Paul Jacobson

I just watched this amazing demonstration of a few Google employees’ 20% project called Google Liquid Galaxy which uses a series of LCD panels and a seemingly seamless combination of Google’s location services like Google Earth and Google Maps to present a fairly immersive virtual experience.

Its worth watching this in 480p and full screen! The Google LatLong blog has some details about how the multi-panel rig was conceived and built for demonstration purposes:

We wanted to try visualizing other cool geo displays, so in July, Dan Barcay, one of the engineers on the Google Earth team, modified a Google Earth client so that it would synchronize views across multiple computers. The effect was pretty stunning: all of a sudden, flying around in Google Earth really felt like flying, and exploring the ocean trenches was like piloting a submarine. When you splashed through the sea surface you cringed slightly, expecting to get wet. You could even command your own lander down to the Moon or Mars. It was amazing to all of us how much more impressive Google Earth felt when we were surrounded by screens and able to turn our heads to look around (and even walk around). It felt more like a ride than a computer program, something between an observation-deck and a glass-walled spaceship. As a result of this totally seamless, immersive experience, we decided to name it the Liquid Galaxy. With the Liquid Galaxy, we could fly through the Grand Canyon, leap into low-Earth orbit, and come back down to perch on the Great Pyramid of Giza without even breaking a sweat.

It doesn’t take a lot to imagine a far more immersive experience with more detailed imagery and a seamless screen setup.

I linked to this post on the Google blog this morning from The Daily Maverick newsletter. It is a very interesting story because of what it reveals about what our world will be like in the months and years ahead.

Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident–albeit a significant one–was something quite different.

…

We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that “we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China.”

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

I’m still working on a post about my thoughts about Google and some of its 2009 product launches for another site (its turning into one of those posts which take me forever to finish) but what I found really interesting about this story is the scale of it. Google and a number of other companies have come under attack from within China, very likely the Chinese government, and Google, a private and massive corporation, is taking action against the Chinese government under the guise of sticking to its values and working with the Chinese government.

Google is taking a stand against the Chinese government and is apparently willing to risk turning off the massive Chinese market, practically in retaliation for the attacks on its infrastructure. What I am more curious about is how the landscape will change as Google becomes more pervasive and influential. Will there one day be digital warfare between a corporation and a government?

You either have to love or run screaming from the hype cycle these days, particularly when it comes to Google and its products. We’ve seen it with hype over Chrome OS (which I regard as very limited), Google Docs (in the context of it being a Microsoft Office killer), Gmail and more. In some cases I think the hype is justified. Gmail revolutionised email with much bigger mailboxes, threaded conversations and dozens of innovations over the years. Google Docs is great for relatively simple document creation and innovation but it is hardly going to replace Microsoft Office in the near future.

Where I take issue with the hype is when it comes to Chrome and Chrome OS. I have already written about Chrome OS so I won’t write about that again but I haven’t really written much about Chrome, the browser. Most of the reports about Chrome say that the browser is fast and it is. It is really fast. I have a development version on my Mac and it loads in about 4 seconds. Firefox 3.6b5, on the other hand, loads in about double that amount of time.

One of the big attractions that Chrome has is that it is extensible (at least, the current betas on PC and Linux are – I believe – and the current Mac dev version is). This means that Chrome supports a range of extensions that extend its functionality beyond the basic browser. This was one of Firefox’s big advantages over Internet Explorer from the start and it remains a big plus for Firefox. The extension ecosystem for Firefox is pretty well developed and varied.

Chrome does a couple other things that make it a great choice. One of these things is how Chrome runs each tab as a separate process so even if a single tab crashes, the rest of the browser continues on. Chrome has done really well. As Duncan McLeod points out in a recent post on TechCentral:

In a short time, Chrome has unseated Safari to become the third-largest computer Web browser. Its market share is still only about 5%, but the speed at which it has overtaken Opera and Safari is telling.

I agree that Chrome is a great browser and it sits on my dock alongside my default browser, Firefox. I have lately been thinking about kicking Safari off my dock (applications I remove from my dock are basically the apps I don’t really see as that essential but are not useless enough to be deleted) and sticking with Firefox and Chrome. Whether Firefox will become largely irrelevant and fade away into obscurity as Duncan suggests it might in the coming years, I don’t know. I really hope that doesn’t happen because Firefox is important to us all, even in the face of Chrome. One of the reasons I say this is because of Firefox’s history:

It is important to remember that Firefox was born as an alternative to Internet Explorer which is possibly one of the worst applications that Microsoft has inflicted on Web users for a variety of reasons, not least of which is security and a disregard to Web standards. It rose out of the ashes of the bloated Netscape browser suite (I remember using the first Netscape browsers – I go that far back). I still remember the excitement as Firefox neared a 1.0 release (I managed to convince my last firm’s IT department to let me use Firefox rather than IE) and I have been using Firefox on and off ever since.

Firefox, to me at least, represents a vital movement that works to improve my Web experience. I have been disappointment with previous versions because of really slow load times (it turns out a lot of this depends on your extensions and, besides, just how fast must the browser really be when loading?), relatively slow browsing and even because it has seemed a little clunky compared to Safari’s simplicity. What I have found, though, is that I have become more and more passionate about Firefox despite Chrome. Chrome is interesting, it is fast and it has a big appeal. At the moment it just doesn’t have what it takes to persuade me to give up Firefox. The dev/beta versions for the Mac don’t have a working bookmark manager, font controls in the Mac beta and there are operating system compatibility issues with some of the extensions (that struck me as weird).

On the other hand, Firefox works pretty much the same on Windows, Mac OS and Linux. The extensions I prefer will work and enhancements like Weave make for a pretty seamless experience between browsers running on different platforms. To paraphrase Apple (ironically given Apple’s and the Mozilla Foundation’s philosophies), Firefox works. I recently had an opportunity to test a Nokia N900 and one of the apps I installed first was Firefox 3.5 beta for the N900.

Firefox is one of the few modern browsers that supports so much HTML 5. I don’t know if Safari supports HTML 5 (Chrome does) but I believe that IE is lagging far behind. I may be wrong on a technical level but it seems to me that Firefox already supports the next generation of offline Web apps and location based services. Its probably fair to say that it won’t be too long before all modern browsers support HTML 5 but I find it encouraging that Firefox has had some degree of support since Firefox 3.5.

I’d be lying if I tried to argue that Firefox has far more advanced functionality than Chrome or Safari. In many respects it does have better functionality or just functionality other browsers lack but most of the differences are fairly subtle and come down to that classic yardstick: personal preference. Despite all the hype about all the things Chrome can do and will be able to do, it is important to remember that Firefox does most of that stuff. In fact, aside from Firefox’s ACID 3 test results (can someone please explain the importance of this test?) and ring-fencing each tab as a separate set of processes, I can’t think of what Chrome does that Firefox doesn’t do, even if it is a little slower. Just as Firefox has innovated in the past and laid the groundwork for what we are seeing now (including Chrome which I believe to have been developed partly by Firefox engineers), it is going to continue to innovate going forward. We should see Firefox 3.6 release in the coming months (Firefox 3.5 was released just a few months ago) and there are plans for 3.7 and 4.0 in the year ahead.

Another aspect of Firefox that has a big appeal for me is the fact that it is developed by a community of passionate and independent developers. In contrast, Chrome was built largely by Google (the underlying code is open source) and I believe it is being developed to fit Google’s agenda for the broader Web. I think I just have a thing for the underdog and despite being the number 2 browser at the moment, Firefox is still the underdog on the Web that also happens to be excellent software. I believe that having a more independent initiative like Firefox that is not so closely aligned to any particular influencer like Google or even Apple is important. Firefox, in a sense, keeps the industry honest with its commitment to Web standards.

Firefox isn’t as trendy as Chrome and I can see the usual trendy folk on Twitter proclaiming Chrome the second coming of Google and the irrelevance of all other browsers but besides the fact that many of them are probably too young to remember what came before Firefox and the impact Firefox had, Firefox was around and thriving before Chrome and will continue to do so as long as there are people passionate about the browser.

Update: I had a couple other stray thoughts. It took a while for them to return to be processed by what passes for my mind (I may keep adding to this list …):

• Firefox has a working and pretty effective bookmark manager that lets me edit my bookmarks – still waiting for that from Chrome;
• As cool as search being integrated into Chrome’s Omnibar is, Firefox’s Awesome Bar is even better (just add search and Ubiquity and its a no-brainer)

Google Chrome OS attracted a huge amount of attention and continues to do so. As you may know it is a Linux-based operating system developed largely by Google and which will be released in about a year.

It is touted as the next Next Big Thing and, like many Google products, it will apparently solve world hunger, water shortages, bring about world peace and make it so much easier to do stuff. As things stand now, the OS is designed to run on fairly specific hardware (SSD and not traditional hard drives, for example) and its apps are really Web apps so it seems that you either need to be online or using Web apps that support some sort of offline functionality. Presumably Google will have updated its apps to support HTML 5 offline capability by the time the OS ships or the OS will have Gears support.

A ChromeOS powered device will be light, fast and will be geared for the Web-based stuff many of us do all day without needing a larger device. You could (and probably would) use ChromeOS on a netbook or something smaller and lighter than your usual laptop. All this is great and mobile workers are celebrating but I just wonder why this is so much better than an OS like Ubuntu Netbook Remix.

ChromeOS is basically the Chrome browser as an OS. Google has boasted that there are so many apps available for ChromeOS already because ChromeOS runs Web apps. Well, so does pretty much any modern browser and given that Chrome (the browser) is available on Linux, why not run Ubuntu on your netbook instead? You have all the benefits of the Web apps through Chrome or Firefox and you have the added ability to use installed apps that don’t require you to be online to use them effectively. You could choose between Google Docs or OpenOffice/Abiword/etc. When it comes to IM, you have a number of options available on Ubuntu whereas you are limited to Google Talk or a Web-based alternative on ChromeOS (did I mention apps aren’t really intended to be installed on ChromeOS devices, as I understand it?).

It is possible that Google will optimise its apps for ChromeOS with the result that ChromeOS users will have certain additional functionality or an improved experience but short of that sort of benefit (ok, and a 7 second load time for ChromeOS … does a few extra seconds or a minute or so make that much difference if you are running an Ubuntu netbook?), I think users are better off using a netbook running Ubuntu or even Windows 7 for a little extra.

There are more benefits to using Ubuntu (I’m going to focus on Ubuntu but Windows 7 probably has similar benefits) on your netbook instead of ChromeOS. For one thing I am not sure that a ChromeOS will be able to support much media on the device running it. I haven’t seen a media application which you can use to play some music you transfer or download to the device. I could be wrong. What I do know is that there are a number of media applications in Ubuntu. I also recently heard that Ubuntu users are going to be able to buy music from Rhythmbox on their Ubuntu machines a little like iTunes or something similar.

Ubuntu users have more flexibility with their hardware requirements and a pretty broad selection of applications, both installed and Web-based. There are probably a number of other benefits I just haven’t thought of yet …

Am I just missing something significant here?

Update: Take a look at this post on JK on the Run titled “What ChromeOS Looks Like as a Primary Operating System” to get an idea what the OS will look like when it releases next year. The video is worth watching!

I was invited to a Google Maps launch event at the Helderfontein Estate. Of course I immediately agreed to attend although I was wondering what I would see at the launch that I haven’t been seeing recently on Google Maps.

It turns out that Google Maps is pretty important to Google with roughly 50% of searches having a geographical component. Google SA’s Stephen Newton started off answering a question I had. Why is there a launch for Google Maps in SA when we’ve had Google Maps for some time now. It turns out that the version of Google Maps we were about to be introduced to is a new release.

Business listings

One of the features of the new Google Maps initiative is free business listings. Another is directions which has been missing from Google Maps until recently (I first noticed it a couple days ago and used it earlier this week to find a meeting location after Nokia Maps took a while to find me and where I wanted to go).

If you use the local maps.google.co.za domain you will find that local content is given precedence. One nice touch is that you can search using popular names in some contexts. For example, you can look for “Joburg” when you are search for stuff about “Johannesburg”. An really handy feature for people wanting to learn more about the locations they are searching for is that you can click on a link “more info” …

… and be presented with a profile page of sorts about that location which aggregates information available on the Web:

For local businesses the business listings parallel the place profile pages. These profiles can contain a variety of rich media about the business, reviews, search results and contact information. It sounds a little like a crowdsourced Yellow Pages with arguably more useful information about these businesses and places. Business listings are free, as in air, and businesses are encouraged to add as much information about their business as they can. Google wants your rich media! This isn’t purely altruistic (although the potential benefit to businesses and consumers alike is substantial). No doubt richer business listings provide more opportunities for Google ad sales but this is something that works out well for all concerned, I think.

For tourists

The addition of a series of information layers adds photos, Wikipedia articles and webcams. This is going to be a pretty handy tool for tourists, especially with the 2010 World Cup coming up next year. I am sure they thought about that … But wait, there is more. There is transit information:

Tourists will find that place and street names have been translated into a number of foreign languages including Japanese, Russian, Hebrew and so on. They can even search for place names in a foreign language using phonetically similar terms.

The travel directions appeal to me and although routes don’t change dynamically on your mobile device as you are driving, you can change the route by dragging points on the route around. In the process you will be presented with information about the trip including distance and travel times.

Mobile

Of course no Google product would be complete without a mobile version. We were treated to a demonstration of the Samsung Galaxy (I think) and Google Maps on Android. Samsung sees Android as a strategically important platform and this really reinforces my thoughts about Android which I rambled about yesterday.

Watching Google Maps being demonstrated on the Samsung Android phone (and similar devices) you can really begin to appreciate how powerful our mobile experience of the Web will be as more and more smart devices rollout and additional features like Street View and other augmented reality apps find their way on to those devices.

As we were watching the presentations, I noticed this gem on the Google Blog:

Here it is in action:

I have Google’s Friend Connect integrated into this blog and you can sign in and comment using your Google account, OpenID, Twitter credentials and one other set of credentials. It works pretty well and when I comment here it integrates nicely with my blog credentials.

I’d like to add Facebook Connect integration to the blog too and I have the Sociable plugin loaded and just need to configure it. What I’m not sure about is whether the Facebook Connect plugin will co-exist with the Friend Connect plugin and give you the option of which service to use to sign in to comment.

I’m certainly seeing Facebook Connect being used far more widely as a sign-on service on blogs and other sites (I’m using Facebook Connect to authenticate on Digg rather than my original credentials) and I’ve read some positive posts about how Facebook Connect integration helps boost awareness of the blog (although there are also reported problems). At the same time Facebook Connect integration seems to be a little more difficult to implement than Friend Connect. Compare these two demos, for example. The first is Kevin Marks, formerly Google’s Developer Evangelist, demonstrating how to add Friend Connect to a static to Robert Scoble.

The second video is Facebook’s Luke Shephard demonstrating how to add Facebook Connect to a similarly static site on Building43.

I know that there are people who are somewhat skeptical about Facebook (I have certainly been skeptical in the past) but given Facebook’s moves towards a distributed model and what seems like pretty widespread adoption on the social Web, it looks like a really good way to go.

I’m going to get the Sociable plugin configured properly and see what happens. What I am already wondering about is what to do if it doesn’t co-exist peacefully with Friend Connect and give you a choice of which way to go? Which option do I go with?

I had a debate with Eve Dmochowska recently about her choice of platform for a business group. She picked LinkedIn for the group and one of my initial thoughts is that I’d like to see the group on Facebook rather than LinkedIn. I have two reasons for this: the first is that I have an aversion to LinkedIn and see it as evil and the second is that I no longer see Facebook as just a social (as in personal) network but rather as a multi-purpose networking platform.

Eve essentially explained that she believes LinkedIn gives the group greater credibility as a business group given LinkedIn’s business focus (LinkedIn isn’t and will never be a social/personal networking site). I respect her and I understand her perspective. Eve is one of the smartest people I know in the SA social media space. She isn’t alone in her view that LinkedIn is a far better choice for business networking activities than Facebook. I was chatting to Gaby Rosario earlier today about her thoughts on the matter and I believe she feels similarly.

At the same time I have a different perspective of Facebook after long maintaining that Facebook isn’t a business networking tool. I remember having a conversation with Paul Walsh when he declared he was quitting LinkedIn in favour of Facebook. I didn’t agree with him and insisted that LinkedIn was a superior platform for business networking. Suffice to say my two reasons I mentioned above have persuaded me to change my mind about Facebook. Given what awaits us in the form of Facebook’s proposed governance structure I am also far more comfortable to invest my time and content in Facebook going forward.

What clinches it for me is this little graph and a post I just read about Facebook’s increasing prominence on the social Web, most likely alongside Google as its only real counterpart.

LinkedIn may be the single biggest business network but it looks pretty flat to me compared to Facebook’s dramatic rise depicted in this graph. While LinkedIn is hardly fading away (I still have an up to date profile on the service) I don’t see it as a focal point of my business presence online.

Facebook started off as a personal social networking site and that is its emphasis. At the same time it has much to offer businesses in the form of its pretty appealing Pages. I also read somewhere that we may see the introduction of personas that would allow Facebook users to present distinct personas based on their business and personal needs. Put all this together and you can’t help but see Facebook as a multi-purpose networking platform.