Google, following the footsteps of social media giants Facebook and Twitter, introduced its new social media feature, Google Buzz on Feb 9, 2010. It is a fully open and distributed platform for conversations. Much like Twitter and Facebook, Google Buzz allows space for the expression of thought. Twitter, however, places a limit on length, allowing a mere 140 characters at most. And while Facebook is wildly popular among all ages groups, its interface is confusing to many new users. It is a fully open and distributed platform for conversations.

Google Buzz has opened a new door in the realm of public relations possibilities. The most preferred advantage of Google Buzz is its ease of access. Moreover, automatically connecting it to the users gmail contacts is the incomparable way to connect the users to their friends. This eliminates the lack-of-network issue that users encounter when they first sign on to a social networking site.

Google has taken social media a step further and created the perfect blend of the two. Buzz is not a Facebook killer as, the latter offers a complete integrated platform to share updates, pictures, videos, games, maps, etc. with a network built on family and friends.

There are speculations that Buzz will not pose a threat for Twitter too. Twitter is a non-symmetric network used to access and broadcast information, to establish new connections, to chat, and to freely blab about anything. Twitter users listen and tweet to an audience that has a very small overlap, if any, with their Gmail address books. Similarly, this audience is mostly disjoint from their Facebook friends. Thus unless one can convince family members, friends, acquaintances, and professional connections to all move to Gmail, Twitter users will keep using Twitter for its very purpose. That is not even considering how users consume tweets. Buzz has nothing like it, at least for now. And Twitter’s lightweight and open API has created one of the richest and most innovative ecosystem in social networks –the best is still to come.

In an interview with eWeek, Google’s Brad Horowitz stated, that Google’s vision was a place where all social services could come together, a place where people would discuss events, trends and engage in real conversation. “It’s not just status-casting. It’s not just checking in. It’s really meaningful interactions around meaningful topics within Buzz and it’s reaching the right audience and people are engaged. That kind of value proposition is I think unique to Buzz,” Horowitz added.

Buzz will fall somewhere in between Facebook and Twitter as it appeals to Gmail users who are unfamiliar to Twitter and find Facebook way too confusing. That is, of course, if Facebook’s future email service does not pick up any momentum, and if Twitter does not bring innovations to its platform. Then you can guess what will be left of Gmail’s Buzz.

Labels: Google, Google Buzz, Social media marketing, Social Media News

Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the founders of Google, will sell off 10 million of their shares in Google.

This trade, revealed in a Google SEC filing, is to take place over the next five years. Brin and Page will be selling approximately 17% of their Google holdings, reducing their voting rights in the company from 59% to 48%. While this does mean that Page and Brin are giving up majority control in the company, in reality, they’re not ceding much. Although they will not have the majority voting rights, barring some bizarre unforeseen circumstance that splits their votes, they maintain enough voting rights to make it nearly impossible to vote against them.

Google, seeking to downplay the significance of this trade plan, stated that this was a regular occurrence among the founders of publicly traded companiesIndeed, Bill Gates has followed a similar procedure with his stake in Microsoft, selling predetermined amounts of shares every year. In an emailed statement, Google said “They are both as committed as ever to Google and are integrally involved in our day-to-day management and product strategy. The majority of their net worth remains with Google.”

The question is, how should Google shareholders read into this divestment by the founders of the company? Is it a lack of confidence in the company’s future? Is it prompted by board politics? Is it simply Brin and Page deciding that they could each use an extra $2.75 billion (to buy matching fleets of yachts?)? It seems that the most correct explanation is the third. They’re still keeping the majority of their money in the company, so a relatively (percentage-wise, not in terms of real dollars) small sale shouldn’t inspire fear in the shareholders.

Source:http://thenextweb.com/us/2010/01/23/google-founders-selling-shares/

Labels: Google, Google Stocks, Larry Page, Sergey Brin

Google has decided to delay the planned release in China of two smartphones based on its Android platform, a sign the company's handset operations could be affected by its dispute with China over cyber security.

The company made the announcement a day before China Unicom was set to release Android phones from Motorola and Samsung. According to the New York Times, a source close to the situation said that given the uncertainty over Google's operations in China, the company decided the devices should not be released. Additionally, another unnamed source told the Wall Street Journal that it would be "irresponsible" to release the phones, given the current atmosphere.

Last week, Google said it had been the target of cyber security attacks originating in China, and that it would no longer censor the Chinese version of its search engine--even if that led to Google shutting down its operations in China.

Google had worked closely with the handset makers and China Unicom on the design of the devices, which were to come packaged with several Google applications. Google did not provide any further information on the delay.

Read more: http://www.fiercewireless.com/

Labels: Google, Google News, Google News for mobile

Over the next few weeks, we’re rolling out the ability to upload all file types to the cloud through Google Docs, giving you one place where you can upload and access your key files online. Because Google Docs now supports files up to 250 MB in size, which is larger than the attachment limit on most email applications, you’ll be able to backup large graphics files, RAW photos, ZIP archives and much more to the cloud. More importantly, instead of carrying a USB drive, you can now use Google Docs as a more convenient option for accessing your files on different computers.

This feature can also help you work with teams to organize and collaborate on information online. For example, an architect can share large schematic files with her construction firm, while a P.T.A. member can share large graphic files for posters with other members. You can even add these files to the same shared project folder your team has already been using to collaborate on documents and spreadsheets.

In addition to uploading any file into Google Docs, our Google Apps Premier Edition customers will be able to seamlessly upload many files at once and sync them with their desktop in real time using third party applications. You can read more about how the ability to upload any file will help businesses on theGoogle Enterprise blog.

This feature will be enabled for your account over the next couple of weeks — look for the bubble notification when you sign in to Google Docs. For more information, check out our post on the Google Docs blog.

Official Google Blog: Upload your files and access them anywhere with Google Docs

Labels: Google, Google Apps Engine, Google docs, Google News

Last week I sent an email to Googlers about the meaning of "open" as it relates to the Internet, Google, and our users. In the spirit of openness, I thought it would be appropriate to share these thoughts with those outside of Google as well.

At Google we believe that open systems win. They lead to more innovation, value, and freedom of choice for consumers, and a vibrant, profitable, and competitive ecosystem for businesses. Many companies will claim roughly the same thing since they know that declaring themselves to be open is both good for their brand and completely without risk. After all, in our industry there is no clear definition of what open really means. It is a Rashomon-like term: highly subjective and vitally important.

The topic of open seems to be coming up a lot lately at Google. I've been in meetings where we're discussing a product and someone says something to the effect that we should be more open. Then a debate ensues which reveals that even though most everyone in the room believes in open we don't necessarily agree on what it means in practice.

This is happening often enough for me to conclude that we need to lay out our definition of open in clear terms that we can all understand and support. What follows is that definition based on my experiences at Google and the input of several colleagues. We run the company and make our product decisions based on these principles, so I encourage you to carefully read, review, and debate them. Then own them and try to incorporate them into your work. This is a complex subject and if there is debate (and I'm sure there will be) it should be in the open! Please feel free to comment.

There are two components to our definition of open: open technology and open information. Open technology includes open source, meaning we release and actively support code that helps grow the Internet, and open standards, meaning we adhere to accepted standards and, if none exist, work to create standards that improve the entire Internet (and not just benefit Google). Open information means that when we have information about users we use it to provide something that is valuable to them, we are transparent about what information we have about them, and we give them ultimate control over their information. These are the things we should be doing. In many cases we aren't there, but I hope that with this note we can start working to close the gap between reality and aspiration.

By:Jonathan Rosenberg, Senior Vice President at Google
Google Public Policy Blog: The meaning of open

Labels: Google, Google News, Open Source, Open technology

Ever since Android was first vaunted, people have been asking for an official Google Phone; however the search giant has always said it was only taking the lead in software, not hardware. Now, according to TechCrunch’s sources, that’s all going to change: they claim that an official, Google branded handset will drop in early 2010, with the company dictating every element of hardware and software to put together their own interpretation of today’s smartphone.

Who’s actually responsible for for hardware construction is still unconfirmed, though despite rumors of HTC involvement TechCrunch are saying it’ll be a Korean firm that produces the Google Phone. They’re leaning toward LG, since rival Samsung produces several of the components in the iPhone, a deal could lead Apple to pressure them not to get involved with the Google handset.

According to the sources, Google had hoped to have their phone on the market by the 2009 holiday period, but that timescale has slipped. However we should expect a “big push” in promotion and advertising in January 2010 in the run-up to launch. No hardware or form-factor specifications are known as yet.

Labels: Android Phone, Google, Google Phone, Mobile technology

Back in 2001, to give people a new, quicker way to find images, we launched Image Search. When you do a search for [eiffel tower] you'll find an array of images of the tower in the daytime, in black and white, at sunset and more. With Similar Images, which recently graduated from Google Labs, you can click "Find similar images" to narrow your search to, say, pictures of the Eiffel Tower lit up at night. Today, we've launched an experimental feature in Labs called Google Image Swirl, which builds on new computer vision research to cluster similar images into representative groups in a fun, exploratory interface.

For example, if you search on Image Swirl for [washington], you'll see 12 image thumbnails including President Washington, the Washington Monument, a map of Washington D.C. and the Capitol Building:




Once you find the group of images you're interested in, you can click on the thumbnail and a cluster of images will "swirl" into view. For example, here's what you'll see if you click the image of the Washington Monument:


You can then further explore additional sub-groups within any cluster. The interface may look familiar to those of you who have tried Google's Wonder Wheel available in the Search Options panel, which enables you to explore related search queries.

Official Google Blog: Explore images with Google Image Swirl, now in Labs

Labels: Google, Google Image Search, Google Image Swirl, Google Labs, Google News

Today we're pleased to announce we've acquired Gizmo5, a company that provides Internet-based calling software for mobile phones and computers. While we don't have any specific features to announce right now, Gizmo5's engineers will be joining the Google Voice team to continue improving the Google Voice and Gizmo5 experience. Current Gizmo5 users will still be able to use the service, though we will be suspending new signups for the time being, and existing users will no longer be able to sign up for a call-in number.

We've acquired a number of small companies over the past five years, and the people and technology that have come to Google from other places have contributed in many ways, large and small, to all kinds of Google products. Since the GrandCentral team joined Google in 2007, they've done incredible things with Google's technology and resources to launch and improve Google Voice.

We welcome the Gizmo5 team to Google and look forward to working together to bringing more useful features to Google Voice.

Google Voice Blog: Google welcomes Gizmo5

Labels: Gizmo5, Google, Google News, Google Voice

There are two brass rings in search these days: real time and social. Google (and Bing) have been working on the real time thing with Twitter, and last week Google announced they were working on a Social Search option in Labs—and now it’s out.

With Social Search, Google finds relevant public content from your friends and contacts and highlights it for you at the bottom of your search results. When I do a simple query for [new york], Google Social Search includes my friend’s blog on the results page under the heading “Results from people in your social circle for New York.” I can also filter my results to see only content from my social circle by clicking “Show options” on the results page and clicking “Social.”

All of the info in Social Search is publicly available, but they highlight info based on their (massive data collection) information about you from:

• Google profile contacts


• Gmail contacts, chats and groups


• People you’re following on FriendFeed or Twitter


• Feeds in your Google Reader

Story URL : http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/10/

Labels: Google, Google News, Google Social Search, Social Media News

Now you can export all your documents, spreadsheets, presentations and PDFs from Google Docs in a ZIP archive.

The most difficult part is to select all your files: you need to go to the "All items" section, scroll down to the bottom of the documents list, click on the checkbox button from the toolbar and then on "select all visible". Google Docs uses "infinite scrolling", but it's not smart enough to select all the documents from a view.



After selecting all your files (or only some of them), right-click and choose "export". A dialog lets you choose the download format for each kind of file: Microsoft Office formats, OpenOffice formats, PDF or some other formats.

Source:http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/10/export-google-docs.html

Labels: Google, Google docs, Google News

Google will soon launch a music service, we’ve heard from multiple sources, and the company has spent the last several weeks securing content for the launch of the service from the major music labels. One source has referred to the new service as Google Audio.

We’re still gathering details, but our understanding is the service will be very different to the Google China music download service that they launched in 2008. That service, which is only available in China, allows users to search for music and download it for free.



This new service will be available for at least U.S. users, our sources confirm, although it isn’t clear if it’s a download or streaming service, or both. Google already has a decent (if little used) music search engine that can be accessed by simply typing “music:” before a query (example). But songs are not available for streaming or download from those searches.


Source:http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/21/google-music-service-the-screenshots/

Labels: Google, Google Audio, Google News, Google Service

Blackle claims that if you are using CRT monitors or LCDs of size 24-inch or more, and use Blackle.com it will save lakhs of Watt hours (Actual figures are displayed on their homepage). Blackle is a website powered by Google Custom Search, which aims at saving electricity by displaying a black background color for search results.

Google, on the other hand, claim that making its home page black will not reduce energy consumption. They also add that on flat-panel monitors, displaying black may actually increase energy usage. However, they do agree with the idea of reducing climate change by saving energy and applaud the spirit of such initiatives. This is an important effort that we all should join in especially in India, since it does not have energy in abundance. India still have a long way to go, but do keep in mind that it is still a developing country but is moving closer to the developed country mark very quickly.

While experts debate if black is the new green or not, here are couple of things you can actually start doing at your end to make a significant contribution to the climate changes:

• Turn off your monitor and computer when you are not using them


• Turn down the brightness on your monitor


• Turn on power management features that mostly all OS provides.


• Look for words "EnergyStar 4.0 Compliant" when you purchase your next monitor.

Labels: Blackle, Google

Some of us here at Google spend almost all of our time thinking about one thing: How do we create a three-dimensional model of every built structure on Earth? How do we make sure it's accurate, that it stays current and that it's useful to everyone who might want to use it?

One of the best ways to get a big project done — and done well — is to open it up to the world. As such, today we're announcing the launch of Google Building Maker, a fun and simple (and crazy addictive, it turns out) tool for creating buildings for Google Earth.

We like to think of Building Maker as a cross between Google Maps and a gigantic bin of building blocks. Basically, you pick a building and construct a model of it using aerial photos and simple 3D shapes – both of which we provide. When you're done, we take a look at your model. If it looks right, and if a better model doesn't already exist, we add it to the 3D Buildings layer in Google Earth. You can make a whole building in a few minutes.

Our early beta testers insist that Building Maker is more like a game than a tool. Check out this video to see Building Maker in action:




Google LatLong: Introducing Google Building Maker

Labels: Google, Google Building Maker, Google News

Google is celebrating the 57th anniversary of the patenting of the barcode with a Google logo that is literally a barcode.

On October 7, 1952, Joseph Woodland, Bernard Silver, and Jordin Johanson were awarded US Patent 2,612,994, after waiting since 1949 for it to come through.



The barcode could have ended up in the hands of IBM, where Woodland and Johanson moved to in 1951 and “continually tried to interest IBM in developing the system.” IBM commissioned a report which concluded “that it was both feasible and interesting, but that processing the resulting information would require equipment that was some time off in the future.”

In 1952 Philco purchased the patent, and then sold it to RCA the same year.

The common use of barcodes though was more recent. In July 1972 RCA began an eighteen-month test of their system in a Kroger store in Cincinnati. By 1977, there were scanning machines in fewer than 200 grocery stores in the United States. By 1980 the technology was being adopted by 8000 stores per year.

At 34 I’m just old enough to remember shopping at a supermarket where every item had a price tag. During the 80’s old fashioned price tags
disappeared, and today you even see self service checkouts in supermarkets.

Although not yet confirmed by Google, it’s fair guess that the barcode logo on Google.com equates to something along the lines of Google, be it in the numeric form of the word.

Via:http://www.inquisitr.com/41117/google-barcode-logo/

Labels: Google, Google News, Google Search

In the most recent stable release of Google Chrome, we looked at ways to make a snappy, simple browser even more customizable, and we're happy to hear that you've enjoyed personalizing Google Chrome's look and feel with a few of our early themes for the browser.

Today, we are introducing Artist Themes for Google Chrome. We invited leading artists, architects, musicians, illustrators, filmmakers and fashion and interior designers from across the globe to create artwork for an unusual canvas: the modern web browser. The result is a vibrant fusion of art and technology, with a hundred Artist Themes that we hope will add a touch of inspiration and delight to your web browsing experience with Google Chrome.

One of our favorite themes comes from Yulia Brodskaya, whose innovative paper art techniques and passion for typography and illustration have brought her into the international spotlight. We were particularly intrigued by Yulia's approach to the design challenge at hand, explained in her own words:

I was really curious to see how the traditional paper craft, which I use for creating my work, can be applied to the Google Chrome browser. I made a quick pencil sketch first, choosing the two main elements for my theme: green jungle leaves for the top and a very colourful parrot to accompany it. Then I followed my usual working pattern and created a physical artwork out of edge glued paper stripes. I used the photographs of the paper leaves and parrot to design my theme layout, and sent the resulting mock-up to Google designers who brought the whole thing to life.

Source:http://chrome.blogspot.com/2009/10/splash-of-color-to-your-browser-artist.html

Labels: Google, Google Chrome, Google Chrome themes, Google News

As launch dates go, the timing could not be better. Less than a week after Google’s Gmail suffered its fourth service disruption this year, IBM debuted a competing Web mail service intended to undercut it. Called LotusLive iNotes it’s an email, calendaring, and contact management system aimed squarely at the enterprise space Google has been so diligently courting.

Priced at about $36 per user per year, iNotes is cheaper than Google’s (GOOG) Apps Premier Edition offering, which costs about $50 per user per year. And while it might not offer as many bells and whistles (IBM’s 1GB of storage is significantly less than the 25GB that Google provides), IBM (IBM) claims it more than makes up for it in security, reliability and privacy.

“We run the world’s most mission critical systems for banks, telcos and utilities,” said Sean Poulley, IBM’s vice president of online collaboration services. “It’s fair to say we’re pretty trusted….Candidly, Google has shown itself to be weak….There is a world of difference between supporting a consumer-grade service and a business-grade service. We’re bringing business class services and support with mission critical reliability at a price lower than the competition.”

Source:http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20091002/ibm-challenges-gmail-with-lotuslive-inotes/

Labels: Gmail News, Google, Google’s Apps, IBM Lotuslive

How long would it take to translate all the world's web content into 50 languages? Even if all of the translators in the world worked around the clock, with the current growth rate of content being created online and the sheer amount of data on the web, it would take hundreds of years to make even a small dent.

Today, we're happy to announce a new website translator gadget powered by Google Translate that enables you to make your site's content available in 51 languages. Now, when people visit your page, if their language (as determined by their browser settings) is different than the language of your page, they'll be prompted to automatically translate the page into their own language. If the visitor's language is the same as the language of your page, no translation banner will appear.



After clicking the Translate button, the automatic translations are shown directly on your page.



It's easy to install — all you have to do is cut and paste a short snippet into your webpage to increase the global reach of your blog or website.

Automatic translation is convenient and helps people get a quick gist of the page. However, it's not a perfect substitute for the art of professional translation. Today happens to be International Translation Day, and we'd like to take the opportunity to celebrate the contributions of translators all over the world. These translators play an essential role in enabling global communication, and with the rapid growth and ease of access to digital content, the need for them is greater than ever. We hope that professional translators, along with translation tools such as Google Translator Toolkit and this Translate gadget, will continue to help make the world's content more accessible to everyone.

Posted by Jeff Chin, Product Manager

Official Google Blog: Translate your website with Google: Expand your audience globally

Labels: Google, Google News, Google Translator Gadget

Google Inc.'s highly anticipated communication and collaboration tool - Google Wave - is one big step closer to its first customer shipment.

The company is inviting about 100,000 users and developers to preview the new technology, Lars Rasmussen, an engineering manager, and Stephanie Hannon, a group product manager at Google, said in a blog post today. The users and developers will get the invitations tomorrow, they said in the post.

The Google bloggers acknowledged that Google Wave, which was unveiled this past May, still isn't yet ready for prime time. But, they added, the developers are now ready to get some feedback on the current iteration of the tool.

"We'll ask some of these early users to nominate people they know also to receive early invitations -- Google Wave is a lot more useful if your friends, family and colleagues have it too," wrote Rasmussen and Hannon. "This, of course, will just be the beginning. If all goes well we will soon be inviting many more to try out Google Wave."

The Web-based Google Wave application is designed to consolidate features from e-mail, instant messaging, blogging, wikis, multimedia management and document sharing. Using social networking-like interfaces, the tool should enable collaboration and community-building applications.

Source:http://www.computerworld.com/

Labels: Google, Google News, Google wave, Google Wave applications

One problem with reading news online today is that browsing can be really slow. A media-rich page loads dozens of files and can take as much as 10 seconds to load over broadband, which can be frustrating. What we need instead is a way to flip through articles really fast without unnatural delays, just as we can in print. The flow should feel seamless and let you rapidly flip forward to the content you like, without the constant wait for things to load. Imagine taking 10 seconds to turn the page of a print magazine!

Today we're adding a new experiment to Google Labs: Google Fast Flip, accessible at fastflip.googlelabs.com. Fast Flip is a new reading experience that combines the best elements of print and online articles. Like a print magazine, Fast Flip lets you browse sequentially through bundles of recent news, headlines and popular topics, as well as feeds from individual top publishers. As the name suggests, flipping through content is very fast, so you can quickly look through a lot of pages until you find something interesting. At the same time, we provide aggregation and search over many top newspapers and magazines, and the ability to share content with your friends and community. Fast Flip also personalizes the experience for you, by taking cues from selections you make to show you more content from sources, topics and journalists that you seem to like. In short, you get fast browsing, natural magazine-style navigation, recommendations from friends and other members of the community and a selection of content that is serendipitous and personalized.



To build Google Fast Flip, we partnered with three dozen top publishers, including the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Salon, Fast Company, ProPublica and Newsweek.


Google News Blog: Read news fast with Google Fast Flip

Labels: Google, Google Fast Flip, Google Labs, Google News

YouTube, always on the look-out for ways to solidify its leadership in video and increase its revenue has been in negotiations with the major movie studios to start streaming movies on a rental basis. Granted there are already some full length movies available on the service but they are generally lesser known movies or indie films looking for exposure.

This latest move is seen as a way to increase their revenue as well as one of its first moves towards charging for content instead of going with the typical ad supported model. At this point YouTube is in discussions with: Lions Gate, Sony, and Warner Bros. about including their movies in YouTube’s site. Additionally part of the talks include making them available on the same day the the movie’s DVD comes out.

Many of the details involved with the ongoing discussions are still in a state of flux. Included is whether or not at some point users will be able to download the movies. The figure being tossed around for the rental is $3.99 with the possibility of the traditional ad supported model being used for some of the movies. As it is the movie studios already get a 70% share of revenue generated by movies already on the site and the word is that this would be the same for the new movies being streamed.

In addition the studios would be guaranteed a minimum fee of just under $3.00 per title viewed. The thinking behind this is that since it is a flat fee the studios would get regardless it give YouTube some wiggle room to offer special deals.

At this point 10,000 Google employees are set to begin testing the service at some point after September, which was the original date for the internal testing launch; but that has been set back as negotiations drag on.

VIA:http://www.inquisitr.com/35632/youtube-in-negotiations-to-stream-new-movies/

Labels: Google, You Tube, You Tube News, YouTube Movies

REDMOND, Wash.--Qi Lu knows as well as anyone just how difficult it is to take on Google.

For nearly a decade, Lu played a leading role in building Yahoo's Internet search and advertising technologies. The effort was so important that Yahoo backed it with billions of dollars to acquire companies, hire armies of engineers and develop and run its own systems. Yet Yahoo fell further and further behind and many analysts said the company was simply outgunned by Google.

Lu, who is 47, left Yahoo 14 months ago but now finds himself once again leading the charge against Google. This time, he is backed by a patron that vows to spend even more than Yahoo did on the mission: Microsoft.

"It's an unfinished mission that I would like to work on," he said.

The challenge for Lu and his team remains enormous, and success appears improbable. But since Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, tapped him to become president of the company's online services division in December, Lu, a self-effacing engineer who is one of the most private and atypical executives in the upper ranks of the Internet industry, has earned the confidence of Microsoft's troops and helped to bring a dose of optimism to a beaten-down team.

Possessing unusual stamina and a maniacal work ethic, he has pushed his team hard to give Microsoft an important victory. In nightly 9:30 meetings over several weeks, he leaned on his managers to find creative ways to structure a sweeping and complex partnership with Yahoo. The deal, signed in July, will give Microsoft something it has coveted for years: a vastly larger audience that will make Bing, its search engine, the runner-up to Google.

By Miguel Helft [VIA:The New York Times ]

Also Read On :http://news.cnet.com/

Labels: Google, Google Search, Microsoft, Microsoft News, Yahoo Search

My cousin is in first grade and sometimes she writes short stories for class. I try to share the stories with her grandparents, but because Japanese is their first language and they don't speak English very well, it's been tough. Today we're releasing a feature for Google Docs to make this kind of multi-lingual sharing easier — you can now automatically translate documents into 42 different languages.

So for my cousin's latest story, I helped her type it up in Google Docs and then clicked "Translate document" from the "Tools" menu. In a matter of seconds, Google Docs has translated the whole story into Japanese using Google Translate's technology.



You can replace the original document with the translation or make a new translated version. I like keeping an English version for friends here and creating a separate Japanese version for her grandparents. All the formatting and layout is preserved no matter what language it's in — translations aren't perfect, but we are continuously working on improving translation quality over time. We hope this new feature helps you more easily share information without worrying about language barriers.




Official Google Blog: Translate documents: sharing across languages and generations

Labels: Google, Google docs, Google News, Google Reader

Over the years, we've heard a lot from people who've unearthed hidden treasures in Google Books: a crafter who uncovered a forgotten knitting technique, a family historian who discovered her ancestor once traveled the country with a dancing, roller-skating bear. The books they found were out of copyright and in the public domain, which meant they could read the full text and even download a PDF version of the book.

I'm excited to announce that starting today, Google Books will offer free downloads of these and more than one million more public domain books in an additional format, EPUB. By adding support for EPUB downloads, we're hoping to make these books more accessible by helping people around the world to find and read them in more places.

More people are turning to new reading devices to access digital books, and many such phones, netbooks, and e-ink readers have smaller screens that don't readily render image-based PDF versions of the books we've scanned.

EPUB is a lightweight text-based digital book format that allows the text to automatically conform (or "reflow") to these smaller screens. And because EPUB is a free, open standard supported by a growing ecosystem of digital reading devices, works you download from Google Books as EPUBs won't be tied to or locked into a particular device.

We'll also continue to make available these books in the popular PDF format so you can see images of the pages just as they appear in the printed book.

To get started, just find any public domain book on Google Books and click on the Download button in the toolbar.



Inside Google Books: Download Over a Million Public Domain Books from Google Books in the Open EPUB Format

Labels: Google, Google News

When composing messages, you probably rely pretty heavily on auto-complete to add recipients. Auto-complete is convenient and fast, and usually does the trick. But sometimes seeing your list of contacts can help you remember all the people you want to include on your email. So, we've added a contact chooser to Gmail. Click the "To:" link (or Cc:/Bcc:) when composing a message and you'll see something like this:


You can click on the contacts you want to add or search for others.

If you use contact groups, your groups will appear in a drop-down menu in the contact chooser, so you can select contacts from the groups you've already created. And if you happen to use Gmail in Chinese, Japanese or Korean, being able to pick from your list of contacts should be particularly useful since auto-complete doesn't offer the same search as you type experience that it does in other languages.


Official Gmail Blog: Composing a message? Try the contact chooser

Labels: Gmail News, Google, Google Apps Engine, Google News

Today we're pleased to announce a new Google Labs application for Android-powered devices in the US called, Listen. Listen quickly finds podcasts and web audio relevant to your searches, lets you stream over-the-air or download for later, and subscribe to fresh content from your favorite feeds and searches. In short, Listen helps organize the world of audio information and makes it easily accessible anytime, anywhere. And if you agree with the Jimi Hendrix quote that is the title of this post, then Listen may actually make you wiser, too.

Listen lets you stay informed even while engaged in other activities. Our colleagues use Listen as a personal audio-magazine while exercising, commuting, gardening, cleaning, dressing, cooking, and more*.



Source Images:googlemobile.blogspot.com

Official Google Mobile Blog: "Knowledge speaks but wisdom listens."

Labels: Android, Android applications, Google, Google Apps Engine, Google News

Google has come up with bookmark syncing for users of its Chrome web browser.Wit this you can sync your chrome browser bookmarks on different machines either home office or any other machine.

Xmarks, the well known Bookmark syncing utility is also letting users register for a beta to test out its Chrome support.

On its blog Google (Google) explained the new addition:-

As of today’s dev channel build, we’re adding a brand new feature to Google Chrome: bookmark sync. Many users have several machines,one at home and one at work for example.This new feature makes it easy to keep the same set of bookmarks on all your machines,and stores them alongside your Google Docs for easy web access.

To activate this feature,launch Google Chrome(Google Chrome)with the –enable-sync command-line flag. Once you set up sync from the Tools menu, Chrome will then upload and store your bookmarks in your Google Account.Anytime you add or change a bookmark, your changes will be sent to the cloud and immediately broadcast to all other computers for which you’ve activated bookmark sync (using the same XMPP technology as Google Talk).

Labels: Google, Google Chrome, Google News

We launched iGoogle in 2005 as a way for people to quickly and easily personalize their Google experience with all the information on the web that was most useful to them. Now tens of millions of people choose to use their iGoogle homepage to check email, track the news, watch videos, chat with friends and much more. Today, we're pleased to tell you about the new social features that we're introducing to iGoogle.

First, we're excited to introduce social gadgets for iGoogle. Social gadgets let you share, collaborate and play games with your friends on top of all the things you can already do on your homepage. The 19 social gadgets we're debuting today offer many new ways to make your homepage more useful and fun. If you're a gaming fanatic, compete with others in Who has the biggest brain? or challenge your fellow Chess or Scrabble enthusiasts to a quick match. Stay tuned in to the latest buzz with media-sharing gadgets from NPR, The Huffington Post, and YouTube. To manage your day-to-day more efficiently, check things off alongside your friends with the social To-Do list gadget.



Source: Official Google Blog: I scream, you scream, we all scream for iGoogle social!

Labels: Google, Google News, iGoogle, iGoogle social media

Since our last big launch, we've been thinking about ways to help our users better share, discover, and consume content in Reader. Today, I'm happy to announce several new features that we hope will further improve the way you use Reader.

Send to...
Send to menuWe've made it easier to share posts you like to Blogger, Twitter, Facebook, and more, with our new "Send to" feature. (Incidentally, Blogger is celebrating its tenth birthday this month, and we're hoping our friends there will like this little birthday present.)

Just head over to the settings page, and enable the services you want to use. If your favorite service isn't listed (and you're feeling extra geeky), you can create your own "Send to" link with a URL template.



Official Google Reader Blog: A flurry of features for feed readers

Labels: Google, Google News, Google Reader

When it comes to Apple and the iPhone, it was a weekend of fear and loathing. From loving Google Voice to Apple’s pending doom, we read it all. While I agree with some of the points that were raised, I see little to no evidence that Apple and its iPhone platform are going to melt down anytime soon. Sure, Google’s Android is going to be a worthy competitor, but it’s likely to wound other mobile ecosystems, such as Symbian and Palm’s Pre, before derailing the speeding freight train being driven by Apple.

Many have already already made a case that Apple isn’t doomed, so I won’t bother. Instead, I would like to let the data from Flurry, a San Francisco-based mobile analytics startup, speak for itself. The data in this report is computed from a sample size of more than 1,600 live applications and 60 million consumers across four platforms: Apple (iPhone and iPod Touch),Google Android, BlackBerry and JavaME.

According to the data collected by Flurry, developer momentum for the iPhone platform shows no sign of abating. The number of iPhone apps is growing 14 percent every month, to stand at roughly 65,000 applications in July. At that rate, Apple’s App Store will have some 100,000 applications by the end of 2009.

Source:http://gigaom.com/2009/08/10/the-battle-of-the-apps-google-vs-apple/

Labels: Google, Google News, iPhone, iPhone 3 G

Voicemail transcription is a popular feature of Google Voice. Having the ability to receive a transcript of a new voicemail by email or SMS and get a quick idea of what a voicemail is about, saves you time in deciding which voicemails are worth listening to.

Since transcription is fully automated and most people often don't talk in the same organized manner that they write, it is tricky to insert punctuation into a message. And reading long messages without punctuation can feel weird.

Today we made some more progress on transcript readability and launched an improved transcription engine with punctuation. Don't expect it to insert question marks for your callers' questions, but it should help make your message transcripts easier to read by breaking them into sentences separated by periods.

We hope you will like the improvement...


Google Voice Blog: Towards better transcription. Period.

Labels: Google, Google News, Google Voice

Every morning, millions of people wake up to a very refreshing experience at work. They don't see "mailbox is full" errors in their email. They don't worry about backing up their data. They can get to any file they need from any computer, anywhere with Internet access and a browser. They can all access and edit the same documents and spreadsheets at the same time as their colleagues. They use Gmail and Google Calendar at work as fluidly and easily as they use their personal Gmail accounts. They video, voice and text chat with their peers globally as naturally as they send email.

The IT people at these companies and organizations don't waste time or money buying, installing or managing email servers. They focus on the smart, innovative stuff they want to work on, because they never have to bother with expensive and painful software upgrades, hardware compatibility issues or managing data centers. They have left many IT frustrations and costs behind and moved on to something better.



Official Google Blog: "Going Google" with Google Apps

Labels: Gmail News, Google, Google News, Google Search

Google Voice is now more useful for BlackBerry and Android users. It has released apps for both platforms that provide access to the service’s features. With Google Voice mobile app for Blackberry and Android, users can now make calls and send SMS messages with their Google Voice number directly from their mobile phone. The app is fully integrated with each phone’s contacts, so they can call via Google Voice straight from the address book.

The main function of the apps is to make it easier to use your Google Voice phone number by automatically routing outbound calls through Google and to the recipient. Google Voice users get a phone number that should be the only number that they give out to people.

You route calls to mobile, home and other phones based on who’s calling and when. But there’s always been a nagging problem with the service - when you call out from your phones, people don’t see your Google Voice number on caller ID. They just see whatever phone number you are calling from. That means your friends have to store another phone number for you, or they don’t know who’s calling.

The Apps also allow users to access the core features of Google Voice. Listen to/read voice-mails and text messages (all voice-mails are automatically transcribed as well), access call history, send SMS and place international calls at low rates.

If you use more than one mobile, Google voice enables you to use one number for all of them, along with the ability to make outgoing text messages and calls, and international rates that start from US2c per minute.

Google Voice now seamless integrates with your phone’s address book, and when you call or text someone they see your Google Voice number rather than your mobile number.

You can also view your call history and, via the transcription feature, read your voice-mail – yes you read that right.

Google engineering manager David Singleton and product manager Marcus Foster assured that they were working on an iPhone app as well, and said it’s possible to use many Google Voice features via the mobile website.

Labels: Google, Google Apps Engine, Google News, Google wave

We believe you should only get the mail you want to get. Some of you already use the "Report Spam" button on all kinds of unwanted email, and for that we're very thankful: the more spam you mark, the better our system gets at weeding out junk mail.

Unsubscribing from mailing lists and newsletters you subscribed to a while back but no longer want to receive should be just as easy. Searching through individual messages for little unsubscribe links is too big a pain —you should be able to unsubscribe with a single click.



So we just launched something that makes this all work better, both for Gmail users and big email senders. Now, when you report spam on a legitimate newsletter or mailing list, we'll help you unsubscribe. After clicking report spam, you'll see a little dialog like this

Official Gmail Blog: Unsubscribing made easy

Labels: Google, Google Apps Engine, Google News

Google Chrome has always been a little more than a browser: it's optimized for running web applications, each tab runs as a separate process, the interface is minimalistic and there's even a task manager. "We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build," said Google in September 2008.

Google's blog announces a natural extension of the Chrome project: an operating system for netbooks. "Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. (...) Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel."

Link to this post: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com

Labels: Google, Google Chrome, Google News

Gmail has worn the beta tag more than five years. It took some time, but the day has finally arrived. Google has removed the beta label from the entire Google Apps suite of products today, including Gmail, Calendar, Docs and Talk. The app suite was launched two years and has been in Beta since than. Now they are all full-fledged members of the, Google family of products

The Google Apps suite targeting businesses was launched two years ago and has been in beta ever since. Gmail, though, has worn the beta tag for even longer - more than five years. The move will bring a whiff of fresh air in the enterprises having hard time getting around the "traditional definition" of the "beta" software label. The super long beta period though puzzled some users who believed that the beta label meant the services weren't ready for the enterprise. Google hopes the move will peeled off the stigma towards using its Apps products, thus increasing the likelihood that they would subscribe to its Apps.

According to Matt Glotzbach, product management director for Google Enterprise, “Ever since we launched the Google Apps suite for businesses two years ago, it had a service level agreement, 24/7 support, and has met or exceeded all the other standards of non-beta software. More than 1.75 million companies around the world run their business on Google Apps, including Google”. In addition, we've come to appreciate that the beta tag just doesn't fit for large enterprises that aren't keen to run their business on software that sounds like it's still in the trial phase. “So we've focused our efforts on reaching our high bar for taking products out of beta, and all the applications in the Apps suite have now met that mark” he further added.

Google has plans on its cards to introduce new Apps features for its business customers in the coming weeks, including one that lets company IT administrators set policies on when company emails should be purged and another that allows administrative assistants to view and send emails on behalf of another person. Google is also introducing a feature that replicates and stores company data on multiple Google data centers for safekeeping in the case of a system crash.

Labels: Gmail News, Google

Ever since the new Google Blog Search homepage launched, we've been fielding requests for a myriad of different features. Today we're happy to announce the launch of our most requested feature: RSS and Atom feeds. Simply click on the links under "Subscribe" in the left-hand column of the Blog Search front page to subscribe to any topic or story in any feed reader, like Google Reader.

If you don't use a feed reader, we're also offering an iGoogle gadget that lets you embed the Blog Search front page right inside of your iGoogle page or any other page where iGoogle gadgets are accepted. You can browse topics and drill into stories from within the widget, and you can customize the gadget to choose which topics you want to follow.

Read On for this story at: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/

Labels: Google, Google News

YouTube added the "wonder wheel" visualization tool for exploring related searches interactively. The feature has been launched last month for Google search and it's now available in a different context.

Type a general term in YouTube's search box, click on "Search" and then click on "Wonder wheel" to find some suggestions. As you click on the suggestions, YouTube shows the search results next to the wheel and it lets you go back to the initial search terms.

"The Wonder wheel visually presents connections between related searches and your search term as an interactive diagram. Click the different nodes in the diagram to see how searches can branch out," explains Google.



While the idea seems interesting, I didn't find the "wonder wheel" very useful. It only works for some searches and the suggestions aren't diverse enough.

Read More On : googlesystem.blogspot.com

Labels: Google, You Tube

Google prepares to launch a service that indexes and ranks content from microblogging services like Twitter. Since it's very easy to post updates and the posts are usually very short, micro-blogging services are great for live blogging, posting real-time information about an event.

Twitter's search engine has two important drawbacks: it's limited to Twitter and it sorts the results by date. While there are other search engines like Tweefind that try to sort Twitter posts by relevancy and search engines like Twingly that index multiple microblogging sites, none of them does a great job.

Much like Google Blog Search, Google's microblogging search service will sort the results by relevancy and it also be integrated with Google's web search engine: the keywords that are frequently used in recent posts will trigger a MicroBlogsearch universal search group.

Here's the description used in Google's localization service:

"Recent updates about QUERY. This is the MicroBlogsearch Universal result group header text. A Microblog is a blog with very short entries. Twitter is the popular service associated with this format."


In May, Marissa Mayer discussed the significance of Twitter for Google:

"What's really happening in Twitter is that there are a lot of clues in it in terms of what's happening that's interesting overall. It's similar to what we see in Google Trends, where people will often type what they're interested in into the search box, and we can make some predictions off of that. So we are interested in being able to offer, for example, micro-blogging and micro-messaging in our search. Particularly in Blog Search and possibly in Web Search, but we don't have any particular plans to announce."

For more updation on google news visit: googlesystem.blogspot.com

Labels: Google, Google News, Google Search

Google rolled out a new version of its iGoogle page ,for the Android and iPhone platforms. New features include the ability to access more of your tabs and improved gadget support for interacting with your content. After killing the special version of the iGoogle personalized home page for the iPhone and Android devices wayback in January, it created quite a bit of furore. Google at that time explained that they are looking forward to provide a consistent experience across all devices. For the last five months iPhone and Android users navigating to iGoogle.com saw the generic mobile version of iGoogle, a bare bones implementation that has the virtue of running on your old RAZR, but which unfortunately gave iPhone or G1 users an old RAZR like user experience.

This enhanced faster and easier version of its iGoogle page is a worthy replacement for the old iPhone/Android specific iGoogle with support for all desktop iGoogle widgets except those that are Flash based. Each widget appears as a large button initially, which when tapped expands to reveal its content. The new iGoogle is not the default, it’s offered as a “Try the new Mobile iGoogle!” option to iPhone and Android users (only) visiting iGoogle.com.

Everyone loves iGoogle because of the availability of the interesting information all day long. You can read a little bit of news here and there, glance at finance portfolios, take a look at the weather forecast, and then do a Google search. It doesn't require a big commitment of time and energy — it's simply there for us whenever we need it. This kind of availability is even more important on a phone, where it can take a long time to surf. That's why iGoogle is so convenient on mobile devices. When you're waiting in line, you can check iGoogle on your phone for a quick "info snack" — even in areas with mediocre network coverage. iGoogle now supports more gadgets, though Google is sure to point out that those gadgets requiring Flash still won't work.

This new version is faster and easier to use. It supports tabs as well as more of your favorite gadgets, including those built by third-party developers. There are a lot of powerful JavaScript capable browsers on devices other than the iPhone and Android that could possibly handle this richer iGoogle Mobile.

Next in the line is the new tabbed view. This lines up your content in a way that is easy to rifle through quickly to find exactly what you want.

For feed-based gadgets, this version has an in-line display of articles. Users can thus read their article summaries without having to leave the page. In addition to this, users can also rearrange their gadget order or choose to keep their favorite gadgets open in the browser. This will allow them to easily access the gadgets on their next visit.

The best part, Google claims is that none of these changes will alter the layout of gadgets on users’ desktop computer. They can now play around and tune their mobile experience. This new version of iGoogle for mobile is available in 38 languages. Users can visit the iGoogle website in their mobile browser and tap ‘Try the new Mobile iGoogle’ to use this tool.

Labels: Google, Google Apps Engine, iGoogle

If your business is looking to trade running its own Exchange server for Google Apps cloud services, Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook may ease the migration pain for those users that are more comfortable with Microsoft's Outlook client.

Google Apps is a set of tools that allows companies to move many IT services, such as e-mail and calendaring, to Google's online cloud resources. A new tool will allow those that rely on Outlook to easily migrate from an Exchange server to Google Apps with virtually no change from the end users' perspective.

Called Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook, it allows "simple, two-click" migration of data from Exchange or Outlook into Google Apps. Then, instead of using Web versions of Gmail, Google Contacts, or Google Calendar, users can continue to use Microsoft's Outlook client to connect to those services. When not at work, users can still access e-mail, calendar, and contacts via Google's online interface.

"You get the cost savings, security and reliability of Google Apps," according to Google's product page, "while employees can use the interface they prefer for email, contacts and calendar." It can even allow users to create meetings and invite contacts whether they are using Google Apps or Exchange.

Google insists the tool isn't an admission that business users aren't interested in adopting Google Apps for some or all of their IT needs. By way of example, the search giant points to semiconductor firm Avago, which migrated to Google Apps in order to save $1.6 million a year in IT costs. The company gave its 4,100 users the option to move to Google Apps from its Exchange server, but about 12 percent simply chose the path of least resistance and continued to use the familiar Outlook.

"We look at [Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook] as a way to provide choice for users who like to do things the old, Outlook way," Google product manager Chris Vander Way told Reuters.

Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook is available to those using the Premier or Education editions of Google Apps. It is not available to the free "standard" edition, which relies on display ads to pay for the service.

Source:http://arstechnica.com

Labels: Google, Google News

The Google I/O conference at San Francisco ended with Google dropping a bomb. Say hello to Google Wave, a unique service from the company that, according to many, has the potential to be the next big thing after e-mail. As we file this story, the latest wave from Google has already hogged the headlines and it has managed to hold on to be a trending topic on Twitter.

So, what exactly is the Google Wave? To simplify things, consider it to be an extension, or rather an evolution of existing e-mail, IM and file-sharing technologies. With Wave, users can share images, videos, converse in what Google terms a collaborative conversation stream.

If that bounced off your head, here we go again. In real world conditions, what you can potentially do is to start a Wave. Now, everyone on your wave will be able to enhance it with rich HTML, pictures, videos even presentations and with possibly anything you can do on the web. You can talk to them (your wave buddies, of course) while this is happening and see in real time how the wave of yours has started to evolve.

Cool, Huh? Now, if you sign off and come back the next day and you see that the wave has changed a lot since you last saw it, what do you do? You can actually go back and see how the evolution happened - a sort of rewind and playback thing. Of course, there is a lot more to the Google Wave than this, but that has to be experienced to be talked about.



Another facet of Google Wave is that this happens to be an Open Source project, and more of a platform, less a finished product. So, what we're talking bout here is an entire new API that allows developers to do almost anything they please, like integrating a Twitter client, playing games on to a wave. From gaming or official work to a simple chat, the Google Wave might just change the way we communicate with our buddies, in the near future

Google Wave is the creation of the same team that was behind Google Maps and the bunch seems to have run into something revolutionary, right from the outset! This five-person startup looks all set to be one of the most talked about Google products ever.

Google has not announced a release date for Google Wave as yet, but assures that it will be made available from later this year. If you want a preview, you do have the option to let Google know your interest here at http://wave.google.com.

For more check it here at http://googleblog.blogspot.com

Source:http://www.techtree.com

Labels: Facebook, Google, Google wave, Twitter

Google said in its quest to create the perfect search engine, it cannot afford to rest on its laurels.

The company's comments came at an event billed as a "state of the union" on search as it unveiled new products that aim to push search in a new direction.

Google has over 63% of the US market compared to rival Yahoo with 20%.

"The race in search is far from over and innovation and continued improvement is absolutely pivotal," said Google's Marissa Mayer.

"I've said this many times but search is still in its infancy. Our engineers are worried about what is the next big thing in search and how are they going to find it," said Ms Mayer who is the vice president of search products and user experience.

She said last year Google released over 365 products and in the first quarter of this year it was 120. Ms Mayer added that this was proof that "Google gets better all the time."

Google has in the past said that despite its lead in the marketplace, users were "one click away" from switching to other alternatives.

Vanessa Fox of SearchEngineLand told the BBC that Google's ability to constantly innovate gives them a leading edge.

"Google is saying we have to provide for all searchers and do things at scale. It means they have to launch all sorts of features while some companies can concentrate on just one thing. The key thing behind why they are still ahead is because they are able to innovate at such a pace," said Ms Fox.

Google Squared

During the "Searchology" event at Google's Mountain View headquarters, Ms Mayer and her team showcased four new products that she said would give users a "different way to look at the web."

One of the more experimental was called Google Squared which will go public in the next month or so. It takes information from the web and displays it in a spreadsheet in "split seconds," something Ms Mayer said would normally take someone a half a day to do.

During the demonstration, a query for "small dog" was typed into the search box. Seconds later a table popped up showing photographs of various dogs, their origin, weight and height in a clear and simple layout.

While Ms Mayer described this product as "transformative" she would only hint at the specific techniques that Google uses to drive this feature.

"I think we can open the kimono a little bit without talking about the computer science behind it.

"What they are basically doing is looking for structures on the web that seem to imply facts. Like something 'is' something.

"Different tables, different structures, and then corroborating the evidence around whether or not something is a fact by looking at whether that fact occurs across pages.

"This is all in the secret sauce of what we are doing and it takes an incredible amount of compute power to create those squares," said Ms Mayer.

"Refine, filter and view"

Google Search Options is a tool that is aimed at letting users "slice and dice" results so they can manipulate the information and get what they want faster.

They come into play after a normal web search and allow users to drill down into the results by offering an option for different genres like product reviews, forum posts or videos. Other choices include recently added blogs, images, timelines and so on.

Ms Mayer said this new feature should help people who struggle with the "vexing" problem of exactly what query they should type into the search box.

It is meant to give users the opportunity to "refine, filter and view results in a different way."

Another feature is called "Rich Snippets" which are search results that return more information in every listing.

For example, users looking for reviews of a new restaurant might get a "rich snippet" of average review scores, number of reviews and the restaurant's price range.

"This is a step toward making the whole internet smarter," said Google product manager Kavi Goel.

'Skymap'

A final feature had Ms Mayer "reaching for the stars" with an app for mobile phones using the Android operating system.

"For a long time here at Google we joked could we actually find physical things like keys and now with the power and technology of Android, coupled with search, you can see we are starting to find some physical things like stars," said Ms Mayer.

Skymap displays the constellations. By using the smart phone's GPS capability, it offers the user a dynamic star map that knows where they are standing and which way they are pointing

The feature came about as a result of Google's 20% time that allows engineers to spend one fifth of their time working on pet projects.

The app is now available on the Android app market.

"Clearly Google is still pushing the envelope with all these new additions," said Rob Hof, Silicon Valley editor of Business Week.

"They are certainly continuing to improve daily. Whether it makes a difference and will stave off the competition, I don't know. But they are not standing still."

Ms Mayer said keeping the user happy is at the heart of everything they do.

"There is a shoe company called Stuart Weitzman and their slogan is "a little obsessed with shoes."

"Google is a little more than obsessed with search," confessed Ms Mayer.


By: Maggie Shiels
Technology Reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley

Source :http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8047076.stm

Labels: Google, Google News, Google Search

From now YouTube will showcase full-length movies and mainstream TV episodes on its Web site. And Google, which owns YouTube has announced its partnership with premium movie studios like Sony, CBS, MGM, Lionsgate, Starz, and the BBC. YouTube had signed deals with Hollywood studios to showcase thousands of TV episodes as well as hundreds of movies on its video-sharing Web site.

For expanding its library of movies ,TV programs and launching a new advertising service and content partners,it also predicted partnerships with 13 smaller companies such as National Geographic, Discovery Communications Inc. and SnagFilms LLC. Also the movies will be ad-supported, and ad revenue will be shared with the content owners.

YouTube plans to redesign the site in order to implement the premium content section while keeping its main concern on user-generated clips. Like Hulu, Youtube also makes mind to showcase video ads inside of the movie stream. But this functionality of youtube is limited for US viewers only, others residing outside the US have to wait for premium content videos.

"We think the prime-time slot of the future is very much user-programmed,” Shiva Rajaraman, a senior product manager for YouTube, told reporters in a conference call . He said users could come home to a mixture of TV shows, music videos and amateur videos. Last time the site announced a joint venture with Universal Music Group to create Vevo, a separate destination for music videos.

During commercial breaks in TV shows, YouTube decided to sell advertising. YouTube being the most popular site may charge for the premium content. Premium content is the feature that will help both YouTube and the studios make money online, and if there's one thing studios like, it's making money. YouTube has taken a giant step in the right direction to figuring out how to monetize the site.

Labels: Google, You Tube

Now Microsoft's Live@edu will be hosting messaging and storage platform by offering a substitute to the successful Google Apps education rush because Queensland University of Technology (QUT) will migrate some 40,000 student user accounts.

QUT joins "thousands of institutions around the world" by shifting to the Live@edu platform according to Microsoft. Microsoft Outlook Live, Microsoft Office Live Workspace and SkyDrive for storage are all included in the Live@edu suite of online applications.

When the existing email infrastructure "reached its limit of functionality and storage capacity QUT evaluate a host named Web-based e-mail solution which a big IT-expenditure for in-house. As per discussions with students, university administration and company representatives, and the deal included an opt-in trial involving students from the Faculty of Information Technology it was decided finally to go with Live@edu.

Actually Live@edu is attuned with "Windows, Mac and Linux machines" and with the IE, Firefox and Safari browsers. It’s being heard from QUT’s end that the university "carefully considered" various options and was happy to offer students a "greatly improved" e-mail service through Microsoft.

The students are provided with benefit of better capacity of mailbox and attachment file size, Also Live@edu service offers useful calendar, plus a number of improvements in related services, while retaining their identity as QUT students in their e-mail addresses. "The University will help by having automated service upgrades, and improved scalability and availability by setting up this software as a service offering from Microsoft."

Not only this QUT's 40,000 students will also have right to use a suite of online applications for the duration of this semester. Along with calendaring and contact management Live@edu service will horde student e-mail accounts with a 10Gb mailbox capacity, and allow 20Mb file attachments.

Not only this it will also provide include instant messaging and file sharing; Windows Live Spaces for personal Web publishing, blogging and photo sharing; and FolderShare, a private peer-to-peer network that allows users to synchronise files between multiple devices and share files with other student users features also.

Labels: Google, Microsoft

Google Reader users can now leave comments on shared items. Google has introduced it as a way to have a discussion with friends outside of a site's main commenting system, and specific just to that shared item and their group of contacts.

To help manage this new stream of information, Google Reader now has a filter that shows you the latest conversations in one place. Here you can view all the latest chatter, and continue to add more comments just like a forum.

In addition to reading and adding comments through Google Reader in your computer's browser it also works on Reader's iPhone version.

It's all very much like FriendFeed, although the privacy it a bit tighter since only friends of the person who shared the item can see what was said. Another limitation is that comments are limited to the friends' shared items section of Reader, however Google says it will be making its way to the "all items" section of user's feeds in a later release.

On the surface this may seem like a very small feature. But if Google were to open up the commenting threads to all Reader users, regardless of their friendship, and enable publishers to feed these Reader comments into their own blog comments, it could make Reader more than just a feed catcher the same way FriendFeed has enabled blogs to suck in the conversation that's happening outside of their own pages.

Source:http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10194895-2.html

Labels: Google

The world's biggest Internet search engine Google and world's largest music label Universal Music is joining hands to launch a new youtube style site”Currently dubbed "Vevo," that would act as a hub for music videos.

The two companies have reportedly been working out the potential agreement since some time in 2008.This would feature premium music video content from Universal artists…and, eventually, perhaps artists from other labels as well. It may be Google's next youtube-like venture that focuses solely on music videos.

The youtube team would be assigned with creating an entirely separate site "Vevo" for Universal's video content, where under the proposed agreement, youtube powered up by Google’s technology and advertising sales support would distribute Universal’s video content to other websites .

With "Vevo"as it appears Google and youtube would be responsible for more aggressive ad sales to run on the music-video-only site. As "Vevo" will differ from youtube's already-existing partnerships with certain content providers in for shared ad revenue .Currently, youtube's partners agree to let their content be played on youtube in exchange for a small share of the ad revenue placed beside the videos, but this tactic has turned out to be less lucrative than both Google and the content providers had hoped.

Talks are still going on and no final agreement has been reached. But a deal could be inked within the next few weeks,"Vevo"will be likely to attract more traffic .

Such a deal would be youtube’s latest attempt to plump up its profits by selling more expensive ads off the back of premium content. Music videos are an extremely popular draw on the site

Labels: Google, You Tube

Known for its new innovations google has come up with a new Google Toolbar 6 for Internet Explorer(beta).The main motive behind this is making search more easy and accessible, also to improve search suggestions, Google Bookmarks, Autofill, and Custom Buttons and gadgets.

The new feature of Google Toolbar 6 (beta) consist Quick Search Box (QSB)feature that provides search functionality outside of the browser. A mouse click or a control-space shortcut invokes its popup dialog for searching the web (with suggestions), local bookmarks, and even applications.In brief we can say, QSB is fairly smart, able to identify applications by abbreviations (WMP) and clearly present suggestions.

If you want to keep Google in your browser, QSB (and suggestions) can be turned off with a simple right-click.

Toolbar 6 beta is loaded with built-in suggestions and sponsored links. Suggestions are highlighted with bold type, and sponsored links appear at the bottom of the suggestion drop-down window.

For accessing toolbar click on the Google logo in the taskbar or for quicker access use the Ctrl+Space shortcut. As you type, it will provide search and website suggestions, relevant bookmarks, and even allow you to launch applications directly from the search box.


One more feature of Google's Toolbar 6 beta is a new page layout for blank tabs that shows thumbnails of your most visited pages. As now a days every browser is providing similar things to make more use of blank browser tab pages,But Google innovated here a little by displaying not just your most-visited sites, but also the three most recently closed tabs.Which is a fresh and news for all users.

Labels: Google