Tag: Google

River of Song.

“The Music Timeline shows genres of music waxing and waning, based on how many Google Play Music users have an artist or album in their music library, and other data (such as album release dates). Each stripe on the graph represents a genre; the thickness of the stripe tells you roughly the popularity of music released in a given year in that genre.” Some click-bait fun for a slow day: Google Research’s Music Timeline.

Putting the Hot back in Hotmail.

“I’ve been using a pre-release version of the service for a couple of weeks now, and I’m a huge fan. The new Hotmail is fast, well-designed, and adds a host of features that bring it up to par with other e-mail services, including Gmail. Indeed, it has several features that I wish Gmail included.” Slate‘s Farhad Manjoo previews the coming Hotmail overhaul. As someone who’s stuck around the old home even as all the cool kids flocked to gmail (which I use for listserv e-mails), I’m definitely looking forward to it.

My Own Worst Enemy.

“With Perlow’s Mail Goggles, users can specify which hours they would like to enable the feature. If a user tries to send an e-mail during the self-selected time — say, midnight to 3 a.m. — a screen pops up forcing the user to solve a series of simple math problems before the message can be sent.” Thinking outside the box for new and useful apps, Gmail engineers try to tackle the thorny problem of drailing (drunk e-mailing.) “Perlow created the function last fall when he found himself sending messages to an ex-girlfriend — late at night — asking to get back together.” I feel you, brother.

Googlarians unite.

“What’s going on? Google has become the new ground zero for the ‘other’ culture war. Not the one between Ralph Reed and Timothy Leary, but the war between Silicon Valley and Hollywood; California’s cultural civil war. At stake are two different visions of what might best promote authorship in this country. One side trumpets the culture of authorial exposure, the other urges the culture of authorial control.” University of Virginia Law professor Tim Wu surveys the controversy over Google Print, and makes a cautious plea for writers and academics to get behind the project.

I can see my house from here…

To the consternation of some privacy advocates, Google unveils its funky new satellite map feature. I’m not too worried yet — the images are apparently between 6-12 months old…but wait, isn’t that Berk and I frolicing in Riverside Park? (Direct link via Supercres.) Update: In keeping with the meme (seen at Girlhacker), here’s home from above. This satellite image is at least a year old, as attested by the missing Columbia School for Social Work across the street — it’s been completed since last summer.

Distance Learning.

By way of Cliopatria, Google announces an agreement to digitize the holdings of many of the world’s great libraries, including those of Harvard, Oxford, Michigan, Stanford, and the NYPL. My, that should be enormously useful for researchers the world over once they get it up and running. That noise you heard in the background was millions of historians’ frequent flier miles suddenly crying out in terror and then suddenly silenced.