Archive for the ‘Google’ Category
Google’s Documents web applications are slowly gaining traction among users who want a no-cost alternative to established productivity suites, most notably Microsoft’s expensive Office suite.
Google Docs does serve its purpose and it is carving a niche for itself not just for it being free but the fact that it is available online has made it the perfect productivity suite for people who need to collaborate closely with other people and need to share documents with a group of people. The sharing option alone is well worth the price of the free admission because it is a no-frills, easy-to-use feature.
Right now, we’re living in a world where Flash is still undeniably king. You see it everywhere, in YouTube, in Facebook games like Farmville, and a hundred and one websites where people just want to show off with all their “designing skills” with their Flash intros and navigation that does nothing but to push the boundaries of tackiness on the web everyday. Heck, if I had my way, I’d make an Australia business directory and make it out of Flash.
Flash is good and all, but it’s not open – it’s controlled and developed by Adobe. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does leave a huge amount of our web interactions in the hands of one company. And let’s not forget the fact that Flash is one of the biggest attack vectors right now. Yes, Flash is riddled with all sorts of security holes and this makes it imperative that we always upgrade the Flash Player immediately once a new update comes out.
However, that is all coming to an end soon. The new version of HTML – the programming language that powers most of the web – is about to receive a major update in a while, and it looks like it’s going to shake up the web. HTML 5 is going to be able to do much of Flash’s work, and even though it’s going to take a bit of time before it comes out, people are already excited to have rich, animated web content running in our browsers without the need of proprietary third-party plugins.
Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is an open source Java development framework that lets you escape the matrix of technologies that make writing AJAX applications so difficult and error prone. With GWT, you can develop and debug AJAX applications in the Java language using the Java development tools of your choice. When you deploy your application to production, the GWT compiler translates your Java application to browser-compliant JavaScript and HTML.
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The move by Google who is considered to be the leading mapping and location aware experts anywhere on the internet (except for the military and intelligence community maybe), and Mozilla have joined forces to take part in the Geode, an awareness add-on package that allows Firefox to display locational data along with Google’s maps. This may be their answer to Yahoo’s Fire Eagle project that resulted in the Geocoder API, allowing yahoo to be web aware. The partnership may be well-placed with Google’s extensive data centers and mapping data to go with it, and Firefox’s overall dominance of the browser market, its a mix of two good things that allows your browser to tell you where you are and possible where other people are. Read the rest of this entry »
The ventures of Google who is one of the promoter of the shift into the cloud by being too over eager with the implementation. The initiation of several of Google’s applications that are bit by bit making cloud computing a reality have gotten some criticism due to their monopoly on the system. The concept of cloud computing can be compared in some sense to the implementation of distributed computing in commercial applications of past where specific users only got access to the apps they were allowed to use. The servers had all the programs and were responsible to distributing and administering the apps and databases. With cloud computing you get all the programs loaded into cyberspace along with the data and everybody who wants access gets it from virtual space, the information on the other hand jumps from server to server as they become available making the whole internet one large machine. Google has been getting hits first by it’s venture into the breakup of the Yahoo and Microsoft deal where the government decided that that would be a violation of the freedom of information for they would get control of over 80% of the search engine marker, the two being the two largest and most popular in the world.
Image source: www.java.sun.com
Creating web applications is as complex as writing a thesis paper or a dissertation. It does not only necessitate quite a tedious amount of effort to perfect the function of the program but also demands one stable thing from the user: internet association.
Whenever a program is being written, it takes several factors in deliberation but the most important of them is the user-interface. It is imperative that the application’s interface is easy to understand, lest it will not be used as it was intended to be so.
Using a atypical office text created raises an issue on standards compliance, moving the evasive issue of file partaking and association. What must be noticed is that these browser applications are used by accessing the internet through the remote servers. It is threatening however, for the document, if the connection is suddenly lost or interrupted. Chances are, the document being programmed online will be lost and inferior, irretrievable.
This kind of disadvantage poses a threat to the survival of the web applications, hence, companies such as Google have made preliminary solutions to this problem. However, for now, only prototypes have been developed to repress the threat raised by this problem. Just like so, Google has created Google Gears—a beta display place that aims to improve the usability of web applications.
Google is rolling out a very much-awaited feature for its hosted applications: the ability for the people to use them even when they aren’t connected to the Internet. I think this is a good idea. It expands useability and definitely keeps a firm one-up agains competitors, if there are any.
The first application was to get this offline access in the word processor, said Ken Norton, the Google Docs product manager. “The design goal is to create a seamless experience, even with or without an Internet connection.”
Over the next three weeks or so, the Google will turn on the feature for all word processor users; giving them all the ability to view and edit documents while offline.
