Dion Almaer

Google's New Gmail Mobile Interface Looks Nice But Doesn't Work Properly

Interesting. I personally do not really care about startup time, as on my blackberry I keep it up and running and just switch around.

I have found it far superior to using gmail via the mobile browser on the BB, and this is 1.0.

Google Is Still a One-Trick Pony

Does anyone expect Google Scholar to have anywhere as much traffic as a plain old Google search?

To me, the top sites are mainstream (as in, everyone wants to search, read email, and print out maps).

Not everyone wants the other things.

That being said, some of the sites should be doing better than they are (such as local).

Also, the search box IS the portal for Google. If other items do well then they can get accessed via that normal search (e.g. why image search is high up).

Dion

Mabe Agrees to Buy Camco for C$70.4 Million

status 2

Google to Acquire Sun? (GOOG, SUNW)

Google would be nuts to buy Sun. They are in very different businesses, and Sun can't work out how to make money for the life of them. They have a platform like Java, and IBM makes all of the money from it.

They open source their app server, and it is hardly used (I know they claim lots of downloads). They put a lot of effort into Apache Tomcat and don't get credit for it. Open sourcing Solaris? Just a few years too late.

Ouch.

Mabe Agrees to Buy Camco for C$70.4 Million

test 5

Mabe Agrees to Buy Camco for C$70.4 Million

test 4

Mabe Agrees to Buy Camco for C$70.4 Million

test 3

Internet Stocks News/Analysis In Brief (EBAY, GOOG, YHOO)

I think that ICANN needs to serious look into how they will lease off the single letter domains. They are worth too much to allow someone with a script to suck them all up.

Auction them on eBay :)

Dion

Google and Porn (GOOG)

David,

You have hit the nail on the new Google Porn project. They have the tech to stop anything X-rated to get through their systems, including Google Images.

Imagine if they created porn.google.com that flipped the bit the other way and you ONLY got XXX content :/

Dion

Google Base Goes Live: Reactions (GOOG, EBAY, MNST)

What strikes me about Google Base is visable on the home page. Compare base.google.com to craigslist. One feels like a community, the other feels like a machine :)

Google vs. Microsoft (GOOG, MSFT)

Very interesting content. Michael's view ties a little into what I find important. Everyone talks about "open source", but I care more about "open data" when selecting products.

An example is in the software bug tracking world. Some of the open source (and commercial) products make it very hard to get access to the data, and you have to reverse engineer to work out exactly what is there. This makes you locked in.

In comparison, a commercial product called JIRA isn't open source, but the data is VERY open. You can export everything, details are there on the formats, and thus YOU the consumer own the data.

The next revolution would be in opening up all of the data, although since that is where the power is, it will be a tough sell :)

Sell-Side Reaction to Google's 3Q05 Results - Mark Mahaney, Citigroup (GOOG)

Amr Awadallah isn't jumping for joy about GOOG like the majority :)

He believes that Wall Street is buying the Google Growth Lie.

In his piece he talks about how the growth that Google is showing isn't natural, and gives us another perspective.

Bloglines Losing Early Adopters to Rojo, Newsgator, and Google? (IACI, GOOG)

I would be amazed if people are moving to Google Reader as more than a "lets check it out" move. It is pretty unusable for daily RSS reading in my opinion.

That being said, I agree that Bloglines is behind these days, and needs to innovate on the UI side.

I find it hard to justfiy using it as my main news reader, and it sits there as a backup for when I am online away from my computer. I use NewsGator and NetNewsWire as my main tools of choice.

NewsGator has gotten worse since they added the online services. When you change a folder in Outlook it hangs for awhile, which makes outlook unusable. This is particularly bad usability, as you assume a rename of a folder is a quick, local operation, and then you see the app hang? Can't the web service request by made in the background? Haven't we learnt about asynch UI threads by now?

Sounds like is still room in this market for innovation, and even a new player? ;)

Hollywood Media's Hollywood.com Relaunches with Podcasts, Blogs and Google Ads (HOLL, GOOG)

I know iTunes is the big player, but I really don't like how the "POD" button assumes iTunes. What if I want to subscribe in Odeo? Or if I just want the RSS feed to put into iPodder? or.....

This also reminds me that iTunes bugs me in other ways. This link should at least go to a web page that shows me my feeds, instead of forcing iTunes to open up etc. This is iTunes fault, not the site. The hybrid iTunes is great in many ways, but sometimes i just want to view the web page in my browser, not in a browser with an iTunes wrapper!

I could also vent about other iTunes things I don't like, such as navigation from podcast to podcast and it losing your context. There is a lot of work to be done there. Apple keeps up'ing the version (iTunes 5, iTunes 6) but give me a break, its just a little hack here and there :)

Early Reaction to Google-Sun Announcement (GOOG)

This was a painful announcement.

Coupling the Java runtime with the Google toolbar makes no sense at all. There is no value add for the user.

Also, it is interesting that although Eric said they would be open to it, the Google Toolbar will not download the JRE, so this is one way traffic.

After all of the Google Office hype, this is a real downer for people.

Does an Ajax based Office even make sense? Not in its present form.

There are weaknesses in a web based office (remember Corel trying to do this way back?), but now with Web 2.0 they could embrace the advantages of the mashups.