Alfred's musings

I've just landed in Madrid, and thankful for that, as some in the UK are on strike today, and I was never quite certain if the journey would be as smooth as it should be. And on the flight, I watched a video replay of our Geo VP hour from yesterday, where our business leaders spelled out their strategy and direction with energizing clarity! It's a great team to work in! And, we launched quite a few new maps bits... including indoor navigation in a few places, notably in the US in a few airports... and in Japan too. I can't wait for it to land here in Europe in more places. But this video had me smiling... an Ikea in Sweden and the UK and the US all look identical inside, don't you think?

I've been privileged to walk around with a pre-production Nexus Galaxy in my pocket for a few months now... to the envy of those in the know. I am on the trusted tester program for ICS and I love ice cream sandwich! It's fantastic, and the device is super, super sweet. I was sworn to secrecy, even to the point where I could not show my colleagues,  but as I had to use it as my only phone. What a pleasure! Inevitably some who know the look of the Nexus S or Nexus One or follow the industry, would sometimes pause and ask... at which point I just had to put it back in my pocket. But the cat is out of the bag... the Nexus Galaxy is available to buy in shops in the UK... so I am allowed to speak (at least a bit) about it. I still need to be careful, as my phone and software build probably don't reflect 100% what you'll find in a shop, so don't base your purchasing decision on anything I say, as I might be wrong (as my wife frequently reminds me too!). And thi...

I suddenly woke up thinking about a discussion I've had with a few friends over lunch at the fantastic new Google canteen in 123... and just realised that my colleagues made a very wrong assumption about an ex-colleague who resigned a year or so ago. She started her own business, and are now apparently considering contracting or joining another company. The wrong assumption they made, was that any entrepreneur who signs up for a "proper job" must have failed as entrepreneur. Not true. I can think of many reasons why an entrepreneur might choose to sign up for a "proper job", temporarily. E.g. Gaining specific experience or contacts topping up cash reserves loneliness... just working for yourself can be lonesome! Delaying the timing of their business - for what ever reason Perhaps it was the right time to sell, as someone else valued your business even more than you did (and you know you could build it better if you started again) Conflicts with spec...

I love my Chromebook (even more than the CR-48 that I handed back), and just discovered another two features... 1) (Ok - not that interesting... but perhaps useful one day!) The Chromebook SIM card can receive texts, and results in a pop-up message with the SMS text displayed. 2) The earphone plug on the Chromebook actually can and does double as a microphone plug too, so you could plug in iPhone-style headphones with a microphone in the wire, for hangouts and more. This means you now have at least three options for microphones on the Samsung Chromebook: Built in mic USB mic (which I've been using mostly thus far, with no problems) mic/headphone combination as described above. And in hind sight - I should have known... See the picture.

HTML5 has some fantastic features... I can see many fat client, flash or Silverlight applications that I've built in the past, could now be done with a few simple HTML5 tags! For a bit of fun on your android... try searching on Google for tilt  and watch the subtle tilt on your Google search results! Or, on your desktop, search for tilt or do a barrel roll and if your browser is HTML 5 capable (like Chrome), you'll see some of the magic in action.

At Google we're using Salesforce for cour CRM stuff. As channel manager responsible for lots of partners all over Europe, I frequently need to search for opportunities and check that they are appropriately assigned to partners, or find all the opportunities for a specific partner. Salesforce can do all this and more, and thus far I've been struggling with custom reports for each partner... which is a pain if you one day decide to change the format. Discovery number one: By creating a salesforce report, you can override the filter values by tweaking the URL. (see note 1) Discovery number two: I can quickly create a way to populate the URL parameters with Chrome's customer search provider feature. (see note 3) The end result is that I can now open a new tab, type "sfo" and hit space (this invokes my special search provider), and then type "police" and hit enter. The search provider translates this into something like https://www.salesforce.com/00...

Vint Cerf  needs no introduction . Not every man is called the father of the internet for nothing! And here is Vint and I, when he came to talk to us at Google. He's an incredible man, and have incredible stories to tell! I feel really honoured and humbled after meeting him. The funny lighting was due to slide projector lighting that caught him from the side... but it was him, not a cardboard cut out!  He has interesting stories, but the best bits, where certainly these two stories: 1) He passionately talked about how his wife's hearing was made possible by technology (in the context of his prediction to see more computer/human interfaces and interaction... which reminded me of the encounter with Captain Cyborg ! It's a moving story , and really funny when he told the story of her calling up the library for audio books for someone certified being deaf :) 2) When we prodded enough in the Q&A, we saw a glimpse what really get him excited... Not IP v4 or v6 any m...