Destination IUnknown: Internet Archives

May 19, 2006

Google Maps does Sydney

Woohoo, Google Maps now includes Sydney and NSW in general. It's very impressive! However I still couldn't get Google Maps to locate my address. I tried several different permutations and still nothing. I tried big landmarks such as 366 George St in the city and still no luck. Maybe they haven't implement the mapping engine 100%, but it's already looking very impressive. All the roads are there, even the backroads.

This is already looking so much better than crappy Whereis mapping engine. When Google add the direction engine I can't see any reason why I would want to use Whereis.

Update: Wrong info, Google actually puts Australia on the map not just NSW.

Posted by vhadiant at 06:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 30, 2005

Google's ingredients

I have some interesting notes that I want to write down. For some reasons I’ve had a number of discussions with a couple of my friends about Google and how they become what they are.

1) Google pretty much solved the web search problem. Although the information retrieval space has been around long before Google, they’re the first to solve the web search. This is mainly because of their PageRank algorithm. Alhtough the information retrieval space has been around long before Google, they're the first one who nailed the web search problem. They’ve discovered that one of the most important properties of the web is the linking between the pages, and by factoring the links in their search algorithm they’ve managed to figure out which page is the most relevant to your query. Sounds simple isn’t it? But no one figured it out before Google.

2) Google figured out the long tail. So PageRank is probably the next best think since sliced bread, but without the money Google would have become another relic of the Internet.

3) Google appeals to the geeks and yet manage to not put off the non-geeks. Google is good, quick, simple, and no-fuzz. Their ads are discreet and doesn’t cause eye sore, geeks love Google. And who do people ask for advice for anything remotely related to technology? The geeks of course! And Google is one of the few things that geeks are not afraid to recommend to others.

4) Google is smart, and does not stop their innovation engine. Although their latest feature to be able to personlise Google’s homepage puzzle me a bit, it just doesn’t seem like Google. Regardless, there’s some really uber cool stuff from the labs, the maps, citation, definition, groups etc.

Anyway, I’m sure there are tons of other articles on the net on similar issue :)

Posted by vhadiant at 06:47 PM | Comments (1)

May 23, 2005

I Google, is it the end?

Last week Google launched the "home page customisation" feature on the labs. It links to google.com/ig. Not sure what ig stands for, I call it "I Google".

It is pretty much a portal and the design curiously very similar to Yahoo portal. Tell you what, I'm not really surprised anymore after GoogleGroups and GMail. Google has moved away from the simple come in -> do you quick work -> leave metaphor to "come in and stay". Is it the end for Google? With all the other innovations out from their labs (map, citation etc) why would they put this out? Have they run out of new innovations? Hopefully not ...

Posted by vhadiant at 07:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack