Day: September 24, 2008

45% of all Google applications are still in Beta… Gmail has been in beta since it was released, and we don’t even notice that it is a beta anymore!

Half baked: 45 percent of Google projects in beta

“Google has an infamous propensity to keep projects in beta for an unusually long time, and now somebody has gone to the trouble of quantifying just how widespread the testing tag is at the Internet giant. ‘Of the 49 Google products we could find, 22 are in beta. That’s 45 percent,’ not including Google Labs projects, according to a Wednesday blog post at Pingdom, a Web site performance monitoring company. ‘We’re so used to seeing the little ‘beta tag next to the various Google product logos that we almost don’t register it anymore. We even had to double-check that Gmail really still was in beta.’ Google told me a few months ago the beta tag would come off Gmail ‘soon,’ but clearly the company is leery of doing so. Royal Pingdom was mystified by Google’s criteria for beta labeling, and I have been, too. It’s true that it’s easier to treat Web-based apps as a work in progress: a company can upgrade the entire user base to a new version of Flickr, say, just by updating the software on the central servers rather than having to cajole millions of users to install a patch. But there comes a point where labeling something as beta gives the impression that the project’s backer is scared to make a commitment to prospective users or customers.”

Technical problems with the LHC have caused the need for a shutdown until next Spring (2009.) So you “end of the world” folks due to the LHC will be able to enjoy Christmas, anyway!

LHC shut down until early spring

“Professor Peter Higgs will have to wait at least a few additional seasons to find out whether his long-held theory on how matter has mass is right. That’s because officials announced Tuesday that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which could confirm the existence of a theoretical particle name after Higgs, will remain shut down until at least early spring. The LHC, the world’s largest particle collider, is located in a nearly 17-mile-long circular tunnel along the French-Swiss border about 330 feet underground. Built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (or CERN), it promises to push forward theories of particle physics, such as the Higgs Boson, and the fundamental building blocks of all things. The collider was officially launched on September 10 when the first particle beam was successfully sent around the full circuit. However, it hit a major glitch last week when a mechanical failure triggered a helium leak and forced a shutdown for what was initially reported to be at least two months. Now it looks like the investigation and repairs won’t be finished in time to restart the LHC before CERN’s obligatory winter maintenance period, pushing the restart date back to early spring 2009, officials said.”