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Google launches visual data tool

By Tom Fitzgerald on March 8, 2010 11:42 PM | No Comments
Google has all the worlds information, now they offer a new way to view it. Google's launches visual data tool with data from Census, World Bank, Eurostat, etc. Basically they have all this data from many different sources. They then use creative visual graphics (some are animated) to display this data. 

Bottom line, the population of the US over the last 10 years is more interesting when its in a graph. Here are some example graphs.

  • Mortality rate
  • Population
  • Gross capital formation
  • Energy use
  • Net migration
Take a look and read the frequently asked questions and give it a try.

Early design concepts for Google Tablet

By Tom Fitzgerald on February 3, 2010 10:00 AM | No Comments
Google's Chromium department has some very interesting design concepts for their upcoming Google Tablet. Its exciting and interesting to see such design images so early in development. I think thats a really cool move by Google. Microsoft & Apple are money driven, its painfully clear that is their main drive. Google is a business, obviously a huge one but they aren't driven only by money. My reason being them devoting tons of time and money into things that don't directly bring in cash flow. My short list would be their proposed HTTP protocol replacement SPDY, their public DNS server and Google Wave. I could list more but you get the idea. Their entire open source mantra is healthy for the soul and is awesome. 

google-tablet-concept.png

Apple on the other hand charged me $4.95 for a f***ing update on my iTouch. I'm still mad about that. Anyway my main point being the Google tablet looks awesome as an early draft and it'll be exciting to see where it goes. 

The Google tablet much like their Android powered devices I feel will one day be stronger than Apple's iPad and iPhone counterpart. Main reason being their open source infrastructure. I believe open source will win in the long run by attracting more developers and users that simply want a better product without paying Ballmer or Jobs major cash. 

Guess we'll have to wait and see.

Gmail goes HTTPS by default

By Tom Fitzgerald on January 16, 2010 12:15 AM | No Comments
This is what I love about Google, pushing us into the future securely. Google is doing a lot to try and move technology and the Internet in a fast and safe direction. Now Google's Gmail will automatically be transmitted securely just like your online bank. What does this mean? Your information is now more secure than before. Wether you know it or not if your web address doesn't say https before the address other people can view your data. Sometimes this is ok but if its sensitive information like a user name or password or your emails, you are going to want it secure. 

I'm looking forward to see Google's other methods to make us more secure and faster. I'm referring to Google Chrome operating system. The Chrome OS is supposed to be secure and extremely fast. Basically its an operating system that is just a web browser. It's not going to replace your main pc but it'll let you do more than you may think.

What else? Google's SPDY protocol has me very excited. Basically the HTTP protocol we use today was designed a long time ago. The original design was during a time when the web was a new born and nothing more than teeny text files. SPDY is designed for todays web in mind. In test environments SPDY is 50% faster than HTTP and its secure like HTTPS. It allows multiple connections at once, a way to tell the viewer when more information is available instead of the client continuously checking.

It'll be interesting to see where these new things take us.

Google's SPDY

By Tom Fitzgerald on November 16, 2009 4:09 PM | No Comments
Wow Google is really on a roll. With their mobile operating system Android doing great, Chrome OS to be launched soon, their programming language - what's next? Well now they are working on a replacement to the http protocol. SPDY is the name and my first impression is very positive. I read the whitepaper describing what the goals are and it's good. The http protocol has been around for literally forever, or 1996 to be exact. The protocol was designed to serve web pages to viewers. The problem is web pages have changed drastically many times over since 1996. 

The new protocol is an application layer protocol meaning the world doesn't need to change to use this. The TCP protocol is still used to move the data around but SPDY makes the data much more smarter. For starters it uses compression. SPDY also allows for more communication between the client and server. Currently only the client can make download requests, with SPDY the server can 'tell you' more information about what to get and not get. Currently headers are redundant and over used. SPDY aims to simplify headers and ultimately make the data smaller and faster to move to the client. 

I encourage readers to view the white paper. It's interesting to see how this will move the web forward. 

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