Sr-ultimate.com | Web 2.0 & Me

Google released a free Web browser called Chrome that the company said would challenge Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, as well as the Firefox browser. All though many of its features are inspired inspired by Firefox and uses Apple Webkit, Open Source Framework.

In a curious twist, Google made its online announcement after its plans appeared as a digital “comic book” that was posted by Google.

Google already competes with Microsoft in online search and Internet advertising. They both make operating software for cellphones. Google is increasingly competing with Microsoft head-on in software that handles basic productivity like word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and e-mail programs. Google has Web-based software in these markets that are low-cost or free alternatives to Microsoft’s lucrative desktop software.

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Google Insights for Search is a new tool from Google to analyze and determine the search pattern, seasonality, creating brand associations or advertising messages.

Examples

• Choosing advertising messages : Insights can help you determine which messages resonate best. For example, an automobile manufacturer may be unsure of whether it should highlight fuel efficiency, safety, or engine performance to market a new car model.
  
  When the three features are entered into Insights, we can see that there’s a considerable amount of interest in car safety. With this information, the manufacturer may want to consider incorporating car safety into its marketing strategy.
• Examining seasonality : Insights can be used to determine seasonality. For example, a ski resort may want to find out when people search for ski-related terms most often.
• Examining seasonality : Insights can be used to determine seasonality. For example, a ski resort may want to find out when people search for ski-related terms most often.
• Creating brand associations : Insights can be a helpful tool in creating brand associations. Take, for example, an advertising agency that needs to build a compelling advertising campaign for its client, a computer hardware company. The agency needs to know what competing brands are doing: how should they position their client’s product against them?
• Entering new markets : Insights can be useful in determining a new market. A wine distributor may be looking to expand into new markets. By entering in wine + vino, and comparing the data across multiple countries, such as Argentina, Mexico, Spain, and Venezuela, the distributor can get a sense of where interest is more prevalent.

URL : http://google.com/insights/search/

Knol is new service by Google, an authoritative article about a specific topic. Though, as of now its mostly about medical and health articles.

Google says,

The key principle behind Knol is authorship. Every knol will have an author (or group of authors) who put their name behind their content. It’s their knol, their voice, their opinion. We expect that there will be multiple knols on the same subject, and we think that is good.

A feature called “moderated collaboration” is introduced for authors to work together. With this feature, any reader can make suggested edits to a knol which the author may then choose to accept, reject, or modify before these contributions become visible to the public. This allows authors to accept suggestions from everyone in the world while remaining in control of their content.

Knols include strong community tools which allow for many modes of interaction between readers and authors. People can submit comments, rate, or write a review of a knol. At the discretion of the author, a knol may include ads from our AdSense program. If an author chooses to include ads, Google will provide the author with a revenue share from the proceeds of those ad placements.

Link : Knol : A knol is an authoritative article about a specific topic.

Google recently added a small but interesting feature in its search results. There appears a small text box below result itself to search the site alone, Not all sites but google does have the feature on for few popular sites like Nvidia, eBay.

Google says

when we detect a high probability that a user wants more refined search results within a specific site. Like the rest of our snippets, the sites that display the site search box are chosen algorithmically based on metrics that measure how useful the search box is to users. We hope that you will make use of the site search box in order to get the information you’re looking for as quickly and easily as possible.

Google has released its new tool, the Google Book Search. It features many Cool features. There are no load times when flipping pages, as most pages are pre-loaded while you are reading.You can scroll through the pages of books by scrolling down your mouse. Its no different than scrolling a web page or a office document. You can use the left and right arrows to flip pages, as if you were holding the book.You can read the book, or download it to PDF. And of course, you can purchase a copy of the book from selected retailers.

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Google has introduced some great new features to Gmail and Google Talk

Google Talk

Orkut, as we know is an Internet social network service run by Google and named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten, has given us another great feature. You can now login to your Google Talk and get all your Orkut friends there in the messenger. So no more scrapbook hassels, if your friend is online, just go ahead and chat with him/her.Its interesting how you can scrap directly from Gtalk. Orkut friends will automatically appear in your Friends list, and you’ll find out instantly if you’ve received a new orkut scrap.

Offline Messages
Now if your friends have chat history enabled, you can send them messages even when they’re not online. Just enter a message into the chat window as you would normally, and they’ll get it the next time they sign into Google Talk. In Gmail, offline messages can be searched and organized — just like instant messages in their chat history.

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Google renewed its Gmail Mobile service with lots of new features. Its ideal WAP/WML interface makes it really easy for the user to read their Gmail. Download it once, and start accessing Gmail on your phone with just a click or two. You’ll also like it because:

• Your friends can leave you a voicemail using Google Talk. The voice message is sent to your Gmail account as an audio file that you can download or play right from your inbox.
• It has the same Gmail interface you know and love
• Your account stays synchronized whether you access it from your computer or the phone
• You can easily view attachments such as photos, documents and .pdf files

Today Google officially aquired JotSpot, a Online Spreadsheets application, Its been a very popular Ajax based web 2.0 application. Perhaps Google has started a sort of trend to acquire a new web 2.0 application every month ;) , in fact its not even a month since it got hold of youtube

Google shares JotSpot’s vision for helping people collaborate, share and work together online. JotSpot’s team and technology are a strong fit with existing Google products like Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google Apps for Your Domain and Google Groups.