08.29.06
To Google or not to google
With the recent controversy of Google complaining that “google†may no longer be used as a verb Yahoo! have eagerly jumped on the band wagon and opened its brand to consumer input. Why would Google want to relinquish the “power of their brandâ€? Once upon a time they revelled as their mark entered the general consumer lexicon. Then again, perhaps they are now afraid that what happened to “Hooverâ€, “Kleenex†and “Xerox†may happen to “Google†with excess usage. Not only that, but it becomes a trademark concern. With excess use and association the trademark law says that you have to show an effort to protect your mark, or you can lose it and that is why Google are reacting to anyone currently using Google as a verb.
Google Spreadsheets – was loving this until one of my spreadsheets crashed and all the data was lost. I probably would not have been as upset as I am had it not been my entire wedding planner including all contact details of service providers, budgets and the guestlist! Thank goodness the people at Google are quite compassionate as they replied to my plight and would have been able to retrieve the document – unfortunately a week after I had already luckily managed to gather up all the information and recreate the spreadsheet. Now I backup a “hardcopy†(well I download the XLS version) religiously whenever I make changes.
Google Apps for your Domain – Officially launched yesterday. This potentially brings us closer to the ever elusive Google OS. Although not a “giant leap for appsâ€, the current available Apps are very basic but a great suite as an option for start-ups. In Google’s words: “Offer private-labeled email, IM and calendar tools to all of your users for free, so they can share ideas and get things done more effectively. You can design and publish your organization’s website, too. It’s all hosted by Google, so there’s no hardware or software for you to install or maintain.â€
Picassa – You may have noticed that our Durban photos are in Google’s Picassa app. I thought Flickr was slow, but I’ve been really disappointed with Picassa in terms of speed. I found that browsing the photos individually was much faster than attempting to browse the slideshow.
GTalk updates – Gtalk now offers file transfer, music status and voicemail.
Google Base now offers “copywriting analytics†to display impressions, clicks, and page views. I really like this, as it’s a great way to track the effectiveness of your articles.
Blotter is a new interesting gadget for gauging blog popularity. Blotter graphs link stats over time based on Technorati data.
This is quite a cool little gadget I came across on Yahoo! called Yahoo Real Estate. As part of its recent update you can now find up-to-date local mortgage rate information directly within web search. This service is currently only available in the US, although for South Africans I’ve recently found a very similar local South African mortgage calculator that is very similar to this. Just search for your property and you’ll find it when you view the listing itself.