Parisista

Last week I was in Canada for the first time and was trolling around the web to find a way to reach Victoria. Victoria, in British Columbia, Canada was first “discovered” for the rest of the world by Capt. James Cook in 1778 and was a major colonial port during the Queen’s reign in late 18th century. So, in order to set my foot on Victoria I was trying to find ways to reach there. Unmindful of the fact that the island on which Victoria is situated is at least 90 minutes away by ferry, I plunk the following on Google Maps:

Pat comes, Google Map’s reply:
Distance 108.1 km (about 11 hours 49 mins)

So, when did Google build this 50+ km bridge? I guess doing the polyline is easier on the Maps. BTW, actual time taken was around 2 hours, 90 minutes on ferry (with my rental car on board) and another 30 minutes of driving down south to Victoria from Swartz Bay Terminal.
Goops! So much for fancy technology.

Previous entry on the Google Messenger was speculative. I have found several links from other b l o g s that are talking about Google Messenger. Also, the domain ‘gMessenger’ has been registered by an annymous person.
Noteworthy is the report that Google Messenger is being prototyped by Geodesic Systems in India. Read the first comment here. Not sure, if Geodesic is being referred here.
Google and Geodesic may have forged a partnership but there are no reports confirming this in the media. Consider this–Ram Shriram is on the board of Google and was an early investor. Geodesic has Rakesh Mathur on their board. Ram Shriram was the President of Junglee (acquired by Amazon in 1998) which had Rakesh Mathur as the CEO. More truth?

I overheard this conversation during a recent visit to a local Java Users Group.
…
Person A: (muffled)
Person B: Do you think ‘G Messenger’ would have all the capabilities?
Person A: (muffled)
Person B: Do you know anything about the launch?
Person A: (muffled)
…
The above two sentences hit my head. Does G stands for Google? Is Google planning to launch its own version of Instant Messenger? It makes sense. Google is already rumoured to enter the desktop search market. It already has couple of tools viz. Deskbar, Toolbar and GMail Notifier.
Natural progression a la Yahoo. Yahoo entered the IM market and now has almost every offering within IM. Chat is just one function. The IM products from almost all the major players AOL, MSN, Yahoo have search, news, stocks, weather, etc. What these products lacked is the desktop search and Google is taking this head-on with Microsoft.
I am not sure whether my judgement its true. I cannot guarantee the merits of the conversation. I just overheard something which might be something else and took it for Google since it is always on my mind.
OK. The above conversation was sheer dramatization but, I did attend a local JUG and a boring topic got my thoughts going. But, if I were Google, that would be the next move anyway. Google Messenger with Search, News, Froogle, RSS Aggregator, E-mail alerts etc. Anybody listening at Google?

Google Inc. today announced it acquired Picasa, Inc., a Pasadena, Calif.-based digital photo management company.
“Picasa enables users to easily manage and share digital photographs, and its technologies complement Google’s ongoing mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
Picasa was founded in October 2001. In May 2004, Picasa announced a technology partnership with Google’s Blogger service to make publishing digital photos with Blogger faster and easier. Further product integration plans have not been announced. Picasa users will not experience any interruption in service.