WebNerd Alert: Google, Pandora, and Customized Domain Extensions

Google Music

I'm not sure which came first between iCloud and Google Music but there appears to be a war brewing between Google and Apple over who has control of all the music (and in Google's case, documents in general) that is soon to be "in the cloud". I just got an email from my boy that he'd received his invitation to sign-up for Google Music and he was PUMPED! We had talked about Google Music versus iCloud a couple weeks back when he initially sent me an article about iCloud. To be honest, I have done enough research yet other than looking at the Google Music website to really have an informed option. I've signed up for an invitation so hopefully I can get access, check things out and do another post about it. I know one thing though, with the 152 gigs of music I have on my machine, it'd be nice to be able to store it somewhere that's accessible from my computer, my phone, and other mobile devices on or off-line... And that's what Google's selling it as. At least for those who have Android-based phones and tablet devices. Not sure I like that, especially when I'm gonna cop that iPhone 5 in September, lol. Google is also adding a Pandora-esque feature where you can play "similar songs" by "similar artists". This should be interesting.

More on Google Music below:



Google Launches a Tool for "Online Reputation Management"

Apparently, Google is "launching" a tool to be used for "online reputation management" called "Me On The Web". It's not really a launch per se (because the functionality is already there) and it's aimed at helping people keep others from finding out things they don't want them to know "manage search results for your name". The new feature is available on your Google Dashboard and "encourages you to keep tabs on [these mentions] by setting up search alerts for data points included in your Google profile, like your name and email address."

This could already be done before and for this reason I don't consider it a "launch" but more of a re-branding and refresh of Google's Dashboard options. This is definitely useful for everyone, not just those that want to keep a "low profile" on the InterWeb. For more information and to check out the full article visit mashable.com.

Pandora... How Does It Work?

Ever wondered how, when you create a Jay-Z playlist (or whatever artist) in Pandora that the website/app somehow knows what other artists to play (aka Biggie)? I did. So I decided to do a little InterWeb research to try and figure it out, lol. What I found out is that back in 1999 two guys started this Music Genome Project and in 2000 they joined up with a guy named John Kraft to form Pandora Media and from there I assume Pandora the application wasn't long after.

The Music Genome Project set out to "'capture the essence of music at the fundamental level' using almost 400 attributes to describe songs and a complex mathematical algorithm to organize them." So basically they tried to create a genetic code for music and then find a way to use computer software to make relationships between different songs. It's also stated on the Pandora website that "[t]aken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It's not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it's about what each individual song sounds like." Sounds nerdy, but best believe that's some cool shyt.

Pay an Arm and a Leg for Your Own Domain Extension

If you've got a measly $185K laying around (plus another $25K to throw around annually) you can now have your own customized domain extension. Is del.icio.us not enough for you? Well, now you can have I.AM.DELICIOUS as your domain name if you want. Just cough up the skrillz to the good folks at ICANN (Internet CORPORATION for Assigned Names and Numbers). Naturally, the first people to dive in and pay for these customized extensions will be companies that have big bucks and need to protect their brands. Microsoft won't want Apple going in and grabbing the .microsoft extension so they'll no doubt cough up the dough. This probably won't reach the consumer for a long time (read: until the price comes waaaaaay down) but it's going to be interesting to see who are the early adopters and innovators when it comes to grabbing these customizable extensions. It seems like a great opportunity to re-brand and perhaps reinvent specific product lines for a company using the InterWeb.

For more information and the full article that inspired this part of the post, visit the Associated Press.

WebNerd Alert: ScanLife

The other day I was looking into DataMatrix 2D barcodes for a client. She was interested in learning more about these barcodes and how they're used. I've seen them in magazines and on fliers and they struck me as the same technology that BlackBerry uses to add BBM Messenger contacts by scanning their barcode.

After a bit of web research I found out: 1) how to create/encode these barcodes and 2) how to use your mobile phone to read them. That's where ScanLife comes in. ScanLife is an application that's available for just about all "recent" mobile phones. ScanLife allows you to scan these 2D barcodes to determine what's encoded in them. These barcodes can be used to encode lots of different information and pretty soon you're going to start seeing them in more and more places and you'll be able to use your phone to scan them and be taken to websites, be sent a text message automatically, or just read a message that's encoded in the bar code. This will probably be a heavily-used promotional tool for lots of companies that do ads in print publications.

To download ScanLife you can visit the following URL: http://www.scanlife.com/atlantis/appdownload.html

At the above URL you'll see that the application is available for a variety of phones and in most cases all you've got to do is use your phone's mobile browser to visit a website and download the application. Trust me when I say that you may as well go ahead and download this application now, WHILE IT'S FREE, because once these barcodes start popping up any and everywhere, I'd bet that this app won't be free any longer.

For a little more on how ScanLife works, check the video below:

WebNerd Alert: TOUT

I heard about Tout when Shaq announced his retirement so I took a few minutes to look it up and see what it's all about. Apparently, it's a social media "enabler" that allows you to take video from your iPhone (and I assume other mobile devices) and share on Twitter, FB, and also email the vids to whomever you like.

I was curious as to why Shaq made his announcement on Tout first and assumed it was because he has some sort of endorsement deal with him and based on their homepage that's apparently true. Not that I'm knocking Shaq for it, I just knew something was up when he didn't go to Twitter first or just go directly to the media. Smart way to make a buck for a guy whose already a millionaire (read: rich keep getting richer, lol). Learn more about Tout for yourself below.

WebNerd Alert: Google to offer Notebooks for sale AND LEASE

The latter part of the title to this post is what makes this not-so-formal announcement really interesting.

Google apparently/allegedly plans to offer:

• Notebook computers with their Chrome OS
• They'll be available for "purchase" in June/July
• They can be purchased as part of a subscription service for $10-$20 per month per user
• Google will provide hardware refreshes as they are released
• Google will replace faulty hardware for the life of the subscription

This is pretty cool people!!!!

The first thing I thought about when I read this was all the people who may not be able to afford a notebook computer at all that *may* now have access to a computer much easier now. I say "may" because a subscription-based model leads me to believe that there will be some sort of credit check and contract required and some people that can't afford a notebook (not even a cheap one) may not be approved.

Aside from that, leasing a computer that you will presumably download software/OS updates to via wireless and get FREE hardware refreshes as they are released is a pretty big deal. Hardware refreshes for the life of a device is pretty big. I wonder what the full description of a "hardware refresh" will be though.

In any event, this is a very interesting move by Google and reinforces my theory that they are out to takeover the entire world. You can check out the full post where I learned all of this information by clicking the link below:

Exclusive: Chrome notebooks confirmed to be released June/July

Also, more on Google Chrome OS:

Google Chrome OS

WebNerd Alert: Google +1

This is pretty major on a few different fronts:

1. If you have a Google account and you activate +1, Google will pretty much know (without much doubt) exactly what you like, enjoy, or are interested in. That means much more accurately targeted ads by Google and Google's ad partners (AdSense anyone) to your search results pages and probably many other pages potentially will have ads that are ON POINT. Not to mention you will be able to +1 ads as well. Which really just means that Google makes more money by presenting you with ads you're more likely to click.


2. This is really just a small step into the world of social networking for Google. The Buzz experiment failed (or as some say, was a bit ahead of it's time and people weren't quite ready to use it or know how to best use it), and that was a step in the social networking space whether you believe it or not. We're all familiar with the "like" button on Facebook. The difference between Facebook's like button and +1 will be that no one goes to FB to search, they go to Google. So every time you decide you want to perform a search, you can help increase the accuracy of Google's results (for yourself and others) by "+1"-ing.


3. This is probably just the beginning of a fight between Google and Facebook to control the social networking and/or search space. Facebook controls social networking, Google controls (read: has access to tons of) data. Pretty soon they'll be competing head-to-head whether it's over search or socializing. It's going to be interesting to see how it plays out. I'd place my bet on Google if I had to. The next Internet revolution will be driven by data and Google's got it, lots of it. And they're cooking up some shyt in the lab, I'm sure.b

WebNerd Alert: Table Connect for iPhone

A co-worker of mine just sent me this video and even though I'm not an iPhone zealot, I have to admit this is pretty cool.


Like I said, pretty cool. That is, until that dyck-pic from Brett Favre shows up on the table for all your friends and family to see. You can hear your moms now, can't you..."Oh, it's so life-sized!" OR, what about that pic you sent to your boy/girlfriend that you forgot to remove from your phone. I'm sure mom and dad will love seeing you in this...

WebNerd Alert: Google Liquid Galaxy

By now you've seen a post or two here on how Google is not-so-secretly plotting to take over the world. For example, Google predicting when you'll get the flu, Google making it rain, Google thinking for you, and my personal favorite...

Google knowing everything about you.

As if all that wasn't enough, Google's cooking up a smorgasbord of services and products to collect data about enhance your life. Not to mention everything they're cooking-up in the lab.

I won't lie, I'd love to work for a company like Google that seems to be on the cutting edge of everything but at the same time, too much of anything just isn't a good thing. There's no way Google can do everything well-enough to the point that we should buy into all (Apple zealots could learn something from this). Gmail, sure. Google Maps, sure. Google Docs, sure. Google Calendar, sure. But installing a Google application on my computer that can search everything on my computer? Ehhh, not so much. And now that I think about it, allowing Google to hold the keys to your mail (Gmail), calendar (Google Calendar), pictures (Picassa), and videos (YouTube) might not be such a good idea either. Even if they do all of those things REALLY well.

With all that said, I just ran across Google Liquid Galaxy which seems like a 3-D version of Google Maps. The video below pretty much speaks for itself but I'll go ahead and say it...WOW!

WebNerd Alert: Legacy Locker...Keeping your InterWeb pRon Collection Safe for Generations

Well, not really (re: the title of this post). But nevertheless, this is the type of service that'll probably become more and more popular as the generations that have grown up with the InterWeb get older.

Legacy Locker allows you to pass along your usernames/passwords for all your online accounts in the event that you die or are disabled. So it's not so much as a repository of archived pRon (which is probably what I'd really need) but a place to store your usernames/passwords and people you would want to have them. This begs the question: Who is YOUR e-beneficiary?

Would you want your wife/husband, parent, brother, sister, child having access to all of your email accounts? This service implies an interesting proposition of what people have in their online accounts and just how much of it they'd want to have "die" when they die.

Nevertheless, I think this is a useful service that I am NOT going to jinx myself by trying. I've told people all along to destroy/incinerate my computers whenever I drop dead. Lord knows I don't need anybody seeing all the foolishness I've got stored on those things.

WebNerd Alert: Flutter > Twitter

LOL.

WebNerd Alert: Conficker Worm Might 1-8-7 your C-P-U Tomorrow

In case you didn't see the special on 60 Minutes about the Conficker worm or your job/school hasn't sent out a bulletin warning you about it, tomorrow is the day that "experts" expect the Conficker worm/virus/does-it-really-matter-which-one-they-call-it to proceed to jumping off (read: eff some s--- up).

Some of you may have had fishy stuff going on with your FaceBook account lately and if your account started sending out random messages then you may have been hit with Conficker.

The likelihood of the entire InterWeb going down as the clock strikes midnight tonight (á la the Y2K fear that many had...smh) or at some point tomorrow is probably EXTREMELY unlikely. But the likelihood that you might somehow have gotten infected with Conficker and not known it is a little more likely. And since that's the case you have to consider that this thing could potentially scam you out of your precious, recession-fighting dollars. So you probably want to read Symantec's information on how to remove the Worm.

I will definitely be checking my system tomorrow to see if something has gone terribly, terribly wrong. Lord knows I don't want hackers to have access to all this pRon I have on this muddasugga!

Mac users, disregard everything you just read, pricks.

WebNerd Alert: I am such a bama for liking this...LOL

Stack the Memory: A Nerdy Rap Song

The music isn't bad (in the words of Dame Diddy: "And it's not even wack!"). The lyrics are to be expected. But really, it's not a bad song.


Naturally, this comes from geekologie.com. Go ahead, rip me a new one....

WebNerd Alert: Somewhere out there...

...there's a Flash developer with way too much time on his hands... LOL

WebNerd Alert: Google thinking for you

Two random thoughts first...I haven't done one of these webnert alerts in a minute. And I think most of these have been about Google.

This post is about Google thinking for you. Google has come up with this feature called Mail Goggles which is basically a way of trying to keep people from sending emails they don't really want to send. And I quote...

"Sometimes I send messages I shouldn't send. Like the time I told that girl I had a crush on her over text message. Or the time I sent that late night email to my ex-girlfriend that we should get back together. Gmail can't always prevent you from sending messages you might later regret, but today we're launching a new Labs feature I wrote called Mail Goggles which may help.

When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you're really sure you want to send that late night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you're in the right state of mind?"

Personally, I can see the use for this but I think there's much more of a need for this feature on cellphones. How many of you have been drunk-dialed late at night by somebody on some dumb ish? Or not even drunk-dialed but just called because someone is in a ridiculous emotional state? I'm not gonna run to my Google account to send a drunken email. I'm more likely to do this over a phone call or a text message. Perhaps this Mail Goggles feature is just a bit ahead of its time and since I don't use the web browser on my phone I'm just not getting it. Nevertheless, I think it'll help mostly people who sit in the house at 1am on a weekend night getting drunk while watching pRon on their computers.

Meanwhile, most folks will be out drunk-dialing and drunk-texting while leaving whatever soireé they happen to be attending.