The official Google Blog writes:

“Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010….

…Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.”

The OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips, and Google is working with a number of OEMs to introduce netbooks to the market next year! The architecture is going to be based on a Linux kernel.

I can’t wait to see this!

This standard could offer a significant shift in the 3D web by breaking down the end user barriers of entry. With the increase in web applications, people are reluctant to download bulky plug ins or software, but if the 3D environment is native to one’s browser, the potential is incredible. This team of developers and thinkers are industry leaders — allowing them to trail head this initiative will undoubtedly yield industry shifting results. I look forward to the release.

The school is designed to bring together the brightest minds from a multiplicity of academic fields and provide an interdisciplinary framework to better understand (and bring about) the future of technology. Cost for the 9-week summer course is slated at $25,000; since it’s the first year, it’s hard to say how hard it will be to get accepted and how much they will give out in aid, though my guess is hard and little.

The curriculum follows 10 tracks:

* future studies and forecasting
* networks and computing systems
* biotechnology and bioinformatics
* nanotechnology
* medicine, neuroscience and human enhancement
* AI, robotics, and cognitive computing
* energy and ecological systems
* space and physical sciences
* policy, law and ethics
* finance and entrepreneurship

Though this is pretty exciting stuff, and I most definitely support its existence, it seems a bit of a misnomer to call it a “University;” it appears to be more of a business trade show/conference than a school. It’s also quite likely that people who are willing to shell out 25K on a summer course possess ulterior business motives and are piggybacking on nerds to sniff out the “next big thing” while establishing the proper Valley connections. Finally, based on current info, it looks like the SU will just be teaching interested parties about various Singularity-related academic topics, and not performing ANY actual research whatsoever. And isn’t the point of the Singularity that it will pretty much happen no matter what we do… that the seeds are sown, and barring some massive catastrophe that blasts us back to the Stone Age, we are just waiting for the trigger? Personally, I’ll be following the people at the trenches, who, for example, are working and thinking extremely hard on how to actually create a seed AI, rather than the “students” attending a glorified Google networking event.

[Singularity University]
[via TechCrunch]

The title of this post is taken directly from Rackspace executive Lew Moorman who offers this interesting perspective.

Until reading Lew’s post, I have not been particularly cognizant of my search behaviors changing. But they are. Similar to Lew, just a short while ago I was giving Google nearly a 100% of my queries. But now, Twitter is taking a share and it’s regularly increasing. And the results tend to not only be more relevant, but a bit more interesting.

As of now, this search method is in the minority (in the non tech-community) because Twitter use has not attained the ubiquity of Google, but there is a macro lesson to draw here: Human Powered Search .

Lew sums this up well: “Twitter is building a human powered search indexing engine. It is an engine that will build better results than any rules based index and has gotten millions of people super motivated to contribute for free every day (even though they don’t know it).

If you are a Twitter user you will quickly see this in action. The most common tweet is a link and some small insight. The value of this link and the insight (which is great context) is instantly voted on. Do people respond? Do people retweet? If so, relevance is very high. If not, well, it does not matter much.

The system of followers is a market based system that guarantees integrity. If you simply use twitter to sell your agenda, it won’t be long until you have no followers. You become noise – that no one hears. All this is data that can be harnessed to create a search system around any topic. ”

This is the web in real time.

Concretely, what does this mean? Well, for example, if you search on Google about Amazon’s recent release of the new Kindle, you will get numerous links about the release of the product — a bunch of SEOed responses. If you go to Twitter and search, it will reveal a lively discussion of the product with immediate product information, feedback, retailers et cetera. The KEY is that all of the relevant content will forge to the front (due to ReTweats) and the rest will fade away. With Google, this type of info will not get indexed for hours and you have to look hard for it.

This information variance exists across all possible queries: News, Shopping, Trends et cetera. Twitter has the opinions of millions of people on what really matters in real time. Google is not going anywhere and probably will not go anywhere anytime soon, but we will unquestionably see a change in the search methodology and the monetizing model. Google is not gonna miss the boat, but Twitter is sailing quickly.

[via LewMoorman, ZDnet]

Latitude, built on the Google Maps API, allows you to share your location with friends while also seeing their location — all in real time, without a manual update.

The mobile application is currently not available on the iPhone and is only supported by Google’s Android as well as Blackberry, Symbian S60 and Windows Mobile.

Will this product take hold? Well, privacy is essentially becoming ephemeral. Between Latitude and Facebook, your “friends” will know a bit too much about you (every minute of the day) — but that is not the underlying concern as they are your “friends.”

But, this information in the wrong hands is a stalkers dream come true. We need to be weary of these services. I completely support their release into the market, however, this (along with numerous other social networking services) is not something that can be passively installed. One needs to be conscious of what information they are sharing with not only their friends, but the world. I foresee a bit of resistance with the adoption of Google’s new service.

Would you use it?

[Via PSFK]

Have a look:

I asked Google who the king of Thailand is and it both understood what I wanted to know and had already structured this data from an unstructured source, in this case answers.com

Here is another:

This one is interesting because the source of the answer is fairly obscure, demonstrating that there is some kind of semantic like structuring going on: Google knows that leninimports.com thinks that Priscilla is Elvis’ wife.

Here is another example, now with a place:

Interestingly I had to put in few countries before I got structured data back like this, so obviously this is very early stage. In-fact, there is no evidence that there is true semantics going on here, instead of some sort of new keyword sorting style, but it is an exciting hint at the future. If by chance Google has started to “understand” the “meaning” of even a small fraction of its indexed content, then perhaps intelligent agents or the Conversational Interface is much closer than many have previously thought.

As reported by O’Reilly, Google is continuing to heavily invest in GeoData on multiple fronts – from exclusive deals with satellite companies to their in-house projects such as Street View and Map Maker. The company has recently released a few images that illustrate their progress.

Rooted in Linux, this OS should prove to be a market success due its stability and off course Google-head brand loyalty.

Via The Next Web (Thanks!)