Google and their new Cube Lab

For those who know me you know that I am a big fan of everything Google. At the heart of this fascination is the fact that Google does everything they can to explore, experiment, learn, challenge, and create things that give people the ability to use technology for what it was meant for - but in a better, more efficient manner. This also allows for unconventional and new methods of doing things with the tech we all have in our lives. This excites me because not only does it give people with advanced knowledge of computers and technology more tools but it also helps to bring along the novice as well. Speaking of the novice computer user, as they come along for the journey with the advanced users and experts, Google provides them with the tools they need to learn and experiment with the technology being used by the experts so they too may one day share in that distinction. It is just marvelous! 

New Experimental Frontiers

Google is well known for its powerful search engine on the internet. They are also known for some of the various other ways the search engine can be used. Things like calculators, translators, and weight conversions are but a small few things that you can use Google for. And unless you have been living under a very large rock, or living at the bottom of the ocean you would also be familiar with Google Glass, Android, and Google Maps and Earth. If I was to make a list of all the various projects that Google is involved in or the companies they own or have a stake in we would be here all day. Let's just say that Google has grown to be a major company in this country (and the world) and they have no plans on slowing down at any point in the near or distant future.

I think that for anybody who likes to keep up with current technology or news about what is just over the horizon, one company to watch would obviously be Google. This is made even easier considering the Google Chrome Blog has been keeping relevant news on the site and informing the public about new experiments. Yes, "Chrome" is the name of their web browser. But think about just how important that is for a moment.

Everything that we do these days, or almost everything anyway, has a start on the internet. Our communications, many of the programs that we run, or the data that we collect or send out. All of it is either coming from or going through the internet. So if you are building something that is supposed to work better than anything else out there the best place to focus your energies is with a browser. That is precisely what Google had done years ago. They developed Chrome.

Chrome has had its ups and downs just like any browser. Personally I have been using Firefox for the last few years. While Firefox is my default browser I still use Chrome occasionally or when I am doing something specific that requires the use of Chrome. As for Internet Explorer... I have not used that piece of junk for a few years now. I have been using Chrome more and more lately and I expect that at some point in the near future I will make a complete switch between Chrome and Firefox. The point is that the browser Google has created in Chrome is a great piece of software and it serves as the starting point for many of their internet based projects/experiments. This is why the Chrome Blog is a great place to get information about upcoming projects.

The Cube Lab

Today marks the 40th anniversary of the Rubiks Cube. As an homage, Google has launched what they are calling the Cube Lab. The lab is a website that gives users various styles of Rubiks Cube puzzles to not only play around with but they can also create their own. The amount of work and brainpower that has gone into this website is immense and I sincerely recommend that you check it out when you have the time. It is definitely worth a look.

The Cube Lab is a great piece of work. Google has done a marvelous job putting sites like this together and if you never take a look at any of them you are really doing yourself a disservice. The best way to describe what the Cube Lab is would be to let Rubik's Cube creator Professor Erno Rubik explain it. The following  is a paragraph taken from the website's "about" page:

"The Cube was born in 1974 as a teaching tool to help me and my students better understand space and 3D. The Cube challenged us to find order in chaos. Since then, technology has made fantastic progress in bringing new possibilities to how we learn and how we tackle bewildering complexity. Chrome Cube Lab takes full advantage of that progress by encouraging curiosity and problem-solving skills—the very reason the Cube was created in the first place. I can’t wait to see people learn about three-dimensional objects through their browsers and to test the limits of what is possible when the Cube gets re-jigged using cutting edge web technologies. Cube on!”

...Professor Erno Rubik


Links to the sites mentioned in this posting:

The Chrome Blog 
The Chrome Cube Lab 

 

Cable and Mobile - Teammates or Adversaries. Part 1

There will always be people who are controlling what others are using. In the 90's the cable companies became giants selling television to the consumer that they could not get anywhere else. Today data is the commodity and the cable companies are still in the game. While they managed to remain a player the mobile companies have made their way into the market and are quickly gaining more and more real estate. With this comes the ever present battles for the money that is attached to all of the various products that they have for the consumer. One such product is not something that you can touch, feel, or even see. Rather it is something that we all use but has very rapidly become one of the most important things in all of our lives today, the data that we all need so much.

DATA Wars

Back when the connections were slow data was not an issue. Nobody needed to worry about their data usage because nobody was able to download anything large enough to matter. Streaming was not a thing back then and companies like Netflix did not exist. Even so, it did not take long for entities such as Netflix to start getting into the game with ideas and business models that did not exist before and with it came a need for a slice of the pie.

Of course the cable companies were not used to people trying to move in on their business because it did not happen all that often. And when it did they were not too worried because they would either win out in court on some trumped up patent lawsuit or they would just crush the competition in other ways. Regardless they remained their own god and really answered to no one. Such was the case when they started putting caps on their bandwidth and using "bandwidth throttling" to control what their customers could use.

When the mobile companies came into the fold it was an entirely different game. The cable companies did not see that they needed to fight with them too much. On the contrary there was an opportunity for an alliance. They could pool their resources and both industries could eat up the consumer. Of course this worked well until the data that consumers used became the biggest need they had and both the cable companies and the mobile companies had the means to sell it to them. This was the start of the DATA Wars.

The ultimate loser in this scenario is the customer. It does not matter how you arrange the players or what they are fighting over. None of it matters because no matter what is going on or how it is working out the consumer losses every time. See, you would think that in our capitalistic society that the customer would be the winner. You would think that the competition between the two entities would spur lower prices and better products. After all, isn't that the model that our markets were founded on? All of these "assumptions" would be correct. That is, if your assuming that things should be this way. The problem is that none of it has happened this way. Both industries have found ways to screw the consumer while fighting the competition. Why? Because the consumer does not have any choices in the matter, because the consumer has shown a dire need for the products, and because the government that is supposed to be the oversight here is not doing anything but allowing the companies to do what they want. So again.. the customer losses every time.

Remove Bloatware the Easy Way!

There have been a ton of applications over the last few years that have promised to handle the daunting task of cleaning your computer. Sadly, most of them were just a ruse aimed at getting people to install the software only to pollute the computer with its own spyware, malware, and even a virus or two. Even when people go to download a software application from download giant CNET you have to be extremely vigilant. Every time you download something from them you are running the risk of installing a toolbar or other such junk that no one needs. Problem is, they try and make it seem as if the toolbar is part of the process of installing the software you actually wanted.

Of course this is not the only cause of what has long been called bloatware. Anytime you bring home a new computer the hard drive is polluted with crap that you do not need and will most likely never use. People spend hours deleting software using various means and different websites that promise to help. As a service tech myself I cannot count how many times I have been called because bloatware has caused some sort of problem on a system. The best thing that anyone can do is to delete anything you do not need or better yet, uninstall it through your control panel. This too can be a chore, especially if you do not know what you are dealing with. This can be hard even for a seasoned computer pro.

Well rest easy my friends. I have found a tool that will save the day. Not only will this application make getting rid of junk so much easier. But it will give you information about what you are deleting and what scores of other users have done with that same piece of software. Coupled with their website the application itself is priceless. I am referring to a piece of code entitled Should I Remove It?

As I said, the application and the website both do a wonderful job of first giving you information to help make your decision about deleting the software easier. Once you know what you are dealing with, you will know if you can safely remove the application without possibly making a mistake and uninstalling something you or your system may actually need.

The application is very easy to use and the best part about it is that it does not install or use any 3rd party applications to get rid of things you delete. The application will load the original uninstall software from the application you are removing. This way it is assured to get every file associated with the offending application because it is the application itself that is doing the deleting. The fact that this application does its job in such a simple yet effective manner is what makes it so great. If you couple this with a couple other great tools you will be able to keep your computer clean and running in top form for a long time.

The website is also a great place to start if you are still unsure about getting rid of things on your system. You can type any application that you find on your system into the search box and you will be presented with a bunch of information on that particular file. What else was installed with it, where it comes from and where on your system it resides. Of course you will still get the best piece of info in my opinion and that is what did other people do with it. What is so great about that piece of information is that even if you are not sure about the application or what to do with it, you can at least make a somewhat safe decision based on what thousands of others have done.

The website can be found HERE and you will find links on the home page to download their software also. That is up to you however. The application does a wonderful job of handling most of the tedious work of deleting the junk for you but if you would prefer to do it yourself you can still do that. Just utilize the web site and the information on it and you will be set to go.

Hotmail Will Be Replaced By Outlook.com

Online email is big business. Well, at least it is for the big companies like Google and Microsoft. Speaking of which, Microsoft is looking to take a bite out of Google's share of the email market with the launch of Outlook.com. Microsoft has forever operated Hotmail as their free email offering and for a long time it was pretty popular. I had a Hotmail account once.. once.

Of course I dropped Hotmail a long time ago and now use Google. As a matter of fact, I use Google for most everything today. It gives me a self-perceived advantage to have all of my data on one service. Especially a service as robust as Google. Yes, I said robust - because it is. Have you taken a look at all the various things, data, and options your Google page gives you? If you have not, then you should. Back to email.

Outlook.com is hoping to take away from Google's reported 425 million users. Yahoo comes in at 293 million and Hotmail (Soon to be converted to Outlook) comes in at a measly 267 million. Well, I wouldn't call that measly, I would be happy to have that many customers for anything each paying me a penny for a service. I would be rich!

Either way we will have to wait and see how well Microsoft does with this new venture. I do not anticipate them hurting Google all that much but I do think this will be a good move for them and could revitalize their worn-down Hotmail service. So all-in-all this is a good move by Microsoft which is seen by many to be the old man standing on the popular corner with the young guys (Google, Yahoo, and Apple). Well.. actually I would equate Apple with a 30-something to Google and Yahoo's 20-something.