Google World Domination Plan
Ok, so we all know Google has a plan for World Domination. The only thing is, no one really knows what the specifics are, well I think I’ve figured it out. I started reading a few posts earlier today, on a popular web magazine. The posts were relating to Windows 7 and how great it is (Yeah I was phishing for ammo), after a while I started to get quite angry, at the fact the guy writing these posts is even allowed to speak in a technical surrounding, let alone write on a popular web magazine and have his idiocies believed by people not in the know, after all these web magazines are not really for us techies, they are for people who aren’t as in the know.
I’m not going to go on about him, but I need to explain the main thing that angered me about these posts, in order that you realise, what, exactly made me realise, The specifics of the Google Plan for World Domination, or GPWD as it is likely referred to within Google. This idiot, compares the new (It isn’t new it’s been around for 3 or 4 years now) Windows Powershell, to the command line in Linux. He claims that there is now no reason for Linux users to keep holding themselves back (At this point I was almost in tears, both of anger at his stupidity and of laughter at the fact he actually wrote it down and published it on the web) and that we will all magically switch to Windows now it has Powershell, he seems to have completely ignored the fact, that where Windows IS a GUI running an emulator called Powershell, where if the GUI crashes, then the whole thing has to be rebooted, Linux runs on the command line and the GUIs run on top of it, thus allowing the GUI to crash, the user to drop to a shell, hopefully fix their GUI or choose an alternate GUI (Another thing Windows can’t do but that list is huge) and then get back to work, all without having to reboot and in most cases even blink. Oh and apparently we all want to play games and use Microsoft Office, let me just say, I do play games, on Linux, and on a PS3 and I’m quite happy with that thanks, as for Office, well this is my more professional blog, so I can’t use the words I would like to.
Anyway I said I wouldn’t go on about him. The specifics of the GPWD, I believe are as follows:
- Release Google Wave to the masses, get everyone hooked and using it to create documents, share photos, make albums, share video, plan trips, auto update blogs, report bugs, view bugs, im people and all the other ABSOLUTELY AMAZING things it’s going to be able to do (If you haven’t watched the preview yet, do so on YouTube, it’s 1 hour 20 minutes long, but you’ll be riveted if you like gadgets and techy stuff.)
- Help developers produce as much stuff for Google Wave as possible, new gadgets, robots, plugins etc to make everyone rely on it just as much as everyone already relies on google.com, when they want to know the answer to an office question, life question or prove someone wrong
- Release Google Chrome OS, built on Linux, sleek, smooth, new custom Google UI, with just a web browser, possibly a mail client and a few small apps to deal with getting photos off your camera etc
- Advertise the hell out of both Google Wave and Google Chrome OS, plus advertising Android as much as possible, travel the conferences to do showcases of how everything interacts (Already done, go watch the Google Wave Video) to make everyone drool and want all the Google Stuff more than they want Apple stuff
- Sit back and relax comfortable in the knowledge that you’ve just destroyed Microsoft and Apple in one fell swoop without even trying
The last one is obviously a joke and a dig at Mr Idiot over at the popular web magazine but it’s not that far from the truth really. If you haven’t watched the Google Wave Tech Preview on You Tube and you’ve got an hour spare, (If you haven’t make an hour spare) then go watch it, even if you’re not that much of a techy you’ll love it, things for everyone, from making collaborative photo albums, with realtime updates on each participants screen (Watch as they drop photos into one Wave client and they immediately appear on the others clients), automatic blogging and twittering by highlighting text and telling a robot to go post for you, automatic bug posting, resolving and discussion editing, live im’ing the ability to join a conversation late and click a “playback” button to see HOW the conversation developed in ordered threaded fashion (no jumping back and forth, scrolling your MSN or Skype client up and down to see what someone said ten minutes ago so you can reply to it now and no one understand what you’re replying to), the ability to reply to a specific comment in a conversation, no matter how long ago it was, who made it, if that person has temporarily left the “wave” etc. and know that they can come back to the wave later and view your comment, right next to their original comment for context, as Lars from Google says “It will make flamewars SO much more effective”.
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Zane Education Website released
After a couple of years of development I can now proudly say that Zane Education is finally up and running. What’s more, it’s FREE for the first 30 days.
My partner and I have been working on this for a long time now, along with Nicholas Tee over at Zane Publishing, we’ve spent the last few years converting all of the “Zane Publishing” Educational Video titles to digital format, converting the quizzes to digital format and building the website and membership system to deliver them, on-demand to the masses for low, affordable subscription costs.
The involvement and intensity of this site has been simply immense, an entirely, built from scratch, database driven website, which had to be easy to use, easy to navigate, yet look beautiful and function perfectly, delivering over 1000 videos and quizzes on-demand has been a challenge, but I think we’ve managed to come damn close with our 30 day release and when the 30 days is up you can expect to see much more in the way of navigational features, teacher resources and helpful how-to documents around the site. The site was literally a “ground-up” operation, unfortunately as much as I’m an open source advocate, nothing out their open or closed source was going to fit the bill for this project, so it was decided we would build this thing from scratch, from it’s first php tag to it’s last bash script.
Originally intended for home-schoolers, because of Zane Publishings original market, the site has become more of a vision for opportunity, we suddenly realised just after beginning the build, that teachers may want to use these videos, quizzes and resources as well. Let’s face it, we’re well and truly into the digital age now and I’ve been working in a school during the day for the last 8 months and discovered that teachers really do love to use a data projector, with visual aids and any other teacher resources they can find to help them in their role as “educators”, so why not open the site up to them as well? That’s exactly what we’re going to do, teachers will have the ability to search the sites extensive video collection for something that suits a topic they want to teach and buy an individual Video or Topic/Collection of Videos for less than $10 and use them for a month. Not to mention, we’re also building a schools based membership system for Educational Institutions to get special pricing and access to all of the sites resources for a yearly subscription fee, the ability to create teacher and student accounts in order to take full advantage of the site.
With free lesson plans and curriculum courses coming soon, teachers will hopefully love this site to bits, I’ve had some great feedback from some of the teachers I work with and I hope that trend will continue as more and more teachers discover the site. Home Schoolers will soon be able to earn money through the site’s affiliate program too. Any member of the site can also volunteer as a sudo-salesperson and earn themselves some money by recommending the site to their friends, other home schoolers and schools, the affiliate system should be available just shortly after the full launch of the site in 28 days time.
The “Christian Guide for Learning” is now in it’s final stages of conversion, from hardback to e-book format and will hopefully be released with the finished site in 28 days time, free sections of the book will be and are now available to all registered members, with 2 “pay for” sections available at around $25 USD each, or the whole book for around $40 USD, all to be released soon.
Music to Study By is a feature that’s already available to members who register now, a collection of music from the Baroque era, proven in recent studies to improve your concentration and learning abilities if you listen to it while studying.
World resources are offered in the form of “The CIA Factbook” and “World Leaders” directories, right there on the website, updated regularly the information can be invaluable to anyone trying to teach social studies or current affairs topics to children.
So pop on over to Zane Education and take a look for yourself, let us know here, or using the websites built in contact form what you think of it, suggestions you may have for more features etc, it’s all appreciated and after all the site was built with you in mind and it will continue to be that way, so suggestions are more imperative than just welcomed.
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