Nick Palmby: The Blog

Google Continues to Bankroll Mozilla

The Mozilla Foundation (which shepherds the development of the Firefox browser) released its financial statements today for its 2006 fiscal year. Its revenues were $67 million, and 85 percent of that (or $57 million) came from the Google search box that comes as a default on every browser. Firefox is used by 120 million people worldwide.

Watch YouTube Videos In Google Earth

Google wants you to watch YouTube videos everywhere. Now you can watch geo-tagged videos inside Google Earth. Any video tagged with a latitude and longitude will show up when this new layer of Google Earth is turned on. So you can watch videos about the places you are exploring inside Google Earth.

It’s a good way to show videos in the context of where they were shot, and also gets more plays for videos that might have otherwise been lost in the YouTube vortex. Of course, people have been embedding YouTube videos in 2-D Google Maps for a while now. But that seems to require more of a manual process. I’d like to see all geo-tagged videos automatically pop up in a video layer on Google Maps as well.

Hate Emailing Documents?

I was going to type a great post about how businesses and people need to start using Google Docs for collaboration purposes but then I found this handy dandy video to explain everything I wanted to say!

Enjoy!

Microsoft Announces Surface Computer

At the All Things Digital conference Wednesday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer unveiled Microsoft Surface, the first in a new category of surface computing products from Microsoft that will “break down traditional barriers between people and technology”.

A Surface computer is able to recognize physical objects from a paintbrush to a cell phone and allows hands-on, direct control of content such as photos, music and maps. Surface turns an ordinary tabletop into a dynamic surface that provides interaction with all forms of digital content through natural gestures, touch and physical objects.

The new product is aimed directly at hotels, retail establishments, restaurants and public entertainment venues and should be commercially available towards the end of the year.

I'm excited to see where this Minority Report like features end up.  The way we interact with devices in the future will be extremely different that the traditional ones today.  Sure we may still have laptops and desktops but there will be devices that communicate with multiple other sensors and controls.

Fred Wilson On Wallstrip

I always enjoy Wallstrip and read Fred Wilson's blog often.  Here is an episode with both Fred and Wallstrip about trends.  Nifty stuff :)

Apple TV - A Neat New Thing

With digital media as a main focus these days Apple has found a way to bring the movies you download on your computer right to your TV.  It's called...(you guessed it) AppleTV.

The Apple TV device allows the playback of standard-definition and high-definition content downloaded via your PC or Mac over the Internet via the ubiquitous iTunes. This content can then be sync'd to the device, similar to an iPod except via the built-in wireless connection. The device will then play back the SD or HD content on a widescreen TV.

So what will Apple think of next?

Web 2.0...The Machine is Us/ing Us

A neat video of evolution with Web 2.0 basis: