Innovation Toronto » google

Google backs ‘white space’ wi-fi

ron — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 15:35:53 +0000

Google is pressing the US government to allow the unlicensed frequencies of TV “white space” to be used for wi-fi.

The firm has written an open letter to regulators saying the US spectrum was a “once in a lifetime opportunity”.

White space is unused blocks of frequencies in-between channels broadcast on analogue airwaves.

“The vast majority of viable spectrum in this country simply goes unused, or else is grossly underutilised,” wrote Google’s Richard Whitt in the letter.

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Seattle Taps Its Inner Silicon Valley

ron — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 03:43:23 +0000

Many communities dream of becoming the next Silicon Valley. This one is actually doing it.

Stroll through the hip Fremont District and you will sense the Valley vibe. Google recently opened a research lab here, its second in Microsoft’s backyard. Technology start-ups are sprouting up amid quirky neighborhood landmarks like a bronze statue of Lenin and the Fremont Troll, the giant concrete creature lurking beneath the George Washington Memorial Bridge.

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Noca Targets Transaction Fees with New Online Payment System

ron — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 18:17:46 +0000

If you sell anything online, whether physical goods or services, you’re probably keenly aware of the 2-3% (plus $0.30) lost through transactional fees every time someone makes a purchase with their credit card. This fee rears its ugly head whether you use PayPal, Google Checkout, or Amazon Flexible Payment Service since those companies are largely just passing on the fees imposed on them by credit card companies.

Noca, a startup founded by ex-Visa employees, is attempting to virtually eliminate transaction feeds by bypassing the credit card companies altogether with its own online payment service.

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This Day Will Be Remembered: Facebook, Google And Plaxo Join The DataPortability Workgroup

ron — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 19:03:19 +0000

After publishing an invitation to Facebook to join the DataPortability Working Group January 4, we never thought that Facebook would accept it. Today changes everything you’ve ever thought about social-networking data and lock-in before, because today Facebook, Google and Plaxo have joined the DataPortability Workgroup.

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V.C. Nation - A Post-Google Fraternity of Investors

ron — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 14:42:39 +0000

Librado Romero/The New York Times

“I had one of the best jobs in the world,” said Chris Sacca, who left Google. “But there is a world of opportunity.”

SAN FRANCISCO — Chris Sacca had a plum job as the Wi-Fi guru at Google. But with his stock options fully vested, he left the Internet search company this month for a new career as a venture capitalist.

Mr. Sacca, 32, joins a growing number of Google millionaires hoping to parlay their newfound wealth into even greater riches by bankrolling technology start-ups.

Andrea Zurek, a former manager for a Google ad system, left in October. She is considering an investment in a company started by another Google alumnus.

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Google Options Make Masseuse a Multimillionaire

ron — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 02:45:26 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 11 — Bonnie Brown was fresh from a nasty divorce in 1999, living with her sister and uncertain of her future. On a lark, she answered an ad for an in-house masseuse at Google, then a Silicon Valley start-up with 40 employees. She was offered the part-time job, which started out at $450 a week but included a pile of Google stock options that she figured might never be worth a penny.

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The web is better when it’s social

ron — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 20:14:08 +0000

The web is more interesting when you can build apps that easily interact with your friends and colleagues. But with the trend towards more social applications also comes a growing list of site-specific APIs that developers must learn.

OpenSocial provides a common set of APIs for social applications across multiple websites. With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create apps that access a social network’s friends and update feeds.

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Why Google Turned Into a Social Butterfly

ron — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 17:05:38 +0000

FACEBOOK is an island. A most convivial island, with one’s classmates, friends, workmates and family members close at hand. An island that since May has been enlivened with entertaining fauna and flora in the form of minisoftware applications. But it’s still an island.

Suppose, however, that you could leave the island compound of a social networking site and take your network of friends, and friends of friends, anywhere on the Web? This is what makes Google’s announcement last week of a new alliance of companies so enticing — the possibility that social networking will become ubiquitous.

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Google and Friends to Gang Up on Facebook

ron — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 16:36:28 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 30 — Google and some of the Web’s leading social networks are teaming up to take on the new kid on the block — Facebook.

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Google’s Response to Facebook: “Maka-Maka”

ron — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 02:45:27 +0000

Google may have lost the bidding war to invest in Facebook, but it is preparing its own major assault on the social networking scene. It goes by the codename “Maka-Maka” inside the Googleplex (or, perhaps, “Makamaka”).

Maka-Maka encompasses Google’s grand plan to build a social layer across all of its applications. Some details about Maka-Maka have already leaked out, particularly how Google plans to use the feed engine that powers Google Reader (known internally as Reactor) to create “activity streams” for other applications akin to Facebook’s news and mini feeds. But Maka-Maka goes well beyond that.

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