@ a glance : Verizon picks Microsoft search over Google, Yahoo

Verizon Communications Inc picked Microsoft Corp to provide Internet search services for cell phones, in what is seen as a blow to rivals Google Inc and Yahoo Inc. Full Story : Reuters…..

@ a glance : Chinese web portal porn apology

A leading Chinese search engine has apologised for providing links to pornographic content following an official internet crackdown. Full Story : BBC…….

Twitter hit by phishing

Some Twitter users were lured into giving away their passwords in a phishing attack. If you receive an email notification that takes you to any site similar to Twitter look at the URL carefully before login. Phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

Search Magazines in Google Book Search

Google announced its new initiative to digitize thousands of magazines. Google has partnered with many publishers as diverse as New York Magazine, Popular Mechanics, and Ebony. Users who want to search a phrase only in the magazines can choose that option through the Google book search‘s “advanced” function. The company kicked off book search in 2006 with the goal of building a colossal digital archive of printed books.

Facebook Users face “Koobface” attack

The new virus dubbed “Koobface”, can gain access to a Facebook user’s friends network and send out a message with an enticing title. The message contains hyper links and when clicked it asks the user to update the Flash Player. They are then prompted to download or open the file flash_player.exe, a new Koobface variant. Norton anti virus detected the downloaded file as virus, but some of the widely used anti virus software failed to detect the threat.

Rising Google search terms of 2008

What have you been searching for lately?. Google has the statistics for what most of us are searching on the net. Google listed the following 10 terms as the fastest rising search terms in the US for 2008.  There is no surprise  seeing obama and iphone in the list, but I’m bit curious what people are actually looking for by searching “surf the channel”.

1. obama
2. facebook
3. att
4. iphone
5. youtube
6. fox news
7. palin
8. beijing 2008
9. david cook
10. surf the channel

Gmail Launches Video Chat

Google launched Gmail voice and video chat, making it easier for people around the world to chat in high-quality video for free right within Gmail. To get started, open a Gmail chat window, click on the “Options” menu at the bottom, and choose “Add voice/video chat,” which will walk you through a one-time installation of a free plugin (a quick 2 MB download). When you re-open Gmail you’ll notice your “Options” link in your chat window has changed to “Video & more”. Open this menu and click “Start video chat” to see and hear your partner in high-quality video. You can pop out the video and change its size and position, or switch to full screen.

YouTube Sponsored Videos

Google launched a new advertising program on YouTube, which allows publishers to promote their video on YouTube and make it easier for people to find it. When people searching for videos, sponsored videos will be listed along side the search results. According to Google,13 hours of video has been uploaded to YouTube every minute.

Microsoft preps Office to run in a web browser

Microsoft unveiled plans to offer its Office suite in web browser. Google already offer this service through its Google docs service. Microsoft said that the Office Web apps would work with Safari and Firefox. The Office Web applications will be lightweight versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.

Google Moves toward OpenID

OpenID is a shared identity service, which allows Internet users to log on to many different web sites using a single user name and password, single sign-on, eliminating the need for a different user name and password for each site. Google announced that it will become a single sign-on provider using OpenID solutions. This will allow Google users to log in with their Google account information when signing up for new accounts on other sites. Microsoft and Yahoo have already taken step to offer this service, using OpenID.

Discovering Interesting Blogs -1:

Blogosphere is a collective term encompassing all blogs and their interconnections. So how big is that?. As of this writing there are over 112 million blogs and still growing according to Technorati. But can we assume only the blogs which have great content are only popular. Of course not, there are truly hidden gems which are yet to be discovered. At Snugd we try to find one blog each week which has interesting content, a contribution for the community we all are part of. A word of caution - individual tastes may vary.Without further ado…we present…

Dismantle Civilisation -The only solution is a change of culture.

Bloggers at the endgames believes that the natural world is under attack. Our global economy & corporate capitalist system is destroying the planetary eco system at a pace that few of us can comprehend. Old growth forests are all but gone.
This blog hopes to pull together many diverging strands of information, to illustrate that the problem lies not with any one simple factor, but with the whole culture that we call civilization. The way we have been raised to view humans as superior and separate to nature, and hence how we behave in relation to our surroundings is ultimately the problem.

Online Advertising Spending will Continue to Grow

According to New Study in UK, online advertising spending will continue to grow, and approach £5 Billion ($8.7 billion) in 2012. In 2007, spending on UK Internet advertising topped £2.6 billion ($5.3 billion), up more than 30% from 2006. The growth in online advertising is due partly to growing agency expertise and advertiser understanding of digital channels.

YouTube Asks for ‘Video Your Vote’

YouTube’s Video Your Vote, a non-partisan program produced in partnership with PBS, encourages American voters to document their voting experiences. Interviews with fellow voters, first person accounts, voter enthusiasm and documenting problems are the few ideas suggested by YouTube to record a video. YouTube hopes to make ‘Vieo Your Vote’ channel a one-stop-shop to view exclusive videos from voter registration experts, election reform activists, and state officials.

Joost Launches New Video Service

Joost launched its new Flash-based, download-free global web video service. Up until now Joost offers video content from CBS, Showtime, Viacom and many other providers. The new service offer a number of ways people can interact with video and with other people on Joost. Users can voice their opinions, they can find out what their friends are watching or they may interact with others in the Joost community through groups around their favorite shows, characters or artists.

Facebook Offers Live Search

Recently,Facebook has integrated Microsoft’s Live search into its website. Visitors to the social networking site can notice when typing in the search bar on Facebook brings a drop-down menu with an option choose to search Facebook or search the Web. If the option to search the web is chose the results page contains link to do an “Advanced search on Live.com.” Microsoft already signed a $240 million advertising deal with Facebook. It is another desperate attempt by Microsoft to gain search market share.

Orkut Blocked Communities Which Support Terrorists.

Social networking site Orkut has blocked access to a community on the site that supports terrorists in India. The blocked community is known to be “Indian Mujahideen Fan Club” and which appears on a search of Orkut’s communities. The community says “Support them. They are fighting for our rights and justice”. Orkut is owned by Google. India has the third-largest number of users of Orkut.

Group Boycotts Facebook Opposing New Design

The group which opposes Facebook’s new design has gathered nearly 2.7 million supporters. The group, “1,000,000 against the new Facebook layout,” is organizing a two day boycott of the site. Among Facebook’s goals with the new design were to reduce the clutter of members’ profile pages and restore the social network’s clean and organized layout.

Twitter Launches Election Site.

Microblogging site Twitter launched election twitter page which displays all of the tweets discussing about the presidential candidates, in real time. Users can also filter the main time line of posts by candidate name. The feed can be paused by scrolling the mouse over the tweets.

“We’re filtering hundreds of Twitter updates per minute to create a new source for gathering public opinion about the presidential election and a new way for you to share your thoughts.”, Twitter said about their new service.

Update : According to one of our reader Simon Owens , C-SPAN has launched a Debate Hub that provides this function as well. It also allows users to mashup and edit videos from each debate, even while the debate is still going on. You can find the hub over here: http://debatehub.c-span.org/

Listen Music on Yahoo Search.

Yahoo launches a new feature on its search pages which allows users who search for an artist with available content on Yahoo! will be able to listen to songs by the artist right on that page. The Yahoo Search music playback is powered by Rhapsody and offers full-song playback for more than 5 million tracks. Each user can listen to 25 free full-length tracks every 30 days. Once 25 songs have been played, users can subscribe to the Rhapsody Unlimited streaming service or continue to listen to an unlimited number of 30-second samples until the next month begins. Yahoo!’s FoxyTunes Player enables the on-demand, web-based playback of music within Yahoo! Search and throughout Yahoo! Music.

Internet to Africa, Google Takes Initiative

O3b Project, named after the “other 3bn” people, is an ambitious project which provide internet access to 3 billion people in Africa and other emerging market. The project will be backed by some global giants. John Malone, the cable television magnate, HSBC and Google join hands to to set up O3b Networks. The estimated cost of the project is $750 million and when its completed cost of bandwidth will be reduced by 95% in those areas. As the first stage of the project, 16 low-earth orbit satellites will be ordered from Thales Alenia Space, the French aerospace group.