Google Indexes Scanned Documents
2008-10-31 17:45:40
Google is now indexing scanned documents. In the past scanned documents were simply pictures to Google's spiders. This means that they were unable to read the contents of these files and simply relied on their file names and tags to index them. This was also the same with the popular Portable Document Fornat (PDF) from Adobe. Recently however, PDF became an ISO standard and more and more documents are stored and uploaded on the internet this way.
Now, Google is proud to announce that they are now able to index these documents.
"We are now able to perform OCR on any scanned documents that we find stored in Adobe's PDF format. This Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology lets us convert a picture (of a thousand words) into a thousand words -- words that can be searched and indexed, so that these valuable documents are more easily found. This is a small but important step forward in our mission of making all the world's information accessible and useful." ...more
Happy Halloween!
Like any other holiday which contrarily Halloween is not, web sites across the internet celebrate this day with a custom logo. This year there a couple of sites that you'll notice to have a different logo. Mostly with pumpkins, cats, witches and all other scary stuff that remind us of Halloween. It's not important but it's definitely refreshing and fun to see these logos and discover where they link to.
Anyway, here are the big three's logos for this year.
I really don't get the music industry sometimes. I reckon they aren't quite sure about how they feel about music piracy. Most of the time they are gung-ho against file sharing sites where illegal copies of music are available. But sometimes they also hate DRM because it hinders the distribution of music.
To add to that confusion, MTV the largest music channel in the world is censoring out the names of file sharing sites featured in a song that's supposed to influence people not to download and pirate music. Sure the song is ridiculous and comedic given that Weird Al wrote and sang it, but is still delivers the message that piracy is a criminal offense and you should buy the CD instead like you know you have to.
The song is even aptly titled "Don't Download this Song" and come off Weird Al Yankovic's latest album Right Outta Lynwood. The lyrics go: ...more
As if the competition between PC's and Macs isn't messy enough, Microsoft is taking the fight right to Apple's doorsteps. Microsoft is setting up recording booths for their "I'm a PC" campaign right outside Apples stores in malls and other places. The booths are for Microsoft customers to record short video clips explaining why they are PC's. Those clips if chosen will air on Microsoft's $300 million ad campaign that started with Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld's shoe shopping trip and suburban escape.
This competition between Apple and Microsoft has been going on for years and Apple's ad campaign that started the messy confrontation between the Macs and PC's is getting its karma. It's sort of like Coke and Pepsi killing each other in their TV ads, only this time geeks are holding the swords.
Apple has yet to retaliate to this most recent attack. They have already aired a bunch of new "I'm a Mac" TV ads to counter Microsoft's "I'm a PC" ads which still feature Justin Long and Jeff Hodges as Mac and PC. ...more
GMail is expected to introduce today their SMS chat service. This new service will let users send text messages for free from the Gmail chat interface. Of course payment will depend on how much the recipients mobile carrier charges and so functionality depends if the recipient allows it.
Webmonkey reports:
"Google is adding the experimental functionality through Gmail Labs. To turn it on, go to the Labs tab within Gmail's settings. Or, just click on the little green Erlenmeyer flask icon next to your e-mail address at the top of the page in Gmail. If you don't see the option right away, check back later - Gmail product manager Keith Coleman, who demonstrated the new feature for Webmonkey, says it will be made available in Labs to all Gmail users Thursday evening." ...more
The United States 2008 presidential election is only a few days away. Democratic candidate Barack Obama and Republican candidate John McCain have debated and made stump speeches about Iraq, the US economy, health care, foreign policy, etc. But, what about technology?
The White House approach to technology issues may not be as critical as diagnosing and treating the health care crisis, but still such matters are important. How would the two presidential candidates handle this important issue?
Main technology issues
Broadband access is one of the main issues the candidates have addressed. The Internet becomes ever more important to our everyday lives, and the US is slipping behind many other developed countries in the ubiquity and speed of broadband access. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the country is now down to 14th place. ...more
Motorola is a troubled company nowadays. Back when when nobody else was making semiconductors and cellular phones, Motorola was king. Now with everybody else making better devices, it seems that Motorola has failed to come up with any new and novel ides to save their skin.
The most recent development in the Motorola camp was its split into two entities and its mobile division beefing up its Android team. However, the good news stops there. Today, Motorola released their Q3 results and things are looking bleak. Sales are down more than 30% from a year ago and they only have 8.4% of market share, also down.
With those numbers, one would assume that Motorola would step up its game and release that Android-powered social mobile handset they're dedicating more than 300 memers of their staff to. On the contrary, they'll be taking their time. Along with the report, they said not to expect their Android phone until the holiday season next year. You'd think that with Motorola's experience in building phones would have an effect on producing a new one. ...more
Have you been using Google Chrome? At first I found it intriguing and was convinced off the bat to shift. However, after a couple of hours, I found myself back in Firefox downloading the latest version of Opera and reorganizing my desktop icons to include a category of internet browsers.
Google Chrome is great but it's not better than Firefox nor IE. It's a great alternative to what we're used to and for the CEO of Opera, it's a godsend. The release of Google Chrome back in September put the spotlight on alternative browsers. This exposure increased Opera downloads by 20%.
So why isn't Chrome the best (yet), well like every new software its got bugs and that's why there's beta testing. In a blog post last night, the Google Chrome engineers announced that the latest beta release of Chrome is available for download. If you're too lazy, your Chrome will update itself in a couple of days. ...more
I'm not a big fan of TiVo or Netflix. I like my TV over the air and controlled by the TV stations. For me its simply the magic of TV. However, if I wanted on demand TV, I go to the pirates.
Nonetheless the partnership between NetFlix and TiVo deserves coverage. It's been four years in the making and both companies are finally ready to collaborate and deliver great TV to the hungry public. I'm not too informed about the pricing and the nitty gritty of TiVo nor Netflix but here's the news. NetFlix and TiVo will immediately be beta testing their collaborative service with NetFlix streaming to TiVo subscribers. The final product roll out will be available to the public beginning December 2008 starting with only a few titles which will eventually (as usual) grow to a couple of thousand.
For both NetFlix and TiVo fans and users, this is all good. NetFlix directly available on the TV is like having your own cineplex without the hassle of changing the reels. ...more
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