Google launches Measurement Lab

This week Google announced the launching of Measurement Lab. The whole concept behind Measurement Lab is for users to be able to use online tools to discover a number of different things about their computer networks, ISP (Internet Service Provider) e.g. is your ISP blocking BitTorrent traffic, is your ISP piping certain traffic down slow pipes, etc. These tools will be a great way for Wantoks in Papua New Guinea to check what their ISP's are up to. Please note that the data collected from your bandwidth tests and traffic tests is saved for reasearch. I have tried doing some of the tests e.g. the ISP blocking BitTorrent test but at the time of writing this article the servers were to busy due to the high demand of people wanting to test.

The Measurement Lab website states that

"Measurement Lab was founded by the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute, the PlanetLab Consortium, Google Inc. and academic researchers. M-Lab was developed in 2008 after Vint Cerf and others at Google initiated conversations with network researchers to learn more about challenges to the effective study of broadband networks.

About Measurement Lab

Measurement Lab (M-Lab) is an open, distributed server platform for researchers to deploy Internet measurement tools. The goal of M-Lab is to advance network research and empower the public with useful information about their broadband connections. By enhancing Internet transparency, M-Lab helps sustain a healthy, innovative Internet.

When an Internet application doesn't work as expected, how can you tell whether the problem is caused by your broadband connection, the application or something else? It can be very difficult for professional network administrators, let alone average Internet users, to answer this sort of question today.

Transparency has always been an essential component of the Internet's success, and Internet users deserve to be well-informed about the performance of their broadband connections. For that to happen, researchers need resources to develop new analytical tools.

That's where M-Lab comes in.

Tools for Users

Many researchers are already developing tools that allow users to test their broadband connections by briefly communicating with a server elsewhere on the Internet. The M-Lab platform supports the development of these measurement tools.

An Open Platform for Researchers

M-Lab assists scientific research by providing widely-distributed servers and ample connectivity for researchers' use. Each tool will be allocated dedicated resources on the M-Lab platform to facilitate accurate measurements. Server-side tools will be openly licensed and operated to allow third-parties to develop their own client-side measurement software.


Better, Open Data for Everyone

All data collected via M-Lab will be made available to the research community to allow researchers to build on a common pool of network measurement data.

M-Lab today and in the future

M-Lab is only at the beginning of its development. Today, three tools will be available, running on three servers at one location, and they will only be able to support a limited number of simultaneous users. A total of 36 servers will be deployed across 12 locations early in 2009.

In order to achieve its goals, M-Lab depends on the active support of additional companies, institutions and researchers, and we welcome input from anyone interested in helping the platform flourish. As more researchers, institutions and companies participate, M-Lab will able to support a wider variety of tools.

If you are an Internet user and want to run the tools, check out our Tools page.

If you are a company, institution or researcher interested in learning more about using and upporting M-Lab, learn more here.

M-Lab Partners

M-Lab was founded by the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute, the PlanetLab Consortium, Google Inc. and academic researchers."

Offline Gmail

Google has recently announced that Gmail is going offline. What does this mean Wantoks is that Google Labs is currently experimenting to close the gap between desktop and web-based applications. With Offline Gmail you are now able to access your Gmail from your browser any time even if you do not have an Internet connection turned on.

How Offline Gmail works is that it downloads all of your emails to your desktop. Then using Gmail offline mode is exactly like using it normally, with the exception that offline mode will make your browsing experience a hell of a lot faster. Due to the emails being stored locally.

The main downside I can see with Offline Gmail is having to download all the emails to your desktop. Depending on how many emails you send and receive it could be a couple of Gigabytes. For the majority of Wantoks that use dial up connections in Papua New Guinea it could be almost as painful as watching paint dry.

Google releases list of 10 fastest rising queries for 2008

With 2008 fast drawing to a close Google has released its Zeitgeist list, the tool which shows what internet users are searching for. The top 10 fastest rising global queries for 2008 are:

• Sarah Palin
• Beijing 2008
• Facebook login
• Tuenti
• Heath Ledger
• Obama
• Nasza Klasa
• Wer Kennt Wen
• Euro 2008
• Jonas Brothers

Unfortunately there was no country specific information on this Zeitgeist list about Papua New Guinea, may be next year?

Google release's "Let me google that for you"

Google has recently launched Let me Google that for you. Which allows you to do a Google search and copy and past the resulting link to an email or instant message, etc. It is designed to help enable the search savvy people assist those that are not capable to use the correct syntax to get good result with links that are relevant.

I am constantly getting asked by friends and relatives a like to do searches for them or look up something for them. That a simple Google search would provide them with answers. In regards to how this would benefit my Papua New Guinean wantoks well it is quiet simple. A lot of my fellow country men and women, who do not fully understand the whole syntax concept when doing searches. So it will allow someone like myself to do a search and provide them with a link that is relevant to the topic that they are after.

When it comes to syntax it does take some getting use to. I know it took up a whole lecture in ITC113 a life time ago when I was at university and learning all about the web and html. It has made helping our wantoks a lot easier when it comes to doing web search's. Thanks Google.