Linux * Screw » google

Google Chromium OS!

artiomix — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:52:10 +0000

Today Google has announced operating system Google Chromium OS. It still not ready to end users as is under deep development but now everyone can see its concepts, benefits and nature. Astonishing news as for me. There were a lot of rumors about Google OS (gos) before it was presented to the public in real. Now it’s clear that the most promising OS these days is based on Linux kernel. Let’s see what Google just have presented in details:

All apps are web apps. The entire experience takes place within the browser and there are no conventional desktop applications. This means users do not have to deal with installing, managing and updating programs.
Because all apps live within the browser, there are significant benefits to security. Unlike traditional operating systems, Chrome OS doesn’t trust the applications you run. Each app is contained within a security sandbox making it harder for malware and viruses to infect your computer. Furthermore, Chrome OS barely trusts itself. Every time you restart your computer the operating system verifies the integrity of its code.
We are obsessed with speed. We are taking out every unnecessary process, optimizing many operations and running everything possible in parallel. This means you can go from turning on the computer to surfing the web in a few seconds.
Chromium OS User Interface Concepts (video)

Design Documents: Software Architecture, Security Overview

VMware Virtual Machine with Chromium OS can be found here (torrent).

Try Google Chrome in Linux

artiomix — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 13:44:26 +0000

There is still no native Linux support of newly unveiled browser Google Chrome but guys from CodeWeavers prepared the port of Chromium (official name of Google Chome for Linux). This staff is already available for downloading as DEB packages for Ubuntu (32-bit and 64-bit), as RPM for RedHat, Fedora, CentOS etc. as well as self installable script for any other Linux distribution.

Well, after quick testings there are no doubts that it is not a good option if you wish to have quick and stable alternative for Firefox… But of course it is good for evaluation purposes or for those people who CAN’T wait for official release of Chrome for Linux Certainly the port is based on Windows copy run by Wine (don’t forget to upgrade it). Actually CodeWeavers says that this is just a proof of concept, for fun, and to showcase what Wine can do.

Google + Water-based Data Centres = Computer Navy?!

artiomix — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 13:03:54 +0000

Well, Google is considering to deploy data centres necessary to operate their search engine on barges powering and cooling computers…

Sounds strangely? Just read below!

Computing centres are located on a ship or ships, anchored in a water body from which energy from natural motion of the water may be captured, and turned into electricity and/or pumping power for cooling pumps to carry heat away.

This text was somehow seen by The Times in this patent application written by Google… Rather interesting article is published at their site. As for me, I didn’t know that Microsoft is planning to build data centres in cold climes of Siberia or that Sun is going to place its supercomputers in abandoned coal (see cold) mine…

By the way all data centers around the world consumed about 1% of all electricity in 2005. How do you think, what would be in 2009?

Useful Links:
Data Center Knowledge
Discussion at Slashdot

Sync Google Reader with Liferea

artiomix — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 14:36:39 +0000

Liferea is the best aggregator for online news feeds especially 1.4.6 version. Some of it’s features really makes feeding life easier. It supports duplicate rss entries detection (see picture), and it’s surely one of the fastest feed readers I ever tried. Google Reader is very powerful and useful solution for RSS reading as well but sometimes it’s very important to have RSS entries offline. To move Google Reader subscription list to Liferea including folder hierarchy it’s necessary to accomplish several steps:

1. Export Google Reader subscriptions: go to “Settings” -> “Import/Export” -> “Export your subscriptions as an OPML file” and save XML file on your computer.

2. Import saved subscriptions into Liferea: go “Subscriptions” -> “Import Feed List” (or press CTRL+O) and select previously saved XML file. In few minutes you’ll get Google Reader subscription saved locally.

By the way, to install Liferea in Ubuntu run: sudo apt-get install -y liferea.

Complete list of Google staff

artiomix — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 21:40:24 +0000

Searches

Google is 9 years old now

artiomix — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 12:56:32 +0000

PageRank 10 page google.com, turned 9 years old at 27th of September 2007, according to the special logo put up for the occasion yesterday.

wikipedia.org:

Google was co-founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were students at Stanford University and the company was first incorporated as a privately held company on September 7, 1998. Through a series of new product developments, acquisitions and partnerships, the company has expanded its initial search and advertising business into other areas, including web-based email, online mapping, office productivity, and video sharing, among others.

Here is a screenshot of google.com page in early 1997 (as you might notice Linux specific resources search was available from the beginning, unfortunately I didn’t find any information when BSD related search become available):

Respect to Google!

Download and convert YouTube video online and offline

artiomix — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 09:56:34 +0000

VideoDownloader is the a service that allows to download online video from YouTube, Google Video, iFilm and MANY other into FLV files. Saved files can be easily converted into different video formats by the following online video converters (some of them allows to save and convert online video in one step instead of two).

Online tools

Vixy.net: allows you convert a Flash Video / FLV file (YouTube’s videos, etc) to MPEG4 (AVI/MOV/MP4/MP3/3GP) file online. It is using a compressed domain transcoder technology. It converts FLV to MPEG4 faster and less lossy than a typical transcoder.

Flvix: Free online video converter. Converts and downloads videos from YouTube, Google Video or directly from .FLV file. It also allows to play it on your PC, Mobile, iPod, PSP and enjoy!

ConvertTube: Video converter and downloader.

Media-Convert: Media-Convert is 100% free. No software is needed, and you don’t have to register. To convert a file located on your computer: Check File mode, click Browse and choose the file, select input format (if autodetection fails) and output format, submit the form.

Zamzar: Not only video converter, it can convert document, images and audio files. Convert files up to 100 MB. Zamzar will send output files to your email.

FLV2MP3: Converts FLV to MP3. One click converter.

Vconvert: This website is very similar with ConvertTube.

Offline tools

To convert FLV into another video format you can use MPlayer’s MEncoder: MEncoder is an all-purpose encoder that is part of MPlayer, a movie player which runs on many systems. It plays most MPEG/VOB, AVI, Ogg/OGM, VIVO, ASF/WMA/WMV, QT/MOV/MP4, RealMedia, Matroska, NUT, NuppelVideo, FLI, YUV4MPEG, FILM, RoQ, PVA files, supported by many native, XAnim, and Win32 DLL codecs. MEncoder is command-line based with limited GUI. It supports wide range of file formats as MPlayer, and it also enable format conversion to be done in x86, Unix, Linux, Red Hat, Mac OS X and other non-x86 system.

Example of command line MEncode syntax:

mencoder input.flv -ofps 15 -vf scale=300:-2 -oac lavc -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=msmpeg4v2:acodec=mp3:abitrate=64 -o output.avi

ffmpeg is a command line tool to convert one video file format to another. It also supports grabbing and encoding in real time from a TV card. Ubuntu users can install it by command apt-get install ffmpeg.

Example of command converting FLV into MPG:

ffmpeg -i jokes.flv -ab 56 -ar 22050 -b 500 -s 320×240 jokes.mpg

You may also be interested in:
Inimitable wallpapers, icons and themes for Linux
Search specific file types with Google
Keep contacts and calendar/datebook of Motorola Razr V3 saved
Google calendar and Linux Evolution sync

Fun: Serious Google bug!

artiomix — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 14:42:12 +0000

Picture was got from sebruiz.

Search specific file types with Google

artiomix — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 21:42:19 +0000

It seems this is old Google tip but… To search files by their name and extensions like mp3 or other, just do:

intitle:index.of + “mp3″ + “gimme back my bullets”

To get results without *.htm or *.html files, perform:

intitle:index.of + “mp3″ + “gimme back my bullets” -htm -html

After that Google will give you a lot of file locations, sites that are hard to find normally.

Google phone (GPhone) rumors

artiomix — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 14:27:00 +0000

LinuxDevices.org:

“Google’s first mobile phone will run a Linux operating system on a Texas Instruments “Edge” chipset, and will likely ship to T-Mobile and Orange customers in the Spring of 2008, according to unconfirmed reports. “GPhone” call minutes and text messages reportedly will be funded by mobile advertising…

News of the so-called “GPhone” or “G-Phone” broke quietly about two weeks ago in the island nation of Singapore, where Jennifer Tan of Reuters subsidiary Anian Research filed a report on July 12.

Tan cited “industry sources,” “U.S. sources,” and “manufacturing and component supply chain sources” in backing her assertion that after year-long delays finding a manufacturer, Google contracted Taiwan-based smartphone maker High Tech Computer (HTC) to design its phone hardware. HTC is best-known for its Windows Mobile smartphones, however, and Tan offered no conjecture about who might supply the phone’s Linux-based operating system.

Additional details reported by Tan include:

* The G-Phone will have a large color screen with a predictive Qwerty keypad to simplify Google searching
* A follow-up 3G-capable model (Edge is considered “2.75G”) will use a Qualcomm chipset
* Scheduled for production in Q1 of 2006, the Google phone will hit retail shelves next spring
* Call minutes and text messages are to be funded by “mobile advertising”
* Google originally hoped to launch a phone this year, but was delayed by “difficulties in nailing down a deal with a handset maker”
* T-Mobile will carrier the phone in the U.S., along with (possibly) Orange in other markets

Tan quotes Susquehanna Financial Group analyst Marianne Wolk as having said, “A mobile offering would be consistent with Google’s goal to make search accessible. We believe Google would design a solution to facilitate greater use of Google Search and other applications like Google Talk, Gmail, Google Maps, encourage wireless video, and leverage this usage to hasten the market for mobile advertising.”

Google itself has declined to comment on rumors it plans to produce a phone, Tan reported.”