Only the NSA and you knows...

Every time you log in to Facebook, every time you click on your news feed, every time you like a photo, every time you send anything via messenger, every time you use your credit card, you add another data point to the galaxy they already have regarding you and your behavior.

Apple and Google collects various user data including search history, location, and voice searches to help improve its services and provide relevant ads.

What’s interesting is the notion that Facebook or Google might be able to paint an extraordinarily accurate pointillist picture of you, with all the data points you give them! Your phone can tell whether you’re depressed. Algorithms are already being used to judge our character and can determine whether your relationship or job situation is in trouble based on your collective social graph.

And they can filter what you see or should see, of course. Like ‘everyone will know’ described in a recent article in the Washington Post.

Did you consider the possibility that human data will in a near future act as an X-ray revealing things about yourself that you thought was your secret or clearly didn't know? Which in turn raises fascinating and disturbing ethical questions, what if Google's extended neural networks predict, based on your behavior, that you’re going to commit an attack of some kind? What do you think NSA or similar organisations will do...?

Google Search Tips and Tricks

The Google search engine is a powerful tool for a variety of tasks and problems. It can provide you with answers directly from the search tool without needing to go to a different website.

Search for the below keywords to get direct answers, instead of links:

Tip Calculator - Ask how to divide a bill and Google provides you a way. Also lets you calculate the tip amount.

Special Days - Looking for when Thanksgiving is this year? Search for special days to get to know and also opt for reminders on Google Now.

Chemical Compounds - If you search for chemical compounds, you get an option to view their structure in 3D.

Updates on Celebrities - Get regular updates on what celebrities are up-to, by subscribing for alerts on Google Now. One useful instance is when you want to get to know about latest albums from your favorite music artist.

Movie Release - Eager to know when the new Star Wars movie is going to be out? Or when was it’s last episode? Search <movie> release for the movie release date.Also, search for movie(s) to get a listing of movies screening in your city.

TV Show Schedule & Reminders - shows the list of recent episodes with air-dates and provides an option to set reminders for new episodes on Google Now.

Books by an Author - shows the list of popular books by an author.Similarly, 

Albums by an Artist - shows the list of popular albums by an artist.

Restaurants - shows the list of restaurants near by.

Songs by an Artist - Shows a complete list of popular songs by an artist.

Flight schedule - <airline> <flight> lists the flight schedule.

Discover Competitors - Discover alternative products or find what to compare-to using Google auto-complete.

Time - shows the current local time. Similarly, time <city> for the time in a specific city.

Weather - shows the weather forecast for your city. Similarly, weather <city>

Sunrise / Sunset - shows the sunrise / sunset forecast for your city. Similarly, sunrise <city>

Founder / Author / … - <company> founder shows the founder of the company. Similarly <company> ceo lists the CEO of a company and <book> author shows the author of a book.

Capital - <country> capital lists the capital of the country.

Dictionary - define <word> provides the word definition.

Calculator - Entering a math expression provides you with the result.

Graph - graph for <math function> shows the function plot

Solve Geometry Problems - solve circle/triangle/rectangle/… 

Currency Converter - <Currency 1> in <Currency 2> gives you the conversion.

Unit Converter - <Unit 1> in <Unit 2> gives you the conversion.

Stock - <Stock symbol> gives you the current stock value.

Personal Results from Google+
Join Search, plus Your World and get details of Friends and Pages in your circles.

Google Site Search
Search for results from a specific site, using site:<site>

Gmail and Google Drive Results
Join the Gmail Search Field Trial and get results from your emails when searching for related topics.

• Emails
• Calendar
• Files - Search for my files to get results from Google Drive
• Photos - Search for my photos to get results from Google+ Photos
• Flight Information - Search my flights or itinerary to get results from Gmail about your travel itinerary.

Google – (minus) operator
Hide results from a particular site or hide results containing a particular term using the – operator. Example: “searchquery -facebook” excludes all search results containing the term “facebook”.

The IPO is dying

Marc Andreessen explains why.

Today, Andreessen is a prominent venture capitalist at the firm Andreessen Horowitz. I asked him to talk about how the stock market has changed over the last two decades. In the 1990s, it was common for small companies to have initial public offerings (IPOs), in which they offer their shares for sale to the general public. But today, companies wait a lot longer to hold their IPOs.

For example, Netscape went public when it was worth a little more than $2 billion, and this wasn't unusual. For comparison, Twitter waited until it was worth about $25 billion before it went public last year. Facebook was worth more than $100 billion when it had its IPO in 2012.

Many companies aren't going public at all. For example, Google bought the home automation company Nest earlier this year for $3.2 billion. Two decades ago, Nest would have been more likely to hold an IPO.

In this interview, conducted on June 12, Andreessen offers his thoughts on why companies are waiting longer to IPO. He argues that the shift is bad for ordinary investors, who no longer have the opportunity to invest in fast-growing technology firms. He also offers his thoughts on the work of Thomas Piketty, a French economist who has studied the growing gap between rich and poor.

Google in the sky

For a company whose mission is to “organize the world’s information” the sky is important. I am not talking about Google Maps. Google Sky and Google Earth, I am talking about the high-altitude bird’s-eye view of our blue planet and it's consumers.

Google is investing in low-cost communications and high--resolution imagery projects such as: Titan Aerospace, making high-altitude solar-powered drones, Project Loon, the internet via high-altitude balloons and lately Skybox Imaging, that builds small satellites that can make high-resolution photos and videos. And probably will Google buy a stake in space project Virgin Galactic as well.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported the firm plans to spend $1 to $3 billion to launch a fleet of 180 small internet satellites.

Once Google got real-time coverage of the entire globe from space, you start getting data that was previously only available to the NSA. Perhaps, we will reach a point where Google can do things that could change the future, and on a daily basis...

Google is committed to the future and in predicting it. Another Google investment is in Recorded Future, a company that seeks to interpret the information on the Web for clues about what's to come.

It doesn't mean that Google competes with the NSA, even if the Skybox sounds a bit like Skynet. Google is investing in how to refine its targeted advertising software, but what a precision they will have!

Google's End-to-End Email Encryption

In a post-Snowden world, it's easy to think email encryption is primarily useful to keep prying eyes (such as the NSA) from intercepting messages.

Google will bring full scale encryption to Google Apps. Google has launched a new commercial product for Google Apps accounts dubbed Google Apps Message Encryption (GAME).

GAME is available for $35 a year per user and allows Google Apps admins to configure encryption settings and routes from the Google Apps dashboard.

Medieval hi-tech or the computing holy grail

Daniel build quantum computers, Yes the most complex ones. Daniel is professor of electrical engineering, chemistry, and physics and the Director and co-founder of the USC Center for Quantum Information Science & Technology, and holds four U.S. patents in the area of quantum computing...

Daniel Lidar

Daniel Amihud Lidar is one of the smartest computer wizards in a pair of snickers, playing with some funky computers at the University of Southern California.

A classical computer stores a single “bit” of information. If the transistor is “on” it holds a “1” If it’s “off” it holds a “0” that's it. With quantum computer, information is held in a system that can exist in two states at the same time called “qubit”, thanks to what’s called the superposition principle of quantum mechanics. This “qubit” can store a “0″ and “1″ simultaneously. If you build two qubits, they can hold four values at once — 00, 01, 10, and 11. As you tack on additional qubits, you can fashion a machine exponentially more powerful than a classical computer.

Quantum computing may help solve some of the most challenging science problems... Google bought one. 

How green is IT?

You can look at the massive transformation of the Internet now, through the demand of clean energy. The internet is one of the most important things created by humanity. It's like human civilization giving itself a nervous system such as Google, investing substantially in green solutions. By moving the IT department to the cloud one can save up to 87% of IT energy! But since all that internet traffic ends up in the massive data-centers of a few big companies, Greenpeace has released a interest report that shows how companies are creating the green internet...

It's interesting to notice who the bigger winners and losers are

In theory, over time the new more efficient equipment’s energy savings of for example, a cellular base station can repay the energy debt embodied in manufacturing that hardware.  But the odds are high that the new equipment will end up being obsoleted and replaced long before the operational efficiency pays for the manufacturing energy debt.

Estimated 2.5 billion people around the world are now connected to the internet, an internet that has become a foundation of the global economy!

Nestlé create an "Social War-Room"

The worst thing to do when your customers are upset and nervous is to cut off communications. It’s the same as telling people you don’t care!

Nestlé launched in 2012 its "Digital Acceleration Team (DAT) where fifteen people responsible for monitoring the evolution of the Nestlé brands on social networks. The team has its proper TV studio to respond to imminent threats on their brands.

Nestlé has not forgotten how in 2010 the company found themselves confronted by Greenpeace. At that time Greenpeace produced a video available on Youtube and Facebook in a global campaign to accuse the use palm oil in Kit Kat bars production. With eminent threat of destroyed the natural habitat of orangutans.

Facebook has more than 1 billion monthly active users. Twitter has 500 million. YouTube has 1 billion active users and 4 billion views a day. No matter what product or service you’re marketing, your audience is on social media.

Today Nestlé works tight with the Silicon Valley giant Facebook, Google, Twitter or Instagram to build sophisticated strategies of defense from "Nestlé's mission control".

The Digital Acceleration Team gets involve before product launches, to implement and monitor the impact of the brand's image and its marketing effects on viral networks.

Such a command centers can listen to conversations in dozens of languages to identify customer support issues, engage with customers, and influence product development.

So will You get your Social War-Room to make better decisions, in a real-time marketer and keep up with consumers who are moving at the speed of social? 

Don't get down on me, please

You may or may not know that nearly all Google services went down last Friday afternoon for a moment. This Monday it was Amazon, in an incredibly rare hiccup, its homepage went down for nearly an hour.

Amazon says its homepage was down for 49 minutes, which puts the total sales missed at nearly $5.7 million.

Microsoft confirmed it has finally resolved an issue with SkyDrive and Outlook.com that has been affecting some users from seven-hour to three days outage, last week.

The New York Times also went down for two hours last week,

But one question I find really interesting is, should we actually expect Amazon, Microsoft or Google’s systems to run perfectly all the time?

Or should we rename the services to:

• SkyDive.com
• Outage.com
• Goone.com

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Or will the world go bizarre in general, for the next days! 

The sun is about to undergo a complete reversal of its magnetic field. The sun's north magnetic pole will become its south pole, and vice versa, in an event that will reverberate throughout the entire solar system.

The sun is currently going through what is known as solar maximum, when extra magnetic activity translates into greater chances to bombard the Earth with radiation and solar material. These events can trigger auroras and disrupt satellite operations and even damage power grids on the ground...

dumb TV becomes smart

Google announced "Google Chromecast" this Wednesday, a new USB dongle, $35 device streams content to your television from your computer, Android and iOS device.

Chromecast will fit at home in the boardroom as well as the living room and on the TV in the hotel-room. Connected with your phone or tablet, streaming your content, film or TV show, bringing your cable-TV overseas. The so-called dumb TV's becomes interactive, this will change the TV market dramatically.

Right now, the Chromecast will support:

• YouTube
• Netflix
• Google Play
• Google Music
• Chrome for Windows, Mac and Chroembook Pixel

The mirrored content isn't beamed from your local device, but is streamed from the cloud direct to the dongle when you activate mirroring on a Chromecast-compatible service like YouTube or Netflix. 

Does this $35 dongle appeal to you?

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