Just stumbled onto another entry on the Google Blog which helps explain why I’ve been seeing reports on other blogs of different interfaces for Google’s Search or other products. Apparently they choose to use (at random) sets of live users, and open the additional functionality to them for a limited time, to see how they’d interact with it. The reason is simple: there’s no substitute for real-world testing. This is pretty cool. See the entry here.
Google Pages, re-launched
Justin Rosenstein, Product Manager and Google Page Creator, posted an entry to the Google Blog a few days ago where he detailed the reason for the application. If my memory serves me right, Google Pages launched a few months ago, but access to it was withdrawn or limited in some way. Perhaps the Google folks thought it needed some more work. Anyway, Justin has just re-launched it, so I assume it’s now ready for public consumption.
Just tried it out, and it does seem to be a really easy way to create web pages, much like the .Mac service – except this is free, and there don’t appear to be any bandwidth limitations, at least none I can find. Then again, there isn’t the tight integration here that one finds on the .Mac service, such as with GarageBand or iPhoto, to allow for one-click publishing of podcasts or photos. Still, it’s a pretty cool service.
Here’s the link to the Google Blog entry, and here’s a link to Google Pages.
Measuring the cost of corruption
The World Bank has put together a very informative collection of papers and websites on corruption at this web page. They define corruption as “theft of public resources for private gain”, and they define and evaluate the various costs associated with corruption.
They name two in the summary: one is redistributive, and is incurred when businesses with political power abuse that privilege to get a contract at the expense of their competitors, and the other is a welfare cost, which is to the overall economy, and thus makes everyone worse off.
The papers and websites are all free to access, and the language is surprisingly clear-cut and demonstrative. This is a really good resource, and I encourage you to take advantage of it. Here is the link to it.
Affordable travel
The NYT Travel section has assembled a fantastic collection of articles they’ve called “Affordable Travel”. They’ve got wonderful tips on how to save money when traveling through Europe on all the big cities such as: Amsterdam, Athens, Barcelona, Berlin, Copenhagen, Dublin, Geneva, Lisbon, London, Madrid, Milan, Oslo, Paris, Prague, Rome and Venice. Here is the link to the collection of articles.
New clothes washer uses steam and no detergent
Gizmag has the details on a new electric-powered clotheswasher that uses no detergent, only steam. The steam cycle can be used alone, or in combination with the normal hot/warm water cycles. It’s made by LG.
Raoul Pop 