Google’s new deal indicates its interest on Social Networking Market.

Google Inc. has signed deal to buy Aardvark. Aardvark is a San Francisco based Internet search and social networking company. Aardvark’s service taps a person’s network of social contacts. It introduced ‘social search’ instead of typical searching.

The purchase represents the latest sign of Google’s interest in the fast-growing social networking market. At present, most of social networking market is captured by companies like Twitter and Facebook. Recently Google has introduced a new product called Google Buzz into its Gmail Web-based email service. Google Buzz directly integrates Twitter-like social networking features.

Google said that it had signed a conclusive agreement to acquire Aardvark, but it did not comment about the amount of the deal, but technology blog TechCrunch has demanded deal was for $50 million. The deal acquisition deal between Aardvark and Google was expected to close within the next week.

Google proposing affordable ultra-fast broadband network in US

Though Ultra-fast broadband networks are available in some selected sector in USA, but they aren’t yet available for mass people. Google Inc. is now planning to build an affordable ultra-fast broadband network to connect mass people in USA through the Internet. It will also intend to provide a platform for outside developers. Beside, Google will let Internet service providers sell their own services over its network.

Google said its testbed fiber-optic network will deliver speeds of 1 gigabit per second which would be roughly 50 to 300 times faster than most U.S. homes cable and fiber-optic networks to the Internet today.
It will enable consumers to download a high-definition, full-length feature film in less than five minutes. Google hope this broadband connection will help students to collaborate with classmates around the world while watching live 3D video of a university lecture.

Google’s ultra-fast broadband service is now prepared to sell access directly to consumers.

Google Buzz: an entirely new world in Gmail

Recently Google has introduced a new product called Google Buzz into integrated Gmail service. It operates on desktop computers, the iPhone and phones that run Google Android.

The social media service offers its users to share and see contents (photos, links, status, messages, and so on) from other sites such as Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and Picasa. Through Google Buzz, public updates will also be available to search engines. The firm has also integrated it with its mapping service and mobile platforms.

It is not the first time Google has tried to launch a social network. In 2004, it released Orkut. Recently Google Inc. has signed deal to buy a San Francisco based Internet search and social networking company named Aardvark.

Google Buzz pitches Google directly against rival networks such as Facebook, which has nearly 400 million users since. Buzz’s primary target is to capture its regular 170 million Gmail users.
Google’s Rival Yahoo has already offered a social service like Twitter and Flickr from inside their Yahoo Mail page.

Goojje launches in after Google’s warning to leave china

A new search engine named Goojje has appeared in China. In Mandarin word “jiejie” (sounds like “goojje”) means older sister. While Goojje sounds like “sister”, the word Google sounds similar to the Mandarin word gege, which means “big brother”. Goojje has a message on its site which reads: “Sister was very happy when brother gave up the thought of leaving and stayed for sister”.

This site also contains very similar branding to Google. Goojje’s search results appear to be filtered for sensitive content in accordance with Chinese regulations.

Google said that hackers had tried to infiltrate its software coding and the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Google warned to leave china unless the the China government relaxed censorship.

Search Stories: Google’s new look and feel of marketing campaign

As Google has about 70 percent market share in search, it hardly needs to attract users. But last week Google has launched half dozen of short videos called “search stories” which look suspiciously like commercials posted on its blog and YouTube.

Cheermobile (My Favorite)

This Search Stories are titled like Parisian Love, Mad to Live, Batman, Newbie, Potholes, and High School. Google has launched these videos in a common tag line “Search on” to have the look and feel of a marketing campaign and give the feel of belongingness of Google homepage to its users. IT also stresses a variety of Google products, such as mapping, video, price comparisons, email and more. Some people are smelling  that the Search Stories are for the $100 million marketing push by Microsoft launched for its Bing search service, but Google said that it was feeling all warm and fuzzy and decided to make some kids-let’s-put-on-a-show videos and simply avoided the debate.

New Phonetic keyboard in Gmail

Gmail is continuously surprising us with its out of the box features, enormous flexible options and outstanding super-simple user interface. Everyday so many users being fade up with yahoo are going towards gmail. Like Yahoo, Gmail also show ads but they are never that annoying as they’re just simple text ads, no funky flash or image ads, no forcing for being a paid subscriber (Gmail don’t have any paid subscription, it’s totally free! :P). All these simplicities are the main attraction of Gmail which are driving Yahoo users towards it. The recent update in Gmail themes is “Random Themes” option. It’s really boring when you have to read and reply hundreds of emails a day. The “random” gmail theme automatically rotates the eye-catching collection of themes after every 1-2h which makes “gmailing” fun! “Random theme” is my personal favorite.
The free Xoopit plugin added an extra gear to Gmail which is no more as Yahoo bought the service. Here we can feel the acute cold war between Gmail & Yahoo evidently. Yesterday I tried Google Wave and it certainly will re-shape the concept of classical email system.

This morning I was typing an email on gmail and found a new symbol on top left of the compose box editing panel (Rich formatting mode). I clicked it and saw a drop-down menu with 12 languages options including Bengali, Hindi, Arabic and so on. OMG! it’s phonetic keyboard! I tried some text with it, simply awesome!! I hope gmail will keep going on with its passion for the “ease of use”. Bravo! love you Gmail.

Print button for Google Map API

You can easily print google map from maps.google.com. But what about printing the map from gmap api you use on your own website? One way is to print the whole page which is not a good idea. Users want to print only the location of your business in a larger size for later purposes. Google map api does not provide any function to print the map or view it in printer friendly mode.

The only solution I found is using a simple javascript code for this purpose. At first place an image/text/button anywhere (obviously easily available to visitors) on the page that contains your map api. I prefer to use a small printer icon image. Apply onclick(inline or unobtrusive) event to the button to popup a page say print.html.

<img src="images/print.png" class="print" alt="print" title="print" onclick="window.open('print.html')" />

Now create an empty html document, name it print.html and put it in the root folder of your site. Place this simple javascript code inside body tag of print.html

<script language="javascript">
var contents = window.opener.document.getElementById("map_container");
document.write(contents.innerHTML);
window.print();
</script>

Replace the “map_container” with the #id you are using for your map container. That’s all, you are done!

This method is good enough for printing static google map layout. But you can not print driving direction as that line is drawn using canvas element. In fact you can not print the exact driving direction even from maps.google.com.

This is more or less a better solution for printing the map from your own website’s gmap api. Please lemme know if you know any smarter way to do it.

Google Voice coming shortly

Google is starting a new service “Google Voice” within a few weeks. This amazing new voice service will give the users a single phone number and all the calls to their existing phones will be diverted to this single number. It’ll have voice mail feature and users can access this service using any mobile phone or internet (browser). The voice messages will be converted to text and thus it’ll be easily searchable, free sms service, forward voice mails directly to email addresses, recording incoming calls only and listen / download them later from web and many more. The interface will be similar to gmail.

Google will certainly integrate it with android and it’ll support other platforms too. For details visit voice.google.com

Finally Gmail has got Themes

Gmail is providing 31 attractive themes! No need to use Stylish any more for customized themes of Gmail. You can easily change your Gmail theme from Settings > Theme.
Among these 31 themes two are really cool, “Desk” and “Zoozimps”. Also “Tea House” has the option of Sunrise/Sunshine view. For this you need to provide your geo-location.

Zoozimps – Gmail Theme

Desk – Gmail Theme

All the themes work great on FireFox and IE. But they have some minor bugs. Chekout yourselves.