Google on Bruno Pedro

If Xerox PARC Invented the PC, Google Invented the Internet

Thu, 09 Aug 2012 08:28:30 +0000

Google did a great job of slurping up some of the most talented researchers in the world at a time when places like Bell Labs and Xerox PARC were dying. It managed to grab not just their researchers, but their lifeblood.

Great story about some of the most under-appreciated engineers behind Google.

Drinking from the firehose

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 15:22:27 +0000

Some firehoses to ~~drink~~ read from, other than twitter’s:

Google Buzz, through their activity firehose API methods;
FriendFeed, using their real-time updates methods.

While the first works via pubsubhubhub, the second uses a combination of long polling and a cursor that helps you make subsequent calls.

Your Google Alerts can be deleted by anyone

Wed, 15 Sep 2010 23:43:57 +0000

I found out the hard way that my Google Alerts can be deleted by anyone, if they have access to the “Remove” URL.

Here’s how it works: Google will send you e-mail alerts whenever it finds results for any search terms you specify. At the bottom of each message there are 3 links:

“Remove this alert”
“Create another alert”
“Manage your alerts”

The problem is with the first link. I tried it several times, first using Chrome’s incognito mode but then opening the link on a different browser, making sure that I wasn’t signed in to any Google application.

DecentralizedAddresses Chrome extension

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:24:36 +0000

After much discussion around the @replies subject I started thinking about a system that could automatically resolve social network addresses no matter where they appear. I then decided to try the approach of writing a Chrome extension that could do the job.

The DecentralizedAddresses extension is in development and is available on github for anyone to contribute. As my JavaScript skills are not very good, any help would be highly appreciated.

More on the @replies subject

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 19:35:56 +0000

I just stumbled on a Buzz by DeWitt Clinton about a possible solution to the use of decentralized @replies. From the Buzz:

I want to throw some ideas out there about how it can someday be done in a decentralized fashion using open technologies such as WebFinger, Portable Contacts, AtomPub, and Activity Streams. (And maybe Salmon. Read on.)

The proposal would let you address any user of any application in a complete decentralized way.

On the use of the @ syntax by Google Buzz

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 14:37:58 +0000

Just a quick note to archive the way Google Buzz is using the @ syntax. From “Google Buzz Tips”:

If you’d like to send a private message to someone, type @ and use Gmail’s autocomplete feature to find the email address of your contact.

In practice, you address other users by typing an @ symbol followed by their e-mail address, like @user@example.com. This is exactly what I proposed a while ago as an easy way to address any user on any Web application:

Re: Bing Tries To Buy The News on TechCrunch

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:20:46 +0000

In order to actually make a dent in Google’s market share, Bing would have to pay such exorbitant sums to so many different news companies that it would be difficult to recoup its investment. Bing certainly get some marketing buzz out of any such move, but that’s about it.

Here’s a list of links about this:

Microsoft and News Corp eye web pact on FT
Thoughts On A “Killer” Bing-News Corp Deal & The Myth Of An “OPEC For News” on search engine land
Microsoft Offers To Pay News Corp To “De-List” Itself From Google on The Business Insider
Will News Corp move its content to Microsoft’s Bing? on The Guardian

Read the original post: Bing Tries To Buy The News on TechCrunch.

A possible future for Chrome OS

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 13:54:38 +0000

I’m writing this after building Chrome OS from scratch and running it from a USB drive. In fact, what I built and ran wasn’t Chrome OS but instead Chromium OS. There’s a big difference not just in the name. According to Google:

Today we are open-sourcing the [Chrome OS] project as Chromium OS. We are doing this early, a year before Google Chrome OS will be ready for users, because we are eager to engage with partners, the open source community and developers. As with the Google Chrome browser, development will be done in the open from this point on. This means the code is free, accessible to anyone and open for contributions.

RSSCloud, a PubSubHubbub alternative?

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 22:41:21 +0000

Great news for all RSS advocates: Dave Winer somehow convinced Matt Mullenweg to automatically support RSSCloud on all WordPress.com blogs.

Quoting ReadWriteWeb, who apparently broke the news:

All blogs on the WordPress.com platform and any WordPress.org blogs that opt-in will now make instant updates available to any RSS readers subscribed to a new feature called RSSCloud. There is currently only one RSS aggregator that supports RSSCloud, Dave Winer’s brand-new reader River2. That will probably change very soon.

If you have a WordPress.org blog, you can easily install the recently launched RSSCloud plugin, by Joseph Scott, an employee of Automattic, the company behind WordPress.