Fast News Info

Google Hoping 'Buzz' Not Another Social Media Fizzle

2010-02-09T23:16:00.001Z

SAN FRANCISCO (Dow Jones)--Google Inc. (GOOG) calls its new social media product "Buzz." If the service goes the way of the search giant's earlier forays into social networks, it may fizzle. On Tuesday, Mountain View, Calif.-based Google unveiled Buzz, which incorporates updates, photos and links into its already popular Gmail service. By adding the features, Google is hoping it can essentially transform Gmail into a social platform with enough clout to challenge leader Facebook Inc. "There has always been a giant social network beneath Gmail," said Google product manager Todd Jackson, when he formally unveiled Buzz at the company's campus. Google's interest in social media is understandable. Though it's unclear how much money companies like Facebook and micro-blogging phenomenon Twitter Inc. will make, they are attracting a huge following among Internet users. Those users potentially can be transformed into audiences for advertising, Google's core business. Google wants to capitalize on Gmail's 176 million users, a population that instantly gives Buzz a powerful installed base. Google hopes Buzz's new bells and whistles will give those users more reasons to use Google to communicate with friends--and potentially give Google more opportunities to sell ads. Google hopes Buzz will come integral to users' lives, like Facebook and Twitter have. To that end, the search company is making it possible to post and view updates from Google's mobile Web site or Buzz mobile software application. Google also plans to "wire" Buzz into other Google Web sites, such as Google Wave, a collaboration service Google began testing publicly last year.

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100209-717524.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines

Google (Voice) solves universal translation soonish

2010-02-08T22:46:00.000Z

Google has managed to get some decent press by announcing that, in a few years, it might be able to translate speech - something iPhone owners can already do. The Times picked up the story, and breathlessly reports that such a development could "transform communications among speakers of the world's 6,000-plus languages" - nice to know that those sticking to the medium of mime will be unaffected. Anyone unwilling to wait the "couple of years" for Google's solution will just have to download the Jibbigo iPhone application, or join the US army. Comparisons to Douglas Adams' creation the Babel Fish are inevitable, though The Times credits Google with creating a text translation tool while neglecting to mention the rather-earlier version from AltaVista named after the unfortunate fish ("unfortunate" as it was forced to live in the user's ear). Also ignored in the popular press coverage is the fact that DARPA, our favourite mad-scientists-for-a-better-tomorrow funding body, has been pouring money into machine translation for years in the hope of enabling US soldiers to ask questions before shooting. The DARPA money has been going into TransTac (Spoken Language Communications and Translation Systems for Tactical Use), and largely the International Centre for Advanced Communication Technologies (interACT) - specialists who've been working in the field for a while and whose spin-off product is an iPhone app that translates spoken English into Japanese or Spanish.

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/08/google_translation/

Google reveals nonexistent Chrome tablet - The GPad

2010-02-02T22:20:00.001Z

Google has unveiled a series of image and video mock-ups of a tablet PC based on its Chrome OS, the still-gestating operating system centered around its Chrome web browser. Mountain View uncloaked its tablet "concept UI" early last week - two days before Steve Jobs announced Apple's long-awaited tablet, the unfortunately named iPad. Google user interface designer Glen Murphy hoisted the mock-ups onto the Chromium Projects site, home to the open source incarnations of Chrome and Chrome OS. Murphy calls these "visual explorations of how a Chrome OS tablet UI might look in hardware." With a series a still images, he explores various software keywords, tool menus, and application launchers as well as a UI that puts multiple browser windows on the same screen. Chrome OS is essentially a Linux-based operating system that runs a single local application: Google's browser.

Source: http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2010/02/02/google_chrome_tablet_mockup/

Google mystery server runs 13% of active websites

2010-01-31T22:28:00.000Z

The Google Web Server - custom-built server software used only by Google - now runs nearly 13 per cent of all active web sites, according to the latest survey data from the web-server-tracking UK research outfit Netcraft. Netcraft data has the Google Web Server (GWS) running nearly 11 million active sites - i.e., sites with recently updated content. This total includes not only sites run solely by Google, but also sites the company operates on behalf of third parties via services like Blogger, Google Docs, and Google App Engine. Apache is still the most prevalent web server, with nearly 44m active sites, and Microsoft servers are second with nearly 14m. But the Google Web Server tops all others and trails Microsoft by a mere 3m sites - despite being unavailable for use outside what Mountain View has called "the Google Network," a worldwide proprietary infrastructure that amounts to a private internet. Google does not discuss GWS. In the past, some reports have indicated that it's based on Apache. But in a 2007 web post, über Googler Matt Cutts indicated otherwise. "That's not correct," he wrote. "I believe GWS is a custom web server, not a modified version of Apache."

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/29/google_web_server/

Service cracks wireless passwords from the cloud

2010-01-28T23:03:00.000Z

A security researcher has unveiled a low-cost service for penetration testers that checks the security of wireless networks by running passwords against a 135-million-word dictionary. The WPA Cracker is a cloud-based service that accesses a 400-CPU cluster. For $34, it can run a password against all 135 million entries in about 20 minutes. Those willing to wait 40 minutes can pay $17 to access the system at half mode. In addition to operating in the cloud, the service is also notable because its dictionary has been set up specifically for cracking Wi-Fi Protected Access passwords. While Windows, Unix and other systems allow short passwords, WPA pass codes must contain a minimum of eight characters. Its entries use a variety of words, common phrases and "elite speak" that have been compiled with WPA networks in mind.

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/07/cloud_based_password_cracking/

Once impenetrable PS3 cracked wide open

2010-01-25T21:20:00.001Z

The first hacker to successfully jailbreak the iPhone says he has pulled off yet another modding marvel, this time penetrating the previously impervious PlayStation 3 gaming console. The hack by 20-year-old George Hotz, aka geohot, is significant because the PS3 was the only game console that hadn't been hacked, despite being on the market for more than three years. The feat greatly expands the functionality of the box by allowing it to run unrestricted versions of Linux and a wide range of games that are currently forbidden. The hardware and software designer told El Reg it took him five weeks to develop the hack using a combination of modifications to the console's hardware and software. "Basically, I used hardware to open a small hole and then used software to make the hole the size of the system to get full read/write access," he said in an interview. "Right now, although the system is broken, I have great power. I can make they system do whatever I want." The first three weeks were spent trying attacks to directly access memory of the console. He eventually settled on his current approach after realizing software approaches alone were insufficient.

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/25/playstation_cracked_wide_open/

Pirate Bay's VPN goes public: Ipredator

2010-01-21T23:03:00.000Z

As governments around the world consider proposals to hand surveillance powers to the entertainment industry and twitchy cops, the Pirate Bay is striking back. Its new €5/month IPRedator service is an encrypted VPN that you can use to hide your traffic (whatever it may contain) from prying eyes. The name comes from Sweden's adoption of IPRED (the "IP Rights Enforcement Directive," a punishing piece of anti-Internet legislation). I've been looking for a reliable VPN to use on public hotspots -- this might just be it. Ipredator is currently using the same platform as several other VPN franchises including Relakks, which means it's not really anything we haven't seen before. The servers are maintained and provided by Pirate Bay affiliates though, which may be more trustworthy to the average BitTorrent user than a random VPN provider. That aside, we were told by former Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde that contrary to what the legal page states, no logs of any kind are kept by Ipredator. The text that is in there is a left over from the standard template they got from the provider of the VPN platform. And, according to Sunde, there will soon be even more advantages and added security to Ipredator.

Source: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/01/20/pirate-bays-vpn-goes.html

German government warns against using MS Explorer

2010-01-18T23:49:00.000Z

The German government has warned web users to find an alternative browser to Internet Explorer to protect security. The warning from the Federal Office for Information Security comes after Microsoft admitted IE was the weak link in recent attacks on Google's systems. Microsoft rejected the warning, saying that the risk to users was low and that the browsers' increased security setting would prevent any serious risk. However, German authorities say that even this would not make IE fully safe. Thomas Baumgaertner, a spokesman for Microsoft in Germany, said that while they were aware of the warning, they did not agree with it, saying that the attacks on Google were by "highly motivated people with a very specific agenda". "These were not attacks against general users or consumers," said Mr Baumgaertner. "There is no threat to the general user, consequently we do not support this warning," he added. Microsoft says the security hole can be shut by setting the browser's security zone to "high", although this limits functionality and blocks many websites.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8463516.stm

Google-China Row Could Reflect A New Era Of Internet Control

2010-01-14T17:38:00.000Z

In its first public reaction to the Internet row between Google and the Chinese government, Beijing today reasserted its right to control the Internet and strengthen what it calls "Internet management." China's position, which comes amid attempts by many authoritarian regimes to control the web, has led some commentators to question whether a new trend toward local or state control over the Internet is developing. Experts say the case, where Google has threatened to shut down its operations in China because of government censorship and cyberattacks against rights activists, reflects the clash between local or national interests and the forces of globalization. Silvio Waisbord, an expert on media and globalization and the director of graduate studies at George Washington University, says we are witnessing "another round of a very long battle between the forces of globalization -- media globalization -- and one of the few governments [China] that actually has tremendous political and economic power to stand up to the demands of those interests." "This is not a new battle that Google is having in China, and I'm sure this is not going to be the last battle of this struggle," he says. "Regardless of how this issue actually gets solved, I think that [battle] is going to continue."

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/GoogleChina_Row_Could_Reflect_A_New_Era_Of_Internet_Control__/1929782.html

'Doomsday Clock' Moves Away From Midnight but Only by 1 Minute

2010-01-14T17:36:00.000Z

The world can breathe a sigh of relief today... kind of. A group of international scientists this morning announced that they are moving the hands of the symbolic "Doomsday Clock" away from midnight -- or the figurative apocalypse -- but only by one minute. The clock, which is maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, was designed to reflect how close civilization is to "catastrophic destruction." First set at seven minutes to midnight, the clock has been moved only 18 times since its creation in 1947. The group, which includes more than a dozen Nobel laureates, last moved the hands of the clock in 2007, from seven to five minutes before midnight to reflect the threat of a "second nuclear age" and the challenges presented by global warming.

Source: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/doomsday-clock-moves-midnight-minute/story?id=9560729

Pat Robertson Haiti Comments Spark Uproar

2010-01-14T17:34:00.000Z

On his Christian Broadcasting Network show yesterday, Rev. Pat Robertson said that the nation of Haiti has been devastated by a large earthquake because its people "made a pact with the devil." "Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it," Robertson said. "They were under the heel of the French ... and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, 'We will serve you if you'll get us free from the French.'" "True story," he continued. "And the devil said, 'OK, it's a deal.' Ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after another." Robertson is infamous for such inflammatory statements. And not surprisingly, the reaction to the controversial pastor's comments has been harsh.

Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2010/01/14/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry6096806.shtml

Tablet PC mania hits

2010-01-11T21:08:00.001Z

Hot new tablet computers are shaking up the stodgy computer industry — possibly giving consumers reason to buy yet another PC. Dell (DELL), Lenovo and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) each unveiled tablet PC models at this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Each features a touch-screen that eliminates or reduces the need for a keyboard. Apple (AAPL) is expected to come out with its own tablet later this month. Apple declined to comment. It's too soon to say whether the new computers will be a hit. Many models are pricey, and older attempts at tablets have not sold well, says Allen Nogee, a tech analyst at researcher In-Stat. But the buzz suggests that their time may have come. "More people (are) adapting to small, touch-screen devices, like the (Apple) iPhone ... and more people (are) attracted to netbooks," Nogee says. That makes them more willing to embrace portable, touch-screen computers, he says. "Is there a market above smartphones and below netbooks? Obviously, we think there is," says Philip McKinney, a vice president at Hewlett-Packard.

Source: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2010-01-07-tablet-computers_N.htm

'Pirate' music site allowed 21 million downloads, court told

2010-01-07T23:25:00.001Z

Alan Ellis, 26, was the founder of the Oink website which had around 200,000 members and allowed 21 million downloads before it was closed down in 2007. Teesside Crown Court heard that the site was free to join, by invitation only with members able to propose a friend, but users had to pay a donation of at least £5. Peter Makepeace, prosecuting, told the jury it was not a case against “some poor minnow who has taped a record one night and circulated it to their friends”. The site was set up in May 2004 and hosted in Norway, but switched to Amsterdam eight months later after the music industry asked it to cease. Mr Makepeace said when the website was taken down, there were approximately 200,000 active members with access to around 200,000 audio files. Police found donations from around the world in several of Mr Ellis's Paypal accounts, amounting to almost 300,000 US dollars, the court heard.

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/6946708/Pirate-music-site-allowed-21-million-downloads-court-told.html

Google Introduces Nexus One, Its Rival to the iPhone

2010-01-06T23:00:00.001Z

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Google stepped up its attack on the smartphone market on Tuesday, introducing a new touch-screen handset called Nexus One that is widely seen as a rival to Apple’s iPhone. Google also said that it would sell the Nexus One, which it called a superphone, exclusively through a new online store. Google, which earns the vast majority of its revenue from advertising, said it was dipping its toes in the direct retailing business not to reap profits from the sale of phones but to broaden the availability of handsets running its Android software. “There is an opportunity to make some margin on the unit sales, but that’s not the objective here,” Andy Rubin, a vice president of engineering in charge of the Android technology, said during a press conference at Google’s headquarters here. “Our primary business is advertising.” Consumers will be able to buy the Nexus One for $529 unlocked or for $179 with a two-year calling plan from T-Mobile. Google said that the Nexus One would be available on Verizon Wireless in the United States and on Vodafone in Europe later this year. It said it hoped to add other devices and carriers to the direct-to-consumer program in the future. Some analysts said they were impressed by the speed of the Nexus One and by some of its capabilities. Google has voice-enabled all text boxes in the device, so a user can, for example, compose an e-mail message by speaking into the phone rather than typing. But they expressed disappointment that Google had not done more to shake up the industry by, for example, subsidizing the phone through profits from advertising.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/technology/internet/06google.html?ref=technology

Canada: Internet Piracy Haven

2010-01-04T01:57:00.000Z

Internet piracy is rampant in China, right? And Russia is known to be a hotbed of infringing activities as well. It may come as a surprise to some that the current No. 1 site for BitTorrent file-sharing -- often of the copyright-infringing kind -- is Canada-based Isohunt. In fact, the Obama administration put Canada on its blacklist of shame, a "priority watch list" of intellectual property laggards. With all of the legal pressures against the first- and second-ranked BitTorrent sites, "Canada has earned a dubious distinction as a world hub for illegitimate file-sharing websites and a leader in Internet piracy," according to Globeandmail.com's Barry McKenna. Further, Canada is in the "embarrassing position of harbouring 5 of the top 8 remaining unauthorized BitTorrent sites including the new number 1 ranked site, Isohunt," wrote technology attorney Barry Sookman. Isohunt was founded in Vancouver by Gary Fung. Isohunt is not just popular in terms of BitTorrent sites, with as many as 100 million unique visitors going to the site every year; Isohunt also ranks among the 200 most popular Web sites of any kind on the planet. Earlier this year, the Obama administration put Canada on its blacklist of shame -- a "priority watch list" of intellectual property laggards including the likes of China, Russia and Venezuela.

Source: http://www.ecommercetimes.com/rsstory/68969.html

PETN Explosive

2009-12-26T23:32:00.000Z

The substance used by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on Amsterdam to Detroit Flight 253 has been identified as PETN, according to the authorities. Pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) is a highly explosive substance which can be transported in many different ways which makes the chemical a horrible threat to passengers on a plane. Luckily a brave passenger named Jasper Schuringa tackled the terrorist, who tried to ignite explosive device. PETN is highly explosive, colorless and an organic compound. It’s also used as a heart medication stimulant. Officials suspect that the explosives were carried in some sort of soft plastic or latex container like a condom could have been used for the purpose.

Source: http://news.puggal.com/petn-explosive-15513/

Coke Tries Facial-Recognition on Facebook

2009-12-26T23:14:00.000Z

Coca-Cola wants you to know that Coke Zero is a lot like Coca-Cola Classic. It believes this so strongly that it’s willing to do something unusual to drive the point home, like introducing you to your own doppelganger. Enter the Facial Profiler. The Profiler is a new Facebook application that lets members upload photos of themselves and match them with a similar-looking Facial Profiler user. The idea is that you can find your mirror image, just the way Coke has found its reflection in Coke Zero. The app, which launches today, has been soliciting submissions to build a database with enough photos to reach critical mass. Once a photo is uploaded, its features are analyzed and rated. Users can then vote on the results, which the developers hope will improve its ratings over time. The software is based on the same kind of technology used by law-enforcement agencies to locate individuals within large pools of people.

Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/12/03/coke-tries-facial-recognition-on-facebook/

Amazon's Kindle has copyright protection hacked

2009-12-23T23:30:00.001Z

An Israeli hacker claims to have broken the copyright protection on Amazon's Kindle e-reader, reports say. The hack will allow the ebooks stored on the reader to be transferred as pdf files to any other device. The hacker, known as Labba, responded to a challenge posted on Israeli hacking forum, hacking.org. It is the latest in a series of Digital Rights Management hacks, the most famous being the reverse engineering of iTunes. The Kindle e-book reader has been very successful since it was launched in the US in 2007. Amazon hopes to have sold a million devices by the end of the year. It leaves it to individual publishers whether they want to apply DRM but books in its main proprietary format .azw, cannot be transferred to other devices. It did not immediately respond to the news but it is likely it will attempt to patch its DRM software. DRM has long divided opinion. While rights holders regard it as a crucial tool to protect copyright, consumers tend to hate it because it limits what can be done with content.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8428126.stm

'Seinfeld' over, but Festivus keeps giving

2009-12-23T16:30:00.001Z

Long before company celebrators bench-pressed fax machines, partygoers performed competitive face-plants into ice water, or family members gathered around an aluminum pole to wield complaints at one another, the common people of ancient Rome began to act up. They were the unruly lot during official religious holidays, the ones who were "raising hell on the streets" while the "elite were putting on their robes," said journalist Allen Salkin. The adverb to describe their behavior, he said: Festivus, the Latin world for "festive." A few thousand years later, and thanks to a "Seinfeld" writer whose father had made Festivus a quirky household tradition, a 1997 episode of the famed sitcom popularized the peculiar day. To hear it from Frank Costanza, the character played by Jerry Stiller, the December 23 observance calls for little more than the erection of an aluminum pole, the airing of grievances and the demonstration of feats of strength -- which preferably culminate in wrestling down to the ground and pinning the head of the household.

Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/12/23/festivus.holiday/

International spam mastermind fined £116,000

2009-12-23T16:24:00.000Z

A man accused of being the mastermind of the world's largest known "spam gang" has been fined $A210,000 (£116,000) by an Australian court after admitting his involvement in the international network that could send 10 billion e-mails a day. Lance Atkinson, a New Zealander who lives on Australia's Gold Coast, was also banned from sending unsolicited commercial e-mails for the next seven years by Australia's Federal Court in Brisbane. Mr Atkinson's network which he ran with his brother Shane, who was based in New Zealand, included operations in the US, Australia, New Zealand, China, India, Russia and Canada. It was responsible for e-mails estimated to account for as much as one third of the world's junk mail. The brothers recruited spammers who sent billions of e-mails a day marketing penis enhancement treatments, weight loss pills and prescription drugs. The Australian Communications and Media Authority pursued Mr Atkinson under Australia's anti-spamming laws after tracing more than 100,000 spam e-mail complaints from Australian residents back to him.

Source: http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article6964722.ece

Google Fast Flip Adds Publications

2009-12-19T22:10:00.001Z

Google has added more than 50 newspapers, magazines, websites and TV stations to Fast Flip, the service that allows users to preview or 'flip' through news stories. Google Fast Flip was introduced in September and can currently be found in the Google Labs beta site. Articles from UK newspapers The Telegraph, The Independent and The Express have been added, along with the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune. The Miami Herald and the Kansas City Star, the Huffington Post, Popular Science, Reuters, Public Radio International, POLITICO, and US News & World Report are also added. PC Advisor's sister titles PCWorld.com and Macworld.com are already on Fast Flip. Fast Flip now indexes around 90 publications and aims, according to Google, to "make reading articles online as fast and simple as flipping through a magazine or newspaper". Announcing the additions via a Google blog post, software engineer Jack Hebert said: "If you make it easier to read news online, people will read more of it. Users have told us they like being able to browse content so quickly, and we've been pleased with the amount of time they have spent reading articles in Fast Flip."

Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/185139/google_fast_flip_adds_publications.html

FBI makes arrest in 'Wolverine' uploading case

2009-12-17T00:03:00.000Z

The FBI has accused a man of copyright infringement for allegedly uploading to the Web the feature film "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" last spring. Gilberto Sanchez, 47, was arrested in the Bronx, N.Y., early Wednesday morning by FBI agents without incident, law enforcement sources told CNET. A spokeswoman from the FBI's Los Angeles field office, which led the investigation, confirmed the arrest. If convicted, Sanchez faces up to three years in prison and a $250,000 fine, or twice the gross gain or gross loss attributable to the offense, whichever is greater. When the feature film from 20th Century Fox was leaked to the Internet in April, it caused panic in Hollywood because the movie, which reportedly cost $100 million to make, was not scheduled for theatrical release until May. The fear was that Internet distribution of an unauthorized copy would hurt ticket sales. By the time the movie screened in theaters, the unauthorized copy had been watched 4.1 million times, according to market researcher BigChampagne.

Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-10416372-261.html?tag=newsLatestHeadlinesArea.0

BREIN: Pirate Bay Does Not Appeal

2009-12-10T00:10:00.000Z

The folks running the Pirate Bay, whoever they may be, never seemed particularly interested in entertaining BREIN’s court summons. The Dutch copyright enforcers, better known as BREIN, have been trying to force The Pirate Bay out of the Netherlands since June of this year. This is nothing new for BREIN, as they have been fierce in their attempts to reverse the stigma that the Netherlands is a haven for BitTorrent trackers aiding in the unauthorized distribution of content. In June of this year, BREIN sent a summons to the administrators of The Pirate Bay via Twitter and Facebook, claiming that it was impossible to track them down in person. Their demand: remove all torrents that point to infringing content. Over the course of several months, the three administrators (or ex-administrators, depending on who you believe) never showed up. There never seemed to be much point anyway – their defense tried to argue that they no longer own the site, but BREIN and the courts didn’t buy it. On October 22, the court finally ruled that The Pirate Bay must remove all access to torrents that potentially refer to infringing material (but could keep the site online). A few weeks later, The Pirate Bay shut their trackers down. However, the site is far from dead. Instead of tracking swarms, the site has magnet links and a torrent index (but does not track them). Most of the links available previously are still accessible, only the technology pointing the end user to the P2P swarms has changed. According to BREIN today, The Pirate Bay isn’t appealing the October 22nd ruling. Maybe that’s because they feel that by removing their torrent tracker, they have already complied with the ruling. But the big question remains, is BREIN satisfied with The Pirate Bay’s efforts? We doubt it, so we’ve followed up with BREIN, and will hopefully have a response soon. Tim Kuik, the Director of BREIN, responded to our inquiry, and it seems that come March 2010, The Pirate Bay won't be off the hook by merely switching to magnet links. "...it does not matter at all whether the links are magnet or whatever. What matters is whether they go to illegal content or not. The links, by whatever name or technology, may not refer to illegal content. It's not the technology, it's what it is used for."

Source: http://www.slyck.com/story1886_BREIN_Pirate_Bay_Does_Not_Appeal

Search By Sight With Google Goggles

2009-12-08T00:22:00.001Z

Today, at their Search Event in Mountain View, Google demoed a brand new product set to launch in Google Labs: Google Goggles. Humorous name aside, the product looks to be a huge leap forward in the field of visual search — by which I mean, you point a camera at something and Google figures out what it is. The example that Google VP of Engineering Vic Gundotra showed on stage involved taking a picture of a particular bottle of wine. When he ran it through Google Goggles, the result showed that the particular bottle has a hint of apricots. You also be able to use Goggles to look up things such as CD covers and bar codes (this is likely similar to the popular Android app ShopSavvy). For text, Google Goggles uses optical character recognition (OCR) to try and read things like logos and labels to aid the search. It seems as if this new functionality, which should be live in Google Labs soon, will be destined for Android phones at least at first.

Source: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/07/google-goggles/

Google redesigns home page

2009-12-03T22:31:00.000Z

Google said the move was designed to remove distractions for those web users "intent on searching". The "fade in" effect initially presents users with the Google logo and a large search box, complete with the Search and I'm Feeling Lucky buttons. A flashing cursor is already inside the search box, meaning people can type directly in to the search field. However, if the user moves their mouse, the rest of the page fades in to focus. The usual array of hyperlinks – directing users through to an image search, Google's news and shopping channels and its iGoogle portal – still appear at the top of the page, while below the search box, links to advertising programs and business solutions appear. Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google, said web users appreciated Google's "clean, minimalist approach". "For the vast majority of people who come to the Google homepage, they are coming in order to search," she wrote in a blog post. "For those users who are interested in using a different application like Gmail, Google Image Search or our advertising programs, the additional links on the homepage only reveal themselves when the user moves the mouse.

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/6717954/Google-redesigns-home-page.html