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Google Opens U.K. Cybercafe and Testing Lab
sebFlyte writes "Google has launched a new venture in England to go with its London offices. They've set up a free Web cafe style affair at London's Heathrow airport to help travelers claw back some of the many hours they spend aimlessly wandering round airport lounges. They're not doing it entirely selflessly though: they admit the main reason they're doing it is to get as wide and as large a cross section of people through the centre as they can so that they can then watch them interact with Google's Web applications. ZDNet has photos, too."
I'm still waiting for a spot to open on there moon base......any second now they'll call me and tell me I'm hired..
Perhaps it's also to promote Firefox as well? I noticed that the browser used in the screenshots was Firefox. I wonder if Firefox is the only thing installed, or if Internet Explorer is also on there?
It's ideas like this that make people not mind when google wants a lot of information about you. All those people who will cry "If this was microsoft you would hate it" - microsoft collates it's data surrepticiously, every webpage you visit or email you write. offereing a free web cafe and saying "but we will watch you" in public no less, is a good thing. I can hardly see anyone looking up anything they wouldn't want anybody to know about anyway at a public terminal
Too bad I'm thousands of miles away from there. :(
I read this a while back and I still don't get it. Is this some area where you can basically surf whereever/whatever you want to do ... or are you restricted to only using Google Applications so they can see how you interact with them? The later makes more sense from a Google User Interface point of view ... but if I were a traveler, I just want a (fast/open/free) wireless connection to do what I want to do - I'm confused how observing that could be so useful to Google. And heck, they track me anyway with their cookies! ;-)
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
Another company with ideas of global domination. Just what we needed.
"Upon completion of his one-man chicken eating demonstration he demonstrated the features of EMACS to an audience that could only be described as disguested."
Should be "disgusted".
Fucking trolls.
Not complaining about slashdot, per se, but did anyone else notice the marketing in those pics?
Must be nice to be a company as big as google, you don't even have to pay to advertise any more. Just do something cool and people eat it up.
9 hours a year... Yeesh.
Makes me glad I don't fly.
Just like driving a car:
(D) to go forward
(R) to go backward
From TFA, 3rd Picture Caption
The 10 Samsung laptops in the temporary installation will be manned from 0700 to 1900 by Google employees from across the organisation, with some flown in especially to help out.
--
It would appear that Google has been flying in their more attractive employees. (Or maybe if I worked for Google I'd look like that too.)
The 10 Samsung laptops in the temporary installation will be manned from 0700 to 1900 by Google employees from across the organisation, with some flown in especially to help out.
Take a look at this photo and all the sudden it makes sense...
google restaurants, google hotels, google drinks, google tv!
To save Slashdot readers some time in the future in all Google related News Stories. Let me provide a universal Table of Contents to summarize the posts that will inevitably follow:
Introduction of our Overlord:
- How many Google News Stories will we see today?
- "I am tired of hearing about Google!"
- I, for one, welcome our Google (topic) overlords
Chapter 1 Obligatory:
- Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of (topic)
- Does (topic) run Linux
- Step1: (topic), Step2: ???, Step3: Profit
Chapter 2 Conspiracy:
- Google = New Microsoft??
- Google = Skynet
- Is Google only friendly on the outside?
- Case Study: a guy who knows a guy that works at some company claiming Google as the next biggest competitor!!!
- Google Fight claims that all of the above are true!
Chapter 3 Downfall
- Is Google too big?
- Does Google have enough funding to branch out so much?
Conclusion Finale:
- Is Google going to be hit by a flying chair?
- Future of Google, such as GoogleOS and Google Condoms
You all know that it is true.
Google is entering, threatening and in many cases on the verge of dominating so many markets that it is both exciting and very scary. It seems that you can't go a whole week without hearing of a new venture or rumour of a new venture. The markets they are entering are mostly very well targeted with the potential for massive payoffs. Even if half fail the few that succeed seem capable of making up for those lossess 50 fold. Their brand name (which is still synonymous with success, and good - just) coupled with their fiscal might and innovative and flexible business model, makes for one hell of a formiddable company.
I give it 5 years or less before the term "Googleopoly" or similar is a commonly used business lexicon and dictionary term.
ogglelog
Is she one of the new applications for "physical testing" too? I mean, it'd fit in with their goals for more wireless technology development.
...*IS* watching you.
I could swear there were way more posts than there are currently (36 at time of this post), and a bunch of threads I was following disapeared in the last 30minutes - hour (man how coding C can make you lose track of time).
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
Google have done this already. Follows from a usability interview I had with them recently in which they said that they have a couple of public cafe's in San Fransisco which they use to "observe" people.
As a freelance software engineer, I routinely run into the same problem: I write software to address a niche need - but have no idea what the needs of the users actually are.
Towards this end, it's typical for me to spend 25% of my time on the phone to various people, asking loads of questions, just so I can understand what the expectations are of the end users. What do they think when they see a button titled "Expand"?
I never cease to be amazed at how much difference it can make to end users to change a button or link from "Reports" to "Export", or from "Course" to "Class". Putting a "Save" button at the right location can make the difference between happy customer and pissed off, irate enemy. .
Getting UI stuff rght is much tougher than you'd think. I remember reading about the intense amount of time and money spent making the iPod nano "perfect".
PS: I LOVE the iPod nano - why can't they get the software right? I hvae a rather large MP3 collection on a network drive, and trying to get the iPod to work with the MP3 collection has been very, very, very frustrating... I have a song on a network drive. I can play said song. I double-click, and I hear the song I like. It's in a playlist, and when I double-click the playlist, I still hear said song.
I synchronize the iPod, and I don't get the song. No message explaining why, no errors noted anywhere, I can't drag/drop the file, even though I get a flash when I drag said file over the iPod icon. WTF?!?!
I love the nano - but the software for it SUCKS REAL BAD.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
...Microsoft Space Live! (beta)
This is just a temporary booth that will run for only two months with only ten computers. Any one of dozens of other companies could have done something similar promoting music, cars, books, mobiles, even candy bars, etc, etc., instead of the internet. This Google venture comes over as a rather tacky and ephermeral trade/marketing stand and the Slashdot headline is completely misleading, imho.
The place is awash with stories about Google taking over the world and putting the fear of god into corporate behemoths everywhere. But take a hard look at what Google is actually doing rather than what analysts are saying. Google is a not very large company which runs the world's best search/advertising engine and has a number of frankly rather modest beta projects going. And that is all. In many ways, Google has yet to prove itself. Sooner or later, the Google boys and girls are going to have to come out with some aggressive killer moves or folks might just conclude that the story is a soap opera about California cool with, alas, little more substance than a completely crazy stock price.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
"Google makes earth-wide, free, wi-fi internet access entitled: Google Net" In 10 years... "The US Government has switched to holding all of it's data on a remote server down in Google's mountain view home, it has proven a big success, allowing people to tour the setup entitled "Google Worldplex". You can check out all of Google's new services in one nice page at Xtra Google
Couldn't be a Brit lass - she has all her teeth.
Maybe he means "were made to feel unwelcome"
disguested
Thank you, I'll leave now.
Heathrow T1 is heavily covered by commercial hot-spots. I can't imagine anyone (except the passengers) being happy if Google offered free coverage. There were people there, but they were hardly queueing for seats (there was a couple of spaces free when I had my look). However some ten metres away people were happily using a pay-hotspot organised by T-mobile. They could use their own PCs (big advantage). Hey, if the company is paying, where is the problem?
As a frequent flyer, I have access to a lounge. Although the lounge has only pay-hot-spots, they have a free internet cafe and being an airline lounge, free drinks and munchies. There having been a number of delayed flights earlier, the munchies were limited but at least I could sit there with a free orange juice.
When I was there early on Friday evening, she most definitely wasn't. It was just a bunch of Google (male) nerds.
I was stuck at Heathrow airport once for about 10 hours. There are only so many cool people you can meet at an airport. I remember these terminals that were there 4 or 5 years ago where you had to fill out a survey about the airport and could use the internet for about 5-10 minutes. I must have filled out that survey atleast 10 times. Obviously it didn't work because I bet there was a lot of bad data that was collected because of people like me. This is a much better idea.
buy Google Condoms and she will want to see your OO-OO-OO face tonight!
You can't handle the truth.
The official link for this project, called Google Space, has not yet been indicated:
l and on two previous /. comments. I submitted this story a few days ago, but I agree with the /. eds, the url I provided were not as interesting as in today's story...
http://www.google.co.uk/googlespace/
It was first mentioned on http://www.ogleearth.com/2005/11/google_space.htm
Animoog.org
I think you are overestimating the average person.
The average person doesn't see IE or Windows, they see a computer with clickies. They see the webpage they typed in and they interact with that.
You could replace it with a location bar on the bottom and no identification at all an they would get used to it pretty quick.
They may not associate it with their home computer anymore, though.
If one of the goals is to say that this setup works on your computer at home, then switching the operating system will probably not portray that.
On the other hand, I bet you 7 of 10 people would have the same reaction if you a) switch XP off the kindergarten theme or b) switched the entire operating system and used a window manager with a start menu.
Heya, Your problem is fixable. I was in the same situation, and figured it out. I have an iBook with a 20GB hard drive but I have 27Gigs of MP3's. I also have a 30GB iPod Photo. Here is what I did All the MP3's are on a PC which I can see from my iBook over the network. In the preferences for iTunes on the iBook, Change the location of the iTunes Library to the parent folder of the MP3's on the PC (obviously you must be networked when doing this) Now, when I add music to iTunes (on the iBook) it stores the mp3's on the PC's Hard Drive. There are no mp3's on my iBook, but I can connect my iPod to the iBook, and everything syncs perfectly. and I have "lots" of free space on the iBook. This suits me fine, as I only ever use the PC for playing solitare, and the occasional test run of some win software that I'm trying to port to Mac. I hope this helps
www.Buy-Proxy.com - A "buyer-driven" global marketplace.
Thanks for this, I was planning on embarking on a similar project this week to move all the music files from my husband's and mine's laptops to our PC we hardly use any more except for some legacy apps. My laptop is an iBook, and I have an iPod, so I was curious about sync'ing/loading songs over the network. Good to hear that it will work. Did you have to set up the PC's mp3 folder(s) as a network drive, or just do a standard share of it over the network?
You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We'd all love to see the plan
(The Beatles)
Glad to be of some help. I just did a standard share of the C Drive on the PC, and connected to it from the iBook. Once the PC Drive is mounted on the iBook, then tell iTunes (on the iBook) to use whichever folder you want as it's library. Depending on the sped of your network, loading/syncing songs may take a just little bit longer than reading from the iBooks drive, but the space saving makes it worth it, and it isn't really that noticable anyway.
www.Buy-Proxy.com - A "buyer-driven" global marketplace.
You shared your whole drive?? Are your system files etc. on another drive? I guess you must have good intra to inter network security, to go and do something like that. Another question: Does the iPod think its PC-formatted or Mac-formatted when you do this? I would assume Mac, since as far as it knows its getting the music from the iBook.
You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We'd all love to see the plan
(The Beatles)
Yes, I shared my whole drive. The system files are on this drive. No reall security in place, just a reckless fellow. All my MP3's are backed up onto recordable DVD's, and there is nothing else on that machine that I'm really interested in. Oh, and the iPod is MAc Formatted, and can't tell that the files are actually on a PC. You are right that it is safer just to share the relevant folder, and I wouldn't recommend doing my (reckless) way.
www.Buy-Proxy.com - A "buyer-driven" global marketplace.