Posts tagged as "google" - Chris Hardie

I just finished reading Steven Levy's In the Plex, a great history of Google, Inc.'s origins and growth, and a great insight into what the company could look like in the future, or at least how it might get there. The story of Google that matters for most people is how it affects their daily lives (searching, web browsing, mobile phones, mapping/navigation, email, calendaring, YouTube, news, etc.) but I appreciate that Levy's book focuses on the personalities and processes driving the evolution...

I've had a few days to play around with Google's new social network offering, Google+, and I thought I'd share some initial thoughts. First of all, kudos to Google for "going for it" in the Facebook era.  They're one of few players who actually has the resources and skill to make a serious go at a viable alternative to Facebook, and you've got to admire the effort.  If the success of the movie The Social Network tells us anything, it's that Facebook has become mainstream and popular, and as generations...

I don't feel guilty for not blogging for a while, no I sure don't. Guilt is certainly not why I'm posting a bunch of random (but great) links for you to look at. Nope, not at all: Hospitality for the Coming Age: Sharing in the midst of scarcity: Anna Lisa's new blog chronicling her ministry formation work around sharing resources - food, listening, time, hope - when such things are scarce. Brand new, ready for your comments! indexed: astute and sometimes funny observations about the state...

You may or may not have been following the Google Treasure Hunt competition, a puzzle contest designed to test your knowledge of Computer Science, networking, and low-level UNIX trivia (as described on the Google blog). It's also a way for them to find potential engineers to be assimilated --er, hired. I took one of the questions for a spin today, and thought I'd post my methodology to solve it. It probably wasn't the fastest way, but it worked for me; if anyone has suggestions for improvements,...

Well, you know my criteria for good April Fool's Day jokes. Here's what I've kept track of so far for the day: I had a little fun with the users of the Palladium-Item forums who like to post anonymous rants. It resulted in at least one phone call threatening legal action against me and started at least one conversation about the nature of privacy on the Internet, so I consider that a mild success. Jim Hair, photographer and community activist extraordinaire, announced he and his wife Vicki...

Are you brave enough to say no to a high-stress holiday? "The problem with Christmas is not the batteries. The problem isn't even really the stuff. The problem with Christmas is that no one much likes it anymore." Richmond News Review podcast episode #23: Debate bid followup, buying local, media coverage gaps from last weekend. And don't forget to submit your suggestions for the upcoming podcast segment, What news stories did Richmond media miss in 2007?. Energy Efficiency Jobs at Google: Get paid...

You may or may not notice that I've incorporated some Google Ads into my weblog. It's my unabashed attempt to make whatever moo-lah I can off of this exercise in public writing (which does not, for what it's worth, have moo-lah generation as a primary goal). I'm not sure if I'll keep the ads: the concept in general already grates against my sense that there's too much advertising on your average website, and because of my affiliation with a certain company that does webhosting, it's not like I'm trying...