#Google

Google Gmail recently got a new feature allowing one to open Word documents using Google Docs and we can safely assume that PDF and Excel (for use with Google Spreadsheets) documents are on their way as well. Sometimes a Word document can be quite big with lots of added stuff like images, drawings and so on. If Google can handle the on-the-fly (or at least on-mail-receive) Word documents conversions I do think that they can (and hopefully will) handle Movie files conversions like I suggest in my previous post about integrating YouTube/Google Video with Gmail. [Read More]

According to this, Google is opening an R&D center in Israel in the Tel Aviv area. This is the second center, the first one opened in Haifa. Microsoft has a research center in Haifa from 1991 and it was published in the Israeli press (sorry, I couldn’t find an English reference for this) that they are planning to open another research center in the Tel Aviv area. The only company now from the big GYM (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft) that doesn’t have an R&D presence here in Israel is Yahoo. [Read More]

I just saw that Google released the Google Ctemplate library. While they do need to get some kudos for their efforts of releasing various code bits out as open source, I do have a problem with the Ctemplate library itself. I don’t know when they wrote this library, but what I do know is that its yet another templating language to use. Why couldn’t they have used a standard language such as JavaScript (more exactly, ECMAScript) instead of inventing their own syntax? [Read More]

According to this link in Globes, the Israeli Business newspaper, Google is going to open up an R&D center in Israel in the second quarter. The center will be led by Dr. Yoelle Maarek, a long time (17 years) veteran of IBM’s research labs and will be located in the northern city of Haifa (near the Technion, surprise surprise) The only company out of the big 3, a.k.a, GYM (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft), that has an R&D center in Israel is Microsoft. [Read More]

A long long time ago on July 6th 2005 I’ve posted a rant post about how I’m so pissed at Google after I had to pay $37.25 to get a “Free” Google T-Shirt I won because I wrote the Google Search API .NET Wrapper. Well, now after 8 months I finally got a refund. It started as a strange Email I got from the GoogleStore saying something about my request being handled. [Read More]

I read a this post on Niall Kennedy’s blog about the new features in the Google Toolbar which includes the ability to store and tag label bookmarks that can also later be retrieved when logging into a different machine. While the concept is nice (and is similar in a number of ways to the del.icio.us extension for FireFox the thing that caught my eye was the fact that Google decided to call the tags labels. [Read More]

Just saw this on Digg and since I’m already on a Jabber frenzy due to my previous posts, I thought I should share. Looks quite cool, though I haven’t tried it yet. I’m using GAIM so I got everything all up in one client. I’m just waiting to get a build of GAIM that works with libjingle so I would be able to chat with my friends using Google Talk’s voice features. [Read More]

I’m sure you’ll all have heard about the Gmail dot scandal and that it WAS confirmed by Google. I’m not a heavy Gmail user but I do have an Email box there (like everyone else) but it DOES pisses me off, specifically since my Email HAS a dot in it. This can also explain why I got an Email a while back from someone that claimed to be my wife (although she was referring to another Eran Sandler ;-) ). [Read More]

I’m sure you all have heard by now that Google and AOL have signed a deal in which part of it is to enable Google Talk and AIM users to communicate with each other. Google Talk is based on the open XMPP (Jabber) standard which has built in abilities to work with gateways that enables this protocol to communicate with other protocols. I just hope Google will use some of the Jabber/AIM bridges such as AIM/ICQ-Transport to make this thing work. [Read More]

I’ve recently read this article on BusinessWeek about how Google changed the landscape for VCs and innovation. To sum things up, the article states that instead of encouraging innovation, VCs are looking for companies that can fill in some gap in Google’s portfolio (at least the portfolio they think Google is seeking for, since they don’t really tell anyone what they are doing most of the time). This step alone can diminish innovation since less VCs will invest in things that cannot be sold as quickly as possible to Google (or some other one of the big giant such as Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, Microsoft and the rest) [Read More]