Webicy Blog

September 14, 2009

Facebook Lite – Stripped Down to the Essentials

Filed under: Industry News, Social Media — Tags: , , — SticKer @ 1:47 am

Facebook has started rolling out a new, slick and speedy version of its website worldwide primarily aimed at those with slower connections. Facebook Lite (http://lite.facebook.com/) loads much faster than the regular version. The HTML is optimized, so there’s less code for browsers to download. The new version has fewer and smaller ads and pictures.

Facebook Lite’s news feed lets users write, post photos and videos, but unlike the regular Facebook, there is no toolbar for enabling access to Facebook Pages, Status Updates, Photos and Links. Lite’s profile pages are leaner, too. While the middle column of users’ profiles in Facebook Lite looks similar to that of the regular Facebook profile, the left and right columns in Lite are pretty bare, lacking the glut of photos, ads, applications and gaming invites of the original Facebook.

Lite could help attract new users. “We have found that people who are new to Facebook tend to be most interested in a simpler experience, and focus on establishing their network of friends by writing on their walls, sending messages, and looking at pictures” the company said.

Stripping away to the most commonly used functions seems to be the aim of the design, allowing users to see and post status updates, events, inbox messages, wall messages, photos and video. The lighter version has no application support, and on a whole seems like a welcomed return to the earlier days of Facebook.

Feel Free to Discuss about the new Facebook Lite in our ongoing discussions at http://forums.webicy.com/showthread.php?t=10448

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July 8, 2009

Google Unveils Chrome OS

Filed under: Featured, Google, Industry News — Tags: , , — SticKer @ 6:39 am

Google Unveils Chrome OS

Google Unveils Chrome OS

A direct challenge to Microsoft, Google today announced a new project that’s an extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It’s an attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year they will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. The OS will be designed to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as they did for the Google Chrome browser, Google is going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates.

Google Chrome OS is a new project, separate from Android. Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips. Google said it still had work to do to develop Chrome into a full-fledged operating system.

Stay tuned for more updates on the Google Chrome OS.

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December 17, 2008

Google Search Results Promote and Remove Feature

Filed under: Google — Tags: , , , , , — SticKer @ 4:54 am

I’m seeing a new feature today ‘Promote and Remove button’ next to Google search results. Note: These buttons only appear when you are logged in and only affect the results that you see.

Log in to your account, promote a page and up it comes, then logout and you will see it drop back. Login again and there it is back at the top.

Here’s how it looks:

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Google drops out of top 20 most trusted companies

Filed under: Featured, Google, Industry News — Tags: , , — SticKer @ 3:17 am

Google dropped out of the top 20 of an annual survey ranking of companies most trusted on privacy by consumers.

Some of the companines in the top 20 were:

American Express
eBay Inc.
Apple Inc.
Yahoo Inc.
Facebook Inc.
IBM Corp.
Hewlett-Packard Co.
Intuit Corp.

Source: bizjournals.com

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December 16, 2008

Google Countdown to 2009

Filed under: Google — Tags: , , , — SticKer @ 6:05 am

Google has set up a countdown page where you can see how many days, hours, minutes and seconds are left for New Year. Find out each day how to count down the holidays with Google. The calendar also presents a new item each day for users. Yesterday was “Get gift ideas and holiday savings”, and the calender contained a link to top searches on Google Product Search. Create, collaborate, and celebrate with Google Docs & Countdown to 2009.

Google Countdown 2009

Google Countdown 2009

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December 6, 2008

Facebook and Google launches new single user-ID services

Filed under: Blogging, Google, Industry News, Social Media — Tags: , , , , — SticKer @ 7:34 am

Web giants Facebook and Google unveil new features to promote the social web. A services that let users take their existing log-ins and deploy them across a number of sites.

Google’s Friend Connect, out now in beta, is pitched at webmasters who want to add social networking tools to their web sites. The search giant said in a blog posting that this is as simple as “cutting and pasting a bit of code”, and requires no advanced coding or technical ability.

“The goal is to facilitate an open social web,” said Google product manager Mussie Shore in the blog post. “Using open standards like OpenID and OAuth, Friend Connect makes it simple for people to instantly interact with one another on the sites that they already love to visit.

Facebook Connect, meanwhile, which was announced this Summer, has also been updated, according to a blog posting on its web site. However, as might be expected with a social networking site, Facebook is asking its users to create momentum.

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg claimed that Facebook will add sites to the service where there is user demand, and asked subscribers to get in contact with the firms in question to request a connection.

Source: vnunet.com

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November 6, 2008

Collapse of the Yahoo – Google Deal

Filed under: Google, Industry News — Tags: , , , , — SticKer @ 6:04 am

The much talked about YahooGoogle Deal has finally collapsed. Jerry Yang, Yahoo’s chief executive says he felt let down by Google’s decision to pull out of a advertising agreement between the two internet rivals.

Yahoo’s lack of growth is the main reason behind all this. By next year, the company will have been through four consecutive years with virtually no increase in its cashflow, estimated Mark Mahaney, internet analyst at Citigroup. That is in spite of having one of the biggest global online audiences at a time when advertisers are making a historic shift to the internet, and is a clear sign that it needs to find a new strategic direction, he added.

The $800m deal – which would have enabled Google to sell advertising on some parts of Yahoo’s search engine listings – had been subject to a formal investigation by the US Department of Justice over potential antitrust concerns.

With Yahoo’s other options seemingly closed off, it is little surprise that all eyes yesterday turned back to Microsoft. But talking to an audience of internet entrepreneurs and investors, Yang said the collapse of takeover talks was “not personal” and that he harboured no ill will towards Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer.

“People who know me will know that I don’t have an ego about remaining independent,” he said. “I have a lot of respect for Steve and we’d had a lot of good conversations. From my perspective, it’s not personal.”

Source:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology…6/yahoo-google
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/86e31826-a…077b07658.html

http://forums.webicy.com/showthread.php?t=7468

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October 31, 2008

Google spiders to index Scanned Documents

Filed under: Google, Industry News — Tags: , , , — SticKer @ 6:32 am

Google has announced that its spiders will now begin including scanned documents in its search results. In the past, scanned documents were rarely included in search results. Google said they are now able to perform OCR on any scanned documents that they find stored in Adobe’s PDF format. This Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology lets them convert a picture (of a thousand words) into a thousand words — words that can be searched and indexed, so that these valuable documents are more easily found.

In the past Google has indexed documents saved as PDF’s but scanned documents are a lot more difficult for a computer to read. From now on Google searches will include the text within these scanned images in normal search results. When you encounter a scanned document you’ll be able to view it in its original form as a PDF, or as a converted text file (click “View As HTML”).

To see the new system at work, click on search queries below. Note the document excerpt in the search results, along with the full text presented after the ‘View as HTML’ link:

[repairing aluminum wiring]
[spin lock performance]
[Mumps and Severe Neutropenia]
[Steady success in a volatile world]

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July 15, 2008

4Chan gets Google Owned!

Filed under: Google, Miscellaneous — Tags: , , — SticKer @ 1:53 am

Google Trends is a tool from Google Labs that shows the most popularly searched terms from the beginning of 2004 to now.

Google Trends charts how often a particular search term is entered relative the total search volume across various regions of the world, and in various languages.

Recently, A well known forum that goes by the name of ‘4Chan’ decided to get together and all search the same thing at once. That query basically is “fuck you google” flipped over.

Google was quick in fixing the problem but Internet users were quick enough to take the snapshots :)

Source: techcrunch.com

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