Cool Tech Reviews

Yesterday, Google released the Google Media Server:

In the old days, we used to watch a simple device called a television. Nowadays, all the stuff worth watching and listening to tends to be stored on or accessed through a computer. To help remedy this, we are pleased to release the Google Media Server.

Google Media Server is a Windows application that aims to bridge the gap between Google and your TV. It uses Google Desktop technology such as Desktop gadgets for the administration tool and Google Desktop Search to locate media files. All you need is a PC running Google Desktop and a UPnP-enabled device (e.g. a PlayStation 3).

And then you can play all your PC media files (videos, music, and photos) on your TV as well as the unique features of displaying Picasa Web Albums and playing YouTube videos through your TV.

If you are having a hard time breaking the code, UPnP is the acronym for Universal Plug and Play and Google Media Server running on your PC is technically a UPnP AV MediaServer which can send audio-visual data to "UPnP media render hardware" (the UPnP-enabled device above) which also includes the Xbox 360, HP MediaSmart LCD televisions and various networked media players.

If you have one of the right gadgets you probably already know it, but this all seems rather needlessly complex:

Imagine a world where your computer, cellphone, games console, storage devices, media streamers and other hardware all play nicely together, so that, for example, music, photos and video can reach the television or Hi-Fi no matter where in the home it originates.

That world is one which the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA), an industry consortium backed by big name consumer electronics, computer and mobile device manufacturers such as HP, Microsoft, Nokia and Samsung, is aiming to create through support for the UPnP (Universal Plug ‘n’ Play) AV standard. For end consumers this means that any ‘DLNA certified’ device should, in theory, be able to share or access media on the same home network — a message that DLNA members have largely failed to communicate, which is especially sad considering that many people already own a number of compliant devices …

Someday, I suppose it will all work, but unless you have a Xbox 360 or a PS3 you’ll have to do your homework to get it all working.

Ed Oswald at BetaNews:

With the holiday shopping season as a backdrop, Google is aiming to increase the visibility of its Google Checkout service by offering promotions to consumers who use it. Beginning on “Cyber Monday,” November 27, discounts would be provided by participating merchants.

Reusable discounts of $10 off purchases of $30 or more, or $20 off purchases of $50 or more would be provided. The rebates would be instant, and no registration would be required, Google said.
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Merchants who accept Google Checkout include Buy.com, Starbucks Store, The Sports Authority, Ace Hardware, and Timberland, among others. The complete list of promotions and merchants will be listed on a special page to premiere at the Checkout site on Cyber Monday.

The Google Checkout site is here.

Google has always had a number of Gadgets available to spiff up your Google HomePage or Desktop, but they are now making them available to website owners to dress up their pages:

Google Gadgets are miniature-sized objects that offer cool and dynamic content that can be placed on any page on the web. A directory of “Google Gadgets for your webpage” is now available for webpage owners everywhere to browse and select gadgets for their own pages, at http://www.google.com/ig/directory?synd=open.

“Now anyone can have a great-looking website with automatically updating content,” said Adam Sah, Google Gadgets Architect. “By making Google Gadgets available for you to add to your webpage, we’re working to connect developers with enthusiastic consumers and to make information universally accessible and useful to the individual user.”

With almost no effort and at no cost, webpage owners can add complex, dynamically updating content to their own websites using Google Gadgets. Because there is such an enormous variety of Google Gadgets to choose from, webmasters also have a great deal of freedom to select only the gadgets that will best complement their own page. There are games, news clips, weather reports, maps, and more.

There are over 1200 of the Gadgets (most provided by 3rd parties) and I suspect the biggest problem is figuring out which ones to choose.  Below are a few that amused me, but I do have to note that loading speed will vary since they are hosted on the 3rd party websites. You may have to refresh the page a couple of times to see all three Gadgets that I have embedded. Also, they seemed to interact oddly with my stylesheet and I wasn’t able to control the heights of the windows as you can see. (Update: that problem now seems to be fixed.)

After a false start during the late 90’s, the idea of Web applications replacing desktop (and server) applications is back with a vengeance with increasingly pervasive broadband access making Web applications useful for more than just big business and Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) Web programming providing user interfaces of nearly desktop quality. Today, Forbes has a article on The Best Web-Based Computer Applications For Small Business that reviews of the state of play for Web applications in the categories of:

• Calendars
• E-mail
• Information managers
• Spreadsheets
• Webtops
• Word Processors

I won’t spoil the ending, but let’s just say that Google walks away with the honors in every category where they compete except for word processors where Google’s recently acquired Writely comes in second to Zoho Writer (a product of AdventNet).

Knowing the best of the crop is nice, but the big question is always, “Are they good enough?” Forbes’ answer:

But don’t throw away your desktop applications just yet. As a general rule, Ajax sites simply aren’t as powerful or as useful as their desktop counterparts. Spreadsheet jockeys, for example, will want to stick with Excel for the foreseeable future.

But we also found surprising power and features in these sites. For example, Zoho Writer is in some ways superior to Microsoft Word, because it automatically creates an HTML version of your document on the fly and handles images better. And Gmail can give any desktop e-mail program a run for its money.

In general, if you’re looking to collaborate on documents, or share calendars, these sites can’t be beat. Nothing on your desktop compares with them.

Also, keep in mind that most of these applications are still in beta mode (in fact, a couple insist they’re alpha), and so they may change radically over the coming months.

The sharing advantage of Web applications is a refrain you will frequently hear repeated.

Nearly rivaling the number of new VoIP services are the Internet video sharing services that seem to pop up daily. When it comes to video, I’m strictly a consumer, not a creator, but one can’t help but notice all the YouTube embedded videos appearing on blogs and elsewhere. To attempt to bring order out of the chaos, Digital Video Guru reviews 10 Internet video sharing services (out of the at least 40 available):

• Eyespot
• Google Video
• Grouper
• Jumpcut
• Ourmedia
• Revver
• Videoegg
• Vimeo
• vSocial
• YouTube

Hit the link for all the details on a variety of considerations, but for my interests this sums it up:

For posting: If you just want to get a video clip online and share it with friends via email or on your own blog, Vimeo wins for its speed, ease-of-use, and simple playback functions.
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For viewership: If you want to step up to more community features and get widespread viewership of your viral clip, YouTube gets the job done…

Is it nostalgia for the 90’s or am I caught in a time warp? Google has resuscitated the “build yourself a free home page service” concept with a spiffy AJAX Page Creator and mercifully without the annoying ads that were the hallmark of such services in the past. Chris Sherman has the details at SearchEngineWatch:

Google Page Creator is a web based application that uses a basic what-you-see is what-you-get style of interface, designed to allow anyone to create and publish web pages, regardless of skill or knowledge level.
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Google Page Creator is a web-based application that runs on any computer or operating system. To use it, you must have a Google account and a Gmail address. Pages that you create are stored on Google servers using a URL convention of gmailname.googlepages.com.

Each user is provided with 100 megabytes of free storage space, and while there is a limit on the amount of bandwidth a site is allowed, Rosenstein says he doubts most people will ever reach the limit. The limit is primarily in place to foil the efforts of spammers, he said.

There are few restrictions on the type of content Google will allow users to publish, though Rosenstein said there won’t be any mechanisms for ecommerce or interactivity.
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Pages hosted on Google Pages are ordinary web pages, and will be included in Google’s (and presumably other search engines) web index, though they won’t be given any special treatment in ranking.

Despite their best intentions, I think they are going to have a problem with various forms of abuse. However, a bigger question is, why? Google already has the free Blogger service for would-be webloggers, so the suspicion is that it’s market positioning against the wildly popular MySpace. If so, they are going to need more than a few generalized web site templates to play the interactive user community game.

As for the other players, Yahoo and Lycos still have those golden oldies, GeoCities and Tripod, complete with the annoying ads. The real question is if or how the big names are planning to compete with MySpace.