(from the guys at Scofieldedit)

Now Germany has come to a different agreement with Google on censorship of content. Google will erase images of faces, house numbers, license plates and individuals in Germany who have told authorities they do not want their information used in the service.

This is different to previous agreements where countries have been happy to have personal information only blurred. I wonder now if questions will now be raised in these countries about whether blurring was enough. Does this mean that Google still holds the original photos and is able to use for its own internal needs?

Personally blurring any content that is publicly available is enough for me, though I am sure others will disagree.

Regardless of the privacy questions, Google Street View is now available in 100 cities across the globe and is being actively used by 3rd party developers to great effect. It has definitely made house hunting easier from the armchair!

Once you look more closely though, there is quite a spread across those top ten markets.

Here is the breakdown:

1. Spain: 26%
2. Norway: 22%
3. Denmark: 22%
4. Belgium: 21%
5. Italy: 20%
6. UK: 19%
7. Germany: 19%
8. Sweden: 19%
9. France: 18.5%
10. Netherlands: 9%

Search remained strong with 26% year on year growth taking up some 43% of ad expenditure.

(Not sure who to credit for the image. If it is yours let me know)

The S stands for Speed supposedly, which feels more Microsoft then Apple in style. No that isn’t a complement. It also seems a bit light on new features if you already have an iPhone as you can download the updated 3.0 software using the latest version of iTunes on June 17th (more instructions here).

If you do that you’ll miss out on a longer battery life, a 3MP camera, hands free voice contol and the ability to record video. The battery life is the same as the previous version when using 3G but is approximately a third longer using WiFi, listening to audio or watching video.

Existing O2 iPhone users are out of luck this time though. Whereas previously there was an option for existing iPhone users to upgrade to the new version by extending the length of their contract to O2, this time the only path to get the new iPhone is to pay out the remainder of your contract.

Most of the comments on Twitter when searching for O2 and iPhone are complaining about this state of affairs.

My take: most people will not pay and Apple could stand to take a hit. If Twitter is anything to go by, O2 is taking a bit of a hit to its brand as well. It is certainly not winning any plaudits

One thing is certain though, when those who bought the iPhone 3G when it launched come to the end of their contract (about 6 months from now) the mobile industry could be a different beast altogether in the UK. There is no Palm Pre today and the Google phone (G1) has been slated for its hardware (though not its software). In the next 6 months though, the Palm Pre should be available in the UK (on either  O2(!) or Vodafone) and there are supposed to be a large number of new Google phones (18+!) hitting the market by the end of the year.

Interesting times in the mobile phone market..

What is most interesting to me is how it moves the needle forward in the email space online. The SMTP protocol was first defined in 1982, and has not changed drastically since. Google Wave is a re-envisioning of how communication on the web could be and it certainly looks like a productivity booster.

But why are Google doing it?

I dont see it adding revenue through advertising.

Are they able to track and understand user behaviour more with this protocol over email? Maybe, but even if this were the case, 3rd party providers could remove or disable this as the product is open source.

So that can’t be it.

There is potential for Google in both the consumer and business space.

On the consumer side, it is an improvement on current separate communication mechanisms along with a definite social element which could challenge Facebook or Microsoft  – though if it really became a threat, Facebook (or Microsoft) could roll this technology out themselves (and finally improve Facebook’s own messaging platform). I wonder if Wave technology will add to the Opensocial platform and become the glue that brings different social networks together. With Google Wave, it could be possible to see the same photo albums in Facebook and Myspace using Wace as an underlying technology. I wonder how this would tie into Facebook’s idea of relationships and privacy.

It is in the business space that I think Google has even more potential with the product. Google Docs has not done great, and in general Google has not been a huge success in the business arena which is still Microsoft’s stronghold. Google Wave for me seems to show significant productivity increases for groups of people both locally inside one office and across multiple offices. That alone could see it adopted by companies. Once it is inside the company, the ability to edit documents inside the wave client (similar to how they currently do it with Google Docs and Gmail) would mean people could start to use web applications more and more.. and start to use Microsoft applications less and less.

Of course, Google Wave might take a significant time to be used globally like email it today. My guess is it might need to integrate with email (SMTP) in the short term. But how long before Wave is a protocol in Exchange server? Exchange server is obviously moving towards being a web service itself, and Microsoft Office has launched lightweight web versions of Office (call Office Live Workspace) . Could we see a Microsoft Exchange/Office integration using Wave protocols. It would be great if the 2 companies worked together on improving the protocol.

Why else is Google doing Google Wave?

There is one thing that will attract people back – I gave it away in the title – events. I do not mean just the business conferences that have been popular on Twitter with the tech and marketing crowd. I mean the concerts and clubs. There’s enough focus and length of time that people will stay interested in monitoring it via their phones and they’re likely to meet people who are into the same things as they are building up a followerbase.

The end result is that a person reaches a critical mass of followers quicker and even if that fails to happen after one event they are likely to come back for the second.. and third etc etc.

Of course Facebook is still in a strong position due to its size if it can move quickly enough.

A possible problem for Facebook that everyone in the tech world complains about is the lack of asymmetric friendships. On Facebook, you can only see someone’s newsfeed if they friend you back. On Twitter you can choose to follow someone and not have them follow you back. However, the privacy in Facebook is a strong feature for them over time – there are some stuff you just do not want the whole world to see. Facebook’s fan pages may well do the job and allow you to see all the other fans and the celebs and then listen/interact with them.

However, whilst there is greater usage of Facebook’s mobile apps than Twitter right now, the Twitter apps are more obviously able to handle event specific message streams than Facebook using its search functionality. Facebook would need to change its mobile apps at least to accomodate easy access to fan pages.

Finally, neither Twitter nor Facebook have realtime updates on mobiles which would be a boon for this type of usage. But one step at a time

(Image courtesy: Osei)

I am moderating a panel at Silverpop’s 2009 Marketing Masterclass next week on Engagement Email Marketing Problems Solved and thought I’d take a look around the web to see what were the best practices for moderating a  panel.

I came up with a couple of gems from two highly respected gentlemen:

• How to Successfully Moderate a Conference Panel
  A Comprehensive Guide by Jeremiah Owyang looking at each stage of moderating a panel. It was recommended reading for all moderators at Ad:Tech 2008 and Web 2.0 Expo in 2008.

• How To Be a Great Moderator
  By Guy Kawasaki – though shorter, it gives ten great points on making a panel entertaining and informative.

It was suprisingly hard using Google to find video examples of panels online so if anyone knows of any send them my way, I would be interested to watch

(Image source: Olivander)

Anyway, regardless of the hype, I have seen one type of Tweet apearing more and more lately. It is that of the job opening. Look for examples here, here and here or you can see the full search for marketing managers in London here.

Given this data, it is not much of a leap to seeing someone searching for “marketing manager” or “account manager” inside Twitter search to look for jobs. Some might say this will kill off the recruitment agencies, well it certainly could help get your job offer in front of more people but especially in today’s economic climate (but even prior to this period) getting CVs was never really the problem. It was always cutting out the rubbish.

Nevertheless, for both recruitment agencies and companies looking to recuit direct, Twitter looks like it can be another channel to find the right candidate.

In order for this to work though Twitter needs to be able to make use of meta data – someone in the Internet industry probably does not want to see roles within the financial sector – the only way to do that would be to include it in the tweet. I wonder if there is enough space. Robert Scoble talks about Twitter’s metadata problem here. It will be interesting if Twitter brought out the ability to add meta data “underneath” each tweet. That would mean techie terms like the hashtag (#) can disappear as well.

I wonder if we will see a Tweet from a recruiter asking whether someone would be interested in a job they have available