Google Mobile App now available on Windows Mobile
One of the most common questions we are asked on this blog is "When will this be available for my phone?". Well for all you Windows Mobile fans the answer is "now" for the Google Mobile App. Try it out by downloading it from http://m.google.com/search on your mobile phone.
Google Mobile App gives you faster searching on your Windows Mobile device, with easy access to your favorite Google applications from the Today screen. There’s no need to wait for a browser to open to begin a search, and with search history available to reduce typing, you can get your search results with fewer clicks than before. For an even speedier experience, Pocket PC users can add the Google Mobile App to the start menu (Settings: Menus) or configure a hardware key (Settings: Buttons) to provide easy access from within any application on your phone.
How much faster is it? Well, our stopwatches show that Google Mobile App team members (who are mostly normal people, no superpowers were deployed during the timings) were able to get their search results for identical queries nearly 50% faster from Google Mobile App than from navigating to google.com in the mobile browser.
Google Mobile App is available for all devices running Windows Mobile in the US, UK, Canada, France, Italy, Spain, and Germany. (Check your phone model here to see if your phone is running Windows Mobile.) It is also available for iPhone, iPod touch and BlackBerry devices.
Source- Google Mobile Blog
Gmail launches voice and video chat
Google today launched Gmail voice and video chat, making it simple for people around the world to chat in high-quality video for free right within Gmail. All you need is a webcam and a small web browser plugin, and you can start video chatting with your friends, family, and coworkers on Gmail and Google Apps. Gmail voice and video chat lets you start a video chat without switching to another application or signing up for another account. And if you don’t have a webcam, you can simply chat by voice. We’ve made it easy enough that your mom — or your employees — will actually use it.
The launch comes as video communication grows in popularity; many of the latest lines of laptops, for example, come with built-in webcams. Businesses stretched across continents and timezones want more face-to-face collaboration among their employees, but in this economic climate, they’re looking for ways to cut travel and IT expenses. Having a meeting with a colleague over video allows communications to continue in person without the expense of traveling there. Whether it’s a coworker demoing a new product, or a first-time grandmother saying hello to her new grandson, sometimes there’s no substitute for speaking to and seeing someone. Google is offering browser-based voice and video chat as a natural extension to webmail and instant messaging, allowing people to choose how they want to communicate at each moment — by email, instant message, voice, or video.
Source- Google Press Release
DoubleClick Serves Into Silverlight to Power Video Advertising for NBC Universal Digital Media
Today, DoubleClick, a premier provider of digital marketing technology and services, announced the new capability to serve video ads into Microsoft Silverlight 2 video environments. The move is part of DoubleClick’s ongoing effort to help clients maximize the yield on their advertising inventory as they deliver content into emergent online, video and mobile channels.
With this new feature of DoubleClick In-Stream, DoubleClick clients such as NBC Universal Digital Media are able to monetize video content played within the Silverlight 2 player. NBCOlympics.com, a division of NBC Universal, will be one of the first sites to open Silverlight 2 content up to advertisers with DoubleClick In-Stream. The solution carves out new video inventory across 2,500 hours of video content running as part of NBC’s Olympics coverage.
“Microsoft has always had a strong commitment to working closely with partners and the industry to enable them to leverage our tools and platform to deliver great user experiences. With Silverlight, we’ve extended that commitment to the advertising space,” said Scott Guthrie, Corporate Vice President, .NET Developer Division. “We’re pleased to see the investment DoubleClick has made to enable customers such as NBCOlympics.com to take advantage of Silverlight to offer compelling packages to their advertisers.”
Source- Google Press Release
Google To Acquire Russian Context Ads Service Begun
Google announced today that it has signed an agreement with Rambler Media to acquire ZAO Begun , a leading Russian context advertising service, for $140 million, subject to customary adjustments. This agreement emphasizes Google’s commitment to improving the service it offers users, partners and advertisers in Russia, where digital advertising is currently experiencing rapid growth.
The acquisition of Begun will give advertisers access to a broader network of sites to advertise on, and publishers will benefit from a wider set of adverts to run on their sites. Users will see more relevant advertising across a much wider set of websites. Google will bring its advertising expertise and experience to Begun’s network of websites.
“Google is very committed to giving Russian users, advertisers and partners the best possible service and experience,” said Mohammad Gawdat, Managing Director Emerging Markets, Google. ”This agreement will result in better search results and more relevant advertising for our Russian users and publishers.”
“Begun is an excellent business which can fully develop its potential under Google’s ownership,” said Mark Opzoomer, Chief Executive Officer of Rambler Media. “Google has the technological and financial capacity to improve Begun’s established advertising service in Russia.”
Source- Google Press Release
Google launches Beta of “Lively” 3D virtual world
Google Lively is a free, browser-based virtual environment with tight integration to social networks like MySpace, Facebook and OpenSocial, as well as Google gadgets like Picasa and YouTube. Unlike some previous integration’s of virtual worlds and social networks, Lively helps users’ friends lists, feeds, and logins to tie directly to the social network. Google’s platform will run in a browser, differentiating it from client-centric worlds like Second Life and can be embedded in a Web site.
There isn’t any currency used in Lively, so users will be able to add objects from Lively’s catalog to their rooms free of charge. With all these features and more rolling out later, Lively is likely to give Second Life and other popular virtual worlds a run for their money. Like most Google products, Lively is free.
While some have compared Lively to Second Life, the better comparison is with IMVU. The core of Lively content are avatars, rooms and catalog. This is true for IMVU as well, though IMVU offers home pages, groups, forums and more. In particular, Lively chose the IMVU-like metaphor of the virtual “room” instead of a sprawling virtual world or land like Second Life. However, Lively is currently a free offering, while IMVU charges for each accessory used and Second Life charges a flat fee, with the basic version provided free.
The minimum hardware requirement for running Lively is, Pentium III 800 MHz System with 512 MB RAM, a 32 MB 3D graphics card such as GeForce 2 or above and a broadband connection. Currently, Lively only runs in IE and Firefox on Windows XP and Vista machines, though the company has said that a Mac OS X client is a priority for the future.
Source- RTTNews
http://www.lively.com
Major Update for Google’s Blogger
It’s raining with features in the experimental version of Blogger, available at http://draft.blogger.com. To try these new features, it’s a good idea to visit Draft Blogger and temporarily enable "Make Blogger in Draft my default dashboard" at the top of the page.
Probably the most important new feature is the inline commenting system, that lets you post comments without opening a new page. This year, I tried using a pop-up window for the comment form, but it’s still inconvenient to post comments. The new option, which can be added in the Draft Blogger by going to Settings > Comments > Comment Form Placement, uses an iframe to display a textarea and a list of authentication options.
Blogger has a new post editor that borrows a lot of new tricks from Google Page Creator. You can move the images inside a post and dynamically choose between different sizes of the image. The new editor is smart enough to no longer replace newlines with <br> tags when you add tables, lists, styles, scripts and objects. There’s also an improved preview option that uses your template to style your content. Unfortunately, the new editor lacks many features currently available: auto-save, spell checking, video upload and the toolbar for editing HTML.
Blogs that use the new layouts can add star ratings to get feedback from readers, but I’m not sure if this is a useful feature. There’s also an option that integrates Blogger with Google Webmaster Central: you can automatically add all your Blogger blogs with a single click.
This is one of the biggest updates to Blogger and many of the new features are long overdue. If everything goes well, all these features will soon be available in the standard Blogger interface.
Source: GoogleSystem Blog
Google Code Jam 2008: Programmers Worldwide Invited to Participate in Google’s Global Coding Competition
Google Inc. announced today that registration is now open for Google Code Jam 2008. Programmers ready to use their coding skills, creativity, and ingenuity to solve a series of challenges can register at http://code.google.com/codejam. The top 500 contestants will win an all expenses paid trip to the semifinals at regional Google offices, with the top 100 advancing to the grand final at Google’s Mountain View headquarters.
"Google Code Jam is an incredible opportunity for the most talented computer scientists in the world to come together and compete on an international stage," said Vic Gundotra, Vice President, Engineering. "Google is proud to support these coders as they take on some of the world’s most challenging programming problems, and we’re pleased to have the chance to introduce them to our research and offices around the world."
This year marks the first year with regional semifinal playoffs in over ten countries. "It’s an incredible opportunity to introduce the best of the programming world to our offices across the globe and demonstrate the incredible diversity of experiences that Google offers engineers worldwide," said Nelson Mattos, Vice President, Engineering, EMEA.
This year’s Google Code Jam will be powered by tools created by a 20%-time team that includes previous Code Jam winners, and will allow contestants to program in any language.
In addition to the trip to local engineering offices and Mountain View, finalists will also divide over $80,000 in prize money:
- Grand Prize:$10,000
- 2nd place:$5,000
- 3rd place:$2,500
- 4th-10th place:$1,500 each
- 11th-30th place:$1,000 each
- 31st-50th place:$750 each
- 51st-75th place:$500 each
- 76th-100th place:$250 each
Participants can register throughout the qualification round, which ends July 17.
Source- Google Press Release
Google App Engine to Announce Open Sign-ups, Pricing Plans, and New APIs at Google I/O
Google is getting ready to welcome more than 2900 developers to the Moscone Center in San Francisco for Google I/OTM, the company’s largest developer event of the year. The event opens with a keynote speech on Wednesday, May 28, and runs through Thursday, May 29, with nearly 100 in-depth technical sessions about Google’s own developer products, and general web application development.
Google’s developer products are devoted to making it easier for developers to build for the web. In particular, Wednesday’s keynote speech will explore three areas of Google investment that — in close collaboration with the larger web community — aim to enable increasingly innovative and rich web applications:
- Making clouds of computing power more accessible to all developers
- Making the client — i.e., the browser — more capable and more powerful
- Ensuring the connectivity that enables the client and the cloud to work in harmony
"After years of competition among platforms, the web has won because it’s open, because it’s ubiquitous, and because there’s a passionate community working together to move it forward," said Vic Gundotra, vice president of engineering for developer products at Google. "Openness is great for developers and for users because it knocks down hurdles to building great applications, and because it speeds the next wave of innovation by letting good ideas be shared. The web doesn’t depend on any one API or tool or product, from Google or anyone else. What makes the real difference is the aggregate effect of us all working together, with open standards and open source."
Source- Google Press Release
