Today the Amazon.com platform has launched 16 widgets that could helped its users to further exploring the e-commerce opportunities and distribution capability. These Amazon widgets is a series of small and easily configurable widgets that allowed a blogger or Website holder to place onto her blog or site. As shown on the landing page, several types of widgets have been designed for different layout, taste or purpose of a blog or Website, as color theme, width, height and title can also further be customized. However, the core content of an Amazon widget is the Amazon product, i.e. users’ favorite Amazon products and the purpose is no other than selling or promoting this product.

Apparently, the released of Amazon widgets showed to the people that Amazon had continually pushed forward the boundary of what could be accomplished online in addition to widen their users’ revenue stream.

The other day I came across a new Web messenger called Imo.im. It was known to be founded and funded by one of the first ten Google employees. This startup Imo.im was currently focused on instant messenger (IM) service that provides a single login for four (4) different IMs, which are AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, and Google Talk. In fact, it initially released on the Web since this April, and since then, attract some loyal users that loved the group chat feature that they provided. According to them, this feature enables their users to chat with their buddies without their buddies having to log into Imo.im.

Imo.im is based in Palo Alto, California. I will report on this startup when its service goes beta phase in the future. Stay tuned.

Yahoo! China has made remarkable advancements recently. From the change of the portal look, the release of Internet Assistant and site explorer to a recent launched of this map services, pronounce as “Ditu” in Mandarin. On the landing page of this Ditu, the default map is the Beijing City, as you know the Beijing 2008 Olympic is to be started in less than a year, this map services, i.e. Ditu will be particularly useful for those who want to learn more about Beijing. If I said this Ditu is launched in tandem with the Olympic, the answer is yes in the eyes of some Beijing citizens, but for those who do not know Mandarin, Ditu is just an useless service and a localize product in the eyes of the foreigners. In spite of globalization, substantial differences still remained in cultural and languages among the cities.

Another reason for Yahoo! China to release this product was their Web 2.0 dream. To show to the people that they hold the biggest crowd of Web community in China, they need to create a lot of stuff. Ditu is one of those stuff that allowed users to upload stories about the cities, what happened in a particular city and let the outsiders to get inside the lives of the surrounding. Thus, people will create more value to the cities that they resided and they definitely will reap the greater loyalty to the cities, districts, towns in return. In the practice of management, it is a request to a learning society.

The other day I came across a new social network site that is a Canada Montreal-based, and will be officially launch on this September 16. Capazoo is the name of the site, and the management team had prioritize the recent hot opportunities of online social networking by launching a site that can rival MySpace or Facebook. Though this site was unveiled in last November, it is still in private beta phase. Most of the members that I found through browsing the site are from Canada, and you’ll definitely share the joy with them when you visit their personal profiles and read that they’re very happy, feeling great, or he/she is in love with someone. In fact, Capazoo is a feature-rich site that allowed their existing users to do stuff like email (through Capazoo’s CZ Mail), blogging, broadcasting, photocasting, add friends, participate in member-get-member scheme and earn the online currency called Zoops, and etcetera. One of the things that I want to talk about Capazoo is the site was developed by using Flash technologies, and thus users that want to experience this site and their computers must be Adobe-Flash pre-installed. Though Flash is mainly used for delivering rich, interactive content and applications such as video, audio, or image, but the lack of distribution in operating systems and browsers maybe one of the factors that hinder the growth prospect of Capazoo.

Capazoo did claimed it is an ultimate social life network and entertainment site. However, given that Capazoo’s existing features (what they release in this invitation-only beta phase), it’s still a long way for them to realize their Web 2.0 dream.

NetEase, a NASDAQ-listed company is announcing that all its users of these three email systems, i.e. 163 Mail, 126, and Yeah.net will have free unlimited storage starting in September 10 afternoon 2pm. This strategic move by NetEase was primarily designed to make its users happy and satisfy of the services rendered, and not being attracted by the promotion of another email provider, Yahoo! Mail. Yahoo! Mail currently also offered unlimited storage for its users in China that sign-up under the domain @yahoo.cn while the user whom still prefer domain @yahoo.com.cn will have the basic online storage restricted to 3.5G.

NetEase was the first company that launched Chinese version of email online storage to the China people there since 1998. Its popular 163 Mail or 126 Mail is restricted to 3G prior to this upgrade by the current users. Both email systems are Ajax interface and Kaspersky antivirus program have pre-installed into the products. Due to the brand name of NetEase, they currently have more than 190 million users that used their Webmail products. Maybe you are in doubt of how they going to manage these three different Webmail products under one umbrella, but they managed to get their users satisfied and happy with the features that they offered.

A new translator service is goes live in Microsoft. An user can access the service though the following four URLs: http://translator.live.com/, http://translate.live.com/, http://windowslivetranslator.com/ or this one, http://translator.start.com/, according to this news blog.

Currently it is still in beta mode, and powered by Systran Machine Translation. That’s explained why a link is provided on the bottom of the site for users that want a premium service of Systran. As expected, this type of translation service on the Web will not help an user to translate the text 100% accurate as one desire. Moreover, as told on the landing page, text beyond 500 words will be truncated by Windows Live Translator. For some users that tested the Systran premium translation services before, they know Systran provide a “Save Translate Project” while this free version offered by Windows Live doesn’t. To know more about how to use this service, there is a “Help” page on the site.

Today a California based startup Clupedia has released a new Web 2.0 browser toolbar that called Clucast. The download program file is weighs in at 1.3MB, and currently under reviewed by Mozilla and potential users need to double confirm the installation process in order to download and use the Clucast services rendered. This toolbar allowed users to effectively find the clues and view those clues created by other users without any registration required. However, when you want to create the clues, you’ll need to sign-up and register a new account. What is a clue? It is a word/phrase that found in any Webpage that one comment on, once it submitted, it will become a clue that is flagged and viewable anywhere on the Web.

This Web 2.0 browser toolbar offered two main functions: Generate new clues or retrieve clues in a peer-to-peer central repository. One can generating the new clues by sharing the opinion and the reward for doing so is the recognition one could received in return, win prizes, earn cash, or become a famous Clucaster. On the other hand, retrieve clues help an user to be able to discover trends, find influencers, be in the know or boost the surfing habit. By generate or retrieve clues, Clupedia strove to increase the users of its own Web community that labeled as Clugen, the “Clues Generation.”

Clupedia stands for encyclopedia of clues from crowd. It is a startup based in Santa Ana, California and has raised $1.3 million in a round A financing from Tech Coast Angels, Pasadena Angels and Frontera Capital.

Zoho has released an office productivity suite purposely for the business use. It is called Zoho Business which temporarily in private beta mode and rich features are being built-in to this suite. The release of this business suite will not affect the availability of Zoho personal version as Zoho has stated that they will continue to develop the personal version for the best of individual user.

This Zoho Business will bring multiple Zoho applications under a single roof and provide an administration console to manage users, domains, groups. It mean when an user sign-up and use this suite, the role of super administrator is given by this system and hence, other new administrators can be added to this Zoho Business. Customization, flexibility, telephone support, data storage management and remote back-up can be found when we use this business version of Zoho. It is a complete suite of business software, as its popular Zoho Writer, Sheet, Show, Wiki, Chat, Calendar, just to mention a few are bundling to this Business suite.

Zoho Business is created based on the concept that companies should be able to run their businesses in an online environment. However, it is known that it will only be officially marketed in the marketplace in this October.