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Posts Tagged ‘Short Period’

The Real Time Google Index: Will It Be a Game Changer? (Open Thread)

Google is developing a system to ingest real-time content updates from any page on the web automatically, using the open PubSubHubbub Atom protocol, we reported on Wednesday.

Google already indexes a whole lot of content very quickly, will a real-time indexing system make a big difference? There are differences of opinion on the matter and we’d like to know what you think. Search analyst Danny Sullivan told us on Wednesday that he thought it could be “the next chapter” for Google. John Battelle said this morning: “In short, it’s a new way for Google to get (more) real time signals. But honestly, not a huge deal. I don’t think. Correct me if I’m wrong…” What do you think, readers?

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Do You Think a Real-Time Google Index is a Big Deal?polls
We explained the specifics of how the Hubbub system might work in our earlier coverage so let’s talk now about possible impacts (or lack thereof).

As we wrote on Wednesday:

PuSH is much more computationally efficient for Google but [Google's Brett] Slatkin says that even more important is the impact of such a move for small publishers. Right now many small sites get visited by Google maybe once a week. With a PuSH system in place, they would be able to get their content to Google automatically right away.

A richer, faster, more efficient internet would be good for everyone, but the benefits in search wouldn’t be limited to Google, either. The PubSubHubbub is an open protocol and the feeds would be as visible to Yahoo and Bing as they would be to Google.

Readers Who Think This is Big

Sharon Kavanagh says:

This all sounds fantastic for the small guy as I have just created my first ever website which is for a reunion. The site will only be live for a short period as the date is May15th 2010 for the event and yet, it will probably take Google till then before my site is indexed and hence the peple I am trying to reach will never find it.

Scott Holodak says:

Previously you had to wait for spiders to crawl around the web to find changes on your site. Pages are crawled over again and again just to see if anything has changed. It’s a pretty inefficient process. Now the spiders are going to be fat and lazy because you are going to deliver your changes directly to them.

No Big Deal

Reader comments arguing this is not a big deal.

“Scott” says:

A properly designed website already “pushes” to (more accurately: gets “pulled” by) search engines and the frequency of indexing by search engines is determined by the popularity of the website.

This information doesn’t seem too new to me.

Bruce Wayne says:

Pushing unstructured content in real time can only mean the non relevant results will make it into the search results faster. To me this is another google hocus pocus distraction away from the the fact that search as it is today has hit a wall….millions of pages on unstructured data created exclusively to game the system….and now these pages of non relevant content can be pushed into the search stream in real time….

What Do You Think?

I think there is something fundamentally different about a web that Google’s index subscribes to in real time vs. a web that Google has to plow through with a spider looking for new content. I’m still wrapping my head around it, but there’s something about the PuSH method that feels like it would make the Google index a living, breathing phenomenon.

What do you think?

Discuss

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Samsung Beam (Halo) Android projector phone hands-on

Well here it is, Samsung’s pico projector phone live and in the flesh here at Mobile World Congress. And surprise surprise it’s running Android 2.1 with a TouchWiz 3.0 skin just as we heard. The only difference is the name: Halo is the codename, the official product name announced today is Beam. As a smartphone with integrated pico projector it’s very impressive. However, as you can see from the pictures and video (it’s coming), the 6 lumen brightness struggles even under the semi-controlled lighting demonstration set up here on the show floor in Barcelona. Samsung tells us that the TouchWiz implementation is nearly identical to what you’ll find on Bada with “very small” differences. Unfortunately, the people we spoke with on the show floor weren’t able to articulate exactly what those were. To us, having only used the two devices for a short period of time, they do look identical. Beam features a nice pass through trick that allows it to project the image seen by the 5 megapixel camera through the TI pico. Not sure how we’d use that in real life but it’s a neat trick nonetheless. Now click into the gallery and prepare to be amazed at just how thin a smartphone with integrated projector can be while we wait for the summer launch.

Samsung Beam (Halo) Android projector phone hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Feb 2010 04:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Zune 4.2 update points to Zune phone, European support

Two days ago, Microsoft took down all the Zune services for a “maintenance update” that seems to have in it a little bit more than just bug fixes. While the downtime was supposed to take a full day (starting at 10pm PST on Monday), the Zune Insider noted that “the team rocked it and got the maintenance finished well under the expected ‘up to 24 hours.’” During that short period, Microsoft released Zune PC software 4.2. In it, there are clues hinting that a Zune phone is coming and that the Zune, in some form, will soon be available outside of North America.

Zune Phone or Windows Mobile plus Zune?

Last week, an analyst went on record saying that a Zune Phone would arrive from Microsoft in two months, and now there’s more evidence that this isn’t just idle speculation about the device. Actually, make that three devices: the software includes USB drivers for three separate, unannounced supposed Zune phones. The hardware ID, which uniquely identifies the manufacturer, is registered to Microsoft. Here are the relevant contents, tucked away inside the Zune.inf file from version 4.2.202.0 of the Zune software:

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Yammer Experiencing Extended Outage

Yammer, the Twitter-like short messaging service for business users, has been experiencing a prolonged period of downtime today due to DNS issues. The service first went down over 12 hours ago, was alive for a short period tonight, and then became unresponsive again a few hours ago. The issue is also affecting sister company Geni, who share the same DNS servers.

A look at the whois records for the domains shows that there are only two name servers assigned, and they are ns1.geni.com and ns2.geni.com – and they are both down. I wasn’t able to locate an IP address for the Yammer servers to test if the actual service is still there, but a query to the root servers shows that the IP addresses for the two name servers used by the domain are on the same netblock and are both down at the moment.

DNS is very fault tolerant, since it is possible to setup secondary servers that know where to find the answer to a query, and query responses are heavily cached all the way down to the local machine performing the lookup. There are a number of commercial services available that offer distributed DNS hosting along with advanced features, such as EasyDNS, who we use at Techcrunch (Disclosure: we use them).

We use and love Yammer at Techcrunch, and the product won the 2008 Techcrunch50 conference. We have become very accustomed to using Yammer as a replacement for a lot of internal email and Skype group chat, so we are almost lost at the moment without it. We can definitely sympathize with other Yammer users flooding Twitter with questions and complaints (Yammer has been very responsive to queries over Twitter, although has not confirmed a firm ETA on the service being back up).

Yammer is an enterprise service, being used my a number of corporations for internal communication. When Twitter goes down, we can moan about it and make do with not knowing what our friends are having for lunch. But when Yammer is down it has an effect on those businesses using it as a communication tool.

There are a number of emerging services taking aim at the corporate short-messaging market, least not Google with Wave and TC50 demopit winner Socialwok. For all of these services, factors such as availability and reliability are far more critical than with consumer oriented sites, and with the enterprise market these factors often take precedence over features or nice design.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

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Ben Heck throws together one-handed Xbox 360 controller, probably with one hand

Ben Heck. Just the mere mention of the name brings chills to the spines of all who mod, and if today’s the first day you’ve ever come into contact with those seven letters, prepare to be changed. Forever. The Great Modder’s latest gig involved the creation of a one-handed Xbox 360 controller, but the catch was that it required completion within a ridiculously short period of time. Essentially, the left analog stick was repositioned to fit on the underside of the controller, enabling the user to operate that with his / her leg while handling the right side of the pad as usual. Check out a video of the admittedly raw looking final product after the break, and feel free to grab some inspiration while you’re there.

[Via HackADay]

Continue reading Ben Heck throws together one-handed Xbox 360 controller, probably with one hand

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

Ben Heck throws together one-handed Xbox 360 controller, probably with one hand originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 25 Sep 2009 02:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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