ATBNetworks

In another step to control the entire internet, Google has launched public DNS servers for everyone’s use. DNS servers are used to lookup on what IP a particular domain or subdomain is located. For instance, ATBNet.us has the IP of 76.10.210.37. So, the DNS server will lookup ATBNet.us and find the correct IP and then your internet connection will connect to that IP and presto – you’re at this site.

Why would you want to use Google’s DNS servers? Well, for one they are very robust. Instead of having just one or two servers handle the DNS service, Google uses anycast which means many servers can handle this task. This also means a DNS server can be fairly local to you instead of jumping halfway across the world. Another reason why is that many ISPs setup redirection on their DNS servers which will take you to a generic search site if you mistype a URL. This search sites are just ways for ISPs to earn extra revenue and can often confuse users rather than help them find the right URL. Other than that, there are no major reasons to switch to Google’s DNS service. They don’t offer any way to block known malware and virus sites like OpenDNS as they do not wish to be in that business to block off parts of the internet even for good reasons.

So, if you are willing check out the Google DNS servers: 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. They are pretty easy to remember.

Full Article: Google Blog

If you used Google search earlier today, you might have been surprised to see it claiming every result as a site that may harm your computer. What was the problem or had the entire Internet been taken over by malware? Well it seems that a single character caused the mass hysteria, the foward slash, /. It just goes to show you that being careless with computers can cause a whole lot of trouble even if the mistake was not malicious. In partnering with Stopbadware.org which compiles lists of malware URLs it seems that the single character / had been included in the list. Not a big problem normally, but in this case / acted like a wildcard URL and basically any URL containing a / would be marked as malware; which just so happens to be every single URL in existance. The mistake has since been removed and the Google search is back to normal, but it just raises the question that perhaps entrusting too much in one company can truly affect the way we use the Internet.

Screenshots: TechCrunch

Some in the the tech community seem to believe that Google is getting ready to launch a service called Gdrive (Google Drive) which aims to replace your hard drive. It will be based upon cloud storage and you store all of your stuff on Google’s servers. Just think about not ever having to maintain backups or worry about being able to access your data in a different location. Plus it would be fairly secure; well, unless you are a bit paranoid about one company having access to all your data and them being corrupt, but that is another matter altogether. You could also sync up your data to whatever computer you happen to be using or simply log in to the Google servers and being able to edit that spreadsheet or document you were working on at another location.

Seems like a pretty neat idea, but how practical is it really? While broadband is fairly available to most people, it still isn’t very fast. So uploading a large file to your cloud storage is going to take a few hours. And with more ISPs implementing caps on broadband it is going to cripple the ability to use cloud storage even further. There are a lot of questions raised including whether or not this is even a true service that Google plans on rolling out. They have been flexing their server might for a while not, but due to the poor economy they have been cutting back services. Is now the right time to roll out seemingly limitless storage for users? Only the coming months or years will tell.

Full Article: TG Daily

MGM Studios has announced that it plans to offer full-length feature films on the popular video sharing site YouTube. Lionsgate had made a previous deal but it only offered short clips and TV shows. This should be good news for YouTube as other studios may be more likely to do the same. This development comes after years of distrust by the studios for YouTube not being more proactive in taking down copyrighted material. Before, the site claimed it could do very little and would not be responsible for what its users posted. Now it seems that these studios have realized the power of internet video. This deal also comes after the success of Hulu which already offers full-length films and TV shows which was started by NBC and News Corp. The one year old Hulu has been a success bringing in as much ad revenue as YouTube. Now the challenge remains for YouTube to bring in most studios as well as decide of a standard format for the ads to support the service.

Full Article: Yahoo!

Google got a little premature in their introduction of their new browser project, Google Chrome, by releasing a comic about it. However, they went ahead and made it official on their blog and announced that it would be released sometime today. The goal of Chrome is to design a browser that is geared toward the use of web applications rather than just continuing the purpose of browsers which were written before web applications became popular. It’ll have a sandbox option for tabs which will prevent a crashing tab from bringing down the entire browser application. They have also redone the JavaScript engine, called V8, to be able to carry out tasks that are not even possible currently. This project is open source and borrows from Apple’s WebKit and Mozilla’s Firefox. It has not be released as of this posting, but I will make an edit when it becomes available.

DOWNLOAD Chrome

Full Article: Google Blog

A major shift in the way companies obtain software and computing capacity is under way as more companies tap into Web-based applications

At first, just a handful of employees at Sanmina-SCI (SANM) began using Google Apps (GOOG) for tasks like e-mail, document creation, and appointment scheduling. Now, just six months later, almost 1,000 employees of the electronics manufacturing company go online to use Google Apps in place of the comparable Microsoft (MSFT) tools. “We have project teams working on a global basis and to help them collaborate effectively, we use Google Apps,” says Manesh Patel, chief information officer of Sanmina-SCI, a company with $10.7 billion in annual revenue. In the next three years, the number of Google Apps users may rise to 10,000, or about 25% of the total, Patel estimates.

San Jose (Calif.)-based Sanmina and Google are at the forefront of a fundamental shift in the way companies obtain software and computing capacity. A host of providers including Amazon (AMZN), Salesforce.com (CRM), IBM (IBM), Oracle (ORCL), and Microsoft are helping corporate clients use the Internet to tap into everything from extra server space to software that helps manage customer relationships. Assigning these computing tasks to some remote location—rather than, say, a desktop computer, handheld machine, or a company’s own servers—is referred to collectively as cloud computing (BusinessWeek, 4/24/08), and it’s catching on across Corporate America.

The term “cloud computing” encompasses many areas of tech, including software as a service, a software distribution method pioneered by Salesforce.com about a decade ago. It also includes newer avenues such as hardware as a service, a way to order storage and server capacity on demand from Amazon and others. What all these cloud computing services have in common, though, is that they’re all delivered over the Internet, on demand, from massive data centers.

Full Article: Business Week

More cloud news, I love it. It really is very cool to see how this is unfolding to become the next big thing in computing. This is one of the things Bill Gates was looking forward to before he retired, allowing computer users to be able to access all of their stuff from any computer they use. And that is exactly what the cloud is trying to accomplish. In another article I read today, it was speculated that Microsoft has around 218,000 servers and adding 10,000 more a month. Truly astounding numbers; it won’t be long before they hit one million.

Google’s Gmail service is down in what appears to be a widespread outage. We’re seeing the same 502 errors reported at TechCrunch and Mashable. While it’s easy to write this off as an outage on a free service, that’s no longer the case for thousands of organizations using Google’s paid Google Apps for Your Domain program.

The outage is prompting anxiety as some realize how much they rely upon Google in general and email in particular. “Given the amount of my digital life that is stored at Google, it’s a wake-up call,” writes Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins at Mashable. “I can’t imagine I am the only person in the blogosphere so heavily vested in Google services, so it’ll be interesting to see what effect a couple hours of downtime will have on us all.”

Like perhaps Mike Arrington at TechCrunch, who is taking the outage personally. “I can’t help but suspect that my decision yesterday to abandon MobileMe/.Mac in favor of the super-stable Google apps may have been a factor,” Arrington writes.

Full Article: DataCenterKnowledge

Interesting, I missed this outage completely since I was busy during the downtime. However, it seems that even Google is not invincible to outages. I guess it is a good thing that Gmail is still in Beta! It’s good to see that they quickly took care of the problem and have the service up and running again.

Apparently the Google taking over Digg rumor mill is back in full action. This time around the figures are much higher than before, now at $200 million. According to Tech Crunch sources, the deal should be made within weeks. Microsoft could step in and block the deal with their own offer, but that remains to be seen. The Microsoft ad deal, which provides Digg with most of its revenue, would be terminated if Google should buy out Digg. For those of you who may not know, Digg is a social content driven website where you ‘Digg’ articles you like and the popular ones get to the main page for others to view.

Full Article: Tech Crunch

While Microsoft Corp. chases Yahoo Inc., Eric Schmidt, Google Inc.’s CEO and chairman, is seeking a stronger relationship with IBM, something IBM Chairman and CEO Sam Palmisano appears very interested in.

Schmidt, who spoke at the IBM’s PartnerWorld conference here, later shared the stage at the Nokia Theater with Palmisano to discuss cloud computing, globalization and other issues.

Google and IBM collaborated last year on a compute cloud-type system — a platform for delivering scalable IT capabilities as a service — and then turned it over for universities to use. It was a pilot project, but it was clear from today that the two firms will be doing more.

Google wants enterprise customers for its applications, which are delivered as services via compute clouds. What it needs to help make that happen is IBM.

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To that point, IBM this week said it will offer an iTunes-like application delivery model for small and midsize businesses. Its Blue Business Platform will deliver complete and integrated software from either IBM or participating independent software vendors.

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Frank Gens, an analyst at market research firm IDC, said the two companies likely want to pool engineering talent on developing a cloud computing platform, as well as putting both their brands behind it. And combining Google’s “cool” with IBM’s enterprise credibility could boost acceptance of the cloud business platform.

Full Article: Computer World

It’s definitely interesting to see these two technology giants getting together like this. It seems exciting to see what products these two can hash out to create a new way of computing through cloud computing. With Google’s excellent software innovation along with IBM’s excellent server solutions such as the BladeCenter can play a pivotal point in cloud computing since virtualization is very cost effective. There should be no expectation that these two would ever merge, even to suggest this would be extremely foolish. They are two entirely different companies, but putting their best together could create great products.

On a side note, I think Microsoft should back off of the whole Yahoo business. They need to begin to attack the competition directly with new ideas rather than just buying ideas. Microsoft is a huge corporation and there are smart people there, they just need tap into new ideas and take it from there. i think buying Yahoo would be a large waste of money and could contribute to a downfall of Microsoft.