Posted 11/06/09 at 08:04:55 AM by Paul Lilly

During an interview with the Fox Business Network, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said his company has learned from Microsoft's past follies in terms of antitrust issues and letting the competition catch up.

"Hopefully we won't repeat the mistakes that Microsoft made 10 years ago that ultimately led to all these things that happened to them," Schmidt said.

Schmidt was also pressed on the potential for Twitter and Facebook to steal the thunder from Google among younger Internet users. But according to Schmidt, it's not a big concern because users of social networking services end up using Google even more.

You can view the two-part interview here and here.

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Posted 11/05/09 at 07:53:51 PM by Ryan Whitwam

We all know Google has a lot of information about us. Now there’s a way to have all that data laid out before you in terrifying detail. Google Dashboard is the search giant’s new site aimed at increasing user control over personal information.

The Dashboard is available in your account settings page (or just go here), and kept behind an additional sign-in page. Once logged in, you’ll see all the Google services you use along with a summary of its use. There is currently support of more than 20 Google services including Gmail, Latitude, Google Voice, Google Docs, Gtalk, YouTube and Picasa.
 
Google offers quick access to the settings for each service if you’re not happy with the information being stored.  So, feel better?

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Posted 11/05/09 at 07:05:29 PM by Jason Barry

Google announced on the official Gmail blog a handy new upgrade to the Offline Gmail labs app. Before the update, you could enable Offline Gmail and it would use specialized heuristics to download messages for offline use.

With the new update, once you enable Offline Gmail, you can find some customizable options under the “Offline” tab in Settings. You can now select specifically which labels to download and how deep into your mailbox you would like the downloading to begin. Once the settings are saved, the app will immediately start downloading any emails weren't already synced to your computer.  Of course, less downloads means faster Offline Gmail so you should be careful with the settings.

It's a substantial upgrade to a very handy lab application for commuters or travelers.

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Posted 11/05/09 at 07:59:31 AM by Paul Lilly

While the mobile world drools over Droid, there's another smartphone that has a shot of stealing a few headlines. We're talking about Acer's upcoming Liquid A1, which is expected to ship in Europe within the next few weeks.

The Liquid A1 is the first Android-based smartphone to be built around Qualcomm's Snapdragon chipset. And even though the CPU has been downclocked to 768MHz, that's a lot more pep than most Android phones are boasting.

Oddly, Acer has decided not to step up to Android 2.0 (Eclair), and the Liquid A1 will instead run on Android 1.6 (Donut). That puts it a generation behind the Droid and other upcoming Android 2.0 smartphones, although this could change by the time the A1 ships. We also wouldn't rule out a software update after the fact, although Acer has spent some time tweaking "a new user interface with easy access to entertainment and web bookmarks."

No word yet on price or when this one's expected to land in the U.S.

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Posted 11/05/09 at 07:55:21 AM by Paul Lilly

During the Enterprise 2.0 conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, Novell unvieled its Novell Pulse, a real-time social and document collaboration platform for enterprises. And the kicker? It works seamlessly with Google Wave, Novell said.

"We designed Google Wave and its open federation protocol to help people collaborate and communicate more efficiently," said Lars Rasmussen, software engineering manager for Google Wave. "We are very excited to see Novell supporting the Google Wave Federation Protocol in their innovative Novell Pulse product."

Novell Pulse gives administrators to ability to provision sign-on and permissions to both keep data secure and make it possible for workers to collaborate on documents online in real-time. Perhaps more importantly, Novell Pulse is one of the first major Wave providers.

Novell said its Pulse platform will be available in the first half of 2010, with a beta scheduled for earlier in the year.

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Posted 11/04/09 at 08:21:22 PM by Jason Barry

Google launched Friend Connect back in early 2008 as a means for website owners to turn their sites into homegrown mini social networks. The service allowed users to login and connect with the other people browsing the site through various widgets.

Fast forward to today, and Google has expanded Friend Connect to include an “Interests” section. Its primary purpose is to capture pertinent information about the users browsing a site using customizable questions.

Logged in users can answer questions posed by the website owner and “connect” to others by seeing their answers (i.e. music website asks what your favorite bands are). Web site owners can also send newsletters infused with content it collects in the site’s “Interests” section.

Further, the update allows website owners to collect information from its user base so it can serve up ads tailored to their interests using the “AdSense” widget—making this a huge selling point for owners to adopt the system on their sites.

Do you use Friend Connect? Would you use it knowing site owners are collecting information to serve you ads?

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Posted 11/04/09 at 06:00:15 PM by Ryan Whitwam

Google has risen to become a behemoth in the tech world in just a bit over a decade. Even in that short time, enough weird tidbits of information resulted that it makes an entertaining read. Perusing this list of ten interesting facts about Google will make you chuckle and scratch your head.

For instance, did you know that the original name for Google’s PageRank algorithm was “BackRub"?  PageRank is probably better and less creepy. Have you ever used Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” button? Well, that button costs Google about $110 million per year, because it skips past the ads on the results page. Hit the story link for the full list.

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Posted 11/04/09 at 11:00:00 AM by Alex Castle

As a part of Google's quest to be the undisputed overlords of the Internet, they've made a lot of quality services available for free. Gmail, Google maps and Google Docs are all famous examples, but one of the search giant's coolest free offerings, Sketchup, flies under a lot of peoples' radars.

Sketchup is a free 3D modelling tool developed based on the philosophy that by giving people a small set of powerful, intuitive tools, you can lower the barrier of entry to 3D modelling, so that almost anyone can make quality 3D models with just a couple of sessions of practice. 

Still not conviced to give Sketchup a try? We've compiled a list of 7 awesome things you can do with Sketchup that you probably didn't know were possible. Did you know, for instance, that you can create a Left 4 Dead map in Sketchup? How about that you can design your own papercraft models?

Read on to find out more! 

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