GOOGLE UPDATES: Caffeine search is ready to go

Google's Caffeine initiative to improve search results is leaving the sandbox.

First revealed as a "secret project" in the early hours of August, Caffeine is projected to speed up search results as well as improve their accuracy. Google's Webmaster Central blog at the point described Caffeine as "the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness with other dimensions."

A Caffeine Web page had been set up as a developer preview test site asking public to try out the new feature and offer their feedback. However as spotted by Mashable.com, the developer information has been taken down and it has been replaced with a note from Google, pegging Caffeine a hit and briefly describing the next phase.

Based on the success we have seen, we believe Caffeine is prepared for a larger audience. Quickly we will activate Caffeine more widely, beginning with one data center. This sandbox is no longer needed and has been retired, but we be thankful for the testing and positive input that webmasters as well has publishers have given.

Caffeine won't change the look or else feel of Google's popular search engine but will work under the hood to perk up its performance, reportedly delivering faster, better, and more flexible results. However Google continually tweaks its search engine, Caffeine represents the first most important enhancement to its search indexing since 2006.

No word or response yet from Google on when Caffeine may actually go live.

In a late August interview with WebProNews, Google engineer Matt Cutts added that the feedback on Caffeine is been very positive.

And in a forecast of Google's latest move, Cutts also added he wouldn't be satisfied if Caffeine were slowly opened up one data center at a time. Then once Google is pleased with the new search indexing, Caffeine must spill out into more and more data centers.

Coming Very Soon: Free video conferencing from Google

Google is all set to strengthen its voice as well as video chat capabilities. The voice and video chat feature in the company's the email service,Gmail, is at present limited to one-to-one communication; however, Google wants to widen this capability to more than two participants.

The Google Apps product manager Rishi Chandra said to SFGate that Google is set to roll out its very first update in a long line of updates that may include multi-user video conferencing.

Rishi Chandra told the website, “This (current Gmail capability) is the first step in a much broader set of features we hope to roll out over the next 6 to 12 months around video (and voice) chat capabilities.” He added, "It is a big opportunity for us to push that space along."

Google acquired Web as well as video conferencing software in 2007 from Swedish company Marratech.

GOOGLE UPDATES: Transparency, Choice and Control -- now complete with a Dashboard

Google has released a feature this Thursday that lets users see and control data that the Web giant has collected regarding them, known as Google Dashboard, the service provides an online summary of a user's Google files -- Gmail, Picasa photos, Google Docs, and so on, by collecting pre-existing privacy controls in one place.

Dashboard users are able to review and delete recent Google searches, see recently opened and shared documents and survey their interactions all the way through other Google-powered sites such as You Tube.

Google, which has come under fire from politicians as well as privacy advocates for its data-collection practices, announced the service through a blog post headlined, "Transparency, Choice and Control -- now complete with a Dashboard!"

"Over the past eleven years, Google has focused on building innovative products for our users," the company added in its official blog on Thursday. "Today, with hundreds of millions of people using those products all around the world, we are very aware of the trust that you have placed in us, plus our responsibility to protect your privacy and data."

The advocacy group Consumer Watchdog, which have been critical of the amount of personal data Google stores, known as the dashboard a small step in the right direction.

"If Google really wanted to grant users control over their privacy it would give consumers the ability to be anonymous from the company and its advertisers in the crucial areas like search data and online behavior," spokesman John M. Simpson added on the group's Web site.

"The Dashboard gives the appearance of control devoid of the actual ability to prevent Google from tracking you also delivering you to its marketers."

Reviews in the blogosphere Thursday appeared relatively muted on behalf of a feature Google described as unprecedented in scale as well as level of detail.

"Sure, it is nice to have all these in one place, should you ever want to review all your private information stored at Google at once, but there is nothing really new about this list," added Stan Schroeder, a blogger at social media site Mashable. "Unfortunately, it is also an unpleasant reminder of just how much data you are giving out to Google."

Tech blogger Matt Asay said most Google users won't bother with Dashboard because people are willing to give up some Internet privacy in exchange for being able to store up and share information online.

"Dashboard leaves Google in the prime position of being able to truthfully utter that it doesn't control user data, as still delivering increasingly beneficial services based on that data," he wrote. "It will not change the way that the vast greater part of consumers use Google, but it just may change the way they think about Google."

Google updated the Analytics for iPhone and Android Applications

Google has recently updated its reach of its Analytics product to mobile apps which lots of users will love; this will help the likes of developers to see how people make use of such particular parts of their iPhone and Android applications.

There are no HTML pages in mobile apps like websites developers would be able to find out when apps should set off page view requests, well Google Analytics will aggregate this data in the content reports which will then show the number of session lengths, visits as well as bounce rates.

It is very good indeed to be able to put into practice Google Analytics into your iPhone app, to get this you will have to get the SDK and implement the exact code in order for Google Analytics to work also watch the video below.

MSN UPDATES: Microsoft launches new version of MSN

Microsoft plans to begin rolling out a redesigned MSN.com on Wednesday in U.S., the first major update for the page in more than ten years.

Regular visitors to the site will instantly notice one major change: The new page has only half the number of links as the old one. That's a sharp departure from the earlier design, which featured about 40 links on just the top third of the page and the site has also dropped the trademark blue background into a simpler white page.

The new design aims to address user feedback as well as complaints, said Erik Jorgenson, corporate vice president for MSN. Customers said they need a single site that is easy to use, he said. "What they don't like is too much clutter," he added. Users also said that they occasionally had a hard time finding what they were looking for, they were disappointed with search results prior to the launch of Bing, and they said the site had an outdated look and the feel.

Microsoft called Wednesday's launch a preview of the redesign, meaning it may come into view for some people immediately but will become commonly available in the New Year.

The site is now divided into just a handful of sections, lots of of which are fed information that might be personally related to the specific user.

For example, a box in the lower right corner of the home page includes three tabs: Windows Live, Facebook and Twitter. The Facebook tab shows a list of friends' current updates to Facebook and lets the user to update their Facebook status from the MSN page.

A box in the lower left corner of the page shows local weather, headlines and events. Clicking on the local link launches a new page, MSN Local Edition and that page uses Bing search to draw in local news and information. It will display more detailed weather information along with a local map where users can view traffic data. The site draws on users IP address to deliver local information to them.

Microsoft will also be testing out a version of the home page that makes use of Silverlight. That page won't launch Wednesday, however in the future people who have Silverlight installed might begin seeing the page. In the Silverlight version, clicking on the Twitter link, for instance, pops up a box where users can see updates as well as trending topics. About 50 percent of MSN.com users already have Silverlight, Jorgenson added.

Yahoo, Microsoft's biggest portal contender, also recently redesigned its home page, but with different results. The Yahoo page still includes a long list of links towards other pages and otherwise mainly features a list of links to news stories. Yahoo users be able to build themselves a customized page to include stock quotes, instant messaging, e-mail, weather, calendar and some other tools.

MSN will also still offer MyMSN, a customizable page; however Microsoft has found that not many people make use of it. "A large majority of users are not eager to put time into customizing and personalizing," Jorgenson added.

The latest design represents a change in thinking at MSN. "We have moved away from the days of being an Internet directory of everything to everyone," he added. As an alternative, MSN wants to deliver useful content across areas that it believes users find most important, Jorgenson added.

As many as 100 million people in the U.S. visit MSN.com each and every month, Microsoft added.

GOOGLE UPDATES: Google rockets to Chrome 4 beta

Google has released the first beta of Chrome 4, the most recent version of its increasingly popular web browser.

For those wondering if they have banged their head and woken up in 2018, don't adjust all your sets. Google works in hyperwarp compared to the rest of the browser industry, slapping a most important version number on browser updates that include only minor feature improvements.

It's taken Mozilla about seven years to get to version 3.6 of Firefox, for instance, while Google has raced to version 4 of Chrome in slight over a year.

The standout feature of Chrome 4 is bookmark synchronization – It is a feature that Internet Explorer and Firefox have offered for years through extensions such as Xmarks.

Chrome's version permits you to log-in to your browser with your Google account details and synchronize bookmarks across multiple machines in real time - which means a bookmark added to your work machine will come into view instantly on your home PC.

Google also claims to have made noteworthy performance improvements in Chrome 4. "We have improved performance scores on Google Chrome by 30 percent since our current stable release, as measured by Mozilla's Dromeao DOM Core Tests, also by 400 percent since our first stable release," claim Google software engineers Anton Muhin and Idan Avraham on the Google Chrome blog.

The official Google release notes say the browser is just compatible with Windows XP SP2 and Vista, though it installed perfectly on Windows 7 64-bit machine.

GOOGLE UPDATES: Google web toolkit based new Orkut version

The Social networking site Orkut, refreshingly new looks are grounded on the Google Web tool Kit (GWT). The new version of Orkut with extra features absolutely looks promising.

Google is always eager to share updates about its innovations. This month Google is reporting to come with many changes at its social networking platform Orkut.

Orkut.com not only offers to find out friends automatically but also new video enabled chat with Google talk is something which will catch the attention of users to keep on this site for hours.

There are lots of changes took place to bring this new UI of orkut like uploading of photos will be more easier now .The new features are also added to it like video chat, automatic face detection and view friends on the same page. Orkut will allow status massage update functionality similar to twitter and facebook.

Orkut new version seems to be safer than the previous one and it will offer a customized new version for its iPhone users S60 and J2ME platforms.

The new Orkut version promises a better integration with other Google services. It will officiate more advanced with Google bar and likewise it allows a quick access to a range of other Google services.