Alex Reid

Futurist Ray Kurzweil is now working for Google as their Director of Engineering.

Kurzweil says that he’s “thrilled to be teaming up with Google to work on some of the hardest problems in computer science so we can turn the next decade’s ‘unrealistic’ visions into reality. This is a special hiring by Google because Kurzweil is a huge believer with the concept of technological singularity - a concept of a time when human beings and machines will sync.

“In 1999, I said that in about a decade we would see technologies such as self-driving cars and mobile phones that could answer your questions, and people criticized these predictions as unrealistic.

Fast forward a decade — Google has demonstrated self-driving cars, and people are indeed asking questions of their Android phones. It’s easy to shrug our collective shoulders as if these technologies have always been around, but we’re really on a remarkable trajectory of quickening innovation, and Google is at the forefront of much of this development.”

~ Ray Kurzweil

After two years of beta, Google released mod_pagespeed from beta.

Mod_pagespeed is an open-source Apache HTTP server module developed by Google to automatically optimize web pages and web media assets including images, CSS, and JavaScript – without requiring any changes to the website itself.

Google has said that website speed performance impacts search engine ranking results, however there are dozens of factors for many web sites via a variety of platforms. This new update automates many of Google’s web optimization recommendations.

I’m proud that my company now offers this feature and my own web site is already loading up faster than before. Very slick. If you have a spare hour, you can watch this detailed explanation.

Unfortunately this server module can cause minor conflicts for third party software such as WordPress and some e-commerce software. The most common conflict I’ve seen is with WordPress; specifically that the visual editor in the WordPress dashboard disappears when editing existing posts.

To fix this, add this line to your .htaccess file.

ModPagespeedDisableFilters rewrite_javascript

You can also disable mod_pagespeed all together, by adding this line to your .htaccess file.

ModPagespeed off

I love this stuff: http://rumsey.geogarage.com/gmaps.html

Say good bye to phones and computers.

Google has embarked on a new revolutionary front first envisioned by Steve Mann, the father of wearable computing. Google’s new physical product is called Google Glass, an augmented reality head-mounted display with the additional capability to capture video and take photos. This is the actual product version of the visual search application Google Goggles.

Google has announced that they will be selling the Google Glasses to US developers for $1,500 (USD) and may be consumer-ready by next year.

Here is what your day could look like next year:

It’s been a busy season for Facebook.

They bought Instagram, they introduced their own app store (for both Android and iPhone), they went public, and last week, they introduced their own camera app. Now Facebook says they may be ready to take on Google and Apple in the mobile phone market.

For the past few months, they have been quietly preparing to enter the mobile phone market. Facebook has already hired former Apple software and hardware engineers, and one engineer who worked on the iPad, the New York Times reported yesterday. They have an open working alliance with HTC and it is expected the phone operating system will be a customized version of Android. The project name is Buffy, named after the vampire slayer TV series.

The rumour is that Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg believes that they need to enter the mobile phone market to ensure they aren’t left behind as just a web site that makes money from ad revenues. Owning the hardware to show the software is a key step to their survival.

Apple has never been welcoming to alliances, so they will be a natural competitor, while Google has been making their own moves to not only create their own phone set, but are pinning hopes on being an ISP operator in years ahead.

Meanwhile, Microsoft – which owns a tiny share of Facebook – has already integrated many features of Facebook. Motorola and HTC have already made phones with a Facebook button built in. There’s also a chance that Facebook could purchase struggling handset RIM down the road.

I believe photography sharing will be at the core of this media challenge.