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Google Launches


Launch searchmash, an experimental site started by Google
Uses Ajax and some other web2.0-ish features.

News Google launches "Features, Not Products" initiative
Sergey Brin is telling employees to stop making old products and start improving new ones. "For example, said Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, Google plans to combine its spreadsheet, calendar and word-processing programs into one suite of Web-based applications."

Launch Google Code Search
Google now lets you do searches -- including regular expression searches -- across public source code.

Preview Google testing new site design
James Yu has a screenshot of a new design Google has been testing lately.

Launch Democracy, the free internet TV system
The Participatory Culture Foundation (formerly Downhill Battle) has finally launched their Internet television platform. Grab existing videocast feeds or make your own, all with a gorgeous interface.

Launch Google Pages, new Geocities-style site-building software
Google has released a new program that gives users 100MB of web space to make simple HTML pages in.

Launch Google running AdWords in newspapers
Google is buying the leftover ad space in the _Chicago Sun-Times_ and filling it with AdWords ads related to the rest of the content. I wonder how they're going to charge advertisers. The domains posted are the real domains, so it can't exactly be pay-per-click.

Launch TextPayMe, makes it easy to send money through SMS
Want to send someone $4? Just text "PAY 4 [phone number here]" to sms@textpayme.com.

Launch Google Music, search for bands and albums

Purchase CNET buys Consumating, dating site for bloggers andgeeks
Started as a hobby by Internet rockstar Ben Brown.

Launch Pandora, creates a custom webcast of music you'll like
Pandora uses an exhaustive database of musical features generated by the Music Genome Project to figure out what songs you'll like. Then it creates a custom webcast station that plays those songs, learning as you tell it which songs you like and don't.

Story Xooglers, Google's former Marketing Director tells his story
Some great stories about Google's early days, with more to come.

Launch Click-to-Call AdWords, Google will let you call advertisers

Launch pbwiki, start your own wiki in seconds
"As easy as peanut butter." Started by David Weekly.

Launch Protopage, create your own personal start page
Pick a background, drag and drop some windows, etc.

Update Blind test reveals Google offers best results
The Search Engine Experiment gives you the results from Yahoo, MSN, and Google without saying which is which. Currently, 41% of those who have taken the test picked Google (33% Yahoo, 26% MSN).

Preview Newsvine, a community news sharing site
"why did four perfectly happy Disney/ESPN employees leave their jobs to build it? ... [It will be a]ttractive not just in looks but in function as well. At Newsvine, we feel strongly that an article's life only begins the second it is published. It is only when readers interact with it that it achieves its full impact."

Launch Google Analytics, see the statistics on your website
A free version of Urchin, a company Google bought. (

Announce Google to unwire Mountain View, WiFi on street lamps
You could also buy equipment to extend it into your house. (proposal)

Preview Dabble DB, easily build custom online web apps
"Dabble combines the best of group spreadsheets, custom databases, and intranet web applications into a new way to manage and share your information online."

Launch Google adds Creative Commons support
The Google advanced search page now lets you limit your search to CC-licensed results.

Launch Google Local Mobile, get Google Maps and more on your mobile phone
Satellites, drag and drop, and more.

Preview BBC Annotatable Audio Project, provides a wiki for annotating the BBC's audio content
This is pretty amazing stuff.

Launch Simple JavaScript Database, uses TrimQuery and AMASS to provide a full SQL database in JavaScript
This takes us another step closer to the possibility of being able to run Ajax applications like Gmail while not connected to the Internet.

Preview Google on the future of advertising
In a long New York Times piece, top Googlers speculate about the future of advertising, including Google selling TV ads, using more personalized information, and links to store inventory information.

Funding Digg, a democratic news site, gets $2.8M in VC from Greylock, angels
Investors include Omidyar Network, the outfit led by eBay co-founder Pierre Omidyar, Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen, and Greylock partners.

Update Flickr adds support for photo printing, books, DVDs, posters, stamps
"At the same time, we're rolling out a pilot program allowing other businesses access to our commercial APIs ... the goal is to open it up completely and give you the biggest variety of choices when it comes to doing things with your photos."

Launch Seattle 911, maps 911 calls in real time
Following in the footsteps of Adrian Holovaty's Chicago Crime, Seattle 911 shows you where all the latest 911 calls originated from and whether they've been responded to yet.

Sale Search engine jux2.com sells for $101K on eBay
Backstory: the developer of this web app was tired of keeping it running so he sold the site -- the domain, the trademark, the software -- on eBay with the starting bid as one cent.

News TypePad blogging software is having trouble keeping up with growth
"We're currently pushing about 250mbps of traffic through our multiple network pipes, and that's growing by 10-20% each month. (If you're more familiar with bandwidth stated in terms of transfer allowances, that's a transfer rate of almost 3TB (terabytes!) per day.) ... the data center we are in ran out of space and power"

Launch Yahoo! Trip Planner, share trip plans including hotels, sightseeing, and notes


Launch Google Video adds 450 interviews with top television producers

Update Google "Smart Pricing" charges less for clicks from poorly-converting sites

Launch Kaboodle, collect and review pages you find on the Internet
Sort of like Amazon.com Listmania but for web pages. Also see H2O Playlist.

Launch Waxmail, send voice emails from Outlook
From the makers of Skylook, which saves Skype calls as MP3s. Joins vemail, Slawesome, and Springdoo.

Launch Jobster, location-based job meta search engine
Also plots results on a Google map. Recently received $20M from the Mayfield Fund, joining Ignition Partners and Trinity Ventures. Competitors include Simply Hired ($3M in angel funding) and Indeed ($5M from NYT and Union Square).

Launch Frappr, place photos of you and your friends on a Google Map
(sample map) It uses your zip code to figure out where to place you on the map.

News MSN joins Open Content Alliance, commits to scanning 150,000 public domain books in 2006
The Open Content Alliance is an organization that includes Yahoo!, the Internet Archive, and a number of libraries and is committed to scanning books that are out of copyright and putting them on the Web completely free for any purpose. Some sample books are also now available. One of them details the project.

Preview Motherload, new broadband network from Comedy Central
Lets broadband users access video clips from popular Comedy Central shows as well as special broadband-only content. Expected to be able to view it on mobile devices soon as well. MTV has a similar system called "Overdrive".



News Google donates $350,000 to open source projects at Oregon State
(Google blog post)

Preview Google Base, a structured database hosted by Google
(screenshots) An official statement from Google says the site was designed to "provide content owners an easy way to give us access to their content".

Update Google briefly releases Google Web Accelerator 2.0
The product that drove webmasters crazy was back...for a moment, at least.

Coming stickis, post a note to yourself and friends on any webpage
Back during Bubble I, a startup called Third Voice allowed you to post a sticky note on any webpage for everyone to see. Website authors cried foul and the company eventually went bust, but stickis apparently plans to revive the feature, although the notes (annotations) are reportedly only shared with friends.



Launch Google Maps Mainia, a blog covering Google Maps apps
There sure are a lot -- everything from ZipCars to urinals.





Launch Socialight, location-based communication on your mobile phone
Walking around and see something cool? With socialight, you can leave a 'sticky shadow' in that locations so that if your friends head back to the same place they get your message or photo.

Launch Riya, face recognition photo search
You upload your photos to Riya and it recognizes the faces in them and allows you to search based on the people. They hope to analyze the photos on the entire Web soon.



Coming ma.gnolia, new twist on social bookmarking
"What you mark in Ma.gnolia not only stays found but keeps coming back to you as your interests change. That's our pitch, plain and simple, and it's why we say that found is the new search." Web design guru Jeffrey Zeldman lends his endorsement. Beta launch in December.

Launch Healthline, web-based medical search engine
Get easy to understand, doctor-reviewed information on medical conditions.

Launch upto11.net, intelligent music recommendations
Uses Wikipedia and social networking.

Launch Taskable, RSS and OPML browsing in your Windows taskbar
The OPML support allows for some cool features, like quick access to the different Amazon.com stores.



Launch PreviewSeek, new topic-based search engine
Search for [apple] and it will ask whether you meant the fruit or the computer. Also provides previews of the resulting pages right in the search results
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Launch Pump Audio, connecting indie musicians with TV/movie licensees
Pump Audio takes music from indie musicians and provides it to people who make television shows and movies so that they can have pre-licensensed, genuine music to put in their works.

Update Y Combinator's Winter Founders Program Speakers include founders of Blogger, Excite
The deadline for the Winter Founders Program is just days away, but Y Combinator has announced some of the impressive speakers that will address the founders, including Joel Spolsky (Fog Creek), Evan Williams (Blogger, Odeo), Joe Kraus (Excite, JotSpot), Chris Sacca (head of new business development at Google), and Simon London (management editor for the Financial Times)
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Coming Shopify, hosted ajax online store software
Touted as the new Viaweb, Shopify looks to be a Ruby on Rails based online store builder.

Launch Outfoxed, web browser with built-in trust metric
Outfoxed is a Mozilla derivative that shows you whether your friends like certain web pages in things like Google search results.

Update Yahoo!, MSN link instant messaging networks
Combined network has 275 million users.

Launch AMASS, Flash-based Ajax local storage system
A clever hack that uses the disk storage features built into Flash to let Ajax applications store data on your local hard drive, instead of keeping it all on the server.

Update Google now helps search for plane tickets
Search for something like [lax nyc] and Google will help you buy plane tickets for that trip.











Launch reservemy.com, displays hotels on a Google Maps
See exactly where the available hotels are on a Google Map.


Preview Sphere, new blog search
Google and Yahoo have joined existing startups Technorati and IceRocket in launching blog search services. Now here comes another blog search startup, with an interface designed by Adaptive Path (see below), that touts better spam filtering. (screenshot) The company apparently has ties to Oddpost, the early ajax-based email client that Yahoo! purchased and plans to roll-out as Yahoo! Mail soon.


Launch Flock, new Web 2.0 browser with built-in del.icio.us and blogging
Flock (formerly round two), the well-funded San Francisco startup that is trying to include "Web 2.0" stuff right in their Mozilla Firefox-based browser, has finally launched a developer preview (reportedly because people were sharing private versions on filesharing networks). In my testing, the software is still buggy, slow, and crash-prone, but it's full of buzzwords -- tagging, blogging, Web 2.0, Ajax, and Firefox.












Purchase Verisign buys Moreover for $30M
Hot on the heals of buying Weblogs.com, Verisign, the company that manages the .com infrastructure, has purchased Moreover, one of the first RSS companies. Moreover provides bloggers with access to a wide variety of news stories through RSS and other methods.

Update Google adds tagging support
Tagging has been all over the place recently and apparently Google couldn't resist. Now you can tag sites in your search history for later retrieval.

Launch Google RSS Reader
Google joins the already crowded RSS aggregator space with their new ajax RSS reader, done in the style of Gmail. Blogger project manager Jason Shellen led the project.






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