I’ve been thinking about Google+ a lot in these last few days, and of course, I have watched a lot of Google propaganda.

Google’s BHAG is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” This is their goal. To dominate the worlds information organization market, which is also sort of the right to exist for IT in general. On the other hand, there’s Facebook with 750M+ (mostly also Google) customers (as they claim while Google can operate as a BS-detector here), all gathered and hunted by some 60 employees. That’s also insane. Because of all this insanity it’s hard to take a step back and see from the heliview who’s really running in which direction here.

Microsoft’s BHAG was and still is “A computer on every desk and in every home.” To me, that doesn’t seem big and hairy enough anymore. Because what to do when there are places in the world where desks and homes are filled with desktops and laptops? Ask Microsoft. Some big bad wolf will come along and will probably say something like: “Hey,  here’s an iPod, iPhone and an iPad, you can carry it around and it does even more cool stuff.. We also have combined it with iTunes. And. Oh yeah, it’s a lot easier to operate”. Remember when people thought they COULDN’T understand computers? When people were afraid of the dark and didn’t even think about replacing their 17 typewriters for one PC?

This information revolution, from typewriter to iPad 2, has happened within 20 years or so. Never before (since mankind started using tools, to the Industrial Revolution, until a little more than 10 years ago) in history, have we revolutionized our way of living in such a fashion as in the last few decades. I think we should call the first decade of this century the Information decade or maybe even the Google decade. “Beam me up Scotty, to a whole new century!”

I see a comparison between Google and Facebook like in Apple and Microsoft. Facebook (MS) first developed the greatest (social media) platform for its time, accompanied by the largest customer base within their market (social media). Then there’s Google (Apple), who thanks Facebook for creating the largest social community in known history of mankind. So what do they do next? Adjust, adept and improve (like Navy Seals or any other living organism in this universe). They’ve carefully waited until it was their time to come on to the stage. They just sat there, waiting, while studying every little thing and then take the best out of the rest (FB,twttr,LnkdIn, etc.) and add something new and valuable to it (circles, group video chat, etc.). On the other hand, they can say: “We’ve invented our innovation a long time ago. We kick ass and take names in this business.”

This thing is all about innovation based on user experience feedback. Stop doing this for a fraction of a moment and you’re out of the game. It kind of reminds me of this book, the Marathon, by Stephen King.

IBM > Microsoft > Apple > AltaVista (who?!) > Yahoo > Google > Facebook > (Google) ?

I’ve left one chain out of there on purpose. Well it’s there, but I wanted to show you the chronological cycle and therefor only repeat Google in the end. The natural cycle has been disturbed by one of these parties before. And I’m not talking about AltaVista. Nuh-uh. It’s Apple.

They’ve shown Microsoft, at the moment their BHAG started shrinking and lost only a few hairs, the iPod, iPhone and iPad. They haven’t taken over their market (yet) but what’s to come? At least they’ve opened up a possibility to do so and are heading for a better position. Just look up the Android and iPhone market share, look where it came from and look where it’s going. Maybe to the iCloud? Oh yeah, and don’t forget Nokia’s press announcement in February about their partnership with Microsoft. Step 2, look at Nokia’s market share, since the press release. Then laugh and nod along with me. After that we, Nokia users, will all cry because it could have been such a nice ride.

I think Google has created something that ‘feels’ even better for their users, + they have more information to offer users in another sense (compared to Facebook).  The thing is that they have already organized all the information on this planet that Facebook didn’t. Now it’s time for them to bring their magic wand to the arena and show us their trick. I’m really curious, especially since they’re also competing other social networks than just Facebook. Therefore I wouldn’t just call it the Facebook-killer, no. I would rather call it a piece of innovation within social media, whether or not they become the Facebook-killer. They’ve also just anounced that a part of the division is still working on the business part of the network. I’m really curious what this will look like, since we now know that it’ll even get bigger, bolder and hairier than we previously thought!

Together with all these posibilities I see the ability for Google to pull this off in a sort of Peter Gibbons kind of way.

Give it a year to see where it’s going, and focus especially on the way they will listen to their users. If this goes FUBAR like Buzz did, it’s dead within 3 weeks. If not, how long till we stop replying emails? I guess the second. I guess less than 5 years. Does this mean Facebook is the new Myspace? I don’t know. Only the future can tell.

Bill Gates expresses shame, when being asked how he feels about the succes of the iPad

Most companies still roll with outdated 20th century business models, and a lot of companies are still having problems with employees using corporate time to post updates to facebook, twitter, LinkedIn and other social media sites. Meanwhile, a movement towards communication on a scale which we’ve never seen before works its way like domino’s, both in new business models as in ways of communicating.The same thing goes for downloading music/movies/games/tv shows/even classified files (think WikiLeaks). The consumer already does it, demands it, and it can’t be stopped. Nope, not anymore. Probably never.

Our world is becoming increasingly transparent, others would say that we’re losing a lot of our privacy. For both reasoning’s there

are good arguments, though with transparency also comes trust .Since the example of WikiLeaks showed us that even for the Pentagon it now is pretty much impossible to keep information obscure and hidden from the public, we’re remembered that with one weak link in the security-by-obscurity model, it can all be out in the open within no-time.We can now tell that information, never before in human history, has spread faster then ever over the last decade, since the rising of the internet.

This can be beneficial in all sorts of ways. Think; medical inventions, technological inventions, the ease to communicate with one another wherever you are, organizing group experiences in every way possible and maybe even world peace. Who knows?

The younger generation therefore is more and more working in terms of collective development and social collaboration. An idea is no longer a proprietary of one, or obscure by means to hold it to one-self. Nowadays, idea’s are there more often to spread, improve and grow in cooperation with others who are like-minded. On the flip-side, you may think, this also brings the ‘risk’ of employees publishing ‘corporate secrets’ online.
Could this ever be turned into something positive?

By giving your employees more ownership over their own work, by means of letting them talk about what they’re doing, you also put responsibility in their own hands for what they are doing. So when they make a mistake, or experience a learning moment (whatever you want to call it), colleagues or others, maybe even customers, will correct them and point them at it. This all comes from the collective mind which forms a new 2-way directed communication medium, called the interwebs.

On the other hand, your customers are probably already talking about you on all sorts of social media. Wouldn’t it be nice to join their conversation? But wait, what if there’s an unhappy customer talking bad about you? You could of course pick up this signal to then turn it into something positive. Show them that you’re also out there and are willing to help them, also with gathering whatever sort of information about your product and/or service they’re looking for. Lot’s of companies already operate in this fashion. Those who don’t are already behind.

So, welcome to the future Scotty. There’s a whole new century out there.

Younger generations will find it even more obvious to use these media as ways to easily communicate with each other, since many others are already making use of them en masse. In their private life, at work or in whatever community they belong to, this is the way people communicate in the 21st century.

Those companies that get along with these thoughts and this way of letting their workers get the best out of themselves and others, will be those that make a head-start into the new millennium. Older-fashioned companies will be able to hold it off for maybe a little longer, but at some point will have to admit that they’re fighting to stop something which already happened.

CCleaner is a freeware system optimization, privacy and cleaning tool. It removes unused files from your system – allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history. Additionally it contains a fully featured registry cleaner. But the best part is that it’s fast (normally taking less than a second to run) and contains NO Spyware or Adware!

Cleans the following:

• Internet Explorer
• Firefox
• Google Chrome
• Opera
• Safari
• Windows – Recycle Bin, Recent Documents, Temporary files and Log files.
• Registry cleaner
• Third-party applications

Download latest version

CCleaner Enhancer

Additionally you can extend the programs cleaned by CCleaner with “CCleaner Enhancer”. This addon adds 270+ programs to be cleaned with CCleaner.

Download latest version

Toggle Audio 7

We’ve made this app with AutoIT to change the default audio device in Windows 7 or Vista.

Upon launch it rotates through the devices set in the config file (conf.ini).
The number of devices you can add is unlimited.
Just make a shortcut to the executable to launch.

Download here

Source code included so you can make your own edits.

Ever wanted to add nice looking fonts to your website? Google Web Fonts is your answer.

Google has made it easy for you to embed and style the fonts. And the fonts are Licenced under Creative Commons and free to use! Also they work cross-browser.

Some examples:

<html>
  <head>
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Tangerine">
    <style>
      body {
        font-family: 'Tangerine', serif;
        font-size: 48px;
      }
    </style>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>Making the Web Beautiful!</h1>
  </body>
</html>

Results in:

And even more styling is possible, look at this:

<html>
  <head>
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Tangerine">
    <style>
      body {
        font-family: 'Tangerine', serif;
        font-size: 48px;
        text-shadow: 4px 4px 4px #aaa;
      }
    </style>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>Making the Web Beautiful!</h1>
  </body>
</html>

Results in (with shadow):

For more info about embedding these fonts in your website check the Getting Started guide.

There is also a WordPress plugin available to embed these fonts in your Blog, check out the WP Google Fonts plugin.

Nowadays almost everybody knows microblog and social networking website Twitter. At website-monitoring.com they’ve generated a nice report with charts and statistics on Twitter’s history, their milestones, users and their Tweet stats, top 10 countries, top 20 users (most followed) and more little interesting facts and figures. This information was collected from multiple sources in April 2010. According to creator of the graph, some data may not be up to date… Interesting to read, though.

You can also click the picture to enlarge it, perhaps for a better view.

See the source.

With the new HTML 5 it is now possible to directly embed audio and video into your websites. This means that your visitors won’t need a Flash plugin anymore.. They do need a browser that supports HTML 5, though. Some browsers already support these functions, others will embed them any day now.

HTML5 3D FFT Visualization with CubicVR from Bocoup on Vimeo.

HTML5 Audio with Realtime Javascript Low Pass Filter from Corban Brook on Vimeo.

Nihilogic’s HTML5 Audio-Data Visualizations from Bocoup on Vimeo.

WebGL HTML5 JavaScript Beat Detection from Bocoup on Vimeo.

Bloop HTML5 Instrument inspired by Brian Eno’s Bloom from Bocoup on Vimeo.

HTML5 Touch-screen Video Instrument in Firefox from Bocoup on Vimeo.

• Read more on the videos’ project
• Videos are courtesy of Bocoup and Corban Brook
• Article thumbnail courtesy of Las Valley 702

Do you ever clean up your cookies and internet history? Do you ever use public computers to find something?
Ever thought about cleaning your tracks with privacy in mind?

It seems like a wise decision to do so, once in a while. To automate this task, we’ll sum up how to enable automatic cleanups within the most common browsers.

Not only do we explain how to set up your browser to clean up after you, at the end of the article we give instructions on how to get rid of Flash cookies.  More than half of all major websites use a small, but largely unknown Adobe Flash plug-in to track their visitors. Also, your browsers cookie control doesn’t handle these cookies.

Online music service Spotify is now the leading streaming music software with around 250,000 paying ‘premium’ subscribers.

When the business model of the music industry started crumbling after the arrival of the internet, alternatives were sought.
Around the year of our Lord 2000 applications like Napster, Kazaa, Limewire and Soulseek arrived. Also, newsgroups got used more often for trading goods as a rebellious alternative. In response the big companies followed with online music stores combined with their software.

Nowadays more online streaming providers are opening their doors to the streaming music scene. One of them is Spotify. They have an amazing amount of music in their library, in great quality.
They offer a free subscription (ads between every couple of songs) and a premium one (no ads). At the moment you can subscribe to Spotify within the following countries; Finland, France, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the UK. More countries are promised to follow on short term.

They’ve also just introduced their mobile software. This is the next step, the wireless (mobile) market and (payed) subscriptions to these services.

• See Spotify.com for more info

Whether you’re an employee or entrepreneur, tracking your time is something a lot of us need to do. “You can’t manage what you can’t measure”, as they say at Toggl.

Be it a project or declarable hours you need to capture for your boss, Toggl is a great tool for the job.
It’s a free service for you which you sign up, sign in, create your project and a client and you’re good to go. Hit the Toggl button to start capturing your time!

At the moment you start “Toggling” your action is tracked second to second. Just hit the Toggl button once more to stop measuring time for your activity. Create another project/client or just select another project and hit the button again to continue that activity.. It’s that simple! Toggl is able to export reports of your activities into PDF or CSV. This will come in handy when you make up the invoices for your clients.

You can now start using Toggl at Toggl.com,  and sign up for any platform. Whether it’s either Windows, Linux, MacOS or iPhone.

• See Toggl.com for more info