Cada vez mais a indústria percebe que mais importante que os directórios de informação (Yahoo), é preciso estabelecer relações entre os dados que se acumulam. As relações sob a forma de gráfos, (p.ex Q-analysis) está a revolucionar a forma como a indústria está a alterar os seus produtos. Agora o Google pretende mudar o paradigma da empresa passando de um serviço de procura para um serviço de conhecimento. Esperemos que isto não seja apenas mais um dos muitos projectos que ao fim de algum tempo é engavetado.
Google Chroome, que pesadelo
Já tentei de tudo para gostar do Google Chrome, a sério. Já usei stable, dev, nightly builds, já apaguei, recriei configurei o meu perfil N vezes. Já actualizei, eliminei e apaguei os plugins e extensões…
É sempre a mesma merda, Google.
O Chrome funciona dois ou três dias, parece que anda a ali a querer adoçar-me a boca e depois ZAP!, KAPUT, Good Bye.
A única hipótese é ir utilizar o Firefox e ir ao vosso site descarregar novamente o Chrome (que vocês insistem em querer-me fazer descarregar em Português, apesar de ter configurado todas as minhas contas google para utilizar English UK e vocês saberem que nunca descarreguei a versão portuguesa), reinstalar e aguentar mais dois dias até novo Kaput.
Pois agora acabou, estou farto, done, finito. Desta vez não vou descarregar mais merda nenhuma. Ou como diria alguém em bom português:
Adios, adieu, auf wiedersehen, goodbye
Bye G+, Hello again Twitter
After some time using G+ I’m starting to find that the platform, although good, isn’t great! Why doesn’t google get social platforms? Can’t understand. I’m finding myself back more often to twitter, and I’ve even moved my name domain (www.davidmsrodrigues.com) from my G+ profile page to my Twitter profile! That’s life!
Wifi FON_ZON em HTTPS, EeePc e eReaders
Pequenas notas que se vão aprendendo em viagem:
Quase em todo o lado se encontram redes Wifi FON_ZON_INTERNET_FREE. Ora estas, permitem o acesso ao mundo Google sem que seja necessário pagar, utilizar o login da fonera, etc… o que é excelente para ver os emails, ler o reader e até fazer pesquisas na internet.
Isto já é coisa antiga (2008), mas parece que só eu é que não sabia.
O melhor no entanto é que também se pode ver outras coisas como o Youtube. Basta para isso forçar todos os endereços do Youtube a serem abertos em HTTPS e não HTTP. Cool.
Excelente para quando em viagem não tiver outro meio de acesso. Agora só me falta implementar um proxy em cima do Google para ter acesso a tudo utilizando o Google e eventualmente ao Bittorrent… Isso é que seria de génio.
Ainda no que diz respeito ao debate sobre o MacBook Air, posso dizer que o meu EeePC de há 3 anos continua a portar-se lindamente para viajar.
Hoje estava numa explanada e tinha o meu eBook reader pousado em cima da mesa. Posso dizer que chamou à atenção, mais até do que o iPad do miúdo da mesa do lado. Chamou principalmente por parte de quem quer ler livros electrónicos que já sabem o que é um eReader.
Producer-Consumer: Google’s File System
Appending data and reading it efficiently is the key to achieving good performance. Many clients may append data to a single file concurrently and its important to achieve this at low synchronization cost. Google employs producer-consumer algorithm to design such system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Producer-consumer_problem .via Web Space: A simplistic view of Google’s File System.
This semester I am teaching Concurrent and Parallel programing at ISCTE-IUL. One of the challenges I have is to get real application examples that don’t look “fake” or being invented just for the purpose of that class. Students need to understand the importance of those concepts as they are then applied in solving real life problems. One of such problems is the producer-consumer coordination problem that google has to solve in order to implement its file system. There’s also a paper dedicated to the Google File System by Sanjay Ghemawat, Howard Gobioff, and Shun-Tak Leung
Google Under European Fire.
European Union is something of a mess. In one hand plays the role of the protector of monopolies like with the approval of legislation that will unplug european citizens from the web in case of piracy (there goes internet access as a fundamental right down the drain). On the other hand wants to protect the citizens from the monopolies.
Curiously, this apparent contradiction, isn’t really a contradiction. The monopolies aren’t equal. In the first case Europe wants to protect those industries that are whining about loosing money, and that, they say, will be in risk of bankruptcy. On the other case the monopolies are from companies that don’t complain, that innovate constantly and that have enough money in their bank accounts to save Ireland (or Portugal) several times in this economic crisis.
So, if your doing well, making money and you don’t whine… the EU will investigate you, accuse you, and ask you for a bribe… (ups, fine you). If you’re company wants to keep doing business as it did 50 years ago, then the EU will ask its citizens to pay up whatever these old farts want.
Get your act together EU!
Is RSS really Dead?
Almost every modern website uses RSS feeds to deliver content to users. But, in the time of social networks is RSS still really the way to push information to readers?
RSS is a big technology as it allows people to subscribe to content and then read it latter in their readers, maybe offline or in another terminal. The problem is that this technology is being replaced with faster mediums. Social networks are to blame in part for this, for example twitter even made everything fit into 140 characters. To write a blog post with more than 300 words has become the exception rather than the rule, and the majority of sites try to deliver information fast and in a continuous stream of small consumable snippets.
It’s fast food time in the interwebs and no one seems to care.
In this context, RSS that once allowed you to get the information you wanted in a longer and probably well organised application, is now being declared dead. RSS is not natural for 140 character long messages (although twitter as RSS feeds for their users). It was invented for longer conversations and readings. It even managed to be used to send large media files to users, as in Podcasts (are these also dead?).
But, although RSS is great, it seems that it is fading into the background. It’s being used more and more as data exchange mechanism. A way for your website to send information to Google or Bing rather that to your users. Google even suggests adding your RSS feed as the sitemap file in their website. During some time microformats were what every body was talking about, but as very few standards were defined, microformats never really got into mainstream websites, and for all practical uses RSS is/was the workhorse of data sharing.
Although invisible to most users, RSS still is around (even if I removed the subscribe RSS button from the top right you can still access it).
The news that Bloglines (one of the first online RSS aggregators where you could read news from your favorite sites) was closing, made a stir around the webs as people suddenly realised how dependent they are of this technology. Luckily, Ask.com agreed with MerchantCircle to keep Bloglines active as a recognition of its importance even if the glory days of Bloglines are now past (at least while google reader is dominating the market and the next big thing doesn’t show up).
In the RSS world there was a time of feast that passed. That time was the time of multiple reader applications and strong development. When it was found that there was no business model for RSS and Google Reader became dominant, RSS faded into it’s secondary passive role. It’s probably one of the most used pieces of technologies around and one that people rely on transparently. This will make keep it alive.
I bet it will survive these strange times of junk food and fast driving.
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Google: uma pergunta sobre o buzz (mais uma)
Com o lançamento do buzz… o que é que acontece ao jaiku?