Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we’re already talking to partners about the project, and we’ll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.

I wonder if Chrome the browser will come pre-installed and defaulted to Google’s search page… and I wonder if they will make it difficult to run Microsoft Explorer… inquiring minds want to know.

Jens and Lars Rasmussen are the original founders of the Google Maps technology. Today they bring us Google Wave. A new communication platform that Google is developing which will launch later this year.

It blends all of the traditional types of communication into a single wave of rich text, images and more all shared with friends who can interact with it in real time. You can even replay the wave to see what was said by whom and when. Very cool stuff.

To try and ensure mass adoption of the platform Google is open sourcing alot of it. To find out more you can read the official blog post, or visit the Google Wave site.

If you’re a blogger you know one of the most tedious things you can do is search for images to use in your posts that won’t get you in trouble. Buying images each time is not financially sound so you have to search for them. Yahoo! Image Search just made it easier by adding a creative commons filter:

Now with this filter turned on you can find a wealth of images ready for use on your blog. No more wasted time searching photos just to find you can use them!

Try this new filter out. I am certain you’ll find it saves you alot of time!

It’s not released yet but there is much speculation about it. If you go to www.bing.com you’ll see the placeholder for it. Follow the link and you’ll get to here http://www.decisionengine.com where you can watch a video demo of the search interface.

What’s intersting about it is that it has some of the nify features we now see in Googles Search Options such as filtering and sorting search results.

I’m looking forward to this new offering from Microsoft. One thing is certain - you can’t not know where to try it. It’s www.bing.com. That alone gives them a good chance at snagging some search market share from Google. I’m also interested in figuring out how to maximize it’s use for our clients - now that’s exciting!

Here is a picture of the interface taken from the video:

We here at Spark have been using basic microformats for various reasons including SEO for some time. This new feature is extremely interesting to us because of the value it could have on user experience and click through rates. Over the next several weeks we’re going to dig deep into this new service from Google to see how we can use it’s advantages for our customers!

To see the full explanation of the new functionality visit the Google Webmaster Central blog post “Introducing Rich Snippets“.

Webmaster tools is an extremely valuable resource every webmaster should be familiar with. It provides a host of features which help you ensure Google is interacting with your website in the most efficient and effective means possible. Over the years since its launch it has grown in popularity and due to overwhelming feedback from users, Google has updated the interface to make it even more convenient to use.

Some of the new features include:

• One-stop Dashboard: We redesigned our dashboard to bring together data you view regularly: Links to your site, Top search queries, Sitemaps, and Crawl errors.
• More top search queries: You now have up to 100 queries to track for impressions and clickthrough! In addition, we’ve substantially improved data quality in this area.
• Sitemap tracking for multiple users: In the past, you were unable to monitor Sitemaps submitted by other users or via mechanisms like robots.txt. Now you can track the status of Sitemaps submitted by other users in addition to yourself.

The only interface is available for a few more weeks to aide with the transition, and you can get the new interface by logging into http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/new.

• Events - Allows you to post events and let visitors add them to their Google Calendars
• Polls - Create and run polls for your site
• Get Answers - Allow visitors to ask the community questions which are then answered
• Comments - Allow visitors to post comments!

If you have a complex website that is not dynamic you may want to consider integrating Google Friend Connect as it is an easy way to bring your site to life!

If you want a concise overview of what Google is about and where they are headed you should read the 2008 Founders’ Letter yourself. Here is a few paragraphs to whet your appetite!

Search

Search remains at the very core of what we do at Google, just as it has been from our earliest days. As the scale has changed dramatically over the years, the presentation and quality of our search results have also undergone many changes since 1998. In the past year alone we have made 359 changes to our web search — nearly one per day. Some are not easy to spot, such as changes in ranking based on personalization (launched broadly in 2005) but they are important in getting the most relevant search results. Others are very easy to see and improve search efficiency in a very clear way, such as spelling correction, annotations, and suggestions.

While I am proud of what has been accomplished in search over the past decade, there are important areas in which I wish we had made more progress. Perfect search requires human-level artificial intelligence, which many of us believe is still quite distant. However, I think it will soon be possible to have a search engine that “understands” more of the queries and documents than we do today. Others claim to have accomplished this, and Google’s systems have more smarts behind the curtains than may be apparent from the outside, but the field as a whole is still shy of where I would have expected it to be. Part of the reason is the dramatic growth of the web — for any particular query, it is likely there are many documents on the topic using the exact same vocabulary. And as the web grows, so does the breadth and depth of the curiosity of those searching. I expect our search engine to become much “smarter” in the coming decade.

So too will the interfaces by which users look for and receive information. While many things have changed, the basic structure of Google search results today is fairly similar to how it was ten years ago. This is partly because of the benefits of simplicity; in fact, the Google homepage has become increasingly simple over the years: http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2006-04-21-n63.html. But we are starting to see more significant changes in search interfaces. Today you can search from your cell phone by just speaking into it and Google Reader can suggest interesting blogs without any query at all. It is my expectation that in the next decade our searches and results will look very different than they do today.

One of the most striking changes that has happened in the past few years is that search results are no longer just web pages. They include images, videos, books, maps, and more. From the outset, we realized that to have comprehensive search we would have to venture beyond web pages. In 2001, we launched Google Image Search and via Google Groups we made available and searchable the most comprehensive archive of Usenet postings ever assembled (800 million messages dating back to 1981).

If you’re not familiar with Twitter this may not be that exciting. On the other hand, if you are familiar with Twitter you’ll agree it’s difficult to find content - good content that’s circulating because of the vast amount of not so interesting information that obscures. Tweet Meme gets around that by only showing the most popular content in Twitter by counting the number of times its been retweeted.

Given how fast news breaks on Twitter - Tweet Meme makes it even easier to tap in to what’s happening at any given time. Have a look and see for yourself!

I was reading an interesting article in BusinessWeek last week regarding the importance of continuing to engage in marketing during tough economic times.

It got me thinking about “riding” it out till it ends. However, is that a good method of thinking? Maybe, but is it the best? I would argue that it isn’t. How are you positioning yourself and your organization to be ready for when people do come back to the spending habits.

The next question is, how do you position yourself to be ready for clients when they are ready to come back and spending.

One of the ways to ensure you are set up for success is to look at your processes right now and see if there are areas of improvements.

Continuing to gain lead capture is a great way to drip them from a marketing perspective until they are ready to purchase. Place them on your marketing e-mail lists and continue to send them contact information.

Another way is to connect with clients through changing content on your website. It will help you to continue putting yourself in their minds.

Good Luck!!

Kyle