Common Paradox Tech Blog

The Internet is all a blur, to be sure, but it’s not a realtime blur. Searches, for example, prowl through databases of constantly complied and updated information, which means there’s always a disconnect, albeit a small one, between what you see and what is actually out there. Google announced plans to eliminate that gap with something it calls the “realtime web.”

The key to realtime is relevancy, and according to Google Fellow Amit Singhal, presenting at Google’s Search Event, Google’s relevance technology has matured to the point where realtime is possible. According to Singhal, “the importance of relevance has gone through the roof as the amount of information out there is growing. Relevance has become the critical factor.”  MG Siegler, of TechCrunch, reports a demonstration by Singhal showing hits on freshly available information, even from Twitter.

Right now English is the only language realtime is available for. But Google plans to expand the number of languages to ensure relevancy remains intact. Other languages are expected to be incorporated by the first quarter of 2010.

Google’s realtime searches will include not only Twitter, but blog posts, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku, Identi.ca and Facebook. Searches can be performed not only on PCs, but iPhones and Android devices.

You can try out the realtime web at Google Trends. Click on any “hot topic.” On the search results page look for the entry “Latest results for…”

Image Credit: Google

We knew it was inevitable, and now it’s here: Google has just launched real-time search integrated into search results pages.

Google real-time search updates as stuff is happening around the Web — for example, live tweets, Yahoo Answers, news articles and Web pages now stream in on the actual result pages for your query. It works on mobile too (at least iPhone and Android for now).

Here’s a video demo from Google:

MySpace and Facebook Deals

That’s not all, though. Google’s announced that they’ve inked partnerships with both Facebook and MySpace to pull in data in real-time. For Facebook, that means public Facebook Pages, and for MySpace, it means any stream data that is publicly available. This is on top of the partnership that the company announced with Twitter back in October.

Live Within Days

Google says the features aren’t available to everyone yet, but will be within the next few days. However, all users can see it now via a “Hot Topics” feature that’s been added to Google Trends. Click on any trend, then click a “Hot Topic,” and you’ll see the new “Latest Results” area of Google search results. For example, you can currently see real-time updates for the Tiger Woods story.

Staying in Front of the Inevitable

For some time, it’s been clear to us that search has been moving to real-time, but until now, Google was seemingly falling behind Twitter, and even perhaps Bing (who inked its own search deals with Twitter and Facebook earlier this year).

Now, with one sweeping stroke, Google has grabbed the lead in the real-time search space, and it appears that Facebook and Twitter have both conceded that they aren’t going to outbuild Google when it comes to search. These are significant strategic decisions for all of those involved that will dictate much of where these companies head in the years to come.

Reviews: Android, Bing, Facebook, Google, MySpace, Twitter, iPhone, myspace.com

Tags: facebook, Google, myspace, real-time search, Search, trending

This guest post was written by Martin Seibert, a German Internet media consultant.

Google Wave is a hot topic at the moment. The ambitious group collaboration and micro-messaging platform started rolling out in beta via an initial batch of 100,000 invitations two months ago. Many people still want invitations. Among those who’ve tried it, some criticize it, some praise it. For now it has a lot of usability problems that are described below. Yes, you should look at Google Wave. But there is no need to desperately long for an invitation yet.

Nevertheless, this post outlines how you’ll probably use Google Wave in the future and also gives you advice on how to implement it in your company or your team of coworkers. It also reveals some big usability problems in the current version. Those issues aside, I would like to show you the advantages of the “wave” once again and describe some cool use cases that might make you love it at some point in the future.

It seems like we’re constantly hearing about promising battery technologies that could ultimately lead to longer battery life, more power, and smaller units, but as of yet, that big breakthrough hasn’t occurred. Maybe nanotechnology, which is the current hot topic in the battery innovations field, will prove to be different.

Right at this moment, a ton of research is being put into carbon nanotubes (CNTs) for a bunch of uses, including electronics and batteries. Researchers are drawn to CNTs because, according to them, carbon nanotubes are near perfect. That has paved the way for a professor and a UC San Diego graduate student to discover a breakthrough that involves introducing purposeful defects into CNT structures. By doing so, the ‘defective’ CNTs actually work better for the development of super capacitors, DailyTech reports.

"While batteries have large storage capacity, they take a long time to charge; while electrostatic capacitors can charge quickly but typically have limited capacity. However, super capacitors electrochemical capacitors incorporate the advantages of both," Professor Prabhakar Bandaru said.

The duo also discovered that other methods, such as bombarding CNTs with argon or hydrogen, could also increase or decrease the charge capacity. In the end, the two researchers believe that their discovery could ultimately lead to electronics that charge faster and last longer than what’s available today.

Image Credit: jacobsschool.ucsd.edu

It seems like we’re constantly hearing about promising battery technologies that could ultimately lead to longer battery life, more power, and smaller units, but as of yet, that big breakthrough hasn’t occurred. Maybe nanotechnology, which is the current hot topic in the battery innovations field, will prove to be different.

Right at this moment, a ton of research is being put into carbon nanotubes (CNTs) for a bunch of uses, including electronics and batteries. Researchers are drawn to CNTs because, according to them, carbon nanotubes are near perfect. That has paved the way for a professor and a UC San Diego graduate student to discover a breakthrough that involves introducing purposeful defects into CNT structures. By doing so, the ‘defective’ CNTs actually work better for the development of super capacitors, DailyTech reports.

"While batteries have large storage capacity, they take a long time to charge; while electrostatic capacitors can charge quickly but typically have limited capacity. However, super capacitors electrochemical capacitors incorporate the advantages of both," Professor Prabhakar Bandaru said.

The duo also discovered that other methods, such as bombarding CNTs with argon or hydrogen, could also increase or decrease the charge capacity. In the end, the two researchers believe that their discovery could ultimately lead to electronics that charge faster and last longer than what’s available today.

Image Credit: jacobsschool.ucsd.edu

RapLeaf, a self-proclaimed “leader in automated search for people information on the social web,” has released the second part of its three-part study about the demographic characteristics of webmail users. In this part they consider the social media profiles and friend counts of AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo users. What they find, unfortunately, doesn’t really reveal all that much about who does what, social networking-wise, based on their webmail ident.

It’s possible to conclude from the study that Gmail users have, on average, more online friends than other webmail users. And it’s possible to say that Hotmail users have more social media memberships then their online counterparts. But the differences are relatively slight; probably aren’t statistically significant; and quite likely within the realm of measurement error.

For example, Gmail users have an average of 46.2 friends. Yahoo users come in second with 40.0 friends. But the arithmetic average in this case is inflated by a small number of ‘friend-hogs’: those with 50 or more friends. The telling number here is that 66 percent of webmail users have 10 or fewer friends–a result fairly consistent across all webmail services. It’s really not wise to let outliers dictate what the average of anything is. (A median would have better served in this case.) Same holds for social media profiles–the differences aren’t all that great.

This is a bit of a disappointment. The dynamic of social networking is a hot topic. And, perhaps, RapLeaf has more insight to this then they’ve released. Whether differences in webmail users (including those who use multiple webmail services), exist, and what they are, could offer valuable insight to the way the Internet is shaping how people interact with each other. Those insights, unfortunately, are to be found here.

Image Credit: RapLeaf

Rupert Murdoch and other News Corp bigwigs have long complained that aggregators like Google are profiting from the works of others, leading some to question why the news conglomerate doesn’t just make its sites invisible to search. "I think we will," was Murdoch’s reply when asked this very question by Sky News political editor David Speers.

Murdoch’s plan is to charge Internet users access for online content, a move which has become a hot topic as of late as news sites look to turn a profit on the information superhighway. What it boils down to is that Murdoch and others who share his view don’t support the idea of news aggregators getting a free ride by linking someone’s else’s content. Others argue that by linking to the original source, it directs traffic to sites like News Corp that they might not otherwise have had, but Murdoch doesn’t agree.

"What’s the point of having someone come occasionally who likes a headline they see in Google, come to us? The fact is, there’s not enough advertising in the world to go around to make all the websites profitable," Murdoch stated in an interview with Speers. "We’d rather have fewer people come to our websites, but paying."

Murdoch has voiced his displeasure with news aggregators before, but this is the first time he’s talked about removing content from search engines, mUmBRELLA.com reports.

If you have a little shy of 40 minutes to spare, check out the interesting interview here.

Last month we showed you a preview of the social networking features coming to Xbox LIVE soon, including Twitter, Facebook and last.fm. We’ve been testing out the new features as part of the special Update Preview program Microsoft made available, and are happy to report that the new social features are indeed well-implemented and make a nice social layer addition to the Xbox LIVE experience.

There’s a bit of unfortunate news for those of you under the age of 18 waiting for the official rollout of the new services, though. Major Nelson reports that at launch, Gold members under 18 won’t have access to Twitter, Facebook and last.fm features.

That’s because right now, there’s no mechanism for parents to use the Family Settings options to filter which applications their children should have access to. The current public Update Preview has the same limitation, which has reportedly been a hot topic amongst young Xbox LIVE users.

On the flip side, Major says Microsoft is working on implementing the appropriate Family Settings controls for the new social application integrations. That means under 18 Gold members should sit tight, as the team expects to be able to roll them out within a few weeks after the new Dashboard Update goes live to the public. There’s no exact date yet, but barring unforeseen circumstances it shouldn’t be an exceedingly long wait.

Are you an Xbox LIVE user affected by this issue? Even if not, what do you think about Microsoft’s decision to hold off on the social features until parental controls are in?

Reviews: Facebook, Last.fm, Twitter

Tags: facebook, gaming, Last.FM, microsoft, parental controls, social networking, twitter, Xbox 360, XBox live

Security’s always a hot topic in the business world, but eWeek.com’s list of ‘10 Essential Things Companies Should Teach Employees About Security" comes particularly well timed. Why? Just recently, McAfee posted a survey suggesting that SMBs are spending less on security as the recession continues to force cuts to the budget, yet cybercrime is on the rise. That being the case, now more than ever the onus falls on employees to take certain precautions.

According to eWeek, companies need to go back to the basics when it comes to educating its staff on safe computing. No. 1 on eWeek’s list is the need to remind employees to be weary of email attachments and to only open ones from trusted sources. The importance of creating strong passwords and avoiding shadier sides of the Web also made the list.

One entry that might not have existed five years ago is teaching employees the dangers of social networks. One wrong click can turn into a security nightmare for an IT staff working with a reduced security budget.

What it all boils down to is that workers need to be reminded every once in awhile of the dangers assumed to already be known.

Flickr NIOSH

File sharers in France who get caught downloading pirated content could lose internet service for up to a year, and that’s okay with the European Parliament, which dropped an amendment to its forthcoming telecoms legislation that would have protected citizens in such scenarios.

"Any such measures liable to restrict those fundamental rights or freedoms may only be taken in exceptional circumstances…and shall be subject to adequate procedural safeguards in conformity with the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights, including effective judicial protection and due process," the dropped amendment reads.

Going forward, individual countries have the green light to ask ISPs to disconnect users believed to be software pirates, and do so without any kind of court order.

This has been a hot topic in Europe, and at the core of the issue is whether or not Internet access can be considered a fundamental right. UK prime minister Gordon Brown put Internet access on the same plane as gas, water, and electricity in terms of entitlement, but there’s been recent pressure to push through anti-piracy legislation. According to research firm Forrester, 14 percent of European Internet users are involved in illegal file-sharing. However, Forrester doesn’t think the solution lies in tougher legislation.

"Piracy will not be solved by legislation alone. Without compelling services, piracy will not be beaten," said Mark Mulligan, an analyst for Forrester.

Image Credit: thephoenix.com