Google Asked to Join Exo-Planet Search Effort

After the success achieved in the last years in the collaboration with NASA's Ames Research Center, which included the mapping of stars and that of the surfaces of different bodies in the solar system, the Internet search giant Google is now showing interest in expanding its development towards providing other useful information such as maps of exo-planets. The Transiting Exoplanet Survery Satellite with its wide-field digital cameras will have the role of studying near bright stars, in the hope to find new exo-planets.

When it will be completed and launched into space in 2012, Google is expected to help process the massive amount of data generated by the satellite. MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research project leader, George R. Ricker, says that: "Decades, or even centuries after the TESS survery is completed, the new planetary systems it discovers will continue to be studied because they are both nerby and bright." Some of these new exo-planets we are discovering today, or which will be discovered in the near future, could one day become the new home to human colonists departing our solar system.

Google’s Lost and Found Lists

Once in a while it’s good to just relax and let the financial talk behind, forget about the CEOs and COOs and features, gadgets and codes. Some relax with a beer, watching the game that’s on, regardless of the sport, just for the feeling of old time’s sake, others go out with
their childhood friends, while a third category stick to the computer and find something else to do except following the numbers.

I myself am of the last, and I just search for a blog post to light my day. Philipp Lenssen’s post on Blogoscoped did the trick, as it addressed both Google and the fun side of it. He entered in the Google search box the "I lost all my" query and noted some of the returns. People seem to have lost "all their files," "the feeds on the Google homepage," "their Google traffic, because they didn’t back up their site," "all their music," "their Yahoo! inbox contents," "their money, lost at cock fights," "their career" (how did that happen?), "their faith, heart or appetite" (probably because of the singles awareness day that Valentine’s turned out to be for many), "their bear" (what?), "all of their contacts, stickies or text message data," "all of their work" (bummer!) and "their virginity" (probably because they found themselves not alone on St V’s day).

Turning the wheel and the query, people found and wanted to search for others who did the same, "a duck," "freedom in an unfree world" (many are still searching for that, some contact information should have been provided), "someone by the name of Elmer" (where? IS there a park you go to and find ducks and Elmers?), "a baby bird" (so sweet, I’m sure the cat will enjoy it), "heaven" (people must stop smoking pot and going online, nothing good can come of it), "Saddam’s WMD bunkers" (probably stumbled upon them, the military couldn’t and they did look everywhere hidden), "a peanut" (there’s something to brag about), "a woman in her husband’s drawers" (adultery is nothing to talk about – or do, for that matter), "God" (‘sup, G?), "you" (no, they didn’t), "crap" (that’s not difficult), "Einstein’s brain" (in a can?) and "pills, which they then ate."

Google Search Introduces New View Modes

Google Experimental has come up with a couple of viewing modes to enhance the search experience for its users. People were getting kind of tired with the old "10 pages per page, white background, blue links" mode and started voicing their desire for something new. After working to improve the algorithm in order to make search more relevant (that will still be going on, it’s still a work in progress), the dev team has decided to address the visualization issue.

The new features added to the search are the Map View, Timeline view and Info
view. The first is very useful in case you’re searching for something happening somewhere in the world that you’d like to be at. Take CES 2008 for example, if you wanted to attend it, you’d probably just have gotten the address where to go, or perhaps a map to the place, if you were lucky. The new visualization pinpointed it on a map from the first try. Or, say, you were to search for a decent restaurant, it’s the same situation, with the addendum that you could zoom in and out of the map and then with a quick "Update Results" click, the returns would only be featured from the area you would be viewing.

The Timeline view deals with the same kind of search, but for dates. It will show you a graph of how the results for your query are spread throughout the time, be it past or future, for upcoming events. Zoom is also available for this visualization, and after doing that the results will be narrowed as well, in order to match the period.

The third mode is the Info view and it looks to be a variant of the normal view, mashed together with the Timeline view, image view, Map view and some additional measurements. It will feature a panel on the right that will display the most relevant related information, for a "space exploration" query you’d get the date of the Sputnik launch for "dates", the equivalent for timeline, for images you’d get the traditional pictures related to the keywords you input and so forth.

Google Apps Officially Launched in Romania

"Buna dimineata!" This is how Michael Champlin, Business Product Manager, started the Google Apps conference which took place yesterday in Bucharest. The Google suite of utilities equipped with Google Calendar, Gmail, Google Talk, iGoogle, Docs & Spreadsheets and many other tools is now available to Romanians and what’s more important, straight into their native language. "It’s a priority for us to bring our products in your language," the Google official explained. Now let me talk about yesterday’s press conference held by Google. We all know it’s pretty difficult to roll out your solutions on a new market especially when you’re a famous company such as Google. And the super giant knows it. "People’s expectations are rising," Michael Champlin admitted. But how can Google help the Romanian companies improve their offering and become more present in the online competition?

"Google Apps is actually about promoting your brand," Google’s representative stated. And if you ever analyzed Apps’ utilities, I’m sure you agree with it because Google’s suite lets you personalize the technologies depending on your needs. For example, you can replace the Google or the Gmail logo appearing inside the products using simple functions. But the Mountain View company is not satisfied with the current configuration options offered to the users and some new settings might be rolled out in the future. "We can do more and maybe in the future [we’ll see] something similar to iGoogle."