As seasons race and reasons gale, the journey of life has by itself become a pale painting of an abstract emotion. And mankind melts in silent stupor while begotten sons of earthly thought prevails to sculpt perfect misery on pallid races. Religions rule and gods brood and bloodshed beckons all humankind to dreamy despair.

Yet time, stillborn though in flight seeks solace in masked mirth. And the shadows wait.

The clouds flight in faith, the stars light in truth. A pregnant sky lets the dusk draw dancing shadows on tired dreams. The oceans let the waves wash themselves in wanton wanderlust. Yet time is still and yet moves. Slow and sure. And the shadows wait.

Sometime shadows do mean that there’s light shining nearby. Time still dreams. The shadows wait…….for peace and truth to prevail in haste..

Google has announced pricing options for both Gmail (email) and Picasa (photo services). The paid model would come in handy for those users who would want much more than the existing free allowance namely 1GB for picasa and 2.8 GB for Gmail. Annual prices are pegged at $20 for 6 GB. Other pricing models fall in the realm of 25GB for $75,100GB for $250 and 250GB for $500.

• Number One, Mahalo by itself a dmoz clone whose goal is to human-write the top 20,000 search terms does’nt have the scalability that Google has. They simply cant capture the loooong tail of search and to know that more that a quarter of Google queries are completely new just shows where Mahalo is going to go kaput.  

• Number 2, his waft at Google’s algorithm being stuck in cement is just a no-brainer. Any SEO would tell you that Google changes its algo spots frequently in a constant effort to bring the perfect search results.
• Number 3 Techmeme ‘fresh meat’ content listings gives you no option to hunt for old content. For older content, one just have to get back to good ol’ google. Techmeme might just give Digg, a dig in the ribs so to say.
• Number 4 Scoble backing of facebook falls flat in the face when you consider that Google can use their own Orkut to integrate social networking in search results.

Is Scoble’s far fetched theories just pure linkbait in toto? Ironic for someone who does’nt think much of SEO.

Here biggie Danny Sullivan’s take on the issue.

Hong Kong, India, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan have given the thumbs up to Yahoo while Australia, China, and New Zealand users prefer Microsoft to the much vaunted Google. The survey results would imply that the search stakes would just not a one horse race especially when Internet penetration in the most populous countries like India and China hits an upward trend.

Topping the charts is the word ‘Folksonomy’, a Web classification system. Blogosphere comes a close second. Not surprising that the term ‘blog’was’nt far behind at third. ‘Netiquette’, slang for Web etiquette came a courteous fourth. ‘Blook’ referring to a blog converted to a book, booked itself into fifth place. ‘Webinar’ held fort at the sixth place. The term ‘Vblog’ or Video Blog wandered into the seventh place. ‘Social Networking’ tagged its way to the eight place. The term ‘cookie’ cached itself in the ninth place. Might be hard to snare a back link from Wikipedia, but it was’nt very difficult for the term ‘Wiki’ to round off the top ten..

New words germinate and hatch as the web takes over. The ninth edition of the Collins English dictionary plans to include words like ‘me-media’, a term for personal content websites such as Facebook, and ‘godcast’, a religious service which has been converted to an MP3 format. The way things are, web lingo and web slang march on unfettered and there is the frightening prospect of a new language called Web-lish that would bury English for good on the web…

More so webmasters down the line will miss one of the most human faces of the search giant. She was always trying to make things easier for them, adding a much needed spark of empathy to related webmaster issues. Hitch hike to her blog to know more…

Whenever you use Google for search, you leave lasting fingerprints that can help the Search Engine prepare a dossier on your tastes and interests, akin to a virtual profile of your existence. Though Google professes to keep this information protected, European online Privacy advocates have beamoned the lack of clear initiative from Google to really handle their fears. The Article 29 working party handling European Union privacy policy initiatives had very recently sent a memo to Google regarding the fact that user search history information has been kept for too long. The latest announcement by Google is aimed to placate these concerns.

Google’s takeover of online ad firm DoubleClick raised a few ruckus along the way. Very recently, there was a lot of serious concerns about Google Maps ‘Street View’ that it is a direct violation of people’s need for anonymity. The biggest fear is the possibility that security vulnerabilities might result in information falling in the wrong hands. What does Google’s privacy policy has to say? Tim O’Reilly has lots more to say on Google and Privacy stakes.

• A fascinating peep into Google Search Engine Labs by New York Times’s Saul Hansel shows why Google is way on top on search engine stakes
• Much awaited Search Marketing Expo (SMX) rolled out at Seattle(June 4th to 5th). To get closer to the action, you can chew on the SMX Diaries at SeoMoz.

Feedburner, the Chicago Illinos based company manages millions of feeds for publishers. Not just helping sites create and manage custom feeds to user desktops, it also provides access to feed analytics that help track feed performance and effectiveness. Feedburner also launced AdCimate, a product aimed at helping mainstream brands doing RSS Advertising to ensure that their ads dont appear alongside objectionable content.

The latest acquistion by Google does’nt come as a surprise. Though RSS advertising is still in its infancy, it gives the search engine behemoth a treasure chest of information on RSS user profiles and habits. How much ever Google shows the spotlight on value of feed-based advertising, it still does not bury existing fears of the privacy of Feedburner users.
Thought terms of the deal have not been disclosed, unsubstantiated reports peg it at roughly $100 million. Feed on more information here.