Tag: Google

Borders, re-drawn by Google

It is quite normal of businesses to have different strategies for different regions but there are some things which should not be hurt just because of the business interests. And I think it is a pity that somebody has to remind a company like Google about that.

Google Maps, in it’s English version, has marked India’s borders with China as disputed area. However, Google Ditu, the Chinese localized version of Google Maps, has portrayed Arunachal Pradesh and other parts of India as part of China. Google Ditu also shows Taiwan and the South China Sea Islands as part of China. This is quite a big insult to the Indian nation and it’s people and I think there has to be a wide spread protest against this.

Google Maps screenshot

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Google Ditu screenshot

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(Thanks to Aravind for the info)

Wolfram Alpa – Redefining Search

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A new search engine, which they call Computational Knowledge Engine, is going to be launched tomorrow evening. Wolfram Alpha, built by mathematician Stephen Wolfram, will give you a single definitive answer for your queries instead of pointing you to a page of results with links which may or may not give you what you were looking for. Their demo looks very promising and I feel that it could give Google a challenge to re-define their search to include such a cool way of searching things. Although the Internet has talks about it that it will be a threat to Google, Mr. Wolfram doesn’t want to encourage such hype.

“I am not keen on the hype,” said Mr. Wolfram, a well-known scientist and entrepreneur and the founder of Wolfram Research, a company in Champaign, Ill., that has been quietly developing WolframAlpha.

Mr. Wolfram’s service does not search through Web pages, and it will not help with movie times or camera shopping. Instead it computes the answers to queries using enormous collections of data the company has amassed. It can quickly spit out facts like the average body mass index of a 40-year-old male, whether the Eiffel Tower is taller than Seattle’s Space Needle, and whether it is high tide in Miami right now. [Newyork Times: New Search Tool Aims at Answering Tough Queries, but Not at Taking on Google ]

Go ahead, check out their demo, blog and wait for the grand release which will be broadcasted live.

(Thanks to KK for the info)