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Language analysts, sifting through two centuries of words in the millions of books in Google Inc.’s growing digital library, found a new way to track the arc of fame, the effect of censorship, the spread of inventions and the explosive growth of new terms in the English-speaking world.

In research reported Thursday in the journal Science, the scientists at Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Google and the Encyclopedia Britannica unveiled a database of two billion words and phrases drawn from 5.2 million books in Google’s digital library published during the past 200 years. With this tool, researchers can measure trends through the language authors used and the names of people they mentioned…Read full article

Advances in digital bookselling have usually pushed independent bookstores further and further out of the literary game. But Google’s new store is dealing them back in. Here’s how.

If you stroll on over to your corner bookstore this week and ask the person behind the counter about Google’s new ebookstore, which launches today, you probably won’t be greeted with the kind of teeth-gnashing that has accompanied other digital developments, like Amazon’s online bookstore or the advent of proprietary e-readers. Instead, you might actually be greeted with some excitement and delight. That’s because Google is taking a different approach to selling e-books than Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Rather than create a closed system that leaves others out in the cold, Google is actually partnering with independent bookstores to sell its wares–and share the profits. More on this story here.

We expected Google to launch its upcoming e-book store before the end of the year, and the company announced Monday that the new Google eBookstore is now open for business in the US. Google is touting the “open” nature of its e-books by making them accessible to the widest array of popular e-reader devices, including the iPad, Nook, and Sony Reader.

Google’s new eBookstore works a little differently than other stores—at least when it comes to reading via computer. All purchased titles are kept in Google’s cloud-based storage and accessed via a browser. When reading via an iOS or Android-based device, a dedicated app can download and cache titles for reading offline. And for devices compatible with Adobe’s DRM-protected e-book formats—including Sony Reader and Barnes & Noble Nook—PDF or EPUB files can be downloaded and transferred to your device using Adobe Editions software. More on this story here.

By Jason Hiner | October 4, 2010, 3:30am PDT

I recently challenged a product person at Google, asking if a certain option — toggling on or off Gmail’s threaded conversation view — would be possible on a thread by thread basis. The Googler responded that it was certainly possible but that they wouldn’t do it. Why? Because it would introduce complexity and confusion for users.

When wireless hot spots cover entire neighborhoods rather than one or two buildings, who needs a mobile-phone contract? A smart phone running Skype or something similar would be essentially free of usage charges and free of all the restrictions that carriers impose.

VHF TV never used all the channel numbers between 1 and 13 because the channel between two analogue channels had to be left unused to separate the channels so they would not interfere with adjacent ones. When UHF came along, empty guard bands were added to each channel for the same reason.

These unused frequencies separating working channels are called white spaces. These white spaces are as much as 70% of the total bandwidth available for television broadcasting.  Digital signals, unlike analogue transmissions, do not bleed into each other so they can be closer together leaving white spaces unnecessary.

The FCC voted unanimously Thursday Sept. 23, 2010 to allow the use of white spaces in the broadcast TV spectrum to deliver broadband connections that can function like Wi-Fi networks on steroids. The new technology is called super Wi-Fi.

TV stations, wireless microphone makers and sports leagues have been against this because of interference since they already operate in the white space spectrum.

By using white spaces large markets could be covered by only a handful of base stations.  Using these channels, signals can travel for miles instead of yards, can carry lots of information, weather and landscapes do not affect them, plus signals can easily go through walls. This will allow mobile carriers to cover up to ten times the area from a single tower. Dropped calls should then become a thing of the past.

The spectrum could also be used to deliver low-cost wireless broadband to rural and poor areas. Leading technology companies, including Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Dell Inc., are eager to develop the market.

According to the PC World Business Center as white space wireless devices hit mainstream, businesses will be able to replace the current wireless infrastructure with a fraction of the hardware. Microsoft is already experimenting with white space Wi-Fi at its Redmond campus and can replace thousands of current wireless access points with just two white space Wi-Fi routers.

Less than 200 miles from West Palm Beach Florida an emerging company named Spectrum Bridge has installed several demonstration systems which use white space technology to blanket whole communities. View the available white space by clicking here and using an address, zip or other combination.

By opening up television’s white space to the public, the FCC hopes to trigger another wireless revolution that could be bigger than the wave of innovation seen a decade or so ago when Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and other wireless technologies entered the unlicensed 2.4 gigahertz band reserved previously for microwave ovens, baby alarms and remote garage door openers. This time the frequencies being released will allow larger chunks of data to be moved further and faster.

Opening up white space will also make things like transmitting traffic videos, building electric-utility smart grids and faster home networks possible.

Do Not Fold, Bend, Spindle or Mutilate: the computer punch card handled data thru the 1970’s on computers that filled an entire room.  Computers were large, cold and non-personal during this era.  This is where the shrinking began and the punch card was replaced by the floppy disc.

Data storage was much easier with the floppy disc which were used on the new PC or personal computer that only took up an entire desktop. The IBM 8” floppy disc came out and soon shrank to the common 5 1/4” with the most common sizes holding 360K and 1.2MB.  The final shrinking of the floppy disc that was encased in a hard rigid envelope, so it was not actually floppy at all, ended up at just 3 1/2” with a larger storage capacity from 400K to 1.4MB of data.

Back in the day this is how data was transferred from one computer to the other, until the advent of the Internet. The Internet allowed people access to data and information from anywhere in the world without the need for storage. CD’s or portable thumb size zip drives with multiple GIG storage are mainly used for data storage and backup, because with the ability to attach files to an email or use applications like Google documents information is now shared over the Internet instantaneously.

Computers have gone from the old room sized to the commonly used laptop to mobile devices.  Pew  Research Center reports 40% of adults use the Internet, email or instant messaging on a mobile phone with over 70% of their actions being taking pictures and text messaging. So the Internet has also been shrinking phones and cameras.

With all this instant global communication, is the Internet shrinking the world?

With the debut of Google Instant, marketers will have to work smarter on the search engine optimization front to gain one of the top two organic rankings on the first page of a Google search. At the same time, paid search advertisers will probably have to step up their pay-per-click (PPC) spending just to hold their current sponsored positions relative to the competition.

Google calls it “the next wave” in making search even more targeted, faster and predictive. Google Instant allows the engine to…

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Facebook last month claimed first place among sites for time spent, with 41.1 billion minutes, followed by Google with 39.8 billion minutes and Yahoo! with 37.7 billion, comScore is reporting. However, Yahoo! edged Google for unique visitors, tallying 179 million to the search giant’s 178.8 million. Microsoft was third with 165.3 million and Facebook stayed in fourth, with 148 million.

Published at Smart Brief