Between the Poles

Google Announces Real-Time Search

Google has announced a real-time search, that allows you after conducting a search, to see live updates from Twitter,  news and blog posts as they are published.  You will be able to click on "Latest results" to see a full page of tweets, blogs, news and other web content scrolling on Google as they are published.  Google has done this by partnering with Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku and Identi.ca and Twitter.  You can see a live example at Google Trends.

Google Announces Goggles on Android Phones

Google has announced Goggles for Android mobile phones.  Goggles allows you to identify objects by taking a picture of something, a building or structure, a painting, a bottle of wine, or a store are some examples. Goggles will identify it and return information about it.  There's an eWeek slide deck that will give you a feel for what Goggles does.

Digital Camera with Built-in GPS: Las Vegas to Colorado from the Air

I flew back from Las Vegas to Chicago and until just about Denver, the air was clear and I was able to take pictures with my Nikon P6000 with a built-in GPS.  The natural scenery of this part of the US is absolutely stunning and because there is so little precipitation and clouds you can get some very good pictures even from 36 000 feet.

Here's a pointer to Flickr where you can see where the plane was when I took the pictures.

Chrome OS Running on Another Netbook

It has been reported that an employee of Dell has gotten Chrome OS, which Google released to open source Nov 19, to run on a Dell Mini 10v netbook.  I blogged earlier that Ed Parsons has Chrome OS running on his Aspire One netbook.

Chrome OS Running on a Netbook

Ed Parsons reports that he has Chrome OS running on his Aspire One, "deadly fast" he says.

Browser Market Share Nov 2009

I just checked the Net Applications web site to see the latest browser market share statistics. The last time I checked was back in July at which time if I remember Chrome had about 2% share. 

Nov 10 Firefox had been out here five years, and has just achieved 25% of the global browser usage market share.

At the beginning of November Chrome had reached 3.5%, again quite respectable for a browser which has been out only about a year.

Chrome OS Source Code Fully Open

Google has announced that the source code for Chrome OS is fully open.  Yesterday Google hosted an event about Chrome OS including demonstrations of Chrome OS.  The presentations ran on machines running Chrome OS.  According to Google, Chrome OS is about a year away from being released.

Google's perspective is that Netbooks are becoming increasingly popular, people are doing more things in their browser, and new types of devices like smart phones, e-readers, and web tablets like the new Nokia N900 are becoming widely used.

According to Google, every Chrome OS application will be a Web application, so you won't have to download and install applications.  Chrome-based netbooks will be instant on.  Turn on the power switch and the machine is on-line.  Google is eliminating the boot loader and modifying the Linux kernel to minimize loading of services at startup.  They also intend to use a verified boot process that detects whether web applications are legitimate.

Google will specify the hardware components for Chrome OS-optimized netbooks. For example, Chrome-OS optimized netbooks will have to use solid state drives.  Chrome OS will run on both ARM and x86 processors.  You won't be able to download Chrome OS onto an existing netbook.

For offline use, it looks like Google will implement something like Google Gears.

Iceland: Hydrogen as a Fuel Source for Ships

Iceland has been moving toward eliminating all use of fossil fuels by 2040.  One the important technologies that Iceland has been investing in is hydrogen.  For example, Iceland is investigating switching over to hydrogen vehicles and has signed an MOU with a number of well known international automobile manufacturers. There has been a successful hydrogen bus project with EU backing.  Another project that was carried out by Icelandic Hydrogen and has been very successful and has also had EU backing is fitting the Elding, a 125 ton  whale watching ship with a hydrogen fuel cell to run its two 50kW generators.  This project was so innovative that it was awarded an Autodesk Inventor of the Month Award.

AutoCAD Map3D 2010 Now Supports Point Clouds

Autodesk has announced the release of the Autodesk Subscription Advantage Pack for AutoCAD® Map 3D 2010, which adds support for using and visualizing point clouds, captured with laser scanners and LiDAR.  Point cloud functionality includes import and 3D visualization of large sets of point cloud data sets with millions of points in LAS and ASCII file formats, filtering point data by spatial extent and LAS classification, elevation, or intensity, point extraction to create surface models, snapping to points in the point cloud using standard AutoCAD software tools, and export of digital elevation models.

The subscription advantage pack also includes Autodesk ImageModeler 2009, which is pretty cool because it allows you to create 3D models from images captured with your digital camera.

ARES 1-X First Stage Recovery

One of the features of the ARES 1 is that the first stage is designd to be recovered.  After first stage burnout and separation from the 2nd stage, the first stage deploys parachutes for a soft sea landing.