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Last week we published a post in which we discussed the concern of some privacy groups in the UK over Google Map’s ‘Street View’. Now Google has struck back on its ‘contentious’ service. The service has been under discussion for sometime. Street View is a service of Google Maps which places snaps of different places on the map making it more visible for others. Currently the service is available in the US but Google is expanding it to Europe, specifically UK. Some other places can also be seen now e.g. Tour de France route was added (the induction came just ahead of the event).

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With a large number of torrent sites around, it is hard to select the most popular one but with the passage of time, new ways are coming up to gauge the ranking. Alexa, being one of the most popular ranking site, is coded usually in reports but now Google is providing its own ranking along with the traffic estimation.

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Google has made a change on their homepage. They have replaced “©2008 Google” with “©2008 Privacy”, which appears just below the search box. Google always wanted to keep the homepage of their search engine simple and to implement it practically, they have been using a simple technique i.e. keeping as low number of words on the homepage as possible. Less the number of words on the homepage, less time it will take to load. This philosophy seems to work effectively. Google homepage currently contains 28 words.

A number of privacy groups have suggested Google to insert a ‘privacy policy’ link on its homepage as per California law, but Google said that it understood the law differently.

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There are more attempts made by Microsoft to acquire some bits and pieces of Yahoo despite a total turn down by either parties at one time or another. The two have come as far as blaming those who had the deal been talked about (Steve Ballmer on bankers). The latest rumor smoking up the Web atmosphere is that of Microsoft trying yet again to pt forward a bid to buy Yahoo Search along with a media company taking up the remainder business (most probably Time Warner or News Corp).

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It is said when you put forward an idea for a bigger fish in the pond to implement, then you must be the first to make an initiation; especially if you are doing something similar; keeping APIs and other data that belongs to none but users. There was a similar statement as pointed out by MG Siegler as he posted Dave Morin, Facebook’s senior platform manager’s post at twitter stating:

The post created quite a stir as it gave various folks in the tech town as they immediately took the chisel to dig out at Facebook; despite the fact the comment was a mere joke. The first comment came from Chris Sacca, former head of special initiatives at Google, stating; Read the rest of this entry »

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WordPress has released a new blogging option called “Turbo”, which is actually a browser extension just like Flash or Media Player. It uses Google Gears to higher the speed of WordPress’ admin functionality. To enhance the online applications, Gears functions with the browser.

It is very popular among web developers and right now it is supporting Firefox 2 & 3 and Internet Explorer 6 & 7. Safari 3 support will be available soon.

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Google Docs, an online word processor, is an easy and faster medium to write and publish documents. The editing mode provides all kinds of editing and preview options that are needed to write a doc and its new offline feature makes its all more easier to access docs without having an Internet connection. Publishing documents and linking them from web pages is what most of the users do at Google Docs. But do you ever wonder, how many times people actually view it or what is the ratio of viewer’s traffic on your doc?

Google Doc has recently added a new feature through which you can track the information about number of visitors. All you need is a Google Analytics tracking code.

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It seems that the battle between Microsoft and Yahoo will eventually turn to an Armageddon pretty soon, given the highs and lows, on and offs related to their deal. The devil in both the red and blue trying desperately to have them lock horns until one of them succumbs to pressure; and we know that Yahoo is one being pushed further into the defence. The stocks have taken a further slump closing in at $20 per share ($20.96 to be precise) and the company’s cash value fumbling; making it all sweeter for Microsoft before it finally makes a gulp at Yahoo.

Microsoft to initiate the pressure once again at Yahoo has taken it up at approaching various media companies; something that would eventually force Yahoo to buckle under pressure from the steps taken by Microsoft, that from its shareholders and the fear of loosing up Google. And how can one forget the exodus of top execs from Yahoo’s armory?

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Mozilla released its latest version of Weave (Weave0.2), a platform for integrating online services that are utilized within the browser. The release is most probably aimed at filling the niche left by Google’s stoppage of Browser sync development; which automatically synchronized bookmarks between various computers.

Weave wasn’t much of success with its previous versions, one major reason being the presence of Browser Sync, but with this gone and a new more useful version available, Weave can very well put up quality service in synchronization of various data. The newly launched Weave already comes up with a bit of hiccups; such as it doesn’t fully incorporate its support for;

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Google has announced that it is rebranding Performics Affiliate of DoubleClick as the Google Affiliate Network. DoubleClick was acquired by Google in March this year for $3.1 Billion. The Google Affiliated Network which is hosted at ConnectCommerce.com, will continue to do so for the time being. Though it has yet to be integrated in Google AdSense. The companies which are featured on the network comprise of Target, Kohls.com, Citibank, Circuit City, Zazzle, Bank of America, Verizon and Barnes & Noble.

The login page of the Google Affiliated Network looks just like any other Google product page, all it does is that it redirects users to the old page of Performics. It seems like Google is having enough pressure to unwillingly rebrand Performics. It is already providing various options of pay per action, under the banner of AdSense.

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On Monday, hi5 announced that it has acquired PixVerse, a flash based live social chat tool. hi5 is one of the world’s leading social networks. PixVerse is already used by hi5 and other social networks. It contains applications like Pix Chat and Pix Wall. In April this year the social network opened its platform for third party applications and since then, PixVerse’s applications are running on top of it along with several other applications.

About PixVerse, its co-founder Charles Ying said:

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The trend for searching stuff on Google and Yahoo has been popular since decays. The mighty  Search Engines have captured a wide range of Internet Search market and people relies on their searching results without going for any other choice. Therefore,  flash websites were not so popular as the sites appears to be invisible for search engines.

Search Engines were not indexed to see what’s inside a SWF(flash) file. and it tends to be a great hindrance in the site’s popularity and ranking.

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Microsoft has announced that Microsoft Office Live has reached a pivotal milestone as the service now has 1 million subscribers. The service was initially launched two years back to help small businesses, typically the ones with fewer than 10 employees to create and maintain a web presence. This healthy uptake has ensured that Microsoft will eventually become a key player in this market segment amid competition from Google and a few others.

Small Businesses are typically resource constraint and usually draw the line on IT expenditures. Windows Live offering is not only free, but also makes it easier for non-IT people to quickly create websites, set up email accounts and perform other auxiliary tasks needed to do business online. These benefits coupled with a timely entry into market allowed Office Live to more than double its subscriber base in the past year alone.

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Ionut Alex from Google Operating System has dugged up an interesting story. According to Alex he has come across many references to Google Photos in the current Picasa Web Albums website. Picasa Web Albums is a web based photo sharing service by Google. Google acquired Picasa, a desktop based photo editing software, in July 2004. Google later allowed the users to upload their albums to the Web and share it with friends and family by creating a web property called Picasa Web Albums. Picasa Web Albums never gained much traction, in fact many Google fans don’t even know that there is any such service available.

The reason for this sluggish performance is obvious, Google acquired Picasa to get into desktop photo editing game. But once it entered the market it never allocated enough resources to the division to make it compete with the likes of Flickr, Slide or Photobucket to mention just a few names. The reasonable decent update to Picasa Web Albums came last year when Google made the photos searchable. This alone could tell you about the speed at which innovation is taking place on this site. The online version of Picasa lacked many basic features such as stats, favorites, tagging etc to make it a little attractive to the feature hungry crowd out there.

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If you’re sick of getting updates by manually refreshing websites, then you should give IM Feed a chance. It is actually a bot that interacts with specific commands adequately (atleast there is a bot which is used positively). The robot supports all the prominent Instant Messaging networks which include AIM, Google Talk, MSN and Yahoo. Another good thing is that there aren’t any pre-requisites for this service.

It is actually a RSS feed which is based on IM which means that the service allows you to receive RSS updates through IM (cool, isn’t it?). The service is somewhat like Anothr. The feeds can be managed either by sending an IM to the bot or by sending a message using the site. The merit of using such a site is that it allows you to get the latest update in a real time instead of refreshing the page manually which takes time and utilise resources.

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With plenty of exec seats lying empty or being filled up with new comers, Mark Zuckerberg looks forward for someone who is reliable and help him avoid taking steps that may lead to an unwanted decline in Facebook’s reputation.

Just when things seemed to be a bit heading towards the anxiety zone, Andreessen, founder of Netscape, Opsware and Ning as well as the former CTO of AOL decides to add more feathers in his cap by joining Facebook’s board of directors. Though the announcement is yet to be made officially, there have been enough rumors since the last month to make it sound less of a rumor and more real.

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Once you have made a niche for yourself in the world you can go about doing anything and succeed almost immediately. New York Times reports that Google with its largest contextual advertising network on the web; will hit the web world with the airing of a short show called “Cavalcade”. The man behind its development is Seth MacFarlane, the creator of Family guy.

The plans are to distribute the show over via the countless web-sits running within them the Google AdSense code. This doesn’t mean that it would only run the short cartoon, there will still be pre-roll advertising still available to let the publisher gets his hands at the revenue. The surprising thing here is that Google makes sure that the content is only shown to those who have an interest for Cavalcade; which points in at young users.

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