Great creative stuff from Google.

Romania

Russia

via Manafu

Popularity: 23% [?]

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Yahoo announced today that they will join OpenSocial and that’s not all, they are forming, together with Google and MySpace a new non-profit foundation - the OpenSocial Foundation, following the model of OpenID Foundation. The reason behind this is of course to be fully neutral but still get everybody involved in this project, at full throttle.

The funny part is that opensocial.org gets redirected to a page made with Google Sites, a product of Google Aps :)

A big surprise comes from Apache - they released an "incubator project for OpenSocial and gadgets" called Shindig.

I find all this fuss extremely interesting for the web industry - including advertisers, strategists, developers and designers. Stay tuned for more "global" surprises.

via TechCrunch

Popularity: 20% [?]

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As previously covered by TechCrunch, YouTube was preparing a huge announcement today. Everybody entered the comment frenzy and started guessing different feature announcements: high definition videos, live streaming, white label video solution, revenue sharing program world wide, partnership with Hulu, etc.

The actual news is that YouTube is introducing a new set of APIs that will turn them practically in a white label video sharing solution.

For users, the exciting news is that they will be able to actively participate in the YouTube community from just about anywhere, including the online destinations and web communities they already love and visit regularly. For partners and developers, YouTube has grown into much more than a website. It has become an open, general purpose, video services platform, available for use by just about any third-party website, desktop application, or consumer device. We now provide a complete set of (CRUD) capabilities for uploading, managing, searching, and playing back user videos and metadata from the YouTube “cloud,” managed by us. We do all of the hard work of transcoding and hosting and streaming and thumbnailing your videos, and we provide open access to our sizable global audience, enabling you to generate traffic for your site, visibility for your brand, or support for your cause. Meanwhile, we provide full access to our substantial video library, enabling you to attract users and enhance the experience on your site. It’s all free, and it’s available to everyone, starting now.

Technically, we have introduced some new APIs. (This is just a geeky acronym for Awesomely Powerful Interactions, which is what users are now capable of performing from just about anywhere.) Building upon our existing APIs for querying the YouTube library and playing embedded YouTube videos, we have added the following new API services for external developers and partners:

    * Upload videos and video responses to YouTube
    * Add/Edit user and video metadata (titles, descriptions, ratings, comments, favorites, contacts, etc)
    * Fetch localized standard feeds (most viewed, top rated, etc.) for 18 international locales
    * Perform custom queries optimized for 18 international locales
    * Customize player UI and control video playback (pause, play, stop, etc.) through software

As a fun fact, Hulu is opening to public today (world wide).

Hulu is NBC Universal and News Corporation’s online video joint venture. The site, which is currently in private beta, focuses exclusively on professional content and does not take on YouTube directly as a viral video destination. The site raised $100 million in financing from Providence Equity Partners.

Check out the new YouTube APIs and Tools and also the case studies for sites already taking benefit of the new YouTube APIs.

Popularity: 18% [?]

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Any idea why www.webmyc.com has PR 5, whereas www.webmyc.com/blog has PR 3 ?

Later update: now both www.webmyc.com and www.webmyc.com/blog have PR4. Did I do that? :)

Popularity: 21% [?]

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Famous for it’s search engine spamming (Spamdexing), ClubAfaceri, a Romanian “business” portal is now proud to associate it’s name with Google Inc. They have implemented Google Apps on their website and they are offering access on their domain to the famous Google Mail, Google Calendar, Google Startpage, Google Docs, Google Talk, etc to their SMB clients. This is not an official partnership as anyone can implement Google Apps for over 2 years now - just as I did on webmyc.com. There is even a comment from one of ClubAfaceri’s owners where he admits there is no official partnership between his company and Google Inc, all in this pathetic story. Another more realistic coverage here.

Followers appeared rapidly and another Romanian portal (targeted on the auto moto market) - Masini.ro,  announced it’s “partnership” with Google Inc.

Who’s next? Neogen.ro ? Not yet, they still have to cope with the trafic that domain speculations brought them.

Popularity: 30% [?]

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Google Talk has a cool new feature - translation bots - you can add them to your contact list and then just chat with them in your native language and they will reply back almost instantly with a pretty close translation (in the language of your chosen bot) of what you wrote. You can see a simple test on the right. The translation is not 100% accurate but hey …it’s pretty good!

So, if you want a translation buddy that will help you instantly with communication gaps between english and german speakers, just add en2de@bot.talk.google.com to your contact list in Google Talk. Currently there are 24 translation bots: ar2en, de2en, de2fr, el2en, en2ar, en2de, en2el, en2es, en2fr, en2it, en2ja, en2ko, en2nl, en2ru, en2zh, es2en, fr2de, fr2en, it2en, ja2en, ko2en, nl2en, ru2en, zh2en. Don’t forget to add the @bot.talk.google.com part at the end.

The really use of this feature will be handy also on you blackberry, if you use the Google Talk client for BlackBerry. With this you can transform you blackberry into a mobile translator!

For more information, there is a post about this feature on the Google Talk Blog.

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Since Friday, I am a BlackBerry user. I decided to go this way as Windows Mobile stability was pretty challenging when combining internet, email, messenger and regular phone usage. I am very happy with my BlackBerry 8800 and I have to tell you that this device is amazing - it hasfrig native support for GTalk and Yahoo Messenger, automatic configuration for my gmail and webmyc email accounts (webmyc has Google Aps) and probably soon, support for my corporate email account. The device works lightning fast and never had to reset it because it hooked up on some applications, like a Windows Mobile device would probably do.

A nice feature is also the integrated GPS, but I was a bit suspicious if it would prove to be useful, as I was told that I am stuck with the BlackBerry Maps application that is not quite relevant for Romania, at least. This, until 2 hours ago, when I discovered that the mobile version of Google Maps has GPS support and can locate you on the map in no time. That being said, give it a spin - you won’t be disappointed - the accuracy is amazing. However, I will not use it as much as i would want to, as the roaming costs for data traffic are not very low.

Good job Google! I think this is the future - no more carrying around large storage memory cards to host GPS navigation software that cost more than half the price of the device. Mobile Google Maps is free and it has global coverage + satellite maps + many more features such as traffic information, locations (restaurants, hotels, museums, etc)

Boss, if you will see some roaming charges on my phone bill, it is because I could not find the way to the conference and I had to use my GPS enabled BlackBerry to get there. :)

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I just received the “Google Friends Newsletter” and there are some pretty exciting news. First of all we will be able to use Gmail with the IMAP protocol - this means better sync on all computers and devices you use to access Gmail. An extra bonus - that I find very useful is that this feature is also enabled on Gmail working on your own domain - Google Apps. I’ve been using Google Apps on my domains and I am also recomending their service to all my clients. Can’t wait to have the Gmail Mobile (link works only if you access it from you mobile device) java application available for Google Apps! (do you hear me Google?)

Here’s the exact excerpt from the newsletter:

You now have the ability to use the IMAP protocol for Gmail (including Google Apps) free of charge. Unlike the POP protocol, IMAP enables you to keep your inbox synced across all devices, so that whatever you do in your email — whether on your phone, desktop mail client, or web browser — shows up everywhere you access your email. Reading, sending, deleting and other actions you take on your messages are reflected automatically and instantaneously any place you get Gmail.

There are also some other rumors about an enhanced version of Gmail - Gmail 2.0 that comes with optimized java-script back end rewrite. Screenshots and other info on Google Blogoscoped.

Popularity: 31% [?]

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