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Friday, March 16, 2007

Summer of Code Student Applications Now Open

The accepted Google Summer of Code 2007 mentors list is now complete at the Summer of Code website — 131 projects could use your help. Student applications are open and the end date is March 24. Google has an application guide in the Summer of Code Announce discussion group that provides more information on the application process.

Google Summer of Code™

Google Summer of Code 2007 is on! We are now accepting student applications. We've also published some additional web app documentation for mentors and organization administrators.

All the information for participants in Google Summer of Code 2007, including student abstracts and other information provided by them, is available by visiting the individual mentoring organization pages below.

Mentoring Organizations Participating in Google Summer of Code 2007

AbiSource (ideas)

Adium (ideas)

Aqsis Team (ideas)

Ardour (ideas)

ArgoUML (ideas)

Audacious Media Player (ideas)

Bazaar (ideas)

BBC Research (ideas)

Beagle (ideas)

Blender Foundation (ideas)

Boost C++ (ideas)

BZFlag (ideas)

Casetta (ideas)

Center for the Study of Complex Systems (CSCS), University of Michigan (ideas)

CLAM ( at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra) (ideas)

Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (ideas)

Coppermine Photo Gallery (ideas)

coresystems GmbH (ideas)

Creative Commons (ideas)

Crystal Space (ideas)

Debian (ideas)

Detached Solutions (ideas)

Dojo Foundation (ideas)

Drupal (ideas)

DSpace (ideas)

Eclipse (ideas)

Etherboot Project (ideas)

eXist (ideas)

FANN - The Fast Artificial Neural Network Library (ideas)

FFmpeg (ideas)

Fityk (ideas)

FreeBSD (ideas)

Freenet Project Inc (ideas)

Freevo (ideas)

Gaim (ideas)

Gallery (ideas)

GCC (ideas)

Geeklog (ideas)

GenMAPP (ideas)

Gentoo Foundation (ideas)

Git Development Community (ideas)

GNOME (ideas)

GNU Project (ideas)

GnuCash (ideas)

GNUstep (ideas)

Haiku (ideas)

Handhelds.org (ideas)

Haskell.org (ideas)

hugin / panotools (ideas)

IEM - Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics, Graz (ideas)

ikiwiki (ideas)

Inkscape (ideas)

Internet2 (ideas)

Jikes RVM (ideas)

Joomla! (ideas)

K-3D (ideas)

KDE (ideas)

Lanka Software Foundation (ideas)

Liblime (ideas)

LispNYC.org (ideas)

LLVM Compiler Infrastructure (ideas)

MacPorts (ideas)

maemo (ideas)

MetaBrainz Foundation (ideas)

Mixxx (ideas)

MoinMoin Wiki Project (ideas)

We are no longer accepting applications from open source organizations.

If you're feeling nostalgic, you can still access the Google Summer of Code 2005 and Google Summer of Code 2006 pages. We've also created a map (requires Google Earth) of all 2006 mentors and student participants for your perusal.

Questions?

Please peruse our FAQ and Terms of Service for more information about the program. If you still have questions, email us for support.

Guide to the Google Summer of Code^TM Web App for Student Applicants

This document is a work-in-progress. Additional information on how to use the application will be added as Google's program administrators receive questions via either our program discussion list or to our support alias.

Using the Web App to Register for GSoC

These are the steps for registering as a student participant for Google Summer of Code:

Start registration by reviewing and accepting our program Terms of Service.

Once you have accepted the Terms of Service, you should automatically be redirected to the student dashboard.

Click on the "My Profile" link in the left hand navigation menu. Please update your personal information.

Notes on the Student Profile Page

Name

Please list your name as you would like it to appear on your program certificate.

Citizenship

We are required to ask for this information. Please see the FAQ entry in student ineligibility for more details.

Shipping Address

Please be very, very careful when filling out this section and provide as much detail as possible. While we're successfully cutting down on the number of problem shipments of t-shirts, etc., we rely on you to provide us with accurate address information. If you have any questions, we suggest you call your local FedEx office and see if they would be able to ship to your address as you have listed it in the web app.

It is very important that you provide a phone number where you can be reached consistenly, as all shipping companies ask for a phone number so they can follow up when there are issues with delivery. If you have a mobile number, please provide it here. It is also very important to include your country code, as a problem with your shipment may occur in a country outside of your own and the shipping company will need the country code information in order to reach you.

School

Please include the full name of your school as it would appear in any official document sent from the administrative staff.

Please include the URL to your school as a whole, not to a particular department.

Your major is your primary field of study at school. If you have not chosen a primary field of study at this time, write in N/A for "not applicable."

The "Degree to be Completed" section may have some choices that you do not recognize. Here's a basic overview:
1. Undergrad: select this option if you are working towards your first degree
2. Masters: select this option if you are working towards a second degree at the graduate level
3. PHD: select this option if you are working towards a Doctorate degree of any kind

If you have not yet begun attending college or university, make your best estimate of the date you will be graduating.

Optional

While all of the information in this section is optional, we'd be totally stoked if you'd provide it, especially since we're planning a Google Summer of Code blog planet this year! By selecting please publish my location, you agree to let us include your coordinates in our yearly GSoC map. (Map file requires Google Earth.)

The Student Dashboard

Once you've updated your profile, you should be redirected to the Student Dashboard. You can also visit this page directly once you have filled out your personal profile.

Your Student Dashboard is a running list of all applications you have submitted. It's also your starting point to submit new applications.

The "Last Modified" column will display the date that your application was submitted. If this information changes, it means that a mentor has posted a public comment, meaning a request to you for to add additional information to the application.

The "Status" column will let you know when mentors have begun reviewing your application.

Submitting an Application

To submit an application, click on the "Add a new application" link in your Student Dashboard . (The "Add a new application" link will also automatically update so you always know how many applications you have left to submit. The maximum number of applications any student can submit is 20.)

You will then be redirected to the application page.

Title/Summary: Make this a very terse description of your application, e.g. "Garbage collection tuning for GCC."

Organization: Select the organization to which you'd like to apply from the drop down list. If the organization has provided us with an application template, it should propagate into the "Detailed Description" section once you've selected the organization.

Abstract: A shorter summary of your overall application to be linked from the GSoC Program Page. View an example.

Detailed Description: Enter the text of your application here. Text only, 7500 characters maximum.

Link to Further Information: You can only provide a single link in this field. If you wish to provide more than one link, include additional links in the "Detailed Description" section.

Once you've clicked the "Submit" button, your application will appear in the selected organization's application review queue.

Comments on Your Application

Mentors may post a comment to your application asking for more information. You will receive an email requesting that you log into the GSoC web app and review the comments. You will be able to view the comments by selecting the correct application from the list in your Student Dashboard. The application title will be a link to the frozen application text and the comments provided by the mentor(s) reviewing the application.

Cop: Wife googled 'How to commit murder'

BY RICK MALWITZ
STAFF WRITER
Tuesday, March 13, 2007

At exactly 5:45:34 on April 18, 2004 a computer taken from the office of the attorney of Melanie McGuire, did a search on the words "How To Commit Murder."That same day searches on Google and MSN search engines, were conducted on such topics as `instant poisons,` `undetectable poisons,' 'fatal digoxin doses,' and gun laws in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Ten days later, according to allegations by the state of New Jersey, McGuire murdered her husband, William T. McGuire, at their Woodbridge apartment, using a gun obtained in Pennsylvania, one day after obtaining a prescription for a sedative known as the "date rape" drug.

Jennifer Seymour, who worked for the State Police digital technology unit, testified thismorning how she examined the digital contents of computers and hand held devices obtained as part of the investigation.

Her testimony was the strongest evidence yet in the state's circumstantial evidence case against the 34-year-old McGuire, who allegedly murdered her husband with a .38 caliber weapon, dismembered his body and placed body parts in three suitcases found in the Chesapeake Bay in May of 2004.

While the jury has yet to see any fingerprint, blood or DNA evidence in the case, the evidence presented by Seymour illustrated how computers can be a valuable investigation tool.

Seymour was still being questioned by Assistant Attorney General Patricia Prezioso when Superior Court Judge Frederick De Vesa gave the jury its lunch break. Testimony was scheduled to resume at 1:45 p.m.

Seymour, now employed by the U.S. Department of Defense, testified how digital investigators can trace activity on a computer, including information the user has deleted.

She testified that she isolated data that was accessed in the weeks leading up to the murder, by inserting the keyword "search," which showed activity by Google and MSN search engines, with the searches center-ing on poisons and gun laws.

The murder took place the same day, according to allegations by the state, that a two-ounce prescription of chloral hydrate was purchased at a Walgreen's in Edison.

A search on April 26, 2004 of the computer seized by the state found that the user accessed the site www.walgreens.com/storelocator.

On Monday Yan Kim Lee, a pharmacist at the Walgreen's on New Durham Road in Edison, testified that on the morning of April 28 she filled a prescription for chloral hydrate for a woman named Tiffany Bain, on script signed by Dr. Bradley Miller of Reproductive Medicine Associates in Morristown.

Melanie McGuire worked at the RMA office as a nurse, and at the time of her husband's death she was having an affair with Miller.

Lee testified that she typically fills only about three or four prescriptions annually for chloral hydrate.

In her testimony Seymour said she was able to trace e-mails on Hotmail accounts allegedly used by McGuire and Miller. She said the e-mails seemed to indicate the two had a romantic relation-ship, with such phrases as "I love you," and "I miss you."

Seymour said that on Sept. 8, 2005, the State Police obtained eight computers, three laptops and eight hand-held devices as part of the murder investigation.

In her testimony today, she said she examined the contents of a computer obtained at the office of McGuire's attorney, though she did not identify the name of the attorney. She also said she tested a home computer used by the Woodbridge couple, and a home computer used by her parents, who now live in Barnegat.

The HP Pavilion computer obtained from McGuire's attorney's office had a 60 gigabyte hard drive, and not all of it was searched by Seymour.

She told the jury that it is known in the computer industry that if information stored on a 12 gigabyte computer was put on paper it would create a stack of paper higher than the Empire State Building.

The first person to testify Tuesday was David A. Barron, a forensics examiner for the state of Virginia, who participated in the initial murder investigation.

Barron testified that he did not examine William McGuire's re-mains for chloral hydrate. He said his office no longer has the samples it used to test for alcohol and certain drugs.

"The protocol is once we complete our testing we submit it to the investigating agency," he said. "My understanding is that it has been destroyed."

Under cross examination by defense attorney Stephen Turano, Barron said no test for chloral hydrate was done on the remains.

When asked by Prezioso if it is routine in autopsies to test for "every substance known to man-kind," Barron said, "We could do a research project on any case we receive, but we don't have the manpower."

The state's second witness, Donna Todd, the director of the Kinder Castle daycare center in Metuchen where the McGuire's 4-year-old son was enrolled, testified for the state about the child's attendance record on April 28, 2004, the day the state alleges the murder take place.

On cross examination by Joseph Tacopina she also testified about his attendance on April 29. Ac-cording to her records the boy arrived at the daycare center at 8:30 a.m.

Todd told the jury that Melanie McGuire explained to her that she was obtaining a temporary restraining order against her husband, and told her about a fight the night before that ended when William stuffed a dryer cloth into her mouth.

Tacopina asked Todd if McGuire looked "upset or crazed."

"She did look upset," said Todd.

Monday, February 26, 2007

Top 10 Google Products

As you surely know, Google is a company that owns an impressive number of products from multiple categories such as video solutions, mail services, calendar, blogs and numerous search technologies including news, jobs, maps, groups and patents. Obviously, every client of the Google products has his own favorite services used every day for a certain activity. In the next lines, I'll present you the top 10 Google solutions in my opinion with a short description for every service in the list.

1. Google Search is regarded as the best search engine on the Internet because it provides an impressive amount of information from numerous websites in the entire world. I use it every day for certain activities so I guess it is quite popular among the Internet users.

2. Gmail is the mail solution provided by Google, released on April 1, 2004 and available as a free public beta. Since the launch date, Gmail was available only by invitations,

requiring users to register for the service using an invitation sent by another client of the product. The service was improved several times but the most important feature seems to be Mail Fetcher that allows users to receive up to 5 POP3 accounts directly into the Gmail inbox. Another important update is the Google Talk interoperability that helps Gmail users communicate with friends and family using the interface of the mail solution.

3. Image Search is a technology provided as a part of the Google Search, allowing you to find pictures from the websites located on the entire Internet. It was the subject of a well-known controversy because the company improved its interface but, after an impressive number of users' complaint, Google decided to switch it back to the old appearance.

4. Google News is one of the most popular sources of information on the Internet because it receives news and latest headlines from almost 4500 publications from the entire world. Although the product displays only the headline but places a link to the original publisher, it was often criticized for receiving praises for the content offered by other sources.

5. YouTube is the leader of the online video services that allows you to upload, share and comment videos with friends or other members of the community. The product was acquired in October 2006 for $1.6 billion and caused numerous lawsuits for Google, the company being accused of publishing videos without authorization.

6. Google Maps is probably the most popular solution in its category, allowing users to view maps and other imagery captured directly from the satellites. It is used in many domains; multiple publications reported that even terrorists were connecting to the service to organize attacks against the UK troops located in Basra.

7. Docs & Spreadsheets is regarded as the Office solution provided the search giant that allows users to create, edit and share documents using a simple web-based interface. The product is available for free so I guess it can represent a powerful rival for the well known Microsoft solution.

8. Blogger is the blog service developed by the search giant to help users post and comment articles wrote by numerous authors. Recently, the company revealed the final version of the Blogger that provides an innovative interface bundled with new exciting features.

9. AdSense is currently the most attracting service provided by the search giant because it allows users to earn money quick and easy by placing ads on their websites. The solution is based on the pay per click procedure because it automatically transfers a certain amount of money into the owner's account every time a user clicks on the adverts.

10. Google Video is another video solution provided by Google that provides almost the same features as YouTube but it is currently in beta. Although the company now owns two similar products, its representatives sustained Google Video will continue to exist but will be based on the content it provides.

So, this is my Top Ten Google Products. Feel free to comment it but remember these are the most popular services provided by Google in MY opinion, so try to avoid criticizing me because I really use all these solutions.

Monday, February 19, 2007

Google Releases Paper on Disk Reliability

"The Google engineers just published a paper on Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population. Based on a study of 100,000 disk drives over 5 years they find some interesting stuff. To quote from the abstract: 'Our analysis identifies several parameters from the drive's self monitoring facility (SMART) that correlate highly with failures. Despite this high correlation, we conclude that models based on SMART parameters alone are unlikely to be useful for predicting individual drive failures. Surprisingly, we found that temperature and activity levels were much less correlated with drive failures than previously reported.'"

Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Google (and Yahoo) Using Email to Profile You!

A family member (who we’ll call Bob) sent an email to my wife on the subject of Health. It was one-link to a nutrition-site product (sunflower oil and other vitamins). My wife uses Gmail for all her email needs. Bob uses Yahoo for his needs.

The email contained a single link with no other information and not even a signature. The one-link email was flanked on its right side with sponsored links from Google. Ok, this is normal.

What was not normal, and was terrifying was that the ads where for Illuminati, deep secret governments, and a whole host of underground conspiracy ads. My wife was puzzled by the ads because they had nothing to do with nutrition. She knows how the ads should work because she has an Adsense account.

Our curiosity of the misinformed ads grew quickly.

For the heck of it we decided to call Bob and ask him if he was into these types of websites? He said, “That’s where I mostly visit. And how would we know this intimate information?”

We explained; Google reads email content with electronic robots and delivers ads based on ‘The Emails’ content. So if your email is about cats, ads should appear on the subject of cats. Google has always claimed it does not track content of users email. It simply provides content-based ads.

This came as a shock to Bob! He said he spends his life investigating threats to the U.S. constitution and expects that to remain ‘private’ to his household.

With that, we all felt a chill down our spine. How is it that emails from Bob now reveal where he surfs to his recipients?

This is no mistake on Google’s part. They are beginning to profile its users through toolbars, email content, collaboration with Yahoo databases and where we visit frequently. Then targeting our associates to see if they too are interested in the same subject matter? Or is that all its for?

I have never been into conspiracy before, but this smells rotten. We have clear evidence that Google and Yahoo somehow track our behavior “Personally!”

Look at the facts:

1) Bob only uses Yahoo for all his needs. This includes email, surfing and purchases.
2) My wife received the email from Bob in her Gmail account.
3) Yahoo and Google are two separate company’s right?
4) Bob has never revealed to my wife his personal Internet life.
5) Ads about where Bob visits frequently appear where content ads should have under Google sponsored section in Gmail email.
6) Bob confirmed that these are the primary sites he visits.
7) Gmail ads should only be focused on email content.

It is becoming ever clearer to me that we are heading towards George Orwell’s 1984. By the way, I can thank Google for those conspiracy ads, which lead me to this book. What a freekin’ irony!

Google is becoming the threat that so many predicted. I guess I am just starting to wake up.

~ BigD of reflexologynation.com

Google's VOIP Strategy

Is Google getting set to compete with the telcos – or maybe change voice communication forever? It’s starting to look that way.

Google Talk Beta is a 1.5 MB instant-messenger download for Windows Vista, XP or 2000 whose functions resemble AOL Instant Messenger or Skype: primarily voice, chat and file transfers. Google explains the service in depth on its Web site.

There is currently no Mac and Linux version of Google Talk, although Google says Mac and Linux fans can communicate with Google Talk users via any of several IM clients that support the open XMPP standard. Google Talk doesn’t currently use the SIP standard and its traffic won’t be encrypted until the full release. Google currently lists Trillian, GAIM, iChat, Adium and Psi as interoperable with Google Talk.

If you have a Gmail account, Google Talk automatically loads your contacts as potential persons to call or IM. In addition, you can save IM chats to your Gmail account or specify that a chat be “off the record” and not saved by either user’s Gmail account, although people using non-Google IM clients could potentially save chats on their PCs. (This feature is either a Sarbanes-Oxley blessing or a pretrial-discovery curse, depending on your perspective.)

Google could go in several directions from this first step toward telephony. Most obviously, Google Talk is another piece in Mountain View’s continuing effort to assemble a Google desktop (and perhaps even the fabled Google OS). However, Google’s legions of Ph.D.s may be up to something much more disruptive.

In December 2006, Dave Girouard, vice president and general manager of Google's enterprise division, told Internet News that Google would ride into enterprise settings on the shoulders of people who already use Google apps on their own. Some observers question this strategy, considering some Google tools haven’t had great luck with consumers yet. Om Malik, for one, observed that as of July 2006 only 44,000 people used Google Talk for IM conversation.

Now come the interesting parts: First, Girouard said Google would beef up Google Talk to increase compatibility with traditional telecom systems and other vendors’ VoIP offerings. Second, in the same article, Forrester researcher Charlene Li said Google might make those voice files searchable. Girouard’s and Li’s remarks open up major speculation as both a telco competitor and as a game-changer.

Google the Telco Killer?

First, Google might partner with any number of telcos as a last-mile provider for a branded VoIP network, just as Apple recently partnered with Cingular to finish calls on its new iPhone. Google isn’t saying—but then, it’s not talking about all those unused (“dark”) fiberoptic lines it bought, either, which could enable it to start its own VoIP network with only minimal outside involvement.

Telco ambitions may partly explain why Google is heavily involved in the Net-neutrality debate, battling big phone and cable companies’ efforts to give preferential treatment to certain data streams (their own, their sponsors’, whoever pays for it) while potentially limiting others. Google sees such efforts as a threat to people’s ability to get quick search and other information from Google. In addition, an end to Net neutrality could also threaten relatively bandwidth-intensive applications like Google Talk, which carriers could slow-track in favor of their own voice or VoIP traffic.

But then, why bother trying to be a phone company when your IM client lets users bypass phone companies—even cell providers—for practically nothing? Some companies—notably Nimbuzz —already take advantage of Google Talk’s commitment to open standards. The Nimbuzz IM client lets you call IM buddies worldwide from your mobile, paying only “your cheapest local rate” for the call. As an IM client, Nimbuzz voice bypasses whatever software counts cell minutes or registers international tariffs, although the blog MobileCrunch thinks sound quality could be improved. In effect, the cell-service provider’s role and rate-setting power shrink dramatically in a world of interoperable IM clients like Google Talk.

Google the Game-Changer

If Charlene Li’s speculation bears fruit and future Google Talk revs both capture and search voice traffic, this little IM client potentially changes the telecom business forever. Here are a few ramifications of digitally recorded, searchable phone calls:

The ability to remember exactly what you just told someone is a major boon to consumers, and businesses would suddenly have an incredibly powerful tool for capturing customer information, certainly more powerful than placing ads related to e-mail content as Google search and Gmail do today; but Google and personal and business users could face problems with state or federal wiretap laws, with additional trouble from prosecutors obtaining warrants for Google’s voice recordings of suspect conversations, and Google Talk’s success could convince the FCC that VoIP is now big enough to regulate, and try to persuade Congress accordingly.

Considering the difficulties that Google and others have had in simply creating effective video search, however, comprehensive, searchable voice-call records may be restricted to science fiction—or the National Security Agency—for now.

For more on VoIP, see the VoIP News VoIP Buyers Guide .

Monday, January 29, 2007

Google TV - An Elaborate Hoax

A heavily produced YouTube video from Mark Erickson at “Infinite Solutions” shows users how to get in on the super-secret (and non existent) Google TV beta. It involves sending yourself an email and then logging in and out of Gmail multiple times until a tv icon appears in the Gmail logo. In the comments to the video, some users have tried logging in and out of Gmail hundreds of times without it working.This is almost certainly a fake, as Google Blogoscoped reports. Erickson then posted a second video to prove the authenticity and saying that Google had increased the login requirements “substantially”. A+ for effort and originality. Both videos are below.

Google

Sphere It

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Google Web Search Now Integrates Blog Results

Type in a phrase into Google.com, add the word "blog" at the end of your query and not only will you get web results but more up-to-date gems from Google Blog Search too. That's the word from the Google Operating System weblog. This has been running as a test since November.