I-Tech

Over the years google has been adding many of the world’s local domains like google.co.uk and google.jo in which case they provides localized search results.
Today Google added google.ps.  yourname.PS is where domains in occupied Palestine are registered like .com or .co.uk. And according to Google Arabia blog post “the new domain will give Arabic-speaking users in the Palestinian Territories, who use Palestinian ISPs, access to Google in Arabic–and eventually, access to more locally-relevant content. With the launch of google.ps, we bring the total number of Google domains worldwide to more than 160. ”

Google also mentioned that it has plans to continue rolling out more domains in the coming months, particularly in Africa.

We do not know if google.ps will work from Gaza, But I will ask Google and update you here soon.

Update: According to a user in Gaza Google.ps works fine in Gaza.

Update2: Google confimred that they will be directing  ”users based on their ISPs, so users of Palestinian ISPs will automatically be redirected to google.ps. However, any user can type in any Google domain they prefer to go.”

Update3: google also explained to ArabCrunch how things will be different to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza:

” Up until today, Arabic-speaking users in the Palestinian Territories have had to visit foreign domains (e.g.google.eg in Egypt) in order to search in Arabic.  Starting today, Arabic-speaking users in the Palestinian Territories who use Palestinian ISPs will be given direct access to Google in Arabic via google.ps

With AdWords, you can target your ads to countries or territories, or to specific regions and cities. The Adwords system uses several factors to determine whether to show your ad including the Google domain being used (.fr, .de, .kr, etc.),  the actual search term the user submits and when possible, we determine the user’s general physical location based upon their computer’s Internet Protocol (IP) address.”

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Google Chrome adds better theme support, gallery in the works

Extensions in the wild may be a little slow in appearing, but themes for Google Chrome? They’ve just gotten a lot easier to install and there may be a flood of them available very shortly.

Right now, there are only two demo themes available — Snowflake (screenshot) and Camo. Based on the thumbnail in Chrome’s new tab, Google has a whole lot more that are nearly ready for public consumption. The actual link returns a 404 error, and then, of course, the thumbnail breaks accordingly.

Once the link goes live, you’ll have easy access through Options -> Personal stuff. Buttons have been added to reset Chrome to its default theme or download something new.

It’s a huge step forward from the old method – renaming and replacing a .dll in your application data folder. CNet’s Stephen Shankland reports that this is working on Mac OS X as well.

To try it out, you’ll need to update your dev channel build or download it from Google.

Source: DOWNLOAD SQUAD

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Google CEO Eric Schmidt

Chief Executive Eric Schmidt has resigned from Apple Inc.’s board because of the companies’ conflicting interests as competition between the one-time allies heats up.

The split announced Monday comes just a few weeks after Google unveiled plans for a personal computer operating system that could siphon sales from Apple’s Mac line and just a few days after the Federal Communications Commission contacted the companies about Apple’s decision to block a Google application from its popular iPhones.

Regulators from the Federal Trade Commission had already been looking into whether Schmidt’s dual role on the boards of Google and Apple would make it easier for the technology trailblazers to collude in ways that would diminish competition.

Thorny questions about corporate governance could remain, even though Apple and Schmidt mutually agreed to sever their ties. That’s because another Google director, Genentech Inc. Chairman Arthur Levinson, remains on Apple’s board.

Schmidt, 54, has repeatedly assured reporters that his involvement with the two companies wasn’t a problem because he recused himself from Apple’s board discussion about the iPhone, which competes with mobile phones equipped with an operating system made by Google. He remained confident he would be able to stay on Apple’s board even after Google last month set out to develop a separate operating system for inexpensive, portable computers, potentially competing with Apple’s Macs.

In a statement Monday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs indicated Google’s operating system — due out next year — made him and Schmidt realize a change had to be made.

“Unfortunately, as Google enters more of Apple’s core businesses … Eric’s effectiveness as an Apple board member will be significantly diminished, since he will have to recuse himself from even larger portions of our meetings due to potential conflicts of interest,” Jobs said.

Apple spokesman Steve Dowling declined to say whether the Cupertino-based company planned to replace Schmidt on a board that now consists of seven directors, including Levinson.

The FTC said Monday that it will continue to examine Levinson’s links to the boards of Apple and Google.

It’s probably only a matter of time before Levinson steps away from Apple or Google, said Charles Elson, director of the University of Delaware’s Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance.

“If it has been determined it’s a conflict for one director to serve on the boards of both companies, I would think it should be for the other, too,” Elson said. “It’s impossible to be on the boards of two companies that are increasingly competing against each other.”

Levinson declined to comment Monday through a Genentech spokesman. Apple’s Dowling declined to discuss the reasons why Apple is letting Levinson stay on its board.

Shares in Mountain View-based Google shares gained $9.12, or 2.1 percent, to close Monday at $452.17, while Apple shares increased $3.04, or 1.9 percent, to close at $166.43.

Schmidt joined Apple’s board three years ago, before Apple released the iPhone and long before Google unveiled its Android operating system for handheld devices.

Having Schmidt serve on Apple’s board seemed to make sense at the time because Google, like Apple, seemed determined to reduce the dominance of Microsoft, whose Windows operating system runs the vast majority of personal computers.

But Apple and Google show signs of becoming less friendly as their agendas collide.

Apple wants people to buy as many of its iPhones and computers as possible while Google is primarily interested in helping manufacturers produce more gadgets that make it easier for people to connect to the Internet and, presumably use its market-leading search engine. Google’s free Android system was the first major step in that direction and the free computer operating system is the next.

What’s more, Google is even branching into telecommunications services with Google Voice, which, which assigns a unique phone number to each user and lets the user direct calls to that number to any other phone line.

Apple recently rejected Google’s attempt to offer Google Voice as an iPhone application, prompting letters of inquiry from the FCC on Friday.

Source: Yahoo! News

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New versions of Google Chrome are out, fixing bugs and patching security holes in both the stable build and the beta build.

Two serious security flaws have been plugged. One had allowed for malicious code exploitation within the Chrome tab sandbox. Found by the Google security team, the threat was serious enough that Google has declined to be more specific until "a majority of users are up to date with the fix," the company said in a blog post on Thursday.

A second security risk caused by memory corruption was found in the browser tab processes. It could have been used to run arbitrary code that would crash all of the browser tabs, creating a second security hole through which an attacker might be able to run code with the privileges of the logged-on user.

Other bug fixes include updates to the V8 JavaScript engine, updates to Google Gears, and getting forward and backward navigation to work even when site redirection is involved.

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Whether it be bills, insurance forms, medical records or prescriptions, patients are often inundated with vast quantities of paper. Google Health is now trying to help you organize all of this paperwork in its platform. Google Health, which finally launched last May after months of rumors, has ambitions to become a centralized and secure place to store medical records online.

The new feature lets patients upload scanned paper documents into your Google Health account. Google particularly suggests that you upload an “advance directive,” which determines your end-of-life wishes so that your family and doctor can honor them if you get sick and are unable to communicate. Google Health is actually working with a advance directive provider, Caring Connections, to provide a free, downloadable form customized for all 50 states. In order to complete the form, you need to download it, print it out, complete it, scan it, and upload it back to Google Health.

Google Health also recently launched a feature that gives users the ability to share their medical history with designated family or close friends. The whole concept of hosting medical records online raises security concerns for many but Google says it is taking lengthy measures to ensure the security of the data, associating invite links to specific Email addresses and allowing users to track who has viewed their records. All shared records are also read-only.

Source: TechCrunch

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Apparently, organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful will require a new operating system.

Google has long worked on expanding its reach beyond mere Internet search. And as many had suspected, it confirmed late Tuesday night that it plans to develop a lightweight operating system based on Linux and Web standards for personal computers.

Why? Well, Google’s standard response to any question about why it’s working on something other than search is to declare that any product that helps people get on the Web, and enjoy their experience on the Web, benefits Google’s advertising customers in that more Web users equals more Google searches.

Yet, Chrome OS represents something more. There’s a competitive impact that can’t be ignored, no matter how often Google insists that it’s in this world to do good rather than inflict pain on other corporations.

Few details were available Wednesday concerning one of the most important and ambitious projects Google has ever undertaken. Sources familiar with the Chrome OS project say Google engineers have only been working on the project in earnest since the beginning of the year, so there’s likely a lot that still needs to be ironed out.

Chrome OS is the byproduct of Google thinking it can do better than Windows, Mac OS X, the various flavors of Linux, and even its own Android operating system. It’s long been obvious that the world has changed from a personal computing model built for individuals working offline or businesspeople sharing files across a workplace to one where the consumer/business lines have blurred and people are expected to be online anywhere and everywhere.

Accompanying that shift has been the decreasing importance of processing power and operating system complexity. For years, the dirty secret of the computer industry has been that most people don’t use nearly the amount of headroom provided to them by modern microprocessors and operating systems.

After all, if you’re searching the Web, sending e-mail, typing up documents, touching up photos, and updating your Facebook status–hardly an uncommon usage model–you’re more concerned with speed and battery life than raw power. Those still playing Doom or editing video will always need something more robust, but most people do spend an awful lot of time in the browser and have embraced smartphones and Netbooks as a way of staying online on the go.

Google’s general idea seems to be twofold. First, it wants to make it easier for regular people to use a computer by making an operating system that is fast, secure, and lightweight enough to run on portable devices.

Sources familiar with Google’s plans for the Chrome OS said that the company is working on a new method of “windowing,” or switching between multiple applications. Google also believes that the whole idea of storing your files and applications in folders is an archaic way of organizing your data, and plans to unveil a new user interface that handles things a little differently.

Secondly, Google believes that through the use of Web standards like HTML 5–promoted heavily during its recent Google I/O conference as the development platform of the future–software development on a browser-based OS will be easily understood by developers reared in the Web 2.0 era.

This is not a new idea. Palm is betting its future on such a strategy, having introduced WebOS on the Palm Pre as a Web-friendly development environment based on a browser engine running atop Linux. Sound familiar?

Google brings much more to bear than Palm, however. It has an entire suite of Web applications and services that already form much of what you want a computer to do: send e-mail, compose documents, edit photos, and, of course, browse the Web.

But why does Google think it needs two operating systems to address this evolving usage model? Much of the language used to introduce Chrome OS could have been pulled from a blog post two years ago introducing Android, Google’s lightweight Linux-based open-source smartphone operating system.

Just a few months ago Google’s Andy Rubin declared Android to be “a revolution” that would help Google conquer the write-once, run-anywhere goal that has eluded the non-Microsoft software community for so many years. And Google executives have endorsed the concept of other companies building things other than phones based on Android.

However, Android appears to now occupy a different role in Google’s thinking. According to Tuesday night’s blog post, “Android was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of devices from phones to set-top boxes to netbooks. Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web, and is being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems.”

As noted, there are an awful lot of details that still need to surface before we can glean Google’s true intent with Chrome OS, not to mention the potential impact. Google said it plans to release the code for Chrome OS later this year, with the expectation that devices based on the OS could arrive in the second half of 2010.

But one thing is for sure: Google’s ambitions are boundless. The company is proposing to do nothing less than rewrite the rules that govern personal computing.

Source: CNET News

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Google Inc.’s entry into the operating system business poses the strongest long-term threat in years to the dominance of Microsoft Corp.’s Windows software, according to analysts.

Google last week announced that it would launch its long-anticipated operating system, based on the open-source Linux kernel and built around its Chrome browser, sometime in the second half of 2010. The new Web-centric operating system will be dubbed Google Chrome OS.

Though analysts agreed that the Windows hegemony is safe in the short term, Google has the financial muscle, engineering might and industry clout to survive a long-term battle with an industry powerhouse like Microsoft.

“Google doesn’t need an operating system to support its revenue stream,” said Dan Olds, an analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group Inc. “They have lots and lots of revenue from their advertising bread and butter. That means they have [the] staying power that’s critically important in this market.”

Michael Silver, an analyst at Gartner Inc., said that Microsoft is unlikely to ignore the threat to Windows. “Microsoft, after all, is one of the more paranoid companies around,” he said.

He added that Microsoft is unlikely to be adversely affected by Chrome OS in the short term.

Microsoft did not respond to a request for comment on the Google announcement.

Analysts did note that Google must stick to the long, complex grind of developing an operating system if it wants to be successful in that business.

Rebecca Wettemann, an analyst at Nucleus Research, said that in recent months, Google has shut down or stopped supporting several products, including Google Video, Google Notebook, the Jaiku microblogging service and the Dodgeball mobile social network.

“They pick something up, get excited about it and work on it until they find another shiny new object they want to play with,” Wettemann said. “My feeling is that Google needs to stop announcing things and instead execute on completing them.”

Nonetheless, the Chrome OS plan has attracted the support of several top PC vendors, including Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo Group, Acer and Asustek Computer.

Source: ComputerWorld

written by admin \\ tags: bing, google, microsoft