Chromecast, an Example of a Well-Productized Device.

The Chromecast Device.

Within minutes of unpacking the Chromecast device, you can see it working beautifully on your HDMI-equipped TV, getting controlled by your iPhone or iPad¹! No reading manuals, nothing.

Thanks, Google!

You notice that any TV with an HDMI input, the Chromecast, and your iPhone or iPad work seamlessly.

A Journalistic Faux Pas, Internet style.

Journalists make every effort to report news and information correctly. However, once in a while, mistakes happen.

An example is today's on CNN.com.

The front page provides the title "Apple downgrades Tim Cook". You wonder why Apple downgraded Tim Cook. When you click on the link, however, you are taken to another web page where the title is "Apple employees downgrade Tim Cook".

Big difference.

Apple as a corporate entity is different from its constituent employees although, in many cases, the employees have a say in what Apple, the corporate entity, does or says.

Google Fiber, when are you coming to our town?

This blog post is an alternative, easier-to-follow, representation of an article on Mashable.com, How Does Your Internet Service Stack up to Google Fiber?

Property	AT&T	Comcast	Google	Time-Warner	Verizon
Name	Max Turbo Internet and U-verse U450 TV	Xfinity Extreme 105 Internet and Digital Premier TV	Gigabit + Fiber TV	Signature Home Package	FiOS 300 and Ultimate HD
Price/mo	$188	$180	$120	$199	$318
Internet access speed	24 Mbit/s down, 3 Mbit/s up	105 Mbit/s down, 10 Mbit/s up	1000 Mbit/s down, 1000 Mbit/s up	105 Mbit/s down, 10 Mbit/s up	300 Mbit/s down, 65 Mbit/s up
Monthly Data Cap	250 GB	300 GB	Infinite	60 GB	Infinite
Channels	430, incl. Cinemax, HBO	> 300, incl. AMC, ESPN, HBO, Showtime	162, incl. Showtime	350; premium extra	380, incl. ESPN, NFL RedZone, Showtime
DVRs, Recording	1, 4	1, 2	1, 8	1, 2	1, 2
DVR - hrs	65 HD	60 HD	500 HD	150 HD	60 HD
Availability	22 states	39 states, & Washington, DC	Kansas City, KS & Kansas City, MO	29 states	12 states, & Washington, DC

Google Acquires BumpTop.

Google acquisition today of BumpTop is an exciting prospect for making a non-browser based OS irrelevant as the future unfolds. You can even see a multi-touch interface version in this YouTube video.

The future desktop, and TVs, will definitely deserve this; maybe some laptops and netbooks will get this as well.

On a Blogger's Meetup.

Blogging is an activity that has gotten well fostered, thanks to the web. I had an opportunity to participate in a meetup conducted by Bill Belew, for bloggers. In addition of course to Bill, I met bloggers who focused in a wide variety of interests:

1. Different kinds of chocolates
2. Writing about Writing
3. What you sow, so you reap, a healthy approach to living
4. IT Tutoring
5. Individual Approach to Financial Management
6. Promotion of English among Chinese
7. Boomer Grandparents
8. Raw Foods
9. Fierce Planet, on Earthquakes and Other Natural Disasters
10. A new blogger who is focused on art

It is quite refreshing to see that blogging as an activity is not only very mainstream, but can be harnessed to generate some side income as well.

An interesting factoid: Nearly everyone else in the meetup used Wordpress; I was the only Blogger user.

Scripting for the Google Web

Not too long ago, Google announced the availability of scripting for the web for Google Apps Standard Edition customers too. If you play with a little bit, you will begin to see the power of JavaScript in its ability to provide meaningful automating capability to web documents, particularly as it is being promoted by Google.

A very interesting application in automating — screenscraping as it is called by the author, Tony Hirst — can be studied here:
Screenscraping With Google Spreadsheets App Script and the =importHTML() Formula.
The author illustrates how council elections results of the town of Lichfield, UK, can be analyzed using Google App Script.

While the Internet is well known to be a great equalizer, it is also true that it also a great personalizer, thanks to scripting everywhere -- at the [browser] client and in the [server in the] cloud.

The state of globally accessible health information on the Internet.

The Google blog post titled Listening to Google Health users is illustrative of the work in front of us before we can claim universal accessibility of health information over the net. The ICD codes have been in use for quite some time now, since 1893 in some form or the other, but the Google Health episode brings forth the need for greater accuracy in defining these codes and their descriptions.

The point to be noted is that computerization greatly helps, and sometimes accelerates, correct classifications.

Use of arbitrary HTML in Gmail signature block.

If you have been wondering about when Google will get around to accepting arbitrary HTML in Gmail signature blocks, look no more! There is a published solution, on the web, but with one constraint: 

You have to use Firefox as your browser. A web developer named Chris Pollock has made that publicly available as a Firefox add-on.

 
I have started using it, and love it. Don't you relish the ubiquity, and hence the shareable characteristic, of the Internet?

Internet and Vedanta?

Yesterday, I caught the last few minutes of a chat session broadcast on one of the public television stations in the Silicon Valley (I don't remember the name of the station), about Deepak Chopra's book Life and Death.

During the Q & A session, Deepak Chopra discussed the impact of technology on promoting the idea of universal consciousness. As posted at the hyperlink of this post's title, "... the Internet is cloning our soul."

I couldn't help reflecting that Facebook, "Internet as a platform", Semantic Web, Web 2.0, etc., are foundational concepts for a richer society.