Domain Names owned by Google

Below doc shows the Domain Names owned by Google, I think mostof them are for future but some of them might related to the Past like
* ebay-google.com
* googlewarnerbros.com

Read this doc on Scribd: 0804 google domains

Webification of Desktops.

Many web players in the market are running for taking early lead in the Desktop share as they have on web. o name few there are Adobe, Google, Mozilla, Fluid, MS. The concept of Desktop presence always fascinate the developers nad for commercial use as user would always have the app/site right on his Desktop, otherwise he has to open a browser and pull down the site to check his mails,videos. "A web browser is only good for Web browsing" and not for your important, daily, must do stuffs like mail, Social networking, Work etc. For all this you always want a desktop App that sits right in front of your eyes. AIR, Prism, Google Gears, Fluid are some of the new techs which helps user to shift his key interest websites from web to his desktop. but out of all these I only think AIR has all the possible capabilities which a desktop app would have and other solutions are more of like answers to some useful ideas and not the complete package. Lets take one by one
Adobe AIR
Adobe AIR is complete solution for desktop versions of your web sites/app as it has all the features of a desktop app from installer to native file access. An AIR app can have a jazzy look n feel as flex can be very easily used in an air app and thats too with added functionalities of Drag n Drop, File systems Access, context menus, integrated web browser(webkit), Multiple windows support, HTML controls etc.

1. It provide a complete installer to user with all the installer options from Licence agreement to Shortcut options to custom installation paths.
2. AIR applications can be built on plane HTML/JavaScript only and not necessarily with MXML/AS(Flex).
3. AIR applications ahve Drag n drop support natively. It allows developer to bundle the dragged data and pass it on the OS native drag manager to handle it OS way, it gives a consistent behavior.
4. Also allows the internal Drag n Drop powered by Flex.
5. AIR apps can have multiple windows which allows user to do things parallaley.
6. It also has a Browser integrated which is the open source webkit.
7. Allows to add custom context menus.
8. Wide variety of HTML controls.
9. Taskbar, System tray presence , tooltips, unistallation via Add/Remove Panel.
10. App would have native file system access.
11. Print Support


Mozilla Prism
Prism is based on a concept called Site Specific Browsers (SSB). An SSB is an application with an embedded browser designed to work exclusively with a single web application. It doesn’t have the menus, toolbars and accoutrements of a normal web browser. Some people have called it a "distraction free browser" because none of the typical browser chrome is used. An SSB also has a tighter integration with the OS and desktop than a typical web application running through a web browser.

1. You can have only shortcut on your Desktop. To Uninstall webapps simply delete the sortcut.
2. Its only your website running in a browser with no chrome and no extra buttons, toolbars.
3. No Native filesystem access.
4. Print support

Google Gears
Google Gears Beta is an open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide offline functionality using the following JavaScript APIs.There are three major API components to Google Gears

1.A local server that caches and serves application resources (HTML, JavaScript, images, etc).
2.A database (powered by SQLite) that stores the data offline.
3.A worker thread pool that synchronizes data in the background.

TechCrunch

TechCrunch: "Y Combinator Demo Day Roundup for Spring 2008
Mark Hendrickson
41 comments »

The fledgling startups listed below will present their ideas and initial products to investors at this spring’s Y Combinator Demo Day on March 18. Of the 19 companies in this batch, 10 have already launched and only one remains in stealth mode. Most of them have been in development for only three months."

YouTube is now a Platform

Google has exposed his YouTube APIs for the developers for having there own Websites to let user upload their videos and in different environments. BUT all those videos would upload on Google Servers so that Google can easily index them.
This brings Google back full circle to the initial strategy for Google Video, which originally required videos to be uploaded directly to Google in order to become indexed. YouTube is gradually replacing Google Video—that is where most people upload videos anyway—but getting as much video from the rest of the Web onto its servers allows it to do many more things with it than if it simply indexed the videos elsewhere. It can search them better and throw up ads against them.

Specifically, the new APIs allow Web developers to:

* Upload videos and video responses to YouTube
* Add/Edit user and video metadata (titles, descriptions, ratings, comments, favorites, contacts, etc)
* Fetch localized standard feeds (most viewed, top rated, etc.) for 18 international locales
* Perform custom queries optimized for 18 international locales
* Customize player UI and control video playback (pause, play, stop, etc.) through software

Of course, it is not exactly free. The videos will also be available on YouTube, where Google will make money from any associated ads. It is not clear how the ad revenue will be split, or even if it will be. There is nothing in the API that allows for a Website to insert their own ads. So that is a big question mark. (More on that after I speak with a YouTube exec later in today).
http://www.techcrunch.com/

Start of Visual Search

The main difference between SearchMe and other search engines is that it returns results primarily in a visual format, via an image of the result site. The results are displayed in a way that is similar to browsing through albums in iTunes - see the following videos to get an idea of how it looks:

Its backed by Sequoia, DAG Ventures and Lehman Brothers.

Is it the lull before the strom?

From last couple of days no big news from any big players in the IT/WEB sector (apart from Adobe AIR launch). Also no news from MS-YAHOO tussle. I think this indicates something big to happen apart from IT slowdown. Google is busy growing and its hard for a big company to remain innovative and growing at the same time. But till now Google did managed this pretty well. From Google official blog it seems Google will be launching Google health soon. Also MS launches its Virtual Earth Beta couple of weeks back but it didn't create mush news. I had gave a try to MS virtual Earth and didn't seem that standard as Google earth is. Also you need to download a browser plugin to view MS maps.

Lets waits if Yahoo investors woos their board members for MS Bid.

Microsoft Just Made Google's Year

At this point Yahoo! (YHOO) is dead man walking. Let's see - a $31 per share sword of Damocles hanging over their head, losing top employees amidst a sea of disappointment and uncertainty (see Horwitz, Brad) and no real plan except to say "Go away." Not a formula for success. Microsoft (MSFT) itself has opened itself up to a Pandora's Box of uncertainty, from both the perspective of "What are you doing spending $40 billion on Yahoo!" and "Sheesh, what is this going to mean for our culture and my job?" It seems to me that the Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google (GOOG) dynamic can best be characterized by the following metaphor: three brothers, one which is 5-years old, one which is 10 and the oldest that is 15. 5, 10, 15. Yahoo! Microsoft. Google.

Yahoo! is 5. Hippy dippy, Silicon Valley circa 1999 culture, never having made the transition to economic powerhouse like its older brothers. And this free-loving eco-chamber is now coming crashing down in the face of harsh market realities. Advertising share down. Search share down. Transition to a de-facto media company a failure. Now what? A plunging share price has made both employee retention difficult and rendered it a sitting duck for a potential buyer. And now its older brother, the big meanie Microsoft, is beating on it yet again. But this time it is an all-out scrap. The 5-year old is swinging but the long, powerful arms of the 10-year old are keeping it at bay. And this beating is causing a bunch of collateral damage - like losing friends, losing respect and losing its future. The 5-year old has and will continue to suffer badly from this encounter, no matter what happens from this point forward. His only hope for survival is by begging for protection and support from its tormentor, Microsoft.

Microsoft is 10. Graduated to middle school, feeling important, feeling like using some new tricks to impress the older kids. But still somewhat rooted to the past, in this case the heavy, software-based desktop franchise that is still the lifeblood of the company. And while Microsoft is picking on Yahoo! it is getting trounced in the most rapidly-growing markets by its older brother, Google. And it isn't pretty. MSN and Microsoft Live are just shadows of the Google search and advertising empire, and it appears that Microsoft has concluded that to make a run at its mighty brother it needs to impose a reign of terror on its younger brother. But this fight has left the 10-year old weakened as well. Looking desperate - why beat up on someone half your age? Clearly not a fair fight. Can't you go it alone with all those resources? Looking stodgy - do you really need those Yahoo! hipsters to breathe some life into that software-heavy culture? Looking financially irresponsible - just because you have $40 billion to spend is this really the best way to enhance shareholder value? All good questions. But in this case 5+10 doesn't equal 15, because this fight has taken years off both of their lives and the big brother remains above the fray, thinking about love, college and the future. What his younger brothers do is of little consequence, except insofar as their might be some good toys and friends to pick up after the fighting is over.

Google is 15. He is laughing - hard. "Boy, are my kid brothers dopes! I'm looking forward, living large, walking tall. I'm in high school but college is around the corner. I'm going to start my own company. And if my idiot brothers lose some of their friends because of the fight, they can come work with me on my company. And if my younger brother falls ill, very ill, I'll come and visit him and send my best but there is little I can do to help." Google must be thinking "Does Microsoft really want Yahoo! or are they simply trying to kill Yahoo! Either way, I win." Google will pick up top pros from both Microsoft and Yahoo!, who no longer want to deal with uncertainty and questionable business strategy, and for this Google will pay precisely nothing. Microsoft may end up spending $40 billion for something that has precious little value, as top human capital which is the real engine of growth will simply walk. Is the advertising engine and the other Yahoo! assets really worth buying the company, much less paying the control premium? And this doesn't even take into account the disruption and value destruction arising from the integration process, which is at any time and always a hairball.

And the end of the day those at Google must be shaking their heads. I think Larry, Sergey and Eric should send Steve a really expensive bouquet of flowers. He has simply made their year.

Microsoft’s Acquisition Of Yahoo: Not As Bad As Some Think

Microsoft’s Acquisition Of Yahoo: Not As Bad As Some Think: "Microsoft’s Acquisition Of Yahoo: Not As Bad As Some Think

The Microsoft is evil meme is alive and well this week as many digest Microsoft’s $44.6 billion takeover offer for Yahoo. There’s Flickr users protesting, talk of Yahoo teaming up with Google to block Microsoft’s bid, and general Microsoft is bad sentiment everywhere, even from Google itself. While Microsoft acquiring Yahoo may not provide the ultimate in happy endings to many, it’s really not as bad as some would have you believe.

Google’s response to the acquisition over the weekend was amazing in its veracity. Google and Microsoft have never been friends, but for Google to come out and attack the acquisition as it did can only mean one thing: Google is afraid, and that’s a very good thing. Internally Google believes that a combined Microsoft/ Yahoo will provide real competition to its dominant market position in search and text advertising, the very same position it has depended on to build its until recently huge share price and market cap. Google can preach about open access and open markets all it wants, but Google’s idea of open is only where users access it from one of its many web properties.

Apple will buy Adobe

In his weekly column, Robert X. Cringely laid out the case for Apple to acquire Adobe in 2008. Disney was crossed off the list.

"About 18 months ago an Apple employee at an internal meeting asked Steve Jobs about Apple's positioning in the enterprise market," Mr Cringely wrote. "Jobs told the employee that it wasn't really Apple's business and that he should go work at a company like IBM or HP if he wanted to pursue that line of work. Jobs said Apple was in the 'content creation' business with the consumer iLife applications as well as professional apps like Final Cut Pro."

With that starting point, Mr. Cringely analyzed Apple's business model and what they're really after. "Last year, for example, Apple bought an application called FinalTouch from Silicon Color that was essentially video color correction on steroids," Mr. Cringely noted. "They [Apple] changed the product name to Color, added a couple features, then rolled it into Final Cut Studio, Apple's top-end video application suite. Though FinalTouch sold for up to $25,000, Color is included in Final Cut Studio FOR FREE, which is a kick in the head to Apple competitors like Avid that don't have hardware sales to count on for profitability."

Recently, however, Apple has shifted its focus from mere content creation to content distribution with iTunes. Mr. Cringely's analysis led to this: "This shift from creation to distribution is vital to understanding Apple's current strategy and involves a counterintuitive feedback loop to those professional applications. Where Final Cut Pro was useful to Apple as a driver of hardware sales, it is now becoming more useful as a driver of content to be distributed through iTunes."

Based on that future for Apple, the acquisition of Adobe makes sense. Mr. Cringely pointed to Adobe's CEO, Bruce Chizen, suddenly stepping down without warning. That may be a early indicator. In addition, the acquisition of Adobe would allow the merger of Flash and QuickTime "would make any other video standards (like Windows Media) simply immaterial," Mr. Cringely concluded.

Timing is also important. The acquisition would go better in 2008 while Avid and Microsoft still present credible competition and the FTC would be unlikely to oppose the merger.

Many others have offered the same suggestion. However, Mr. Cringely [a pen name for Mark Stephens] filled in all the bits and pieces that explain why it's likely to happen.

John Battelle's Searchblog: An Experiment with PDF Ads Via Yahoo

An Experiment with PDF Ads Via YahooTf 3.SamllcoverKevin Kelly is trying out a new ad insertion program with his book "True Films". His write up is interesting and Kevin's always thoughtful about these things.Earlier editions of this book have been available on Amazon, Lulu, and as a cheap download from my site. But with this new version 3.0 I am trying something new. I am offering this 200-page full-color guide (perfect as a companion if you have Netflix) as a FREE download. It's in PDF format, but with a twist. To help offset the significant bandwidth costs of these downloads (I hope my server can take the wave), I have appended advertisements to the PDF book. Here is how the ads work:If you choose to see the ads, they will appear in a gray sidebar on the right, adjacent to the pages of the book, just outside the frame of the page.....These ads are inserted into the PDF by Adobe (using the Yahoo ad network) when you open the file. Like Google Adsense ads, they are contextual.

John Battelle's Searchblog: An Experiment with PDF Ads Via Yahoo

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Adobe eyes on the Web

Adobe's new CEO zeroes in on Web

"We want to marry the power of the desktop with the Web," Adobe Systems CEO Shantanu Narayen says. Products aimed at that goal go on sale soon.  ABOUT SHANTANU NARAYEN • Age: 44. • Title: CEO of Adobe Systems. • Joined Adobe: 1998. • Previous positions: President and chief operating officer. • Grew up in: Hyderabad, India. • Degrees: Two in engineering, from Osmania University in India and Bowling Green State University; MBA from University of California, Berkeley. • Children: 2. • Dogs: 2. • Patents: Holds five in digital imaging.

Longtime Adobe Systems (ADBE) executive Shantanu Narayen on Dec. 1 became CEO of the software powerhouse. An engineer who had previously worked at Apple (AAPL) and Silicon Graphics (SGIC), he took over from mentor Bruce Chizen, who stepped down.

Narayen takes over as Adobe, best known for Photoshop photo software and Acrobat and PDF digital document tools, is shifting many of its wares from boxed software to online services.

Adobe, which celebrates its 25th anniversary on Dec. 13, is a Web powerhouse with its Adobe Reader and Flash software. Narayen spoke with USA TODAY's Jefferson Graham about Adobe's transition, and why he believes two new initiatives for 2008 — Adobe's Media Player and AIR, which connects desktop applications with the Web — have the potential to transform the $3 billion company.

Q: Let's start by talking about your background. I understand you grew up in India and are an engineer by training?

A: I have two engineering degrees and a business degree. I worked in the networking group at Apple and then joined Silicon Graphics. In 1995, everyone was doing start-ups. I wanted to help transfer analog photography to digital and co-founded a company called Pictra. We were a little ahead of our time and ended up partnering with Adobe. I joined Adobe in 1998, running the engineering technology group. Bruce started asking me to do more, and as he's grown, so have I.

Q: Do you still think of yourself as an engineer?

A: I've been running products and marketing since 2001, but building great products is my first love.

Q: Adobe is in an interesting place right now. The company is making a transition from boxed software to online, "cloud" computing. Can you talk about that?

A: We want to marry the power of the desktop with the Web.

Q: You're talking about AIR, Adobe's new desktop-meets-the-Internet application?

A: Yes. Look at what (Apple's) iTunes does, you never know when you're online or offline. For the user, it's a seamless experience. We want to overcome some of the barriers that exist with a browser, to let people access maps, recipes and sports scores, for instance, in an application that sits on your desktop.

Q: How does that work?

A: We have an example from eBay (EBAY) on our labs.adobe.com site. Offline, you get to specify what you're interested in — specific auctions — and they are constantly updated, without you having to go to eBay.com. The application has a richer, graphical look.

Q: When will AIR be available?

A: In the first quarter, along with the Adobe Media Player.

Q: This is your answer to Windows Media Player?

A: In a sense. It showcases our Flash video (tool) in DVD-like quality. Seventy percent of the video you see online today is Flash, and a number of our customers would like to be able to show Flash offline. They'd like to put branding in a player, so if you watch NBC's Heroes TV show, Heroes information and ads can be in the body of the player.

Q: How do you make money from these products?

A: To get the most out of them, companies will need to buy our software. If you look at the history of Adobe, we delivered PostScript, a technology platform, and monetized it through Illustrator (layout software) and Photoshop. We delivered PDF document technology and monetized it through Acrobat.

Q: Let's talk about cloud computing. Adobe now has Internet versions of Premiere Elements video-editing software on MTV.com and YouTube. A "lite" online version of Photoshop is coming next year. Why are you going in this direction?

A: This is a low-barrier way to try our software; it exposes people to try our products. We can do this now because broadband is better, and we've been able to re-engineer our products to work on a server.

Q: What Adobe software do you use on a daily basis?

A: Digital photography is one of my passions. I own a Sony Alpha digital camera and consider myself an advanced hobbyist. I spend time with Photoshop on image management and touchup. I like to use Creative Suite 3 to take multiple pictures and combine them into one. It's a lot of fun.

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Adobe introduces Ads in PDF Docs

Adobe, Yahoo partner to put advertisements in PDF documents

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Enclosing in a Google Circle

I was thinking about how much time I spent on Google products in a day and I was just stunned by finding that this Logo keep showing in my browser about 30% of the tabs opened  and about 80% of the time. And nobody is forcing me to do so. No penny spent. Also in all the workflows that Google provided has no hassles, they are straight, do only they designed to do and nothing else, have cleanlier user interface. I think we are all are using Google too much and its just starting.  as per John Bettelle an average searcher searches about 5-10 queries per day in a search engine and expert may be around 20-35. In that way we software engineers are way ahead as we on an average searches more then 50 queries per day. I uses google search not only for finding information but also as a calculator and dictionary for checking spelling.

Stumble upon good link on the same http://www.redherring.com/Home/23165

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Google Trends Pridectibility

Google Trends shows an interesting search popularity graph for the queries “turkey” (as in turkey the food, too) and “diet”:

On North-American Thanksgiving day, the searches for a traditional dish for the festivity peak. There’s still Xmas ahead with a second, milder peak for turkey queries... afterwards, searches for a diet are building up, peaking right after on New Year.

There’s an interesting other correlation... between depression and rain:

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Google is spreading

Wanted to write about all this but not enough time.....


Google draggable directions and Fast inter continental path Finding -

Google style of working, what do agile folks thinking.....-

Google is calling all developers for $10 Million Challenge -

Interesting Numbers about online Ads

That's interesting figures. Now the real question would be how will Google, Facebook, Yahoo divide the pie.

Modest billion dollor Idea by Alex Linhares

I was reading through the blogs and just stumble upon this nice proposal for Adobe, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and others who are interested. This guy (Alex Linhares ) has done lots of research and also has good understanding g if the what is going on the web currently and what can impact the future. Any one out there in biggies to grab this oppotunity!!!

A Modest (billion-dollar) proposal

Imagine the following scenario. A secretive meeting, years ago, when Apple´s Steve Jobs, the benevolent dictator, put in place a strategy to get into the music business. It included not only a gadget, but also an online store, iTunes. I have no idea how that meeting went, but one thing is for sure: many people afterwards must have been back-stabbing Jobs, and mentioning "the music business? We´re going to sell music? This guy has totally lost it."

Fact of the matter was, technology had forever changed the economics of the music business, and Jobs could see it.

Having said that, I´d like to make a modest, billion-dollar, proposal, to the likes of Adobe, Yahoo, Apple, IBM, Microsoft, and whomever else might be up to the task.

Cui Bono?

Think about science publishing. I publish papers for a living. My first paper came out in Biological Cybernetics, a journal which cost, in 1998, over US$2000 for a one year subscription. I live scared to death of Profa. Deborah, who reviews my scientific output. And there are others like me in this world. Oh yes, many others.

The economics of science publishing is completely crazy for this day and age. Authors give enormous effort to bring their work to light, editors and journal and conference referees also put in enormous effort. All of that is unpaid, of course (or at least indirectly paid, in the hopes of tenure and/or prestige). But then, our masterpieces go to a journal, which obliges me to transfer copyright to the likes of Elsevier, or Springer, or someone else. Then some money starts to show up! According to wikipedia, Springer had sales exceeding €900 million in 2006, while Elsevier upped the ante to a pre-tax profit (in the REED annual report) to a staggering €1 billion (on €7.9 Billion turnover). But for those who brought out the scientific results, for those that bring the content, and the fact checking by referees and editors, all that work goes unpaid. The money goes to those who typeset it, then store it in a server, then print it out and mail it to libraries worldwide. And let´s not forget those which actually pay for the research, the public, as most research is government-financed. In the words of Michael Geist, a law professor:

Cancer patients seeking information on new treatments or parents searching for the latest on childhood development issues were often denied access to the research they indirectly fund through their taxes

How did we get here? A better question is how could it have been otherwise? In the last decades, how could a different industrial organization appear? Cui Bono?

Lowly (and busy) professors or universities were obviously not up to the risky and costly task of printing and mailing thousands of journals worldwide, every month. A few societies emerged, and, mostly funded by their membership, they were up to the task. So, in time, the business of science publishing emerged and eventually consolidated in the hands of a few players. And these few players could focus on typesetting, printing, mailing much better than the equation-loving professors or the prestige & money-seeking universities.

The other day I tried to download my own paper published in the journal " Artificial Intelligence", and I was asked to pay USD30.00 for it. That´s the price of a book, and I was the author of the thing in the first place!

Now, if you ask me, technology has forever changed the economics of the scientific publishing business, and it´s high time for someone like Jobs to step forward.

Adobe Buzzword is specially suited to do this. Most scientific publishers (Elsevier, Springer) and societies (IEEE, ACM, APA, APS, INFORMS) have just one or two typesetting styles for papers. I imagine a version of Buzzword which carries only the particular typesetting style(s) of the final published document, and researchers would already prepare those manuscripts ready for publication (there are glitches today, of course, like high-quality images and tables and equations--but hey, we´re talking about Adobe here!). A submit button would submit the papers for evaluation, either to a journal or a conference. Referees could make comments and annotation on the electronic manuscript itself, or even suggest minor rewritings of a part here and there. The process would be much smoother than even the most modern of online submission processes. And, since Adobe has flash, this means that they´re especially positioned to bring up future papers with movies, sounds, screencasts and whole simulations embedded. Wouldn´t that be rich? Doesn´t that beautifully fit with what´s stated in their page?

Adobe revolutionizes how the world engages with ideas and information .


But Buzzword is just my favorite option (because it enables beautiful typesetting, is backed by a large, credible, player, works on any platform, and enables worldwide collaboration between authors, editors, referees). Other options could be desktop processors (MsWord, Pages, OpenOffice, etc). There would be a productivity gain by using something the likes of Buzzword, but using desktop processors wouldn´t affect the overall idea.

Now, why would the people in Adobe, Yahoo, SUN, IBM, Microsoft, Google, or others actually want to do a thing like that?

There are two reasons. The first one is goodwill, the second one is money.

Goodwill

I recently had a paper outright rejected in the IBM Systems Journal. In retrospect, I now see that it was a very bad call to submit there. I had mentioned that choice to the editor of a very prestigious scientific journal, and he responded by saying: "They´re going to hate it. They´re not in the business of publishing great original science for a long time now. That´s just a marketing thing; they´re in the business of trying to impress customers." I responded that I thought that they´d be open-minded; that the journal had had some great contributions in the past and I thought it was just great. I was, of course, wrong. They didn´t even look at the thing; they didn´t even bother to send back a message. After a quick check, I felt enormously stupid: all papers, or maybe not all but something way above 90%, come from IBM authors. The IBM Systems Journal, it seems to me, is now a branch of IBM´s marketing department. And while it may impress less sophisticated customers, it´s definitely a huge loss for IBM.

The Systems Journal (and their R&D journal) used to be a fountain of goodwill for IBM. Scientists took pride in publishing there, and hordes of researchers (not customers) browsed it and studied it carefully. It was a fountain of goodwill--with a direct route to IBM´s bottom line: it attracted the best scientists to IBM. Now that it´s in the hands of marketing, you can hardly find any serious scientist considering it as a potential outlet. If I were in IBM, I´d be fighting to change things around. But I´m not there, I can speak the truth as I see it, and I can just submit somewhere else. The BELL LABS Technical Journal also seems to be meeting the same "marketing department" fate. Don´t expect to see nobel prizes coming from these journals any time soon.

When these journals didn´t belong to marketing, they brought, at least to this observer, a huge amount of goodwill and good publicity for their respective companies. The HR department must have loved choosing among the best PhDs dying to get into IBM. Sad to mention, I doubt that the best PhDs are now begging to work on these companies anymore.

Yet, IBM could change things around. As could Adobe, SUN, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and many others. What I feel they should do is establish a platform for online paper submission, review, and publication. This platform should be made openly available for all scientific societies, for free. From the prestigious journal "Cognitive Science" to the Asia-Pacific Medical Education Conference, this platform should be free (to societies, journals, and conferences) and the papers published online should be freely accessible to all, no login, no paywall, nothing in the way. Copyright should remain in the hands of authors. Gradually, one after another, journals and conferences would jump ship, as the platform gained credibility and respectability.

Now here´s the kicker. It´s not only about goodwill. There´s money to be made.

Money

One crucial point is for the platform to be freely accessible to all. But you can do that, and still block the googlebot, the yahoobot, and all others "bots", but your own. Let´s say, for instance, that Microsoft does something of the sort. In some years time, not only it gets the goodwill of graduate students who are studying papers published by science.microsoft.org (as opposed to hey-sucker-pay-thirty-bucks-for-your-own-paper-Elsevier), but also the way to search for such information would be only through that website. As we all know, advertising is moving online: according to a recent study, the last year saw "$24 billion spent on internet advertising and $450 billion spent on all advertising ". Soon we´ll reach US$100 Billion/year in advertising on the web. And imagine having a privileged position in the eyeballs of graduate-educated people, from medicine to science to economics to business to engineering to history.

I hope someone will pull something like this off. Maybe for the goodwill. Or maybe for the money.

Many companies could pull it off, but some seem specially suited to the task. My favorite would be Adobe--with buzzword and AIR and flash and pdfs, that´s definitely my choice. Google might want to do it just to preempt some other company from blocking the googlebot to get its hands on valuable scientific research. Microsoft, the Dracula of the day, certainly needs the goodwill, and it could help it to hang on to the MS-Word lock in. Maybe Amazon would find this interesting--fits nicely with their web storage and search dreams. Yahoo would have the same reason as Google.

I don´t see Apple doing it. I think it could actually hurt their market value, as investors might think that they would be over-stretching, ever expanding into new markets.

I don´t see IBM or SUN doing it either; in fact, if anyone in a board meeting ever proposed this, I can only see the exact same back-stabbing that must have gone through, years ago, in Apple: "Science-publishing? This guy has totally lost it. This is IBM, and that´s not the business we´re in." They´re to busy handling their own internal office politics, who´s getting promotion and pay packages. Innovation is hardly coming in from there (though both have been embracing open-source to a certain degree).

One thing is for sure. The open-access to research movement is getting momentum everyday. It´s time to sell that Elsevier stock.

Just a final note. If any player is willing to do this, use an org domain name. Don´t name it "Microsoft Science". That won´t work with intelligent, independent scientists. Use a domain name such as science.yahoo.org, science.adobe.org, and name it as "Open science", "World of Science", anything... but please don´t try to push your name too far. Let it grow slowly.

And just in case someone wants to pull this off, and is actually wondering... I´m right here.

Microsoft would be on Buying Spree

This is what Microsoft Chairman Steve Ballmer said in the recent Web 2.0 Summit in San Fransisco.

What are you interested in that Microsoft currently isn't doing?
"We'll probably buy 20 companies a year for the next five years. Most of them will be footnotes - we're talking about acquisitions of $50m, $100m, $200m. Those are good acquisitions and are important to us, and it's of strategic value. There aren't many things in the $6bn to $15bn price range, you're talking about a handful of things. In the meantime we'll probably buy a lot of companies from $50m to $1bn, so we'll continue to buy a lot of stuff. Email steveb@microsoft.com if you something to sell!"

Now Microsoft has started it again but this time MS is imitating Google by targeting only small ones. Yahoo hasn't declared the acquisitions strategy officially, but he is also in queue.

Google Riddle : Its Simpsons

The Following Riddle posts on Google Blogoscoped and many Google followers like me solved it quickly with Google Docs. Actually it can't be solved by MS Excel and that's the main point behind posting this Puzzle by Philipp Lenssen. You can't add more then three rules in MS Excel Conditional Formatting and that's what google wants to highlight.

3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,4,4,3,0,4,4,4,3,4,3,4,3,3,3,3
3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,4,3,4,4,4,0,4,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,0,2,2,0,4,3,3,3
3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,2,2,2,2,0,1,2,2,1,2,1,1,1,2,2,2,2,2,4,3,3,3
3,3,3,3,3,3,2,2,2,1,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,4,3,3,3
3,3,3,3,3,3,4,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,4,3,3,3
3,3,3,3,3,3,4,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,4,3,3,3
3,3,3,3,3,3,3,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,4,3,3,3
3,3,3,3,3,3,3,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,4,3,3,3
3,3,3,3,3,3,3,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,4,3,3,3
3,3,3,3,3,3,3,4,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,4,3,3,3
3,3,3,3,3,3,3,4,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,4,3,3,3
3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,4,3,3,3
3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,3,3,3
3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,2,1,1,1,1,1,2,2,4,4,2,2,1,2,2,2,2,2,2,3,3,3
3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,4,1,1,1,1,2,4,3,3,3,3,4,2,4,3,3,3,3,2,3,3,3
3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,4,1,1,1,2,4,3,3,3,3,3,3,2,3,3,3,3,3,4,4,3,3
3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,4,2,1,1,2,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,4,3,3,3,3,3,3,4,3,3
3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,2,1,1,2,3,3,4,4,3,3,3,4,4,3,3,3,3,3,4,3,3
3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,2,1,1,2,3,3,2,4,3,3,3,4,0,0,2,2,4,3,4,3,3
3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,2,1,1,1,4,3,3,3,3,3,3,2,1,1,1,1,2,2,3,3,3
3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,2,1,1,1,2,4,3,3,3,3,2,1,1,1,1,1,2,2,3,3,3
3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,2,2,1,1,1,1,2,4,2,2,1,1,1,1,2,2,2,2,3,3,3
3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,4,2,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,2,1,2,3,3,3
3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,2,1,0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,4,3,3
3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,4,2,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,4,3,3
3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,4,0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,4,3,3
3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,2,1,1,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,3,3,3
3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,2,1,1,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,4,3,3,3
3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,2,4,4,4,3,3,3,3,3,3,3
3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,4,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3
3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3
3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,4,0,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3
3,3,3,3,3,3,4,0,0,0,0,2,1,1,1,1,1,2,0,0,2,4,4,3,3,3,3,3,3,3
3,3,3,3,4,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,4,3,3,3,3,3
3,3,3,4,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,3,3,3
3,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,4,3,3,3,3
3,3,4,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2,2,4,3,3
3,3,4,2,1,1,2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2,1,1,2,4,3
3,3,2,1,1,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2,2,1,1,2,4
3,4,1,1,1,1,2,2,2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2,2,2,1,1,1,2
3,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1
3,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,0,0,0,0,0,0,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1
3,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,0,0,0,0,1,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2
3,4,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0,0,2,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,2