Google UK has launched the UK Carbon Footprint Project, a project that bring to the people in the UK understand different aspects of environmental footprint. On the site, user learn to know what is her actual carbon emissions on the earth. The offering of Google Carbon Calculator on the site also help the users understand that we can make a strong impact on this environmental issue, as well as we hold the vital roles in improving the environmental sustainability of our society. Carefully evaluate the questions posted on the Google Carbon Calculator will lead us to the greener life if we want, by taking action in the personalized action plan. Some really good examples can be found on this Calculator such as: Replace your desktop computer with a laptop because laptops generally use only 30% of the energy of a desktop computer; When you can, take the train instead of flying because flying emits more than twice as much CO2 (carbon dioxide) as trains. From the action plan, users can also compare their actions to those of others in the UK by putting themselves on the Carbon Footprint Map, as there are three different pin colors, which are green, orange and red can be found on the map. Each pin color indicate different tonnes of carbon dioxide that happened to that particular area.

To help promote this green initiative, Google UK encourage their users to add the Carbon Footprint tab to their iGoogle home pages for the ease of progress tracking. In the meantime, gadgets (widgets), discussion groups, project statistics, news feed as well as a snapshot of climate change from Sky are available.

Google UK has partnered with some organizations, the government, and companies on this project that include: Energy Saving Trust, Act on CO2, The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, Defra, BSkyB, British Gas and d::gen.

A UK-based social networking site called SAGA Zone has officially launched today. Like any other social networking sites that can be found on the Web, the users of SAGA Zone are allowed to build their own profiles with their photos, participate in the blogs or forums, join groups, message each other and etc. Their membership is offered without any charge but the only requirement for a potential user to join this SAGA Zone is the person need to be above 50 years of age. Imagine you first come across their membership requirement, you probably find this new social networking site would not able to make it on the Web, as online social networking activities are more likely associated with the younger generation. However, the outcome are not.

There is a distinction between what we thought and the actual fact; that is, SAGA Zone has more than 13,000 users so far, after the site has been tested in the market for four months, and the oldest user of this site is 87, reports SAGA Group. If they continue growing from now on, as we try to understand the basis of their success, it’s not that difficult we recognize the theory of “one size does not fit all” in the social networking industry.

FORA.tv, a provider of online video content that focused on discourse, discussion and debates surrounding the world’s most compelling political, social and cultural issues, today announced the closing of its undisclosed sum of seed round financing with an investment from Adobe and venture capitalist Will Hearst, who also serves on the boards of Akimbo, Applied Minds, Juniper Networks, Oblix, OnFiber, and RGB Networks. Though the sum of investment was not disclosed, TechCrunch has reported the amount of investment is $2 million. FORA.tv has not been a surprise investment target for Adobe as Adobe announced at MAX last year that they will invest in companies that doing cool things by using their technology. In the matter of fact, FORA.tv is just the latest addition to the list of companies that Adobe invested in. Moreover, Adobe announced they will invest approx. $100 million in companies that leveraging Adobe AIR. As such, FORA.tv, built on Adobe Flash Player and Adobe’s new Media Player, has not only quickly attracted thousands of viewers but also caught the eyes of Adobe.

“Adobe’s investment in FORA.tv signifies our belief in the company’s great opportunity to deliver a rich online media experience to consumers worldwide,” added John Leckrone, director of Venture Development for Adobe. “FORA.tv is making innovative use of Adobe’s Flash Player compatible video technology. The fact that our shared vision for richer content delivery comes to life via the Adobe Media Player is a win-win for us all.”

Founded in 2006, FORA.tv is based in San-Francisco and its content partners include: C-SPAN; the Chautauqua Institution; the World Affairs Councils of Northern California, Dallas, Oregon, Philadelphia and Connecticut; The Brookings Institution; Hoover Institution; University of London; Cambridge University, just to name a few.

Israeli news provider Globes is reporting that Imagine Communications has closed $15 million in a Series B round of expansion financing, bringing its total venture capital funding to a total of $25 million. This round was led by US venture capital firm Court Square Ventures, alongside with existing investors including Columbia Capital and Carmel Ventures. Imagine Communications will use the fund to accelerate the company’s growth and further improve its core technology, namely as PersonalizedTV platform that designed for broadband operators. This platform is mainly used in improving bandwidth efficiency, video quality, in addition to targeted TV ads and personalized audio. However, Imagine Communications is scheduled to commercially launch this platform in the fourth quarter of this year. Meanwhile, it also announced that James B. Murray, Jr., the managing general partner at Court Square Ventures, has been appointed to its board of directors.

Imagine Communications, previously known as QoD, is headquartered in San Diego with research facilities in Netanya, Israel. It was co-founded by current CTO Ron Gutman and VP Engineering Doron Segev in 2005. Both co-founders previously worked at BigBand Networks.

Source: available at http://blog.yupoo.com/?p=219, accessed 30 October 2007

To support the China Blogger Conference 2007 that to be held in Beijing this weekend, an online photo Web 2.0 in China Yupoo has prepared a Web 2.0 logo postcard, as shown in the above picture. In the meantime, they also urge all the China Web 2.0 sites submit their company logos to this site for the purpose of promoting the local Web development. My sense is that the more Web 2.0 sites launched in China, the more mature the China Web industry is.

Apple has announced it has sold more than 2 million copies of Mac OS X Leopard since its release on last Friday. It also notch up a new record and it seems Apple managed to sell nearly 700,000 copies of Leopard per day. I wonder it is due to the improved performance of system-level that based on Mach kernel and the switch to Intel processors which greatly improved the performance of Mac’s visualization solutions have resulted in Macs being widely chosen in the consumer/developer market.

WASALive is an Ajax search engine that I included on my Web tracking list, and they’re just release the Buzz Firefox toolbar. When I finished installed on my Firefox browser, it will provide a new user like me with the hot keywords, or tags such as Google, Halloween, Life, People, Prostate Cancer, Web, and etc. Click on any of these tags will bring you to a succinct list of links that related to the tag. Each link has a heading and a brief introduction of the article that underneath the heading. You can also find the date and time of a particular article, as well as the information of the source. If an user is not satisfy with the search results of the WASALive, she is allowed to key in her own search query in the search box located in the left-hand side of the WASALive Firefox toolbar.

I believed WASALive was founded by a French startup that called Cedrat Net. Currently, their search results are available in 7 languages: French, English, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian and Polish. Each language has its own set of hot keywords or tags, and their search results are fetching from 173,898 news providers at the time of my writing.

Now that Google Australia is seeking growth through the offered of Google Maps. And presently one firm REA Group is using the technology of Google Maps rendered to show its customer a real estate site, with the options of zoom in and satellite views, according to Google Australia. In fact, the REA Group is already one of the largest users of Google Maps worldwide, delivering over 1.4 billion page views of Google Maps over the past 12 months on its real estate Websites in Australia and New Zealand. Moreover, under the new license, Google Maps can be found on its Websites in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Hong Kong, Luxembourg and the United Kingdom. “Experience has shown the visitors to our sites in Australia and New Zealand love using Google Maps to plot properties. By adding Google Maps to our sites in other countries, we will clearly enhance the user experience,” said Simon Baker, CEO and Managing Director of the REA Group, according to REA’s press release.

Apparently, Google’s mapping capabilities in internal Websites can be a marvelous tool, enabling potential customers to make the purchasing decisions as well as magnify the value of the internal data of a firm.