let the downloading begin - Google Chrome

Google or "Big G" has finally decided to own the internet by releasing the linux of browsers. Microsoft has not finished fighting linux now they have to fight Chrome. Google used the power of linux, put thousands of computers together and built what Microsoft could never be able to kick off and in other words, build what will be the internet monopoly. I don't blame them because its always said "only a Ninja can stop a Ninja", and in this case "only Monopoly could stop Monopoly". Chrome sounds very interesting for a software developer like me - multi threading with processes, garbage collection, memory reuse, many nice geeky words, and I like the fact that it has the power java had when it came in with garbage collection and memory reuse. I am very excited to learn this will be out today for download and we have to watch the number of download against that of IE8 and Firefox 3.
I cant wait to download and test chrome for the mean time I like the look from the pictures

for more pictures visit http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-09-02-n72.html

Google Adsense shows on Microsoft's live.com search

Today after working the whole day on www.africa2point0.com and www.afriplay.tv , I decided to play abit with Microsoft's live search www.live.com, I searched for images on keyword aeroplane just to test the usability of live.com images search. I worked on it a few months back and I must tell you the image search of live.com is more interactive than that of Google.com. So I wanted to play with it once more and feel the interactivity and usability expertise portrayed by the software giant.
What amazed me is the fact that Ads by google appeared right on the Microsoft Search engine.
So has Microsoft accepted Google as king and decided to include the famous 'ads by Google' on their search results or Microsoft did not notice that including web pages randomly from many sources on their site could also include google ads.

check the photo below and see where the ads by google appears on http://search.live.com

Codeigniter is better than the .NET Framework

Codeigniter - www.codeigniter.com , the best php web development framework, is far better than the .NET framework's ASP.NET.
I have never used the .NET framework before but php appears to be much more efficient than all Microsoft technologies such that even Ballmer wants to buy facebook.com (php) and yahoo.com (php).
When I started programming some three years back, I was contemplating on using php or java for my web solutions. Java was more organised and mature than php but php was easy to install and run. You could find free php servers all around the place alongside soo many free php libraries and classes.
But java was too heavy and difficult to maintain by yourself ( dont get me wrong, to better use codeigniter I advice you to work with java first then apply your java skills on codeigniter projects).
Due to running cost I had to hang on to php.
I later wanted to build a framework that will remove the mess in php and make it orderly like java.
After about a week of hard work on the architecture of my framework, I decided to search the Internet for something similar, so I could rather improve upon or learn from it to build mine. I was shocked to see cakephp (www.cakephp.org) codeigniter (www.codeigniter.com) symphony and a couple of others.
I tried cake php but it gave me hell, but when I tried codeigniter it was like eating mangoes.
From there on I saw how big and powerfull the framework was and how easy it was to teach a new bie.
Ebot Ndip www.ebotndip.com , one of my students learned php and codeigniter in one week, after working on java for about two months.

I love codeigniter because its affordable and easy to learn and Right here in Africa I can host my own site running apache, php, mysql and Codeigniter, right inside my room with no stress.
I am in support of codeigniter for African developers mainly because, its easy to learn and easy to run. With Codeigniter, an African New Bee can take a period of 5 months to be equal to a guy who has been coding web apps in USA for the past ten years (trust me).

Enough of the Codeigniter jist, lets get down to why its better than .NET asp.net

The learning curve: A new bee can learn codeigniter in one month and start building great functional startup businesses while in .NET you will take about three months to do same.

Hosting issues: To host your .NET site on your own will cost you alot of money to pay to Microsoft. And in Africa money is what we dont have so I will advice all african web developers to jump unto php and codeigniter and they will never see a reason to learn any other web development framework.

Personally I started off with codeigniter in 2006 and I build www.ubstudents.com in 10 days thanks to codeigniter and phpbb, I built www.cameroonfootballers.com in a week thanks to codeigniter. I could use ruby on rails though but ruby is very stressfull to install and scale ask twitter.com

How Microsoft Can Answer Google in Six Months

Microsoft has been investing billions of dollars to catch up with Google on Internet Business.
But I think they have all the money and power to catch up but they have been doing so the wrong way. To me they are not getting it right because they have never had such a rival before.
Microsoft did not grow up with the internet, so they dont understand how to fight someone who actually made the internet valuable (Google).
I have a simple idea:
Microsoft should make Adcenta free of charge to advertisers for six months and the game will change.

What does that mean ?

What I mean is, Microsoft should make advertising on all their websites (via Adcenta) free for the next six months, alongside Microsoft should put engineers in place who will monitor the Adcenta system and the comments from the user base ( which will grow very fast in terms of users and feedback, because the ads are given out for free but still competitive).
This simply means many people will get to try Microsoft Ads even if they are using Google ads. From their comments and feedback Microsoft will then be able to improve their online advertisement targeting technology to compete with Google and even beat Google.

How Bad is it ?

The bad side is: Microsoft will get to loose soo much money from advertisers, but when the people use free advertising they will get use to the Microsoft platform. When they are asked to pay sometime in the future, users wont see any reason to leave and besides the system will be improving from their comments to suit them. This is what they did with windows some years back and this is what Google is doing with Google Apps for your domain. Is Microsoft Too Blind to see this ??

Taking Remix and Featuring from Hip Hop World to Information Technology World

I personally think, Remix and Featuring, two concepts that originated from Sean "P Diddy" Comb's Badboy Entertainment, are nice cultures that can help the Information and Technology Industry grow very fast.
For example if Google could team up with Facebook to release a social web property(hosted on a seperate domain name), all Google fans and facebook fans will use the site and the resulting solution will be a whole new web property that will generate enough revenue for share holders in both companies.
lets say Ebay teams up with Yahoo and they release a new social and marketing platform (hosted on a seperate domain name). This will employ new guys and also bring up more funds and change the way marketing (auction) and communication is done world wide within the space of two months. This is because it will automatically harvest the fan base of both ebay and yahoo.
This Remix and Featuring culture, that is helping hip hop artists make extra money by coming together to work on a song that will sell accross their fan bases is a very interesting business strategy.
Possible remix in the IT space:

Google and Microsoft - enterprise search revolution ( more money for Google, more money for Microsoft)

Yahoo and Facebook - jobs sharing community ( where all yahoo clients can login and share jobs a la facebook style)

you can come up with others.

Google does not love open source

Google the internet giant who uses open source technologies to make billions of dollars every month is actually an enemy to open source just like Microsoft.
Google embraced open source technologies that were geared against Microsoft, and trampled on Microsoft to become web King. But right now their core business (Google money making machines: - Adworks and Adsense) are not open source.
You might think Google is open source but let me make you see this clear.
Google can give you the source code of gmail , google maps, docs and the rest so that you start your own version of the solutions, but they know you will never get a better adverts provider so you will still employ them for adverts and they will make money from your business.
But if you could get a better ads provider they can not give you the codes for free and hence they are scared of open source.
Nobody on earth will have such power and make it open source, and I believe if an open source rival surfaces around the corner it will be a threat to Google’s kingdom.
I personally think if there could be some open source web advertisement solution for websites, where individuals could install the software on their sites and marketers could come and buy space right on their site and they make 100% of the money then Google’s business will drop to some extend.
Ok lets say I build Admark, a php engine (application) which you can install on your site as www.your-site.com/admark, and you put a link for marketers (ad buyers) on your site at www.your-site.com/admark/adbuyers where they can login, choose keywords or sections of your website where they can include their ads, then the Admark engine will bill them for you and then they pay via paypal or e-gold. It will be just like www.google.com/adworks but this time you market to websites that you know and believe in their traffic. For example I want to market only on cnn.com, if CNN has installed Admark; I will put my ads only on cnn.com and on a given page and it will reduce my ads spending. These way marketers will have to study websites where their adverts will make more sense and pay for ads there.
The killer is such a system will run alongside Google ads on the same site with no issues, just like Linux can run alongside windows.
You can login to www.your-site.com/admark/admin to view all the transactions, clicks and also profit you have made just like on www.google.com/adsense
Enough of the technology talks, lets get to the implications of such a system.
The system must be open source:
You know open source is always the answer to proprietary technologies like Google’s ads money making engine. Since its open source, many developers on earth will contribute to make the solution better so that they can host it on their sites, blogs or web business’ and in about a year the engine will become as good as Google’s and after some years it will be better because Google’s employees can not out smart the cloud of open source developers around the world.
The system must be written in php and run under Apache:
Php and apache is synonymous to the web, if you don’t use apache and php then you are not on the web. Php has a short learning curve and its also open source, and I believe 99% of web developers know how to code php and the best web developers are php guys who also know java. If the system is done in php, I think many developers will be able to improve the system and also build new plugins and utilities to make the system better, at that point web publishers will have what they want free or paid to improve their adverts engine.
The Admark system won’t be licensed to any company or any person. It will be an open source framework that any person can use to make money off his/her web traffic. Before you know it we won’t depend highly on Google anymore for monetizing our web traffic and in five years the Linux of Google will be finally born.
Question:
If such a system is put in place, do you think Google’s dominance on the web will still be as strong as it is?