Scott Yang's Playground

Okay. This is serious. Google has just announced their spring cleaning, and it appears that Google Reader is facing the axe. Yes Google Reader, probably the most popular RSS reader (heard of RSS, right?!) and has been my daily staple for the last 6 and half years. It would be turned off on July 1 [...]

Like pretty much everyone else, I’ve finally gained the access to Google Drive yesterday. We all know the feature set — or at least those that matter to me anyway. 5GB of free storage space, desktop folder sync, native Android app, Google Apps integration, Google Docs integration, scalable storage plans up to 16TB+ etc. Bye [...]

Via Hacker News. Google Chrome Pwned by VUPEN aka Sandbox/ASLR/DEP Bypass. While Chrome has one of the most secure sandboxes and has always survived the Pwn2Own contest during the last three years, we have now uncovered a reliable way to execute arbitrary code on any installation of Chrome despite its sandbox, ASLR and DEP. I [...]

Much better looking 404 Not found page at Google. Interestingly this is a single HTTP request — despite the Google logo + that blue’ish broken robot, that is embedded as url(data:image/png;base64,…) as inline CSS inside the HTML.

Google Offers is coming to compete with Groupon, and huge number of group buy sites that appear on the market like mushrooms after the rain.

Released early this morning (AEST time) — Google Nexus S, made by Samsung. Official page here. A few highlights: 1GHz Cortex A8 (Hummingbird) processor 512MB RAM and 16GB internal storage 4 inch WVGA contour display (yes it’s not flat) Android 2.3 “Gingerbread” Android 2.3 platform was also announced, with SIP stack, Near Field Communications, more [...]

Google’s probably the last update on Google Wave. It’s a bit sad, because Wave is primary a Sydney product, sad I have spent the last Google partners day looking at it. We even used it for one of the collaboration at work. I guess a technically superior product might still not be popular, if no [...]

Saw this on Sydney Morning Herald yesterday — Google named Australia’s best place to work: After its outstandingly successful parent company topped a 100 Best Places To Work survey conducted by the US magazine Fortune, Google Australia has claimed the No.1 spot in a similar Australian poll. BRW, which conducted the study, said Google had [...]

Undo Send — new in Gmail Labs, via Twitter. One feature that I wished that I have over the last 14 years of emailing. Back in the Thunderbird days, way too often press [Ctrl]-[Enter] instead of [Enter], which sent off an unfinished email. Too bad you only have 5 seconds to recall your mistakes.

Basically I have been playing with the HTC Dream smartphone for the last week and half, thanks to the loan phone from Optus. Let me say it first — it is a very very nice phone that I believe every geek would love to have one. On the day when it arrived on my desk, [...]

Meet my new email client. Yes, it’s Google Mail. Or to be more specific, Gmail part of Google Apps, and it is now hosting my (and Vivian’s) emails on this domain (yang.id.au).

It has been 3 and half years since I first added advertisement from Google AdSense on this website. The amount of traffic has been steady over the last 3 ½ years although I have been really slack blogging here recently. Here are some interesting statistics on monetising this blog with Google AdSense. Year Impressions Clicks [...]

It’s all over the news yesterday and today. Kogan, a relatively-small electronics shop in Melbourne famous for re-branded cheap Chinese goods, has pre-released their Google Android powered mobile phone. It can now be ordered online but won’t be shipping until late Jan 2009. There will be two models: Kogan Agora for AUD$299, and Kogan Agora [...]

I said I was going to download Google Chrome first thing in the morning, didn’t it? Well, I had a hectic morning trying to get to Tech.Ed on time so I did not manage to download the freshly baked Google Chrome Beta, but then I still managed to get it up and running after I [...]

Top news item at TechMeme today — Google has revealed its own browser — Google Chrome, via a comic adoption by the artist Scott McCloud (ain’t that presentation brilliant!) By browsing the 5-chapter comic book you basically learnt that Chrome is a new Open Source web browser developed by Google. WebKit is used as the [...]