Google: Eric Schmidt to step down as CEO; Larry Page (co-founder) to replace him

[Post published by Liviu on Liviu's [Computer Science] Blog]


Noooooo.. What did I say? Noooooo...

Indeed, Eric Schmidt is to step down as CEO in April 2011... I've just stumbled on an article on TechCrunch [article] and said to myself: What? Is this true? Wtf?

Searched a bit inside the The Official Google Blog and what do you know? - it IS true [Google Blog: post]

Hey, it's even on Twitter [post] :)) Eric on Twitter - that's such a great joke given some of his speeches / interviews / key notes... Wait, Eric Schmidt has a twitter channel? [channel] Funny, I've heard him many times mocking Twitter. A ha ha :)) What next? He'll become an active Facebook user? :))


All in all, my personal opinion (published on my computer science blog [1]) is that Google has become what it is today due to Eric's skill as a leader - I've watched may presentations and/or interviews of him in the last 2+ years and I'm impressed by his skill and intelligence.

I see his leadership and management style [2] to have been and still be the force which manages Larry, Sergey and developers' energy, ideas and desires to aim sky high. He took the company from a 200-employees start-up and developed it into a super power - indeed, he had brilliant developers to work with, constantly hired new brilliant developers, empowered innovation etc. - I see all these as big pluses.

I regret Eric Schmidt is leaving [4], but am also curious on Larry Page's [3] leadership impact on the innovation pattern of the company. Thanks Eric, good luck Larry!

Wait, April 4th they said? That must be wrong - I surely hope they meant April 1st :)) Really!

---

A great funny comment on TechCrunch - I removed the Caps and some words, while inserting a couple new words to make it funnier:

• Apple: wowowow, omg billions billions billions. Increase of X, increase of Y, omg Apple is blowing people out of the water. Buy, buy, buy!... oh and CEO is taking medical leave and leaving the company in the hands of a longtime business partner that nobody has heard of since... wait, what's the other Steve's name?... 
• Google: earnings are quite good, but...that's just secondary... omg the CEO is stepping down and leaving the company in the hands of one of its co-founders, also his 10-years business partner and actively working at Google’s day-to-day operations, and omg the world is so going to end. Sell, sell, sell!

---

In the news


Guardian's take on the subject [Guardian: article]

Ok, they talk again about spam in search results... Have they tried Bing? It's worse :))
Are they idiots? All they see is search and Android as successes? Well, there's also

1. GMail - btw, the anti-spam service is great; really, try Yahoo, Hotmail etc. and then tell me your opinion
2. Calendar
3. Reader
4. Translate - I wish I had this when studying French in highschool :)) Oh, yeah, that would've been awesome.
5. Docs
6. Maps
7. YouTube (they bought it, yes, but improved it a lot)
8. Picasa
9. Analytics (bought it, but improved it a lot)
10. Blogger (bought it, but improved it a lot)
11. Google Apps - Hey, I run both my domains on Apps and I'm grateful for the free service

plus there are some I never tried, but seem great given the demos during Eric's speeches and/or separate presentations/demos:

1. Goggles
2. Voice search
3. Voice real time translation
4. Google App Engine

and the 2 lists could go on...

Why does Guardian say that? Because the new hype is social. Oh gi'me a break!
Social is and will be cool.
Social is and will be a great feature of the future development of Internet, indeed.
However, ignoring all other aspects of our lives looks stupid to me.

The Guardian: Such a laissez-faire attitude won't work once you get bigger, as the Buzz example shows. - Congrats Guardian for killing the innovation spirit. We appreciate it! Hey, grow up, failure is part of life; one has to try multiple times in order to get it right!
I, for one, surely hope Google to keep & improve this laissez-faire attitude in order to deliver more great & free products/services!

---

[1] That's a subtle joke, since I have 2 blogs: one treats my personal (but not too personal) life, and the other one treats computer science-related topics. Now you get it? A personal opinion on the computer science blog :)

[2] Hey, Eric Schmidt had successfully lead big projects and/or companies before - [Eric's bio at Google; Wikipedia: Eric Schmidt]

[3] Side note: Hey I never noticed that PageRank [Wikipedia: PageRank Algorithm] is called after Larry Page - I've always interpreted page as page [M-W: page] - always analyzed how things worked, but rarely paid attention to where the naming comes from. I can barely stop laughing now.

[4] Am I too old to accept the replacement of people I admire?  Have I grown too old already not to take a huge leap towards innovation?

Flash - my opinion: Adobe shall have to reinvent Flash in order to save it

[Post published by Liviu on Liviu's [Computer Science] Blog]

This post is about Flash - my opinion:

There's an entire discussion on whether to support or not Flash. Google (at I/O 2010 for example) picks on Apple for not supporting Flash... well, I'd say Apple announced this too early, just that. If Apple had only waited some 1-2 years, it would have been ok.
Oh, and they can't just ignore Flash when launching something [ugly, useless, expensive] like the... iPad.
Why was it only later that Steve Jobs provided a full reasoning?

I must admit that Eric Schmidt is kind of evil in the Google I/O 2010: Google TV Keynote, Day 2 - CEO Partner Panel - we all know that HTML 5 will kind of make Flash obsolete. If you've read my 2009 I/O post, you've probably watched the I/O 2009 Day 1 Keynote which talks about offering pixel level control in-the-browser... right? (Anyway, start watching again at 18:31)

Also, in last year's keynote - this is going to be SO FUN!...

Skip to 19:08 and listen the reasoning with respect to the Canvas... [...] just use silverlight, vml or flash... but what if we wanted something that was part of the open and transparent internet that we know and love? Now, is it just me hearing this or has Mr. Gundrotta just said Flash was not open and transparent in 2009? :))

19:48 - drawing and animation APIs with pixel level control.
Now, what will Flash be used for? I don't know.

You can stop at 29:50.

Hey, watch another demo of in-the-browser capabilities - nothing fancy, just...
The Quake II GWT port brings the 3d gaming experience of Quake II to the browser. 
And the video... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhMN0wlITLk
Cool? I'd say yes.


Conclusion

Now, tell me, what shall we need Flash for?
I don't know. Not now. Maybe later I can come up with some ideas.

I say that Adobe shall have to reinvent Flash in order to save it. Until then, it must be supported - Apple should have supported it, and Google is [almost] right when picking on Apple. However, if Google supports Flash now and ensures that Flash shall not be reinvented... :D... then Flash shall disappear in the next 2 years...
I still wonder on whose side Google is...

Google I/O 2009 keynotes and "resuming video" feature in YouTube

[Post published by Liviu on Liviu's [Computer Science] Blog]

Indeed, it was about time I watched the 2 full keynotes of Google I/O 2009. (For the record, I have watched bits and pieces over time, so I wasn't that lazy, but never actually watched the 2 full keynotes, so I was lazy to some degree.)

Anyway, here they are for the ones too lazy to click on the Google I/O 2009 page:
Google I/O 2009 - Keynote Day 1 (full)
Google I/O Day 2 keynote - Google Wave Developer Preview at Google I/O 2009

On this occasion, I've noticed YouTube has introduced a new feature I had no idea about - resuming video... - should one stop watching a video and minutes later reopens it, then it resumes from where one stopped last time. Pretty awesome I might say. - Did I say new? Well, it appears it has been launched quite a long time ago - if interested, see the post with the detailed description of the feature on YouTube's official blog - the "Resume where you left off" paragraph of the post.

How to download embedded content in webpages

[Post published by Liviu on Liviu's [Computer Science] Blog]


Problem

Would you like to download content (audio, video) embedded in web pages? e.g. YouTube, Trilulilu etc.

RO: Cum downloadez un cantec (fisier audio) dintr-o pagina Trilulilu, sau un film (fisier video) dintr-o pagina YouTube etc.?


Solution 1

I've found a page describing how to do it, but now let me tell you the long story, i.e. my approach, because it's nice, harder and doesn't always work - indeed, CS people have a funny sense of humor.
The truth is this is the first solution I've tested:

First, install in Firefox the add-ons called FireBug and DownThemAll.

Second, open the page with the targeted content. Click on the little bug (because we use FireBug now) found at the bottom of the window, on the right side; click Net, click Enable, reload the page. Then sort the links by the downloaded size of content, i.e. click Size - now all links are displayed in descending order of the loaded content size. The first link(s) should be the one(s) you're interested in. Copy them, one at a time.

Third, Tools > DownThemAll > Manager > Add URL - insert here the links you've copied at the previous step. Download the content corresponding to each link, rename appropriately, i.e. if you've downloaded an audio file from Trilulilu then rename so the downloaded file ends in .mp3


Solutions 2, 3 (easier solutions)

Fast Video Download - good add-on for downloading videos embedded in a web page, e.g. YouTube.
Just click on the blue icon at the bottom of the window, on the right side, or in the upper right side of the window.
I recommend you disable Hover menu icon, i.e. the blue box which appears when you select some text, like this: Tools > Fast Video Download > Fast Video Download options > Settings > Search Menu Advanced > click to uncheck Hover menu icon.

FlashGot - a very good add-on.
Just click on the blue icon at the bottom of the window, on the right side - it shall download all content.
I recommend it if you desire to download audio files from Trilulilu, for example.
I also recommend you deselect Autostart downloads: Tools > FlashGot > Autostart downloads (click to deselect it, id it appears selected) or Tools > FlashGot > More options > Downloads > make sure Autostart downloads appears unchecked.


Conclusions

I recommend you use (1) FlashGot, or (2) Fast Video Download.

FiraBug could be useful for debugging or other more complicated tasks, but not for this solution.
Also, DownThemAll might prove useful in the future.

Share your Google Reader shared items to a website / blog / feed reader etc.

[Post published by Liviu on Liviu's [Computer Science] Blog]


Problem:

Have you ever wanted to share your Google Reader shared items with the world, by inserting them in a website/blog?

I have wanted that since I started sharing items: hey, if I share something, let the world know it and read all shared items, since they might find it useful!



Solutions:

Solution 1: RSS feed
At some point, I inserted on my professional website a link to my shared items' RSS feed.
The RSS feed can be found on the page with your shared items, if you made them public: Settings > Reader settings > Folders and Tags > View public page >Atom feed.
Downside: that does not make too much impact, doesn't it?

Solution 2: Add a clip with your Google Reader shared items to a website or blog
Later, I saw this cool feature in Google Reader of adding a clip with your Google Reader shared items to a website or blog and realized I wanted to display them on my personal blog. So, I created the clip - that was some 6 months ago or more.
A few days ago, a friend asked how I did that, so I searched for the feature and found the solution described in Reader's Help: How do I add a clip to my website or blog? - note that Tags in now called Folders and Tags. Afterward, configuring your clip is straightforward.

Solution 3: Send to...
This is new apparently: Settings > Reader settings > Send to. From there you can choose some predefined websites or add your own.
Each time when sharing something, on the same row with Share, Share with note etc. you also have the option Send to - last one in the right.
I tested it a bit with Facebook, but it either makes things appear unattractive/unpleasant in my profile (e.g. for Dilbert strips only a link appears) or Facebook crashes when hitting the button Share (e.g. for Academia Catavencu).
I do not recommend this feature for now: I'll further test it and recommend it once it behaves nice.

Google vs. China

[Post published by Liviu on Liviu's [Computer Science] Blog]

Thanks to Financial Times, I got informed on what has happened recently between Google and China; see the so called Google vs. China section on FT.
I will enumerate just a few articles I've read and found interesting:

1. Google’s defiance of China really is praiseworthy
2. Beijing seeks to limit Google fallout 
3. Google is not alone in calling China’s bluff
4. Google stands up to China’s censors
5. Cyberattacks aimed at defence groups

My position is simple: I have always in the past and shall in the future (1) support competition and freedom (since I consider these the building blocks of our society) and (2) criticize any form of censorship and/or threat to competition.

Bucharest (capital city of Romania) on Google Maps

Great! We finally have the map of Bucharest, the capital city of Romania, on Google Maps. Really, take a look!
Ok, Googe has to improve its street names, since Magheru Blvd. is currently Kiseleff, but hey!, it's a good start! I've been waiting for this for a long time!


View Larger Map

BGP: security threats etc. and a bit of Google

While doing intensive reading on Tuesday (yes, school got me again growing some more white hair), I stumbled upon this quite interesting article Analysis of BGP prefix origins during Google's May 2005 outage (full text available from Carleton). One might be interested, I don't know. Or one might just read it and say to himself/herself: well, that was a funny reason.

Mozilla Firefox, Google search plugin (in the address bar) => remove local redirection (i.e. remove search redirection based on your IP)

A short note to myself: This post is, first of all, for me, to preserve my brain sanity (joking!) and increase my efficiency when I deal with this situation again. This has been the 4th time when I had to perform a search to solve it, therefore it's time I write it down for future reference.


Situation

The Google search plugin (in the search bar) in Firefox behaves different to what I expect:

• The search string is redirected to the local country code Google engine, i.e. .ro, but I prefer the international .com search => I must remove the redirection aka no country redirection


• The search result only offers 10 results per page, but I prefer 100.

I noticed that this happens in any one of the following situations:

• Firefox is reinstalled


• Firefox self updates, e.g. the update to 3.0.7 erased the old google.xml and I had to modify it again.

Therefore, I need a solution.


Solution

First, go to C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins

Second, open the google.xml file
This is where all the search bar settings are kept. Once you enter some text in that bar and hit enter, the search is performed based on the settings in that .xml

Perform the following modifications to the file:

• Add the following lines:
  <Param name="hl" value="en"/>
  <Param name="num" value="100"/>
  between the tags <Url> and </Url> (you will see similar lines there, but with other parameters)


• Delete all the lines of dynamic parameters: start with <!-- Dynamic parameters --> and stop before deleting </Url>


• Optional: between the tags ShortName, feel free to replace Google with Liviu's Google Search, since I think it's fun.


• Save the google.xml file, then restart Firefox. Select the Google search from the address bar (which contains many search options). Insert some string, perform the search. The address bar shall behave as Liviu, i.e. I, likes it to behave.

Enjoy!


Another solution

One can download the search plugin from the Mycroft Project page: click on the Google (No country redirect)


Some useful links:

The search parameters, as explained by Google - who knows, maybe you want to add some more parameters?...
The article that inspired me the first time when I solved this problem.

Solution: Remove/Delete JPEG metadata / header information

Problem:

One needs to modify/manipulate the header of .jpg files, i.e. one needs to remove / strip out / delete the metadata from those JPEG images. Obviously, one would need some sort of a tool to do that. So, I searched for something/anything to help me.


Solution 1: Jhead

I found (in 2008) this little command line tool called Jhead (documentation can be found here) which helped me get the job done.

Thank you. It's simple and has done exactly what I needed it to do.


Solution 2: exiftool (perl)

I found it in 2010 while reading Mat Cutts's blog post How to strip JPEG metadata in Ubuntu.

ImageMagick (convert), GhostScript (gswin32), GSview

To put it simple, I was trying (under Windows XP SP2) to convert a .pdf file into a .jpg file, to upload it on my personal blog.

ImageMagick is quite a good tool. I've been using it under Linux (Kubuntu) and Windows at various projects (i.e. at my diploma project, to convert some images into pdf files; at a project done as a homework for a course, called ASDN, at the faculty - my application had to recognize letters from that type of images used for login / create account and I was using neural networks as part of the solution and I used ImageMagick to play a bit with the images before actually running my algorithm etc.)

Since when I worked at my diploma project I used ImageMagick to convert .gif files into .pdf files and it worked, I supposed the opposite would work flawlessly today. Well... no. When I tried to convert a .pdf into a .jpg it gave the following error:

convert: `%s': %s "gswin32c.exe" -q -dQUIET -dPARANOIDSAFER -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -dNOPROMPT -dMaxBitmap=500000000 -dEPSCrop -dAlignToPixels=0 -dGridFitTT=0 "-sDEVICE=pnmraw" -dTextAlphaBits=4 -dGraphicsAlphaBits=4 "-r72x72" "-sOutputFile=C:/DOCUME~1/john/LOCALS~1/Temp/magick-jTzLRJ_C" "-fC:/DOCUME~1/john/LOCALS~1/Temp/magick-TlaNdwxx" "-fC:/DOCUME~1/john/LOCALS~1/Temp/magick-NkbgXR1g".
convert: Postscript delegate failed `myFile.pdf': No such file or directory.
convert: missing an image filename `myFile.jpg'.

^note: I replaced my actual filename with myfile.

One can imagine I was quite surprised when the error showed up in the command line. Ok, hello little error, let's see what upset you...

After searching a bit on the Internet (thank you, Google) I realized the solution was the following:

• Install GhostScript for Windows: http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/doc/GPL/gpl863.htm


• Optional: install GSview for Windows: http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/gsview/get49.htm - well, since I got so far, why not? It could be usefull sometime in the future... I mean, I have no viewer for .ps or .eps files (ok, for .pdf I have a viewer), and I've always wanted a viewer for those 2 file types, in fact it's been my secret desire for about 2 years now but I've never told anyone; ok, I admit it, I was too lazy to search for a .ps viewer and always clicked on the .pdf version of the same file.


• Run the convert command at the command line (convert is the mighty and powerfull ImageMagick) as I've tried before and get my job done.

Now, wasn't that simple or what?
Why did I get nervous in the first 15 minutes, mmm?

Ok, I admit it, I faced another tiny little problem after that: the default DPI seemed quite small (I drew this conclusion because some elements, i.e. characters and numbers in the .jpg output looked bad), so I had to increase the DPI in the output. This should help you get the job done.

After some attempts, I decided a 350x350 DPI is enough for me; yes the command was something like:

convert -density 350x350 inputFilename.pdf outputFilename.jpg

And yes, it worked.

Hope this helps you. Keep having fun with technology! ;)

The new Facebook: "This Box cannot be added to the Wall tab"

I have written some time ago about the new Facebook interface and two of the tabs that gave me headaches: Wall tab and Boxes tab - the issue, as I've described it then, was that I could not move neither "iRepresent", nor "Honesty box" from the Boxes tab to the Wall tab. (I filed a a bug report at that time, since I thought that to be a bug; however, I have not received a reply since)

Today, after playing a bit inside my Facebook account, i.e. surfing the settings and various options that the profile offers, I accidentally reached the Boxes tab; when I clicked on the little pencil shown in the upper right corner (in both "iRepresent" and "Honesty Box"), I discovered that besides the usual "Remove Box" message, I received an extra message: This Box cannot be added to the Wall tab

So, it was not a bug, it was a feature :D However, I still want to move these 2 boxes to the Wall tab, and I hope that some day they well allow the move.


Update: To the right of all tabs, there is that "+", which, if one clicks on, offers the possibility to add as a separate tab some of one's boxes; so, I took advantage of this option and added the "Honesty Box" as a separate tab; however I also keep it in the "Boxes tab". It's worth to mention that "iRepresent" cannot be added as a separate tab.

To do: add the Digg yellow button

To do: add the Digg yellow button to all my posts on both my personal blog and my computer science related stuff blog.

I did some research on the net (i.e. googling) => I found 2 solutions:

1. The first solution is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you, Jorge!
   
   Of course, there's also Digg's solution but it's not very straightforward to find - I mean the thing that I wanted with the button seems quite difficult to find. I found it on their website only when I knew what I was looking for. However, they don't say exactly how to integrate this with blogger: I have searched quite a bit on digg.com and I'm quite sure that they don't say anywhere on their site the exact specific way to integrate digg with blogger - I mean the exact specific information as I needed and Jorge's blog provided.
   
   The funny thing is that googling digg for the exact integration with blogger only offers results about digged web pages and none from Digg Help.
   



2. The second solution I found is for adding digg buttons to individual posts. I haven't tested that, because I didn't need it and also I don't have access to a server where to store that html file they're creating as a workaround.

Hope this helped anyone trying to add a Digg yellow button on their website!


P.S.: Now guess who's the first one to digg my personal blog! Yes, obviously, it's me!
P.S.2: Yes, yes, I know and I've read that technically they don't accept non-English digged links, but hey! it would be a real shame not to promote those posts I wrote about my traveling in Romania.