PaulSpoerry.com

According to TechCrunch Google ended the year with 63.5 percent market share of all search queries performed in the U.S., estimates comScore. And that market share has inched up steadily from 58.5 percent in January, 2008. But the market share numbers mask the absolute growth in searches and how Google has ben able to Gobble up all of that growth.

The chart above tells a clearer story. It comes out of the comScore 2008 Digital Year In Review, and shows the share of raw number of search queries in the U.S captured by the five major search engines. All the lines are pretty flat, except Google’s (the purple one). Of the 137 billion estimated total searches performed in the U.S. last year, 85 billion were done on Google.

What’s even more impressive is that nearly 90 percent of all the growth in search volume was also captured by Google. Most of that growth came from increasing the number of searches per person, rather than bringing more people to Google.

View the original article on TechCrunch.

Brian Ussery noticed an interesting reference to GDrive in a file used by Google Pack. The file includes “localized information which is sent to translators”.

The product category for GDrive is “online file backup and storage” and there are two lines that describe the application:

“GDrive provides reliable storage for all of your files, including photos, music and documents. GDrive allows you to access your files from anywhere, anytime, and from any device – be it from your desktop, web browser or cellular phone.”

If the description is accurate, we can conclude that GDrive will provide a software that could be included in Google Pack, you’ll be able to store any kind of files and you’ll be able to access them from your mobile phone.

Read the original article at Google Operating System.

I just received word that I’ve been chosen as one of redOrdbit’s Red Hot Blogs of the Day! Sweet!

RedOrbit, Inc., headquartered in Texas, was founded in November 2002. The web site, RedOrbit.com, was launched in May 2003, with the goal of creating the largest, most unique internet community, with the strongest consumer brand, in the most underserved niche on the Web. RedOrbit.com has since become the premier internet destination for space, science, health, and technology enthusiasts around the globe.

RedOrbit.com is committed to providing stimulating, original content and presentation, with over 1,500,000 pages covering the vast ideological spectrums of space, science, health, and technology. The beautiful and engaging forum created at RedOrbit.com promotes a friendly and open environment, enhancing user loyalty and community, while advancing RedOrbit’s goal of providing the world with a virtual Utopia for intelligent, curious minds.

RedOrbit.com averages over 5 million unique visitors per month. With subject matter a bit more intellectually oriented than most, the average RedOrbit.com visitors tend to be well educated, between the ages of 25 – 55, with a median income significantly higher than that of Internet users as a whole.

RedOrbit has positioned itself perfectly to excel in the current Internet climate and well into the 21st Century.

Visit redOrbit!

Gmail finally provided “offline” mode via Google Gears. So when Gears is enabled you can access your Gmail from your browser any time… even when you’re not online! Ok so that’s cool… but where does it store the data and is the data secure?

When a website attempts to interact with a gears datastore it uses uses the same origin policy as its underlying security model. In a nutshell, the policy permits scripts running on pages originating from the same site to access each other’s methods and properties with no specific restrictions — but prevents access to most methods and properties across pages on different sites. This means that a web page with a particular scheme, host, and port can only access resources with the same scheme, host, and port.

This means a site using Gears:

• Database: Can only open databases created for that site’s origin.
• LocalServer: Can only capture URLs and use manifests from the site’s origin.

The data is stored locally using a SQLite database. The downer is that your data within this database is NOT encrypted. Gears data files are protected with the user’s operating system login credentials. Users with separate login names cannot access each other’s Gears data files… but this is only enforced by the operating system.

If two users are sharing the same login to the operating system they could theoretically access each other’s Gears data files, just as they could access any other file on the machine.

Read the rest of this entry »

QTTabBar is an add-in that gives a Tab Browsing Feature to Windows Explorer. The page is pretty sparse so there’s not a lot of information directly available. However, the forums on the site show there is a bit of activity going on this project. Essentially, QTTabBar gives you tab features like in your browser. Cool idea, wonder why this isn’t baked right into the OS as it is? I know I hate having a bunch of Windows Explorer windows open!

QTTabBar requires Windows Vista or Windows XP + .Net Framework 2.0 or later ( Tested on 32bit ). You can download QTTabBar, plugins, and themes all from the main site: http://qttabbar.wikidot.com