Google Cloud Print: coming to a wireless device near you

The question of how to print from wireless devices has been thrust once again into the limelight recently thanks to the printing-anemic iPad. Longtime notebook and mobile device users are quite familiar with the printing conundrum—cables, drivers and all.

Google has announced that it's looking to address this problem in the form of Cloud Print. Part of the Chromium and Chromium OS projects, Cloud Print aims to allow any type of application to print to any printer. This includes Web, desktop, and mobile apps from any kind of device—potentially, this could be used on a BlackBerry, Windows machines, Macs, or even the iPad. (That is in addition to Google's own offerings: "Google Chrome OS will use Google Cloud Print for all printing. There is no print stack and there are no printer drivers on Google Chrome OS!" says the company.)

The devices would make use of a Web-based API to either communicate directly with cloud-aware printers, or to send signals to a proxy in order to communicate with "legacy" printers. Google says it's already developing software for Windows to perform this function, "and will support Mac and Linux later on as well."

Yes, there are already wireless printers that work over your local network without having to be tethered, but there are downsides to this solution (I say this as a semi-satisfied owner of one). The biggest hurdle is, of course, the fact that you must actually be on the same network in order to print. (I can't complete and print an expense report from this coffee shop now that I'm thinking about it, for example.) VPN is an option, but that's an extra step that could be eliminated.

Then there's the problem we discussed above: my wireless printer only has drivers for real computers. If I buy concert tickets on my phone or if I compose a document on my iPad, I have to wait till I have access to a computer to print them. These inconveniences could easily be addressed by cloud-based printing.

Google says that the Cloud Print project is still in the early stages, but, like with its other open source projects, the company has made the existing code and documentation open to the public. The documentation indicates that, in order to use Google's Cloud Print, users will have to associate their printers with their Google logins—a detail that might make some privacy advocates squirm. Still, Google stresses that it expects other companies to develop their own cloud printing solutions, so this is likely only the beginning of a trend.

Source: Arstechnica.com

Google fiber losers, unite! (And then build your own network)

Now that Google has wrapped up the application period for its open access, 1Gbps fiber testbed, we know that more than 1,000 US cities want the network. Only a couple will get it, though; what's going to happen to everyone else?

Broadband consultant Craig Settles and Greensboro, North Carolina fiber booster Jay Ovittore have joined forces to start "Communities United for Broadband." The idea is simple: create a place where communities can share strategies for moving forward with high-speed broadband plans—even if Google says no to their bid.

Pent-up demand

Enthusiasm about broadband has been running high, especially during the last 18 months. In 2009, President Obama's stimulus bill set aside billions for broadband. That money, now being dispersed, is already funding plenty of regional and middle-mile projects, and it encouraged communities to think more carefully about how broadband could be made better. Then came the National Broadband Plan, which has inspired broadband discussion over the last year and now promotes some major changes like providing Universal Service Fund money to broadband providers instead of phone companies.

But no local mayor jumped in a shark tank or changed its city's name to get federal broadband stimulus funds. It took Google's out-of-the-blue announcement earlier this year to really bring broadband excitement from governments down to the grassroots level. With so much enthusiasm generated by the project, and with cities having spent so much time to collect all sorts of useful data about their own communities, now would seem the perfect opportunity for people to take their broadband destiny into their own hands—with or without Google.

That's what Settles and Ottivore hope to do. They're starting with a Facebook group to coordinate broadband boosters around the country. Already, a few hundred people have signed on, among them many local administrators of the Google fiber bids.

Google's project really "brought into focus what the value of broadband is," Settles tells Ars. Even before the project has been built, Google's announcement has woken people up to what's possible; maximum speeds of 6Mbps from a local DSL provider simply aren't state-of-the-art. People want more, they know it's possible, but many see no way to get it from existing providers.

Everyone wanted a piece of the Google action because the company was ready to build the network itself, pledging to charge users quite reasonable rates for access. But if municipalities or regional governments are going to get into the fiber-building game, that's a different and much scarier proposition, with real tax money on the table.

Settles is no stranger to these issues, having just written a book called Fighting the Next Good Fight: Bringing true broadband to your community, but he says that "we're not in the pitchfork business" when it comes to dealing with incumbents. If existing companies will provide the services that local residents want, fine. If communities can use the recent wave of broadband excitement to encourage new entrants or nonprofits to deploy fiber, terrific. But if no one steps up to the plate, Settles encourages local governments to take the initiative themselves.

"I believe incumbents are unaware of, or unconcerned with, the depth of people’s dislike for their service provider as well as the lack of broadband competition," he said in the official announcement. "The fact that, spending almost no money and making no concrete offers, Google generated so many community and individual responses within just seven weeks clearly shows how much incumbents have failed the market. Our effort on Facebook gives communities one path to helping correct this failure."

The page is already stimulating discussion. When one participant asked about starting a "fiber co-op, akin to the farmer's co-ops, that allows cities to band together for bargaining purposes and equipment purchases," another person offered to talk, saying, "We are already down this road and would love to help others along in other communities."

As Settles noted in our conversation, there aren't many "best practices" in this area. What works? What doesn't? Certainly, as municipal involvement with free WiFi a few years back showed us, there are good ways and bad ways to get governments involved in infrastructure buildouts. Sharing information, pooling resources, and grouping buying power should help, though Google could certainly do its part by producing detailed best practices guides for ISPs based on its own experience building the 1Gbps testbed.

Last week, Google seemed to hint at just such a plan. "Wherever we decide to build," the company wrote, "we hope to learn lessons that will help improve Internet access everywhere. After all, you shouldn't have to jump into frozen lakes and shark tanks to get ultra high-speed broadband."

Source: Arstechnica.com

Setting the record straight: no simple theory of everything

A bit over two years ago, news sources and science blogs lit up when a pre-print paper from Dr. A. Garrett Lisi came to light that proposed a novel theory of everything—one theory that accurately describes all four of the universes fundamental forces. Current theories have demonstrated that three of the four fundamental forces and their associated particles can all be obtained from different symmetry operations (think rotations and reflections) of an algebraic group called a Lie group The pre-print, hosted by the on-line repository arXiv, proposed that, within the complicated symmetry group E8, all four forces of nature could be described and united.

The hype that ensued (Google still suggests "surfer physicist" as a possible query) made this pre-print the most downloaded arXiv paper by March of 2008, and spawned an entire Wikipedia entry for the paper alone. As an engineer who specializes in theoretical work, it seemed to me to be a case of "give me enough parameters and I can fit a horse." Our in-Orbiting Headquarters physicist, Dr. Chris Lee, described it as solid, but noted it had some serious shortcomings.

In the intervening years, the paper—to the best of my knowledge and research ability—has not made it through peer-review to publication. A new paper, set to be published in an upcoming edition of Communications in Mathematical Physics, formally addresses the idea, and not only finds that Lisi's specific theory falls short, but that no theory based on the E8 symmetry group can possibly be a "Theory of Everything."

The new paper, which is also freely available as a preprint through the arXiv, is highly technical and lays out its case as a proof to a mathematical problem that attempts to define the criteria for a valid theory of everything. The authors begin by laying out three key criteria that a pair of subgroups on a Lie group must have in order to be a 'Theory of Everything.' The first is a trivial, yet purely mathematical, restriction that must hold true between the chosen sub-groups. The second is that the model cannot contain any "'exotic' higher-order spin particles." The final issue is that the gauge theory employed in our group must be chiral—a limitation dictated by the existing Standard Model.

In the original work by Lisi, it was proposed that the 248 dimensions of E8 corresponded to specific particles, either bosons or fermions—over 20 of which had yet to be discovered. The authors of the paper state that, in private communications, Dr. Lisi has backed off on this specific claim, and now states that only a subset of these dimensions represent actual particles. This modified version of the theory has yet to be publicly presented.

Going with the original version, one has to ask whether there is the correct amount of space within the potential subgroups to explain what we already know about. Math tells us that all the fermions—particles with half-integer spin—must come from what is known as the (-1)-eigenspace of the Lie group. Physics and math tell us that, in order to describe the known fermions, the subgroup of interest must have 180 dimensions.

Unfortunately, the (-1)-eigenspace on E8 (where the fermions must exist) has either 112 or 128 dimensions—too few to account for the known fermions. This goes directly against the claims made in Lisi's original work, and is not compatible with known spin theory and three generations of matter as described by the Standard model. The authors do point out that this result is not incompatible with a 1- or 2-generation Standard Model (as opposed to the accepted 3-generational Standard Model) being embedded in a real form of E8.

The authors go on, in a purely mathematical fashion, to prove that any "Theory of Everything" is not capable of meeting all three criteria in any real representation of E8, or even in a complex representation of E8. They show that any set of subspaces that meet the first criteria and either the second criteria or a relaxed version of it, will necessarily fail to meet the third.

When asked, Prof. Garibaldi, co-author of the paper and expert in exceptional Lie groups, stated that he felt an obligation to help set the record straight. "A lot of mystery surrounds the Lie groups, but the facts about them should not be distorted," he said. "These are natural objects that are central to mathematics, so it's important to have a correct understanding of them."

He went on to describe the work in easy to understand terms, and elegantly showed how disputes in science are handled. "You can think of E8 as a room, and the four subgroups related to the four fundamental forces of nature as furniture, let's say chairs," Garibaldi explained. "It's pretty easy to see that the room is big enough that you can put all four of the chairs inside it. The problem with the 'theory of everything' is that the way it arranges the chairs in the room makes them non-functional."

(An example of this being that one chair is inverted and stacked atop another chair—it's there, but it isn't useful for sitting.)

"I'm tired of answering questions about the 'theory of everything,'" Garibaldi said. "I'm glad that I will now be able to point to a peer-reviewed scientific article that clearly rebuts this theory. I feel that there are so many great stories in science, there's no reason to puff up something that doesn't work."

Source: Arstechnica.com

Google bakes Flash into Chrome, hopes to improve plug-in API

Google announced Tuesday that its Chrome Web browser will integrate Adobe's Flash plug-in. The latest version of Flash will ship with Google's Web browser, obviating the need for end users to download and install it separately. Google will also start regularly deploying new versions of Flash through Chrome's update system in order to ensure that users always have the latest version.

Google has also revealed that it will be working closely with Adobe, Mozilla, and other players in the Web ecosystem to improve the API that browsers use to support plugins. Such improvements could potentially help ameliorate some of the technical deficiencies that have plagued Flash and other plugins.

A new version of Chrome with the integrated Flash plug-in was rolled out yesterday to users of the Chrome developer channel. The Flash integration is not enabled by default because it is still highly experimental. It can be turned on by activating Chrome with the —enable-internal-flash parameter at the command line. The new developer version of Chrome also has a new plugin management interface that can be used to toggle which plugins are active.

Can Flash be fixed?

Although the Flash plug-in is widely used on the Internet, it is strongly disliked by a growing number of users. Websites like YouTube are seeing strong demand for adoption of standards-based alternatives to Flash. There are signs that disdain for Adobe's plug-in is becoming increasingly mainstream and is no longer just confined to the community of technology enthusiasts and standards advocates.

This trend is largely driven by the fundamental technical failings of Adobe's technology. The Flash plug-in is often criticized for its awful browser integration, poor performance (especially on Mac OS X and Linux) and stability, lack of conduciveness to accessibility, and excessive resource consumption. Another major problem is its frequent security vulnerabilities, which have made it a major target for exploits.

Adobe deserves much of the blame for Flash's defects, but the problem is also largely attributable to the underlying limitations of the framework that browsers use to enable plug-ins.

The original browser plug-in system, which is called the Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface (NPAPI) was first introduced in Netscape Navigator 2.0. It is a historical irony that Adobe itself played a key role in influencing the earliest development of the plug-in, before even Flash existed. Several Adobe developers collaborated with Netscape to produce the API so that the nascent Acrobat Reader program could be embedded in the browser and be used to display PDF content on the Internet.

The plug-in architecture was basically designed for the purpose of running an independent program inside of the main browser window, but it has been stretched far beyond its intended capacity by modern plug-ins that attempt to provide a lot more functionality. Due to the limitations in the design of the plug-in API, Flash has to maintain its own insular universe inside of a rectangle that doesn't seamlessly mesh with the rest of the page.

Referred to as the "plug-in prison" phenomenon, this limitation has created a lot of barriers to making plug-ins like Flash operate as a native part of the Web. You can see its detrimental impact on the browsing experience in many areas—such as scrolling, keyboard navigation, text selection, and resizing—where Flash content simply doesn't conform with the expected behavior.

Improving the API

Mozilla and other major stakeholders have been working on an update to the plug-in API with the aim of improving the situation. It won't even come close to fixing all the problems with Flash, but it will begin to address certain critical issues. According to the documentation that has been published so far, the update will attempt to boost consistency between implementations, augment support for out-of-process plug-ins, and improve the way that plugin rendering integrates with browser compositing in order to fix layering glitches. There will also hopefully be some opportunities along the way for improving performance, stability, and security.

Mozilla started publicly working on it last year. Google has now affirmed its intention to join the effort and contribute to improving browser support for plug-ins.

"The browser plug-in interface is loosely specified, limited in capability and varies across browsers and operating systems. This can lead to incompatibilities, reduction in performance and some security headaches," wrote Chrome engineering VP Linus Upson in Google's official Chromium blog. "That's why we are working with Adobe, Mozilla and the broader community to help define the next generation browser plug-in API. This new API aims to address the shortcomings of the current browser plug-in model.

Google's interest in this effort seems somewhat inconsistent with the company's affinity for emerging native Web standards, but there are several relevant factors to consider. It's worth noting that Google itself has implemented its own browser plug-ins, such as the Native Client (NaCL) technology.

Improvements that Google contributes to the NPAPI could potentially be beneficial for NaCL, enabling Google to use it in ways that might not otherwise be possible or practical. Another relevant factor is the potential opportunity for ChromeOS. Strong support for Flash could potentially look like a competitive advantage for ChromeOS-based devices relative to Apple's competing products.

Are plug-ins still relevant?

Although there is clearly an opportunity for Adobe and browser vendors to make Flash behave better on the Web, it may never be a first-class part of the Internet. Indeed, one could argue that the idea of a proprietary vendor-controlled plug-in that loads interactive components into a Web page from a binary blob is fundamentally antithetical to the underlying design of the Web.

As the standards process accelerates and previously weak browsers like Internet Explorer start to catch up and deliver support for the latest functionality, the need for plug-ins is rapidly declining. As an example of the growing viability of the standards process, consider the nascent WebGL standard, which has gained broad acceptance and multiple implementations in a very short period of time.

There is no technical reason that prevents Adobe from participating in the Web like a good citizen. Instead of maintaining a plug-in, the company could propose new functionality for Web standards, contribute implementations to open source browsers, and then target its authoring tools to support those capabilities. The vast majority of companies that are involved in the Web ecosystem are committed to extending the Web in that manner because it's simply more consistent with how the Web works.

Now that all of the major browsers, including IE, are aggressively adopting emerging standards, the value of plug-ins is not as clear-cut as it once was. It appears that the primary reason why Adobe still pursues a plugin-based strategy at this stage is so that it can preserve the vendor lock-in that is inherent in having a proprietary plug-in.

Source: Arstechnica.com

Lawmakers want Google to Buzz off over privacy concerns

Google's Buzz social networking service, which launched as part of Gmail in February, was met with considerable controversy. The service automatically transformed users' e-mail address books into public Buzz contact lists, creating the potential for sensitive information to be exposed without user consent.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) condemned Google's mismanagement of the service's rollout and lack of privacy safeguards. EPIC filed a complaint with the FTC, calling for the organization to review the matter. A bipartisan group of congressmen are the latest to join the chorus. In an open letter addressed to FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz, eleven members of the US House of Representatives called for an investigation of Buzz and closer scrutiny of Google's pending acquisition of mobile advertising company AdMob.

"We are writing to express our concern over claims that Google's 'Google Buzz' social networking tool breaches online consumer privacy and trust. Due to the high number of individuals whose online privacy is affected by tools like this—either directly or indirectly—we feel that these claims warrant the Commission's review of Google's public disclosure of personal information of consumers through Google Buzz," the letter says. "We hope to be of assistance to you in finding constructive solutions to fill in the gaps that leave our online privacy vulnerable to unsolicited intrusion."

The letter specifically highlights the contact list disclosure issue, but also raises questions about the implications of Google's advertising practices. The letter asks the FTC to determine if Google's acquisition of AdMob—and the resulting reduction in mobile advertising competition—will reduce incentives for the company to protect consumer privacy.

Google took swift action to correct Buzz's privacy problems shortly after the controversy erupted. The automatic contact-following behavior was replaced with a system that recommends people to follow. The service's underlying functionality was also made more transparent and the mechanisms for disabling the service were improved.

Although these changes have been broadly lauded as a step in the right direction, critics believe that Google needs to go further and make the service itself an opt-in offering. The forceful rollout of the service, and Google's move to inject it into Gmail as an unsolicited addition, are cited by EPIC and other privacy advocates as a serious breach of user trust.

This view is shared by outgoing FTC Commissioner Pamela Jones Harbour, who criticized Google in a recent panel about Internet privacy. In Harbour's opinion, Google's "irresponsible" launch of Buzz is representative of the broader privacy and security issues that society faces with the emergence of cloud computing. She fears that questionable privacy practices will escalate if steps aren't taken now on behalf of consumers. "Consumer privacy cannot be run in beta," she reportedly said.

As Google expands its reach into more corners of daily life, the company will face more stringent scrutiny. The Buzz privacy blunder, and the concerns that it has raised, have clearly penetrated the awareness of lawmakers and the policy community.

Source: Arstechnica.com

Google reportedly shares mobile ad revenue with key partners

Google's Android mobile operating system is gaining considerable traction in the smartphone market. According to a report from mocoNews, the secret behind Android's success is a series of revenue-sharing agreements that Google has signed with carriers and even some handset manufacturers.

The specific details are somewhat hazy, but the report cites unnamed sources who say that Google is giving its partners a cut of the advertising revenue generated by its mobile users. These deals are said to be isolated to the companies that are shipping Google Experience devices—handsets that come preinstalled with Google's branded mobile applications.

Mobile advertising is still at a relatively nascent stage of its evolution. A New York Times article that was published earlier says that mobile ads in 2009 generated less than one-third of one percent of all total ad revenue. Despite the current lack of compelling demand for mobile advertising, there appears to be a whole lot of potential for growth, which is why Google and Apple are both making big investments. Google's $750 million acquisition of mobile advertising firm AdMob is pending and Apple reportedly paid $275 million for Quattro, one of AdMob's competitors.

The availability of Android's source code and the absence of licensing fees helps to make Android adoption an easy choice for carriers and handset makers, but the revenue sharing is possibly how Google seals the deal and attracts loyalty.

Source: Arstechnica.com

Google reportedly to part ways with China on April 10

April 10: General Robert E. Lee's last address to Confederate troops, the Titanic's departure from Southampton, England, my friend Jake's birthday, and now, Google's rumored pull-out date in China. The company is preparing to announce its decision as soon as March 22, according to an anonymous source speaking to the China Business News, though it likely won't be the end of the company's operations in the region.

The newspaper's source, quoted by Bloomberg, said that Google's Chinese staff will find out what their options are on March 22 as well. Previously, Google had told them that they could either move to the US to work at Google's headquarters or that they could work for Google's Asia-Pacific business.

Chinese officials have been warning Google's partners to continue censoring search results in the event that the company decides to either open the floodgates on taboo topics or pull out altogether. Though some believe Google has already begun to let some results leak through, it seems as if the official decision has not yet been made.

Google will continue its Asia-Pacific operations, even if Google.cn ends up going away.

Source: Arstechnica.com

China warns Google partners as censored results leak through

Google's partners are getting a stern warning from Chinese authorities over Google's decision to ditch censorship in the country, which some believe has already begun. An "industry expert" speaking anonymously to the New York Times said that a notice went out to Google's biggest online partners on Friday, telling them to be prepared to continue censoring search results no matter what Google does.

As we covered on Friday, Google is on the verge of either ending its censorship of search results or pulling its business out of China, although insiders say that Google is trying to work out an agreement with a handful of agencies so it doesn't have to leave altogether. China's Minister of Industry and Information Technology, however, has made it clear that if the company doesn't respect Chinese laws with regards to censorship, "the consequences will be on you."

According to the Times, the government's warning to Google's partners is primarily meant to avoid confusion if China is forced to flip the switch on the Great Firewall to block Google's results. Like other parts of the world, there are numerous Chinese portals that use Google-powered search boxes on their sites, and readers might be a little more frustrated when it's not just Google.cn that's being blocked, but also sina.com.cn or ganji.com. Implementing a last-minute switch to another search service could be difficult for those sites, though, so it seems reasonable to expect that there will be some downtime for one and all.

According to some, however, Decision Day has already arrived: Silicon Alley Insider notes that Beijing resident Bill Bishop is already pulling up uncensored results for the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, which were previously blocked within China. Other taboo subjects remain inaccessible, however, meaning that the Tiananmen Square results are either a bug or evidence of Google testing the waters before going whole hog. Given the company's commitment to standing by its original word, we're going to guess the latter.

Source: Arstechnica.com

China and Google playing game of Chicken over censorship

Chinese authorities are pounding their desks over compliance with the law as Google's C-Day approaches. The "C" is for Censorship, of course, which Google plans to lift in China sometime in the near future. The company has been in talks with China ever since the highly publicized hack earlier this year, and although the two may not be in agreement over what to censor, it seems likely that Google will keep at least some of its business in China.

"Google has made its case, both publicly and privately," China's Minister of Industry and Information Technology Li Yizhong told the press on Friday when questioned about censorship, according to Reuters. "If you don't respect Chinese laws, you are unfriendly and irresponsible, and the consequences will be on you."

Translation: in this game of chicken, the Chinese government won't be the one to budge. Meanwhile, a person "familiar with the talks" told the Wall Street Journal that the company isn't likely to pull out of China altogether if this censorship experiment goes sour. Google is apparently putting together a "patchwork agreement" with a number of different Chinese agencies so that it can continue operating to some degree in China.

One thing's for sure: the status quo won't hold. The WSJ's source claims a decision will come within weeks, and Google CEO Eric Schmidt indicated at a press conference in Abu Dhabi that "something will happen soon."

If Google opens the floodgates on previously censored topics like the Dalai Lama or the Tiananmen Square protests, there's little stopping China from taking measures to block the site like it already does with numerous others. There are plenty of workarounds for crafty Internet users, but we wouldn't be surprised to see this happen if China and Google are unable to come to an agreement.

Source: Arstechnica.com

Google Apps becomes a platform, gets its own app store

At the Campfire One event last night, Google launched the Google Apps Marketplace and demonstrated how external Web applications from other vendors can be integrated into Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and other services that are part of the search giant's Web-based productivity suite.

In the quest for data liberation, Google's hosted Web services have long offered a wide range of APIs for third-party developers. With the launch of the new marketplace, however, Google Apps for domains is opening up even further and enabling external software to expose its own functionality directly through Google's Web-based applications. This will make it possible for third-party software in the cloud to offer broad interoperability with Google Apps and very tight integration.

When a Google Apps domain administrator installs an application from the new marketplace, it will be accessible to users directly through the Google Apps navigation bar, and the administrator will be able to configure it through the Google Apps control panel. Those are the simplest examples of how software can tie into the Google Apps interface. Google says that there are many other integration points that can be used by app developers.

In order to ensure that the experience is seamless, Google is relying on a number of increasingly important open standards. Single sign-on, for example, is facilitated by OpenID. Google Apps will act as an OpenID provider, and third-party Web applications that integrate with Google Apps will be implemented as OpenID relying parties. This will make it possible for users to access the integrated software without having to provide a separate set of credentials.

The new marketplace system uses OAuth to open up the user's data to third-party applications in a manner that is secure and transparent. During the app installation process, Domain administrators will be able to see a list of data access permissions that the app needs in order to operate. The applications will only be able to touch the user's data if they are given explicit permission by the domain administrator. Data access can be revoked at any time through the Google Apps control panel.

During the presentation at Campfire One, Google invited several of its marketplace partners to demo their new apps. Intuit showed how it has integrated its own Web-based payroll offering with Google Apps, allowing employees to access their paystubs directly through Google Calendar. Much deeper integration is also possible. Atlassian showed how its collaborative development tools can be woven into the Google Apps ecosystem, with interactive notifications, calendaring, and embeddable OpenSocial gadgets that can be snapped into Gmail, Google Calendar, and iGoogle.

I tested the new marketplace myself by installing the Aviary application on my gwibber.com domain. After installing the app, it became possible to access Aviary content directly through the navigation sidebar in Google Docs. Installation was a simple process that required only a few steps. The user experience wasn't flawless, however. Aviary had a bit of trouble handling the authentication token.



In order to participate in the marketplace, developers will have to pay an initial $100 entry fee. Google also takes 20 percent of the revenue from application sales. As the service is primarily geared towards business users, the marketplace is currently only available to Google Apps for domain users, not regular users of Google's services. For more details about the marketplace, see Google's official announcement.

Source: Arstechnica.com

The Body of a Tank, the Brain of an Android

We've come across plenty of robots that were controlled by phones before, but usually those phones were being controlled by human hands. Some California hackers, however, are building bots that harness Android for their robo-brainpower.

Their first creation, the TruckBot, uses a HTC G1 as a brain and has a chassis that they made for $30 in parts. It's not too advanced yet—it can use the phone's compass to head in a particular direction—but they're working on incorporating the bot more fully with the phone and the Android software. Some ideas they're kicking around that wouldn't be possible with a dinky Arduino brain: face and voice recognition and location awareness.


If you're interested in putting together a Cellbot of your own—can you even conceive of a cooler dock for your Android phone? Or a better use for your G1?—the team's development blog has some more information. The possibilities here are manifold; mad scientists, feel free to share your Android-bot schemes in the comments. [Wired]

Image credit Miran Pavic / Wired.com

Source: Gizmodo.com

Etacts Launches First Implementation of oAuth For Gmail IMAP Accounts

Earlier this week, we reported on a number of new security enhancements that we expect Gmail to launch in the next few days, including oAuth support. It looks like we were right: a small startup called Etacts, which launched last month, has just implemented oAuth for Gmail IMAP accounts, allowing Etacts to securely tap into your email without the security risks associated with handing over your Gmail password. This appears to be the first public implementation of Gmail IMAP oAuth support. For email services, this is a big deal. We expect Google to announce support for the new feature more broadly this week.

So why does this matter? Etacts is a powerful tool for making sure you keep in touch with the friends, family, and business associates that are important to you. But at launch, it came with one significant flaw: it required users to hand over their Gmail account passwords (without them, the service wouldn’t be able to automatically pull in your new email). Even though Etacts seems trustworthy, handing over a password carries risks — if the service was ever hacked, there’s a small chance your password could have been compromised. With oAuth, this isn’t an issue.

Now instead of entering your password, Etacts redirects you to a special Google site, where you can elect to grant Etacts access to your account information (you can revoke this permission at any time). Etacts still stores your email header information, which contains the subject, timestamp, and recipients of each message, but most people probably won’t have an issue with that.

Now, oAuth isn’t a magic bullet for security — if you give a malevolent service access to your Gmail account, they can sift through your email. What they won’t be able to do, though, is access any of your other Google services (Calendar, Google Checkout, etc). And they won’t have your password stored anywhere, so in the event that their servers get hacked, you won’t have to worry about your password being compromised.

It’s worth pointing out that Google offers oAuth access to some of its other services, like Calendar and Contacts, but this is the first time they’ve offered it for email. Gmail also appears to be the first major email provider to offer oAuth access.

Source: Techcrunch.com

Google buys DocVerse, steps closer to Office collaboration

Google has acquired a company that allows Microsoft Office users to edit their documents collaboratively on the Web. The acquisition of DocVerse will undoubtedly allow users who are married to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to edit their documents through Google's services, thanks to a "small, nimble team of talented developers who share [Google's] vision."

Both Google and DocVerse made their announcements Friday afternoon, with each noting that transitioning to cloud document storage and collaboration has been somewhat of a challenge for Office users. "Unfortunately, today, individuals are still forced to make a choice between those two worlds," reads the DocVerse blog post. "Google’s acquisition of DocVerse represents a first step to solve these problems."

Google says that current DocVerse users will be able to continue using the service as usual, but that new signups have been closed until the company is "ready to share what's next." This is no doubt a foreshadowing of Google's plan to integrate DocVerse's capabilities into Google Docs, which allows users to collaborate simultaneously on Google-hosted word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation documents.

The move is just another step in Google's strategy to chip away at Microsoft's dominance in the productivity space. Of course, there are other ways for Office users to share documents online—SharePoint is a popular solution among businesses, for example—but the functionality is still quite different from what's offered through Google Docs. The DocVerse acquisition, combined with Google's recently announced file-storage capabilities, will help beef up Google Docs to the point where it will be even harder for small businesses to resist signing up for Google Apps.

Source: Arstechnica.com

Why Google makes it easy to leave Google

We profiled Google's Data Liberation Front when the initiative was first made public last year, but what has Google's in-house data export team been up to since? Designing stickers, for one thing.

"CAGE FREE DATA," they proclaim, which sums up the Data Liberation Front's efforts succinctly. The team's goal is nothing less than to make it simple for people to leave Google's many services, taking e-mails, photos, and documents along with them.

Its most recent work has been on Google Docs, which now sports a batch download option. Select the documents you want, click a button, and Google will zip them all into one compressed archive of up to 2GB and mail them to you.

On a recent visit to Google's Chicago office, where the DLF team is based, we sat down with team leader Brian Fitzpatrick to talk more about how and why he wants to make it easy for people to abandon Google's services.

Stopping stagnation
Certainly there's PR value in hosting such a "not evil" initiative within the company, but DLF didn't begin life as a top-down project. Fitzpatrick says it "started off as naïveté" on his part; after listening to company president Eric Schmidt wax eloquent for years on the virtues of not locking users in, Fitzpatrick noted that not all of Google's products made this easy.

DLF was the result of his work. The team has been together for two years now, and although it began by seeking out other engineering teams, Fitzpatrick says that those teams are "now coming to us" to ask how they're doing.

Data lock-in isn't bad just for users; Fitzpatrick argues that it's also bad for Google. "If you create a user base that's locked in," he says, "there's no way you're not going to become complacent."

Making it as easy to leave Google Docs as to leave the Google search engine plays to one of Google's strengths: hiring really smart people. DLF's work "sets that fire under an engineering team," Fitzpatrick says, since the engineers need to keep users happy through innovation, not lock-in.

Do people actually care about liberating their data? Some do, but usage of the export features remains low. Google sees a "continuous low-level of use of these things," said one engineer on the team, especially when it chooses to shut down underperforming services. Having export tools actually makes it easier to do such shutdowns, too; recall that DRM-laden music stores ran into problems when they eventually tried to shut down their DRM servers. Google's data openness helps the company avoid this sort of public criticism in the event of service shutdowns, as when the company closed its Google Notebook product.

Nicole Wong, Google's Deputy General Counsel, told us separately that DLF matters to Google for two reasons: 1) it provides control to users and 2) "when we say our competition is one click away," initiatives like DLF prove that it's true.

This last comment is a reminder that openness does have real strategic benefits for the company that go beyond engineering and user empowerment. Google is increasingly under antitrust scrutiny by a more aggressive Department of Justice in the US, and it's already fending off antitrust investigations in Europe. DLF is one more part of the argument that Google is not a gatekeeper.

The DLF team does face occasional criticism that Google's products are "open" only to exporting material of less value to Google (see this comment from researcher Ben Edelman on getting data out of AdWords, for instance). But DLF has now worked with more than 25 teams at Google to make data export easier, and its efforts on products like Google Docs are certainly good news for users.

"We try to raise awareness within the company," said Fitzpatrick, though he admitted with a grin that he has no "authority" to make anyone do anything.

There's always more to do. The team does monitor a Google Moderator page where users can make suggestions—and there are plenty. "Gmail contacts—being able to export them and reimport an edited version, without duplicating every single one," says one idea. "Add hCalendar microformats to Google Calendar, so that events can be reused elsewhere," says another. "Let me get my Chat history from gMail," says a third.

Fitzpatrick promises that more is coming, though he can't talk about projects in the pipeline. What he can do, though, is mail you a sticker.

Source: Arstechnica.com

EU seeks Street View picture purge

Google has had a very tough month in the EU, and it isn't getting any better. So far, its executives have been convicted in Italian courts and an investigation has been launched into whether the company's search rankings are anticompetitive. Now, a different service has found itself in the crosshairs of European regulators: Street View. The EU has been uneasy about Street View from the very beginning, and several Europeans nation has taken action against it. For Street View, this week has been déjà vu all over again.

On the continental level, the Associated Press obtained a letter from EU regulators to Google in which they expressed concern about the company's retention policy for Street View images (Reuters is reporting this as well). It's undoubtedly fairly expensive to completely crawl a city or country, which would make it advantageous to retain images for as long as possible. The downside to this is that the images can go stale—buildings are torn down, new ones built, and businesses come and go. Google has apparently decided, undoubtedly after running the numbers through one algorithm or another, that its ideal retention time for Street View images is a year.

As far as the EU is concerned, that's way too long. Its letter to Google requested that the company shorten the retention period from a year to six months. Concerns were also raised about whether the search giant needs to retain unblurred images internally. The EU would also like to see an improved warning system for areas that will be imaged, with Google paying for notifications in local newspapers.

On the national level, Germany has also raised a number of concerns about the service, but the company will apparently launch the service this year. Despite the host country's uneasiness about Street View, the AFP quotes a member of Google's legal team in Germany as saying, "It is difficult to forbid a company to do something that is legal."

The AFP's author points out how the country's 20th century history might make it uneasy with a massive image database, given the extensive state surveillance that took place in East Germany, as well as the totalitarian regime that preceded it.

Regardless of the frequent local opposition, it's clear that Google views Street View as a valuable commodity, and intends to keep pushing it into as many countries as it can. But, given differing cultural views on privacy and vastly different legal structures, the approach that the EU would clearly like to take—fine tuning the parameters of the service, rather than an outright ban—may eventually make it difficult for Google to run the service on its own terms.

Source: Arstechnica.com

Chinese scientists worry about Google pullout

Google's threat to pull out of China may have been met with a shrug in some circles, but there's a population of Chineses citizens who appear to be genuinely worried about the prospect: scientists. Nature conducted an informal survey of Chinese researchers, and got nearly 800 responses. Well over 90 percent of those who responded say they use Google for searches, and 48 percent felt that the loss of Google would create a significant problem for their research.

There are a number of reasons for the scientists' attachment to Google. Although Baidu has done well by tailoring its search service to the sites frequented by the Chinese public, science has remained a field where most of the top research takes place in English. As such, Google's massive index of English-language material, especially works that have found their way into Google Scholar, provide the company's search offerings with distinct advantages. In fact, Google Search and Scholar were the services most often used by the respondents (Maps and Mail were also heavily used).

There are specialized scientific search services, such as the PubMed index, but these don't offer the same level of sophistication as Google. They also don't bring in a broad set of additional materials from outside the realm of academic publishing, such as faculty webpages and the sites of scholarly organizations. Although searching for papers accounted for the largest use of Google cited (at 82 percent of respondents), basic science news and information about other labs were cited by 57 percent, accessing databases by 46, and searches for conferences and meetings by 40 percent.

To be sure, some of those polled didn't feel that Google offered anything special—one told Nature that "It doesn’t matter whether we have Google for science—we have PubMed." But others were equally adamant that the company provides an essential service for researchers (one compared its loss to going blind), and the numbers seem to suggest this group is in the majority. Chinese scholars are increasingly engaged in the international scientific community, training, working, and publishing abroad with regularity. As such, they need access to services that provide full access to that community; the loss of Google would apparently limit their options when it comes to those services.

Source: Arstechnica.com

Yelp facing class-action lawsuit over extortive "ad sales"

Last year, business review site Yelp was the target of a scathing exposé that accused the company of promoting or even fabricating negative reviews in order to get businesses to pay to have them hidden or removed. Now, the company is facing a class action lawsuit over those practices, which attorney Jared Beck said amounted to "high-tech extortion."

In an in-depth article that appeared in East Bay Express last year, business owners said that Yelp sales agents would contact them whenever negative reviews appeared for their business. Representatives allegedly would offer to remove or hide the reviews in exchange for agreeing to buy an advertising contract with the site.

"When you do get a call from Yelp, and you go to the site, it looks like [the negative comments] have been moved," a restaurant owner told East Bay Express. "You don't know if they happen to be at the top legitimately or if the rep moved them to the top. You don't even know if this is someone who legitimately doesn't like your restaurant." The owner said that a sales rep offered to remove negative reviews for $299 per month.

Yelp reviews can often make or break a small business that relies on word of mouth, and business owners have a clear need for a way to address reviews that may be false or make disparaging comments. In our research, we even turned up one "online reputation management" company offering a service to "fix" negative Yelp reviews in a Google search ad.

A veterinary hospital in Long Beach, California experienced similar tactics to those described in the Easy Bay Express article. When the hospital contacted Yelp to address false and defamatory claims in a review it received on the site, Yelp allegedly refused to remove the comment unless the hospital agreed to pay $300 a month.

Attorney Gregory Weston, who had done legal work for the hospital in the past, is also working on the class action suit. "This had happened to the client over a period of time," he told Ars. "They were finding very harsh, negative reviews appearing at the top of [their Yelp page], and the [sales] calls were very aggressive. They went online and found that this had been happening to other people, and they forwarded me what they found." After Weston looked into the matter, he agreed to file the case with partner Beck.

"It's one thing if you enter in to an advertising contract of your own free will, but it's another thing if you do that if someone has unfair leverage over you," Beck told Ars. "We think it's unconscionable to go to a small business and say, 'We can take down these negative reviews, and we will if you pay us.'"

The pair have already received a number of calls from around the country, just one day after filing the suit in US District Count, Central District of California. "Today I've talked to two different dentists, in different parts of the country, for example," Weston told Ars. He is evaluating the claims he receives for potential class representatives or others that can offer corroborating testimony.

We asked Yelp to comment on the allegations, and naturally the company disagrees with the characterization of its sales practices. "The allegations are demonstrably false, since many businesses that advertise on Yelp have both negative and positive reviews," Vince Sollitto, vice president of communications for Yelp, told Ars. The company notes on its website that only 15 percent of all reviews on the site are one or two stars (out of five).

"These businesses realize that both kinds of feedback provide authenticity and value," Sollitto continued. "Running a good business is hard; filing a lawsuit is easy. We will fight the suit aggressively."

The lawsuit seeks an injunction against Yelp to discontinue practices that are believed to violate California's unfair business practices statutes, as well as requesting unspecified damages.

Source: Arstechnica.com

A Comprehensive Video Guide to Google Voice

Google Voice hasn't been in the spotlight much since the iPhone debacle, but Google continues to pack on the features. If you're still not sure what Google Voice has to offer, here's Google's comprehensive Voice guide in video form.

All the videos below come courtesy of Google Voice's just-launched YouTube channel. If you've followed previous Voice coverage—like our roundup of reasons you may or may not want Google Voice — you may not see a lot new here. On the other hand, if you still aren't quite sure if Voice is a good fit for you, the feature-by-feature videos below can't hurt.

If you are interested in Voice but don't have an invite yet, be sure to check out our new Google Voice Invitation Donation Thread — and once you secure an account, make sure you make the transition as pain-free as possible.

Voicemail Transcriptions

Personalized Voicemail Greetings for Different Contacts

Source: Lifehacker.Com

Google Street View Comes to the Ski Slopes

Google is really pushing to expand Street View off of the streets. First they talk about Google Store View, and now the Google Snowmobile is mapping ski trails.

The new mapped trails are all in Vancouver at Whistler, the site of the Olympic games. Since the tie-in is with next week's games, I wouldn't expect Google to rush out and suddenly map a bunch of other areas. But still, it's pretty cool to be able to virtually tear down some of those awesome-looking runs. [Google Blog]

Source: Lifehacker.Com

Google launches Buzz to rein in social media overload

Today Google announced its latest social application, designed to bring the fire hose of social media and status updates down to a useful trickle of the most "interesting" bits. Dubbed Google Buzz, the service is designed to offer easier ways to share links, photos, and other information, corral all those things shared by friends and other connections, and integrate well with other services in an open way.

It's "a Google approach to sharing," according to Todd Jackson, product manager for Gmail and Google Buzz.

While the rumor was that Buzz would be Google's "Twitter-killer," it would actually be missing the point to describe it that way. Buzz offers a way to share status updates, if you want to use it that way. It can also be used to share links, videos, photos, and more—in this regard, it's more akin to Facebook posts or even quick-blogging services like Tumblr or Posterous. Buzz can also integrate with other social services to share any publicly accessible things you post to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, Google Reader, Blogger, and any service that offers an RSS feed.

Buzz also offers a way for anyone you're connected to via your Google contacts to comment on the things you share, much like your friends can on Facebook. Further, it adopts the de facto standard of using "@replies" to send notices to specific users.

In addition, Buzz gives users control over how information is shared. Posts can be made public or private. You can create groups of contacts, such as "co-workers" and mark items as shared with only that group, multiple groups, or just a single contact.

Everything that is shared publicly is instantly indexed by Google search index, and Buzz streams and comments update in real time.

Aggregation aggravation
But, the goal of Buzz is more ambitious than just offering a Twitter or Facebook status clone. Buzz is designed to aggregate all the content that is already being shared among your connections on social sites all over the Web, much like Friend Feed. That information can become unmanageable when your contacts number in the hundreds, thousands, or more.

"It's harder and harder to separate the noise," Jackson said during a press conference earlier today. "Organizing the world's social information has become a large scale problem, the kind Google loves to solve."

To solve the overload problem, Buzz filters all those items, separating the "good" buzz from the "bad" buzz. It assigns a relevancy score to all the items being shared by those you are connected to, much like how Google assigns a relevancy score to Web search results. When you view your stream, Buzz will display the items you're most likely to be interested in, and collapse items that you're not likely to care much about.

It will also recommend other items from those you might not even follow, based on a variety of criteria, such as whether or not other contacts you follow are commenting or sharing the item. These recommendations can be fine-tuned over time based on your feedback to the recommendation system.

To make sure you don't miss anything, Buzz integrates with Gmail. Items that the system recommends to you, or items you are getting comments on, will show up inline in your Gmail inbox. Buzz also uses the same keyboard shortcuts, so if you're comfortable with the Gmail interface you'll feel right at home using Buzz.

Mobile Buzz and open standards
Furthermore, Google Buzz is also built with mobile devices in mind. Applications for Android and iPhone will let users sort "buzzes" via location, and Buzz will do its best to turn GPS coordinates into relevant locations such as "Woodfield Mall," "The Berghoff" or "Wrigley Field." An updated version of Google Mobile Maps for Android will also let you turn on a Buzz layer and see "buzzes" nearby or attached to any particular location.

"We want Buzz to be the paragon for what it means to create a social destination that is standards compliant," Vic Gundotra, vice president of engineering for Google Mobile, said during today's press conference.

Buzz is built using a number of open standards, such as Atom, Activity Streams, and PubSubHubbub. Future support for OAuth, Salmon, and WebFinger is also planned. Open standards advocate Tim Bray told Ars that use of PubSubHubbub "seems like a 'A Good Thing' to me." However, our own Ryan Paul wasn't as thrilled, noting that the current open standards for social networking interoperation are "more painful" than a straightforward REST API using JSON.

There is good news for standards and interoperability mavens, though. "We're just getting started," Jackson said during the press conference. "We can wire this up in so many ways, so we are rolling it out today to let users and developers steer its future course." A page has been set up on Google Code for the APIs to connect to Google Buzz.

Future plans include integrating with other Google services, such as Wave and Voice, where integration of data is most appropriate. Google also hopes to add more services that can tie it to Buzz. And a version of Buzz geared towards the needs of enterprise customers is also in the works.

The question is, will users already juggling accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and other services want to use yet another "social network?"

For its part, Microsoft isn't convinced. "Busy people don't want another social network; what they want is the convenience of aggregation. We've done that," Dharmesh Mehta, director of Product Management, Windows Live, told Ars. "Hotmail customers have benefitted from Microsoft working with Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and 75 other partners since 2008."

However, Buzz is designed to offer just the integration that Microsoft says users want. On top of that, it will offer a way for users to suss out the wheat from the chaff with its relevancy rankings and filtering. It's not quite the easy data portability that some users would like, but if it advances interoperability among the growing social networks that many increasingly rely on, Buzz will serve as a helpful step as the ways we communicate continue to evolve.

Google Buzz is being rolled out over the course of the next few days. Gmail users should see a notice when they log in once it has been activated on their account. We'll be sure to share our thoughts once we have an opportunity to put it through its paces.

Source: Arstechnica.com