Those travelers that have the opportunity to take advantage of a free wi-fi connection will also be able to donate money to the Climate Savers Computing efforts to move toward a clean, sustainable economy through energy-efficient computing.

“We encourage all air travelers to use the free Wi-Fi access to learn more about Climate Savers Computing, and to download one of our free PC Power Management tools,” said Lorie Wigle, president of Climate Savers Computing, an international nonprofit committed to reducing IT-related energy consumption. “You’ll immediately reduce the carbon footprint of your computer, and if you make a donation, you will help us bring power management to more people, reducing their carbon footprint too.”

You can get more information about the free Wi-Fi for the holidays and what airports are participating by visiting www.freeholidaywifi.com

If you’re out on the road from now through January 15, 2010, look for the gift of free wi-fi from Google and make a donation to Climate Savers Computing.

Post from: EveryJoe

Free Wi-Fi from Google This Holiday Season

With Microsoft releasing Bing and Google working on their newest search algorithm called Google Caffeine, there’s a lot of effort around incorporating the idea of social search with your organic results.

One of my biggest complaints about search is that my results are impacted by just about everything that’s available on the web. If I’m searching for a question about a certain topic, I don’t want to get results from sites that are completely irrelevant to the goal of my search.

For example, if I’m interested in a question about coffee, I don’t want to get results about people who have talked about sitting around the coffee shop and chatting all day. I may be more interested in the growth regions, bean roasting methods and brewing tasks.

There may be five or ten sites on the Internet that are really great at providing this content and I’d like to just search those sites for my answer. Google provides the ability to do this kind of targeted search tuning by using Google Subscribed Links.

Google has already put together some groupings of sites in categories like Tools, Fun and Games, Lifestyle, and Technology. When you search for certain keywords that have been programmed into these Google Subscribed Links you’ll get special results based on the search links that have been put together for you.

The problem is that Google doesn’t make it easy for people to setup their own search metrics. Developers can create their own, but it’s not as user-friendly I would hope.

Post from: EveryJoe

Using Google Subscribed Links

There are a variety of settings you can set to tell Google search to act the way you want it to act. If you want to access all of these options, just look for the “Settings” link in the top, right-hand corner of the screen on the main Google search page.

• Interface Language – what language do you want Google to use for you
• Search Language – I’m really only interested in seeing pages in English, no need to clutter my view with search results in other languages
• SafeSearch Filtering – If I’m not interested in accidentally getting some search results that my not be appropriate for my personal preferences or safe-for-work
• Number of Results – with faster Internet speeds you may save some time by showing more results per page. The minimum is 10, maximum is 100.
• Results Window – my personal favorite, when I click on a search result I want it to open in a new window so I don’t lose my search results listing on Google
• Query Suggestions – let Google help you fine-tune your search results to get better results for what you’re looking for online
• Search Wiki – a fairly new option, but this allows you to modify and see modified search results by the Google community of users
• Subscribed Links – a very powerful feature, this lets you build collections of pages that you want to search for on specific terms or phrases

When you’re done, just make sure you click on the “Save Preferences” options.

As you can see, there’s plenty of ways for you to customize your user-experience. Now you can really show your friends that you know how to manipulate the Google machine.

Post from: EveryJoe

Setting Your Google Search Preferences

The digital collaboration space is growing and the enterprise keeps on implementing and improving their collaboration capability across the whole organization. Google knows this as such they have released Google Wave technology to be able to complete in a vertical market. I have signed up for their user invitation weeks back but still wasn’t able to get an invite since I was too late on doing so.

Even if Google Wave is not yet open for everyone, the technology is progressing rapidly and Google has announced during the London meeting that the Google Wave would be opening an app store similar to what Apple has done.  This move shows the long term commitment of the search giant on this technology which they seem to roll-out to the consumer market first before pushing it to the enterprise. I think the move of Google Wave to the consumer market is aimed to help the technology grow and mature before they go full speed ahead on competing with enterprise collaboration tools like Microsoft SharePoint.

Google Wave is an interesting technology because aside from the usual collaborative functions it has, Google promises a real-time collaboration that gets updated as the user makes a keystroke instead of the usual submission of items, going through a workflow and approval process until the time the other user from the other end sees your thoughts.

The search giant also plans to create an extension gallery for Google Wave which includes hooks that invoke actions like opening new wave or launching shortcuts, merging waves, deployment on networks, etc.

As of the latest updates, third party developers have already developed applications in teleconferencing, videoconferencing, and multiplayer games.

I think the Google wave has a lot of potential and in time it would be a cheap alternative application for implementing productive digital collaboration across organizations.

Have you been given an invite for Google wave? What are your initial thoughts?

Image from Google Wave.

Post from: EveryJoe

Google Wave App Store and its potential

It appears that Google will be adding some social search functionality to their toolbox. Currently in development in the Google Labs, we’re told it should be coming publicly available soon.

The idea is that when you search, there will be results offered from those in your social networks as well. So, if you’re searching for images, you can bet that your friends images on flickr will come up in the results if they fit your search terms.

Looking for something on a hot topic floating around the web? If your friends are talking about it on twitter, then those tweets will show-up in the results as well.

The hooks into your social networks will come from those networks you’ve tied to your own Google Profile. I guess the downside of that, or upside depending on your viewpoint, is that you’ll now have to setup a Google Profile for yourself as well.

All in all a pretty powerful feature to have at your finger tips if you’ve built up a strong and connected social network of friends. I truly believe that taking advantage of the networks we’ve built with each other, trusted friendships and tight integration between our various online presences will become the key to the future of search.

Post from: EveryJoe

Google Releasing Social Search Functionality

The tech companies who are on the rebound includes Intel, Asus, HP, Dell. Chuck Malloy from Intel who said in an interview with MaximumPC that they cannot save their way out of recession but rather spend their way out. Intel has increased demands as manufacturers like Asus, HP, Dell have made increases in their hardware manufacturing demands going into October and towards the holiday season. Microsoft is releasing their Windows 7 and we are also expecting increased in sales that would trickle down to various vendors. These companies are expected to grow and the requirements for human resources are also expected to increase.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt was in a New York city press conference last week where he said they are increasing their hiring since they have seen recovery in the United States and Europe. Eric says they didn’t expect Europe to recover together with U.S. but with Europe recovering right now, things look bright for the search giant.

This is the time I would suggest that you start updating your resumes because most probably companies are prepping their organization for growth, hiring leaders for their growth organizations, hiring quality employees, giving out signing bonuses, etc. This is the time to revisit your monster.com or dice.com account.

I am surely one of those people who would be checking out the waters right now and see what the offer is out there. I encourage you to join the boat.

Image from Monster.

Post from: EveryJoe

A Good Time to Check out the Job Boards

Anyways, Google has announced they are releasing around 100,000 invitations to preview the Google wave. Those invitations are most likely to be sent out to developers who were actively participating in the developer preview back in June, the first customers who signed up and offered to give feedback on Google wave and some select customers of Google Apps.

Those initial invites would later be asked to nominate their friends and family to join the Google Wave preview since they content that Google Wave becomes more useful when you have friends and family on it. Since it is a collaboration tool then it is a requirement to have colleagues, family and friends to collaborate with. If all goes well, Google Wave team says they will invite more people into the preview.

The team says that right from the start they have focused on building Google for scalability, stability and speed and usability. They have a very strong opponent in SharePoint and they need to build a kickass application. Their collaboration platform might easily make it to the consumer market but if they want to see enterprise scale implementation of this application, they need to make sure this can compete with the heavyweight SharePoint.

However, the team is quick to say that occasional crashes can happen and they would try their best to fix these issues and improve upon their product. Google Wave would not only be used for personal activities but it should provide improvements in productivity through better communication and collaboration. The team says they have been using Google Wave for planning, sharing photos, managing release processes, debate of features, writing design documents and other business tasks.

The announcement for those 100,000 people who would be chosen to participate in this activity would begin on September 30. I hope thousands of people who are given the invite would not confirm and Google opens up more invitations to people other than those outlined above. I missed signing-up for developers preview, and I missed joining the Google Wave feedbacks to receive invitation for the preview.

Anyways, I would watching closely the features and happenings on this space as Digital Collaboration is and would always be part of me.

Image from Google.

Post from: EveryJoe

Google Wave and 100,000 Invites

The interface is not well designed but if you are looking to compare results especially when you are checking search engine ranking of your keywords, the bing vs google is definitely functional.

Go ahead and give this a try until probably deciding which ones to stick on. I know most of you like Google, but c’mon Bing is worth a try.

Image from bing-vs-google.

Post from: EveryJoe

Bing and Google Combined

Following the success of its Chrome web browser, Google says that a bare-bones operating system is the next logical step for them, representing an attempt to “rethink what operating systems should be.” It’s designed to have a minimal user interface, so that the majority of the user experience takes place on the web. And unlike other popular operating systems like Windows and Mac OS, Chrome OS will be open source, running atop a Linux kernel. The code is expected to be released later this year, with netbooks running the OS available in Q3 or Q4 of 2010.

Google says it intends to create something that’s “fast and lightweight,” so you can “start up and get onto the web in a few seconds.” This is just one of several jabs Google takes at Microsoft in the Chrome OS announcement, since Windows is known for its long start-up times, security issues, and elaborate routines required to configure new hardware. Chrome OS hopes to eliminate all of those problems, getting you onto the web in seconds, with simple software architecture that won’t require constant updates or succumb to viruses or malware.

But don’t let the PR fool you: Chrome OS is not so much an autonomous operating system, as it is a platform for promoting the Web itself — and Google’s library of Web apps, like Gmail, the Chrome browser, and Google Docs — as the ultimate operating system. This is a long-strategized move on Google’s part to go head-to-head with Microsoft, who it has always seen as its biggest competitor. (And Microsoft clearly feels similarly; have you seen the commercials for MS’ new Bing search engine, which essentially position it as the anti-Google?)

Google says it is “working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year,” though it stops short of naming who those manufacturers might be. Personally, I’m more interested in seeing where Chrome OS goes beyond netbooks. Does Google imagine desktops or traditional laptops being powered by Chrome OS? Or could there even be an entirely new range of devices in the works, which will be made possible only now, thanks to this software?

Are you interested in Google’s Chrome OS? Are you ready to abandon Windows or Mac OS for something that puts the emphasis on online computing?

Google Chrome logo: Copyright 2009 ©Google, Inc.

Post from: EveryJoe

Google announces Chrome OS

There’s a number of tips you can manage to add to your searching routine to help pull back that finer tuned section of results you’ve been looking for all this time. PC Magazine has an article that lists a variety of tips on succeeding with your searches.

Your first thought may be using a variety of operators in your searches to include, exclude or search for an exact phrase on the web. The PC Magazine article spotlights some other actions you can take to automate searches or remember some specific searches you make regularly as well.

Image: sxc.hu

Post from: EveryJoe

How to Really Search for Results