I have just released my first ever Android application. It’s called World Cup 2010 TV Guide and is available in the Android Market (do a search for World Cup 2010 TV Guide or, better, just scan the above QR code.)

I got my Google Nexus One exactly two weeks ago (Thanks Alam and Dassen!) and I became a fan from the very first sight. The hardware is fantastic and the operating system, Android, which I upgraded to the latest 2.2 version on the same day, is excellent. It is built on Linux and provided all the features one can dream on a smartphone. Let’s just say that it easily matches whatever exists elsewhere…

Android software development

Android smartphones are programmed using Java using the Eclipse IDE. As you all know, I am somewhat of a Java buff myself and I love Eclipse and all the Java opensource ecosystem. The application itself is not very complex yet I had to spent a few days to understand how Android deals with user interface layouts (DroidDraw helped a lot) as well as with the built-in SQLite database.

Interestingly, I never felt constrained even though I was programming for a phone instead of a PC. The Nexus One is really a powerful device. And it runs Java so well that, now, I know why I spent all those years reading Java books and programming for fun up to 2am

What next?

Who knows? When I bought my Amiga 500 around 1988, it came in a box on which was written “Your Imagination is the Limit” and this really made me understand how malleable and powerful a computer can be when programmed correctly. I am really looking forward to learn how to develop more powerful Android application.

In the meantime, download “World Cup 2010 TV Guide” in the Android Market. And have fun with it!

When I was an adolescent circa end of the 80′s / beginning of the 90′s, I owned the best computer available at that time: the mighty Commodore Amiga 500.

It was powered by a 16/32 bits processor (the Motorola 68000) at 7.14MHz and four coprocessors (Gary, Agnus, Paula, Denise), had 1Mb of RAM, had 4096 colours on screen at once, had stereo sound, ran a powerful operating system featuring a graphical windowing environment and was very well technically documented. As a result, I spent many nights learning programming (BASIC, C and 68000 Assembly) on my Amiga 500.

My new Amiga

Twenty years later and I still like using the Amiga. But now it’s in software form. I run E-UAE which is a Ubiquitous Amiga Emulator. I run it on my Linux Mint PC and performance is fine (the PC is only 1000 times quicker…) I even love getting a Guru Meditation from time to time. This brings back a lot of memories.

Last December, Father Christmas gave me a Sony PlayStation 3.

Today, 1st April 2010, I am starting to regret that he did this.

You see, I am not a gamer. I use my PS3 mostly to watch movies and to browse the Web. The built-in Web browser is fine and supports Flash so I indulge in YouTube pleasure from time to time with it. The media playing capabilities of the PS3 are also very good and the PS3 supports a lot of video formats out of the box e.g. MPEG1, MPEG2 (VOB), MPEG4 (DivX and H264) and WMV. I routinely connect my PS3 to my DNS-323 NAS to enjoy the latest series and movies.

And, if I want to browse using a better browser than the built-in one or I want to watch something stored in a more esoteric format, I just reboot my PS3 and, voilà, I have a Ubuntu Linux computer in my living room! Yes, the PS3 allows installing third-party operating system and this makes the device more desirable (at least for me.) Interestingly, this is why the US Department of Defense and the US Air Force bought myriads of PS3 in the past: they used them in clusters to build supercomputers as the PS3 has a very powerful Cell processor inside.

Fools in April

Today, Sony released a new firmware update for the PS3 which essentially make Linux inoperative on it. As quoted on the Electronic Frontier Foundation website, Sony is stealing features from my PS3. Here is a quote from the EFF:

In short, Sony is effectively downgrading PS3s already sold and in the hands of consumers — when you bought it, it could play games, play Blu-ray discs, and run GNU/Linux. After April 1, it’s an inferior product.

To be fair, it seems Sony did that because a guy called George Hotz managed to

use the [Linux] feature [on the PS3] along with a bit of soldering in a manner that gave him more control over the PS3 hardware than Sony had intended.

So, today, Sony responded and killed Linux on the PS3. Sure, the upgrade is optional (meaning that my Ubuntu Linux is still perfectly functional as I do not intend to upgrade) but here is what I lose as a result of not upgrading:

(1) The ability to sign in to PlayStation Network

(2) The ability to use online features that require you to sign in to PlayStation Network, such as chat.

(3) The ability to use the online features of PlayStation 3 format software (like network play and software updates.)

(4) Playback of PlayStation 3 format software or Blu-ray Disc videos that require PS3 system software version 3.21 or later

(5) Playback of copyright-protected videos that are stored on a media server

I am going to lose a lot of capabilities but I’ll keep my Linux. The one thing that bothers me a lot is that I won’t be able to upgrade software (i.e. games) online so, as more and more of them are just being released full of bugs (and I won’t be able to patch the game), I’ll think at least twice or even thrice before buying a game for my kids (as I’m not a gamer myself.)

Why this is a stupid move

Sony should have patched the PS3 so that the hack by George Hotz stops working. Of course, another George Hotz would have come later with a new hack and Sony would have had to patch the PS3 again. But this is normal when you sell a product with DRM in it… because DRM is, well, a stupid idea.

DRM is about making people buy hardware and software controlled by a third-party. And, of course, people naturally want to be free. George Hotz is not a bad guy. He is just a guy like you and me who became fed up with the idea of owning a fantastically powerful device over which he had no full control: Sony allowed Linux to run (until yesterday) but, in parallel, disabled most of processing power of the Cell processor as well as the graphical processing unit just before booting the Linux kernel. So, in essence, Linux was running on a very crippled PS3.

My prediction

A lot of people (who had no earlier interest in the PS3) will now try to hack the new PS3 firmware. And I guess they’ll succeed in a more or less near future (ask the Nintendo people what they think of Wiibrew for instance.) Maybe we’ll see a PS3brew community emerge really soon now.

Thanks Sony for being stupid.

My company, Knowledge Seven Ltd, will be running two courses in the following weeks:

• Web Development with PHP & MySQL will run on 8, 15, 22 February and 1, 8 March
• Linux System Administration will run on 5, 19, 26 February and 5, 11 March

Both courses are MQA-approved and places are still available. Call us on 464-7446 or visit http://www.knowledge7.com/ for more information.

My company, Knowledge Seven Ltd, will shortly start a Web Development with PHP & MySQL course as well as a Linux System Administration course.

Do not hesitate to contact us for more information.

I am proud to announce the launching of my new recommendation website called ThreeBags and which is accessible at

http://www.threebags.com/

ThreeBags showcases the best basic, value and prestige mobile phones, smartphones, digital cameras, MP3 players, LCD televisions, home cinema systems and laptops available in Mauritius.

Naturally, ThreeBags relies 100% on open source software and, in fact, uses Linux, MySQL, Java, Spring, Hibernate, C3P0, Jakarta Commons, etc. Interestingly, I considered using PHP initially but I wanted to have a go at Enterprise Java using Spring and Hibernate and I think I can say that this combination is very powerful, somewhat complex to learn and rock solid (as far as I can see.)

A few months ago, I realised that even though technology surround us, choosing and buying a technology product is tough: too many buzzwords, too many models, too many shops and so few people willing to explain things clearly. This is how I got the idea about ThreeBags: a recommendation website with seven categories of products (from mobile phones to home cinema systems) and three recommended products per category: one basic, one value and one prestige model. One interesting aspect of ThreeBags is that you can specify your budget and let ThreeBags give you an optimal set of technological products within that budget.

You will notice that there are no advertisements on ThreeBags. Additionally, I do not get paid by anyone to recommend a specific product. My evaluation criteria are product features, design, availability in Mauritius and price only.

Visit ThreeBags at

http://www.threebags.com/

ThreeBags also has a blog which is accessible at

http://blog.threebags.com/

Of course, constructive criticism is always welcome

The D-Link DNS-323 NAS is great. It runs Linux, is infinitely tweakable and plays nicely with most devices I have at home including my MacBook, my Linux boxes and my Wii running MPlayer CE which I use to watch DivX on my TV.

The only problem I had was that the NAS only offered SMB (via Samba) out of the box which meant that some operations were somewhat slow when initiated from my MacBook. For instance, deletes were slow even though transfer speeds were great. After reading some posts online, I realised that the solution was to activate AFP (Apple Filing Protocol) as well as Multicast DNS (Bonjour) on the NAS. AFP is provided by Netatalk and Bonjour by Avahi.

Of course, to install new software on the DNS-323, you must have fun_plug properly activated.

Installing Avahi on the DNS-323

1) Get libdaemon and avahi.

Install both with

funpkg -i libdaemon-0.13-1.tgz
funpkg -i avahi-0.6.24-1.tgz

2) Add an avahi user

groupadd -g 50 avahi
useradd -u 50 -g avahi -d /tmp -s /bin/false avahi

3) Create a startup script called /ffp/start/avahi.sh as shown here.

#!/ffp/bin/sh

# PROVIDE: avahi
# REQUIRE: SERVERS

. /ffp/etc/ffp.subr

name="avahi"
command="/ffp/sbin/avahi-daemon"
avahi_daemon_flags="-D -s"
required_files="/ffp/etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf /ffp/etc/avahi/hosts"

start_cmd="avahi_start"

avahi_start()
{
	# need avahi user and group for priviledge separation
	if ! grep '^avahi:' /etc/passwd >/dev/null; then
	        echo 'avahi:x:50:50:Avahi Daemon:/no/where:/bin/false' >>/etc/passwd
	fi
	if ! grep '^avahi:' /etc/shadow >/dev/null; then
	        echo 'avahi:*:14493:0:99999:7:::' >>/etc/shadow
	fi
	if ! grep '^avahi:' /etc/group >/dev/null; then
	        echo 'avahi::50:avahi' >>/etc/group
	fi

	proc_start $command
}

run_rc_command "$1"

4) Make the file executable so that avahi starts when the DNS-323 boots

chmod +x /ffp/start/avahi.sh

5) Create /ffp/etc/avahi/services/smb.service

<?xml version="1.0" standalone="no"?><!--*-nxml-*-->
<service-group>
        <name replace-wildcards="yes">%h</name>
        <service>
                <type>_smb._tcp</type>
                <port>445</port>
        </service>
</service-group>

6) Create /ffp/etc/avahi/services/http.service

<?xml version="1.0" standalone="no"?><!--*-nxml-*-->
<service-group>
        <name replace-wildcards="yes">%h</name>
        <service>
                <type>_http._tcp</type>
                <port>80</port>
        </service>
</service-group>

7) Create /ffp/etc/avahi/services/device-info.service (This changes the ICON shown in Mac OS X)

<?xml version="1.0" standalone="no"?><!--*-nxml-*-->
<service-group>
        <name replace-wildcards="yes">%h</name>
        <service>
                <type>_device-info._tcp</type>
                <port>0</port>
                <txt-record>model=RackMac</txt-record>
        </service>
</service-group>

8 ) Launch avahi

/ffp/start/avahi.sh

Installing AFP (netatalk) on the DNS-323

1) Get db42 and netatalk and install both with

funpkg -i db42-4.2.52-1.tgz
funpkg -i netatalk-2.0.4-1.tgz

2) Create a startup script called /ffp/start/afpd.sh as shown here.

#!/ffp/bin/sh

# PROVIDE: afpd
# BEFORE:
# REQUIRE:

. /ffp/etc/ffp.subr

name="afpd"
start_cmd="afpd_start"
stop_cmd="afpd_stop"
status_cmd="afpd_status"

afpd_start()
{
    /ffp/sbin/afpd
}

afpd_stop()
{
    killall afpd
}

afpd_status()
{
    ps -A | grep /ffp/sbin/afpd | grep -v grep
}

run_rc_command "$1"

3) Make it executable with

chmod +x /ffp/start/afpd.sh

4) Create /ffp/etc/avahi/services/afpd.service as show here.

<?xml version="1.0" standalone="no"?><!--*-nxml-*-->
<!DOCTYPE service-group SYSTEM "avahi-service.dtd">

<service-group>

<name replace-wildcards="yes">%h</name>

<service>
<type>_afpovertcp._tcp</type>
<port>548</port>
</service>

</service-group>

5) Use the “vipw” command and change some details for the default “nobody” user so that Mac OS X can use that user to log in.

nobody:x:501:501:Linux User,,,:/home/nobody:/ffp/bin/bash

Give a password to that user and store the password (in clear text) in the user’s home directory as shown here.

passwd nobody
cd /home
mkdir nobody
echo "secret" > nobody/.passwd
chown -R nobody: nobody

It is essential to store this user’s information in the flash memory of the DNS-323. Do this with:

store-passwd.sh

6) Modify /ffp/etc/netatalk/AppleVolumes.default to add the required shares. Mine looks like:

# The "~" below indicates that Home directories are visible by default.
# If you do not wish to have people accessing their Home directories,
# please put a pound sign in front of the tilde or delete it.
# ~     

/mnt/HD_a2 Volume_1
/mnt/HD_b2 Volume_2

Notice that I have commented the ~ because I don’t want the user to have a home directory on the DNS-323. I only want to access Volume_1 and Volume_2.

7) Start netatalk

/ffp/start/afpd.sh start

Making Mac OS X Leopard play nice with Netatalk

To allow Leopard to connect to AFP shares with clear text (unencrypted) passwords, do as shown here:

# to be done on the Mac and not the DNS-323
sudo defaults write com.apple.AppleShareClient "afp_cleartext_allow" -bool YES
sudo defaults write com.apple.AppleShareClient "afp_cleartext_warn" -bool YES

Enjoy!

You can now connect to the DNS-323 from a Mac and get optimal performance. Phew. Linux is sooooo fun… for geeks like me

5 November 2009 update: Instead of creating a new user, the existing user “nobody” is used. This allows the DNS-323 to be used through AFP and SMB transparently as SMB uses “nobody” by default. Interestingly, when the DNS-323 reboots, its /home directory starts anew and therefore will lack a /home/nobody directory (with its .passwd file) but this does not seem to trouble Mac OS X.

Google engineers held a two day conference on 3-4 September 2009 to give a technical overview of key Google technologies (like Google Maps and Earth, Open Social, Friend Connect, AdSense, AdWords, Analytics, the App Engine, the Web Toolkit etc.) for software development and for enhancing business processes.

During the news item, I explain how important it is for a major IT company like Google to come to Mauritius and how beneficial Google technologies can be for the local economy.

I am always in awe of how easy it seems for Google to create new technologies mostly out of thin air in a very short amount of time. For example, I use Gmail on a daily basis and, seriously, I don’t think that there is anything as good as it elsewhere. The beauty of Gmail is, of course, that it was created by someone out of passion during his 20% of free time that all Googlers get.

Naturally, the essential word in the above paragraph is seems. This is because nothing could be further from truth. Google succeeds in creating great products and technologies because it only recruits the best (and, ouch, I know that…) and encourage them to innovate.

During the conference, someone asked a really bizarre question: “Were we going to receive training certificates at the end?” This is bizarre for two reasons (i) the conference was not a training course and (ii) we already had received more than a mere piece of paper: the Googlers were sharing their knowledge with us! Once more, lorsque le sage montre la lune du doigt, l’imbécile regarde le doigt…

[This video is extracted from the MBC national TV news bulletin.]

I was at the G-MauritiusDay2009 conference today and the Googlers talked about a lot of Google technologies to help people build better websites and monetise them. Here is my Twitter transcript:

(about 9 hours ago)
#googlemu Second day of the Google conference in Mauritius! Mary Himinkool, who does New Business Development, talks about Google's vision

(about 9 hours ago in reply to asheshr)
@asheshr How bizarre… They use MacBooks Pro and mentioned Linux one or twice yesterday

(about 9 hours ago)
#googlemu A captivating website is (i) relevant (ii) customisable (iii) respect users (iv) engage users to participate (v) innovative

(about 9 hours ago)
#googlemu Innovation = Launch early and iterate = open source development model

(about 9 hours ago)
#googlemu Long tail community of users…

(about 9 hours ago)
#googlemu Need to have a look at the nice things on Google Labs http://www.googlelabs.com/

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Google Indic Transliteration in real time http://www.google.com/transliterate/indic

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Innovation = Share everything you can = open source development model once more

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Innovation = Hire the best (most intelligent — not most vocal

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Innovation = Allow people to pursue dreams. 20% of the time, Googlers do whatever they want to spend energy on.. and you get Gmail

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Innovation = ideas come from everywhere. Make people meet, talk and communicate. Let them suggest ideas.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Google acquires companies to get people with new ideas.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Innovation = don't politic — use data. Only deduce something from hard facts. Get the data! Run pilot experiments!

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Innovation = creativity loves restraints — put clear boundaries

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Focus on Users and usage and money will follow. Don't focus on the money. Start with satisfying user needs.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Don't kill projects — morph them. Simplify. Combine. E.g. Google Talk + Gmail = Gmail chat…

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Talked about Google Trends http://www.google.com/trends

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu THE FUTURE = LIVING IN THE CLOUD. I'm convinced. And I hope you're too!

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Advances: Better search, better visualisation, etc.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu A great wind is blowing and that gives you either imagination or a headache. I'm lucky that I'm being inspired by Mary

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy told us to blog about how awesome the keynote by Mary was. So I feel compelled to say that Mary's keynote was very nice.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu 15 minutes of break before a Google Analytics session. See you later.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy starts on Adsense and Adwords.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu 74,200,000,000 Google searches in June 2008. Bloody hell

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Evolution of search: lycos, askjeeves, yahoo, excite, web crawler. Brings a lot of past memory.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy mentions Mozilla Aurora, 3D search, http://www.adaptivepath.com/aurora/

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Google Search is successful because of its speed (and also its relevance.)

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy didn't mention it but Google search runs on a cluster of 500,000 Linux computers.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Google continually changes its algo. 10-20% of the web is new each time Google starts using a new algo.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu By the way (and this will appeal to functional programming fans like me), Google uses MapReduce http://bit.ly/2ErR0O

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy explaining the Ad Auction mechanism. See http://bit.ly/VUAVo

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Ad position determined by quality score (click-through-rate, keyword, ad text, landing page quality.) So ad text also has a role!

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Ad position also depends on how much the advertiser wants to pay (CPC). Ad rank = quality score * max CPC.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Payment = Ad rank / competitor quality score + $0.01. Actual CPC <= Max CPC.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Revise your Quality Score and your Max CPC a least once per month

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Account -> Campaign -> Ad group. Chose relevant keywords and ad text.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy mentions the AdWords Keyword Tool https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu The Keyword Tool is really excellent. I am happy to have been introduced to it!

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy explains exact match, phrase match, broad match, negative match. See http://bit.ly/ecb3S

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy says that people spend less time watching TV, listening radio and reading. Instead they do those things online.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Marketers are moving online as things can be measured. Everything is based on clicks.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Return on investment calculation becomes trivial.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu New platforms: mobile. iPhone users search 50x more than other mobile phone users. Mobile ad market: around $4B estimated.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy mentions the Nokia N900 http://maemo.nokia.com/n900/ which is the future of phones ahem computers, maybe.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu The guy next to me is fast asleep. He shouldn't have come…

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy says that the most important parameter in AdWords is the budget per day. Starts at $1 per day which means Rs 1000 per month

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu The destination URL for an advert should be as specific as possible.

(about 7 hours ago in reply to yashvin)
@yashvin I hope that guy didn't come yesterday

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy is a fetishist: he is using the domain lickmyear.org as an example domain

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Adwords finished. All and good. Now let's move to AdSense.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Explains about ad units, etc.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Revenue from AdSense depends of course on the traffic.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy finished doing his presentation on AdWords (great) and AdSense (so so…) Julian will talk of Analytics next.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Julian starts on Google Analytics. Know your users. Decide from data! That's the new mantra

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Analytics = what's happening | Website Optimizer = change your website

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Julian Harris explains how analytics is highly customisable: profiles, geofiltering, custom reporting, visitor demographics, API

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Having referrals is a great way to increase traffic. http://www.noulakaz.net/ gets 55% of its traffic from referrals.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Julian explains the difference between hits and page views. A single page might request hundreds of server hits.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Julian speaks on Analytics URL builder http://bit.ly/foZtS

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu For those who don't know: Chewy is @LordofGoats and Julian is @julianharris What about the other Googlers?

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Hell! I've mistakenly typed @ instead of # again. I am getting too old for this

(about 7 hours ago in reply to who0)
@who0 De rien

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Think in terms of user goals! Know your users. Why are they coming on my website?

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Potential goals: e-commerce, lead generation, brand and/or product awareness, member acquisition, etc.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Google Analytics can track goals (multiple pages e.g. an e-commerce sale process.)

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu For lead generation, goal tracking can be used, for example, to check whether a visitor is filling in a form after his visit.

(about 7 hours ago in reply to AdamWoozeer)
@AdamWoozeer True. True.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Analytics allow you to "pinpoint where you lose visitors" and "duplicate successful paths" I really need to have a look at goals

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Up to now, I have used Analytics as a good-looking webalizer. I need to change my stance.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Funnel reporting looks really nice graphically.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Don't don't don't tell me that googlestore is powered by ASP!?!?!?

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Goals and Funnels explained at http://bit.ly/GKWmX I have to spend some time with those for my http://www.knowledge7.com/ website

(about 6 hours ago in reply to misrael)
@misrael You win this time #googlemu

(about 6 hours ago)
@misrael There is something fishy. If you go on the website e.g. http://bit.ly/cmYx5 you'll see that it is using PHP… #googlemu

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu So, on the Analytics webpage, we see .asp pages whereas when we visit the site, we can see .php. Who can explain? Using both?

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Julian now starts talking of Google Site Optimizer which is what you should do after doing analytics.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Netcraft confirms that googlestore.com works on IIS 6.0 http://bit.ly/rSrRJ Must be a side project, n'est ce pas @misrael?

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Site Optimizer https://www.google.com/analytics/siteopt/ allow people to improve conversion rate.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Site optimizer allows people to do A/B testing (compare two versions of the same page) and multivariate experiment (compare >2)

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Read http://bit.ly/2VQhFd for more information on Google Site Optimizer

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu What? Test what combination of site content drives most conversions. Why? Help marketers convert visitors into customers.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Visitors take 8 seconds to decide whether they will leave or stay! So cut down on the crap graphics

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Julian is talking about multivariate analysis. In other words, GSO can compare the conversion rates of, say, 3 versions of a page.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu GWO allows different designs to cohabit. Nothing to do with trying out a design for, say, a week. That's neat.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Maybe Julian is getting into too much depth, isn't he? A lot of people in the audience are somewhat dizzy

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Julian was a user experience consultant in his pre-Google life. By the way, you should really really read http://bit.ly/VMhYK

(about 6 hours ago in reply to __Sun__)
@__Sun__ Why don't you come? I don't think they'll notice there is an "outsider" #googlemu

(about 6 hours ago)
@misrael timbuktubikes runs on PHP I'm vindicated! #googlemu

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Talking of conversions and conversion rate. See http://bit.ly/W82Hp Basically, has the visitor done THE action you wanted.

(about 6 hours ago in reply to LordofGoats)
@LordofGoats Finding nice sounding domains has really become tough lately because of those people buying domains in bulk. #googlemu

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Julian has just finished demoing a Website Optimizer experiment. Now he is showing us a case study of Picassa.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Julian said something very important: "A funnel can be only one page!" That's excellent.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Hypothesis #1: It is always better to describe user benefits than product features

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Site optimizer showed that the hypothesis was false. I would have never guessed…

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Julian showing us a "enhanced" design which cut the sales by half. He also said that the homepage is a political battleground

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Julian is summarising now. He has called Julien Faliu how he optimizes his own website. See http://www.expat-blog.com/

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu sed 's/u h/u to show h/g' please

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu Expat-Blog has a lot of traffic. More than 290,000 visits per month. Julien must be a rich guy

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu Julien is getting more than 6000 new customers per month on Expat-Blog now

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu Julien Faliu is saying that Analytics & AdSense are great tools to monetise a website. I guess we're all convinced now

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu 66% of people coming on Expat-Blog register. That's excellent!!!

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu Consultants can use Google products for free and bill customers for their service. Phew [As if we didn't know already.]

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu Someone asked a good question on the real influence of SEO experts on ranking. They didn't answer. Seems to work though.

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu Talking of the potential of using Google Earth for the tourist industry..

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy showing us a layer in Google Earth from fboweb.com where one can see all airplanes flying in the US airspace! That's neat!

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu See http://flightwise.com/ for more info.

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu Need to have some *real* food now

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy showing us Google Squared http://www.google.com/squared

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu Lunchtime!!!

(about 4 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy explains Google Search (1) crawling (2) page ranking http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html and (3) indexing

(about 4 hours ago in reply to kiagiri)
@kiagiri Should be on http://flightwise.com/ somewhere… Sorry I don't remember the exact name.

(about 4 hours ago)
#googlemu For fun, search for "search engine" on Google and be surprised

(about 4 hours ago)
#googlemu 25% of queries have not been seen in 3 months. 10-25% of the web is new each time Google crawls it.

(about 4 hours ago)
#googlemu Basic guidelines. Make your website (1) discoverable (2) indexable (3) nice content and structure (4) get a lot of incoming links

(about 4 hours ago)
#googlemu About (4), do it correctly: by becoming authoritative in some adequate forums and having, say, your URL in your signature.

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Make your URLs nice and clean. Have a lot of normal internal text links so that the GoogleBot can visit all pages…

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Reduce the number of redirects to a minimum. Think about what users will type as keywords. Use good titles, headings and keywords.

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy mentioned Linux again. And Mary somewhat described the open source development model in the morning. I'm happy

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Check your website using Lynx GoogleBot cannot (yet) understand images…

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Use Flash and Javascript sparingly. Measure everything. Run Analytics. Look at referring sites. etc.

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Flash recommendations: use HTML for navigation, use meta tags, use text tracks, create an HTML version of your site…

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Personally I dream of a world with no flash but a lot of HTML5. See http://www.youtube.com/html5 I tried with Safari and it works

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy is explaining the syntax of robots.txt which a lot of people don't know about. I don't use robots.txt personally.

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Dealing with duplicate content. Read about rel="canonical" at http://bit.ly/I9KXQ

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Google does not like paid links or anything fishy at all!

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Showing us Google Webmasters Central http://www.google.com/webmasters/

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu … which allows people to use the Google Webmaster Tools.

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu "Top search queries" only appear here, in the Google Webmaster Tools. It's worth its weight in gold

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Exploring GWT. Crawl stats. Pages crawled per day. Time spent downloading a page. PageRank of pages. Page with highest PageRank.

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu About SEO: you need to understand what the SEO people are doing. Avoid black hat http://bit.ly/dREBl

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Mary starts presenting some innovative applications using Google technology. First…

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu http://www.meetup.com/ Do something • Learn something Share something • Change something

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu More info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meetup.com

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Showing us http://animoto.com/ Turn your photos & videos into pure amazing videos. Free, fast and shockingly easy

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu You can add music. Either your own or one of the Creative Commons music available there.

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Now she's showing us http://www.zappos.com/map/ which is something girls will love

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Now we're seeing http://obamavisits-ghana.appspot.com/ which is the Obama visits Ghana website. App Engine, YouTube, Maps, etc.

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu By the way, something nice just happened. Flash crashed within Chrome and everything still works This is great.

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Don't forget about the Google App Gallery http://appgallery.appspot.com/ I really need to get into that.

(about 2 hours ago in reply to LordofGoats)
@LordofGoats HTML5 has the potential to displace Flash from the heart of a lot of *real* web developers #googlemu

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Asvin Balloo has just showed us his own application http://twitree.com/ and it was great

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Now having a look at http://www.kotzot.com/ and it looks like a portal for Mauritians. Dilraj is demoing it

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu I think it's time now to go home. Seems that there is not much to see.

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu I liked: App Engine, Friend Connect, Mary's keynote, Adwords, Adsense, Analytics and some of the websites shown by Mary.

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu I was somewhat less enthusiastic about: the Google Web Toolkit but, maybe, I didn't manage to understand everything.

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy is showing us Google Audio Indexing http://labs.google.com/gaudi You can search for words in a video!!!

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Mary mentions Google Channels. I need to think about using one for @KnowledgeSeven

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu I need to ask one question about Android…

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy said that Android has just started and everything now will depend on the user community developing applications.

(about 1 hour ago)
#googlemu Finished with a great group photo. Bye bye everyone. It was great being part of this event and twittering for 2 days was cool too

Today I was at the G-MauritiusDay2009 conference organised by Google and the Board of Investment and I spent the whole day listening to the Google engineers and twittering about the event. Here is my Twitter transcript:

(about 9 hours ago)
Twittering from G-Mauritius Day! The Wifi connection (being shared by 100's…) is slow but it works

(about 9 hours ago)
I recognise a lot of friends: Anwar and Raj from the UoM, loads of ex-UoM students, friends from RCC, ex-MCCI colleagues etc.

(about 9 hours ago)
Starting now… with a promo video of Google… as if we needed one

(about 9 hours ago)
Speeches are starting. Boring as usual… up to now.

(about 9 hours ago in reply to fadilfr)
@fadilfr Raise your hand fadil so that I can see you

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Sascha Brawer, lead engineer at Google Zurich, starts his keynote address.

(about 8 hours ago in reply to girishmungra)
@girishmungra The speech was, ahem, a 3/10 speech

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Adewale Ostineye, Google London engineer starts talking.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu … history of the web. I'm not too happy he said the web was crap in 1995. It was not.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu You should bet on the web.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu open standards HTML5, atom, openid, oauth

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Google, Apple, etc. are behind HTML5 so you can bet on it succeeding…

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu geolocation api allows a webpage to know one's location. Of course, the user has to allow this first.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu HTML5 + offline (web workers, appcache, etc.) for more powerful client software.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari all collaborate. The browsers are becoming really good. Chrome succeeds Acid2 & most of Acid3.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Web browsers have excellent Javascript engines now. Try http://www.youtube.com/html5 for a non-Flash version of YouTube…

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Test the speed of your webpage with the page-speed Firefox extension.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Talking of Ajax apps now. Still a bit too generic for my liking…

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu API-driven development is the future. Twitter gets more traffic through its API than its web interface…

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu "The mobile web site is changing from being the low-end website to being the high-end website"

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu There is no difference between a laptop and a (good) mobile phone now… as they run the same browser.

(about 8 hours ago)
#googlemu Going to give an interview to the MBC

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu demo of Picassa, Friendfeed, etc. without polling, hence minimal use of bandwidth.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Talking of cloud computing now: Google App Engine & Amazon EC2

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Need to have a look at http://code.google.com/p/pubsubhubbub/ The name is crap

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Someone is having fun playing with Google Map Maker…

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu When using Pubsubhubhub, the hubs run on the cloud: Google App Engine.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu GoogleMapMaker http://bit.ly/10l7qM does not work at this moment. Google is surely seeing 100's of requests from the same IP…

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu GoogleMapMaker includes a wiki to discuss about edits before they become permanent.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu I'm yearning for some code I would like to know more about the Google Maps API…

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Easy way to use Google Maps API. See http://bit.ly/wCQZ

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Yeah! Google Maps API code. It's really powerful and easy to use. Javascript closures are used to make the code more compact.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Google Maps API Wizard found at http://bit.ly/xbgAL It generates HTML code.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Amazon EC2 is instance based. You have to manage your own "machines"

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Fabric based clouds (like App Engine) allow you to deploy to an environment and Google decides how many servers should be used.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu http://bit.ly/aIxdA Sandbox: no threads, no native code, no filesystem access, no sockets, must respond to requests within 30s.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu App Engine only hosts web apps. Receive requests and send back response. Shared-nothing architecture: stateless.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Java session API works using Datastore http://bit.ly/ZDDhQ and Memcache http://bit.ly/cdYrn

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Google App Engine applications are written in Python by the way. I forgot to mention that.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Every language which runs on the JVM runs on the Google App Engine: Java 5 and above, JRuby, Clojure

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Quota: under 500 queries per second is free

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu Distributed datastore based on Bigtable http://bit.ly/y9lw4 Looks a lot like a hashmap instead of being a RDBMS. GQL for queries.

(about 7 hours ago)
#googlemu UrlFetch library / Send email / Image manipulation / Optional authentication using Google accounts… (including gafd accounts)

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu cron has just been added to the App Engine. 20 actions max.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Experimental feature of Google App Engine: task queues (essentially delayed requests and responses.) Increases scalability.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Adewale Ostineye likes Python and he is raving about Jython…

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Google App Engine gallery of applications: http://appgallery.appspot.com/

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Someone asked about polymorphic queries. Google will answer later. See http://bit.ly/EWXhr

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Polymorphic queries are just queries which return rows from derived tables too. SELECT * FROM animal returns DOGs and CATs.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Relaxing for 5 minutes before a hopefully great app engine hands-on with the Google Web Toolkit http://bit.ly/18FoZ2 and Java.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Java, Eclipse, Javascript, HTML to be covered. I need to be convinced that a UI can be *easily* done in Java

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu We're starting HELLO WORLD using Google Web Toolkit, GeoGuestBook, maps, gears and geolocation.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Julian Harris Technical Account Manager

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Starting a new Web Application Project in Eclipse. Need to add the App Engine Eclipse plugin.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Starting a new Web Application Project in Eclipse. Need to add the App Engine Eclipse plugin.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu GWT offers history support. Solves the problem of the BACK button in browsers…

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu I'm trying developing my own app using GWT and so far it works

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu GWT supports Java 5

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Now we're doing some geolocation…

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu onModuleLoad is the entry point. According to Julian, GWT looks a lot like Spring

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Java looks verbose even if inner classes somewhat make things simpler. A service can return POJOs or collections of POJOs.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu Personally I am not too convinced about GWT. I wonder if something like jQuery is not adequate enough.

(about 6 hours ago)
#googlemu In GWT, a POJO is the schema for the database. No separate XML required.

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu Geolocation based on Wifi access point works really well. See http://bit.ly/antBw

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu Julian thinks that using a static language like Java is a good thing (TM) Scala?

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu is showing us how I18N can be done. I works with Java property files and looks trivial…

(about 5 hours ago in reply to vyshane)
@vyshane Most dynamic languages too are strongly typed So, no need for wars

(about 5 hours ago in reply to kurtavish)
@kurtavish You're right. Replace all @ by #googlemu

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu Google Wave is written using Google Web Toolkit.

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu I need to get more into Spring Web Flow

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu … or Wicket. It's not (yet) used in industry but a lot of people are raving about it. See http://wicket.apache.org/

(about 5 hours ago)
#googlemu Time for lunch now!

(about 4 hours ago)
#googlemu Back from lunch (ahem!) and Chewy, a Google Developer Advocate, has started talking…

(about 4 hours ago)
#googlemu Talking of iGoogle. And of RSS aggregation. Gadgets. Which can be rich applications. Flash games. Or other webpages…

(about 4 hours ago)
#googlemu iGoogle gadgets are interesting… but only a few people use iGoogle and there are so many of them! How do you choose?!?

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu The philosophy of the Amazon gadget is interesting. One can compare prices with non-Amazon store (which are sometimes cheaper.)

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Gadgets are build upon HTML and therefore you can easily use analytics on them.

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Gadgets can also be embedded on normal webpages. This is very nice IMHO.

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu The Google Gadget Editor http://bit.ly/2f8eP looks nice and can be put on iGoogle as a gadget. Recursion at work

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu One can enable and disable caching on a gadget to gadget basis…

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu I should try to build my own Google Gadget. Looks easy. And I can then embed it on http://www.noulakaz.net/

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu OpenSocial starting now. Social everywhere!!! Share links. etc. Talks of 5 eras of social web http://bit.ly/232XYZ

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Need to investigate Facebook Connect http://developers.facebook.com/connect.php

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu http://www.skittles.com/ is the future of websites!!!

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu http://www.booneoakley.com/ is too

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu People don't come to your website anymore…. (re: Twitter) Email is dead!

(about 3 hours ago)
I am delighted to tell the world that this is my 1000th twit. Thanks to all those following me. I love the web

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Talking of http://www.opensocial.org/ now. Mentioning Orkut, LinkedIn, Hi5, Salesforce. OpenSocial has a REST interface.

(about 3 hours ago in reply to asheshr)
@asheshr Thanks! I would never have guessed that my 1000th would have been in the middle of a Google conference

(about 3 hours ago)
#googlemu Need to check http://www.buddypoke.com/ It uses the OpenSocial API and runs on Google App Engine

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy is making me reconsider my stance towards social games. I'll need to try some of them. They seem to be neat

(about 2 hours ago in reply to sjdvda)
@sjdvda Congrats. Incidentally, it would be a good idea to have a regular girlfriend too

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Need to understand the implications of Google Friend Connect http://www.google.com/friendconnect/

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu As a flight sim addict, I am definitely going to check http://plane-crazy.appspot.com/

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Google Friend Connect looks really powerful and can greatly increase the "attractiveness" of websites…

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Chewy has finished. Things to check: gadgets. And Google Friend Connect. There are so many things to learn and so little time.

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Presentation of Chrome Themes & Extensions starting… See https://tools.google.com/chrome/intl/en/themes/index.html

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Creating a Chrome extension http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/chrome/common/extensions/docs/getstarted.html

(about 2 hours ago)
#googlemu Extensions in Chrome are still in their infancy. Extensions will be able to manage all features of Chrome e.g. bookmarks

(about 1 hour ago)
#googlemu Still showing how to customise Chrome. I'll leave in a few minutes as I'm tired.

(about 1 hour ago)
#googlemu Extensions are written in Javascript and need a JSON manifest. Little by little, JSON is replacing XML http://www.json.org/

(about 1 hour ago)
#googlemu I asked about Chrome OS

(about 1 hour ago)
#googlemu He said that Chrome OS is still only a few words on a blog right now and nothing substantial has been done.

(about 1 hour ago)
#googlemu yet

(about 1 hour ago)
#googlemu Time to go home now

(about 1 hour ago)
Finished! Today I am going at my brother's place for a barbecue. Life is cool