'cipicchia! » Google

No Way! Google changed its name!

ximilian — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 07:52:35 +0000

Unbelievable…
It seems people at Google completely lost their mind. They just changed the name of the company in Topeka.

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!

Google un-censor China

ximilian — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 20:40:38 +0000

It seems Google finally discovered the hot water, and taken a new approach to China.
Well done! Yeah, as an activist at Amnesty International, and idealistic person, I’m very happy about this decision.
Of course, who dare to not be happy? But, reading twice this piece of news a question arises.
Where was Google in the past years? With its head under the sand? Maybe they were blind by the shining of waving things…
Human rights are denied all over the world. China is one of the top-most repressive free speech: people are tortured, the justice is unfair, there are arbitrary arrests and detentions.
Suddenly, Google is attacked by Chinese hacker and they discover that, maybe, something is wrong. Because of this accident, they are reconsidering their approach to China. Fine. “Not to be evil”, is your motto, and finally you understand that was bad bow your head for the Chinese money. Now, you have the opportunity to show to the world that the change is possible.
Please, do not stop by just this episode. Keep opening the Internet, everywhere. Keep the free speech, well, FREE!

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

Look ma, a swirl!

ximilian — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:10:06 +0000

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…