Why is Google ditching search?

Try this trend out for size: Google is abandoning search

(Credit: iStockphoto)

There has been a huge maelstrom about Google integrating Google+ into its search links. And it all misses the point.
Twitter and others are complaining that Google is throwing its massive 65 percent plus market share weight around and quashing smaller competitors. The reason Twitter and others are so threatened is that the pattern of shared links within Google+ provides a decent enough indicator as to what links are interesting. What's important is what's trending, and algorithms can get a sense of that with just a subset of everything that's getting shared on the Web.
The most interesting aspect of Google's move, however, is its tacit acknowledgement that its stalwart search links are largely irrelevant and might as well be replaced with social results. Google search results are essentially gamed results produced by search optimizers.
In other words, the search results that we supposedly value so highly are themselves paid placements, just like Google's keyword ads. It's just that in the case of search results, link owners have paid for SEO (search-engine optimization) to get Google's attention instead of paying for SEM (search engine marketing) to make Google give their links prominence. Either way, though, searches are mostly just producing ads by any other name.
In addition, Google's famed PageRank algorithm carries less and less weight these days, since fresh news and results inherently don't have as many inbound links as older content. (If it helps, you can think of PageRank as a kind of paleo-social search--just one that moves way too slowly for the modern Web.)

(Credit: Peter Yared/CNET)

As I've written in the past, Google well knows that its search results suck, and over the past few years, it has started to short-circuit those results by putting more and more direct "answers" at the top search pages. That, of course, makes the search results themselves less and less important.
As the screenshot to the right (click for a larger version) shows, ads and answers have started to push Google's quintessential search results below the fold into the netherworld of the Web. As it turns out, in many cases the actual "answers" to searches for airline flights or products are actually much more monetizable than ads.
At last year's D conference, Google chairman Eric Schmidt presaged the shift from links to answers, stating that "we're trying to move from answers that are link-based to answers that are algorithmically based, where we can actually compute the right answer." More and more, Google is simply going to answer your questions. Last month, it acquired predictive search company Clever Sense to accelerate this transition. New mobile search engines such as Apple's Siri also dispense with search links entirely and simply return a single answer.
So why not replace increasingly gamed and lame search links with socially curated links? The search results were increasingly irrelevant anyway.

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How apps for your appliances represent the newest opportunity

Samsung's booth seems bigger than ever. An expansive array of products are on display, including smart appliances such as refrigerators and washers.

(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)

Smart televisions I sort of get. But smart refrigerators and washers?
If Samsung Electronics is right, developers may flock to smart appliances as the next opportunity. At the Consumer Electronics Show, the consumer electronic giant unveiled its vision for a wider range of smart appliances. That included music apps such as Pandora on the refrigerator and an app on the washer that can ping you when a load is done.
The move underscores just how pervasive the app world has become, moving beyond PCs and smartphones into all sorts of devices. Samsung has arguably been the most aggressive in pushing apps into newer devices. The company boasts having the largest library of TV-centric apps and plans to follow the same strategy to create an ecosystem of appliance apps.
For Samsung, having a catalog of apps for its TVs, washers, and refrigerators only serves to enhance the capabilities of its products, attracting the new consumers and retaining existing ones. Developers, meanwhile, get a chance to build their brand in the different parts of the home, and create new advertising opportunities.
"It doesn't take long for companies to embrace this," David Steel, senior vice president of North America strategic market, told me in an interview while at CES.
If you had asked me a few years ago about apps for televisions, I probably would have laughed it off. Yet Samsung has been able to a create a decent size--yet still niche--market for apps. Its TV line boasts 1,400 apps--the most among the television manufacturers--and 2,000 active members in its developer community. The company has used its reach as the top TV company to lure in developers, which can write one app and have it run on Samsung Blu-ray players and home theater systems as well.
"The TV experience is less about raw numbers," Steel said. "It's a very different area."
Unsurprisingly, video-related apps have done the best, while social media apps have done surprisingly well too, Steel said. The next software development kit will allow developers to take advantage of the newer televisions' gesture and voice-command capabilities.
To raise awareness for its TV ventures, Samsung has held developer contests. The company announced the winner of its TV app contest at its CES press conference, awarding the app Party Shots with a cool $100,000. The interactive app lets users take pictures at an event or gathering with their phone and push them to a Samsung Smart TV, allowing the photo to be included in a slideshow in real time.
Still, there's a big difference between a smartphone and TV screen, which you stare at all the time, and a refrigerator and washer, which you look at more sparingly. Steel points to Pandora and Epicurious as apps that make sense on the refrigerator, and Samsung plans to start the ball rolling with its own apps for the washer.
Samsung is considering holding similar contests for the other appliances to spur smaller developers into considering these different areas, Steel said. A focus for Samsung is to push developers into creating apps that link multiple devices. Right now, that consists of the phone and TV but could grow to include the other appliances.
"Over time, it'll be a must to have apps on multiple devices," Steel said.



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Motorola Droid 4 review

Motorola recently announced the Droid 4, a 4G LTE-compatible QWERTY phone that will hit retailers in coming weeks.
The first thing anyone will notice about the phone is how sleek and Razr-esque it feels in your hand.
It's a QWERTY phone with a slide-out keyboard, but upon first handle it felt a bit like a slightly chunky touch phone.

That's because at .5-inches it's surprisingly thin - thin enough for Motorola to bill it as the world's thinnest LTE QWERTY phone.
But all that wouldn't much matter if the keyboard was garbage, and we're happy to report that we were able to quickly type on it, without having to relearning much of anything.

The keyboard is edge lit so you type in the dark with rounded keys that help you find the tiny buttons you're looking to type.
The Droid 4 is currently running Android 2.3.5, but should get a bump to Android 4.0 in the first half of the year.

It's slightly more powerful than its predecessor as well. It has a 1.2 GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM, and we tested a variety of intensive apps and each were smooth and fast.
The Droid 4 also has an 8MP rear-facing camera capable of 1080p HD video capture. Our test pictures looked mediocre at best, but we'll wait to pass final judgment for when we have a bit more ideal lighting circumstances (Motorola's booth was exceptionally dark).

Other than that, many of the specs should look familiar. There's the same sized scratch resistant 4-inch display, 16GB internal memory (which can be expanded with up to a 32GB microSD), and LTE Hotspot capabilities.

So how much will this slider cost you? No firm price has been released, but rumors suggest the phone will release for $249 with a two-year contract.
But wait, there's more
Motorola also announced the Droid Razr Maxx, which adds a slight bulk to its wonderfully thin Droid Razr but adds a gargantuan 3300 mAh battery.
We'll let you know when official details surface for either of these phones

OnLive Desktop review

Not content with taking on the gaming giants with its great streaming service, OnLive surprised all this week by announcing that it was getting into cloud computing in a big way, with the launch of OnLive Desktop for the iPad.
This service allows iPad users to use the Microsoft Office Suite on their tablets with full touch capabilities and the added bonus of being able to show off processor-intensive presentations without worrying that the iPad can't handle the pressure. This is because the whole thing is streamed in real-time from OnLive's bounty of servers so the tablet you are using is a conduit to the service.
TechRadar was given an in-depth look at OnLive Desktop at CES 2012 and it's quite frankly incredible.

While many will think that it is an odd thing for OnLive to launch, it does make sense that the company has gotten into the cloud computing sector.
In fact it is a logical leap; the servers and the technology are already there from its gaming sector so you don't have to worry about things like latency and service dropouts.

Considering OnLive has so far had no downtime whatsoever, there's no question that you can trust the company to deliver Microsoft Office without fear that your documents will be stuck in the internet ether.
OnLive Desktop works by downloading the app, signing up to the service – you can use your current OnLive log-in – and then accessing Office from the OnLive portal.

The apps are all completely touch enabled as you are essentially accessing the native Microsoft Windows 7 software from OnLive's cloud service.
When we scrolled through both Word and PowerPoint we noticed minimal lag and you could pinch and zoom into the docs with ease.
If you have a stylus handy then you can write onto the doc and the handwriting recognition tech will turn your scrawl into text.

There's also afull on-screen Windows keyboard and we played back the likes of video, animation and slide transitions was effortless.
OnLive has nailed cloud computing with OnLive Desktop. Its servers ooze power and speed and this is noticeable when using the service. Well, actually it's not as you easily forget that the document you are creating is in the cloud and not on the iPad itself.

When the service is released on iOS this week, Onlive Desktop will be free. With this you get 2GB of storage and access to Microsoft Office.
A premium version is in the works called Onlive Desktop Pro and this will offer 50GB of storage and the brilliant addition of superfast web browsing. Through the Pro version, you will be able to browse the web using all the power of OnLive's servers.

Not only does this offer full Flash web browsing (we know, on an iPad!) but you can take advantage of OnLive's speedy web connection. We were shown a speed test and it maxed out at 375Mbps, but OnLive reckons it can be far speedier.

The brilliant thing about this new service is that it sounds like it is just the start of many programmes getting a cloud makeover.
OnLive let us into a secret that it began life as a white label solution for Autodesk, where it ported the processor-intensive Maya 3D-rendering software into the cloud.

If it can do that with ease, then hosting a Word document won't exactly see its servers breaking a sweat.
If you aren't an iPad user, then an Android version of the service is coming soon.

Samsung Series 5 Ultra review

We sure have seen some Ultrabooks this CES. Samsung has had two major computing launches at CES 2012. Firstly there was the new high-end Series 9 and then there's this – the new Samsung Notebook Series 5 Ultrabook.
Powered by an Intel Core i5 procesor, the Series 5 differentiates itself from many of the other Ultrabooks on offer at the show by packing beefed-up graphics in the form of an AMD Radeon HD chip inside the bigger 14-inch model. It also has something called an 'optical disc drive' – we're pretty scared that disc storage seems like such an outdated concept.

The Series 5 is available in a 13-inch too – it's interesting that the sizes aren't more different - but both size variants have the Intel Core i5-2467M processor and up to 8GB of memory.

The 300nit HD LED SuperBright screen is lovely and bright and is anti-glare, though this didn't seem to help on the show floor at CES.

So let's talk about the 13-inch. It's between 14 to 17.6mm thick and weighs a measly 1.38kg – a fairly standard Ultrabook weight.

As is generally the case with Samsung laptops, the keyboard seems great, while the trackpad buttons are definite and well designed.

As well a 128GB SSD or 258GB SSD, there is also an option to go for higher capacity by using a standard hard drive – up to 500GB.
Samsung says the 14-inch can be configured with up to 1TB of storage – an incredible amount.
However, this creates a problem – SSD storage is fast. So the Series 5 includes a tech to boost the speed of the standard drive - ExpressCache by Diskeeper. This uses a small 16GB iSSD to speed up the system. Samsung cites a 20 second boot time and 2 second resume from standby, which is only a little slower than many other Ultrabooks featuring SSDs.
The only area the Series 5 13 disappoints is in battery life – Samsung cites 6.4 hours. This pales in comparison to the 8-9 hours promised by many other Ultrabooks.
The 13" model also has a full-size HDMI port along with one USB 3.0, two USB 2.0, a 4-in-1 multi SD card slot, an Ethernet connection and webcam.
The 14" model offers full-size HDMI, VGA, two USB 3.0, one USB 2.0, a 4-in-1 multi SD card slot, Ethernet and built-in webcam. It's 20.9mm thick and weighs 1.84kg

Motorola Defy Mini Review

Motorola announced the Motorola Defy Mini here at CES, and we got a chance to test out the rugged entry-level phone that's sparse on features and small in stature.
The most noticeable feature of the Defy Mini is, well, how Mini it is. It comes with a tiny 3.2-inch HVGA touchscreen.
Though the Defy Mini is being advertised as a beginner's entry into smartphones, it seems to us that trying to type on the screen will be more of an exercise in futility than a learning experience.

Because it's so small, we suspect many people will hold the phone primarily in landscape, to access a larger keyboard.
There are a few other features equally geared toward a budget phone - a 3MP rear-facing camera with LED flash and a front-facing VGA.

At the very least, mothers and fathers of dirty little children will be happy to find that its both dust-proof and water resistant.
The phone comes with a surprisingly adequate 1650mAh battery, which should keep the phone alive for about 10 hours of talk time. Not bad, we say.

The phone was small enough to feel unique and comfortable in the hand. The size also contributes to the phone feeling as if its truly geared toward a younger audience - perhaps children who desperately want to get their first Android phone.
That's not to say that it won't find a place in the heart of those who just wants their smartphones to be small and stay out of their way.

The Motorola Defy Mini is set to hit store shelves in Europe, China, and Latin America this February.
Still no word on pricing, but with a feature set like the aforementioned, we wouldn't guess it'll be much.
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LG Smart TV with Google TV

With all the talk of Google TV, it has to be remembered that the service hadn't been available straight from a television until CES 2012, when a partnership with LG was announced.
Before, it had to be beamed through a set-top box and the like which made it less desirable. This is why seeing Google TV on an LG television is a refreshing change and it also bolsters LG's own Smart TV functionality.

Those familiar with Google TV will be right at home with what LG is offering. You get the same selection of apps and services and the search functionality is all present and correct. LG has obviously put its own skin on to Google TV but it looks great and is definitely in line with the rest of LG's Smart TV services.

What's different is just how you find all of Google's goodies and this has to do with LG's rather innovative remote.

Not as bulky as other Google TV remotes we have seen, this one has all your usual remote buttons on the front. Flip it over and you have a qwerty keyboard on the back, so you can make use of Google's search options.

The remote also has motion control built in, so you point the curser and interact with the TV this way. There is also a scrollwheel situated in the middle of the device.

There's no word on an LG Smart TV with Google TV UK release date or on pricing but we are hoping it will come to the UK sometime in the summer.

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