Thejo Kote » Google

SMS Channels from Google

Thejo — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 17:40:58 +0000

Google just launched a labs project called SMS Channels. Seems very similar to what we’re doing with MyToday. What a coincidence…

I think it had to happen at some point considering the numbers we have. But, I wouldn’t really conclude that Google is taking on MyToday with this labs launch. My guess is that this is a 20% project and not a “let’s crush these midgets” type strategic move. Many Google products are born from 20% projects, so you never know how far they’ll take it. Either way, competition is always good and the attractiveness of the space got validated some more. Of course, whether competiton from Google is good is open to debate.

Update: Rajesh has posted an interview he gave on the competition from Google.

Competition for SlideShare?

Thejo — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 17:22:38 +0000

A globally successful site built out of India in the last few years we can all be proud of (apart from Zoho) is SlideShare. It does one thing really well. Sharing slide shows. But, it looks like Google has taken a first step in competing with them. Of course, SlideShare does so much more at this point, but with a lot of Google products becoming “social” (like Reader), you never know. I guess it’s time for the SlideShare guys to put their heads down to out-innovate them, because there is no way a 16K people company with all their bureaucracy is going to keep up with a motivated start up. All the best to Amit and team.

DRM sucks. Again.

Thejo — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 19:59:13 +0000

Google recently killed the paid video downloads service, and told the people who have bought videos all these days that they can no longer view them. It’s yet another instance which shows why DRM is such a bad idea.

By picking up its marbles and going home, Google just demonstrated how completely bizarre and anti-consumer DRM technology can be. Most importantly, by pulling the plug on the service, Google proved why consumers have to be allowed to circumvent copy controls.

More at Ars.

Google offers bus rides!

Thejo — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 16:53:49 +0000

As with all things related to Google, the press is gushing about Google arranging transportation for its employees. The report says around 1,200 employees use the transportation service. Compare that to the 18,000 employees of Infosys who work out of Electronics City in Bangalore, most of whom use the bus facility provided by them. Of course, the service from Infy is not free and there’s no free Wi-Fi access and other perks, but, purely from a logistical perspective, it was a massive, well run operation, atleast when I was there.

Ubiquity first, Revenue Later

Thejo — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 18:47:13 +0000

Eric Schmidt on criticism that Youtube may have been a bad investment -

…an old joke in the Internet is that URL stands for Ubiquity first, Revenue Later.

[Link]

Google Image Labeler – Very addictive

Thejo — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 07:39:26 +0000

Google has released a new Labs project called Image Labeler. It’s a game where you and another random user try to give images the same label in a 90 second period. 100 points for every match. It’s very addictive. I wasted an hour playing it. Google in turn got human intelligence labelling their images, so the image search quality should improve.

A rare mistake

Thejo — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 20:05:03 +0000

Even the best automated systems get it wrong sometimes….

Address groups in Gmail

Thejo — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 17:49:33 +0000

Creating mailing lists, which is a very useful feature, is currently not supported by Gmail. Here’s an excellent workaround.

Google currency conversion

Thejo — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 17:59:59 +0000

If it’s something that you can query through a text box, Google seems to be there. Now it’s a currency converter. I’ve always used the excellent xe.com for conversions, but Google has made it easier. It works like the basic calculator, and its biggest strength is the ability to understand natural language queries. One need not even know the currency of the country before trying to get a conversion. For example the query “uae money in indian money” works just fine.

Google Earth

Thejo — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 18:54:56 +0000

Google recently acquired Keyhole, the satellite imaging company. They have now released a product which integrates satellite imagery and Google search. It’s called Google Earth, and in traditional Google style, there’s a free version. I had tried out Keyhole earlier and it was a lot of fun. Google Earth aims to be more than just fun, but that’s just for users in the United states. For users in other countries, it’s more of a toy that is a lot of fun to play with. Features like the one which flies you along the route you want to take along real roads are really cool. Users in the US, especially those living in big cities, can enjoy the integration of Google Earth with Local search, to actually ’see’ search results. The combination of actual photos with relevant search results are a huge improvement over graphical maps.

Just to illustrate the difference in the resolution of the images available, I chose Chicago in the US and Mysore in India.

The image above shows houses and cars on the streets too.

I took this screenshot as the name is shown in the way it is pronounced in my native language, Kannada, and not as it is usually done in English. That was cool. If you’re familiar with the area, you can actually identify some landmarks.