Google turned on data compression features this week, helping Chrome Beta for Android surf the web faster while cutting down on wireless use. How much is it saving you? This little command will show you. Read more »
Nexus 7 owners paying attention to Google Play may have scored the official tablet dock for $30 … if they were quick. The dock is already sold out; another sign that Google needs to up its sales and inventory game. Read more »
If Google really did set off the process that led to Microsoft’s mammoth fine, then this was in a way just another episode in an increasingly nasty war between the two companies. Read more »
Companies are rushing to embrace the promise of big data to understand both their businesses and the ways in which customers interact with them. But effective data-based decisions are not made in response to simplistic data reporting; they are made in response to considered and ongoing data analysis. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Europe needs to do more to reduce wasteful energy consumption, and its policy makers are looking at how to green its data centers to help them achieve a 2020 energy efficiency goal. Read more »
A year after it was launched as the new version of Android Market, Google Play contains over 5 million ebooks, 18 million songs and 700,000 apps, the company announced Thursday. But it’s still struggling to compete against Amazon and iTunes. Read more at paidContent »
Uptake for Android 4.0 or better continues to rise and there are finally more devices fitting this category than those that use the old Android 2.3 Gingerbread software. That’s good for users and for developers. Read more »
Experimental code found earlier this week has found its way into the Chrome Beta for Android app. With a simple tweak it should speed up your browsing experience while using less wireless data at the same time. Read more »
Google’ vice president of data centers, Joe Kava, outlines how the search giant’s pursuit of data center designs corresponds nicely to the company’s ten governing rules. Well, almost. Read more »
Google’s Chromebook Pixel is quite versatile after all. Here’s a video look of it running Chrome OS and Linux at the same time, allowing me to use Skype and other third-party apps. Read more »
The latest update to the app also includes quicker nearby search options and English language versions of the app and a choice of kilometers or miles in seven Middle Eastern countries. Read more »
The console era is over — or so a growing number of game-industry executives would have us believe. While social and mobile gaming have taken a sizable share of the video games market, there is room for growth for hardware, particularly in streaming technology and the emergence of open-source platforms. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Google’s SPDY (pronounced “speedy”) experiment to deliver web pages faster may be coming to Chrome for Android based on experimental code found this weekend. Read more »
In the first of our four-part multi-media series on Hadoop, the people who helped build Hadoop talk about its birth, its promise and the challenges in moving it from webscale to just large-scale. Read more »
Google could add huge data sets of satellite images to the Google Maps Engine, which businesses would be able to use for rapid analysis of changes over time. Now only researchers can access the data. Read more »
Google is trying to paint a new German law regulating news excerpts as a victory, just as it did with the deals it cut with France and Belgium . But it feels like Google is losing more than it is winning. Read more at paidContent »
The world needs more crazy energy entrepreneurs, said Bill Gates. Well here’s five potentially disruptive but a little out there energy projects spotted at the ARPA-E Summit this week. Read more »
VMware, the king of in-house server virtualization, wants partners to help it defeat Amazon for corporate cloud workloads. One problem: VMware has its own issues with its partners. Read more »
The controversial ancillary copyright law has now made its way through the Bundestag, although the opposition SPD party will try to defeat it in the country’s second legislative chamber. Read more »
The U.S. tech firms are teaming up with Cancer Research UK in a bid to give citizen scientists a gene-analyzing game that they can play on their mobile phones for a few minutes at a time. Read more »
Facebook has announced the purchase of Atlas Solutions, with CNBC reporting the deal went for around $100 million. The deal had been rumored for a while now, as Facebook is looking to improve its ad platform and Atlas Solutions would give them additional advertising info. Read more »
My hopes for official Android support on the Chromebook Pixel are just that for now: Hopes. You can install and Android 4.2 on the Pixel, or most other laptops, however, without trashing your computer’s native operating system. Read more »
There has been a lot of data news already this week — some big, some interesting, and some both. Here’s a collection of the stuff you shouldn’t, or don’t want to, miss. Read more »
The Slate7 isn’t terrible, but it ain’t great either. It looks like HP rushed this one, and it needs to do better next time if it wants to be a contender in consumer tablets. Read more »
Paying $1,299 or more for “just a browser” is a common theme against buying Google’s Chromebook Pixel. There are ways to use a full desktop operating system on this impressive laptop, however. Read more »
Data portability — the ability to move your information between clouds (or in and out of clouds) with relative ease — is a key concern of companies considering a cloud move. Read more »
The RightScale-GCE deal gives RightScale early lead on capturing Google cloud customers and gives Google infrastructure credibility — and support — for business customers. Read more »
LG is buying webOS from HP to tun it into a Smart TV operating system. The question is: Where does that leave Google TV? Read more »
The Yandex.Store will be preinstalled on various Android devices being sold in Russia and other core Yandex markets, and offered as a whitelabel store to carriers in the rest of the world. Read more »
BTI Systems has raised $10 million in third round funding and launched a new software-defined networking product that will span data centers. Read more »
After a fan posted a video of a horrific crash at a NASCAR event, the organizer removed it claiming copyright infringement, but Google over-ruled the company — an example of a decision that happens all too rarely. Read more at paidContent »
Google’s acquisition of Channel Intelligence could give it a big leg up in ecommerce. But Jason Lehmbeck, DataPop, says the search giant has its sights on the offline retailing world, too, Read more »
I’ve been using a Chromebook Pixel for the past two days and a single phrase comes to mind: blown away. Is it worth $1,299 or more? Take a look to see and then stack it up against your mobile computing needs. Read more »
Google is the undisputed champ of search, but it’s much better with “head” searches than it is with “long-tail” searches — and that’s a problem. Narendra Reddy, of Wignite, says Google can address that by purchasing the expert network Quora. Read more »
Shown off this week, HTC’s new One is better than the old One in several ways and it may share the same processor as the Samsung Galaxy S4. Plus you can now play with Ubuntu on a Nexus device now. Read more »
Google has reiterated a warning to publishers that its ban on links that are designed to enhance a site’s PageRank applies not just to paid links but to sponsored content and advertorial as well. Read more at paidContent »
LED production has grown tremendously, accompanied by a significant fall in prices that will further propel the sale of this energy-efficient digital-lighting technology. But challenges remain on the road to widespread adoption. Figuring out ways to use power efficiently for lighting will be crucial for a future when the world’s population will likely be much larger. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Google touts the new Chromebook Pixel for “what’s next” or the touchable web, but the fact is we already have that experience on tablets and such. Maybe this is what’s really next for the Pixel. Read more »
Twitter’s new advertising API is just part of an ongoing seismic shift in the way advertising works online, where algorithms and self-serve networks are taking over from traditional ad buying and further destabilizing the media industry. Read more at paidContent »
Business customers who want more support than Google Groups or Stack Overflow for Google Cloud workloads can now choose from four tiers of Google-branded support. Read more »
