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Will Wolfram Alpha the “Electronic Brain” Devour Google?
Edwin Rosero | March 11th, 2009
British physicist Stephan Wolfram officially announced a next-generation search engine called Wolfram Alpha last week and it is scheduled to launch sometime in May. Well… not exactly – you see, Wolfram Alpha is not exactly a search engine in a traditional sense – it is actually a “computational knowledge engine” for the web. What does mean? Well to put it simply, Wolfram Alpha is an answer engine; you can type a query into Wolfram Alpha and it will understand your question and compute the answer instead of linking you to a listing of web pages. The idea is to provide academics, researchers, students, government employees, or anyone who needs it, one straightforward answer to their question instead of millions of ad-sponsored web pages. So how exactly does Wolfram Alpha work? Well according to Nova Spivack’s article – “(wolfram Alpha) uses built-in models of fields of knowledge, complete with data and algorithms, that represent real-world knowledge. For example, it contains formal models of much of what we know about science — massive amounts of data about various physical laws and properties, as well as data about the physical world. Based on this you can ask it scientific questions and it can compute the answers for you. Even if it has not been programmed explicitly to answer each question you might ask it. But science is just one of the domains it knows about — it also knows about technology, geography, weather, cooking, business, travel, people, music, and more.” So will Wolfram Continue reading…
Tags: computational knowledge engine, Google, Isaac Asimov, search engine, Wolfram Alpha
Posted in Internet News, Technology | 4 Comments
5 Web Design Trends To Know and <3
Edwin Rosero | February 25th, 2009
The design of a website requires that the designer use his visual vocabulary to maximize the effectiveness of the page. In the old days of the web, Web Pages were sterile and boring – JPGs were rare and GIFs were the norm as bandwidth limitations made it impractical to have overly graphical layouts. Broadband Internet and modern browsers are now able to deliver rich graphical experiences on the web in a way that was impossible to do in the past. Below you will find 5 visual trends every web designer should know and love if they are making a website in 2009. Using Textures on your website is always a good idea. Not only will textures give your site personality but also greatly enhance the usability of your site. Wood backgrounds and textures have definitely made a comeback. They can be used as part of your UI design or make for a pleasant background. Experiment plenty and be careful not to over do it. Examples: http://www.davidhellmann.com/ http://www.booktagger.com/ The use of paperclips and post it notes on websites has been steadily rising in the last couple of years. They can be very effective for displaying small amounts of data as well as giving your site the illusion of depth. I’m not the biggest fan of this trend but it can certainly prove to be useful. Examples: http://www.homedesignfind.com/ http://www.notyouraveragejoe.com/ http://www.chemistryrecruitment.com/ If you are an emo designer, and want to rebel against the post-gmunk aesthetics employed by slick elitists, then maybe you should Continue reading…
Stormy Skies Over Comcast
Edwin Rosero | August 1st, 2008
Summer may be in full swing but that didn’t stop the Federal Communications Commissions from raining on Comcast’s parade. This morning the FCC ruled , by a vote of 3-2, that Comcast’s management of its broadband network violated Net neutrality rules by hindering peer-to-peer filing sharing. Comcast says they did nothing wrong but the FCC found that Comcast had been monitoring the content of user internet traffic and illegally blocking peer-to-peer connections that are used by programs such as Bit Torrent and Lime Wire. No matter how you dice it Comcast abused their power and the trust of Internet users. “Would you be OK with the post office opening your mail, deciding they didn’t want to bother delivering it, and hiding that fact by sending it back to you stamped “address unknown – return to sender,”? said FCC Chairman Kevin Martin in a statment. “Or if they opened letters mailed to you, decided that because the mail truck is full sometimes, letters to you could wait, and then hid both that they read your letters and delayed them? Unfortunately, that is exactly what Comcast with their subscribers’ Internet traffic.” The FCC chairman went on to say , ” Comcast has an anticompetitive motive to interfere with customers’ use of peer-to-peer applications…Such applications, including those relying on BitTorrent, provide Internet users with the opportunity to view high-quality video that they might otherwise watch (and pay for) on cable television. Such video distribution poses a potential competitive threat to Comcast’s video-on-demand (“VOD”) Continue reading…
Happy Birthday World Wide Web
Edwin Rosero | May 5th, 2008
It was 15 years ago that the web became free thanks to the visionary leadership of computer guru and web-inventor, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. The open-source technical documents, that he and other developers posted, liberated web tech from obscure compsci labs and released it out into the open. 8.5 Billion pages later, the World Wide Web continues to grow both in size and in its integration into our daily lives. Interesting Web Statistics • Number of years each took to reach 50 million users Radio – 38 years TV – 13 years Cable – 10 years Internet – 5 years • The average person each month usually visits 59 domains, views 1,050 pages averaging 45 seconds for each page and spend about 25 hours a month doing this! Each surfing session lasts approximately 51 minutes • The estimated number of Internet users in the world for March 31, 2008 is 1,355,110,631 – 1/5 of World Population • Affiliate Marketing is expected to grow to over $ 230 Billion in 2008. • In 2007 More than 281 Exabytes of data was created, captured or replicated. (It would take more than 280 Billion iPod Shuffles to store all that data.) • The compound annual growth rate is expected to be almost 60 percent. Here is what the web visionaries had to say to the bbc about the Web, and what we might expect in the next 15 years. “The future is always in the past and for the web particularly. In a hundred Continue reading…
Tags: future of the web, search, statistics, world wide web
Posted in Internet News, Technology | 11 Comments
The Page Race
Edwin Rosero | March 28th, 2008
How landing page load time can affect your Quality Score Earlier this month Google modified their Quality Score algorithm to include an assessment of landing page ‘load time’. Incase you are not familiar with landing page terminology; the ’load time’ refers to the amount of time it takes for a user to arrive at your working landing page, after they have clicked on your ad. If you check out the Keyword Analysis page you should be able to view your load time grade. If your keyword was given the, This page loads slowly grade, your quality score will take a hit. If Google finds your page to have an acceptable load time your Quality Score won’t be impacted and you will receive the very exciting, No problems found, grade. If however, Google finds your landing page’s load time to be faster than the average in your server’s geographic region, your Quality Score may be positively affected. Speed is now an important factor in determining the Quality Score of your landing page but not the only one. Google wants publishers to create landing pages that feature unique and relevant content and also are quick to load as this improves the users experience. Advertisers benefit from fast loading landing pages because users are less likely to bail on a site that loads fast as lightning versus one that makes you want to gauge your eyes out from boredom. So, How does Google grade the load time? Well, First, they look at the Continue reading…
