Posts tagged Google
Google Street View Parody Videos
Apr 24th
Even though most people consider Google’s Street View feature within maps to be pure magic, there are some who think that the bounds of privacy have been completely exceeded. This has spawned a cottage industry of professional and amateur parody videos that are simply hysterical.
I usually feature comedy on Saturdays. In the past, I have featured jokes, comics, cartoons, and news on the weekends. Sometimes I include comics, stories, games, and photos. By far, though, humor and especially videos with Information Technology (IT) themes have been the most popular. So I have gone back to this endless well of laughs! I simply cannot get enough of comedy videos!
For this week, I have picked this video to share with you as follow-up. It is called “NewsTopia – Google Street View”… It is by NewsTopia and placed on YouTube by Yyookkyy and it just plain funny and frighteningly accurate. NewsTopia is an Australian sketch comedy show. They have a great write up on Wikipedia.
The most humorous part of all of this is that it is all so true. Some of the jokes hit a bit close to home!
I hope that I gave you a chuckle to make your weekend a little brighter. I will be back Monday with more serious topics!
What did you think of the video? Funny? Do you know of any other similar movies or clips? Please share.
That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for April 24, 2010.
News Commentary: Google to own Printing?
Apr 19th
Google has an amazing knack for developing products that solve big problems that I did not even realize that I had – and then becoming indispensible in the process. Google recently announced, Google Cloud Print is just such an exciting new initiative.
On Mondays I offer comments on some 
of the most interesting information technology stories that I have found on the web that week. Please feel free to join in the discussion or suggest other stories.
Today’s comments are associated with a recent, exciting declaration from Google. The upcoming Google Chrome Operating System, is to be a completely minimalist, web-based, cloud aware platform. As you will read, this comes with one major headache – Printing! Give it a read below.
Tech Radar – Google Chrome OS brings printing to the cloud: How Chrome will play with printers
Read more:
“While the emergence of cloud and mobile computing has provided users with access to information and personal documents from virtually any device, today’s printers still require installing drivers which makes printing impossible from most of these new devices," says Jazayeri.
"Developing and maintaining print subsystems for every combination of hardware and operating system- from desktops to netbooks to mobile devices – simply isn’t feasible.
"Since in Google Chrome OS all applications are web apps, we wanted to design a printing experience that would enable web apps to give users the full printing capabilities that native apps have today."
As you all know so well, getting a printer to work is a required step in every computer system setup. It is never as easy as they say it will be and every year brings some new initiative to make last year’s “zero configuration” solution have even fewer steps. But today, it still remains that every printer needs an operating system needs a printer driver for every printer – even networked printers. That is where Google Cloud Print comes in. It is essentially a new standard for new printer manufacturers to follow to make their networked printers accept cloud based print requests. That is not very revolutionary, but it is a welcome bit of strong arming from our Technology Age Leader – Google. Their dedication to providing a platform to enable legacy printers to print from the cloud, by their supplying an Internet based print proxy, is really innovative. The basic idea is that your legacy networked or system based printer would connect not to the print server internal to it or on the machine connected to it, as is done now, but rather to a Google Print Server in the cloud. This is very revolutionary and could actually permit a one printer, one driver solution. If anyone could and should do it – Google can and should!
If you have a Smartphone, an iPhone or Blackberry for example, or an iPad, or even just a traveling laptop, you know what a pain it is to try to get a print out from your device at an unusual location. This could be the solution that we have all been searching for to enable the ability for all of mobile devices to borrow printers, use public resources, and print at remote sites without configuration. I hope that it works! Thanks, Google, for taking the lead here!
What do you think about this topic? Do you agree or disagree with me? Do you have a recommended news story for next week? Please share your ideas below.
That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for April 19, 2010 by Scott Coughlin.
[Editor’s Note: To my long time readers: This represents a change to my editorial schedule. I have decided that going forward, The IT Thought of the Day Website will publish it’s weekly News Commentary articles, like this one, on Monday’s vice Sundays. Sunday will become the day that I publish my Twitter Archive for the week. Thank you for reading.]
Loading ...
News Commentary: TV 3.0?
May 3rd
Posted by Scott Coughlin in Business of IT
No comments
I consider TV 1.0 to have been the basic, over-the-air 5 or so channel content that was prevalent up until 1985 or so. I consider TV 2.0 to have been the explosion of content that came along with the rise of cable TV and its thousands of channels today. For a very long time people have been promising that TV 3.0 will occur when we finally figure out how to integrate the Internet along with TV content in an effective, additive, and pleasing way. If anyone can get this often tried, and often failed, job done, it should be Google.
On Mondays I offer comments on some of the most interesting information technology stories that I have found on the web that week. Please feel free to join in the discussion or suggest other stories.
Today’s comments were generated after I read a CNN story that was reporting on comments found in the The Wall Street Journal. Give it a read below.
CNN – WSJ: Google TV to be announced in May
I am very ready for this fusion to occur. I actually hope that Google can pull it off once and for all. I would welcome a closer coupling between TV content and the Internet. What would I like?
I think that we are long overdue for this merger. I also know that even giants like Microsoft and Yahoo failed at it so this is far from a done deal. However, I think that the timing is more right, the Intel based hardware is most right, and the demand is finally here for this to be a success. Good luck, Google!
What do you think about this topic? Do you agree or disagree with me? Do you have a recommended news story for next week? Please share your ideas below.
That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for May 3, 2010 by Scott Coughlin.
Image Credit: The US Govt Blog