Google seems to be getting everywhere. They are there in just about every corner of our online life, and now they have taken a step further by launching Google Public DNS. Google Public DNS aims at making the web faster for you, by using a high speed, public DNS server. Here’s what DNS does in simple words :
Say you type in the Wikipedia.org in your browser window. The DNS then converts the URL you typed into machine readable IP address and returns it to you. Only after the actual IP of the website is determined does the webpage begin loading for you.
OpenDNS has long since been considered the pioneer in the making the web faster by giving users a free, fast public DNS server with servers spread around the globe to reduce latency.
I’ve been using OpenDNS for the past two years for my needs, and needless to say the experience has been quite good. Not to forget the increase in speed while browsing the web. But today with the release of Google’s own DNS solution I was curious to see if it could beat the already fast service that OpenDNS provides.
So I ran my own tests sitting here in India, using this script by Manu over at TechSutra.
#!/bin/sh for i in "lifehacker.com" "facebook.com" "dailyapps.net" "reddit.com" "google.com" "bbc.co.uk" "microsoft.com" "yahoo.com" "ebay.com" do for j in "4.2.2.2" "8.8.4.4" "208.67.222.222" do echo $j $i `dig @$j $i | grep Query | awk -F ":" '{print $2}'` done done
And here are my results :
Back in September this year when Twitter founder and inventor Jack Dorsey left the company, to a work on a new project, everyone was skeptical at best when he said “I came back to St. Louis to find the next thing, and I found it.” Obviously we are aware of the Genius of a person that Jack is, so expectations are quite high.
Well today he’s revealed this next big thing to world as Square. The idea – let people quickly and easily accept physical credit card payments from their mobile phone. A small device attaches to the phone via the headset/microphone jack. The device gets the power it needs to send data to the phone from the swipe of the card, and sends the information over the microphone connection.
Even before launch Square is now valued at $40 Million with already $10 Million in Venture Capital Backing. By the looks of it, Square is a bold entry into this huge market of physical payments. “What PayPal was to eBay, Square is to the real world,” said one person close to the company.
The Big credit card companies Visa, Mastercard and American Express are already on board with Square to take credit card payments. Square has already won the attention of the blogosphere, and we will have to wait and watch to see if Square becomes the next big thing.
Enough of the talk, lets have a look at what Square looks like…