Google acquires On2 (video compression)

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/innovation-in-video-on-web.html

...high quality, searchable video programming on the web one day = inevitable. Surely Google wants to be at the epicenter.

Google Finance - Feature Request

Dear Google Finance,

It is possible to include a music feature in your application, specifically in the My Portfolio section? I would like to play the music sound of a carnival carousel that goes up and down, up and down, up and down... make it have a downward trend though in the tone.

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!

Sincerely,
Mark Holton
User

Knol and Semantic Web

http://knol.google.com/k

...reading between the lines on this for awhile... Google is seemingly going to move in the semantic direction... this is a step... by referencing a Knol (or a Wiki link or any link to a definition) in an RDF, you define that element in the HTML hierarchy with a real meaning "a shark is an aquatic creature, yada yada". Search for "shark" not only pulls up hyperlinked web content (current legacy which uses headers, urls, hyperlinks... to relate search terms to highest relevance), but pulls up all in the 'web' defined, so it pulls up shark, the creature that swims, not Shark the former wide receiver for the Irish Jeff Samardijza, nor The Shark Greg Norman, for instance... it's a way to relate words with different definitions in a semantic way, which is a common and big problem to solve on the web. It also enables new automated ways for apps to talk with other apps. The web has been missing this step towards progressing.

Google doesn't want to be beholden to Wikipedia... and why should they be, they have the resources and the intelligence to pull this off and move it forward.

... those ahead of the curve, start thinking about and programming your internetz and interwebs semantically...

http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html

BusinessWeek article on Search

Interesting points about the gap between what we have now, and where much of the potential in Search remains, especially when it comes to the Semantic web:

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2008/tc20080616_034849.htm

...Powerset is written in all OpenSource -- Ruby, Merb, Rails, god, Mongrel, Mootools, Memcache, Erlang, Fuzed*, YAWS, Hadoop... one of their developers is Kevin Clark, active Ruby/Rails developer: http://glu.ttono.us/articles/2008/05/12/holy-god-powerset-launches

More on Powerset:
http://searchengineland.com/080512-000100.php

Great stuff. Thanks to Kevin for sharing that info on his blog -- inspiring work.

Google and IPv6

This is a bit of a blast from the past, but I have been wondering what is brewing with IPv6....

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Google/?p=241

(for your reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6)

It turns out that on "On March 12th, 2008, Google launched an IPv6 version of www.google.com, the most visited page on the Internet, under an alternative host name (ipv6.google.com) -- however that site is a dead link now.

...interesting to keep an eye on, and become familiar with if you're looking ahead...

UPDATE (3/30/08): try this inside your terminal:

bash-3.2$ traceroute6 -n ipv6.google.com

Thanks to Derek Morr for his comment straightening me out. :) Incidentally, he has some informative reads: http://www.personal.psu.edu/dvm105/blogs/ipv6/