Google released Friend Connect, which is a neat way to add social networking to your site. Basically, it comes down to embedding some JavaScript into wherever you want the widgets to appear. The main thing however is that this tool allows webmasters to use it as a social promotion tool, having people comment on the content and spread it amongst their friends on the various networks that the Friend Connect communicates with - Facebook, Google Talk, Hi5, Plaxo, LinkedIn, Orkut. Basically users can log in through the widget with an existing Google, Yahoo, AIM, or OpenID account, but it also does data retrieval through APIs from Google, Facebook and MySpace.

Here’s a video presentation of what Friend Connect can do for a website that’s missing the social networking dimension:

Although Friend Connect couldn’t be easier to implement on a web site (simply cut and paste), there are things that can be viewed as limitations or issues - Friend Connect works from an iFrame on the page, so basically the webmaster has no control over the way it looks at all. There is thus far no way to mix the tool with other applications to create a more unique richer experience, basically you’re stuck with what you get … so far anyway. Then there are privacy/security issues - how do users from wherever access information that they may not have permission to access (we’re talking about social network profiles). Users will have to be given the option whether to expose sensitive information to other sites or not.

The goal was to allow sites without a social dimension to use the benefits of social networking, and this is definitely a great start. The ultimate goal is to allow people to connect from wherever they are with everyone else regardless of the social network they are on.

Here are a couple of good posts to see about this, giving an in depth look into Friend Connect:

Google Friend Connect (Google)
Google confirms Friend Connect (TechCrunch)
Google brings Friend Connect to the Masses (news.com)
Google Friend Connect tries to strangle the social (ReadWriteWeb)
How Google Friend Connect will affect SEO (BlogStorm.co.uk)

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Google Earth and The New York Times have collaborated to produce a new layer in Google Earth that enables users to actually see news location origin, as they happen. According to Google LatLong, all you have to do is get the latest version of Google Earth, and make sure the “Geographic Web” folder is turned on. You then click on the New York Times place mark to see the lates news and features about that region. The news are updated every 15 minutes.

Mapped news are not that new a concept. Here’s an example (dating back from 2005), which is basically a mash-up of Associated Press news feed, Yahoo Geocoding API, Google Maps and GxMarker.

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Google Talk has got a new addition in form of a bot that will help users communicate with others who don’t speak the same language. In order to use the bot you need add it as a friend in Google Talk. This is the form: [from lang]2[to lang]@bot.talk.google.com . “from/to lang” is substituted with a two-letter abbreviation for the desired language (ex. english is “en”, french is “fr”). The system uses standard two-letter abbreviations for languages. Once the bot is active, the user talks to it saying whatever in the “from” language and gets the translation as an answer in the “to” language. Pretty neat!

The languages currently available include French, English, German, French, Russian, Chinese, and a few more. Best of all, developers can use the Google Talk service and XMPP to program their own translation bots. I am not sure this means we can add new languages, since it wasn’t stated explicitly, in which case this means we’ll have to wait for Google to add the corresponding dictionaries.

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Google announced a new strategic inititaive for development of electricity from renewable energy sources. Electricity produced this way would be cheaper than electricity produced from coal. The initiative, refered to as RE<C, is to be focused on advanced solar power, wind power, enhanced geothermal systems and other breakthrough technologies. Engineers are getting hired as well as energy experts to lead research and development work for the RE<C. In 2008 Google expects to spend tens of millions on research and development in renewable energy resources. They are also contemplating investing hundreds of millions in renewable energy projects that will generate positive returns.

Larry Page, Google co-founder, said:

There has been tremendous work already on renewable energy. Technologies have been developed that can mature into industries capable of providing electricity cheaper than coal. Solar thermal technology, for example, provides a very plausible path to providing renewable energy cheaper than coal. We are also very interested in further developing other technologies that have potential to be cost-competitive and green. We are aware of several promising technologies, and believe there are many more out there.

Read more about this on Google Press Center.

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Facebook users will now have the ability to view news from Google News within their Facebook profile through the Google News Facebook app, introduced yesterday. It’s still in beta, so experiments are going on, and there will probably be changes over the coming weeks.

The user chooses news categories to monitor, pretty much the same as on Google News personalization, except every news item can be shared with a Facebook friend by sending it directly, or by sharing it through the profile. There are also options to save a story to My Stories and to view stories sent by friends (Stories from friends). Additionally, the app allows the user to create their own news category (custom section) and save stories with a particular topic.

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Facebook may be becoming a serious threat to Google with the ever growing number of users and popularity. Google seems to have decided to take a more active approach to combat what they call the “Facebook issue” by being more open than the Facebook platform. According to TechCrunch, this plant has been discussed behind closed doors at a meeting. The new initiative has been scheduled for as early as November 5 this year.

In short, there will be new APIs that will enable developers to leverage Google’s social graph data, starting with Orkut and iGoogle. This will later expand to include Gmail, Google Talk, as well as other G services in the future. Read in more detail here.

Google has already taken steps leading it into the social network realm by introducing Google Share Stuff. In this post I contemplated on what the future would be like if Google decides to make its own social network (or if it buys en existing one, like Facebook), and it seems the new open strategy is an introduction to something like that. In my opinion, Facebook is really not that open, being a platform that enables you to develop applications that can only be used within Facebook, so being more open that Facebook is not that big a deal. Since Google has had many more APIs open to the public, with much more functionality than those on Facebook, and with thousands of sites that generate (usually useful and interesting) content by using Google APIs exclusively, what Google needs to work on is the social networking side of things, and keep that open from the start. Maybe, if they give support to the open social graph initiative by making their APIs and services with the concept in mind, they can actually outperform sites like Facebook. Since Brad Fitzpatrick (ex Six Apart) now works for Google, this is probably happening anyway. If Google indeed integrates social networking into its existing services than there is little option for independent social networks except to participate as this will give them significant exposure.

Unless there are significant changes, November 5 will be the date to watch for a major announcement by Google.

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The G has introduced this change so quietly that one might think they really didn’t want any publicity about this. Nevertheless, there are plenty of blog posts about this already, but one that I think goes into a lot of detail about this is on LifeHacker.

Basically, by using an Email/Share button Google allows you to share or email any web content with your friends. Your shared content (stuff) is publicly available for sharing with friends on the Internet. If you see a Google sharing button on any site, click it to share the current webpage in a preferred way:

• You can add the item to your Google Shared Stuff page
• You can email the page, with a custom message
• You can post the page to some related social bookmarking sites

What may be more interesting than this welcome addition by Google, is the fact that Google is sailing towards social networking waters more openly. I wonder what the social network scape would look like if/when Google decides to own (Facebook?) or make its own killer social networking site.

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And we have a first sign-up for the Google Lunar X Prize competition. It’s Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute! Red Whittaker, roboticist at the institute decided to enter the competition that is to be completed by 2012.

Planetary exploration is a dream we pursue and a technology we create…
We have spent decades building and testing robotic technologies for just this purpose.

Whittaker is assembling a Carnegie Mellon team that will work on the project for the competition. Although he advocated privately funded lunar landing for more than a decade, he views the task quite daunting.

It’s inevitable that someone will find a way to win it. Regardless of who takes home the cash, this achievement will enrich us all.

Well, good luck to them!

See in more detail in this press-release.

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Google has announced it is going to fund the X Prize competition which invites competing companies to design and successfully land a robot on the Moon. The $30 million prize dubbed the X Prize will be awarded to the company that not only lands a rover robot on the Moon but also completes several mission objectives, including roaming the lunar surface for at least 500 meters and sending video, images and data back to Earth. Wow! Sounds like a handful. You can see more about this here and here. I decided to be different and show you the video which explains it all in an invigorating fashion reminding me of my teen dream of becoming an astronaut.

In case you are wondering “why the Moon?”, John Marburger (Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy, Executive Office of the President) said the key element of the new vision for space is bringing the Solar System (starting with the Moon) into the economic sphere of the Earth.

Let’s hope our economic adventures on the Moon will produce less problems than they do daily on Earth.

Here are the competition guidelines.

Sounds pretty straight forward! Where do I sign up? Well, I didn’t find such an option, but as soon as I do I am signing up.

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There is a new great addition to Google Earth called Sky. The Google Earth team have decided to let us look away from our planet, out into the open universe. The latest version of Google Earth, version 4.2, now includes Sky, so go download it and take a peek.

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