data

Google's quest to (re)open and accelerate the web

I've been an outspoken critic of Google over the years, admiring some of its products (Search, SMS, News, etc.) while deriding its relationship to open source and deprecating most of its products.

There appears to be, however, a new Google afoot, and it's one that I like quite a bit. Google may need to change its slogan from "Don't be evil" to "Be open," as this looks to be the direction it is going. At Google I/O today, Google announced a few things that make me feel like the future of the web is much safer in its hands than in Microsoft's (if Microsoft ever figures out the web at all).

First, as ReadWriteWeb rightly applauds, Google is dropping its name from its Gears project, a

symbolic move aimed at reinforcing Google's commitment to working with existing standards communities and helping them to define better open standards for bridging online applications and the offline world.

Indeed, Google's Gears Engineer Aaron Boodman writes that Gears "aims to bring emerging web standards to as many devices as possible, as quickly as possible."

More open, much sooner.

In Google's increasingly open world, Steve Ballmer's insistence that Vista "is not a failure and it's not a mistake" speaks to the wrong questions surrounding the much maligned operating system. What he should be protesting is that "It's not irrelevant."… Read more

I-O Data keyboard is too small for its own good

The quest for the perfect portable keyboard has seen all manner of designs, whether they fold, roll up, or even glow in the dark. But no one seems to have found the killer solution just yet--and we doubt the latest attempt by I-O Data is the exception.

There's no disputing that this Bluetooth keyboard, which is designed for use with a mobile phone or PDA, is portable enough at 6 by 3.6 inches and only half an inch thick. Those petite dimensions, however, could well be what limits its success. Just look at the picture accompanying this item: … Read more

Sprint addresses data usage limit

Last week I told you that Sprint was limiting customers with "simply everything" to 5GB of data usage per month, plus 300MB per month of off-network data roaming. While quite a few readers have complained about the cap, it's only fair to acknowledge a couple of points. By anyone's measure 5GB is a lot of data, and it's doubtful that all but a very small handful of people would even even reach that limit. Yes, it's really the principal that matters here--unlimited should mean just that--but Sprint is not the only carrier to limit … Read more

Switch Communications gambles in Las Vegas

It's Sunday morning on Memorial Day weekend in the U.S. The technology industry is relatively quiet. Nothing new has been leaked or announced so far about negotiations between Microsoft and Yahoo or Yahoo and Google, but I ran across a fascinating and in-depth story by Ashlee Vance of The Register on a new data center service, Switch Communications.

The company is opening a 407,000-square-foot data center in Las Vegas that CEO Rob Roy claims will house four times as much gear as facilities from companies such as Google and Microsoft. He boasts:

"This building will be … Read more

Google's David Glazer expects to make peace with Facebook

On Friday's Gillmor Gang podcast, Google's point person on Friend Connect, David Glazer, took questions from the gang, which included Steve, Marc Canter, Robert Anderson, Mike Arrington, Dana Gardner, and myself.

Much of the conversation centered on Facebook's suspended participation in Google Friend Connect. Glazer said he expects Facebook and Google to make peace but didn't want to give a time frame for a resolution.

Regarding efforts by Google, Facebook, and MySpace to provide some element of data portability, Glazer said they are complementary, based on what is known about the APIs so far, which isn'… Read more

Sprint to limit data usage on everything plans

When is unlimited not unlimited? Apparently when it comes from Sprint. Though the carrier has been very active about touting its new "simply everything" plan, which includes unlimited mobile Internet and messaging, it plans to place a cap on monthly data usage next month. Sprint will limit its simply everything customers to 5GB of data usage per month, plus 300MB per month for off-network data roaming.

A Sprint representative told BetaNews that the cap is needed to ensure a great customer experience. "The use of voice and data roaming by a small minority of customers is generating … Read more

Aster Data Systems offers cluster for deep insights

Taking a cue from Google, Aster Data Systems has come up with an massively parallel processing analytical engine and cluster of commodity hardware for extracting insight from hundreds of terabytes of data. MySpace has deployed 100 nodes of the Aster "nCluster" to load millions of rows per second to surface trends that can help the company fine-tune its services.

Aster nCluster nodes consist of 16GB of RAM, four 250GB SATA disks, and dual-processor quad-core Intel Xeon systems interconnected via 24-port 1Gb Ethernet switches. It works with the popular business intelligence and ETL tools, and it can talk to … Read more

Get lost in map data: Policymap

After the Where 2.0 conference, I had a chance to catch up a bit with Jaron Waldman, the CEO of Placebase, which makes the demo site Pushpin that I covered from the conference. He had another demo to show me, but this one is a bit more useful: PolicyMap.

Made for Placebase customer The Reinvestment Fund, it's a collection of real estate, civil, and financial built into a mapping and charting engine. It can locate superfund sites; show you crime stats; tell you about mortgage originations (including things like subprime mortgages to various demographic groups), and age and … Read more

Birthing pains in the colonization of the social Web

The social Web is going through some birthing pains (see Techmeme). In the name of data portability, Facebook, MySpace.com, and Google made announcements last week about creating a more open social Web. For the most part, they are press releases and not yet fully released into the wild.

On Thursday, Facebook suspended involvement with Google's Friend Connect, claiming that it redistributes user information from Facebook to developers without users' knowledge, violating the company's terms of service.

Google responded that Friend Connect is designed to keep users fully in control of their information at all times. "Users … Read more

Facebook suspends participation in Google's Friend Connect

This post was updated at 3:17 PM with comment from Google's David Glazer.

A post Thursday on Facebook's developer blog explains that the social network has suspended participation in Google's "Friend Connect" project, citing a violation of its internal terms of service.

"Now that Google has launched Friend Connect, we've had a chance to evaluate the technology," the post by Facebook employee Charlie Cheever read. "We've found that it redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users' knowledge, which doesn't respect the privacy standards our users … Read more