Have Laptop Will Travel

Google/YouTube Purchase Confirmed

Originally posted on October 9, 2006 @ 5:46 pm

A few days ago I posted about the possibility of Google purchasing YouTube and guess what was announced today?

Google agreed to acquire YouTube, the Web’s most popular video-sharing site, for $1.65 billion in stock, the company announced today.

“The YouTube team has built an exciting and powerful media platform that complements Google’s mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said in a statement.

Source: MercuryNews.com

Google’s video service attracted a unique audience of about 13 million people in August 2006 compared with more than 34 million for YouTube, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.

I’ve personally noticed that the video quality is a lot better with YouTube, so hopefully now that Google has aquired them, we’ll see a lot better video quality from Google Video. Only time will tell.

Read the Official Google Press Release for more information.

Do you like to drink? It’s Happy Hour!

Originally posted on October 13, 2006 @ 7:13 pm

I do a lot of traveling with my consulting work. Many of my readers do a fair amount of traveling as well.

After talking with a few friends and co-workers, I’ve found that we all have the same issue from time to time while out on our travel adventures… finding a good watering hole to relax and get some drinks.

I was doing some research this evening and I came across MappyHour.

Yep, it’s time to find a beverage – anywhere in the world:

MappyHour - Happy Hour Map!

So what is MappyHour exactly? It’s a nifty web application using the Google Map API and some other special sauce to help you find a beverage anywhere in the World, or so it appears.

How it works is you click on a city, or anywhere on the map, then it will zoom in and display nearby bars and their happy hour specials. So cool!

They even allow user submissions and bar ratings. The site is pretty new and they’re adding new features daily, so I’m sure as time goes on, the site will get even better.

It doesn’t work on handheld devices as of yet but I heard that it’s being worked on. Having a mobile version of this would be huge for people traveling or for locals.

I’ll be keeping my eye on this project for sure.

Google Code Search

Originally posted on October 5, 2006 @ 8:23 am

For most people, open-source is a synonym for free software but for programmers and application developers, open-source is about sharing code, building on the work of others and not having to reinvent the wheel. At least in theory that’s the idea.

In practice, code reuse remains very low, because it’s often too hard for programmers to find relevant bits of code for their applications, until now.

Google Code Search

The idea behind Google Code Search alleviate that problem by making it easier to find and share code. That in turn could increase programmers’ productivity and give a nice boost to the open-source movement.

How does it work? You enter your query in the Google Code search box using special parameters like lang: and license: to narrow your results, which will come back as short code snippets.

Click on a result to see the full page of highlighted source code, plus any other files included in the zip package and a link to download the whole enchilada. Speaking of enchilada’s, I’m hungry :)

Ok, moving along, try doing a search for package:perl Frodo or package:linux-2.6 int\ printk to give it a try.

I really hope other open-source developers take notice of this cool new tool from our friends Google.

Happy 8th Birthday, Google

Originally posted on September 8, 2006 @ 7:23 am

Google turns eight today. Happy Birthday! But so far no spiffy Google Birthday logo :(

Google/YouTube Rumor

Originally posted on October 7, 2006 @ 9:14 am

Google YouTubeI know from various friends that since early January 2006 YouTube has had informal talks with a number of companies about acquisition in the $1.5 – $2 billion range.

If Google purchased YouTube, it could expand Google Video into a site visited by millions daily. That would be some marketshare.

It might also make sense to purchase YouTube, where more than 100 million videos are viewed daily, because opportunities for growing Google’s community, advertising and sales channel becomes much larger.

So what do you think about a possible Google acquisition of YouTube?

Well if the stock market is any indicator, shares of Google rose on the rumor report, rising from $410.22 to finish the week at $420.50.