Web 2.0

Twitter Launches New Website, Pics And Videos Can Be Embedded

September 14

Tonight, Twitter has taken the time to show us the new Twitter.com, which focuses on content delivery, has a 2-pane layout much like the official iPad app, and allows for pictures and videos to be embedded into tweets themselves. Supported video providers including YouTube, Vimeo, Ustream, and all popular picture services are part of the new Twitter.

Rollout of the new site begins tonight to select users, then will finish up sometimes in the next several weeks.

A promo vid about the redesign is below.

Source: Twitter

Google Instant Is Freaking Awesome, And Here’s Why To Prove It

September 8

Say you wanted to search something? You Google it of course. And you hit enter on your keyboard. Apparently, Google thinks that is evil, since it is their motto not to be.

Anyways (pushing that delicate subject aside), Google has revealed Google Instant. It makes your enter key useless. Type the words for something, and it’ll predict it at the same time showing you the search results for it. It’s just uncanny. A quick search for ‘LaptopMemo’ was immediately picked up before the whole word was typed, and the search results came right underneath.

Supported browsers are Chrome, FireFox, Internet Explorer 8, and Safari. Google Instant will begin to appear internationally in the U.K., France, Italy, Germany, and Spain beginning next week, while an U.S rollout begins now. Oh, and it’ll be implemented into browsers natively in the coming months, with a mobile version coming this fall.

Source: Google Instant

Google Releases Free Phone Calls Over Gmail

August 25

So here’s the whole idea: using GMail, you can now make free phone calls to the U.S and Canada via your Gmail account online. Basically, the service uses your laptop’s microphone to send awesome call quality (I just tested it myself) to anyone that you’re calling. And you can call internationally too, by adding (cheap!) amounts of money to your account, like 2 cents per-minute to Paris.

What’s The Catch?

There really isn’t one. Except one:

If you don’t have a Google Voice account, Gmail will use a random number in storage to make that call. If your friend calls you back, he/she gets a message saying that they were called with Gmail .But since I have a Voice account, I wouldn’t care at all.

So…The Verdict?

A great idea. Pretty cool. Alright, it’s awesome. Google’s caveman video of how it works is after the cut.

Source: Gmail Blog
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Twitter Is Down Again. Because Something Is Technically Wrong. Again.

August 5

I give this Twitter crisis 15 more minutes and this post will be obsolete. I’ve tried many 3rd party Twitter clients to no avail, so something must be “technically wrong” as of 5:38 PM Eastern Time.

Update as of 5:52 PM: Twitter is still down.

Update #2: Twitter is back up and running.

Source: Twitter

Zero Punctuation: Something About E3 2010

July 12

If you wanna click that “play” button, you know, no pressure.

Fox Party: Firefox 4 Beta 1 now on the Mozilla servers

July 6

Whoa! While I did know it was 106 degrees at the LaptopMemo New Jersey Summer Vacation office (instead of Miami or NYC) while I was staying there, I didn’t expect for Mozilla to give me a go at the Firefox 4 beta 1 download button. The changelog is waaaay too long to post up here and the new broswer works on Windows, Linux and OS X-based machines, so you’re covered. Along with the new UI, faster speeds, and tons of extra security, “the world’s favorite browser” as Mozilla puts it is available at the official beta download link.

Just don’t say that I didn’t warn you that a few of your add-ons might not work with the new release,’kay?

Via: Firefox (beta download), Changelog, The Mozilla Blog

Google Voice Is Now Free For Everyone. Finally.

June 22

See? Now’s the time to enjoy Google Voice to its fullest. There’s no reason for you to use your status to get an invite (like I did, I admit). Starting today, Google Voice is free with anyone who needs its services (which are awesome). Hit up the Google Blog to read more; I’m not posting a whole column about what it does (because you should know by now anyways with the video above).

Source: Google Voice Blog

Google’s Index Is Now “Caffeinated”: All Riiiiiight!

June 9

The Google index has been caffeinated. Basically, just like I might enjoy a fresh cup of joe, Google likes everything to be fresh in their index filled with thousands of sites. When you make a Google search, sometimes you’re presented with old content. Not anymore. Google’s explanation:

Our old index had several layers, some of which were refreshed at a faster rate than others; the main layer would update every couple of weeks. To refresh a layer of the old index, we would analyze the entire web, which meant there was a significant delay between when we found a page and made it available to you.

With Caffeine, we analyze the web in small portions and update our search index on a continuous basis, globally. As we find new pages, or new information on existing pages, we can add these straight to the index. That means you can find fresher information than ever before—no matter when or where it was published.

So everything you search for stays fresh, full of caffeinated coffee, and always hyper. Hmm. And here’s Google’s mind-numbing, brain twisting numbers for how much more space this uses in their data centers:

Caffeine lets us index web pages on an enormous scale. In fact, every second Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel. If this were a pile of paper it would grow three miles taller every second. Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day. You would need 625,000 of the largest iPods to store that much information; if these were stacked end-to-end they would go for more than 40 miles.

Boom. Wow.