Melastmohican's Blog

New version of FFmpeg codenamed “Works with HTML5″ is released. It is first version that supports Google’s newly released libvpx library for the VP8 codec and the Matroska demuxer was extended to support to WebM container. WebM is an open, royalty-free, media file format designed for the web. WebM defines the file container structure, video [...]

At Google I/O conference: WebM, a new project that will attempt to offer a standard, open format for audio and video on the web. WebM includes: VP8, a high-quality video codec we are releasing today under a BSD-style, royalty-free license Vorbis, an already open source and broadly implemented audio codec a container format based on [...]

Early last month the mayor of Topeka, Kansas stunned the world by announcing that his city was changing its name to Google. The unusual move is a response to Google’s new “Fiber for Communities” program. Google is going to install new Internet connections in unannounced locations, giving those communities Internet speeds 100 times faster than [...]

As an every day commuter I am really happy to see this happening. The bike directions take a lot of factors into consideration: designated bike lanes, tries to avoid areas with lots of hill climbs and drops, busy roads and intersections. In giving estimates on trip times, Google uses an average person at an average [...]

Popular web-based photo editing service Picnik was acquired by Google. Picnik does a great job of cropping and touching up photos, and it comes with a lot of fun effects. It looks like nothing changes today. They will keep supporting existing partners, including Flickr and Facebook. I just wonder how they going to merge it [...]

Map displays temperatures as measured from stations across Weather Underground‘s extensive reporting areas, but you can also switch to Precipitation and Cloud views (you can even play back cloud or precipitation movement over time). In the bottom-left of the window you get an overview of current conditions and a four-day forecast. var AdBrite_Title_Color = ’0000FF’ [...]

Basically it’s about name tags that have been available in web version for a while. It  scans all the photos in your collection, identifies the ones with faces, and groups photos with similar faces together.  It will also sync back and forth with online albums so if you already got name tags there all will [...]

Google Flu Trends showing the prevalence of flu outbreaks across America. it uses aggregated Google search data to estimate flu activity in your state up to two weeks faster than traditional systems.Flu-related search terms are tracked to estimate when and where the flu happens, with data going back to 2003. They have found a close [...]

Webmonkey details how to automatically back up your files to Google Docs using a Python script.

Google Desktop is a desktop search application that runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. But the Linux version has always been a bit behind the curve. While all three clients let you search the web or files on your computer, the Mac and Windows versions have long supported Google Gadgets, which are desktop widgets that [...]