Google goes Topeka

Why such thing? Well, they launched a fiber optics experiment, and Topeka changed its name in March as “Google, Kansas, the capital city of fiber optics“.

So, it seems they did a surprise to us, but I guess that people there they have their reason. Maybe, there are also some hidden reason here what it the day today?, but who knows what will happen in the future.
As the time goes by, we will see if Google Topeka will be right!
Let’s go Topeka then!

And then, we will forgive you this late second thoughts…

Ohohoh! Santa Wave is coming!

Dear folks,

apparently Google people are extremely generous to me.

Early last month, they sent me a full invitation (the one with 8-more invite to send). Now, I discovered 8 more invitation in my googlewave account. If that wasn’t enough they sent me another regular invitation to a second account I own.

Thus, here I am wishing you Merry XMas and giving away my invitation!

What you have to do

Send me a mail (yes a snail-mail or better a postcard, I love them) to this address:

and send me your XMas greetings!

The first eight people will receive a google wave invitation as soon as I receive their postcard.
Leave a comment as soon as you sent the postcard, with your email, so I can reserve an invite for you!

A little remark

Greetings From Google!

Try to be polite with the subject of your request, and choose a great theme for the postcard. The best of all would be one of these from Google, but unfortunately I do not live in US (but if you are and would like to be at the first rank…)

Have you ever used Google Image Search trying to find that-funny-thing-you-cannot-remember-the-name?
Have you felt the sense of frustration trying to remember a clue or something else related to that thing, but not having idea about what to write in the box search?
Well, this happen to me very often, and one of the most exciting practical application of Artificial Intelligence is the ability to retrieve the information not by a word match, but by connected topic.
Applied to the WWW it becomes the (in)-famous Semantic Web.

This post is not about what the Semantic Web is, or what it can be useful (a very well-known cousin of Semantic Web is the Semantic Desktop, and one of the most promising technology related is NEPOMUK).
What this is all about is that a piece of real Semantic Web just landed few days ago.
And of course it comes from Mountain View: let’s give a cheer to Google Image Swirl.

Let me introduce Google Image Swirl

Google Image Swirl lets you search for images (just like Google Image Search) but it presents the results in clusters or groups.
Each cluster represented by a thumbnail and represents images with similar appearance and meaning.
By clicking each cluster you can access the group and the results are showed hierarchically in a swirl. Try to narrow you search by clicking one of the thumbnails. The images are reordered and the swirl become like the Debian logo.

A meta-swirl: searching for a swirl within Swirl!

It is still experimental and handles just about 200.000 queries. However, this is a very cool way to look for that-funny-thing-you-cannot-remember-the-name. In the future, when it will become more beta-than-alpha, an image could be researched by grouping the topics and narrowing by simpy looking at the bunch of clusters.

Looking forward for that day…

I was bored to go to work today, but a cool surprise was waiting me: I just got a Google Wave invitation!

There was a lot of excited comments about this new piece of Google-ware.
I’m excited too, but I keep my mind on the ground: the technology is really cool and offers a lot of potential new use, but the real usefulness need to be proved yet.

Nevertheless, I would not to work today… (looking forward to come back home to try it!)

Thanks, you anonymous guy who Google that sent me the invitation!!!