Tuesday: July 14, 2009
Microsoft to put lightweight versions of Office 2010 apps online for free.Microsoft's announcement is being seen as the latest move in a tit-for-tat rivalry between two tech giants as it and Google increasingly make efforts to encroach on one another's turf.
Tuesday: December 18, 2012
Why Google's GMail outage may be a sign of things to come.The answer is that most of the coders behind today’s popular websites and services are deploying their code when it’s ready—not at some pre-determined point when downtime may not be noticed. It’s called continuous code deployment, or some variation on that theme, and everyone from Facebook and Netflix to smaller services do it. While it may occasionally cause a few blips, those blips should be shorter and less catastrophic.
Thursday: December 13, 2012
Google releases standalone maps application for iPhone.The long awaited Google Maps application is finally here and it actually looks and functions very well. There have been numerous reports that this app beats out it's Android counterpart in terms of design and overall look and feel. All of the characteristics you expected from a proper maps application are here - turn by turn directions, vector maps, rotational maps and general location information. Some amazing work here from Google.
Wednesday: December 12, 2012
Merry Dukemas! Gog.com giving away Duke Nukem 3D for the holidays.I have fond memories of playing Duke Nukem 3D in college as it was my first real networked game with my fellow nerd-type college friends that we could all partake in. Mind you this was way before your traditional online multiplayer we know today, before the Halos and Call of Duties, and way before kids screaming obscenities at other adults through Xbox headsets were the norm. I'm surprised to see that the game still holds up well jaggy pixels and all. Hey, you can even snag a Mac port of the game - hurry offer ends while supplies last (you have until December 14 and supplies won't run out).
Want to know what the world searched for in 2012? There's a Google Zeitgeist for that.They even prepared a little video with inspirational music to go along with it. How very Google of them.
Monday: December 10, 2012
Google Fiber not coming to your neighborhood any time soon.Turns out that Google would need about $140 billion to roll out their fiber network to the entire continental United States. At present time, they only have about $45 billion in the bank and that doesn't begin to include other associative costs. Long story short, if you really want to try out Google Fiber you should think about moving to Kansas.
Monday: November 14, 2011
Everything you never knew about Google's top secret lab where they pursue future ideas.According to the article, this magical place (dubbed 'Google X') is where Google may or may not be working on the following futuristic concepts: 1) an internet fridge that orders food when it's low, 2) driver-less cars, 3) space elevators, 4) personal assistant robots for your home, 5) networked coffee pots and gardening tools and finally 6) training monkeys to fly airplanes for special covert operations.
Wednesday: November 9, 2011
Bret Victor's not-so-brief rant on the future of interaction design.If you haven't seen Microsoft's video entailing what they think the future of technology holds, you should watch it (readily available on source URL as an embedded clip). So watch that video and then read Victor's thoughts on the matter. That being said, I do have a minor point of contention. I did get some hands-on time with a Kinect-enabled Xbox 360 this past weekend and it was a fun, dare I say, semi-magical experience. I highly reccomend Double Fine's Once Upon a Monster (even the demo is fun).
Nintendo hard at work to find way to use more than one tablet for their next console.It seems that Nintendo had originally planned to have only one controller / tablet accessible to the Wii U at launch time (the other controller would have been your standard Wii-mote variety). Someone at Nintendo must have realized that this would probably be a bad idea so they have been hard at work at trying to make two tablets work for the console. The console's processor and RAM constraints may have played a part in pairing a singular tablet. However, Nintendo may have solved this so multi-tablet gaming may be coming to a living room near you.
Monday: August 15, 2011
Mozilla to do away with version numbers in Firefox with new non-numbered version update.Google has taught us all that people are too busy to remember version numbers these days. It's better just to keep updating software and have to worry about pesky version number conventions. Mozilla thinks this is a good idea and has decided to adopt this release schedule for future non-version-numbered releases of Firefox. Good for them.
Wednesday: August 3, 2011
A quick tutorial on how to create checklists using Evernote.Until quite recently all of my to-do lists were hand-written in a tattered marble covered notebook. I liked writing things down and enjoying that small feeling of achievement that comes with checking something off. That is, until I got too lazy to write them down. Enter Evernote, a free app for cataloguing whatever it is you want to catalogue. It's searchable, syncs with pretty much any computer or device, and best of all - free. Posting this here because I was not aware that you could search to-do lists via items that have gone unchecked. Awesome feature.