Google Desktop Search

Reuben mentioned Google Desktop Search when it came out in Beta. Google Desktop Search is now out of Beta. The security concerns raised at the time of Beta's launch have been addressed - password-protected documents and other secure content on the computer are not indexed. Also, users can disallow indexing of content from secure web-sites. GDS comes with an SDK for developers to extend support, and has been released on Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

Google has heavy competition in the consumer desktop arena. Not only have its top rivals, Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN, introduced similar tools recently, but a litany of upstarts have emerged to compete for Web surfers' attention. Some are even having success; Blinkx said Friday that its desktop-search tool is now fielding 100 million searches daily.

All the search companies are hoping to lock in new visitors with desktop applications because they believe it will help them drive more Web searches--and hence more advertising sales. Search-related advertising is expected to be worth between $4 billion and $5 billion this year.

Microsoft should be able to achieve tighter integration as they own the platform and the APIs, greater flexibility as they can probably better index Office and other file types, and perhaps also faster searching, since their search and file system components can integrate better. Desktop search is still anybody's game.

In other developments, it was pleasing to see Google's new weather service. You can now type the keyword "weather" followed by city and state information (or zip code) to get weather and weather-related search information on the area. When will Google integrate their weather, news and other services into a, um...., portal?

[Cross-posted on Zoo Station]

Bay Area Unites concert today

This is just a quick reminder regarding the Bay Area Unites concert today to benefit those affected by the tsunami. The concert is from 2:00 to 5:00 pm at the HP Pavilion in San Jose.

[Cross-posted to Zoo Station]

Google Maps

[From BoingBoing via Scientific Indian]

Google introduces their new feature : Google Maps. Google Maps is another brilliantly engineered site from Google. There are a couple of really cool new features : infinitely scrollable maps, which help you visualize the map or the route much better than Mapquest and other existing mapping sites, and turn-by-turn driving directions with pop-ups that show a zoomed-in map of the turn points.
Google Maps is blazingly fast. It uses absolute URLs for the map, so there is potential for client-side and edge-of-network caching. GoogleMaps also makes innovative use of XML technologies, an area close to my heart. HTTP get's from the browser return XML embedded in the HTML, and Google Maps uses the browser's built-in XSLT processor to apply a stylesheet on the XML returned. Joel Webber talks about what else is going on under the covers at Google Maps in this post. I think Google is where the game is now.

I also think it bears noting that Google is pulling out all the stops to build rich web apps, no matter how weirdly they have to hack the browser to make them go. And I strongly believe that this is a trend that is here to stay -- XHTML Strict/CSS/etc be damned. At the end of the day, what really matters to users is compelling apps that let them get their work done quickly.

[Cross-posted to Zoo Station]

Aid for the tsunami and AID India

President Bush will ask Congress for 950 million in aid for the tsunami-stricken nations. The money will mostly go towards helping Indonesia and Sri Lanka, since India and Thailand have not sought foreign governmental aid. The bill, if approved, would be the single largest pledge made towards any single disaster in US history. This is the sort of the thing that puts compassion into conservativism, and I can only applaud Bush for this move.

President Bush on Wednesday increased the United States tsunami relief pledge to $950 million, nearly tripling America's contribution.

The additional $600 million would put the United States, which was criticized initially as reacting slowly to the disaster, ahead of Australia, which has pledged $750 million, and Germany, which has pledged $680 million, among the top donors.

The relief couldn't come at a better time. Disasters such as the tsunami have a tendency to be quicky forgotten. As a relief worker in one of the articles Amit Varma wrote on Rediff.com put it : 'This will also slip away from public memory'.

"I have been to Orissa (where there was a cyclone in 1999), I have been to Bhuj (earthquake in 2001), and from those experiences I can tell you, long-term rehabilitation is a problem. See, now the tsunami has just happened, the press is everywhere, the government everywhere, volunteers everywhere. But as time passes -- after the immediate emergency needs of the survivors are taken care of -- most of them will go away.

Amit Varma blogged on India Uncut about his first-hand experiences in Tamil Nadu in the days following the tsunami. (Check out his "India Uncut - The Tsunami Posts") In the article, Amit Varma also mentions AID India's efforts in the tsunami. He refers to AID as 'an organisation [he] can't praise highly enough for their unflagging relief work in the state', and goes on to talk about AID's relief strategy. I know some of the AID people in Austin and the Bay Area, and they are one incredibly motivated bunch of volunteers. Hurrah, AIDers. Way to go!

Update : Updated the post a bit. If you are interested in contributing to the AID tsunami campaign, you can do so here. Information on AID from CharityNavigator is available here.

[Cross-posted to Zoo Station]

The Bay Area Unites concert

For all the Bay Area readers of the blog out there, Vamsee Tirukkala brings to our attention a fundraising event happening over the next weekend (Feb. 20th) to benefit victims of the tsunami. From Vamsee's e-mail :

Many bay area communities are coming together like never before to remember the victims of the tsunami disaster and to raise funds for the rehabilitation of its survivors. On Sunday, February 20, join us at the HP Pavilion in San Jose at 2pm for an interfaith service led by Dr. Deepak Chopra and entertainment by Lisa Loeb, Gamelan Sekar Jaya, Shankar & Gingger, Mostly Dylan, as well as a special message from President Bill Clinton, as we unite to support this important cause, benefiting the seven countries hit hardest by the tsunami.

I took a quick look at the brochure. The event looks pretty fabulous with artistes from India, Indonesia, and the United States. A performance by Shankar and Gingger alone should be reason enough to go, but it really trumps everything that the proceeds are going to benefit such a great cause. Beneficiaries will be people affected by the tsunami in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, the Maldives, Malaysia and Somalia. Tickets starts at $10, plus additional contributions on a voluntary basis. Tickets can be bought out here.

P.S. For bloggers reading this, please do spread the word around if you can. Your help is appreciated.

[Cross-posted to Zoo Station]

Photo-enhanced yellow pages

Amazon.com's latest offering - photo-enhanced Yellow Pages.

The most powerful technology A9.com invented for Yellow Pages is "Block View" which brings the Yellow Pages to life by showing a street view of millions of businesses and their surroundings. Using trucks equipped with digital cameras, global positioning system (GPS) receivers, and proprietary software and hardware, A9.com drove tens of thousands of miles capturing images and matching them with businesses and the way they look from the street.

Type in your search query : you can not only see a picture of the business, you can also walk up and down the block, and see pictures of other businesses on the same street. I love the way they have integrated the images and GPS data to create a seamless walk-down-the-street experience. Looks luverly.

[Cross-posted to Zoo Station]

Patting ourselves on our backs

Reuben Abraham made a short post regarding Zoo Station winning the Indiblog award for best group blog for 2004, signing off appropriately enough with a trivia question (click on the link above to see the question in the post). The answer to the question? Oh well, let us just say it is around here somewhere. Google around, and you too can find it :)

So, it seems like Zoo Station did win the Indiblog award for best group blog. It's pretty cool to win a blogging prize by popular choice just a month after ABC News crowned bloggers as their choice for People of the Year. First, thanks to all our readers who voted for this blog. Second, thanks to all the rest of the team at ZS who have made this blog mighty readable. Congratulations are also in order for frequent ZS commenter and friend, Atanu Dey and the Deeshaa/RISC blog, which won the award for Indiblog of the Year. Thanks go out to Indiblog nominee Rajesh Jain, who convinced me to start Zoo Station way back in 2003.

Electoral-Vote.com

For those following the electoral college vote game, check out Electoral-Vote.com, featured in today's New York Times. The man behind the site is Andrew Tanenbaum - reputed professor of computer science, author of standard textbooks on operating systems and computer networks, and U.S. citizen. Although Tanenbaum's political leanings are Democratic, I think the projections can be relied on to be non-partisan.

I think America deserves better. I want America to be respected in the world again, and John Kerry can restore the respect America deserves. 

Don't believe me that the world hates us? The Guardian, one of Britain's most respected newspapers, ran a column by Charlie Brooker last week ending with this paragaph: "On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod's law dictates he'll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed ..." Then it gets so bad that I refuse to quote it. Maybe Brooker is a nut and maybe it was a joke, but the fact that a serious newspaper would publish this piece shows how deep the hatred of George Bush runs. And this comes from our closest ally. Imagine what people in Spain or Indonesia or the Arab world think. 

But there are some practical matters to consider as well. If you look at British and Canadian publications, such as The BBC, The Guardian, The Economist, and The Globe and Mail, you get a picture not colored by partisan electoral considerations. You sometimes wonder if they are reporting the same war as the U.S. media. The situation in Iraq has deteriorated very badly. Over 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died in the war, mostly women and children. Well over 1000 American soldiers--many of them just kids who signed up for the National Guard and never expected to go to war--have been killed there and thousands more have been maimed for life. Americans are being killed daily in increasing numbers and unless there is a radical change, this will go on for years. Reenlistment rates are way down and manpower needs are way up. With a President Kerry, there is hope that other countries might contribute serious numbers of troops to help stabilize Iraq. With a second Bush administration they will just say: "You broke it, you fix it."

Update : Updated the post a bit.

[Cross-posted to Zoo Station]

Robot videos

I was at Fry's, and I saw the $100 Robosapien on sale. Check out these cool videos of Mark Tilden with Robosapien. The second one on the page is really cool! I love that international caveman language that Robosapien speaks. I also happened across Aibo at the Metreon the other time. There seem to be so many robots floating around. This article in Businessweek summarizes the state of the market.

Some of today's most popular entertainment robots are little more than toys, but they're attracting plenty of attention. With 67 preprogrammed moves controlled by a remote, Wow Wee's $100 Robosapiens have been hot sellers at Fry's Electronics and other U.S. stores. At the other end of the price spectrum is Sony's $1,800 robot canine, Aibo ERS-7, which can fetch, respond to its owner's voice, take photos, and find its recharger when its batteries run low.

Check out this video of Asimo going the stairs. From a robotics perspective, it is harder to implement sophisticated movement with bipedal robots than with six- or four- legged ones, not to mention wheeled ones. That they have been able to make Asimo walk down the stairs must violate some law of robotics somewhere :)

Update : updated the post a bit.

[Cross-posted to Zoo Station]

The news from Mars

The news from Mars is that they have fresh evidence that there were significant quantities of water on the planet.

Opportunity was the first to send back evidence that a salty sea once covered the area where it landed, a flat plain known as the Meridiani Planum. Spirit also found signs that the massive Gusev Crater, where it landed, had seen small amounts of water.

Now, recent data sent back by Opportunity suggests the area had a second drenching sometime after the plains dried out, scientists said.

The Martian rovers have been nothing short of spectacular. The guys have been making some amazing discoveries while being controlled from here on earth. That should also be a huge plug for robotics and Artificial Intelligence, in general.

[Cross-posted to Zoo Station]