City Tours From Google Labs

Google Labs have published about multi-day (or single day if you are the fast walking type) walking tours of major cities given a starting address. For startes, there are a few cities and walks suggested;

• Union Square, San Francisco
• 34th Street and 5th, New York
• London, England
• Dame Street, Dublin, Ireland
  

Except Dublin, I have walked the other cities, more or same the suggested routes. Let Google find nearby points of interest for you or (new!) create your own tours from your own and others' "My Maps".

Try City Tours

Friendster Sold To MOL Global.

Friendster Mol Global Weseepeople.blogspot.com

The social networking site Friendster has been sold to MOL Global, a Malaysian payments company. Friendster is one of the oldest social networking companies that had a face lift recently. Eventhough it has lost the glamour a glitter in the USA, it still has a lot of users (about 75 Million) else where, mostly in Asia.
MOL Global Pte. Ltd, an affiliate of leading online payment solutions provider MOL AccessPortal Berhad handles payment transactions totaling  an annual payment volume of over US$200 million. It provides systems to collect payments for online content and services.

“The merger with Friendster will continue to transform the social networking industry, combining a highly intuitive and successful social media site and online marketing channel with an integrated payment platform and content network which includes games, goods, gifts, music and video. We are creating a unique company that will be well positioned to provide content to a huge, regional user base, here in Southeast Asia,” said Ganesh Kumar Bangah, president and chief executive officer of MOL.

“Friendster and MOL are both industry pioneers and are close partners. This combination is a natural progression of our relationship and will be an industry-changing event, The new combined entity gives Friendster the kind of financial backing, retail distribution, and e-commerce infrastructure that will enable us to accelerate our strategy and create a locally relevant, fun experience for our users in Asia, both on and offline.” ” said Richard Kimber, chief executive officer at Friendster.

The combined entity will maintain offices in various locations, around the world, including Mountain View, CA (USA), the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore. Ganesh Kumar Bangah will become the Group Chief Executive Officer of the combined entity while Richard Kimber will become the Non-Executive Chairman.

Google Friend Connect Becomes More Social.

Google Friend Connect has added a whole slew of features that might help them to fend off some of the effects of facebook onslaught. Due to popularity of facebook the facebook connect has many more members and sites.
Perhaps time that we have friend connect on all our blogs ! :)
Google Friend Connect Gains Ground With New Features | VOIP IP Telephony

Becoming And Staying Digitally Literate!

Being online and understanding your surroundings is not an easy task. When you are unsure of your position in any situation, it leads to you being vulnerable. Little children, and young adults are often targets of unscrupulous people and only way to keep them safe is to educate parents and educators about the digital world.
So Google and iKeepSafeare working together to take a tour through the country to help parents and educators across the country become more involved in kids' online activities. To begin the tour in proper manner, the team is holding a panel discussion in the capital regarding issues concerning educating a protecting youngsters. The best part of it is that they will be talking about "How to talk to young people about online safety"

"Playing and Staying Safe Online"
An expert panel discussion on how to help kids become responsible members of the digital community.

Panelists:

• Dr. Michael Rich, Director of the Center on Media and Child Health at Children's Hospital Boston, Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health
• Dr. Harry Bloom, Director, California Technology Assistance Project
• Lt. Joe Laramie, Director, Missouri ICAC Task Force
• Darlene Faster, COO, Center for Social and Emotional Education
  

Moderator:

• Marsali Hancock, iKeepSafe President
  

With special presentations from Google and WoogiWorld.

When: Tuesday, November 3, Noon - 1:30pm
Where: Room B-354, Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, D.C.

Lunch will be served.

Please click here to RSVP.

Google Social Search Extend Your Searches Into Your Social Networks.

Google last week told us about a Google's Social Search Demo in "This week in search 10/24/09" and the feature will enhance your searches with information from people you know or blogs that you follow!.
The Google Social Search is an opt-in and it is tightly connected to your Google Profile and GMail. So it will connect to blogs, photo albums, videos, reviews your close ones and friends produce.
Say for instance, if you have your twitter page connected to your Google Profile, the search will extend to blogs, photo albums, videos, reviews written or done by people you follow.
This is available on experiment on Google Labs and like all Google labs fetures, it is an experiment that might make into the mainstream services by Google. You can follow the link after the jump for more information and more videos.

Official Google Blog: Introducing Google Social Search: I finally found my friend's New York blog!

http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/

Yahoo Sexist?

After Go-Go dancers doing lap dances (where in my laptop? or what is that thing on my lap) at Yahoo Hack Day 2009 in Taiwan. Hack Day is deviced to attract developers to build widgets and apps for the Yahoo platforms.
But this stunt may have attracted many young developers, who lost their laptops, there were plenty of flack coming from all sort of people in the society.

I am not surprised at either side, knowing how sexist some of the Asian countries are and hypocrits protesting these dancers while having whore houses which are called Massage parlors in the back yards, abusing similar young women. (massage parlors San Francisco, search Massage Parlors New York at google)
Yahoo should have known better and done better, and so the critics!
Yahoo posted an apology on the developer blog but apperantly the sane thing has happened before, in 2008 as well

I wanted to acknowledge the public reaction generated by the images of female dancers at our Taiwan Open Hack Day this past weekend. Our hack events are designed to give developers an opportunity to learn about our APIs and technologies. As many folks have rightly pointed out, the “Hack Girls” aspect of our Taiwan Hack Day is not reflective of that spirit or purpose. And it’s certainly not the message we want to send about our values here at Yahoo!. Hack Days are about making everyone feel welcome, including women coders and technologists.

 You can read more, specially the comments at yahoo blog.

Keep Your Reputation Clean On The Net With "Reputation Management"

Google, I think in managing the people who come running to it to remove personally damaging or embarrassing information. Even though Google is not responsible for such data on it's servers on search farms, first place people write seems to be Google.
Always, Think three times before putting your personal information online.

But there are more things yoou could do if the horse has already left the barn. I think the following article is both valuable to everyone.
You can read it also on Webmaster Central Blog
Managing your reputation through search results

Friendster Patents On Social Networks May Make It Unfriendly To Other Social Networks

I do not like patents but they do excist and we all got to live with them! Techcrunch published the following data on some of the Friendster Patents, (since our report they got two more) and I hope some one, one of those big boys, validate these;

No. 7,478,078, titled “Method for sharing relationship information stored in a social network database with third party databases.” It was first filed on June 14, 2004.
The patent describes the sharing of information between users and applications based on relationships between users, as well as other uses. Most social networks today do exactly this, and may violate the patent:

By having a way of obtaining relationship information from an online social network, operators of online services can manage services based on the relationships between their customers. For example, a site offering a directory of members may allow each member to limit who may access his or her member information, or who may communicate with him or her, based on the closeness of the relationship between the requesting member and him or her. In addition, providers of online services may use methods of the present invention to allow users to control the accessibility of personal information maintained in an online environment. Furthermore, operators of existing database are better able to target particular information (e.g. advertisements) to individuals with an interest in receiving it, based on the premise that people closely related to one another in a social network share common interests, goals, lifestyles, and the like.

This patent joins the previous four Friendster patents. From information supplied by the company:

• In July 2006, Friendster was awarded its first U.S. patent describing how people are
  connected in the context of an online social network, titled “A System, Method and
  Apparatus for Connecting Users in an Online Computer System Based on Their Relationships within Social Networks” (U.S. Patent No. 7,069,308).
• Friendster was granted a second U.S. patent in October 2006, which discloses the
  process of enriching other users’ profiles with text, video, pictures and additional content,
  titled “Method of Inducing Content Uploads in a Social Network” (U.S. Patent No.
  7,117,254).
• In March 2007, Friendster added another patent to its portfolio, titled “System and
  Method for Managing Connections in an Online Social Network” (U.S. Patent No.
  7,188,153), which describes a technology that manages connections in a social network and allows members of the social network to add friends, personalize their network through arranging, ordering and classifying their connections, and search and browse profiles of other members of the social network.
• In December 2008, Friendster was granted its fourth patent, titled “Compatibility Scoring of Users in a Social Network” (U.S. Patent No. 7,451,161), which discloses a unique methodology used to calculate compatibility based on expressed interests between users of a social network. This includes scoring the compatibility between two members of a social network based on their interests and scoring the correlation between two interests for a given member of a social network.

Oogle In 51 Languages Through Google Translate

I use Google translate very often to communicate with some of the people that I work with but when we do not have a common language, through translation bots on Google.
I also use it to browse through foreign language websites and news sites.
Sometimes it also helps you to horn a language that you are learning or have learned a while ago and forgotten for lack of usage.
What ever the case, now you have opportunity to translate in additional 9 languages, bringing the total languages on Google Translate to 51!
I also leaned some thing today;

You can translate e-mails within GMail, translate web pages using Google Toolbar, translate RSS news feeds from around the world in Google Reader, and translate documents in Google Docs.

And if you work with translations a lot, Google Translator Toolkit might help you a lot.

Official Google Research Blog: 51 Languages in Google Translate

"I Am What I Learn" Tell Us How! To Win $1000 From Department Of Education (DOE)

YouTube and Department Of Education has come together to boost the morale of US Students and teach all of us the value of education.
All the students of USA has to do is make a video (two minutes or less) showing how the education will guide you to your dreams and goals of life, and upload it to the Department of Education's YouTube channel.
I wish I had such opportunity when I was in high school, as there were many things I could do with $1000 to achieve my dreams, which I have reached in any case, due to the excellent education an opportunities I received.
The contest is open to U.S. middle, high school, college and post-grad students, ages 13 and up, and the deadline to submit is October 20. For complete rules and FAQs, please visit www.ed.gov/iamwhatilearn.
YouTube Blog: If Only Every Homework Assignment Had Prizes Like This...