Google V/s The Best Companies In The World

[Arun 795]

New Google Search Technologies Make Information Easier to Discover, Organize and Share

- Press Release from Google Inc.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., May 10, 2006

Today, Google Inc. announced new technologies to enhance and improve the search experience. Three new products Google Co-op, Google Desktop 4, and Google Notebook advance the state of the art in search by helping users worldwide find and share more relevant information. The products all incorporate new capabilities that leverage user communities, enabling users to either share more information with others or benefit from other users' expertise to improve the accuracy of search results.

The company also introduced Google Trends, a new tool that enables users to examine billions of searches conducted on Google to gain insight into broad search patterns over time.

"Google Co-op and the other new services announced today combine the power of Google's technology with the context, knowledge, and unique expertise of individuals," said Jonathan Rosenberg, senior vice president, Product Management, Google Inc. "As a result, users can find the information they are looking for no matter how specialized or specific faster than ever."

Google Co-op Beta

Google Co-op beta is a community where users can contribute their knowledge and expertise to improve Google search for everyone. Organizations, businesses, or individuals can label web pages relevant to their areas of expertise or create specialized links to which users can subscribe.

Once a user has subscribed to a provider's content, all of that provider's labels and subscribed links are added to the user's search results for relevant queries. These contributions serve as meta information that helps Google's search algorithms connect users to the most relevant information for their specific query. Users interested in contributing can get started at http://www.google.com/coop

For example, a doctor can label web pages related to arthritis, and users who subscribe to that doctor's information will receive options at the top of the results for more specific information such as "treatment," "symptoms," or "for health professionals" when they enter a relevant query.

As a first step, Google has worked with partners to annotate web pages related to health and city guides and to offer dozens of subscribed links to specialized content such as restaurant and movie information. Going forward, the broader online community will begin building out new topic areas and subscribed links to help improve the way people find and discover information online.

Users can subscribe to content and providers at http://www.google.com/coop/directory. Google Co-op is available today on all English language Google domains including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.

Google Desktop 4 Beta

Also announced today, Google Desktop 4 beta available in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, and Brazilian Portuguese offers another way for users to improve their search experience, by personalizing their desktops with the introduction of Google Gadgets. These gadgets are mini-applications that reside on users' desktops and deliver a variety of personalized information such as games, media players, weather and news. Google Desktop can also recommend new gadgets and can automatically create a personalized homepage for users based on the subjects they frequently search and access.

Google currently has hundreds of gadgets users can add to their desktops and with the new Google Desktop Gadgets API, developers can easily create and share their own gadgets with other users.

Google Desktop 4 also enables users to:

Access their Google Gadget content and settings from other computers and protect it from computer crashes by saving it online.

Add favorite gadgets from their personalized Google homepage right onto their desktops.

Easily access other Google services from their desktop. For example, users can view upcoming birthdays with the orkut.com gadget, see what's popular on Google Video, or access their Google Calendar directly on the desktop.

Manually re-index their computers or remove deleted files from search results.

Additionally, Google Desktop 4 now offers an option for network administrators to disable Search Across Computers on both the consumer and enterprise versions of the product at the network level by simply blocking access to a specific URL.

Google Desktop 4 will be available in additional languages and include more localized features for users around the world as the product evolves. Additional information on the newest version of Google Desktop is available at http://desktop.google.com

Google Trends from Google Labs

Available today from Google Labs at http://www.google.com/trends , Google Trends builds on the Google Zeitgeist to help users find facts and trends related to Google usage around the world. Google Trends enables users to learn how popular a particular search term has been on Google over time and see the relevant news articles that ran on that subject.

"For the first time ever, Google is making it possible to sift through billions of search queries from around the world to see what people are thinking about," said Marissa Mayer, vice president, Search Products and User Experience, Google Inc.

With Google Trends, users will be able to observe the collective interests of all Google users to gain general insight into topics such as people's preferences on ice cream flavors, American Idol contestants, or the relative popularity of brands and politicians in specific countries.

Google Notebook from Google Labs

Google Notebook is a simple way for users to save and organize their thoughts when conducting research online. This personal browser tool permits users to clip text, images, and links from the pages they're browsing, save them to an online "notebook" that is accessible from any computer, and share them with others.

Google Notebook is an interactive scratch pad for every website a user visits, offering a single online location to collect web findings without having to leave the browser window. For example, if a user were planning a vacation, she could clip the most relevant materials on the pages she visits and add personal notes to help organize all of her research.

Users can make their Google Notebook public and share the notes they've taken with others. As a result, the time and effort put into their research can be harnessed by the online community as a whole.

Google Notebook will be available next week from Google Labs at http://www.google.com/notebook

[Nirvana 4]

Manually re-index their computers or remove deleted files from search results.

Ah, that was a much wanted addition, will get the new version now !

Here's a plugin for your Google Desktop Search: Live Cricket Scores but only for matches involving India. Keep it handy for the West Indies tour

[abhay 0]

am using desktop 4 since the day it released !! solves 75% of my problems with previous GDesktop's

part of my wish lists are

1) updating of databases/indexes in realtime

2) choice of finding results by filenames or text

3) capture all the files on the computer. GDesktop still dose'nt cover all files(ie system and normal files)

[abhay 0]

Making AJAX development easier

5/16/2006 12:28:00 PM

Posted by Bret Taylor, Product Manager

AJAX has the power to make your site more compelling and more dynamic, but AJAX development is often complicated, with much of the development time spent working around browser quirks and the fragility of AJAX components. Trust us, we know--the development of our own AJAX apps, like Google Maps and Google Calendar, caused us no small amount of AJAX-induced frustration.

That's why we're bringing you Google Web Toolkit. GWT is a new publicly available software development tool that makes creating AJAX applications much easier. With GWT, you can develop and debug your own AJAX applications in Java code using the Java development tools of your choice. When you deploy your application to production, the GWT compiler simply translates your Java application to browser-compliant JavaScript and HTML.

Check it out over on Google Code.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/mak...ent-easier.html

good news for AJAX developers in java!!

Note this

5/15/2006 09:26:00 PM

Posted by Bay-Wei Chang, Senior Research Scientist

Search is all about finding the answers you need. Unfortunately, some kinds of questions--like where you should stay and what you should do on your Hawaiian vacation, or what kind of digital camera you should buy, or what the latest treatments for arthritis are--can't always be answered in one sitting, or by visiting one site.

That's why we built Google Notebook--to give you an online "notebook" where you can organize all your research, add personal notes to it, and share it with others. Google Notebook surfs along quietly with you as you browse, letting you clip and annotate whatever text, images, and links that help answer your question, all without ever leaving the webpage you're on.

If this sounds like something you'd like to try, you can find it here.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/note-this.html

did a little playing around with notebook in firefox and found out if

there is lots of text in a notebook like say 3000+ characters and then

if when we go and edit the book it gives a "STOP SCRIPT" messagebox

WARNING :- "UNRESPONSIVE SCRIPT"

did any1 else face this problem!! dint try it in IE though!!

[abhay 0]

Make Way for the Dell Google PC

Google and Dell announced a partnership today in a deal that will put the Google Toolbar and Desktop applications on every computer sold. Besides the extra software, Google will also be the default search engine in Internet Explorer.

I actually didn't realize this was news — the Google Personalized Homepage for Dell has been available for quite some time, and I could have sworn these Google apps were already being installed by default on Dell machines. I guess today it was just made official.

It would be ideal for Google if Dell agreed to put Google Pack on every computer sold. A deal like this would give Google more control over applications installed on those computers — potentially causing some uncomfort for Microsoft. That might be too much to ask for initially, but I wouldn't be surprised if this is in the cards.

An interesting sentence from the New York Times article (linked above) quotes Eric Schmidt as saying this would be first of several agreements with Dell. What other projects could Google partner with a computer manufacturer on? Maybe the rumored Google Cube, or even Goobuntu (the Goobuntu rumor has pretty much been squashed , but wouldn't it be cool?).

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Google/?p=204

Make Way for the Dell Google PC

Not exactly “Google PC”, but Dell has announced that they will start selling PCs that will have Google software (like Google Desktop , Google Talk , etc.) pre-installed. The PCs will obviously still run Microsoft Windows, but “Google software” can also mean Mozilla Firefox with Google Toolbar as the default browser, pushing aside the plagued Internet Explorer, which is quite a setback for Microsoft. Google will be paying Dell a small fee per PC for putting their software, which Google will earn back in a few clicks on Google ads. Everyone’s happy. Except Microsoft, of course.

I make people switch to Firefox from Internet Explorer, but if other manufacturers start following Dell, I won’t have to!

http://tech.moneycontrol.com/news/make-way...-pc/1196/india/

[Nirvana 4]

Besides being a direct affront to Microsoft this deal leads the way for Google to create a Linux based OS and drop it onto Dell computers. Being that Google is so proficient in creating browser-based applications, my obvious slant here is that a Google Linux should become the base for Dell PCs. This would eliminate the hassle of online/offline applications and means that PC makers can get out from under the M$ thumb.

For the moment Google is still far less evil than Microsoft.

BTW, Google launched Picasa for Linux yesterday.

[Arun 795]

Google predicts India will be largest net market

Times of India

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

London --- Google's chief executive Eric Schmidt has predicted that India and not China will become the world's biggest Internet market in "about five or ten years from now, based on current trends."

And what's more, Schmidt's other futurist view is that Hindi, not Hispanic, could become one of the world's three Internet languages, in conjunction with English and Chinese.

Schmidt's remarkable predictions have left techies and the Internet market analysts scrambling to ask what Google was doing to prepare for a tomorrow when India is virtually the Internet and Internet is India?

Are there any special plans, for instance, on how to harness India's increasing netizen strengths with Google's strategic vision for the future?

Google had no answers on Tuesday just hours after Schmidt offered a glimpse of the search engine's searchlight on the future to a riveted audience attending its ongoing Google Zeitgeist conference.

Instead, spokeswoman Laura Ainsworth could only tell TOI that Schmidt's views were a reflection of beliefs he set out on Monday in a British daily.

In the article, Schmidt talked about the world wide web's ability to "democratise" information, making it possible for the developing world to have the same access to knowledge as the developed.

Schmidt wrote, "Over time digitisation will make it possible for people throughout the developing world to access the same information that is available to us in the West. A schoolboy in Africa will be able, for example, to find research papers from around the world or see ancient manuscripts from a library in Oxford."

Mobile telephony, he prophesied, would "be the next big Internet phenomena." He pointed out, "Mobile phones are cheaper than PCs, there are three times more of them, growing at twice the speed, and they increasingly have Internet access.

What is more the World Bank estimates that more than two-thirds of the world's population lives within range of a mobile phone network."

[KingofKalyan 0]

Google predicts India will be largest net market

Is google aware that 95 % Of people in india suffering from loadshedding problems. :'(

[abhay 0]

Google predicts India will be largest net market

Times of India

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

London --- Google's chief executive Eric Schmidt has predicted that India and not China will become the world's biggest Internet market in "about five or ten years from now, based on current trends."

...

i think we should send this article to LINUXGUY !! hey i asked this ? ealiear also and will ask the same now >> whats linuxguys real name ! or everytime we should refer to him by his nick

Google predicts India will be largest net market

Is google aware that 95 % Of people in india suffering from loadshedding problems. :'(

bhai mere yeh prediction hai!! it depends on the progress rate right now ! not on whats the sitution right now

hehehe dont mind my spellings

Edited May 27, 2006 by Arun

[linuxguy 0]

*sigh* Googles gone mad. Lately it has really been cracking. I mean what were they thinking when they say such things... Power is just one thing, no unbundling of local loop.

Look at my pathetic situation right now. Reliance Powersurfer is down for more than 24 hours and I am currently on the ****y MTNL dialup...

abhay, please do call me by my nick only

Edited June 1, 2006 by linuxguy

[abhay 0]

Google Spreadsheets turns up heat on Excel

Google is set to launch a Web-based spreadsheet program that will allow people to view and simultaneously edit data while conducting "in-document" chat, a company product manager said Monday.

The launch of Google Spreadsheets puts the search engine in even more heated competition with Microsoft, whose desktop-based Excel spreadsheet program is a standard office tool.

Google, which acquired the Writely Web-based word processor in March, is unleashing Web-based services of programs that propelled Microsoft to dominance on the desktop. Microsoft is responding by revamping its business to focus on Web services under the Windows Live and Office Live monikers.

Google Spreadsheets, which will go live as part of Google Labs, supports the import and export of documents in the .xls format used in Excel and the .csv (comma-separated values) format, said Jonathan Rochelle, product manager for Google Spreadsheet.

The service provides automatic saving, so once a document is saved for the first time it is saved upon every change, as well as enables easy transfer of data from cell to cell, inserting and deleting of rows and columns and supports multiple sheets or tabs, he said.

Consumers must have a Google account to use the service.

http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/internet/0,3...39365114,00.htm

if any one need invites only way is to get it through google labs through first come first serve basis!!so log on to labs and wait for the program to go LIVE

Edited June 6, 2006 by abhay

[KingofKalyan 0]

cooooooooooooool

[abhay 0]

got invites to google spreadsheets to all requested accounts

its a very fast webbased alternative to excel!! though did not do much RND on it, it seems to be a cool new tool from bigG

Edited June 8, 2006 by abhay

[abhay 0]

Now on eBay: Google Spreadsheet invites

Maybe it was inevitable: Google's new spreadsheet program has gotten enough attention that people are now trying to sell invites on eBay. Granted, at about $1 to $2 per invite, it's not like what sellers were getting for the Xbox 360.

But still, are people really interested enough to pay actual money to use a free spreadsheet program? I guess we'll find out.

See this week's Software Notebook for more on the sudden boom in online spreadsheets, and what it says about the broader move toward Web-based software. In putting together the story, I spoke with spreadsheet pioneer Dan Bricklin, the VisiCalc co-creator who has more recently been working on his own online spreadsheet, wikiCalc. For more on what Bricklin has been up to, the Associated Press has an extensive profile of him.

One underlying question: Will these online spreadsheets be financially viable products? Bricklin, for one, announced last week that he has struck a deal with Socialtext, which will offer commercial versions of wikiCalc. See more details on Socialtext CEO Ross Mayfield's blog.

To get a sense for Microsoft's position on all of this, ZDNet's Dan Farber has an interesting podcast with Antoine LeBlond, a corporate vice president in the Office group. The bottom line: Don't look for Microsoft to offer pure, Web-based versions of the major Office programs anytime soon.

And if you're interested in checking out programs beyond Google Spreadsheets and wikiCalc, here are links to more Web-based spreadsheet programs. It's not a comprehensive list, so if you know of any others that deserve a mention, free to e-mail me or post a link in the comments section below.

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microso...ives/104153.asp

Edited June 12, 2006 by abhay

[abhay 0]

Google TV recognition system gets tongues wagging

Picture this scenario. You're seated at your PC surfing the web and in the next room a clearly audible episode of "Lost" is playing on TV. The next thing you know a pop-message appears with a link to a "Lost" discussion group on the MySpace site. What just happened is that your PC recognized that "Lost" was playing on your TV.

Believe it or not, this is exactly the sort of technology the Google researchers Michele Covell and Shumeet Baluja have developed and presented last month at the Euro ITV interactive television conference in Greece. How it works roughly is that your PC samples and digitally records the audio signals in your home and sends to it to Google's massive data center which then matches it to its database of programs.

Microsoft has reportedly recently patented similar technology.

While the technology is still in its embryonic stage, the applications for personalisation of data and ad serving are obvious. If you can recognise what TV shows and ads a family is watching on TV, you can theoretically tailor the content and advertising that you serve up to them.

In addition, the applications that TV program recognition systems may have for TV content providers have started tongues wagging about real-time popularity ratings services that could make current ratings systems obsolete. With real-time data on TV viewing being fed down the line, Google could conceivably provide a service to programmers and advertisers that would enable them to be far more responsive to audience sentiment.

An issue that has been raised, however, is the question of privacy. Regardless of statements of reassurance from Covell and Baluja, many consumers will not be comfortable with having a listening device recording audio data in homes. The researchers say that the system will not be able to understand conversations. However, one can imagine the potential for paranoia being generated by the knowledge that a Google or Microsoft data center has a direct audio feed into a person's home.

http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/4689/53/

[abhay 0]

Google Launches Checkout, not the Rumored GBuy

Google has launched Google Checkout, a payment system for online retailers that's tightly integrated with Google AdWords. Checkout isn't the rumored PayPal killer, but it does offer some compelling features for both merchants and online shoppers alike.

Rumors have been flying for more than a year about a payment system under development by Google. Reports emerged that Google was developing a micropayments system, an online wallet, even a PayPal killer (see this blog post for a chronology of Google payments speculation over the past year).

In fact, Google Checkout is simply an extension of technology the company has developed internally for its AdWords, Base, Picasa and other services.

"There are more and more reasons for users to do transactions for Google products. We wanted to generalize that experience," said Salar Kamangar, vice president, product management at Google.

Google Checkout is a payment system that can be used either alone or as an alternative to existing checkout systems already in place on a retailer's web site. Users with Google accounts can simply sign into their account on the retailer's web site and then click once to complete the checkout process using the credit card number stored with the Google account, rather than having to fill out detailed forms with shipping and payment information.

"It's not about a universal wallet; it's about making the checkout process streamlined with the fewest number of steps," said Kamangar.

In addition to being able to buy with only one or two clicks from any merchant using the program, Google Checkout offers other benefits to users. Since payments will be processed by Google, consumers don't need to share credit card details with merchants using the system.

The program also has email forwarding controls. If you don't want email from a merchant, you can turn off in your own Google account. Google will also maintain a transaction history of all purchases you've made through Google Checkout.

Google is also offering merchant review ratings from Checkout users, and guarantees that users will have no liability for unauthorized use of their account.

Google Checkout should appeal to merchants, as well. Google is making the code to use Checkout available to merchants at no charge, either through simple cut-and-paste code or through a more sophisticated API. Google is also working with shopping cart providers to integrate Checkout into their systems.

Google will charge merchants 20 cents and 2% of a total transaction cost to use the service—very favorable rates compared with PayPal's 30 cents and 2.9% fees (PayPal's fees scale lower with higher-cost transactions). However, merchants who also are Google AdWords advertisers get even more favorable terms.

Google will credit $10 to a merchant for each $1 spent on Google AdWords. For some merchants, this will lower transaction costs for using Google Checkout to virtually nothing. And even though Google CEO Eric Schmidt swore that Google didn't have eBay's PayPal system in its sights when developing Checkout, it's bound to have a significant impact on PayPal's business.

Checkout isn't a person-to-person, stored-value system like PayPal. But with its pricing and ease of use, it's a compelling alternative for businesses of any size that are currently using PayPal as a payment processing system—particularly with its aggressive pricing and incentives for AdWords advertisers to use the system.

Google has tightly integrated Checkout with AdWords. Any advertiser offering a Google Checkout option will now see their ads displaying with a Google Checkout "badge" icon next to the ad in search results. This visual cue lets searchers know they have the option of using Google Checkout if they click through and buy from that advertiser.

If the program takes off, it's likely to give an advantage to advertisers who participate in the Google Checkout program, as Google ranks ads in part based on the number of clicks they receive. If searchers display a preference for Google Checkout enabled sites, advertisers displaying the badge will see their ads rise in prominence in search results.

This will surely raise concerns about what Google is doing with the data it's collecting, as it now has visibility into searcher buying behavior from the first initial queries through the entire clickthrough and conversion process.

Already, many search marketers avoid Google's free analytics service because they are unwilling to let Google capture data that can show conversion rates, ROI and other cost and profitability metrics. But advertisers risk losing position in search results to other advertisers who are using Checkout.

This will create a conundrum for some search marketers: Which is more important—a high ranking ad or not allowing Google such a complete view of your search-related business transactions?

It also raises the questions of whether Google will use this data to potentially influence minimum bids for AdWords customers, or data-mine it for other uses.

Kamangar says that the data collected is used solely to process payments at this point, though he also declined to rule out other potential uses of the information in the future. He stressed that Google would keep its data collection and use policies transparent to both users and customers, however.

For now, using Google Checkout will be a no-brainer for smaller merchants with limited budgets, as the program provides a valuable service for very low cost and offers additional benefits for advertisers. More established merchants may well want to wait to see how successful the program becomes before jumping in, keeping a close eye on the positioning of competitors' ads who are using Checkout to see if their ads are getting a boost from consumers clicking through more frequently.

http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3617061

Edited June 29, 2006 by abhay

[anujit 0]

These guys are in overdrive in releasing products:

1. 2 versions of GD in a few months

2. picasa web

3. checkout

4. sketch-up (granted they didnt do much here)

5. spreadsheet

6. visible updates to gmail and obviously backend updates to google search

7. gtalk

8. a million other things!!!!

In the same time MS is struggling to release 2-3 (albiet alot bigger and more complicated) products - Vista, Anti-virus, Office 2007! Of course the difference in company size (emp & financials) must be taken into account!

[abhay 0]

hmm ohh u there!! i thought i was talking to a MIRROR

well then u forgot

gReader

gNews

book search

blog search

[abhay 0]

"Google" declared a verb

Having the public use your company name as a verb is, in one way, a marketer's Shangri-la. Many companies would kill for the name recognition and popularity of "xerox," "google," and "hoover." For the companies themselves, though, being "verbed" has its dark side. A company that does not defend its trademark risks losing it when it becomes a common figure of speech, which explains why Google is not happy about its recent inclusion in a new Merriam-Webster dictionary.

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary now includes the word "google," which it defines as a verb (prediction: within a decade, it will also be an expletive, as in "go google yourself!"). Sensitive to the search engine's concerns (and to its legal team), the dictionary does note that the word is trademarked. Dictionaries, news outlets, and websites that do not note this risk receiving a strongly-worded letter asking them to either remove the offending use of the term or note that it is trademarked.

Right now, "to google" actually means to use the Google search engine. Google no doubt fears that the world will go the way of "hoover," which has become a generic term for "vacuum" in the UK. If "google" ever comes to mean "I searched for it on the Internet," the company's careful branding and promotion will be diluted and the name will lose value.

"Google" joins other up-and-comers in the new dictionary, sharing page space with words like "himbo" (male bimbo) and "mouse potato" (think couch potato, but with a computer). Although it has just made it into the dictionary, "google" has been on linguists' radar screens for years. In 2002, for instance, it was judged the "most useful" new word of the year by the American Dialect Society.

[abhay 0]

How many domains does Google own?

Neil Patel is compiling a list, and currently has more than 500. Some of these are related to the things Google has bought (deja.net, picasa.com, pyra.com, keyhole.com, writely.com etc), some are misspellings (gogole.com, googel.com, googil.com) and some are defensive pre-emptions (googles**ks.com, googleporn.com etc). Some are just mysterious: what's the point of veritablebevy.com or jennifer-wanderer.com or canalportugal.info, if these are actually owned by Google.

Either way, it's a great time-waster for a Friday afternoon. Pity it's Tuesday....

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/arc...google_own.html

[abhay 0]

Which Sources Does Google News Index?

Google tells us they index “more than 4,500 English-language news sources worldwide” in Google News USA. Which could mean any number, really... and we know they add new sources all the time. To find out how much (and what) they really index, for the past days I polled roughly 1,4 million news stories per day by searching Google News for semi-random words every few minutes. I found over 8,600 unique news sources in Google News and made them available for sorting & searching.

You can search the data for single keywords, such as [search], which returns sources like Search Engine Guide, Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Marketing Blog, Search Engine Roundtable, Search Engine Watch, or Search Engine Weblog. You can also search using quotes, forcing full matches only... a search for e.g. [“TX”] (Texas) returns 2% of all sources.

Note that certain news organizations have several sites, which are counted individually (for example, CNN has CNN, CNN International and CNNMoney.com indexed in Google News). DBusinessNews alone is indexed for 28 different states. So if you would count those as a single source, you’d come up with vastly different numbers. Also note the list is likely not complete... there may be several hundred (or even thousand) more sources not found so far. Other sources shown may be removed from Google News as time passes.

[Arun 795]

Google Talk adds File Transfer, Voicemail

eWeek.com - Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Google will announce later today several upgrades to Google Talk. The upgrades, which come on near the product's one year anniversary, include:

File transfer - The "top requested" feature of GTalk users. You can share any type of file, several at a time if you want, including photos of course. According to a Google representative, when you drop up to 10 photos on Google Talk, smaller previews automatically appear right inside the chat window, so you can chat about them right away.

Voicemail - You can now leave voicemails for any of your Google Talk contacts when they don't answer a call, but you can also easily record voice notes and send them to anyone you know by just adding their email address to your contact list. They don't even have to be running Google Talk. According to the same Google rep: "This is a fun and easy way to just say hello, send someone a reminder, or sing your mom happy birthday. :-)" The Gmail team has added the ability to playback voicemail messages within Gmail.

Music status sharing - Users can opt to display the titles of the songs they are listening to in their status bar when Google Talk detects that a supported music player is running. Music Status currently supports iTunes, Windows Media Player, Winamp, and Yahoo Music Engine. We look forward to supporting more players in the future.

You will be able to download the updates on the Talk site. Singing happy birthday to your mom is optional.

Google Talk is Google's late entry into the instant messaging market, following AOL's AIM, Microsoft's MSN Windows Live Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger with Voice. Microsoft and Yahoo recently announced that they were allowing their two IM clients to interoperate. Meanwhile Google and AOL are planning on making their IM clients interoperable by 2007.

When Google launched GTalk, AOL owned about 52% of the IM market, Yahoo owned 24%, and Microsoft had 17.7%, acording to ComScore. One year on, the latest statistics show that GTalk still lags behind its major competitors, with only about 1 million users.

[abhay 0]

Writely registration is now open!

This week, we have finished inviting everyone who's been patiently on the waiting list, and have reopened registration to the public. If you haven't already, now is the time to sign up for the Writely beta!

Why have we reopened now? Maybe it was because we just won a very nice product review on CNET ... or maybe it was that ten-billionth person who emailed us to say, "Hey what's UP? When will Writely open again?" Well, in fact, now Writely is truly ready to open its doors to everyone, so let's just do it!

By the way, we're still going to be moving to a Google Account sign-in soon, so if you don't have one already it would be great if you could take a few minutes to sign up for a Google Account, using the email address and password that you're using to log into Writely. That way when we do move to Google Account sign-in, you'll be all set.

http://writely.blogspot.com/2006/08/writel...s-now-open.html

sign up its cool !!

Edited September 1, 2006 by abhay

[Arun 795]

ah, I just love these collaboration tools from Google !

[abhay 0]

Google seeks surfers' help to label images

Google is asking surfers with time on their hands to help it categorize and label the images indexed by its search engine, building a database of knowledge about the contents of the images.

The company launched a new online game on Friday, Google Image Labeler, which it describes as “a fun way to help us organize all the images on the Web.” In the game, two randomly selected players are each shown the same image, plucked at random from Google’s search index, and given 90 seconds to suggest as many keywords or phrases as they can to describe it. They score points if any of their descriptions match.

Google’s image search engine currently returns results based on captions and other text adjacent to images on Web pages, without reference to the content of the images themselves. The game will allow it to improve the performance of the search engine by returning results based on the players’ descriptions of the images.

The game is not the first attempt to use volunteer labor to create a database of knowledge: The Wikipedia online encyclopedia and the DMoz search directory are two of the better known examples.

Google’s game, based in part on technology developed at Carnegie Mellon University, is not even the first to use volunteer labor to categorize images: The ESP Game developed by Luis von Ahn and other researchers at Carnegie Mellon first put players to work tagging its image database in October 2003.

Building a database using information provided by volunteers has its risks: campaign groups or pranksters might influence or pollute the raw data by associating an insulting term with the image of a political candidate. The campaign to link the term “miserable failure” to the online biography of President George W. Bush is one example of how this can happen.

The ESP Game and Google Image Labeler limit the possibilities for such pranks, since they select players and images at random, and only associate a label with an image if both players independently suggest it.

Von Ahn and his colleagues study “human computation,” or finding novel ways to put human brains to work. Their work includes Peekaboom, a game which harnesses players’ brains to locate objects in images, and Phetch, which goes further than the ESP game by inviting players to create longer descriptions of images. You can also blame them for Captchas, those puzzles featuring sequences of distorted letters that are intended to distinguish between humans and computer impostors.

Google says its search engine indexes billions of images. That may make Google’s goal of labelling all the images on the Web seem far-fetched, especially since players of Von Ahn’s game have only attributed around 17.8 million labels to images since October 2003, according to the game’s Web site.

However, computer users around the world collectively wasted 9 billion hours playing Solitaire on their computers in 2003, Von Ahn estimated in a presentation to Google staff in July. If they had spent that time playing The ESP Game or Google Image Labeller instead, they could have labelled almost 200 billion images.

http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/09/04/google/index.php