Tag: Google

Trust Is The Issue

I predicted wrongly 2 years ago that Google would make their own OS. Today with Chrome I have been redeemed!

Well ok not exactly. I was still far off both by time and result, but the thinking is the same. In order for Google to roll out the kind of products they want to work in the way they want, they have to deal with the environment their apps work in, and that means working with the browser – which so far makes varied results. It therefore makes sense they make their own browser given the ever higher level of complexity they want their apps to do.

The average Joe is probably aware we developers hate IE, but may not completely know why. Explaining why is not the point of this post, but let me just tell you – IE sucks seriously big time. Anyone who’s ever had to deal with CSS, UTF or language standards, or Java for example, will understand why developers have thinning hair or zero social life as they spend too much time trying to get their apps to work on IE. Firefox helped save them a bit with its standards compliancy, but has so far not been entirely reliable imho, and it still lags behind with approximately 30% market share. I love it and support it, but it’s been crashing on me recently, and anyone who knows code knows that a crashing browser is serious stuff.

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Google’s Microsoftian Approach to Apps

Taking a very quick break to write thoughts about Google Apps. Quick as in Photoshop and my power editor are still open, so I’m writing this midstream into my work. I wanna write it down because surely I’ll forget.

Anyway I stumbled onto this Ars Technica Article re Google Apps, a thrust by Google to support independent application developers via handholding at the start of their project until they can spread their wings and fly so to speak. App development is a topic very close to my heart, being essentially the core of what I’m trying to do with the Exchanges, and having to do with the fact that I’m using subdomains under a main domain (exchange.ph), which I’ve always been convinced will eventually come together when time comes. As to how, I’ll keep that a secret, but it will one day.

So anyway, Google’s guys know this, and also know the considerable technical and cost issues one has to face whilst trying to get things going. I for example am paying a relatively tidy sum for hosting alone, just imagine the cost if I hired developers (I do approximately 90% of the work myself), and / or I wasn’t using a popular CMS. The more complicated the project, say it be Facebook, Imeem, or what Amazon Web Services are doing, the higher the cost. So Google pays for it all, along with provision of an authentication service (wow), a free database (although I gather from the article it isn’t a ‘traditional relational database’, what is it I wonder?), and Google’s BigTable Project among others.

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OpenSocial and the Freaky Future

Google’s video re Opensocial is a freaking 57 minutes long so I didn’t get to watch all of it (my downloads are hogging the bandwidth), but it’s purpose is fairly clear. The Social networking phenomenon needs a way to hook them all up together and Google is answering the call. The html+javascript implementation is a no brainer for most developers and by using it, not only are social networking sites accessing other, more established services and therefore saving yourself the time and effort of development and research, while at the same time actually saving bandwidth as you are pulling from their servers.

Before I watched the video the whole idea reminded me somewhat (whether related or not), about OpenID. It’s obviously far more richer and deeper than that, but for the most part the ‘sharing’ idea is the same.

So my thoughts:

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Google PageRank and my State of Mind

Sometimes, when the wind blows hither nither, Basketball Exchange’s Pagerank is a nice, healthy 5.

Sometimes however, when the moon flies high across the sky, pulling with it the tides below and the ancient living things within, Ballex’s Pagerank is a piddling (for a basketball site), pedestrian and all too ordinary 4.

Poetic inducements aside, I resort to such words for lack of an explanation of the quandaries I face as a blog publisher. To wit:

  1. Why is Ballex’s PR sometimes 4, sometimes 5?
  2. Why is Pisces Iscariot’s PR sometimes 5, sometimes (gasp) 3?
  3. Why in the flying flak fudacious does KikayEx not have a PR rank yet after almost 5 months in existence?

Continue reading Google PageRank and my State of Mind