Nels Wadycki » Google

Song from Google Nexus S Video

Nels — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 19:01:33 +0000

It wasn’t all that hard to find, but I bet a lot of people will be looking for the song from the Google Nexus S video since they don’t credit it in the video or on the YouTube page. (And since my wife is a French teacher, I thought maybe I could help other French teachers out here)

It’s called Allo Allo by Les Sans Culottes, which I believe translates to “Those Without Underwear”.

Here’s the song Allo Allo (Hello I Love You) on Amazon, and on YouTube.

Other Stuff Like This

Things I Read Today [aka Links!]

Nels — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 13:35:35 +0000

Rachel at cre8d design bemoans the loss of long-form writing. The example is a book telling a story composed of emails. While I agree with the sentiment that the loss of long-form writing is just that – a true loss – I’d be interested in seeing the same book told through Tweets and TwitPics (or Facebook status updates and corresponding Photos).

Google is set to speed up Gmail. I’m only up to 16% usage on my Gmail account, but I certainly wouldn’t mind anything they can do to speed it up.

Tim Bray is now a Developer Advocate for Google – specifically the Android platform. I don’t have anything against Apple and the iPhone personally, but as a software/web development professional, I am definitely behind the argument that their gatekeeper/executioner style of running the App Store is dangerous for any developer involved.

Other Stuff Like This

Web Apps = Automatic Upgrades

Nels — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 02:00:02 +0000

While it wasn’t one of the major factors I talked about in my previous post, the following is a quick and easy example of another reason that webapps kick ass: No Upgrade Cycle

Google launched Buzz 2 days ago, and already their making changes based on user feedback. But the best part is not that they’re making changes and responding so quickly, rather it’s that the update gets automatically pushed to everyone. No download. No install. Just, roll out, and boom, it’s there.

Other Stuff Like This

Mobile + Cloud = Magic … Right Now!

Nels — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:40:53 +0000

It’s funny that the these two posts both appeared on TechCrunch just yesterday…

First: Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt on the Magical Potential of Mobile Cloud. I will re-blockquote:

The mobile platforms, Android and the others, are so powerful now that you can build client apps that do magical things that are connected with the cloud. This is I think the most visually obvious example of that…don’t limit your imagination to this set of problems. Anything where you can produce this phenomenal customer benefit when you have a mobile device broadly defined connected to the cloud….Obviously we like the price of free because the consumers like that as well and we can figure out ways to use advertising to pay for it.

The way he says it, he makes it sound like this is still a few years in coming… but then there’s this post about Lala.com’s iPhone app which was just submitted a few days ago, and basically does exactly what Schmidt was talking about: Use the mobile cloud to make magic happen.

I’ve already expounded on my love of Lala, and how I may never buy another mp3 again, and now that I’ll soon be able to (hopefully) listen to all my music on my iPhone from the cloud, why would I???? I can store a lot more music on Lala than I can on my iPhone, and at significantly lower cost!

It’s like I told my wife last night (talking about why I didn’t want anything more than watching a Bulls game for my birthday): I can get any DVD I want from Netflix, I can get any music I want on Lala, and I can get any book I want from the library. When you couple with that, the fact that I don’t really need any new clothes since I don’t even wear everything I own now, and the only thing that I really need for my birthday is more time.

Other Stuff Like This

Gmail’s Magic Inbox

Nels — Thu, 21 May 2009 13:54:34 +0000

Google Operating System has found some Gmail code that indicates the coming of a social inbox!

So, not only will we have one inbox for Everything, but it’ll be organized by importance (or at least how important Google thinks things are).

Other Stuff Like This

Thank God Google! Suggest comes to Image Search

Nels — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 22:45:42 +0000

In searching for the image for my Aardvark post, I just discovered that Google has added the drop-down suggestion list to Image Search!

I just used it to find the images for this post! As someone who writes 3 (or maybe more ) blogs, and likes to use relevant images in his posts, I can’t tell you how happy this makes me. But this guy can:

Other Stuff Like This

The Hulu Takeover

Nels — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:41:50 +0000

According to TechCrunch, Hulu gained 10 million viewers in Feburary, which is an impressive number, but if you look at their chart, what I think is more impressive is the 64.5 minutes per viewer which is second in the top 10 behind only Google Sites (aka YouTube) which had 134 minutes, and 3.6 times more than the next highest average minutes per viewer in the top 10.

Maybe it’s because Hulu rocks the house. I wish CBS and ABC would take note. I would give them more advertising revenue that they are otherwise losing because I’d be all over the past 4 seasons of How I Met Your Mother and the last few episodes of LOST that I haven’t been able to watch yet (and I might even watch Wipeout if I could add it to my Hulu queue).

Other Stuff Like This

One Inbox To Rule Them All

Nels — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 23:26:52 +0000

or: All Your Inbox Are Belong To Us

So, there’s a thing called Google Voice (via TechCrunch). And to quote TechCrunch:

Google also says that full integration with Gmail is coming, but won’t say when. Personally, having all my email, SMS and transcribed voicemails in a single inbox could be life-changing.

Yes indeed. Of course, this post has been skulking around in the background for almost a week, and so I’ve developed a counter-point as well, but let’s start with the positive.

Google Voice is a Google Product, so it has a pretty good chance of being awesome. Being a Google Product, it also has a pretty good chance of sucking, and pretty much no chance of being in between. But since TechCrunch says it’s Very Very Good, then I think the chances of being awesome are pretty good.

As someone who does not have a “smartphone” I would like a phone number that could direct my calls to my home number if I didn’t really want to deal with them, and deliver them to my cell phone if they were important. Of course, since it usually takes 24 hours or more for me to remember to set my cell phone back to Loud after I have to put it on Silent (like for a movie), the announcement of voicemails and SMS in my Gmail seems like a brilliant idea. I also like the idea of getting transcriptions of my voicemails and perhaps even moreso, the ability to save my text messages forever. Storing them in a place where I keep emails that I want to save forever is like getting fouled on a monster dunk.

Of course, if it could also tell me if a SMS message went to anyone else (like, say, and email does), then I would be 100% happy (as opposed to, you know, 99.999%), like getting fouled on a dunk from the three-point line, NBA Jam-style.

I already saw that at least one of my Facebook friends has upgraded from GrandCentral to Google Voice. Lucky b-tard. I don’t even remember hearing of GrandCentral before, but I wish I was part of the in crowd now. If you’re like me, you can find a link here that will give you a form to sign up to be notified when Google Voice is available to everyone.

Here’s the official Google Blog post which doesn’t have much besides a link to the Google Voice About Page. The About Page has a video for every feature (I believe) in the product, though, so that’s pretty awesome.

Other Stuff Like This

How Long Before Disqus adds Google FriendConnect Login?

Nels — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:59:38 +0000

Since Google’s FriendConnect now has public APIs and Joost de Valk (is that his real name?) already has a WordPress plugin, it seems like only a matter of ~~minutes~~ days until Disqus will add the ability to login through Google to their plugin.

(Would it help if I said Please?)

Other Stuff Like This

Is IE7 filtering out Google Ads?

Nels — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 21:51:33 +0000

You can click for a larger view…

I’m not the only one who’s noticed.

Internet Explorer 7 blocking Google AdSense

IE7 disables javascript with the security setting on “high”, which would not allow AdSense ads to show along with numerous features of most websites. IE6 works exactly the same and the phenomenon is definitely not specific to Google AdSense. It is likely that whomever did the test had their security setting on “high”. However, this is not the default setting and we believe most users would not have a good experience on the web having javascript blocked.

I tested with the security setting at Medium-High and Medium and had the same issue, so it’s not just a problem with High security.

And some insight on Internet Explorer 8 which will apparently be doing the same thing. Now, yes, I can see how security experts would be skeptical of AdSense as being a form of spyware, but you could also (and I would think perhaps more successfully) argue that Google Analytics is even worse. (And yes, putting the two together is even worse)

That said, I (and many others) use Google AdSense to make a little extra cash from blogging (not from this blog, mind you, despite the presence of ads in some browsers). I prefer Google’s ads to just about any sort of display advertising which is usually just distracting or annoying, and the face that Firefox, Safari, and Opera (and obviously Chrome) don’t seem to have any issues with displaying Google Ads does make me leary. Microsoft has been known to be fairly anti-trusting in the past, and while the links above explain that the security measures affect more than just Google Ads, my guess would be that the Internet Explorer test suite includes a “security test” that makes sure that Google Ads aren’t showing up.