Google China is launching a new search engine for China’s Sichuan users to find the latest updates of all the China quake victims that buried under the rubble.
Meanwhile, there are several other Chinese sites which created to help find the Sichuan victims, included Tianya Laiba, Baidu Tieba, Soso, Sina Quake help, and NetEase survivors’ list.
Google is launching a new tool called Friend Connect. This new tool allowed site owners to add social features to their sites in an easy manner. Upon you received invitation to use this newly launched Friend Connect, you can add the so-called “social gadgets” (Google called it gadget, we’re more used to it by calling it widget). You can add as many gadgets as you want to your site’s sidebar. On Friend Connect, you can invite your friends from Facebook, Hi5, Orkut, etc. Friends who accepted your invitation have the options to post messages, upload pictures, and of course, a social graph of your Friend Connect will be appeared on your site.
Since Friend Connect was developed by Google, you need to have a Google account in order to use it. At present, this Friend Connect is at Preview Release phase and a control panel can be found on each of the Friend Connect accounts. Users will be given opportunity to learn this new tool under the “Getting Started” column, mostly concerned with how to copy and paste the code to the site at best. You also can manage members, view report, test drive Friend Connect, etc.
Below is the video that prepared by Google Product Manager, Mussie Shore on the instructions to use this Friend Connect. Enjoy.
Google has stopped serving its advertisements to a Sydney-based search engine called Ecocho. Now if you visit the Ecocho search engine, you’ll notice a small default button which only allowed users to search by using Yahoo!, but not Google anymore. More details can be found on the Ecocho’s blog. In their blog, Ecocho said, “For Google to say that we had no approval to use Adsense on Ecocho is inaccurate.”
Ecocho’s business model is simple. Whenever users use its search engine, for every 1,000 searches, they’ll plant two trees. If users search Ecocho through Google technology, they’ll find the AdSense advertisement to be appeared next to the search results. Ironically, the ban action was taken immediately effect on the Earth Day, i.e. April 22.
In an Australian newspaper, Google Australia spokesman Rob Shilkin said Ecocho was banned because it broke Google’s AdSense policies by “compensate users for viewing Google ads or performing searches, or promise compensation to a third party for such behaviour”.
A new Google Finance in Mandarin has been launched in China. It allowed investors in China to find out the latest updates of all the information in securities markets, and of course, they will find some sophisticated financial advices there too. For your information, this site was jointly created by the Google’s engineers that based in New York and Shanghai.
The product offerings of this Google Finance Chinese version is relatively no different from the other versions such as the US, Canada, and UK versions. Content found on the Google Finance China is geographic catering to the local people. The top left column is as usual, the market summary, as China users will read all the latest news happening in China, not necessarily related to the Shanghai or Shenzhen stock market data. This contrast to the US or UK site, both sites typically showed the stock market info and users there will get a fast grasp on what’s happening to some stocks or funds in respective country.
One unique feature found on this site is the Google Suggest feature. Whenever an user type a letter on the search bar, it will display the search suggestion of some stock quotes or stock portfolios appeared in a fixed dialog box. This feature is helpful, but not sure when Google China will release another advanced feature called Stock Screener to the China people.
CityIN, a new social network launched in last month that targeting the Hong Kong and China people is joining Google’s OpenSocial. As you know, OpenSocial is Google’s first plan to take on Facebook, with a goal to release application programming interfaces (API) that allowed developers to build variety of applications for a range of social networking sites. And the most notable high-profile partner was MySpace.
With the participation of CityIn in OpenSocial, it probably the first Chinese social network that opens its platform to the developers mainly China Web developers. Strengths of the participation in OpenSocial will help to increase the worldwide profile of CityIN, this can be viewed from all the reporting from the top blogs in the blogosphere. As a new startup, it’s probably the best way for them that draw attention to it. CityIn’s challenge will be to build a different social network as there are many among them in China, or throughout the world. As a new startup, that co-founded by young talents, it is currently undertaking the differentiation strategy and was nearly very brave to try out all the new things and developed a lot of new features on their site.
CityIN, co-founded by Simon Chan and Alex Tam, was first incorporated in Hong Kong, and later setup the main operation office in Guangzhou, China in 2007. Simon Chan, 26 and Alex Tam, 25, seemed to be the Internet enthusiasts. With their passion on the Web, and work experience (Simon Chan is a former E-Trade software engineer, reported by VentureBeat), they planned to make CityIN the best ever social network in China. The site is easy-to-navigate, vividly presented content such as latest users, latest events happening in Guangzhou, and a second-edition of recommendation engine, which they’ve planned to apply for the patent in the US, Japan, and Hong Kong in the later stage. Recommendation engine is broad in scope, but it is enough to build a strong bridge from its users of the site that belong to a same group of leisure interest to some friends reside in local areas they might interested to interact with. If they continually improve its recommendation approaches, it might make a lot of potential users to have that compel feeling to join.
Additional interesting feature found on CityIN is the automatic face detection for photo tagging. As one of the hyperlinks they’ve sent to me, as shown in the below picture, it showed how a hassle less feature for CityIN user to play around with. At present, CityIN wasn’t comprehensive yet, with the English proficiently level of its co-founders, it’s no surprise that they’ll launch a brand new English site to cater to the US, Europe, or some countries whereby Friendster is strong at, such as Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia.
Also, in pertaining to its participation on OpenSocial, CityIN still does not have the resources to build proprietary add-on yet. In other word, CityIN will going to be 100% OpenSocial at the beginning stage. However, they’ve received some favorably response from the industry players in casual game sector.
CityIN currently has 11 employees and they’ve been angel invested for a undisclosed sum by Dr. Samson Tam in early 2007. Dr. Tam, who invented the first electronic Dictionary Device (Chinese-English), is the chairman of a listed company in Hong Kong.
Well done, Simon.
Picture: Automatic face detection for photo tagging
Source: available at http://static.cityin.com/images/screenshots/facedetect/steps123.png, accessed at March 22, 2008.
Google has announced its Website Optimizer, previously only available for their AdWords account holders to be offered to the public. Now if you have GMail account, and wanted to test the elements or design of your Website, you’re free to check out this service. This move can be viewed as an early step to capture the Web designer market, as Web designers finished their Web designs for their clients, they might be interested to know the implication of their designs, more specifically a Web page’s headline, graphic or image, how this lead to a successful pre-determine goal, lead or conversion rate.
According to the Website Optimizer team, there are two different versions of this product, one is available for the AdWords account holders, and the other one is a standalone product that a potential user could just sign-up through her GMail account. However, these two products are virtually the same, performing similar functionality regardless the approaches they’ve signed-up to this product.
Meanwhile, the Website Optimizer team also launched a blog to promote the latest news, testing methods of this newly public offered product.
Today Google is releasing its Google Talk, Labs Edition, a new version of Google Talk which enables news notification of GMail, Google Calendar and Orkut, in addition to the built-in features of Google Talk Gadget. It is Google’s initial foray into the desktop space whereby its users can now install Google Talk in their PCs or laptops. Though it will have little impact on the instant messenger (IM) market, this release underscore Google’s aim in extending its product not solely on the Web, but also as a client software version. From now on, there will be four different version of Google Talk: the original client, Gmail Chat, the gadget and the Labs edition.
To try it, You can download it when visiting this page.
via [Google Operating System]
Google has lost another high-profile executive to Facebook in less than a month. Ethan Beard, Google Director of Business Development has resigned from the company and will start work at Facebook. Why Facebook over Google, Ethan Beard told TechCrunch:
I think Facebook is great for a variety of reasons: the company has an innovative product with amazing growth, the team they have assembled is first rate, and the business is at a very exciting time in its development. I am excited to join Facebook at a time and in a role where I can have a significant impact on its core business and bottom line.
Other Facebook high-profile executives that previously worked at Google include Sheryl Sandberg (now COO), and Gideon Yu (now CFO).
via [TechCrunch]