Posted by //
Sean

Date and Time //
Jun 27, 08 - 6:44 am

Categories //
Google
Search
Technology
Wireless

Comments Off

Starting today in the U.S., users of BlackBerry smartphones should begin noticing a number of improvements to their Google search results. Google has tailored its software to better accommodate the BlackBerry Web browser.

Google has been on a roll lately with customized phone support. It goes to greater and greater lengths to make sure each mobile phone platform has what it needs to view and use Google’s mobile services better.

Google has, for example, rolled out some seriously customized versions of its services for the iPhone, which has different usability characteristics than many other phones.

Now, Google has turned its attention to BlackBerry users, specifically the browser.

The Official Google Mobile Blog spells out what it has done:

  1. Improved comprehensiveness: Our mobile search now incorporates results from Product Search, Blog Search, News archives search, and more.
  2. Blended results: Instead of showing you web, image, local and news results in separate sections, we now combine them to improve relevance. We’ve also made it easier for you to focus your search on any one of these categories — notice how the links are now placed at the top of the results page.
  3. Longer snippets: Web results include longer snippets so that your answer may be right on the results page.
  4. Related searches: At the bottom of the search results page, you’ll find a list of related searches to help you refine a query.

According to Google, these changes reflect its desktop search results pages. I was not able to test the new enhancements on my BlackBerry to confirm that.

Feel free to check it out for yourself and share your experience in the comments below.

You may also watch a video demonstration here.


Posted by //
Sean

Date and Time //
Jun 26, 08 - 11:13 am

Categories //
Humor
Photography
Random Thoughts

2 Comments

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so I will let this picture speak for it’s self:

Breast Pumps and Milk

So yeah… does anyone else have something to add?


Posted by //
Sean

Date and Time //
Jun 26, 08 - 9:52 am

Categories //
Movies
Music
Videos

Comments Off

This video is hilarious. If you’re a huge Star Wars fan like I am, you’ll enjoy this video. Be sure to watch the entire thing as the ending is pure Star Wars classic:

We all know that Darth Vader is one of the most iconic villains in film history, but who knew he had such awesome dance moves?


Posted by //
Sean

Date and Time //
Jun 21, 08 - 2:58 pm

Categories //
Humor
Random Thoughts
Videos

Comments Off

The below video will show you why I have such a crush on Judge Marilyn Milian:

Judge Milian lets him have it really good right after she tells him that he’s “dead wrong” on his issue. He fires back with “no, that’s your opinion” and what does Marilyn Milian tell him?

No, that’s my ruling pal… and let me tell you something Mr. University of Miami Law School…

Don’t you just love The People’s Court? Oh yeah. I like it a lot better then Judge Judy for sure :)


Posted by //
Sean

Date and Time //
Jun 12, 08 - 6:13 am

Categories //
Geekery
Software
Technology
Wireless

Comments Off

Wow. That’s all I can say right now. It’s been about nine months since Mozilla promised to “rock the mobile Web” with its forthcoming mobile version of the Firefox browser.

If the final product bears even the slightest resemblance to the browser demonstrated in this video, every other mobile browser out there has a lot to worry about.

Aza Raskin, head of user experience over at Mozilla Labs, posted a video demonstration on a potential candidate for Firefox Mobile.

He also writes in detail some nice explanations on why Mozilla has taken this direction with mobile Firefox.

The browser seen in this demo is not a final release candidate, but it should be:

Based on using a touchscreen device, Mozilla has solved all the navigational pains associated with mobile browsing by using simple panning gestures.

Need to access the control buttons or URL bar? Pan in any direction. Most of the time, 100% of the phone’s pixels are being used to display content, not navigational controls. You only see the nav controls when you want to.

Secondly, it uses a zoom effect to control tabs. You can zoom way in and out, and set up groupings of tabs in clusters of associated content, such as communications Web sites, and so on.

Being able to cluster tabs like this is just plain cool. Because the display is a 2-D plane, you can arrange the tabs and documents in any way that you want.

I can’t wait for this to be released. Again. Wow. Lots of wow.


Posted by //
Sean

Date and Time //
Jun 10, 08 - 11:05 am

Categories //
Google
Technology
Web

Comments Off

Google provides so many services for free, I am rather surprised that it doesn’t offer a free FTP hosting service for small business customers.

Sure, Docs, Apps, and even GMail and Picasa can serve as repositories of files, but they aren’t super convenient for transferring large files back and forth. Will there ever be a Google FTP?

Most FTP services aren’t that expensive. You can get storage for up to 10 GB for less than $10.00 USD or $20.00 USD per month, depending on where you have your FTP site hosted. That’s not a colossal expense for any business.

Small businesses, however, suffer more from the nickel-and-dime effect, and that $10.00 USD can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

On top of that, not all FTPs are created equal. Some have limits on the amount of data that can be transferred back and forth, charging you more when you go over the limit.

To be fair, Google is very generous with storage in its Gmail accounts. I currently have access to 6.8 GB of storage in my e-mail, and can retrieve anything I’ve sent/received at any time, from nearly any platform.

Google’s photo-sharing service, Picasa, grants you 1 GB of storage. Not bad.

Docs limits file uploads to 500 Kb for HTML, .doc and .rtf files. Spreadsheets can’t be larger than 1 MB, and Presentations can’t surpass 10 MB if uploaded from a PC, 2 MB if transferred from the Web, or just 500 Kb via e-mail.

It’s not uncommon for me to have to send a large batch of picture files, or a video file, here or there. Sending pictures one by one is a major pain in the rear. I often pack them into a single folder and then zip the file but even zipped, the folders can still be bulky.

Most e-mail systems, even Gmail, can’t really handle 30 MB attachments all that well, necessitating the need for FTP to transfer the bigger files/folders.

So, Google, just out of curiosity, why don’t you offer an FTP service for small business? Afraid it will be used to transfer copyrighted material such as movies and/or music?

Have the MPAA and RIAA already squashed any ideas you might have had? What’s the deal? Am I stuck finding some anonymous storage facility?