As I write this Gmail is in the throes of another service outage; its third this year. As individuals and businesses steel themselves for an inevitbale rush of correspondence (in fairness how much can happen on a Thursday afternoon?) it has thrown Google’s other current projects into sharp relief and, I have to say, I’m impressed by how much is going on in the happiest workplace on Earth.
This week alone I have been introduced to Fast Flip, a magazine style presentation app for thumbing through some of the day’s more popular content (think of it like Google News in thumbnail form), an audio indexing feature on YouTube that can take you to specific parts of a clip based on trigger words and, perhaps for the wrong reasons, Google Talk, which is still floating in iTunes App Store hell. On my to-do list are Android and Sidewiki, a peer-reviewing system for websites where users can comment on the quality of content therein – I expect the same level of insight one would find on YouTube, Digg or 4Chan but hope springs. Chrome seems to be doing ok, even if it is still a curiosity for early adopters, but the cheeky Chrome Frame plug-in for Internet Explorer 8 has ruffled some feathers. I have yet to get to grips with Wave, largely because I don’t work in a large organisation and can shout over my cubicle if I want to get someone’s attention – sometimes low tech is a good enough solution.
As for how Google plans to reinvent the banner in AdExchange, that’s a discussion for another day.
We’ll be covering the above and more in future as one suspects there will be more than a little ‘inspiration’ taken from these myriad projects. In the meantime I’m off to check my messsages. Something important might have happened. It is a Thursday after all.
Subscribers 0
Fans 0
Followers 0
Followers