GOOGLE IS GOD OF THE INTERNET

GOOGLE IS GOD OF THE INTERNET

Having had a website and a domain name at the inception of the Internet was really cool. That's when static HTML web pages was state of the art. But then, the boom started, suddenly there were dynamic websites all over the net, with animated graphics and java applets.

Search engines then, were mundane, Jeeves, Lycos, Altavista and Hotbot was making a name for themselves and Yahoo Inc. was king of the hill. Meanwhile thousands of people were earning millions of dollars with dot-coms and e-trade. Then came the crash. Hardly a year later e-commerce sites prang-up all over the net and Google Inc. was the new kid on the block... Google has grown from strength to strength and as a 10 year old, provides untold amounts of online applications from Web hosting, to Web and Image search to Google Maps and Satellite Imagery to mention only but a few of its substantial array of offerings

However the 14 year old Yahoo has been out-stripped, out-competed, out-played, out-done, even tough, it provides similar services and a substantial amount of them at that, but certainly not as many as its chief competitor Google, who is not only hailed as king of the search engines but also god of the Internet. Despite its dominance now, there will be other search engines wanting to be king of the hill. FOR FREE TICKETS to the EXPO!

In the flanks, Live Search/MSN was doings its thing and made a play to grab Yahoo, but Bill G just got an earful from Jerry Y instead. Websites have improved, PHP, ASP and JSP is abound, with some sites are flaunting amazing Flash and Ajax technologies. Online shopping is outdoing conventional shopping, bandwidth is getting cheaper and the Internet is growing daily.

Meanwhile search engines has taken on specific rolls like, Jobs search, Property search, News search, People search etc... and the race for the best search engined continues. Jeeves had swallowed Hotbot and changed its name to Ask.com, Lycos became Lycos Inc., Altavista became the property of Yahoo and InfoSpace the owners of Exite and the WebCrawler Metasearch engine bought Dogpile, another metasearch engine.

But that's just the beginning. Enter the latest and newest in search engines, OneRiot, Hakia, Kosmix, Searchme, Twine, Cuil, Topsy, TweetMeme, and not forgetting Bing. Bing is Microsoft's New Search Engine (old Live Search/MSN) and its not bad at all, it has a very clean interface, really visually appealing and presentation is excellent. I think its destined to give Google a run for its money. Searchme is a multimedia search engine and appears to be much faster than Google whereas Wolfram Alpha is a computational knowledge engine, which can do stuff that Google can't. I predict there will soon be much controversy and speculation as to which the best is among the search engines. At the moment Searchme is my personal favorite.
However, the latest nerdytoys are metesearch engines, it has become the latest craze, because they deliver the most comprehensive and relevant results in one place. Dogpile is currently producing better results than Google. The cool thing about metasearch engines is, they search the leading search engines like Google, Yahoo and Ask simultaneously and deliver the best combined results for any search. So, is googling going to give way to engining? What say you?

Here are some Metasearch engines to try out!

• Dogpile - is my personal favorite.
• MetaCrawler
• Polycola
• WebFetch
• InfoSpace

FOR FREE TICKETS to the EXPO!

AMAZON KINDLE

AMAZON KINDLE

The latest nerdy toy on the block is the Amazon's Kindle 2, but its not only for nerds, the ladies are going gah-gah over it. Its a nifty gadget that does for books what the Apple iPod does for music. Kindle2 is a battery powered tree friendly ebook reader, that simulates a page of a book, but its much lighter and thinner than a book, (depending on the book you reading of course). It can store some 4000 books, documents and magazines on its SD card (subject to available space).

Like the Apple iPod connects to iTunes, so does Kindle connect to Amazon via 3G wireless to download complete books at the fraction of the printed version in mere minutes. It has inbuilt PDF support and connects to the Internet wirelessly to access the quarter million books currently available for download. Apparently Kindle2 is also MP3 savvy, but I will best stick to my iPod. Kindle is in a sense is a very large iPod with 3G wireless. My trusty iPod can do it all, so who needs wireless when the iPod interfaces with the aggregator. Kindle2 has an auto-rotating screen and can rotate its image from portrait to landscape much like the latest touch screen cellphones and GPS unit do (my samsung omnia), but it has no colour, only 16 shades of gray. It is boasted that it makes text look clearer and images sharper but I'm almost certain the Kindle3 will be in colour. Seriously, who wants to read a glossy full colour men's magazine in 16 shades of grey. Neither will the ladies appreciate a chocolate or fresh cream cake ad or even a sexy underwear ad in black and white.

I'm not knocking it, I love this device because I see Kindle technology as "freedom of write" like "freedom of speech" meaning that anyone and everyone can publish their own books. Save it PDF format (encryped cf course), email it to some Kindle owners top roof read, edit and Voila! No need for type setting, imagesetting, lithgraphic artwork, printers, publisher nor distrubutor and warehousing, caws you can brand it and sell it yourself via the internet. Kindle has cetainly spedup vanity publishing (self-publish) tremendously and authors can now finally gain financial success and not just settle for the royalties.

Anyway, the Kindle2 has a mate called Kindle DX, its has a larger screen, both have built in text-to-speech processors, (like Text-Aloud computerised voices) and can read back articles and pages when driving in your car.

I wonder it it will impact on the sale of school books, considering the cost of the Kindle may exceed the cost of all the books in the first place. However, its time to go techno, so all you book worms.... go on, go donate all your books to the local library.

DIGITAL IMAGES

DIGITAL IMAGES

The bible reads "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images" .... and the second commandment concludes "Thou shalt not bow down to them nor serve them", which implies the prohibition against idolatry, but man in his heightened zeal to disobey the commandments and to glorify his own image, sprang into making carvings of himself and his surroundings, since time immemorial. These graven images has changed somewhat in its form to the virtual and the digital kind of today. Will this invariably be the cause of his destruction or his higher elevation? Man has termed all his clever tricks that he mentally conjured up technologies but are these not mere "ploys by Satan" to distract mankind from worshipping God?

After centuries of statue mouldings and wood carvings, man has come to preserve his own image by creating the crude box-camera and the film to accompany it. Vigorously perusing betterment over time, we today, have interchangeable 35mm cameras that beats its more modern digital camera in picture density hands down. The single slide projector of old gave way to carousels, superseded by silent 8mm projector, then ones with sound. Progress in motion photography gave rise to 16 movie projector, then 32 mm cine projectors and its other industrial incarnations. These amazing technologies were even further superseded by Television, and video recorder, as exhibits and storage places for man's images. CD/DVD writer and computer hard drives today, are to the most popular and the cheapest form of mass storage for any kinds of information.

Just imagine where this is all going to end, we already have digital kids, who have digital kidz, playing in digital playground with nerdy toys, trading with digital cash, in virtual space in the Web 2.0 world -the latest hype. Virtually every cell phone today has an embedded camera and the ability to record several frames per second, viz, digital video cameras.

Essentially Web 2.0 refers to the "second generation" of web development, technologies and design. It better facilitate Internet communication, data uploads,  information sharing and world wide collaboration on virtually every subject. Web 2.0 gave rise the development and evolution of web-based communities collaborating through social-networking sites where video-sharing and picture sharing, is the order of the day. The porn industry has more than flourished because of this and pervades the Internet to the point that school going kids are sending selphy's of their pink parts to others to evoke a response.

So I ask you, has image creation reached a new level of evil?

NERD TOYS

NERD TOYS

To be grateful to someone, is an emotion that is short lived yet the benefits received from that person may last a life time. Technology is such a benefit. In most cases all that technologist ever want, is acknowledgement and thanks and perhaps some money.  But for many nothing has been forthcoming. It probably all started with Charles Babbage, perpetuated by both Blaise Pascal and Ada Lovelace or even Martin Cooper but thereafter the trail becomes a bit hazy perhaps even suppressed. Anyway be that as it may, its important to give credit where credit is due.

Dr Martin Cooper was in essence the inventor the modern cell phone in 1947 but it wasn't popular then, because hexagonal cells technology wasn't invented until the 70's, however cell phones as we know it today has been popularised by the effort AT&T and Bell Labs. The funny thing is, they have been sitting on this cell phone technology since the early 50's during which time the military were using radiophones.

All I can say now, is a big thanks to them and all those others whose names became obscured in order that others may shine. When we look back at my other two pals, Stevie W. and Stevie J. they didn't wait around for the acknowledgments and the thanks but turned their brainchild into a global giant and in the process became world renown. Bill William G was no different, at one time he was even writing software for the two Stevies as well as for IBM and made a big success of it, he became popular in the process and is now keeping the world at ransom.

Capitalists aside, enter Linus Torvalds, he is the originator of the Unix work-alike kernel upon which Linux is built. He is a true humanitarian, a true technologist because he has placed his would-be-wealth at the disposal of everyone. He is the reason why we have operating systems like, Suse, Mandrake, Red Hat, Debian, Ubuntu and Centos etc...

Tim Berners-Lee is probably one of the least recognisable people in I.T, but he probably deserves more credit than most. This particle physicist is in fact "the Father of the Web", he originated HTML, the basis of all Web pages. Lets all give him a hand or better yet a standing ovation. Less well known to us, are the dudes and dudettes whose names elude us, of Intel Corp and Motorala Corp who invented their respective microprocessors. Three cheers for these brilliant people and for their ideas and microprocessor designs that now dominates the desktop, notebook and mobile scene. Cellphones, computers, digital diaries, satellite receivers, are the result of you.

"Project Chess", is another such case of hidden identities, where the individual's intellectual property becomes that of his or her employer. Project chess was the code name for the "Acorn" computer which later became known as the IBM PC, designed by William Lowe and his twelve man engineering team. A computer system that has changed the way we do business and communicate. A benefit for which all of us should be eternally grateful.

However, identity obscurity was the exclusive domain of the Corporate employer then, and still now and as much as the glory of the invention of the mouse goes to Xerox corporation, a special thanks and a collective salute to its individual inventor, (perhaps Douglas Engelbart). Dude  without your mouse, the graphic user interface may never have materialised. Nothing happens in the foreground when the background is missing. A very special thanks to all the dudes and dudettes who works or worked in the background, contributed to technology but received no acknowledgement nor recognition for their part - THIS ONE IS FOR YOU and the nerd toys of the future.

Wana be a NERD? CLICK ME!

GEEKS

THE NERD DEFINED

A few years ago spectacle manufacturers had a very mundane outlook on life and as such, made spectacles that made everyone look like nerds. But what is a nerd really, you may ask? That's a difficult one! But I'm quite sure there is probably 101 definitions for the term - nerd. One definition that stuck in our minds; is that of Steve Erkel. You know, the dude with the round specs, the very visible tartan socks and matching braces. Those wide braces pulled-up his trousers midway between his nipples and his navel  but his appearance was further accentuated by his skinniness and  shortness of the trousers itself. But this description of nerds may not be entirely true. 

GEEK CLOTHING 

By design Erkel pulled up his trouser, whether is was non-designer Jeans, or regular geek clothing, a shorts or a tracksuit, it just had to be high enough to put his socks on display. And don't forget about his peculiar walk or rather waddle and the squeaky voice and the meticulously short haircut.

The intelligence episodes of the Big bang Theory somewhat gives us  different view of nerds.   The assumption normally is, that a nerd's eccentricity comes from right-brain development, thus the left brain responsible for appearance and dress-sense, walking and even talking lags behind. However, that is no longer the definition of a nerd. The new nerd is normally short, often plump with fat cheeks from eating all that pizza and pasta and other take-out, whilst sitting at the computer or video games or even reading. He wears designer spectacles, dresses relatively normally, definitely no tartan check socks and has long hair sometimes long enough to be gathered in a pony-tail, and hardly ever speaks and always seems distracted.

These nerds are technology savvy. They are the dudes that can mentally store the visualize steps of screens in software and talk you through it, if needs be. Like perhaps cellphones or a video game console, video machine, a router, a modem and especially computer software. They are the JAVA, PHP, ASP programmers, the electronic circuit designers, the CAD visualizers. In the intricacy of their minds, they ponder and hypothesize and even day-dream, but its not all futile, because shortly after, whilst even at a take-out joint, will grab a serviette and write down some code, draw a small design of something or even a mathematical formula. Months later, we have new cell phones, satellite receiver, GPS system, video game console, computer software, semiconductors, microprocessors and other nerdy toys because they could visualize in the shadows of their minds.

They certainly have the Nerd Gene and the likelihood is that they are all related somehow. Please don't ask how, only time can give us the answer. You may probably say, that description somehow fits me. All I ask, is design something futuristic and give me sole distribution rights.

But have a look at this first, CLICK HERE! or HERE!

THE NERDS

THE NERD GENE

Nerds have always been ridiculed, looked down upon and persecuted by those devoid of intelligence. This "nerd prejudice" is known to have spanned two or three generations but the nerds and the geeks are blameless, since its written in their genes? "Is there really such a thing as a nerd gene" you may  well ask? You be the judge. For me, it started in the year dot when technology was in its infancy compared to today's standards. I didn't say that I'm a nerd or a geek, but will say I have a great affinity for them, in fact I love nerds and have developed some really great relationships with those fellow beings so termed by their technological dependents. 

For Stevy J, William Bill G, Kay N, Stevy W, Shina T and so many others too numerous to mention, it probably also started around the same time. Whiles they tinkered around in the garages, conjuring up ideas for geeky stuff they provided tech support for established electronics companies.

Electronics was the next big craze then, that's when the Galvins (Motorola) changed from making police radios to manufacturing semiconductors. Nerds were also gearing themselves up globally. Traf-O-Data (Bill Gates) went from traffic data analysis to writing Operating Systems for microprocessors. Home computers were abound, Sord, Tandy, Spectrum, Apple, Apricot, Banana, Commodore, etc ... were the springboards for the nerd toys of the future under the guide of the older  technological nerds. Computer parts were in demand. Computer sales soared.

Today laptop computers and cell phones, GPS's, Satellite receivers, digital dairies, laser discs, scanners, printers and the Internet, are all results of 40 years of experimentation by those with nerdy genes. Laptop repairs, What will the nerdy toys of next 40 years have on offer?

To see the Nerd Gene CLICK THIS!