Are you a college student looking for a cool summer job? Would you like a job that will put Google on your resume? Or would you prefer a job where you can work in the comfort of your own home while sipping coffee and ordering pizza? How about a job where you can make a big impact in a short period of time? What about a job where you can do all of the above?

First let's get the hurdles out of the way. In order to qualify for these ubercool jobs you must be at least 18 and enrolled in an accredited institution on April 14, 2008. The other big qualifying criteria is that you must be eligible to work in the country where you're planning to do the work. That's it. Pretty much every college student whether newly-admitted, part-timers or fresh graduates qualify for the program. And the best part is you get to help make cool software even cooler. What if you're not the world's foremost PHP expert? Afraid you don't qualify because you haven't recompiled the kernel a dozen times between algorithms class and project management? Don't be. You don't have to be an uber-coder. Sure it helps to have a sense of PHP and how web applications work, but if you have a strong desire and any background with logic you can pick these skills quickly enough to get started.  Read more »

So the much awaited gPhone, nee the Android OS for the open handset alliance, debuted this week. Yawn. So Google's going to hock an OS that while it has the trendy underpinnings of Linux and the Open Source code-word attached won't at the end of the day (or year rather) give us much more than we already have on our Blackberries, Treos and iPhones. (Not to even mention the plethora of Windows Mobile cell phones with these capabilities).  Read more »

Google's Summer of Code 2007 came to an end earlier today. The Drupal project is left with some great new innovations. And on top of interesting things like the DAST project for automating deployment and staging there is a new Autopilot module that looks promising. (Haven't tested it yet but will soon!) Many great new things to test and of course sites to build. It is also worth noting that everyone interested in Drupal should stop over and take the survey to help give some feedback about where Drupal should go in version 7 and beyond. Which reminds me it's time to get cracking on testing with Drupal 6. New file management here I come!

I just finished The Google Story and it is great. The look into the way a company can run is invigorating and the focus on the Google Economy is also interesting. Following that read which ends with a look at how Microsoft is responding to the Google threat it is ironic to go back and read the Microsoft attack on Google from a few months ago. The difference in the companies becomes clear in the contrast of Google's attempt to democratize information and Microsoft's attempts to keep it contained. Or it could be more a ploy to help keep attention focused away from a failed operating system release.

author: David Vise Mark Malseed rating: asin: 0553383663 binding: Paperback list price: $14.00 USD amazon price: $11.20 USD

Social phenomena happen, and the historians follow. So it goes with Google, the latest star shooting through the universe of trend-setting businesses. This company has even entered our popular lexicon: as many note, "Google" has moved beyond noun to verb, becoming an action which most tech-savvy citizens at the turn of the twenty-first century recognize and in fact do, on a daily basis. It's this wide societal impact that fascinated authors David Vise and Mark Malseed, who came to the book with well-established reputations in investigative reporting. Vise authored the bestselling The Bureau and the Mole, and Malseed contributed significantly to two Bob Woodward books, Bush at War and Plan of Attack. The kind of voluminous research and behind-the-scenes insight in which both writers specialize, and on which their earlier books rested, comes through in The Google Story.

The strength of the book comes from its command of many small details, and its focus on the human side of the Google story, as opposed to the merely academic one. Some may prefer a dryer, more analytic approach to Google's impact on the Internet, like The Search or books that tilt more heavily towards bits and bytes on the spectrum between technology and business, like The Singularity is Near. Those wanting to understand the motivations and personal growth of founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and CEO Eric Schmidt, however, will enjoy this book.  Read more »

It seems the lynch mob after Google this morning over this result. It seems that if you search for "She Invented" in Google it returns "Did you mean He Invented?" at the top of the results. Of course with little research many are running off suggesting this is some kind of evil, anti-feminine plot. In reality it has far more to do with how Google spell check works. As that page points out when you search for "United Stats" it asks if you meant "United States". It isn't that "United Stats" has a mis-spelled word but rather that most people who search for "United Stats" modify their search to "United States". This brings up the question of how many searches one would have to do to game the system. Imagine what could be done with searches for "bad companies" and having "Did you mean our main competitor" pop up. Maybe that's the next step in search engine optimization/marketing -- blackhat version.

Google's Apps for Domains has been in beta for a while now. The service is a nice way to combine several great Google services with one's own domain. Personalized start pages, calendars and email are a few of the services available. Nevertheless, Google also makes some silly choices. For example in signing up for a new domain name today the following email arrived:

Thanks for your interest in Google Apps for Your Domain. Unfortunately, we are not able to invite your domain example.com into the beta at this time, because you have reached the maximum number of domains per administrator. If we increase this limit, we'll let you know by email.

Now I wonder how they imagine this actually works. Do they imagine that people who are astute enough to reach the "domain limit" will balk at having more than one Google account to sign up additional domains with? That domain administrators reaching this limit do not have more than one Google account already would come as a bit of a surprise.

The meeting where this limit is set likely goes something along the lines of "We want to prevent users from abusing the service and setting up too many domains."

"OK, we'll limit them to 10 domains," says the person eager to get the product out the door.

Thus, it becomes the policy. What is interesting is to look at the ultimate consequence of this decision. Because Google Apps for Domains doesn't provide a single place to manage all your domains the Google account used to sign up a particular domain is of little consequence. There is one time when the user really needs it and that is to retrieve a forgotten administrator login.

From Google's perspective, however, the problem is a bit different. Because Google forces users to use several accounts to sign up Google looses count of how many domains I actually have placed with them. At the end of the day when the bean counters tick off each user one by one, or have their computer minions do the ticking, they will count me as several users with a few domains each instead of the real count of being one user who controls a few dozen domains using part or all of their service.  Read more »