Google Friend Connect sites start offering tailored web content, ads
More than a year ago Google and Facebook started a head-to-head race to build a social layer across the web with Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect. The vision was, if you visited a web site, you’d get a custom experience based on your own interests and what your friends have been doing.
Today that’s becoming a bit more of a reality.
Google is releasing a series of widgets for its Friend Connect-enabled sites to give them… Continue Reading
Google announces turn-by-turn GPS navigation — for free
There’s a good chance you’ve driven with someone who’s bought a fancy GPS navigation system for their car that gives them voice directions for each turn as they drive. You may have purchased one of those systems yourself, or maybe you went for the $100 iPhone version from TomTom. Now Google says it’s releasing a version of Google Maps that does the same thing, and you won’t have to pay anything for it.
Google Maps Navigation… Continue Reading
AlertMe teams with Google, British Gas to give consumers more control over energy use
AlertMe is the newest energy monitoring device maker to partner with Google PowerMeter, giving homeowners more information and control over how much electricity they are using, and how much they pay for it. By providing hardware that plugs into your home’s traditional electric meter and your broadband connection, British-based AlertMe now makes power consumption data available on your internet browser via the Google PowerMeter interface — if you happen to live in the United Kingdom.
The… Continue Reading
Web 2.0: Google’s Sergey Brin admits Chrome for Mac delays are disappointing
Google co-founder Sergey Brin made a surprise appearance at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco today, where he was booster-ish on almost everything (Google, Bing, hardware, web advertising, more), but did admit to one disappointment: The delays in releasing a version of Google’s Chrome browser for Macs.
When asked by an audience member when we’ll be able to use a Mac version of Chrome, Brin first said, “I am using Chrome for Mac.” A Mac… Continue Reading
Web 2.0: Google to roll out social search, with results from friends
The big elephant in the worlds of social and real-time search certainly made itself heard today.
Google’s rolling out a social search product in Labs within the next few weeks that will show you results connected to your social circle. At the bottom of the page, you’ll see results, blog posts, photos or reviews created by friends. For example, a “New Zealand” search page will turn up travel reviews written or photos taken by friends who… Continue Reading
Bing, you’re not alone: Google adds tweets to search too
Bing got much of the glory this morning at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, when it announced that it was incorporating Twitter’s public stream into its results. But a few hours later, Google crept in with its own announcement.
Google, it turns out, is also pulling Twitter’s public data into its search engine. The company declined to release financial terms of the deal. Google had no prototypes to demo, but here’s what Marissa Mayer,… Continue Reading
Google to work with Lala and iLike on music search (report)
Google is planning to launch a music search service with music sites Lala and MySpace-owned iLike, according to multiple reports.
So far, all that’s official is the fact that Lala, iLike, and unspecified “others” are holding an event titled “Discover Music” next week in Los Angeles. But it sounds like Google will be there.
With this new service, you’ll be able to search for a musician, then play songs streamed from partner sites like Lala and iLike…. Continue Reading
Google needs a new name for its wicked Holodeck
When Google showed off a way of navigating Street View in a fully immersive room of flat-panel screens at the I/O conference in May, there was a collective web cry of — uh, awesome!
Informally dubbed the “Holodeck,” the room had a chair in the center and a joystick that let you “drive” around. (See the video below applied to Google Earth.)
But alas, the name “Holodeck” is not meant to be.
Paramount Pictures filed for the trademark back… Continue Reading
‘Gone Google’ ad campaign goes global
It looks like Google is happy with the initial response to its “Gone Google” campaign, where it uses simple white billboards to try to recruit more companies to its Google Apps online software.
The campaign started in August, with the posting of billboards in Boston, Chicago, New York, and San Francisco, whose messages changed every weekday. The billboards were aimed at workers and IT managers frustrated with traditional work software like Microsoft Office, and bore messages… Continue Reading
5 O’Clock Roundup: Sidekickers saved, e-books slashed, PCmover revisited
Microsoft recovers T-Mobile customers from the Sidekick Apocalypse – A blog post from Roz Ho at Microsoft, head of the company’s Premium Mobile Experiences group, promises that “we have recovered most, if not all, customer data” that had disappeared last week in an embarrassingly public failure of Microsoft’s backup system for Sidekick customers’ data.
But it’s too late to undo a lot of the reputational damage. T-Mobile has stopped selling the phones, and lawsuits have already been… Continue Reading
Google’s optimism backed by positive Q3 results
Google released its third quarter financial results today, and the positive numbers seem to back up Google chief executive Eric Schmidt’s recent statements that the ad market is improving, allowing the company to start spending again.
During Q3, which ended on Sept. 30, Google earned $5.94 billion of revenue, up 7 percent from the same period last year. (That’s without subtracting the $1.56 billion Google spent acquiring traffic.) Excluding the expenses of stock-based compensation, net income… Continue Reading
Avoid emailing the wrong person with Gmail’s ‘Got the wrong Bob?’
One of the greatest sources of embarrassment, or worse, when using email comes when you send a message to the wrong person accidentally. (Hence the proliferation of those annoying “Delete this message if you’re the wrong recipient” email signatures.) Google added a new feature to Gmail today that should help you catch those errors before hitting “send.”
“Got the wrong Bob?” has been added to Labs, the section for experimental features that may get added to… Continue Reading
Shared folders make Google Docs better for teamwork
Google has announced that its online word processor Docs just got a little better for team collaboration, with a new feature that allows users to share entire folders.
This is a nice tweak — previously, you could invite users to collaborate with you on individual documents, but not on an entire group of documents in a folder. Google says this is the most-requested feature improvement in Docs.
For example, I do almost all of my VentureBeat-related writing… Continue Reading
Google PowerMeter comes online in Germany
Utility customers in the U.S. are still waiting for widespread roll out of Google PowerMeter, the search engine’s new home energy monitoring system that allows users to view their energy consumption on their iGoogle homepages in real time. And yesterday, German homeowners and businesses using utility Yello Strom beat them to the punch.
Now, all of Yello Strom’s customers have the ability to add the PowerMeter widget to their iGoogle pages to actively keep tabs on… Continue Reading
Android’s search gets a lot richer than the iPhone’s
If there’s one area where Google’s Android platform should blow Apple’s iPhone completely out of the water, it’s search.
So Google’s aiming to do just that with the Quick Search Box it released today for Android-based phones. It combines web search with search inside your phone. That means you can look up your personal contacts and do a generic Google search from the same place. It also learns from your prior behavior — if you’ve looked… Continue Reading
YouTube now serves more than 1 billion money-losing views per day
Fifteen million viewers watched CSI on Thursday night, making it the most-popular show on television. On that same day, YouTube served over a billion video clips — 66 times the number of views CSI got.
Yet YouTube owner Google is currently losing an estimated $1.5 million per day on the service, according to basic math done on some analyst reports by Internet Evolution blogger David Silversmith.
YouTube’s story has changed a lot from the big expectations of… Continue Reading
Google’s Sergey Brin defends Book Search settlement
The New York Times just published an op-ed piece from Google co-founder Sergey Brin, in which Brin defends the settlement between his company and a group of authors and publishers over Google’s right to scan books and publish excerpts on its Book Search site. That deal hasn’t fared well, with the Justice Department asking courts to reject it, and with what The Times earlier described as an “army” of opponents trying to block it.
Brin addresses… Continue Reading
Lawmakers criticize Google Voice for rural call-blocking
Updated
The legal issues continue to grow around Google Voice, the company’s application for directing calls from a single number to multiple phones. The Federal Communications Commission is already investigating Apple’s rejection of Voice (or its “continued study,” to use Apple’s phrase). Now a group of legislators has asking the FCC to investigate Voice itself, specifically its practice of blocking calls to expensive rural telephone exchanges.
Google doesn’t deny that it blocks calls to some numbers that… Continue Reading
Dell building an Android phone for the US (report)
It looks like computer maker Dell is building its first mobile phone for the United States, one that will use Google’s Android operating system. Since the phone will reportedly run on AT&T’s network, not only does this news add to Android’s roster of device manufacturers, but it also means the mobile OS will be on all four major mobile networks in the US.
The new phone will be a modified version of the Android phone for… Continue Reading
AT&T: Just kidding! VoIP apps like Skype can run on our network
AT&T, the iPhone’s exclusive wireless carrier in the United States, said it has paved the way for Apple to let voice-over-Internet-protocol apps like Skype run on its 3G network instead of only on nearby Wi-Fi connections.
VoIP technology allows voice calls to be treated as data, making them significantly cheaper per minute.
The “iPhone is an innovative device that dramatically changed the game in wireless when it was introduced just two years ago,” said Ralph de la… Continue Reading