Wyszdom

Today at Google I/O, Google announced Google Web Elements, which lets you easily (we’re talking copy-and-paste easy) incorporate Google services into your website.

To show you how easy it is, I recorded a live installation of a Custom Search element on my homepage. The video, which is recorded in realtime, doesn’t even reach the two minute mark:

I would remind you of my disclaimer, but it’s prominently displayed in the video. 🙂

I’m usually in love with Apple’s UI decisions, but I dusted off my Apple TV tonight to download a few movies, and it was an incredibly frustrating experience.

First of all, I didn’t have my iPhone with me, so I had to do without the Remote app while searching and type with this:

That part wasn’t too bad, since it only takes a few letters before the right movie pops up. But here’s where I could not justify the 6-button remote:

And after all of my effort, here’s what I got:

When that happened several times, I tried hooking up a USB keyboard to the USB port in the back of the device. A port which does absolutely nothing.

Finally, I reset my password (which worked after the second attempt), and then was able to complete my purchases after resetting my Apple TV.

The experience felt like using a real-life MacBook Wheel:

I spent a few minutes playing with Wolfram|Alpha today, its first full day of public availability. While the launch of this service was very recent, Wolfram|Alpha has a longer history than you might think. It’s built off of Mathematica, which I never used as a student but I certainly heard about from my math-loving friends. Mathematica was released over 20 years ago and named by Steve Jobs.

At first glance, Wolfram|Alpha looks like a traditional search engine, but it’s different than the types of search engines you’re used to associating with a web service.

It strives to provide answers to factual queries based on data visualization and computation. Yeah, I don’t think I explained it well either. Let’s just jump to some sample queries to show what I mean. I’m pretty bad at calculating time, so let’s have computers tell me the answers:

How much longer until my birthday? (my first query!)
[days until dec 31, 2009]

How much time do I have to ride my bike? I don’t have a bike light.
[time until sunset] or just [sunset]

When is this 87-minute movie going to be over if I start watching at 7:15?
[7:15 + 87 minutes]

Here’s the first query I tried which didn’t work. I wanted to see if I could add up times (in MM:SS format) to see how much video I’ve uploaded to YouTube. I put in these sample values:
[4:15 + 2:10 + 18:37]

Bummer. But with a little bit of find/replace I could get an input that Wolfram|Alpha understood:
[4 minutes 15 seconds + 2 minutes 10 seconds + 18 minutes 37 seconds]

I entered all of those queries with limited knowledge about what types of questions Wolfram|Alpha could answer, and had no idea what a correct syntax should look like. Fortunately, it does a pretty good idea of understanding what I’m trying to ask, which is what’s expected of search engines today. After I played around with time-based computation, I tried a couple of other queries:

[population of doylestown, pa and population of sunnyvale, ca]

This one did not work:
[populations of doylestown, pa and sunnyvale, ca in 1983]

Here’s a fun one that I originally learned from Google’s calculator:
[number of horns on a unicorn]

And this one from Monty Python:
[velocity of an unladen swallow]

As you can see, the results are better when you’re more specific:
[velocity of an unladen european swallow]

Those should be enough to get you started, but if you need more inspiration or are looking for more diverse examples, check out this list.

Tomorrow night I’ll finish my Android trial, and I’m honestly not sure which device my SIM card will be sitting in at 7:00. I’ll definitely continue to use both platforms; I just need to decide which one will be my primary device.

In addition to a great notification system and the ability to run background apps, I’ve found another point in Android’s favor, and had a fun time geeking out with it last night. Google Sky Map, which was born in Google’s Pittsburgh office, allows you to do what you’d expect from Google: search the sky. I noticed that none of the daytime/indoor demos really showed the app “in the wild,” so I waited for the moonrise last night and then shot a quick video. I decided to search for the Moon for three reasons: First, I know what the Moon looks like and can confirm the app’s accuracy. Second, it’s the only natural object in the night sky that my video camera is able to capture. And finally, I was hoping that it would lead me to David Moon. He totally freaks out when I find him at night. It’s hilarious.

Here’s my quick demo:

My camera did pretty well on full-auto; I think you get the gist of what’s going on. The bright circle is the Moon. You’ll note that the Moon actually appears a bit to the left of where Sky Map said it would be. It’s possible that my compass needs to be calibrated. The difference could also be caused by the fact that at my location, magnetic north is about 14° east of true north, and the app currently does not account for magnetic declination.

Did you like the music? It’s my first time publishing a video with YouTube’s AudioSwap feature. I chose a short song called “Happy and Happy” because it sounded corny enough to be in one of those science videos you watch in school. I’d also like to note that this is the first time I made use of one of YouTube’s new tags to make sure the video was presented properly. I uploaded a raw HDV file, which is 1440×1080 pixels. But that doesn’t sound like it matches the 16:9 aspect ratio, does it? That’s because DV and HDV use a horrible concept called “non-square pixels” which I’m sure was a good idea at some point for technical reasons, but in today’s world is just an annoyance. So, to make sure YouTube knew to present it as widescreen, I added this tag: yt:stretch=16:9. Worked like a charm, and it meant I didn’t have to do any transcoding on my end.

So, the next time you see one of those articles about “Object X will be visible to the naked eye tonight,” grab your (or your friend’s) Android device and find that object in no time. Or if you want to find something tonight, try searching Google (without the brackets) for [tonight’s sky] or something similar. Before heading outside, however, check to see if the object you’re looking for appears above the yellow horizon line. If it’s below the horizon, you won’t be able to see it without some heavy-duty Earth-moving equipment, so make sure you look up the best viewing time for your area.

Don’t have access to an Android device? Don’t forget you can still explore the sky with your browser or with Google Earth before heading out to find things yourself.

I haven’t done a lot of stargazing in my life, and it’s a bit difficult to do where I live now, but I have a few favorite sky-watching moments:

1. As a birthday present for me one year in elementary school, my parents won a fundraising auction for an evening with Derrick Pitts at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. We got to look through a pretty sweet telescope on the roof.
2. In 4th grade, my science teacher hosted an astronomy night. It was temporarily cancelled due to weather but then was back on at the last minute. The next morning, I told my homeroom teacher that I went to the astronomy night and she looked really concerned because she thought it was cancelled. I remember this because she always seemed worried about everything.
3. When I was 11 years old, I went to an Audubon camp in Maine in August and saw my first meteor shower. I’m guessing it was the Perseids, and it was amazing.
4. In March of 1997 when my family was on vacation in Colorado, a partial lunar eclipse occurred while the Comet Hale-Bopp was especially bright, and I’m pretty sure we spotted it. At the same time, Hanson’s “MMMBop” was a popular song, and Andy Signore wrote a parody song honoring this and published on the back of the creatively-named S’Edition, a parody of The Edition, our school’s paper.
5. I saw the Perseids again last summer.

When I was about 10 years old, every day after school I used to get some cookies and milk and watch Star Trek: The Next Generation on TV. The series had recently ended and they played it five nights a week on UPN 57. I eventually got around to seeing all of the old movies and kept up with the new ones, and then in college watched the entire Original Series within about a couple of weeks on DVD. I’ve bits of Deep Space 9, Voyager, and even Enterprise, but never on a consistent basis so I’m hoping those will pop up (legally) online someday.

The Next Generation is my favorite series, but I really enjoyed The Original Series too, even though they only visit two planets: “The Soundstage Full Of Plaster-based Rocks Where You Can See The Shadows Of The Trees On The Sky During Lightning” and “The One That Looks Just Like Earth.”

Last night, I finally got a long-awaited Trek fix and saw the new Star Trek movie. I don’t want to give away anything to those who haven’t seen it yet, so I’ll just say that I was a bit worried going in and even during the movie, but in the end I enjoyed it. The characters were pretty true to their original personalities, and even the plot uses one of Star Trek’s favorite devices. It wasn’t the most serious Star Trek content, but their movies are generally fun and let the characters let loose a little more, so they honored that tradition. I could totally have done without the Nokia ad, though (it’s like watching one of their cheesy “concept” videos about the future), but it only lasts a few seconds and I didn’t notice any other intrusive placements in the film.

After the movie we ate at Tomatina, which was really good. We had garlic rolls and a Margherita pizza, both recommended.  I don’t often go to good pizza places with friends out here. It reminded me of home, although just seeing Star Trek may have helped with that feeling.