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The RealNetworks, creators of the hugely popular RealPlayer (Download), have started singing mobile rings!!

Well…don’t jump on to conclusions!!

This Tuesday, RealNetworks, with Nokia, launched Mobile RealPlayer—the wireless version of RealPlayer we all use. Mobile RealPlayer brings Real’s audio and video formats available for wireless world for the first time. The companies, which joined hands in last summers, will offer this new feature in Nokia’s upcoming model, 9210, some this year.

Nokia’s new model will use Symbian operating system, which is based on Psion’s EPOC32 operating system, (Read all about Mobile Operating Systems…a bit dated…but Good). Apart from Realplayer and regular colour screen, this phone is combination of cell phone and PDA — just like its predecessors 9110 and 9000. (often dubbed as “communicator”).

Bogged down by the growing TV content? Well here is an alternative — Google Video.

The not-so-newly launched service promises to be end your TV programming woes. It will enable you to search a growing archive of televised content – everything from sports to dinosaur documentaries to news shows.

However, similar services are also being offered by rival MSN and Yahoo! So, how this one different from others?

Well there is not much difference in content offering. The new sites are all about packaging and making searches user-friendly.

Google Video allows surfers to search the text of TV shows. Just type in your search term (for instance, Heather Stephens) or do a more advanced search (for instance, title: Desperate Housewives) and “Google Video will search the closed captioning text of all the programs in our archive for relevant results. Click on a program title on your results page and you can look through short snippets of the text along with still images from the show. Visit the “About this show” side panel to learn when this show will air next. (About Google Video). The service gives you te option of choosing the local timings by putting your local area code.

As usual, anything from Google stable has to be a beta site. As the official stand goes: “Right now we’re just testing this product, so you’ll find programs only from a limited number of channels, which we’ve been indexing since late December 2004. You can expect to see more and more content as we continue to add new channels.” (About Google Video)

Considering the Google News is under “beta” tag for years now, I think Google guys have stretched the beta concept too far.

As of now Google video searches following channels: ABC (KGO) *
KRON *
PBS
C-SPAN
KQED *
NBC (KNTV) *
Fox News
C-SPAN2

* San Francisco Bay Area stations

The impact of internet based distribution of programmes is yet to take a definite shape, but the developments like Google video are going to decide the way we will choose and consume media offerings.

The emergence of technologies like Broadband, IP, digital movie-making have opened a floodgate of content which is available for consumption. Not only it has significantly reduced the production costs, but also made media common man’s tool.

But this has never happened before in history mankind. This is truly an age of media and communication revolution.

With digital technology, even a 10-year-old boy can make a film — that he chooses to make a video while a girl is giving him blow job is a totally different matter .

At times, I really get baffled by the amount of programmes and number of medium which are available in the market. That is where I think search engines come handy. However, there are people who feel Google Video will not sustain for long…well let us wait and watch. (See interesting reactions on Google Video)

But I think there is a definite pattern. When Internet boom happened around 1995-1999, the amount of written content baffled surfers, which eventually germinated search engines like yahoo, google and MSN. I think, there is a definite trend which is triggering a new cyber usage pattern!!

References:

labs.google.com
About Google Video
Various newspaper/magazine websites

The internet giant is out to make life easier for students/scholars. If you don’t want to spend hours browsing through heaps of books and journals in a library, here is an option for you — Google Scholar.

Google Scholar searches “scholarly literature” such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, pre-prints, abstracts and technical reports.

Plus, it also promises to open the ‘invisible content’. The Google Inc has joined hands with publishers of the specialised journals. While earlier the content of these journal was only available to subscribers, with the new Google service, all surfers can access it.

However, there is a catch: Not entire content of the subscription protected text will be available to surfers. The Google scholar will just extract a summary…if one wants the entire text, one has subscribe to the respective journal.

“Further, responding to complaints of research librarians, Google scholar has expanded its usefulness for campus-based users. Its new institutional access feature links Google Scholar users to electronic versions—and print —of journals accessible through library collections. Any library using OpenURLs and meeting Google Scholar’s conditions can join. Google offers the institutional link resolving at its usual attractive rate—free. Within days of the announcement, 150 libraries had joined.” (careo.elearning.ubc.ca). A similar offer has also been made to publishers.

The services created Google Scholar has revolutionised the human quest for information and its access to the way we access information. However, at the same time it puts a question mark over the future of our normal libraries.

Consequently, the role of Information Literacy has also come under scanner. The pendulum is swinging, but it is almost a lost cause. “The war is over. Google won” — goes the punch line. (This blog does not gives the option to hyper-link a headline, so scroll down and Check out “Some thoughts on ACRL”).

As expected, googal scholar has triggered a huge scholarly debate over the complete domination of the
Silicon Valley based company over the WWW. Studies are being done to review Google Scholar. The site is being compared with other web options available.
1. ATLA vs. Google Scholar

2. Google Scholar vs Native Search

Despite debates and comparisons, there is little doubt that google is marching ahead. Web is filled with librarians’ confessions where they admit that their favourite place for searching scholarly literature has moved to google.

With librarians’ moving to google, I think we have little reason to hold ourselves back, so guys lets hop on to the new service.

With Google Scholar, the search giants have started a new ranking system. I’m not sure how it works…does anyone knows…and is it effective?

PS: I quite liked the punch line of the Google Scholar “Stand on the shoulders of giants”.

Check out some Blogs on Googal Scholar:
1. UBC Google Scholar Blog
2. On Google Scholar