Wednesday, November 17, 2010

iOS has more games than four generations of consoles


This one's strictly in the "just for fun" category of stat comparisons, but the guys over at TUAW decided to do a little headcount of the sheer number of games Apple's App Store has available for consumption. Then, just for fun, they decided to compare that to some publicly available stats on how many games the last 25 years of consoles, both the sort that plug into your teevee and the handheld type, have churned out. Of course, the caveats are plentiful, as there are a lot of duplicates and Lite versions floating about in the App Store (as well as multi-platform games among the consoles), but the general point that iOS has a lot of games on its books is made pretty clearly. Now if anyone wants to document how many Flashgames there are for browser-based consumption, we look forward to reading your results in 2013.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Gingerbread coming today? It's still pinging

Posted on Thursday, Nov 11, 2010 by Phil Nickinson



The big ol' unsourced, unconfirmed, who-knows-if-it's-true rumor of the past week or so has been that Android  2.3 -- Gingerbread -- will be announced/released/something today. It's just about lunchtime, and no sign of anything sweet yet -- though as you can see from the Google analytics above, it looks like it's still pinging around out there.
Will we see it today? Dunno. Will we see it tomorrow? Dunno. Are our fingers crossed? Absofrigginlutely.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Google suing US Department of the Interior for Google Apps snub


Google has filed a lawsuit in the US Court of Federal Claims against the US Department of the Interior for being what it claims as "unduly restrictive of competition." Apparently the DOI wrote up procurement requirements for a hosted email and collaboration solution (it's currently hobbling along with 13 different platforms for its 88,000 users) that specifically stated the software had to be part of the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite. Google thinks there should be a competitive procurement process for the $59 million contract, allowing for potential alternatives to Microsoft (like Google Apps, for instance). The DOI says it's up for open competition on the contract, but it's "standardized" on Microsoft tech. We'll have to see how this plays out.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Google now second-largest ISP, carries 6.4% of Internet traffic


Network World - Google is now the second-largest carrier of Internet traffic, according to data released this week by Arbor Networks. But should corporate network managers care about this news?
Yes, says Arbor Networks Chief Scientist Craig Labovitz, who argues that savvy IT managers need to understand how macro Internet traffic trends will affect the design and management of their own network backbones.
"The way we think about the network is changing," Labovitz says. "We're going through a transition where the value of the network was about connectivity ... the ability to reach thousands of people and tens of thousands of other Web sites. But now there's a shift from connectivity to content. Increasingly, whether you're a consumer or an enterprise, you care not about reaching thousands of different Web sites. You care about the 20 social networking,cloud vendor and partner sites that you do business with."
The Arbor Networks' data points to a future where Internet traffic consolidates on the networks of a handful of carriers and content providers - what Arbor calls "hyper giants."
"This will affect how enterprises plan their services ... whether they host their own services or whether they use cloud vendors," Labovitz says. "The enterprise needs to shift its thinking in terms of [service level agreements] and the way it measures, monitors and secures its networks. That all used to be focused on connectivity, but now it needs to be focused on content."
Enterprise network managers need to focus more on the content and services they are delivering over the Internet, and less on Internet transport, Arbor recommends. "It's no longer just enough to know your circuit is up," Labovitz adds. "What enterprise users care about is the quality of service."
In the last year, Google has risen from third to second place in Arbor's list of the top 10 carriers of Internet traffic. All of the other companies on Arbor's list are ISPs, rather than content providers.
Today, Google carries an average of 6.4% of all Internet traffic -- a figure that has grown by more than one percentage point since January. Only one tier 1 provider -- a wholesaler to other ISPs -- carries more Internet traffic on its backbone network than Google does, and this wholesaler (Arbor declined to identify the provider) carries a lot of Google traffic, too.
The Arbor data shows that overall Internet volumes are increasing at a rate of 40% to 45% per year, and that Google is growing faster than that. Most of Google's data is video from its popular YouTube site.
Arbor Networks conducts ongoing analysis of Internet traffic housed on the networks of 110 ISPs around the world.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Google rolls out Chrome 7


Google on Tuesday released a new stable version of its internet browser, Chrome 7.
The latest update is part of Google's promise in July to release a new stable version of Chrome about every six weeks.


Chrome 7 comes with hundreds of bug fixes, an updated HTML5 parser, the File API, and directory upload via input tag. It is available in the stable and beta channels for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
“The main focus was the hundreds of bug fixes”, Jeff Chang, a Google product manager, wrote in a blog post.
"We've also included a few other things that may be of interest to developers, such as full AppleScript support on Mac OS X for UI automation and implementation of the HTML5 parsing algorithm, the File API, and directory upload," Chang wrote. "Also, if you choose to block sites from setting any data in your browser's content settings for cookies, you can now use a new dialog for managing blocked cookies in bulk."
The latest version will automatically update an installed Google Chrome version.