<IT
WORLD>
The growth of Planet Google
By
Martin J Young
HUA HIN, Thailand - Google has taken
a dive this week but not in the sense we would
expect in the current economic climate. Following
the success of Google Earth, one of the company's
more successful products - it has been downloaded
around half a billion times - the search giant is
delving into the depths of the seas to bring us
Google Ocean.
In
its latest iteration released this week, Google
Earth 5 hosts a number of educational tools but
the ability to interact with 3D maps of the ocean
floor has been touted as one of the better ones.
The data comes courtesy of the US Navy and a
number of partners, including the BBC and National
Geographic, and offers information on global
fishing statistics, footage of shipwrecks, marine
animal tracking and movements of Arctic sea ice.
Once you've had your fill of
virtual marine excursions, Earth 5 can
take
you out of this planet - for a tour of the surface
of Mars, where users can fly over the landscape of
Martian rocks, canyons and mountains viewing
things as seen through the eyes of the rovers
Spirit and Opportunity and the Mars Reconnaissance
Orbiter.
Working closely with NASA's
Ames Research Center, Carnegie Mellon University
and SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence) Google has again collated the bulk
of the available data into one place.
It
is unlikely that the Ocean or Martian virtual
exploration functions will bring any direct
immediate revenue to Google, but it is another
notch on the bedpost of data management services
and information control that the company can add
to their ever expanding tally.
Back
on terra firma, Google has been making more
updates to its mobile maps with software that, it
hopes, will be able to track people on the move.
The new applications will allow people with mobile
phones and devices to share their whereabouts with
family and friends through a system dubbed
"Latitude".
The system plots a user's
location by adding a picture of them to a Google
map and utilizing mobile phone signal towers,
global positions systems or a wi-fi connection.
The company refers to it as "social mapping", to
add a friendlier feel and avoid the attention of
privacy advocates who are already crying "big
brother". The service is completely optional and
users can specify the precision of tracking they
require, who can monitor their location - or they
can simply turn it off.
Privacy International, a
London-based advocacy group, claims the software
can be used to track unsuspecting people, as many
may not even realize that the service is activated
on their mobile devices. They are calling it a
major invasion of privacy and citing a number of
examples, such as an employer giving an employee a
Latitude-enabled mobile phone just to keep tabs on
his or her whereabouts. There are also concerns
about outside parties gaining access to this
information, as the group stated: "As it stands
right now, Latitude could be a gift to stalkers,
prying employers, jealous partners and obsessive
friends, the dangers to a user's privacy and
security are as limitless as the imagination of
those who would abuse this technology."
With
Google's ever intensive drive to control and
manage the world's information there must come a
stage when the world decides that it needs to
control and manage Google. Knowledge is power as
the saying goes and Google's knowledge through its
data management services expands every day. What
this latest technology holds for the future is
anybody's guess, but the likelihood is that there
will soon be no escaping the great Google eye, on
this planet or the next, whether you opt-in or
not.
Software Microsoft has been turning up
the heat in an effort to get Windows 7 out this
year. An announcement on the Engineering Windows 7
blog this week stated that the company was
planning to skip the beta 2 and go straight to a
release candidate 1 version of the operating
system for the public.
The
implication is that Microsoft plans to roll out
its replacement to Vista in time for the
end-of-year holiday season. The company has always
stated that the system will arrive three years
after the launch of Vista, which was in January
2007.
Windows XP users will have a
headache if they want to skip Vista altogether and
jump straight to 7. It seems likely that there
will be no direct upgrade provision from XP to 7
and users will need to back-up all of their
settings and data, format their hard drives, and
perform a fresh install of the new operating
system and all of their programs. Not many will be
comfortable doing this as it does require some
technical knowledge, not to mention the time
taken, so Microsoft may well be reducing their
potential customer base before the product is even
released.
Vista users will not face
this dilemma and will be able to upgrade direct
without wiping their disk and reinstalling
everything again.
Adding to the confusion is
the news released this week that Windows 7 will
ship in six versions; Windows 7 Starter Edition,
Home Basic, Premium, Professional, Enterprise and
Ultimate. After all the griping over multiple
flavors of Vista, you would think that Microsoft
would have learnt a lesson. Apparently not. Many
view it as a method by which the company can sell
the same, or a very similar, product at vastly
different prices with little benefit to the end
user.
Following all the hype and
despite the initial good reviews, it looks like
this latest version of the world's most popular
operating system will cause just as much confusion
and commotion as all of its predecessors.
Martin J Young is an Asia Times Online correspondent based in
Thailand.
(Copyright 2009 Asia Times
Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about
sales, syndication and republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
Software
