I'm starting to regret that I missed out on the Google IPO. I've been a loyal customer of theirs since before it was cool, and am increasingly impressed by the quality of their software and search offerings. It's only going to get better.
It's now becoming obvious that the Big G (no, not that one) has its sights set past the mere cataloging, digestion, and distribution of all of humanity's information. Now they're in position to be a leader in content creation, and I can't wait to see it happen.
I'm in the process of enslaving the half dozen or so email accounts I have to Gmail, which is so vastly superior in terms of usefulness and design elegance that I need not even bother going into it here. I'm waiting for a Google Calendar, which will let me publish (public) appointments from anywhere as well as singly add them from any website dealing with time-sensitive content (that is, everything from court summonses to TV shows). But that's only the half of it. Since it's not MS proprietary, it can be shared with anyone whom I trust to see it, and will probably allow different permissions for different times of day, different people, and common trust levels based on how well they know people I know well.
If this sounds like rambling, it's because I'm overwhelmed by the potential that the new Google/Sun deal brings to the office sphere. Finally, we'll have (for the very reasonable price of free) what MS Office has been trying to do for the better part of a decade: seamless interaction with other users, the internet, etc. Massively distributed editing, immediate publication, and, of course, the ability to search every sentence ever written by anyone from now on.
Now, of course, privacy advocates will whine about how, if they could only go on using typewriters, no one would be able to see what they were up to. Certainly there will be at least as many concerns as there are over the gmail searching (I for one support it as long as it's done in a way that benefits me, rather than overwhelms me with useless information. Google is currently the only entity I trust to limit itself to reasonable profitable usage of my information, and I would much rather see them as a leader in how to do it right than have them cringe under privacy advocates' sensibilities).
I think what the privacy people fear most is that no one cares what they think they know or have to say. Most of history's greatest thinkers were among its most open (and thus vulnerable) people; you almost have to pity the people who hide from this kind of information.
In any event, the infomation age is upon us. While some will say that it's been here for at least ten years, I'm going to mark the launch of google SMS as something of a turning point. Now, any moron with a cell phone, a thumb, and a dime can access any text information they need from the most reliable source of all things reliable. That's not even touching the potential of real-time google map-based navigation devices, or linux-based, $100 laptops running nothing but Firefox with a few choice extensions capable of blowing away office & windows-based systems. We're way past the point where new features in office are of use to most people; every new capability they tack on serves to cover up three that were almost debugged to begin with.
I'm more than a little perturbed by some publishers' reaction to the Google Print project, which aims to scan every book ever published and make exerpts and ISBN information available online. It has the potential to save thousands of out-of-print (such a quaint expression) titles from obscurity, and make billions of dollars for copyright holders of unpopular books. I don't remember which site I read this on, but one publisher, when asked why Google's generous offer to leave out any publisher who wanted to opt out (despite a more than legitamate fair use claim) said something along the lines of, "We have no idea what books we may have published or have a legitimate claim on." So, at present, they stand to make all of no money from those works, whereas, with cheap print-on-demand and ebook readers in every cell phone and PDA (except mine), they stand to be dripping in caviar. People like that need to be expunged from the planet for the good of humanity; if you stand in the way of education, especially when it's on the verge of being universally, freely, globally, and instantaneously available, I have no use for you.
I won't speculate on the future of Google Video, which looks like it may have further to go, but I'd keep an eye on it if I were you. All they need to do is cross-reference scripts with TV shows, put bookmarks corresponding with keypoints in the script (or better yet, allow users to do it for them), and basically all of television and film can be indexed and catagorized as easily as print news is today.
Information wants to be free. I want to be free. I want to be informed. I also want to have as much distance as possible between me and those that don't. Unless they're playing poker.
It's now becoming obvious that the Big G (no, not that one) has its sights set past the mere cataloging, digestion, and distribution of all of humanity's information. Now they're in position to be a leader in content creation, and I can't wait to see it happen.
I'm in the process of enslaving the half dozen or so email accounts I have to Gmail, which is so vastly superior in terms of usefulness and design elegance that I need not even bother going into it here. I'm waiting for a Google Calendar, which will let me publish (public) appointments from anywhere as well as singly add them from any website dealing with time-sensitive content (that is, everything from court summonses to TV shows). But that's only the half of it. Since it's not MS proprietary, it can be shared with anyone whom I trust to see it, and will probably allow different permissions for different times of day, different people, and common trust levels based on how well they know people I know well.
If this sounds like rambling, it's because I'm overwhelmed by the potential that the new Google/Sun deal brings to the office sphere. Finally, we'll have (for the very reasonable price of free) what MS Office has been trying to do for the better part of a decade: seamless interaction with other users, the internet, etc. Massively distributed editing, immediate publication, and, of course, the ability to search every sentence ever written by anyone from now on.
Now, of course, privacy advocates will whine about how, if they could only go on using typewriters, no one would be able to see what they were up to. Certainly there will be at least as many concerns as there are over the gmail searching (I for one support it as long as it's done in a way that benefits me, rather than overwhelms me with useless information. Google is currently the only entity I trust to limit itself to reasonable profitable usage of my information, and I would much rather see them as a leader in how to do it right than have them cringe under privacy advocates' sensibilities).
I think what the privacy people fear most is that no one cares what they think they know or have to say. Most of history's greatest thinkers were among its most open (and thus vulnerable) people; you almost have to pity the people who hide from this kind of information.
In any event, the infomation age is upon us. While some will say that it's been here for at least ten years, I'm going to mark the launch of google SMS as something of a turning point. Now, any moron with a cell phone, a thumb, and a dime can access any text information they need from the most reliable source of all things reliable. That's not even touching the potential of real-time google map-based navigation devices, or linux-based, $100 laptops running nothing but Firefox with a few choice extensions capable of blowing away office & windows-based systems. We're way past the point where new features in office are of use to most people; every new capability they tack on serves to cover up three that were almost debugged to begin with.
I'm more than a little perturbed by some publishers' reaction to the Google Print project, which aims to scan every book ever published and make exerpts and ISBN information available online. It has the potential to save thousands of out-of-print (such a quaint expression) titles from obscurity, and make billions of dollars for copyright holders of unpopular books. I don't remember which site I read this on, but one publisher, when asked why Google's generous offer to leave out any publisher who wanted to opt out (despite a more than legitamate fair use claim) said something along the lines of, "We have no idea what books we may have published or have a legitimate claim on." So, at present, they stand to make all of no money from those works, whereas, with cheap print-on-demand and ebook readers in every cell phone and PDA (except mine), they stand to be dripping in caviar. People like that need to be expunged from the planet for the good of humanity; if you stand in the way of education, especially when it's on the verge of being universally, freely, globally, and instantaneously available, I have no use for you.
I won't speculate on the future of Google Video, which looks like it may have further to go, but I'd keep an eye on it if I were you. All they need to do is cross-reference scripts with TV shows, put bookmarks corresponding with keypoints in the script (or better yet, allow users to do it for them), and basically all of television and film can be indexed and catagorized as easily as print news is today.
Information wants to be free. I want to be free. I want to be informed. I also want to have as much distance as possible between me and those that don't. Unless they're playing poker.
