Hallo

Google besoek ons Dinsdag 12:00.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/07/computer-science-resources-for.html

Translated from Afrikaans:

Google is visiting us Tuesday 12:00.

Awesome!

At least it’s someone from Google, don’t know who exactly, but none-the-less. Cool.

Microsoft also visited our University (Stellenbosch Uni) earlier in the year. Trying to find people to recruit.

Moving countries is probably the biggest reason why people don’t want to go work for these big companies. I have commented on this issue on Charl van Niekerk’s blog before. He was the only person from South Africa to do the Google Summer Of Code this year (2007).
Basically I said that the Summer of Code’s timing isn’t right for South African Universities Timetables. Also, I said that Google should email all the Universities in the country to get more info and spread the word, they went one up on that and are visiting us instead!

As an aside, personally, I think MXit is becoming the Google of South Africa, in its own way. In the fact that they have to handle largehuge scale instant messenging and data transfers in real time. And what seems to be the largest single instant messenger this side of China!

Google Offices in Africa

Google opened its first office in Sub-Saharan Africa, in Kenya, earlier this year.
Google is opening up some offices in South Africa too. Don’t know much about it though. But it doesn’t look technical yet. [1]
Amazon has offices in South Africa, Cape Town, with developers too. (Jerith is someone who works there.)

Here’s the proposed agenda, any questions you all want to know? Let me know, I’ll ask them.
I could maybe write something on my site about the meeting when it’s done for those interested.

Google University Meeting Agenda

1. Introductions
1. Introductions from University
2. Introductions from Google
2. Overview from Google
1. Google overview
2. New Africa office overview
3. University Programs overview
4. Growth and opportunities in Africa and worldwide
5. New Initiatives

3. Overview of Google Programs
1. Google Apps
2. Open Source
3. Summer of Code

4.Questions and Answers
1. Google and University discuss
5. Next Steps
1. Determine best point of contact within University and Google
2. Best method of communication going forward
3. Discussion

Other topics to discuss

**************
• Understanding the various departments / degree programs offered pertaining to ICT
– (e.g. Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Informatics? Multiple programs?)
– What is the curriculum for each of these departments?
– Is the curriculum standard or is it customizable for each student?
– Are there different specializations or tracks of study within these courses?
– Would it be possible for us to obtain an actual course list?

• Student Statistics
– demographics
a. What is the ratio of male to female students university-wide?
b. By ICT department…
c. What is the general age of most incoming students?
d. How would you characterize the ethnic diversity of your university?
e. What is the total number of students enrolled in each of the aforementioned ICT

departments?
f. Where do most of your students come from? (both in terms of which high schools and regionally within the country)
g. What is the percentage of international students? From which countries do they hail?
h. What is the ratio of incoming students from urban vs rural areas?
– matriculation
i. What is the graduation rate? (both university-wide and for each of the ICT departments)
j. What do students do after graduation?
k. Who are considered the favorite employers among the ICT student body?
l. What is the employment rate among graduating students?
m. What percentage of students go on for additional education?
n. What percentage of graduating students stay in the field of ICT / engineering?

• Academic Calendar
– when do classes begin?
– when are exams held?
– when do students graduate?

Yahoo! uses Google too!?

Specifically, the Ask Yahoo! service used Google search results and forgot to change the word Google to Yahoo!

It starts here: How many countries are there in the world? – Ask Yahoo!

Notice the line

We realized the chances of finding a Yahoo! category on the subject were about as small as Andorra, but we were confident the Google search results would point us in the right direction.

MMm… someone left the word Google there?
While the link actually points to a search.yahoo.com result page.

Internet Archive – Wayback Machine

I then went into the Internet Archive (yes, Yahoo archives the entire internet…) and looked at this Ask Yahoo! page in the past.

And I found that the “Google search results” link originally pointed to “google.yahoo.com” search results.

http://google.yahoo.com/bin/query?p=how+many+countries+in+the+world&hc=0&hs=1123

Strange, Yahoo used to have a google.yahoo.com subdomain …
google.yahoo.com in the past.
It used to just point to a Yahoo search page. But from 2002 onwards it just became a page with just “Do you yahoo?” on it before the subdomain was removed from yahoo in about 2003.

You can still see the “do you yahoo?” page archived here.

Digg this || Post page to del.icio.us

UPDATE: Get sms notifications of events on ANY calender! In fact, now you can schedule reminders for events on your personal calendar or any other calendar to which you’re subscribed.

NEW: Google calender mobile cellphone version!

Visit calendar.google.com on your mobile web browser.

• Multiple calendars on one account – so you can separate the different parts of your life/schedule (work, home, etc)
• Share events and calendars – You can let a calendar be show to the public or share a calendar with someone.
• Planning an event? – You can create invitations, send reminders and keep track of RSVPs right inside Google Calendar.

Now, the main reason for this post is the SMS/text notifications you can setup for any event! And it costs you nothing!

Staying on schedule
You can set up automatic event reminders, including mobile phone notifications, and instantly bring up anything on your calendar with the built-in search tool.

And they support all three networks in SA – MTN, CellC and Vodacom.

How to enable SMS notifications

• Login to Google Calendar with your Google Account details (same as your GMail)
• Click Settings at the top right.
• In the Calendar Settings page click on the Notifications button.
• Then enter your cell phone details and follow the instructions.
• You’re done. Now any notifications you put on an event will come in an SMS/text to your cellphone. All for free!

Poor Google has to foot the bill for all the SMSs sent. I wonder how viable it will turn out to be?

• Google Calendar Tour
• mycee.co.za – The guy who told me about this cool feature!
• goosync.com – You can sync Google Calendar to your mobile device for free as well.

It allows you to keep notes that are accessible from anywhere.

You can even make notes public…
Check it out here:
my notebook

Read more in my notes

Nah, it’s just from the Google Adsense Team

They sent all their Google Adsense users a verification pin to verify that there are real people at the address given! Something about fraud and what not.
That must have been quite a mailing list!

The Google Adsense Pin number provided is just a once off to verify that you are real and alive.

Google adsense is pretty cool, and extremely easy to use.

Here is an example of a half-banner:
This Code:
<script type="text/javascript"><!--
google_ad_client = "pub-1802553631602251";
google_ad_width = 234;
google_ad_height = 60;
google_ad_format = "234x60_as";
google_ad_type = "text_image";
google_ad_channel ="6199676621";
google_color_border = "336699";
google_color_bg = "FFFFFF";
google_color_link = "0000FF";
google_color_url = "008000";
google_color_text = "000000";
//--></script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script>

Produces this =>

Just paste it into your site, and you have ads. (Well, my ads in this case)

pages.google.com
OR
googlepages.com

Check out mine at jddcef.googlepages.com… (everyone gets their own subdomain)

So, anyone can have a free page hosted by googlepages.com…

It’s a WYSIWYG editor, so you don’t need to know any HTML, just point-and-click.

You get 100MB of webspace.

Google really has got almost everything in the bag already.
This means, you can make something available to your friends/family pretty easily.

A few years behind Yahoo!’s Briefcase, where you can make files available across the web to your self or to friends.

Yahoo! also has photos.yahoo.com – where you can share your photos in a nice album.
All free of course.

This web page creator is still in beta in the Google Lab’s, but it’s in working condition of course

Go ahead, create your own page! Remember to link to defza.com

You need a google account of course. If you need a free google account invitiation, comment here.

Want to create an online photo tour of your vacation to Bali? An overview of the South American precipitation cycle for your science class? A shrine to your pet ferret?

Now’s your chance. We’re testing a new product that makes creating your own web pages as easy as creating a document in a word processor. Google Page Creator is a free tool that lets you create web pages right in your browser and publish them to the web with one click. There’s no software to download and no web designer to hire. The pages you create are hosted on Google servers and are available at http://yourgmailusername.googlepages.com for the world to see.

There is a sourceforge project called gmail-mobile . It allows you to check/send your gmail via your mobile/cellphone with your WAP browser (web browser).

Very neat application.

Unlike google’s own m.gmail.com, gmobile can be used from anywhere. (Do not need to be from the USA on a specific network)

I have it running on my server here. Visit gmobile.defza.com with your mobile/cellphone.