Google’s Operating System (Chrome OS) Is Coming – Microsoft Probably Not Happy

“So at long last Google is making its move. Promising a lightweight but fast operating system – Chrome OS – the internet search company is poised to strike at the heart of Microsoft’s software empire.

The Windows operating system is Microsoft’s cash cow, powering about 90% of the world’s personal computers, and as a result accounting for the majority of its profits.  The benefits are wider, though. Every Windows desktop comes with an invitation (and at times the imperative) to use other Microsoft software and services.  This, in turn, hobbles Google’s ambition of organising all the world’s information, and making money on the back of it.”   Full Story

Virtual Banker Steals 200 Billion Interstellar Kredits (i.e. $5100)

“TORONTO, July 2 (Reuters) – Facing real world debts, a trusted figure in a popular online game stole money from the virtual bank he ran and exchanged it for cash through the black market.

It happened in EVE Online, where more than 300,000 subscribers pay $15 a month to play. They gain wealth through hard work, manipulating the market, or killing rivals in a distant future where humans have colonized the stars in an online game similar to World of Warcraft and Second Life.”  Full Story at NYTIMES

EBSCO Demo Products

Hey staff, don’t forget to look at the Ebsco trial products on the SCLS blog listing of active Suffolk VRC/Coordinated Order demos.

Status Updates on the Staff WebOPAC

Beginning on Thursday, June 25th, 2009, the PALS Staff will begin using Twitter to disseminate information to the libraries. The updates will display at the bottom of the screen in the PAC1 (Staff) County Catalog as well as on the PALS Wiki.  Details are available on the PALS Wiki, including:

A detailed Explanation of the service, a grid outlining times when Twitter communications might be expected and a Frequently Asked Questions page.

Hands-on with Google Voice, as Launch Nears

from Ars Technica:

“Google is preparing to launch a new service called Google Voice which gives users a single phone number that can seamlessly route calls to their existing phones. It has its own built-in voicemail service that can be accessed from any phone or through a browser, with GMail-like archiving features for audio messages.

The Google Voice service launched in March for closed testing with a limited audience that consisted of existing GrandCentral users. Google introduced a number of highly impressive features such as automatic message transcription and free SMS delivery. The transcription feature will convert voicemails to text and make them searchable. The service can also automatically forward voicemail transcripts directly to your preferred e-mail account.”  Full Story

Librarians Vs. Google

Is it really war? This article seems to think so.

“Critics of Google’s book-searching agreement with publishers and authors were cheered last week when antitrust regulators in the Justice Department set their sights on the search giant’s publishing deal, demanding more information….”           Full Story

Collecta, New Search Engine For Realtime Searching of Blogs, Twitter, Flickr, etc.

“As we become inundated with more and more streams of data from Twitter, Facebook, blog, Flickr, and everywhere else, we need better ways to search what is happening right now. Twitter, Facebook, and Google are working on their own real-time search efforts, along with a slew of startups including OneRiot, Scoopler, and CrowdEye (which launched last night). The latest entrant in the real time search wars is Collecta It just launched a few minutes ago, and it scours the Web for real-time information. Results come from Twitter, of course, but also from news feeds, blog posts, comments, and Flickr photos. Status updates on Jaiku and Identica are also captured.”     Story

New – Google Book Search Scans Embedded in Your Website, Blog

Google Book Search announced some new features today, making it easier to find and share the content you’re looking for in the search giant’s archive of scanned books and magazines. It’s clear that Book Search is moving away from being just a landing site for reading to become more of a tool that brings the content in books to the rest of the web.”     Story

BlindSearch: A Test To See Which Search Engine is Best

We’re bombarded with advertisements and articles about which search engine is the best, but how is a person to know?  Of course you can have your favorite, or like parts of one and parts of another, but don’t you want to know which one gives you the results that are best for you?  BlindSearch may be the answer.

Just enter your search term and 3 sets of results will be displayed without any logos or hints as to where they’re from.  Click the column you feel provides the best results and you will find out if you voted for Google, Yahoo or Microsoft.      Try BlindSearch

Wolfram Alpha rolls out core updates

From news.Cnet.com

 ”Though only three weeks old, Wolfram Alpha is already showing growing spurts.

On Monday, the project unleashed a variety of updates to its computational search engine, according to the latest blog from the Wolfram Alpha team. The updates include 1,850 changes to its code base and 1.1 million updates to its data.

In one sense, Wolfram Alpha is in constant update mode, since new data is flowing into the system all the time. But this is the company’s first major release of so many core updates in one shot.

The blog post lists about 20 of the many updates. Some of the descriptions are abstract, such as “Additional linguistic forms for many types of data and questions.” But several of the updates intrigued me, so I took them for a test drive to see how they fared with my own questions.”   Full Story