The Good NET Guide

Archive for July, 2009

Image search is an area of intense competition between Google, Yahoo, and now Bing. Today, Google Images added some search options to make it easier to filter a search by color, type (face, photo, clip art, line drawing), and file size.

Most of these filters were available before in advanced search, but now they are available in the left-hand column. (A similar option column was introduced to the main search page in May, 2009). You can choose more than one option to automatically narrow down your search. Another option Google could add is sorting by images with a Creative Commons license. It already does this in its advanced search options, but it is hidden there.

Yahoo and Bing have similar filtering options, Although Google’s color filter is the most advanced. It allows you to sort by 12 different colors, wheras Bing and Yahoo only let you sort by color or black-and-white images. Bing, however, does a better job with related searches, something Google is experimenting with in a slightly different way by actually trying to find And Yahoo has its own set of novel features in image search which Google doesn’t. You can compare the three with a search for “fruit” on Google Images, Yahoo Images, and Bing Images.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

The first Twitpocalypse was one of those events that you’re going to tell your children about one day. I remember where I was when it hit: On my way to Napa Valley with some friends as we heard sirens race by, likely signaling the end of the Twitter world as we knew it.

Okay, it didn’t end up being that bad. But it still was a pain in the ass for many third-party developers, especially the iPhone Twitter app developers, who had to wait in the App Store line like everyone else for their fixes to go through. And now it’s set to happen all over again!

A tweet today from the TwitterAPI account warned that the second Twitpocalypse was closer than people thought. Okay, most people probably didn’t realize that it could occur again, but it can, and it will, and it’s fast approaching.

The current estimate by the API team is that it will occur sometime in the next 60 days, probably at the end of September. They warn that it could happen sooner though.

So what does it mean, and why is it happening? Well, for those that don’t remember, the first Twitpocalypse occurred when the unique identifier for tweets hit 2,147,483,647 — the 32-bit signed integer limit. That number caused some third-party apps to start counting tweet identifiers as negative, screwing them up. This new Twitpocalpyse is similar, only it’s for the 32-bit unsigned integer value of 4,294,967,295.

In case you didn’t already realize it, the fact that this chasm between the two numbers was crossed so quickly once again shows that Twitter is growing very quickly. Though it’s not a 1 to 1 tweet-to-unique ID ratio, that the number will have doubled (an increase of over 2 billion) in just a few months is huge.

So what can you do to prepare yourself? Well the Twitter API recommends developing your apps to use 64-bit integers, thus increasingly the number of tweets your app can recognize before it hits these integer walls.

Also, lock up the women and children.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Asus dropped word last week that they would be coming out with the world’s first USB 3.0-capable mobo, and I was itching to make it the basis for my next PC. But then Asus had to go and spoil my dreams by cancelling the P6X58 … and why was that again? Not for any particularly interesting reasons

Here is the original:
World’s first USB 3.0-capable motherboard gets nixed

Bethesda’s third-person shooter, WET , is slated for a September 15 launch on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

See the original post:
Bethesda dates WET For September 15

It doesn’t look like much, but if it does its job right, and you really love to speed, it may pay for itself after a few close calls with the Highway Patrol.

Here is the original: 
$500 for the mother of all radar detectors

I have a secret to tell you. I’m a fan of the Fast & Furious franchise.

See original here: 
Review: Universal’s Fast & Furious Blu-ray iPhone app (It’s a start)

Which countries are the worst greenhouse gas emitters? Now you can see for yourself on this handy Google Map created by a department of the UN and Google. The map shows changes in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 to 2006. Green is good (a decrease in emissions) and purple is bad (an increase).

So who are the worst offenders? Topping the list is Sweden! The country has managed to increase its emissions by 110 percent over that time period. So much for Nordic purity. Following Sweden is Turkey (with a 103 percent increase) and Canada (with a 55 percent increase). Yes, Canada. What is it with these northern countries?

You’d think the U.S. would top the list, but it is actually only the tenth worst country with a 14 percent increase in emissions (still well within purple territory). It is kind of embarrassing that Russia is greener than we are. But at least we are better than Canada (and Sweden).

Or are we? The map itself lets you drill down into the data to find out. You can sort by industry, type of emission (CO2, CH4, N2O, etc), or year, and if click on a country it gives you a detailed breakdown of emissions by economic sector and other variables. For instance, over the 1990 to 2006 time span, Russia has actually seen a 29 percent decrease in emissions, but if you look at just 2006, Russia starts getting pretty purple, and rises to the No. 3 worst emitter. And the USA rises to No. 1.

Hey, we’re No. 1!

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Years from now, people will look back on the year 2009 as the year A) Apple lost the goodwill of a sizable chunk of the Internet audience; and B) when a high school kid sued Amazon because it remotely deleted an illegal copy of 1984 . The kid is suing because he annotated the copy of the book, and now is without said notes. So of course, sue right?

More here: 
Shock: High school student whose Kindle 1984 was deleted sues Amazon

“We’re here today to announce the death of comments.”

That’s what JS-Kit CEO Khris Loux said in his opening remarks at our Real-Time Stream CrunchUp earlier this month. He went on to unveil ECHO, JS-Kit’s new take on how conversations should be happening around content on the web. And today, we’re going to try a limited test of this new system on the TechCrunch Network.

To reiterate, this is just a test that will reside under only this post for the time-being, so let us know what you think.

While at first glance, the comments you see below this post may look like a slight variation of any other commenting system, the reality is much different. Sure, a part of ECHO is made up by what we think of as traditional comments, that is, comments you fill out on a particular article and post to it. But the majority of the content in this commenting area will actually be populated from sources all around the web talking about this piece of content.

What is the Everio X GZ-X900 ? Is it a pocket camcorder like a Flip? Is it a fully-fledged video camera?

Original post:
Review: JVC Everio X GZ-X900