Thoughts

Googling from different countries

I was watching this video on the Google Webmaster Central Channel, where Matt Cutts answers a question about the impact of server location on Google’s rankings, and he touched on an important point, which I hadn’t noticed until I spent a few months in Romania. In the video, he says that Google will return different search results based on which Google site you visit. For example, if you go to Google.com and type in “bank”, you’ll get different search results than if you go to Google.com.au and type in “bank”.

Back in January, when I arrived in Romania, I noticed the same thing. I Googled myself while in Romania, only to find out I was no longer the first search result that came up for my name at Google.ro or at Google.com. I thought that was odd at the time, because doing the same thing while in the US yielded the expected result. It never occurred to me that Google would yield different search results for each country, although that makes perfect sense now.

Here’s the interesting part though. As I spent more time in Romania, writing and publishing to this site, whose server is in the US, from Romania, the order of the search results for my name at Google.ro and Google.com changed. One day, I googled myself and noticed my name came up first, just like it did in the US. So, Google somehow learned — and I’m not sure how they did it — that I was writing from Romania, or that I was in Romania, and figured out that returning my site as the first search result for my name in Romania was the relevant thing to do. If nothing else, it reveals some of the complexity behind Google’s search algorithms and earns my respect.

Lists

Gadget Monday – May 4, 2009

Here is this week’s list of seven cool gadgets. Sorry I couldn’t publish a Gadget Monday edition last week; my schedule was too hectic to accommodate the several hours of research and preparation that are required for each one of these posts.

Sea-Doo Seascooter Explorer

Made for scuba divers, the Seascooter Explorer will pull you through the water at speeds up to 3.3 mph. It has a three-stage speed control, it can dive up to 160 feet, and it’s powered by a rechargeable electric battery that lasts up to two hours. It looks like it’d be fun and easy to use. See the demo video. You can get one for $640.

seascooter-explorer-1

seascooter-explorer-2

seascooter-explorer-3

Lunocet

As long as I’m talking about scuba gear, here’s another cool gadget, the Lunocet. It’s a dolphin-inspired fin for divers that will supposedly allow you to swim at speeds of up to 8 mph underwater. That’s a pretty hefty claim. There’s a demo video on YouTube. I don’t know, with a fin that big, it looks to me like it’d be pretty easy to get muscle cramps if you’re not well trained, and with both feet stuck together onto the fin, you’d be hard-pressed to surface quickly. But, if you know what you’re doing, it should be a pretty cool toy, albeit at the substantial price of $975.

lunocet

[via LikeCool and Lunocet]

Pelican 0450 Mobile Tool Chest

I love tools, and this mobile tool chest from Pelican has me drooling. It’s tough, stackable, can hold up to 150 lbs. of tools, has all sorts of fancy features like pressure equalization valves and the ability to keep tools in place even when it’s turned over, and more. It is somewhat expensive though, at $500.

pelican-0450-mobile-tool-chest-1

pelican-0450-mobile-tool-chest-2

pelican-0450-mobile-tool-chest-3

[via LikeCool]

Rainxchange Rain Barrel by Aquascape

This decorative rain barrel looks great and has a built-in planter on top as well as a spout on its side. It’s an easy way to save money on your water bills and keep your garden irrigated.

rainxchange-rain-barrel-1

rainxchange-rain-barrel-2

[via The Design Blog and Aquascape]

Foldable Director’s Chair

This director’s chair folds up into a messenger bag. It’s available from Hammacher Schlemmer for $130.

messenger-bag-directors-chair

[via The Design Blog]

2D to 3D Coat Tree by Andie Olive

This 2D coat tree is essentially a sticker you place on your wall. It comes with a few hooks that you can install into the wall at specific points where they’re masked by the design, essentially turning the sticker into a usable coat tree. It’s a neat idea, but the price is well-peppered at $109. I guess you’re paying for the design, not the hardware, which is minimal indeed.

2d-to-3d-coat-tree

[via LikeCool]

Brugo Travel Mug

This special mug has a separate top compartment that fills up when you tip the mug, allowing you to cool a small portion of the liquid inside the mug before you drink it. It’s a neat idea. You tilt it, then sip it. There’s a demo video that shows you how this works. It sells for $20.

brugo-mug

[via TrustyPony]

Thoughts

Where's the Solar Coaster when you need it?

Lamenting the absence of a practical, usable solar car…

In an episode of The Raccoons which aired in 1985, entitled “The Evergreen Grand Prix“, Cedric, one of the protagonists and Cyril Sneer’s son, comes up with a design for an innovative solar car that Cyril promises to mass-produce in a new deal struck with a big car manufacturer, a Mr. Mammoth. Once the manufacturer hears the car is solar-powered, he objects, because he sells other tie-in products like gasoline and oil, and they can’t be used when the fuel source is sunlight.

Cyril quickly changes his mind, trashes his son’s brilliant design, and builds a road-hog prototype instead. When it comes time to demonstrate his prototype’s abilities publicly, Cedric and Bert come up with a surprise. They rebuild the trashed solar car and propose to Cyril that the two prototypes race together to see who wins.

Mr. Mammoth is eager to see what happens, and gives the okay. Naturally — or, I suppose, unnaturally, given the current status quo — the solar car wins, to Cyril’s dismay. The manufacturer then agrees to mass-produce self-assembly kits of the solar car, which goes on to be a great success.

So I ask, given that this episode saw the light of day in 1985, has anything progressed in the area of solar cars since then? After all, it’s been 29 years. That’s a long time, during which many new developments could have been architected. The answer is sadly no.

To put things in perspective, the Solar Coaster used a single rectangular solar panel which also doubled as a rear spoiler, and it was enough to make the car “peppy”, as one of the lines in the show went. Today’s solar cars (actually, all solar cars since their inception, sadly) have placed photovoltaic panels over the entire top of the car, and it’s still not enough. They have had to adjust the design radically in order to increase the top surface area, so the cars have no side height at all. They’re basically tapered tops and bottoms, packed full of solar cells, and yet their performance cannot be described as peppy.

I realize the Solar Coaster doesn’t exist. It’s only the fancy of the show’s writers, but still, it’s a good standard by which to judge the solar car’s progress within the last three decades, simply because the idea has been around for that long, if not longer. From my point of view, R&D in photovoltaic cells has stagnated sadly, and this is what’s holding back the solar car. Incredible leaps have been made in computer technology, building technology, and even the performance of petrol-fueled cars, but unfortunately the solar car is still the sickly step child no one likes to play with. To paraphrase Terry from “On the Waterfront”, it could have been a contender; it could have been somebody. [Sorry for the cliché.]

Instead of a serious contender, we’re offered a glorified solar fan in the form of the 2010 Toyota Prius, whose solar cells will be used to cool the car while it’s parked. Thanks, but we’ve had that stuff around since the 80s too.

If you want to watch the full “Evergreen Grand Prix” episode, it’s available on Youtube in three parts: part 1, part 2 and part 3. If you’re seeing this on my site, not on my feed, you can also watch the videos below.

Lists

Gadget Monday – April 20, 2009

Here are this week’s seven cool gadgets.

LG Viewty Smart Mobile Phone

The LG Viewty Smart (LG-GC900) smartphone comes with a touchscreen, 8-megapixel camera, and all the other goodies you’d expect from a late-generation mobile phone, such as a 3-inch WVGA screen with 800×480 pixels of crystal-clear resolution, 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and WiFi, 1½GB of internal memory and up to 32GB of expandable memory, and it is only 12.4mm thick. That’s thinner than a standard sheet of drywall, for those of you familiar with construction. It’s less than ¾ the width of my Nokia N95 smartphone. No pricing information is available yet. LG says the phone will first be available in European markets first.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= j3odfmQze_4

[via LikeCool and LG]

Video camera pen from Hammacher Schlemmer

Available for $130 from Hammacher Schlemmer, this nifty pen records up to 2½ hours of color video at a resolution of 352×288 pixels. It stores the video (AVI format) on its 4GB internal memory, and it interfaces with a computer through its built-in USB connector, which can also be used to recharge its lithium battery by plugging it into an outlet via the included adapter. Best of all, it also writes, and the ink sticks are refillable.

[via TrustyPony and Hammacher Schlemmer]

Acrylic Cowboy open computer case

This is a precision-drilled acrylic board, onto which you can install the usual components that go inside a computer, such as a motherboard, video card, power supply, CD-ROM and hard drive. The kick is that everything’s out in the open so it can be easily serviced. Nice concept, but somewhat pricy at $76 bucks, no?

[via LikeCool and Geek Stuff 4 U]

Braille E-Book Reader

This is only a concept, but if it gets made, it’ll let blind people read books via the device’s special surface, which can change to reproduce Braille letters through electromagnetic impulses. Very cool.

[via The Design Blog]

Bird Dispenser by Curro Claret

A very clever design for an automatic bird dispenser! The cutting board has pre-drilled holes through which crumbs from your sliced bread fall and collect into a dispenser for your pet bird. Love it!

[via LikeCool]

Battery Snaps

For $5, you get a cool little top that snaps onto a regular 9-volt battery to give you an instant flashlight. It has an on/off switch and comes with its own 9-volt battery, ready to go.

[via LikeCool and Perpetual Kid]

DrinKlip Cup Holder

A sturdy clip that attaches to the edge of your desk and holds your cup. Very nice!

[via LikeCool]

Lists

Gadget Monday – April 13, 2009

Here are this week’s seven cool gadgets.

Lenovo IdeaCentre A600 All-in-One Desktop

I wrote about the Dell Studio One in last week’s Gadget Monday. Now I see that Lenovo is coming out with their own version of the iMac — I say this because the design is similar. Unlike the Dell Studio One, they’ve left the hardware underneath the display, just like the iMac, but they bent the lower lip back to give it a different look.

The starting price hovers at $700, same as the Dell Studio One, but be forewarned, the hardware specs include an integrated video card. And since the machine runs Vista Home Premium, which is a real clunker of an OS, an integrated video card will slow everything down. To get a decent video card, you need to get the model that costs $1,000. And at that price, you really gotta wonder, should I pay $1,000 to run Vista, or just put down $200 more and get an iMac, which runs a much better OS?

Still, if I had to run Windows, I’d rather run it on a nice-looking machine like this one.

[via LikeCool and Lenovo]

White Leica M8

Design-wise, this camera is wonderful. I’m not convinced the specs and the quality of the photos you can get with it live up to its astronomic $10,000 and above price.

[via Gizmodo]

Modular CT adjustable bike seat by Selle Bassano

The distance between the two halves of this bike seat can be readily adjusted to fit the needs of every rider. Great idea!

[via The Design Blog and Selle Bassano]

Land Sailor

A portable wind-powered craft that can go up to 25mph on flat ground. It’s no Greenbird, but it’ll do for the weekend enthusiast. It disassembles easily to fit into the trunk of a car. It has a seat, handbrake, seat belt, and steers with your feet while your hands operate the sail. The back wheels are cambered for stability. Available from Hammacher-Schlemmer for just under $1,000.

[via LikeCool and Hammacher-Schlemmer]

Icon showerhead by Grohe

A very cool-looking showerhead that uses less water thanks to its nozzle design.

[via The Design Blog]

Haiku Satori ceiling fan

A ceiling fan that combines great design and sculpted bamboo blades with a revolutionary microprocessor-controlled motor that consumes 60-80% less electricity than a typical fan motor.

[via The Design Blog and Haiku]

Sony Ericsson MS500 Bluetooth speaker

Those of us with Sony Ericsson cellphones can entertain ourselves on the go with this handy Bluetooth speaker. It plays music directly from the phone, and as a bonus, the volume of the speaker is controlled by the phone as well. It operates on two AA batteries for up to 5 hours.

[via LikeCool]

Raoul Pop

One man's life

Tag Archives: technology

Googling from different countries