Google plans on offering searchers the ability to be able to see what Google music has to offer in their search results. Google also adds that one of the top 10 search terms of all time are the words “music” and “lyrics”. Google’s vice president of search, Marissa Mayer claims that most of the Google users love music and are mainly looking for music to download.

It can’t be denied that music is one the most searched terms in any search engine. This is because people love music, and they will find ways to get its lyrics. That is why Google wants to enter in to the online music market, which will cater to millions of music lovers. Currently, Apple still covers a wide area of online music market with around 70% of worldwide sales. Some European firms like Spotify begin to attain popularity.

More than 2 million users in the UK and more than 6 million across Europe now are using the free music-streaming service, which was, launched last year, 2008. That is why Google wants to enter into this kind of service. This is because most people now are searching and downloading different genres of music, which will satisfy them. Google’s new collaboration hopes to compete with the success of these services. Google is now offering a variety of free downloads of licensed tracks in China. They said that they are trying to look for potential partners in some other countries to get some new and varied music. Well, this could be a great shift with, regards to the improvement of Google. There will surely be a lot of new users that will subscribe to these new services especially to those music lovers and trendsetters. Google is making a lot of dynamic and competitive ways to maintain their image as one of the most used search engine nowadays.

Vodafone has launched Vodafone 360, a suit for net services for mobiles and PCs, that lets users unite customer contacts with info from social networking portals such as Facebook. Vodafone 360 is expected to replace its earlier offering Vodafone Live.

Initially, Vodafone 360 will be launched in eight European countries. The suite is optimized for two handsets from Samsung, alongside four models of Nokia.

At the heart of the new service was the address book, which pulls together mobile, messaging and social networking contacts from social networking services like Facebook, Google Talk, and Windows Live Messenger. Another notable feature of Vodafone 360 is that it is not limited to Vodafone customers alone. It can still be used even if customers defect to a new service provider later. At present, using Vodafone 360, users can access as many as 1000 applications, and the list is still growing.

Vodafone is one of the largest mobile networks with 315 million+ customers worldwide.

Gmail lets Internet users write/send e-mail messages, archive documents/emails, chat online, and store contact lists.

Clarifying on the issue, Google Inc has posted a note stating that all e-mail service was working by 11 a.m. ET, and the problems have only caused email to slow down a bit, and it did not crash as some news reports had claimed. The company in its report further stated that “A problem with Google Contacts caused many Gmail users to experience slowness and degraded service for about an hour today.” “We’re sorry for the inconvenience. As usual, we’ll provide an incident report on the Google Apps Status Dashboard, where we also gave ongoing status updates as this issue progressed.”

As with the previous cases of Gmail outage, the current episode has also triggered an animated discussion/debate in the online community, especially among those who rely heavily on Gmail for their professional as well as daily personal communication. But this time around, fortunately, the outage was short lived, and before most of its users could knew about it, Gmail was able to put its defense back in place, inside an hour or so since the outage occurred. Perhaps, these days, Google Inc has become well versed in damage control management as well!

However, before you jump into the Twitter bandwagon, you should understand that Twitter is one complex beast to tame. If you don’t know what you’re doing, your faulted efforts can easily backfire. But when used by the right and skillful hands, this tool can bring torrents of traffic (and profits) to your website and pocket before you know it! But here’s the question – how should you use Twitter and make it work to your advantage?

There are some Twitter tips and techniques written below that is aimed to help you to drive traffic your website

• Communicate effectively! Think about it – you only have 140 characters at your disposal. You better make sure that each Twitter post you make educates to establish yourself as an authority in your niche and intrigues your followers to know more about your product and service.
• There’s no doubt about it – managing your Twitter accounts can be a BIG pain! But why spend most of your time managing it when you can easily communicate and respond with Twitter with the help of different desktop applications?

  You see, there are different software packages and applications out there that allow you to handle multiple Twitter accounts… every tweet – outgoing or incoming are easily viewed, replied to, and managed with these Twitter desktop applications that are scattered all over the net. See a comprehensive list of Twitter Tools and Applications

• Don’t forget to link back to your website! You see, search engines – especially Google, love the Twitter tweets and they get indexed fast than any website could. True, you cannot post text links that point back to your website… BUT they are links no matter how you look at them! The BIG search engines will follow them and they will result in indexing of your pages.
• People on Twitter love to ask questions about things they’re passionate about. Heck! Some of them even ask for actual product feedback and recommendation. Make sure that you are around to answer their questions and provide quality info.

Without further adieu, let’s get started!

Use Your Profile To Your Advantage!
Make sure that you have included a picture in your Twitter profile. How to pick the right picture? Well, there’s no definite rule but you need to make sure it says something about yourself.  Some are using their children’s picture, others opt for their branded logos… the list could go on.

However, since we’re trying to establish ourselves as an authority within our niche or market, it’s best that we go with pictures that people within the niche could easily relate to. For example, if you have a website promoting chess books and related stuff, why not use a pawn as your avatar?

Aside from that, you can also tweak your Twitter profile’s background. The website has provided some resources for this, but I would recommend finding and downloading the appropriate background from other sites. Or, if that doesn’t cut, you can have someone to do it for you.

140 Characters ONLY!
Yes,  fellas.  You’ve read that right – you only have 140 characters to impress or WOW your audience (commonly known as followers). That’s not a lot. So forget about the long introduction, drop all the hype, and make sure that your post is something that inspires, entertains, educates, and encourages other people to follow you.

Don’t Be Pushy!
Promoting and educating your followers about your product, website, or service is cool. But pushing them into your followers’ faces is NOT! Personally, I have promoted my blog and the blog posts in it. But I do so in a way that intrigues them… makes them want to know more! Forget about selling your service hard through Twitter – that’s a surefire way to lose all your followers and get spanked by Twitter!

There are other tips and techniques about using Twitter in a more effective and productive way. But that’s another story. Nail down these basics and you’ll be ready to advance in the Twitter traffic-sucking industry in no time!

Many people are excited about Google Wave because it will recreate how people communication and do business online. Google unarguably will revolutionize collaboration and communication through this platform. Even if the creators have imparted a few vague details about Google Wave, from the looks of it, Google is on a mission to bring communication to a much higher level. Google Wave brings together chat, email, photo editing and live collaborative editing into a single, simple and interactive interface.

Google Wave Defined

First off, what is this Google Wave and why is everyone so excited about its release? Since there are a lot of articles in the web today and you won’t probably have enough time to read them all, here is the summary. Google Wave is a platform for real time communication. Every communication aspect is combined here such as email, social networking, instant messages, chat, wikis and project management. This integration will be used for a sophisticated client for in browser communication. It will now be easy for you to tag along your whole group of friends or even your business partners so that you can discuss anything that has happened on that day and even share files with them without too much trouble. Now, Google, the company itself describes this “wave” as conversations and documents with equivalent parts.

Google Wave Features

Now a lot of people are wondering what is so special about this Google Wave. Obvious enough, it is from Google and you what they say, when it comes from Google it must good. Because of its several features, we are immediately curious about it. Now let us take a look at some of them. First it is real time. This allows you to view what other people are typing on their keyboards, character by character. Another feature is its ability to be embedded on any blog you have created or any website. There are virtually no limitations here. Now, when it comes to the applications and the extensions of Google Wave, they are very much comparable to Facebook or the popular iGoogle gadget. If you are one of those site developers, you can build and create your own applications within these waves. When we speak of applications here, these can be anything starting from bots to those complicated real time games.

Onto the Wiki functionality, this interesting feature emphasizes that Google Wave is shared. In this case, every detail written can be edited by everyone. This being said, you will be able to correct misinformation and even add up to what the others have provided in case they have missed something. As an option, you can insert your own commentaries based on the developing conversations. Developers are also very much appreciative because of the fact that Google Wave is open source. This fosters innovation and implementation. Another aspect that you will find useful is the playback feature, which allows you to review what other people have said earlier.

Natural language, on the other hand, is part of Google Wave, which corrects your spelling automatically. This even goes all the way to knowing the difference between congruent words such as bean and been. Also, this is able to translate words dynamically. Now, with email, you may have observed that you have to attach every single file that you have to send to your recipient. This is quite tiresome especially if you have a lot of files to send. Now with drag and drop file sharing, it is convenient for you to dispatch the files. Simply drag and drop within the Google Wave platform and each and every one will be able to gain access quickly.

These are just some of the features but as you can see, they are extremely remarkable that you may never help yourself in getting excited.

Who Created Google Wave?

Obviously it’s Google. But who did exactly? Originally, the Google team from Sydney, Australia was the one who first thought about this. Special mention goes out to two brothers namely Lars and Jens Rasmussen along with their project manager, Stephanie Hannon. These people were the same persons who were involved in the highly acclaimed Google Maps. Although the Google Wave product will not be released until later this year, there are a lot of people who are expecting that this will be a great program that will reinvent online communication. And for history freaks out there, Google Wave was officially announced during the I/O Developer conference on May 28, 2009.

Terminologies You Will Encounter

A lingo in itself, you will only understand what Google Wave is all about if you are able to take in what the terminologies being used mean. There are a few definitions that you have to learn so that you will grasp what Google Wave is all about and hopefully gain knowledge regarding this new project from Google.

Wave -  This refers to a particular threaded conversation. It does not matter here how many people are involved. You can safely say “I will wave you” soon enough without flagging grammar geeks. Actually, it can include only one person, groups or even robots. To make it simpler, you can take for example your entire instant messaging history with someone. Whatever you have discussed in a single conversation or a chat is considered as a wave.

Wavelet - Like “wave” this is a threaded conversation as well but this is only a part of the wave or a larger conversation. This is like a single instant messaging conversation, which is a small part of a bigger chat and history. Although they are a fraction of the wave, they can be managed and created separately from the main one. With blips, they are smaller than wavelets so this means that they are a single and individual message. They are like a single line of a conversation from your IM. These blips can have others linked to them and these are called children. Additionally, you can choose whether you would go for a published or unpublished a blip. It is sort of like you will type a message and then change your mind so you did not send it. In line with this, the content inside the blip is known as a document. Seemingly they refer to the words or characters or the files that have something to do with the blip.

Wave Extensions -  These are small applications that functions inside the wave. Thus, they are what you can play with while you are engaged in a wave. There are two types of these. The first one is a gadget wherein you will be able to participate in. Many of such are created based on the OpenSocial platform from Google. For those who still find this quite unclear, you can compare them to the applications on Facebook and the iGoogle gadgets. Meanwhile, robots are the automated participants in a wave. They are able to chat with other people and interrelate with waves. They also have the ability to provide outside information from a wide variety of sources such as Twitter. Besides that, they check the contents that are included in the wave and based on those examinations they will be able to perform some actions. For example, there is a mention of stock name these robots will provide a stock quote for you.

Embedded Wave - This is the method that you will do so that you can take the Google Wave along with the conversation and then put them in a blog or a website. Once done, other users will be able to utilize this like a chatroom. This is now their way to contact you or communicate with you.

An Overview on Google Wave Gadgets

As previously mentioned, a gadget is half of the types of wave extensions. One thing that you will like about these is that they are applications that are fully functional. According to Google, they are responsible for changing the appearance and feel of these waves though this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Now, with Google Wave, absolutely any OpenSocial or iGoogle gadget will be able to run here. So when you think about it, this means that Google Wave has been successfully created since it is able to support a lot of applications already. Another fact about gadgets is that when they are built within the wave, they can fully take advantage of interactions in real time with multiple users. For you to understand clearly, you can think of this s an online game with users that are participating actively. Hence, it is similar to your Myspace and Facebook applications which take a chance on your growing friend network to build games, make quizzes and create applications as well so that you will generate a more meaningful and more valuable application.

Gadgets are exclusive to individual waves and not on the users and this is what makes them different to your social network applications on your profile. A gadget then belongs to everyone who is included in the wave. Also, they do not possess titles so that they can easily associate to the whole conversation. Examples of gadgets that are already built within the Google Wave are Sudoku, Bidder, which converts the wave into some kind of an auction and then the Maps gadget. The latter allows you to collaborate with Google Maps.

Understanding Google Wave Robots

As you have reads, this is the other form of extensions in Google Wave. Here, you can compare them to the sense of having another person in the conversation. The significant point here is that they are automated. They are pretty much like the instant messaging robots in the early stages of technology but of course they are far more forceful. These robots have the ability to modify the information in conversations. In addition to that, they can interact with the users, pull information from other sources and correspond with other waves.

Because these robots behave like they are ordinary users, you can definitely define their acts based on what is happening in the chat. You can create one that goes like “modify the word cat to rat.” It can be as simple as that or you may choose to build one that is as complex as a debugger. With these abilities, it is no wonder that we will be able to see some really advanced robots in the near future.

Robots that are available include Stocky, which brings out stock prices whenever there is a mention of a stock quote, Debuggy and Tweety, which is designed to display the tweets within the wave.

Google Wave Embed

If you have a Youtube account, you are well informed about embedding a video into your blog. However, Doogle Wave embed, it is a little more complex than that. Still, this is what Google Wave Embedding is all about: to bring forth waves or conversations into a third party website. Embedded Waves are excellent because they support several functions that are included in the definite Google Wave client. This includes the dropping and dragging of files feature.

Even though the Wave Embeds is still young, Google has already produced two that is to say the Multiple Extensions Embed and the Youtube Playlist Discuss, which lets you converse about a video through a wave. In the meantime, the former tolerates interaction with numerous waves on one page alone.

Evidently, Google has once again showcased how apt their team is. With this new brainchild, they will continue to outdo their competitions. Some believe that Google Wave is the next trend for social media while others doubt the security and the confidentiality of the information they have provided. Given that this is plugged into your Twitter, Myspace accounts or blogs, it seems like Google owns everything that is published on the Internet via this new communication platform. No matter what other people may believe in, there are still countless individuals and groups who are waiting for the release of Google Wave, that includes us. Let us stay positive about this progression, until then, just be ready to Wave.

“We are excited to announce the launch of a mobile version of Google Book Search, opening up over 1.5 million mobile public domain books in the US (and over half a million outside the US) for you to browse”, the company said.

The Internet search giant, in a post on Thursday on the Google Book Search blog, said mobile versions of the books could be read on devices such as the Apple iPhone or T-Mobile G1, which is powered by Google’s Android software.

“These new mobile editions are optimized to be read on a small screen,” Google said. “With this launch, we believe that we’ve taken an important step toward more universal access to books.”

To access the mobile version of Google Book Search a user needs to type http://books.google.com/m into the Web browser of their iPhone or Android phone.

Google’s announcement comes just days ahead of the expected unveiling by Amazon of a new generation version of its popular electronic book reader, the Kindle, at a New York press conference on Monday.

Amazon is also planning to make its online store of e-books for the Kindle available on mobile phones, the New York Times reported on Friday.

“We are excited to make Kindle books available on a range of mobile phones,” Drew Herdener, an Amazon spokesman, told the Times. “We are working on that now.”

The Amazon spokesman did not provide any further details. Google will initially only be offering books in the public domain — those which are not under copyright — for mobile phones.

Amazon, on the other hand, offers the latest releases and 230,000 titles in all, including 103 of the 112 current New York Times bestsellers.

What features should be added into Chrome to make it a better browser!

• Extension Support: Today, a browsers does not offer only surfing on the net. There are extensions for Firefox which makes it very easy to customize even for an average computer user. What Google should do here is not to call developers to build extensions for Chrome. Instead, they should make their browser to be compatible with the existing Firefox extensions.
• Customizable Skin: It would be another plus if users would be able to change UI of browser or download ready themes from Internet and setup it with one click.
• Did you know that Chrome does now work under Mac and Linux? If Google want to get a place in the browser market, they should consider releasing different builds for each operating systems.
• Support Mode: It is quite often that Firefox users have to switch their browsers to Internet Explorer or activate IEtab extension for certain web applications since they do not work with Firefox. Most of Webmasters started to build/re-structure their applications to make it compatible with Firefox. Chrome should find a way to prevent this problem in advance to make itself compatible with all applications.
• Flash Applications: One of the biggest problem that Chrome is struggling with is handling of flash applications. The page is becoming no-longer accessible when Flash cause a problem. This is a big problem for those who likes to play online flash games on Internet. There must be taken some certain steps to fix that problem immediately.
• Integration with Google Docs for documentation: That is hitting two birds with one stone. Google will definitely increase the usage of Docs if it would build all documentation on that application.
• RSS Support: No need to write anything about that. It definitely need to support RSS.

Source: Chip Online Turkey

Clickbooth Publisher Network looks promising place. I just registered with them so I can not tell you how profitable service it is. However, the sign up process was a bit hard but not too complicated.

You know the routine procedure of signing up on a new place. An email is being sent right after registration for verification purposes. Instead of email, while registering with Clickbooth, you would be called on your phone number. During this phone call you will get a pin code to complete the submission.

After registration is completed, I browsed through the advertising campaigns they have. I should say that it looks promising place.

They guarantee the highest payout to publishers in the industry and I guess I am going to give it a try. Sign up is free and you lose nothing by trying.

proposal is not in the best interests of Yahoo! and our stockholders.

Many analysts expected a higher offer from Microsoft that would eventually lead to an agreement. But Microsoft intends to take its bid directly to Yahoo’s shareholders by authorizing a proxy campaign, instead of raising its bid.

During an interview, Microsoft founder Bill Gates told the Associated Press that his company is not privately negotiating with Yahoo over its $31-per-share buyout offer. According to field experts, Microsoft is ready to a lot to acquire Yahoo. But they are not going to pay more that 31 dollar while Yahoo asks 40 for a share.

An alone Google in the search and text advertising is not something very good. A combined Microsoft and Yahoo would provide real competition, and I fully support that since I would like to see an alternative to Google for search, ads and office applications. Yahoo and Microsoft might not be able to catch google in search technology , but there is real chance that they will provide a viable alternative to ad-sense and online advertisement market.