If you had been longing for a social media networking feature within your web site, but were always apprehensive about the inherent costs involved, worry no more. Google has created an exclusive platform for integrating a social media marketing aspect into your website as a free service.

More popularly recognised as Friend Connect, which can be accessed at http://www.google.com/friendconnect, it allows owners to add ‘social’ features to their site. Online users visiting the site that uses Friend Connect services are entitled to view, invite and interact with new members as well as existing friends from other social networks like Facebook, Google Talk, Hi5, Orkut, etc. through secure authorisation APIs. Read more »

SenseBot, the search engine, uses a tool for delivering summaries of the results that appear after performing a search. It proves to be useful when a deluge of content is available on the Web from which choices have to be made and the user wants to make sense of it all. A FireFox plug-in has been provided by SenseBot that provides for summaries of any web page while integrating with Google search. Read more »

Sun formally started its JavaOne developer conference in San Francisco with a series of keynote presentations intended to showcase JavaFX. JavaFX is the company’s new rich internet-application (RIA) technology. It has been described by Sun as a family of products that are required for creating RIAs with engaging content.

JavaFX has been positioned as a competitor to Adobe’s AIR and Microsoft’s Silverlight. JavaFX Desktop 1.0 will be available in the third quarter this year. JavaFX platform is expected to build on the power of Java to facilitate content authors and designers as well as developers so that they team up to deliver RIAs. Movie Cloud is a 3D graphical user interface from Sun that can be used to exhibit multiple high-definition videos from a user’s compilation concurrently. On the other hand, Photo Flocker helps users to search for photos by tags and see a cascading medley of the results.

The company also showcased its Connected Life product which powers RIAs by delivering an application across a web browser, desktop operating system, social network and mobile phone.

Yahoo! has recently entered into a fruitful partnership with renowned security firm McAfee to develop yet another search device, ‘SearchScan’.

The new safer, secured search tool shall endeavour to offer the following salient features:

• Facilitates ‘always-on alerts’ to its users, such that they will be sent an alert immediately when they open any risky site tagged with security issues, such as Spyware, Adware and other malicious software.
• Locates the sites known for showing bad emails, such as sending spam emails to users’ inboxes.
• Accessible to Yahoo! Search users in the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Australia and New Zealand.

The SearchScan feature by Yahoo! would also provide for a safer search tool. There is no other search engine available today that offers similar benefits or warning / alerts. This is a very useful feature since it will guard a user against the prospect of visiting any site that can affect their PC and valuable data.

The European Union is recommending to leading search engines that they follow its data protection rules. The thing to note here is that most of the companies are based outside the European Union (EU).

A privacy panel has issued a report urging the top search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo! to delete the stored data of users after a stipulated period. A person’s IP address is considered to be personal information by the panel. It has recommended to the search engines that information collected by them regarding users like search logs should be erased after six months. By doing so, the panel believes that their privacy can be protected. The measure would also avoid possible misuse of the data compiled, it feels. Read more »

There will be WiMax coverage across the UK in the next couple of years according to Ashish Patel, managing director of Intel Capital EMEA. Speaking at a roundtable discussion he said that the long-range wireless technology would find takers - largely among the users of mini-notebooks as well as other portable web-surfing devices. Read more »

Almost 500,000 users have been trapped by a booby-trapped media file, states security firm McAfee. This fake file poses as a tempting music track, movie or short video and has been profusely seeded on file-sharing networks to snare gullible people.

McAfee stated the fake media file outbreak was one of the largest it had come across for about three years. Those who run the fake file get bombarded with unnecessary pop-up ads and also risk compromising the safety of their computer. Read more »

Among the world’s most popular social networking sites, MySpace, is to let its users to make their information or data available to other web sites. Its ‘data availability’ project will allow members share their public profile information with Twitter, eBay, Photobucket and Yahoo!. In the past the networking site had ‘locked’ users and guarded member’s content. Read more »

Google has denied that there is a brain drain of talent at the company following the departure of its high-profile communications boss to social networking site Facebook. Elliot Schrage’s departure to Facebook as their head of global communications & public affairs is one among a string of senior Google personnel to have left the firm. Read more »

There are news reports that the top two searches on Vodafone’s newly launched mobile internet service are social networking web sites Facebook and Bebo. Next in line is the community-based auction site eBay. Facebook is already the most surfed site by Vodafone mobile broadband users. It is followed by Google and the BBC. Bebo features fifth in the ranking list, with MySpace in the eighth slot. Read more »

A group of Unix users has taken the British Standards Institution to court in an attempt to get the standards body to take back its support of Microsoft’s Office Open XML (OOXML) document format. The UK Unix & Open Systems User Group UKUUG said the British Standards Institution’s contentious decision to vote for approval of OOXML in a recent International Organisation for Standardisation ballot followed a faulty decision-making process.

The UKUUG has many complaints about Office Open XML, like various unresolved patent issues and a lack of clarity in the specifications’ documentation among others. It has made an appeal in the High Court of Justice to force a judicial review of the BSI’s decision. The UKUUG hopes to reverse the decision.

OOXML is Microsoft’s offering to the OpenDocument Format, which is an established ISO standard based completely on open specifications. After volatile voting that took place among national standards bodies in April, ISO announced that OOXML would be an official standard.

However, there is a two-month lag after that date; April 2nd. During this time, the process can be stopped if one of the national standards bodies makes a formal appeal. Various decision-making communities have raised objections about the approval vote.

Recent research done in the US estimates nearly 34 per cent of adult Net users play online games every week. These findings represent a great opportunity for developers and social networking web sites to cater to the vast audience. And they are working overtime to leverage the opportunity. For example, MySpace has already announced the launch of its applications gallery. Central to those applications will be various games.

Steve Pearman of the company told BBC News:

This will take what one can do inside a social network to a new exciting level. If you can offer something cool for my users, I will be very happy.

Galia and Guy Ben-Artzi are among those who believe they have a cool application which will attract the growing social gaming community.

The Ben-Artzi’s - brother and sister – are behind the start up ‘Mytopia’ that they depict as a social gaming community wherein everyone can join and play together. It provides everything from Sudoku to chess and poker to hearts that you can opt to play directly from their web site or even via Facebook, MySpace, Hi5 and Bebo.

The split between Microsoft and Yahoo! has left the online advertising market wide open for Google to move in, capitalise and expand. It also catapults the search engine giant in the envied position of deciding the destiny of its closest rival, so to say. Microsoft took away a $47.5 billion offer for Yahoo! after the latter kept pushing for a higher price. Read more »

A price cut of £100 has resulted in a mad rush for the base-level iPhone in the UK. As a result, the product is vanishing fast online and off the shelf. An 8GB iPhone now costs only £169, while the 16GB one costs £329. But it is very difficult to get either of them in the O2 or Carphone Warehouse outlets. Read more »

Social networks and Game design are all set to merge into one of the most persuasive and powerful forces on the net, according to a news report. Read more »

Yahoo! Network’s users will be able to their friends’ activities on a centralised Yahoo! social map since Yahoo! is connecting its users over the various platforms that are offered. The change is being viewed by many as a ‘Facebook meets Yahoo!’ setting. Apart from this Yahoo! is also coming out with a unified user profile page. Read more »

As unbelievable as it may sound, in what may probably be an effort to make the site as simple as possible, while developing the Live Search News portal the Microsoft Live Search team forgot to put what has become a tool that makes their user’s life easier when monitoring news items that they want- the RSS. In fact many may not have noticed this fact but Microsoft did (or maybe it was a user who brought it to their notice) and in good enough time. Read more »

Google has invested £66 million into a solar energy company, eSolar. eSolar specialises in developing solar-to-steam technology that will be used in launching the construction of a solar power plant. It is an interesting ‘green’ investment made by the search engine giant, and also a very logical direction made by the firm. It is gradually entering the electricity and utility industry by making such investments in keeping with its core business philosophy that revolves around efficiency driven profitability. Read more »

One of the most important aspects to be kept in mind while writing crisp content for a website is to conceive it for not only search engines but also its target audience.

When creating content, the idea often is more to increasing a website’s Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) than user fulfilment. But it is also very important to remember that users and not just search portals will be deciding its potential and popularity. Read more »

The well-known mobile operator Vodafone is planning to offer a service that customers have been yearning for. The firm is mulling over offering unlimited Internet access for customers accessing Facebook and Bebo via their handsets. This new service is the result of the rising and significant trend of accessing social networking sites and email from mobile phones. Read more »