Google Apps Marketplace Opens For B2Business
Taking a page from Salesforce.com, last night Google formally launched the anticipated Google Apps Marketplace at its “Campfire One” developer event. In short it allows companies and developers to gain access and sell into Google’s “2 million businesses and 25 million Google Apps users.” The marketplace launches with 50 partners including Intuit and competitor Zoho.
Google [...]
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Twitter Engineer Deletes Tweet to Avoid Developer Backlash?
Twitter Engineer, Alex Payne, has inserted his foot in his mouth. Actually he inserted a big chirping bird in his mouth and ended up with a fail whale of backlash. This tweet started it:
That apparently caused all kinds of angst among Twitter developers, concerned that third-party apps–such as Seesmic and Twhirl–would become obsolete.
So much angst that Payne has apparently deleted the tweet! You’d think he of all people would know that deleting tweets just stirs things up more–and tweets never fully vanish from the web, as the above screenshot proves.
Payne also had to kiss and make up with those that flooded him with @replies:
Still, there’s one sure way to take the heat off any impending new features for the web interface. What’s that, you ask? Simple! Go ahead and launch the Twitter ads that are rumored to be imminent–that will give users something different to complain about. 
Human-powered Search Gets More Humans: ChaCha Hooks up with Facebook
Human-powered search engine ChaCha has hung on (let’s face it) longer than anyone thought possible. Although it abandoned guided web-based search almost two years ago, ChaCha is still thriving in the mobile Q&A market. Back in December, they raised $7M in funding—and it looks like the ultimate result of that cash was an API and a Facebook app.
Yep—ChaCha’s getting into social search. The Facebook app takes questions users post to friends and connections and broadcasts them to ChaCha. The app checks the database of pre-loaded answers to see if they’ve already covered that topic.
Definitely not an app I’m interested in. I’ve joked with friends in Gmail chat that Google should just popup with the answer to any of our factual questions right in our chat window. But really, we definitely wouldn’t appreciate the intrusion (even if we were just going to google that same question in a minute anyway—although TechCrunch doesn’t clarify whether ChaCha actually supplies the answer or just suggests that it might already know the answer). Most of the questions I pose my social network are going to be opinion-based, rather than factual—so ChaCha’s can’t to help there.
However, ChaCha has also turned this into a kind of game—the more participating questions you answer, the more points you get. They’ve also added a number of social features, including the option to have an “Ask ChaCha” box on your profile, share questions and their answers on selected friends’ walls and more.
Meanwhile, ChaCha has also developed an API to allow other developers to interface with their Q&A database. They’re also the #1 SMS search service, according to Nielsen Mobile, answering more than a million SMS questions a day.
What do you think? Should ChaCha even count as a “search engine” since they’re serving up solely structured data? Do you use ChaCha, and will you use their new apps and APIs?
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OneRiot Launches RiotWise Ad Network For Real-Time Search
OneRiot has announced the full rollout of RiotWise, a service that it calls “the first ad network for the realtime web.” Today’s launch follows a pilot phase that the company says was successful in allowing developers to monetize mobile apps, desktop clients, social search engines, and similar applications.
Partners during the pilot phase included Digsby and [...]
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YouTube Gets (Not Really) Shorter Links
Just a week after Google launched its URL shortener, Goo.gl, it’s premiering another one, this time for YouTube. And because we can’t stand to learn yet another URL shortener name, they’re going with youtu.be. To use the new shortener, you just append the video ID to youtu.be/, so http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKOTClyVrIc become http://youtu.be/PKOTClyVrIc.
Shall we count them together? That saves us 13 15 whole characters. Now, in a limited-capacity message, like Twitter, those 13 15 characters might come in handy (“no rickroll!!”). Clearly, youtu.be is not intended as a full-featured URL shortener: it won’t work for other domains, there are no custom options, and it’s not as short as possible.
In the YouTube blog post, they say that this integrates with the AutoShare features of account holders to link up with Google Reader and Twitter. However, if you haven’t enabled AutoShare, or are not a signed-in member, and you want to just Tweet from the Share menu below the video window, they haven’t put youtu.be into action yet. In fact, a lot of the time, if you want to use it, you’ll have to manually remove the other parts of the video URL.
The feature does have its good points: as the blog post points out, when you see a youtu.be link, you know you’re going to a YouTube video. Its integration with Twitter allows developers to show thumbnails, embed directly or track stats in real-time.
What do you think? Will you use youtu.be?
It’s Coming: the Google Chrome OS Netbook
Last month, there was a minor furor over Google’s Chrome OS. The rumors were flying that it was about to “launch” and you could run it on a netbook before Thanksgiving. Of course, that wasn’t quite the case—as Google had promised all along, it was merely opening its code to developers to prepare for the eventual full launch. (Of course, if you really wanted it, you could always run the code through a compiler—and cross your fingers.)
Well, that full launch is still coming. Google’s original timeline set devices coming out in the second half of 2010. According to TechCrunch, a Google-branded device might be ready for the holiday season of 2010—right on schedule.
Hm? Oh, yeah, I said Google-branded. I know, first we hear about the Google Nexus phone (a “real” Gphone?), created directly for Google, and now a netbook. I thought they didn’t want to get into the hardware….
Says TechCrunch:
Our understanding is that Google intends to have the devices built, branded with Google, and then sell them directly to consumers. The only firm tech spec we’ve heard is that they’ll be mobile enabled, and likely tied to one or more carriers with a subsidy.
Previously, as with Android, Google had said that they intended to work with established hardware brands (from Acer to Toshiba) for the devices. TC points out that outsourcing their own device might make integration with a new OS easier.
What do you think? Will we see a Google-branded, Google OS Netbook in the next year? Or will Google really stick to its original plans of using established computer makers?
Google Chrome OS; Taking the “P” Out of Your Current POS Computer
It’s going to be a whole year before consumers get their hands on Google’s Chrome OS, but developers were given early access to the project, so they can prepare for the launch.
There’s not much "marketing" in this announcement, but it’s Google and it’s big, so we thought you’d like to know about it.
Those with a passing interest will find the video below to sufficient to explain what’s coming:
Those that want more details can head over to TechCrunch.
Those that want to the details from the perspective of a Google employee should head to Matt Cutts’ blog.
That’s all!
Yahoo Allows Search Ads In BOSS Via 3rd Party Partner
The Yahoo Search Blog announced that BOSS developers can now add Yahoo Search ads in their search results. This will give developers a way to help monetize the BOSS applications they have built.
How do you get ads in your BOSS results? You have to apply for approval by one of Yahoo’s 3rd party [...]
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Do the Wave: Google Wave to Roll Out to 100,000 Testers
I’m certainly jealous. Google first showed off its new integrated communications platform, Google Wave, back at Google I/O in May. When I first heard the stories, I was all ready to roll my eyes and berate the new technology. IM and email and pictures and social networking-type stuff in the same place? Get real.
And then I watched the video. I don’t doubt that it would be overwhelming to some. But the more you look at Google Wave, the cooler it looks. And now 100,000 testers are going to get to look pretty closely at the platform, starting tomorrow.
eWeek.com reports that the test will reach consumer and business users. Danny Sullivan also points out that this test may also include the capability to invite others—because, hey, what good is a communications platform if you don’t have anyone to communicate with? Read Write Web clarifies that each person invited will have the opportunity to nominate eight people to join, and Google will continue to exercise its final discretion.
As a refresher, some of the cool features of Wave include:
- Online/offline chat
- One-on-one or group chat
- In-line replies within chats (”waves”)
- Photo sharing, events and link sharing
- (Eventually) integration with email (Right, guys?)
More features are to come—some of which are pretty vital, such as privacy and permissions features, the ability to remove people from waves, etc.
RWW reports the invites will be coming to select people from developers currently working on their sandbox server, people who’ve signed up on the Google Wave site and some Google Apps enterprise users. IE users will be prompted to add Google Chrome Frame to their browser.
As the back-end support for the system grows, more invites will be issued—some to those so graciously nominated by their friends who are already testing. If none of your friends are on Wave yet, RWW says you can always play with the robots—no seriously, developers have already created bots for Google Wave. (These are the good kind, not the evil ones. I hope.)
What do you think? Are you looking forward to Wave? Is an invitation waiting in your inbox? (If so—please! Tell us whether it’s all we dreamed it would be!)
Google Chroming Out Internet Explorer
The browser wars just got ugly. Google Chrome was unveiled just over a year ago (really? wow…). Sony is using them as their default browser and Chrome is coming to the Mac. And now it’s coming to Internet Explorer.
Back in January, we noted that Google was telling Internet Explorer/Gmail users to download Chrome for a faster email experience. And now they’ve launched Google Chrome Frame, which operates within IE but gives users the Chrome experience. Well, officially, it’s “an open source plug-in that brings HTML5 and other open web technologies to Internet Explorer.”
Mostly GCF is for developers, to allow their users to access Chrome’s faster JavaScript engine and other capabilities. But somehow I imagine they wouldn’t object to some regular IE users to giving Chrome a test run this way.
And for those of you who aren’t big readers, Google has a video:
What do you think? Would Google Chrome Frame be useful to you?
