http://news.softpedia.com Softpedia News - Google News Softpedia News en-us 2001 - 2009 Softpedia. All rights reserved. Sun, 29 Nov 2009 13:17:21 GMT Sun, 29 Nov 2009 13:17:21 GMT News http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 10 http://www.softpedia.com/base_img/softpedia_logo.gif http://news.softpedia.com/ http://news.softpedia.com/news/Spamming-People-s-Blogs-Just-Isn-t-Very-Nice-Google-Says-128312.shtml Spam is one of the biggest problems with the web at the moment and, despite countless efforts and measures, it's unlikely to go away any time soon. Google has several way of countering spam, be it in Gmail or in the web at large, which it claims are pretty good at making these methods pretty useless, though, this doesn't seem to faze most spammers. In a recent blog post, it's focusing on comment spam, specifically on what it does to tackle the problem and what webmasters can do to prevent them. It's not exactly groundbreaking, but there are a couple of useful tips in there.

Google starts off by appealing to the spammer's conscience with things like: “abusing comment fields of innocent sites is a bad and risky way of getting links to your site.” There's nothing wrong with that sentence, in fact, it's entirely true. But the morality of the thing insn't likely to stop anyone from doing it. Google also tries to make the case that original content is the way to go and that a little patience and a lot of hard work will pay off with nice, clean and natural ranking.

This is all great if you're talking to a five-year old, but the “do the right thing” and “work hard and one day ...” arguments are perhaps lost on the people Google is trying to reach. Fortunately, Googl... (read more)]]> Sat, 28 Nov 2009 12:11:01 GMT Softpedia News - Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Spamming-People-s-Blogs-Just-Isn-t-Very-Nice-Google-Says-128312.shtml Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Spamming-People-s-Blogs-Just-Isn-t-Very-Nice-Google-Says-128312.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Wave-Could-Do-with-a-Turbo-Boost-128301.shtml Google got most of the attention this week for its recently unveiled Chrome OS so the Wave team figured it was time for a little update as well. They're not actually announcing anything but they are revealing the results of a survey they've carried out to find out what people liked or disliked about Google Wave. And with most of the tech world unimpressed with Google's efforts, it would be interesting to know what the actual users think.

“Since we can't talk to all of our users individually (no matter how hard we try!), we've been running an online survey to get some feedback on the Google Wave experience. We distributed the survey through email (to a random sample of those that volunteered to help), a link in our help center and a tweet. While this may not be a completely representative sample of all Google Wave users, the results have been interesting to us, and we'd like to share them,” Aaron Cheang, User Experience researcher for Google Wave, wrote.

The results aren't as useful as they could have been, but there are a couple of interesting nuggets in there. When asked what they liked the most about Google Wave, the majority of users said they liked the idea of the wave as the center of all their communications. The interesting thing is that they didn't say they liked they way Google had implemented it but rather the concept itself. This is v... (read more)]]> Sat, 28 Nov 2009 09:42:00 GMT Softpedia News - Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Wave-Could-Do-with-a-Turbo-Boost-128301.shtml Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Wave-Could-Do-with-a-Turbo-Boost-128301.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Twilight-and-Netbooks-Trend-Google-Searches-Ahead-of-Black-Friday-128282.shtml The holiday shopping spree has, more or less, officially started in the US with Black Friday's huge discounts, or just shrewd advertising depending on your point of view, that most retailers are offering today. While people are hitting the stores today, most have already done their homework online well ahead of time, as Google search data shows. Several items seem to be hot with the younger crowd this year, including everyone's favorite vampire saga, Twilight, soundtrack. With the older and more tech-savvy audience, though, the trend is clear, it's all about netbooks.

So what are going to be the most sought-after gifts this holiday season? Google reckons that some of them will be Zhu Zhu Pets, Nerf N Strike, Mindflex, and the Twilight soundtrack and it's got a good reason to think so, searches for these items is seeing a huge growth as the holidays are approaching.

Gadgets are always a favorite gift option, especially with the more 'tech-inclined', and this year people are being safe going with failsafe options like netbooks and mp3 players. The fact that netbooks are so sought after is especially interesting since many experts were sure that the diminutive computers were just a trend and that people will return to their usual buying habits. The data doesn't lie though, it look... (read more)]]> Fri, 27 Nov 2009 17:01:02 GMT Softpedia News - Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Twilight-and-Netbooks-Trend-Google-Searches-Ahead-of-Black-Friday-128282.shtml Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Twilight-and-Netbooks-Trend-Google-Searches-Ahead-of-Black-Friday-128282.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-s-Peace-Offering-to-the-Advertising-Industry-128210.shtml Google is hardly a typical media company despite making the vast majority of its revenue from advertising. In the past, it's had a rather tense relationship with old media companies and traditional advertising outlets. The strategy seems to have paid off, judging by its success so far, but in recent years Google is using a softer tone and trying to work more with the establishment. In its latest peace offering, the company has pledged an unspecified amount to an initiative by the Advertising Association in the UK to rebuild public trust in advertising and advertisers, not exactly an easy task.

Advertisers are right to be worried, a recent study commissioned by the association found that under 15 percent of adults in the UK trust advertising. Some might say that this is generally a good thing and a healthy amount of skepticism is more than welcomed in a world where everyone is trying to sell you something.

Now, apart from the effect this has on the efficiency of the campaigns themselves, advertisers are even more worried that this would lead to harsher government regulation, the last thing they want. To be fair, more often than not, strict rules create more problems than they solve and the public should be trusted to be able to make its own decisions and judgments, despite countless evidence t... (read more)]]> Fri, 27 Nov 2009 10:11:01 GMT Softpedia News - Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-s-Peace-Offering-to-the-Advertising-Industry-128210.shtml Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-s-Peace-Offering-to-the-Advertising-Industry-128210.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Italian-Prosecutors-Ask-for-Jail-Time-for-Google-Executives-128128.shtml Lawsuits aren't anything new for Google, but one in Italy could mean jail time for several Google employees if they're found guilty. The four men are charged with several privacy violations and libel over a user-uploaded video, hosted on Google Video in 2006. The prosecutors are now asking for one year in jail for three of the executives, David Drummond, senior VP of corporate development and chief legal officer at Google, George Reyes ex-CFO at the company and Peter Fleischer, global privacy counsel, and six months for libel for Arvind Desikan, senior product marketing manager at Google.

As expected, Google is defending its employees and believes the case to be without merit. “We did exactly what is required under European and Italian law,” William Echikson, a Google spokesman, told Bloomberg. “We took the video down when notified by the authorities. Seeking to hold neutral platforms liable for content posted on them is a direct attack on a free, open Internet and could spell the end of Web 2.0 in Italy. We will defend and support our employees.”

In 2006, several students from a Turin school uploaded a clip to Google Video of them bullying a classmate with Down's syndrome. The video was up on the site for almost two months before being taken down by Google. The compan... (read more)]]> Thu, 26 Nov 2009 11:31:00 GMT Softpedia News - Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Italian-Prosecutors-Ask-for-Jail-Time-for-Google-Executives-128128.shtml Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Italian-Prosecutors-Ask-for-Jail-Time-for-Google-Executives-128128.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Aviary-Screen-Capture-Extension-for-Google-Chrome-128102.shtml Developers are abuzz over the latest thing to come to Google Chrome. It's not a new feature in the browser itself, it's the Extensions Gallery which is about to launch bringing add-on goodness to Chrome. The browser has had some support for extensions for several months, but now that Google thinks it's ready for a wider roll out, developers are not wasting any time and starting to support the platform. Aviary, a startup specializing in web-based image editors and now even audio editors, has been working on a Chrome extension of its own similar to the Firefox add-on it already offers.

Installing the Aviary Screen Capture extension for Google Chrome is as easy as any other Chrome extension. It only works on the dev channel builds of Google Chrome, but extensions support should be coming to the beta soon. Once you're done, a small icon will show up in the right side of the toolbar. With the icon you can access any Aviary tool from a drop-down menu or access the website. The interesting part, though, is the screenshot capture option right at the top of the menu. This is the reason to install the extension in the first place and the feature is one of the easiest ways to capture a web page.

All it takes is one click and the screenshot opens up in the default Aviary image editor you have setup. Initially, this is set to Aviary Image Markup, which is more of a blog... (read more)]]> Thu, 26 Nov 2009 09:44:00 GMT Softpedia News - Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Aviary-Screen-Capture-Extension-for-Google-Chrome-128102.shtml Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Aviary-Screen-Capture-Extension-for-Google-Chrome-128102.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Profiles-Can-Now-Be-Used-as-OpenIDs-128081.shtml Google has been a big backer of OpenID, though that's not exactly a surprise when you have the login standard's creator, Brad Fitzpatrick, working for you. Fitzpatrick has announced that Google Profiles can now be used as OpenID logins. He has also added that WebFinger for Gmail now supports Google Profiles as well. While any push forward on this front is a good thing, OpenID, in its current form, has several problems and this definitely doesn't solve them.

Adding Google Profiles to the list of sites which can be used as an OpenID identity may be convenient for some people, those already using OpenID or, at least, those who understand it. Google Profiles URLs are easy enough to remember and relatively short, something like http://www.google.com/profiles/user.name. But, it's probably not going to drive adoption and certainly not solve the bigger issue.

There are several groups trying to tackle the online identity problem. With tens or hundreds of sites and services each with their login information and system it can be a nightmare to handle them all. Most people just use the same user name and password, but this opens up a whole lot of potential security issues. For a couple of years several solutions have popped up which promise one set of credentials working across a myriad of sites.

One of the ... (read more)]]> Thu, 26 Nov 2009 08:29:00 GMT Softpedia News - Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Profiles-Can-Now-Be-Used-as-OpenIDs-128081.shtml Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Profiles-Can-Now-Be-Used-as-OpenIDs-128081.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Test-the-Brand-New-Google-Homepage-Redesign-Yourself-Screenshots-128067.shtml Google is always tweaking the design of its products even, or especially, that of its search engine. The site has evolved in time but for the most part the changes have been subdued and discrete. Not anymore though, Google is planning a major revamp of its search engine, by Google standards anyway, promising to be the biggest single redesign to date. The company is already testing the design with a number of users, but the rest of us will have to wait until next year to get to see it in action. However, if you just can't wait that long, there's a little trick you can use to get into the trial.

The trick involves modifying the cookies Google stores on your computer to keep various settings and data. This sounds more complicated than it really is, all you need to do is copy and paste the code below into your browser's address bar. You need to sign out of your Google account either before or after pasting the code and then you should see the brand-new design regardless of whether you're signed in or not.

After this, the new design is all yours in all its Technicolor glory. It's still the same minimalist Google design that we all know and love, but it's gotten a bit livelier. A lot livelier actually, thanks to the small icons adorning the categories in the now-permanent sidebar, but espe... (read more)]]> Wed, 25 Nov 2009 19:21:00 GMT Softpedia News - Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Test-the-Brand-New-Google-Homepage-Redesign-Yourself-Screenshots-128067.shtml Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Test-the-Brand-New-Google-Homepage-Redesign-Yourself-Screenshots-128067.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-s-New-In-Your-Face-Ads-127984.shtml Perhaps a little reluctantly, Google has been slowly adding more rich content to its search engine. It's still as spartan as it gets, but there's certainly an evolution and now it's making the same changes to the ads it serves on the search results page which now feature videos, images, and even maps.

“To provide a better search ads experience, we've been developing and testing a variety of new ad formats. These formats are focused on giving you the information you need, while retaining what you love about Google advertising: that the ads are relevant and useful,” Susan Wojcicki, VP of product management at Google, wrote. “If you're looking to buy your mom a new handbag for the holidays, for instance, you might want to see pictures, prices, the addresses of boutiques in your area and a map of how to get there — all within the ad.”

Some of the new ad units have been in testing for a while now, but Google wanted to showcase them, perhaps because it's ready to introduce them on a larger scale. The company is working on several new units, but the general theme is 'bigger is better'. There's a good reason for that, bigger ads equal more clicks therefore better revenue for the company, but this only works up to a point. Part of the reason why people chose Google to do their searches is the clean in... (read more)]]> Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:04:00 GMT Softpedia News - Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-s-New-In-Your-Face-Ads-127984.shtml Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-s-New-In-Your-Face-Ads-127984.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Gmail-Now-Supports-Offline-Attachments-127938.shtml Google would love a world where everyone is online all the time. In fact, it's basing all of its strategies on this. We're not quite there yet, so, in the meantime, it's working on making its services available when offline. Gmail makes it possible to work offline with a Google Gears version of the service that has been available since earlier this year. But it's not a complete stand-in for the regular version and one of the most requested features has been the ability to send offline attachments, something Google has finally introduced.

“One of the most requested features for Offline Gmail has been the ability to include attachments in messages composed while offline. Starting today, attachments work just the way you would expect them to whether you are online or offline (with the exception that when you're offline you won't be able to include inline images). Just add the attachment and send your message,” Andy Palay, software engineer at Google, wrote.

First things first, if you want to send offline attachments, you need to enable offline access in Gmail. Before you can enable the Labs feature, you need to have Google Gears installed for your browser, which you can get here. Gears is built into Google Chrome, so you can skip this step if you use this browser. Then, go to the Labs tab in the Gmai... (read more)]]> Wed, 25 Nov 2009 07:42:00 GMT Softpedia News - Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Gmail-Now-Supports-Offline-Attachments-127938.shtml Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Gmail-Now-Supports-Offline-Attachments-127938.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Germany-Going-After-Google-Again-This-Time-over-Analytics-127917.shtml Either Germans care a whole lot about their privacy or they really have it in for Google. Most likely it's the first, but it doesn't discount from the fact that Google is getting in trouble again in the country, after the whole Street View affair, this time for Google Analytics. Several government officials in the country are threatening websites which use the service with fines if they don't stop using it without explicit consent from their visitors.

The government officials claim that services like Google Analytics which retrieve detailed usage data from the visitors of a website are illegal in the country and are now considering imposing fines of up to €50,000 for websites which use the Google service. The officials take issue with the fact that the websites don't make it clear to the users that their visit is being tracked and believe that the users would have to express their approval of the practice before the websites would be allowed to get the information.

According to the Zeit Online some 13 percent of German websites, over 1.8 million in total, use Google Analytics to measure traffic and visits including some big companies, political parties, and so on. The officials claim that all this information could be used by Google to create a complete profile of the users from the data ... (read more)]]> Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:41:00 GMT Softpedia News - Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Germany-Going-After-Google-Again-This-Time-over-Analytics-127917.shtml Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Germany-Going-After-Google-Again-This-Time-over-Analytics-127917.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Doesn-t-Want-to-Be-an-Utility-Company-127903.shtml With its hands in every cookie jar in the kitchen, there doesn't seem to be anything that Google isn't doing or planning to do. It's gotten to the point where even the slightest hint or rumor that Google is planning to enter a new market is making established players worry. But do utility companies have any reason to fear Google? As far fetched as it may seem, the truth is that, in a way, they very well may have, though the search giant is eager to dispel any worries.

Google was represented by Ed Lu, the company's program manager for advanced products at the GreenBeat 2009 conference, focused green technology. There's a very good reason for Google to be present at such a conference, aside from building operating systems and selling ads, it also has a big focus on alternative energy and manages several “green” projects through its philanthropic arm Google.org.

Google also offers PowerMeter, an power-usage monitoring software designed to work with so-called “smart meters” giving users an easy way of keeping track of their energy usage. It's this tool and the partnerships which Google has with several device manufacturers that lead to the inevitable question of whether Google was trying to squeeze its way as a middle man of sorts between utility companies and the consumers.

read more)]]> Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:47:00 GMT Softpedia News - Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Doesn-t-Want-to-Be-an-Utility-Company-127903.shtml Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Doesn-t-Want-to-Be-an-Utility-Company-127903.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Products-Search-Gets-a-Gallery-View-and-a-Reviews-Section-127850.shtml
“This holiday season, whether you're shopping for a new sweater for Fido, a Lego set for young builders, or that fancy camera you've been eyeing all year, Google Product Search can help you find what you're looking for at a great price. You can compare products and prices from merchants across the web, from popular retailers like Amazon and Best Buy to places to buy unique gifts like eBay and Etsy,” Sameer Samat, product management director and Jeff Bartelma, senior product manager at Google wrote, announcing the new features.

One of the first changes users are likely to notice is the new Products OneBox which will show up along the regular one. Normally, the Products OneBox, which shows up among the search results for certain queries, list five products related to the search, with thumbnails, prices, and links to buy them. The new OneBox, that is currently being tested for just several searches, features only the most popular two products and information on them and then links to a list of top brands which offer similar products.

read more)]]> Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:51:00 GMT Softpedia News - Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Products-Search-Gets-a-Gallery-View-and-a-Reviews-Section-127850.shtml Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Products-Search-Gets-a-Gallery-View-and-a-Reviews-Section-127850.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-to-Offer-Smarter-Display-Ads-Acquires-Teracent-127811.shtml Google hasn't been making too much inroad into display advertising, certainly not to the extent of its success with search ads. But it's not giving up any time soon and, if it can't deliver on its own, it could always buy a company that can. And this is exactly what it did with the acquisition of Teracent, a display advertising startup which creates automated, customized ads in real time.

“We think that this technology has great potential to improve display advertising on the web. That's why we're pleased to announce today that we've entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Teracent. The transaction, which is subject to various closing conditions, is expected to close this quarter,” Neal Mohan, vice president, Product Management, and Joerg Heilig, engineering director, wrote.

Google hasn't disclosed any financial details, but it's likely a small acquisition, nothing like the recent $750-million AdMob deal. Teracent has raised only $5.8 million from investors so far and it already had a growing business. Interestingly, Yahoo was one of its big-name clients and is using Teracent technology to offer its Mobile SmartAds. Google hasn't said anything about this, but it's likely that the partnership will be ending soon enough.

“Teracent's technology can pick and choose ... (read more)]]> Tue, 24 Nov 2009 08:56:00 GMT Softpedia News - Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-to-Offer-Smarter-Display-Ads-Acquires-Teracent-127811.shtml Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-to-Offer-Smarter-Display-Ads-Acquires-Teracent-127811.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Chrome-Extensions-Gallery-Opens-Up-for-Developers-127790.shtml Google Chrome extensions are here for everyone. Well, almost, for everyone who's a developer. The extensions gallery which we've been getting hints of for more than a week now is finally open for business, but for the moment, only to allow developers to upload their extensions. The gallery went live just as Google updated the dev channel to Chrome 4.0.249.11, a small update which fixes a couple of things.

“During the last few months, our team has been working hard to support extensions in Google Chrome's beta channel. Today, we are getting one step closer to this goal; developers can now upload their extensions to Google Chrome's extension gallery. We are making the upload flow available early to make sure that developers have the time to publish their extensions ahead of our full launch,” Lei Zheng, a software engineer at Google, wrote.

This is one of the last steps before launching extension support in the beta version and launching the dedicated gallery. But Google can't launch an empty gallery, so it's giving developers a chance to upload their creations. For the most part, it should be a seamless process, at the very least developers have to submit the code and an icon, but they also have the option to include some text, screenshots of the extension in action, and even a YouTub... (read more)]]> Tue, 24 Nov 2009 07:48:00 GMT Softpedia News - Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Chrome-Extensions-Gallery-Opens-Up-for-Developers-127790.shtml Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Chrome-Extensions-Gallery-Opens-Up-for-Developers-127790.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/GrandCentral-Shuts-Down-as-Google-Is-Getting-Ready-to-Take-on-Skype-127702.shtml Google is getting ready for a big push with a full voice communications service in the works, but in the mean time it has to do a little housekeeping. Google Voice, one of Google's hottest products on the mobile front at the moment, came to be after the company acquired GrandCentral, a startup offering pretty much what Voice is offering today. This was back in 2007 and now that Google Voice is getting ready for its big public debut, the GrandCentral website and service is living its final days.

Google sent an email to GrandCentral users, informing them that the service is shutting down and to move completely to Google Voice if they haven't done so already. “We’re writing to let you know that we will be closing down the GrandCentral website as of December 31, 2009,” the email read.

All GrandCentral accounts were upgraded to Google Voice earlier this year, but since that time, you’ve still been able to log-in to your GrandCentral account and listen to old messages there. You will no longer be able to log-in to your GrandCentral account after December 31. Because of this, we strongly suggest downloading any messages or contacts that you want to keep in the next 43 days,” Google also wrote.

This isn't much of a hassle for GrandCentral users, they... (read more)]]> Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:36:00 GMT Softpedia News - Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/GrandCentral-Shuts-Down-as-Google-Is-Getting-Ready-to-Take-on-Skype-127702.shtml Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/GrandCentral-Shuts-Down-as-Google-Is-Getting-Ready-to-Take-on-Skype-127702.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Calendar-Tests-Sneak-Preview-Event-Creator-127669.shtml Google has spread its interests so wide that it’s hard to keep track of all of them. It's also looks like the company may be jumping from one big project to the other while lacking a very focused goal. At the same time though, several services have always been central to the company. Gmail gets most of the credit and it fully deserves it, Docs has also seen a lot of attention lately, but there's an app which has been around for longer and is just as important though it's often overlooked, Google Calendar. It may not look like it, but it's evolving along with the rest of the apps and has recently introduced a new feature which should make it easier to plan an event that doesn't clash with someone else's plans.

It's called “Sneak Preview” and it allows users to see if the people they're adding to an event have other plans at that time. Google is apparently just testing the feature, so not too many get access to it for the moment. These tests are a regular occurrence at Google and, unless something goes horribly wrong, the feature should be rolled out to everyone soon enough, more or less in its current form.

If you get included in the test, you will have to activate the new feature, it's not enabled by default. Sneak Preview is a pretty big overhaul of the event creation menu, mostly i... (read more)]]> Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:26:00 GMT Softpedia News - Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Calendar-Tests-Sneak-Preview-Event-Creator-127669.shtml Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Calendar-Tests-Sneak-Preview-Event-Creator-127669.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/YouTube-to-Add-Support-for-IPv6-127648.shtml The underlying technology powering the Internet is going through a major overhaul as IPv6 is slowly replacing the aging IPv4, the most widely used networking protocol. The adoption rate has been slow but more and more companies are implementing the new protocol. Google is already one of the biggest adopters and is now working on introducing support to its hugely popular video site YouTube.

Implementing the new protocol isn't a big technical hurdle, Google says, but YouTube is one of the biggest and most heavily trafficked websites, so the company isn't setting any hard deadlines for the moment. "YouTube is the IPv6 team's number one priority right now," Erik Kline, IPv6 software engineer at Google, told NetworkWorld. "We haven't said anything about the timeframe for that yet."

Google's IPv6 team has already implemented the protocol for many of the company's online proprieties like its search engine, Alerts, Docs, Finance, Gmail, Health, iGoogle, News, Reader, Picasa, Maps and Wave. However, it's still pretty much a provisionary measure for now as few people access the sites through IPv6 at the moment largely due to the fact that the feature has been implemented by only a small number of ISPs.

"It's somewhere on the order of the 0.2% range of Google users have IPv6 access," Lorenzo Colitti, network engineer a... (read more)]]> Sat, 21 Nov 2009 12:18:00 GMT Softpedia News - Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/YouTube-to-Add-Support-for-IPv6-127648.shtml Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/YouTube-to-Add-Support-for-IPv6-127648.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Download-Google-Chrome-4-0-249-4-127632.shtml Google has pushed a new build to the Chrome dev channel with the usual number of small fixes and tweaks. It's only a minor update but if you want to be on the bleeding edge, you should grab the latest build, Google Chrome 4.0.249.4, from the download link below. The updated version fixes a number of issues across all platforms but the extensions gallery hinted at lately still isn't here.

Anthony Laforge, Google Chrome Program Manager, listed the bug fixes that apply to all platforms, “Some extensions crash after installing 4.0.249.0. Reload on crash infobar causes more crashes.” On Windows, the update “[f]ixed top windows crasher. Fixed a crashing race condition in bookmark synchronization. Make the character encoding indicator visible again on Windows.”

Mac users finally get Silverlight support and some bookmark bar improvements and “[p]asting some text into the Omnibox should no longer crash Google Chrome” on both Mac and Linux. With a big extensions announcement likely coming soon, the dev team is putting some finishing touches ahead of the broader launch like fixing the tab traversal in popups on Windows and several other bugs.

Finally, Google wanted to make sure users realize the fact that the new extension links in the fresh tab page that don't work are not a bug and... (read more)]]> Sat, 21 Nov 2009 10:29:00 GMT Softpedia News - Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Download-Google-Chrome-4-0-249-4-127632.shtml Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Download-Google-Chrome-4-0-249-4-127632.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/YouTube-Cuts-Off-Popcorn-Hour-Set-Top-Boxes-127615.shtml People love online video these days. In some cases, it has even begun to replace old-fashioned TV watching as users connect their PCs or web-enabled set-top boxes to their TV sets and get the best of both worlds. But it's a tough world to make a living in for video sites, not only are they struggling to bring in revenue, they also have to keep content creators, aka TV networks, happy. Put all of these things together and you get another case where a video site cuts off access to a device and, surprisingly, this time it isn't Hulu, it's YouTube.

Starting with next month, users of a line of set-top boxes going by the name of Popcorn Hour are left without access to everyone's favorite chat-video site in what the manufacturer, Syabas Technology, believes to be a somewhat arbitrary move. The company says that it had an agreement with YouTube to access the content through the API the video site offers and the devices have had YouTube videos for more than a year now. Syabas claims that YouTube has changed its Terms of Service (ToS), which it was in its rights to do, so that third-party manufacturers like itself are being blocked from accessing the videos, if they don't pay up anyway.

YouTube wouldn't comment on this particular case but has issued a statement that applies to it, “Since July of 2008, YouTube's ... (read more)]]> Sat, 21 Nov 2009 08:56:00 GMT Softpedia News - Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/YouTube-Cuts-Off-Popcorn-Hour-Set-Top-Boxes-127615.shtml Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/YouTube-Cuts-Off-Popcorn-Hour-Set-Top-Boxes-127615.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Search-to-Get-a-Thorough-Redesign-in-Early-2010-127587.shtml
Google is well known for constantly tweaking and updating its products and its search engine has seen its fair share over the years. Most of the time, those changes are subtle and unnoticeable, but little by little they have contributed to a lot of inconsistencies in the features. Marissa Mayer, Google VP of search and user experience, has had enough and is looking to give the search engine a complete do-over.

“I don’t like jazz, because you never know what’s going to happen next,” Mayer told Search Engine Land comparing the issues with the search engine to the musical style. “I’ve been calling this problem ‘user interface jazz.’ This result looks this way, and that result looks that way [something much different], and it really does slow you down.”

So Google got to wor... (read more)]]> Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:23:00 GMT Softpedia News - Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Search-to-Get-a-Thorough-Redesign-in-Early-2010-127587.shtml Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Search-to-Get-a-Thorough-Redesign-in-Early-2010-127587.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Chrome-OS-The-User-Interface-127525.shtml Google has just revealed its most ambitious undertaking to date, Chrome OS, a new operating system which intends to push the concept in a new direction by moving everything to the cloud. While this game-changing approach is very exciting and raises a lot of questions about the future of operating systems, the web and convergence of the two, the fact is that the first thing most people wanted to know is what it looks like and how has Google tackled the challenge of just having a browser and no other native app.

When the company first announced the project it claimed that everything would be done inside the browser. This was such a radical approach, to have a complete desktop environment inside the Chrome browser, that most people didn't think it was possible. Now that Google has shown the world what's been working on we can safely say that it made true on its promise.

The first actual footage and screenshots of the new operating system were actually a bit disappointing. Chrome is Chrome OS so the new operating system looks just like the browser that some 50 million people are now using monthly as their main browser. Aside from a few subtle cues, Chrome OS looks just like a maximized Chrome window, so if you have been using the Google browser you're not missing out on much.

This was a conscious decision b... (read more)]]> Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:50:00 GMT Softpedia News - Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Chrome-OS-The-User-Interface-127525.shtml Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Chrome-OS-The-User-Interface-127525.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/YouTube-Introduces-Automatic-Transcriptions-for-Videos-127496.shtml YouTube has introduced some pretty interesting technologies which enable users to add automatic text captions to the videos. The feature is only available in several channels for now, as the speech recognition technology it uses isn't exactly perfect but Google says it should improve in time. The video site had enabled users to upload their own captions for about a year now, but the process is time consuming and only a few users have taken advantage of the feature until now.

“Since the original launch of captions in our products, we’ve been happy to see growth in the number of captioned videos on our services, which now number in the hundreds of thousands,” Ken Harrenstien, a Google software engineer working on the features, wrote.

“However, like everything YouTube does, captions face a tremendous challenge of scale...To help address this challenge, we've combined Google's automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology with the YouTube caption system to offer automatic captions, or auto-caps for short,” he added.

There are several related features being introduced at the same time, but the most interesting, albeit the most underdeveloped, is the automatic captions technology. For the videos on which the feature has been made available, users can use the rig... (read more)]]> Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:44:00 GMT Softpedia News - Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/YouTube-Introduces-Automatic-Transcriptions-for-Videos-127496.shtml Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/YouTube-Introduces-Automatic-Transcriptions-for-Videos-127496.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Move-over-Microsoft-Google-Chrome-OS-is-Here-127472.shtml Google has just unveiled its hugely anticipated, web-based operating system, Google Chrome OS. As expected, Google hasn't actually launched the operating system, but it has released the source code in its current state for developers to have a chance to start working on it. From now on, the code will remain open for third-party developers to build and modify. Google wants the actual operating system and the accompanying hardware to be ready for launch in time for the holiday season next year.

As Google stated when it first revealed that it was working on its very own OS, Chrome OS will be completely web-based. There will be no native apps for it, even the tools that will be built by Google and bundled with the OS will be web apps. In a simplified view, Chrome OS is just a specialized version of its browser Chrome running on top of an optimized Linux kernel.

There have been a number of modifications done to Chrome in order to make it function as a full-blown operating system. One of the things Google has introduced consists of persistent application tabs, which will always be available to the user and are fully customizable. Apps can also be run in a "panel" that is a persistent light-weight window, which sits on top of the browser designed for apps like instant messengers. One example of use is a notepad tool that comes with the operating system and that... (read more)]]> Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:08:00 GMT Softpedia News - Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Move-over-Microsoft-Google-Chrome-OS-is-Here-127472.shtml Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Move-over-Microsoft-Google-Chrome-OS-is-Here-127472.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Gmail-Chat-Gets-Custom-Icons-for-Contacts-Using-Android-Phones-127470.shtml Google doesn't really like big product and feature launches. It's about to have one very, very soon as it unleashes Google Chrome OS into the world, but for the most part its products and services evolve slowly with small but regular updates. Sometimes though, these small features may be a lot more important than they would appear at first glance. Take today's announcement of a very small feature available now in Gmail labs notifying users that their chat buddies are currently connected using Android-powered devices.

“Gmail chat status (those green, orange, and red bubbles) indicates if your friends are online or not. But sometimes my buddies appear green when they're not really "online online" — they just have chat open on their Android phones. Turn on Green Robot, a new experiment in Gmail Labs, and you'll see a robot icon next to people who are currently using Android phones,” Chad Yoshikawa, a Google software engineer, wrote.

Moreover, Google has a perfectly legitimate example of why the feature is useful: “when you know the guy on the other end is using his Android phone, you may decide to send shorter, more concise chat messages.” The idea makes perfect sense, typing on most mobile devices is not exactly fun and the small feature can make a lot of d... (read more)]]> Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:41:01 GMT Softpedia News - Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Gmail-Chat-Gets-Custom-Icons-for-Contacts-Using-Android-Phones-127470.shtml Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Gmail-Chat-Gets-Custom-Icons-for-Contacts-Using-Android-Phones-127470.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Chrome-OS-Will-Be-Revealed-Tomorrow-127322.shtml The wait for Google Chrome OS is almost over as the company is getting ready to reveal the upcoming operating system in an event tomorrow at Googleplex, the company's headquarters. It's unclear whether Google will release any actual code or a rough, working version, but there will definitely be plenty of details and an in-depth overview of the web-based OS as well as more clearly laid out plans for the launch schedule.

Rumors about an impending launch surfaced last week and Google has now more or less confirmed them, with the only unknown left being the issue of whether there will be any code available or not. Google sent out invites to several industry insiders announcing that it would reveal a lot of information on the project. The event will be lead by Sundar Pichai, Google’s VP of Product Management, and Matthew Papakipos, Google engineering director for Google Chrome OS.

Google will show the audience just how far along it is with the OS which was only revealed last summer. The dev team must be confident enough with the state of the project if it's ready to reveal it to the world and judging by Google's usual pace and the state of the initial releases of its products its safe to assume that the foundation is well laid out by now. The project, though, is likely to be very rough around the edges and,... (read more)]]> Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:51:00 GMT Softpedia News - Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Chrome-OS-Will-Be-Revealed-Tomorrow-127322.shtml Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Chrome-OS-Will-Be-Revealed-Tomorrow-127322.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Legal-Texts-Are-Now-Available-in-Google-Scholar-127278.shtml Often it’s not the scarcity of information but its abundance that is the problem. This is especially true online, the web holds huge amounts of information, yet finding it can be more hassle than it should in some cases. And it's even harder for very specialized information which, while publicly available, can be buried deep enough that it's practically useless. That is why Google is now introducing full legal texts in Google Scholar, making it easier to find legal options on any number of topics albeit limited to the US for now.

“Starting today, we're enabling people everywhere to find and read full text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts using Google Scholar. You can find these opinions by searching for cases (like Planned Parenthood v. Casey), or by topics (like desegregation) or other queries that you are interested in,” Google's Anurag Acharya writes. “We think this addition to Google Scholar will empower the average citizen by helping everyone learn more about the laws that govern us all.”

Google Scholar enables users to find all manner of academic and research papers. As the name implies, it's not exactly designed to be a thorough research tool, but rather to come to the aid of those doing a school project or just for per... (read more)]]> Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:27:00 GMT Softpedia News - Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Legal-Texts-Are-Now-Available-in-Google-Scholar-127278.shtml Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Legal-Texts-Are-Now-Available-in-Google-Scholar-127278.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Search-Results-Now-Feature-a-Breadcrumb-Display-127265.shtml
“Today we're rolling out an improvement that replaces the URL in some search results with a hierarchy showing the precise location of the page on the website. The new display provides valuable context and new navigation options. The changes are rolling out now and should be available globally in the next few days,” Harvey Jones and Daniel Rocha, software engineers in the Result UI Team, wrote.

You hardly realize it, but the page address is a huge factor in choosing a result which you believe is relevant. Having the exact URL is good for determining if the result comes from a site you're familiar with and you trust, but for navigational information it isn't always very useful. With the new “breadcrum... (read more)]]> Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:46:00 GMT Softpedia News - Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Search-Results-Now-Feature-a-Breadcrumb-Display-127265.shtml Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Search-Results-Now-Feature-a-Breadcrumb-Display-127265.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Experimental-Image-Swirl-Search-Lands-in-Google-Labs-127249.shtml Google enjoys a very solid and comfortable lead in search right now and this is true for most types of searches, including image search. This doesn't mean that it can rest on its laurels, if anything Google is the company that showed others just that, so it's now launching a totally new way of discovering images via some interesting technologies and an experimental user interface. The new feature is called Google Image Swirl and is very similar to the Wonder Wheel view in the main search.

“Today, we've launched an experimental feature in Labs called Google Image Swirl, which builds on new computer vision research to cluster similar images into representative groups in a fun, exploratory interface,” Aparna Chennapragada, product manager, and Yushi Jing, Google Research, explain the feature. “For example, if you search on Image Swirl for [washington], you'll see 12 image thumbnails including President Washington, the Washington Monument, a map of Washington D.C. and the Capitol Building. Once you find the group of images you're interested in, you can click on the thumbnail and a cluster of images will "swirl" into view.”

Image Swirl is confined to Google Labs for now, but even if it doesn't get included in the main image search in this exact form, the overall idea behind the exp... (read more)]]> Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:32:00 GMT Softpedia News - Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Experimental-Image-Swirl-Search-Lands-in-Google-Labs-127249.shtml Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Experimental-Image-Swirl-Search-Lands-in-Google-Labs-127249.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni) http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Gets-Ready-for-Full-Blown-Extensions-Support-in-Chrome-4-0-249-0-127207.shtml Google Chrome is now almost certain to get much better support for extensions very soon, at least in the developer channel builds. After the first clues of an online extensions gallery were spotted yesterday, Google made it more or less official with the latest Chrome release, which now features links and notifiers to a still non-existent extensions gallery. What's more, Google's own sample extensions are now working on in the latest Chrome builds.

While Google doesn't say it, with the latest Chrome 4.0.249.0 ,extension support is almost fully baked both on the technology front but also in the user interface. Users will notice that the corner in the new tab page has changed and now links to an online extensions gallery. There is also a notification at the bottom, alerting users that Chrome now supports extensions and bookmark sync.

But probably the most telling clue is the fact that the extensions which Google provides as examples can now be installed with just a couple of clicks. There are three Google extensions at the moment, a Gmail checker, a feed subscriber and the BuildBot Monitor. The Gmail checker is self explanatory, it adds a small icon to the toolbar showing how many unread emails you have. The feed reader subscriber extension adds an RSS icon to the address bar when feeds are available in the page, exactly like Firefox handles the function... (read more)]]> Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:22:00 GMT Softpedia News - Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Gets-Ready-for-Full-Blown-Extensions-Support-in-Chrome-4-0-249-0-127207.shtml Google News http://news.softpedia.com/news/Google-Gets-Ready-for-Full-Blown-Extensions-Support-in-Chrome-4-0-249-0-127207.shtml#review_zone Softpedia News (Lucian Parfeni)