The mail system from Facebook has yet to officially roll out, but you can currently ask for an early invite to the Facebook email system if you are interested in checking out the newest Facebook features. Here is the address of the official Facebook email request page: http://www.facebook.com/about/messages/

Have fun checking out the new Facebook email and hopefully you get your invite soon. I for one am not sure if using a dedicated Facebook email address has any value for me, but there are many people who are very excited about this new feature. I am more interested in getting accepted into the Google CR-48 Notebook Pilot Program! If you are already using the Facebook email please leave a comment below and let everybody know what you think about this new service from FB.

This new Google authorized notebook will be sure to turn some head and raise the question “Do we really need a operating system at all?” to many users. The cloud based Chrome OS is about ready to hit the streets for real and only time will tell how earth shattering this news really is. There are a lot of consumers who have high hopes for Google making a serious move in the PC world and bringing affordable and usable computers to the masses once and for all.

The very nondescript look of the laptop is definitely a way to keep prying eyes from knowing what you are working with, but because they have already put images on the net, we don’t know why they did not at least slap a Google sticker on the back of it.

Google Cr-48 Chrome Notebook Screen Shots

Google Cr-48 Chrome Notebook

There are no complete spec sheets on what Google has put together yet. However, here is what Google is saying about the first ever official Google Chrome Laptop:

The Cr-48 is the test notebook we designed for the Pilot program. It’s the first of its kind.

It’s ready when you are, booting in about 10 seconds and resuming from sleep instantly. There’s built-in Wi-Fi and 3G, so you can stay connected everywhere, and a webcam for video chat. The vibrant 12-inch LCD display, full-size keyboard and oversized touchpad let you enjoy the web comfortably. And at just 3.8 pounds with over eight hours of active usage and a week of standby time, it’s easy to take along for the ride.

What did we leave out? Spinning disks, caps-lock key, function keys, and lap burns.

The Cr-48 is available exclusively to participants in the Pilot program.

More Information About The CR-48 Chrome Laptop

The official release of this new web operating system based laptop has not happened yet. There is more information on what is in the works, so if you want to learn all the ins and outs of this new laptop and want to see if Google will ship one to you for testing, check out the Google Laptop Pilot Program and see if you can be one of the lucky googlers to test it and get a free laptop to boot. Looking for more information on the new Google Chrome Cr-48? Let Google tell you more about the features on their new operating system by visiting their official project site here : Google Chrome Laptop Features

If you want to learn more about he new Google laptop just keep checking back here, we will be posting more information as we get it and will be posting plenty of screenshots if we get one for testing.

There is no more waiting for an initiation, now you can simply go signup at the site : http://voice.google.com You can choose to get a new phone number to tie to your account or you can use an existing mobile number for your service. Both have their advantages, so choose wisely!

So many are already aware of the new and very cool “free” service Google has started called Google Voice.   This was a great idea and many people are using this service to it’s fullest by taking advantage of the totally free phone number they give you, the customized answering service that can be used from the internet or email, call filtering to only redirect calls you want and much more.  All in all the Google Voice service is simply amazing and a great value even if they were charging for it. The ability to take your voice messages in your email after they have been magically translated into text for you should be a service on it’s own, but it is just one part of this great package Google is offering for free.

I was doing some research on free calling from the internet and was surprised to find how many services still offer totally free calling from your PC.  However, in my journey I ran across this post on 100% free voip phone service using Google Voice and Gizmo which really got me exited about using the free “Skype” like app called Gizmo and the free phone number from Google paired together to make a totally free functional intnernet phone.  However, once I tried to access the Gizmo website, I realized it was down.  So back to the search engine and I soon found this link on Google’s own website http://www.google.com/gizmo5/

So it looks like Google has already acquired this company and is planning on integrating it with their Google voice service. Once this takes place it will cost to make outgoing calls, pretty much like the service that Skype is offering. With heavy competition from companies like Vonage and my personal favorite Magic Jack, it will be interesting to see how Google fits into the new age of VOIP and how long before the telephone companies that we now know are gone altogether. You can read more about this on the Google Voice Blog here.

It looks to be a very fast loading setup that offers a image only page display until you have hovered over an image.  Once you click on an image, you are taken to the website where the image originated, much like before, but now the image is shown big and ready to view in a clean looking ajax shadow box effect over the website instead of being at the top of the page and small.  This really makes it easy for webmasters who are searching for graphics that have been “labeled for reuse” because it cuts one step out of the image download process, cool.

They will surely be tweaking this and making some other small changes. We all know that once they start changing something, they just can’t stop right?  Well, it is looking good so far if you ask me and I can’t wait to see what they are going to do next.  Just wanted to take a quick second to let everybody know that the world’s best image search, just got better.

Due to the many recent changes at Facebook.com there are a whole group of disgruntled users that have become organized and now are working on a new options for Facebookers.  The new “Un-Secure” features that Facebook has brought on board have made many of their would be loyal followers, pretty angry. This has lead to another shortcoming of this social networking giant.  Many users have found that it is a lot harder to delete your profile and what information that is made public on this social network than it should be.

Diaspora?  Never heard of it, well your not the only one, here is how this group defines their own existance:

diaspora - d?-?as-p(?-)r?, de-
origin: Greek, – “a scattering [of seeds]”
1. the privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all distributed open source social network.

Well the group that has now been organized and is working on new options has named their project Diaspora.  This new social networking architecture should offer some new options for any web developer and for anybody who wants to go social but have control.  The project is still in it’s infancy stages, but we think this may become a big hit because the concept of using industry standard api’s like Oauth and other portable application languages will make this new social engine very simple to integrate into any existing site and then share!

Check out the Diaspora Project Here

http://www.joindiaspora.com/project.html

Join this project now and help be part of the research and development of this amazing open source social networking project.  This can be very interesting if you are one of these who have been outraged at the recent facebook changes or if you simply like to be part of the decision making process.  Have fun!

The closest thing that these guys have to a true working social network is Youtube and it is a very large social gathering site, but their are many social networking features that this is simply not cut out for.  Orkut was Google’s last failed attempt at creating a social site worth visiting. However, this one never seemed to catch on and was rather archaic if you ask me. Google Buzz only seemed to over complicate what Twitter is already doing and their “Friend Connect” has yet to show any true usability.

So when Google finds their next model employee, be ready to see this company bring something new and something very impressive to the web.  It will be hard to tell if their new social networking engine will be a new stand alone product or if it will be a  product that integrates into existing Google services.  They do have the largest email user base in the world, so it makes a lot of since to simply add features to this system like they did with Buzz.

More about Google’s Hunt For a Social Networking Guru @ PC World

Please leave your ideas for Google’s new social networking concept below.  We love to hear what you have to say and are interested to see what you think Google’s next move should be.

The youtube network is the 3rd most popular website on the planet, only trumped by FaceBook and Google itself.  So this tells you one thing, internet users love video, love rich media and love funny videos.  Now that Youtube is allowing videos in HD to be upgraded plan on seeing a lot more indipentant film makers taking advantage of this platform to distribute their work and compete with the big boys.  You can also watch a selection of full featured films on Youtube now, so we may see them taking on a Netflix type monetization program very soon.

There is a whole section on Youtube that focuses on all they have achieved and their 5th year of operation, you can check it out here : 5 Years Of Youtube

The video empire online continues to grow and there is plenty of competition out there for Youtube, but it’s going to be hard for anybody to take the lead in this race.  Youtube has been upgrading and constantly trying to stay ahead of the curve in video sharing technology.  They have grown a massive community also.  Very few think of this site as a social network, but it really is the second largest social network on the planet.  Google has make a lot of great choices in their existence and choosing to take over and run this streaming video site has to be one of their best.  So go on, jump over and start enjoying the festivities with Youtube on their 5 year party!

They are not totally giving up, they have just rethought their marketing strategy.  They are going to pick out a few retailers and see if it does better online.  This is an interesting change, but there will be no telling if this will spike sales for the Nexus One or maybe the heyday for this phone has come and passed already.   There are many other android enabled cell phones on the market now and it will be hard to compete with these other phones that have already penetrated the market.

Google’s Own Words On This Situation

Here is what Google had to say on their official Nexus One blog:

When we launched Nexus One in January, we announced partnerships with Vodafone in Europe and Verizon Wireless in the US. We have news on both fronts.

In the US, if you’ve been waiting for the Nexus One for Verizon Wireless’ network, head over to http://phones.verizonwireless.com/htc/incredible to pre-order the Droid Incredible by HTC, a powerful new Android phone and a cousin of the Nexus One that is similarly feature-packed. It will be available in stores on April 29th.

Can They Still Breath Life Back Into The Nexus One?

We have never seen a company try to bring a product back from the dead like this, especially one that is not new any more.  this may e a hail merry for Google.  There has been no official mention of what cell phone companies will be to offer the Nexus One at or if there will be any exclusive offers for specific carriers.  The cell phone competition has been heating up, so we expect to see these at a familiar $99 or $149 with a contract upgrade.  The phone is currently being offered on T-mobile, Sprint and Verizon networks with a contract for $179 and $529 with no contract or if you want to take your nexus one to AT&T.  They are going to have to give consumers some more incentive if they really want to boost sales.  However, since their app store has been dwindling too, it seems that they may not have been ready to be big contenders in the mobile world at all.

The iPhone 4G will be released in another month or so and this would be the perfect opportunity for Google to give Apple some much needed competition on release date.

Wouldn’t it just be crazy if Microsoft or Apple tried to pull this off? The open source software industry has been around for a long time and until now it has only really been harnessed to make small, less popular operating systems. Now with Google taking the driver’s seat, it will be interesting if any of the other big players in the software industry follow suit.  After all there is no better free labor and getting input from many developers all over the world is one way to make sure you end up with a dynamite product.

So lets take a quick look at what Google has to say about their new effort to build the next best operating system on the market….

What is Google Chrome OS?

Google Chrome OS Needs You!

I you think your hot stuff, you can go join the dev team and start adding your bits and pieces to make it work better too.  Most of the development that is in a working test environment has been done using a distribution of Linux for its base.  Debian, Ubuntu, Suse and Fedora have been the front running candidates for the actual underlying OS.  What Google has put together so far is nothing more than a few web apps that they call an operating system.  We really don’t know what to think of this.

Here is the official Google Code site : http://code.google.com/chromium/

Here is one of the sites that seems to be leading in the development of the chromium project, so give these guys a look if you are wanting to put your code loving spin on the new Google Chrome OS.

Chromium.org

Google Chrome OS Live ScreenShots

It’s Not About Processor, How Fast Is Your Internet Connection?

Cloud computing is definitely the way of the future and now you even see Microsoft releasing their popular Office on the web too.  So our real question is Google creating and real operating system or are they just using a disto of Linux to fancy up their existing web services?

We have all heard of thin clients, well at least those of us who are to nerdy to admit it at least.  If you have been working with computers and large networks, then most likely you have heard of Citrix and how it can basically take advantage of a fat internet connection and a windows server to make hundreds of workstations run with very little ran or processing power.  These little devices save big companies a lot of money and in fact work rather well.  This is one way that cloud computing can be used in the normal office environment successfully.  The idea is that in the near future all you need is a web browser and if you can run it off of a thumb drive that plugs into a monitor, then so be it.

There will be a lot to see as the development continues on what is being called the Chromium OS or simply Chrome OS.  This thing could ship on netbooks as early as next year and with all the buzz surrounding the Android phones right now, it would only make since that Google would have their own netbooks available at the cell phone stores just like Dell and HP.  Of course you have better got a good 3G connection if you want to be able to open your word processor!

Will Google Chrome OS Take Over Windows In The Future?

Google has pretty much aced every type of business that they have tried to get involved with, so the chances are that they are going to come out with a bad ass OS soon enough.  We don’t want to sound like naysayers, but we are just not impressed with what we have seen so far.

What is that?  You want to see it too? Well here you go, you will find a link below that will take you to a pre-built distro of the new Chrome OS.  Download it, install it, check it out and let us know what you think about it.  We’ll see you on the comments section!

Download Chrome OS/Chromium OS

Here is a link to a users own experience and feelings about the Twine.com transition: Twine and Evri

Twine and Evri Merger

There are many small social networks that combine simple to grow the user base, but we do not see the reason for this social merger.  Twine.com was rather popular and was growing at a nice rate.  We wonder if there was a back-end deal or if these two companies have planned on this merge for some time, there have been many new banners leading over to the evri site on twine for a while now.  Either way change is on the way.

Heres The Email From Twine/Evri

The final results will be more of a transition for many users than they are interested in following through with because you actually have to download files then re-upload to sync you old bookmarks.  So the team here at TechBloq see this as a big loss for the users and a end to another great social site.  We hope that there are some serious changes with the evri site as it seems very hard to navigate and does not have some of our favorite features that were standard on the old Twine.com site.

This company has spring boarded itself into the advertising market as they release their “Promoted Tweets”.  The concept seems far from revolutionary to us. However, they will be sure to make truckloads of money, so it really does not make a difference how “ah” inspiring it is.  After all, advertising is about the money right?

You can read more about this new promoted tweets system on the official Twitter Blog.

Private Investors Want Financial Returns From Twitter Investing

Considering that this company has been backed by private investors that continue to pump millions of dollars into the research, development and technology costs associated with running such a large operation, we expected something more.  After all, having an ad show up that is relevant to your search criteria is nothing new. Every search engine in the world pretty much uses this as a standard monetization practice…have you ever heard of google adsense?

Twitter Smarter Marketing Than We Thought

We got to hand it to Twitter, they did one thing right. Before releasing their monetization plan, they weaseled their way into Google search results using the new Google caffeine and live search capabilities.  So the idea is that this will be yet another way to buy yourself a spot on Google, you will just have to send your check to Twitter instead.

After years of brainstorming, taking ideas from public forums, and even paying the big consultants to assist with a monetization plan, it just seems that they may have come up with something new, instead of doing the same thing as everybody else is and waiting so long to do it.  They may have just held off as a strategical move to get into google results before they released the twitter monetization plan or at least that is what many marketers are whispering.

Example Picture Of A Promoted Tweet On Twitter

The big thing for twitter tweeps to understand at this point in time, twitter does really have a good handle on technology and the social aspect of their business, so they know that the ads can’t be in the way of the users.  The ads show on search results in twitter, which to be quite honest I have never done.  I don’t look for random crap that people I don’t know are talking about.  So I hope for their financial future, you and many other are doing this.

Blatant Self Promotion – Start Your Own Twitter Monetization System and Get Paid To Tweet! Sorry, but hey if you like making money from places like ad sense, this is just like Google ad sense, but for Twitter and they do pay.

So lets all have a twitterific day and hey, don’t worry about the ads guys you will hardly notice them.

With this step that has been taken by GoDaddy, it now becomes one of the first American Internet company that has followed Google in expressing its disagreement with the Chinese government towards the extent of information that it is required to disclose. The existing .cn customers will still be served by the company; however it is just that the new customers will not be added on by the company. The company has an extensive business reach in china since the year 2005. This was more than any other non-Chinese company. The company however declines that the decision taken by them was unrelated to the steps taken by Google to move its search into Hong Kong. The reason for the company to take this step was to not share the personal information about the different domain names registrants to the Chinese government.

The existing customers of the company were also not interested in sharing the additional information required by the Chinese government. Thus, by taking these steps, the company has definitely expressed its concern for the security of the individuals and it is also indicative of the fact that these new regulations from the Chinese government could definitely have a chilling effect on the registration of the new domain names.

GoDaddy has been identified as the first company to publicly follow Google in responding to the censorship of Chinese government. However, another company called Network Solutions LLC had also stopped handling the web registrations in China in December 2009. This company also took such steps for the same reason.

Starting five years ago Outsell started researching how advertising money was planned to be spent in the US. This year they released the “Marketing and Ad Spending Study 2010: Total US and B2B Advertising,” focusing on online spending, tv and radio, events, print (magazine and newspaper ads), and PR and other. They have been the leading source for information based on their surveys and research based analysis. For digital media advertising these stats have been intriguing in the past, but this year the shift was simply staggering.

Outsell surveyed 1000 US advertisers in December 2009 for its report and the data collected. The data reveals how companies plan to spend in 2010, especially after the recent global economic crises. There is no question that the highest spending moving into the new year will be online, not in print.

Companies want to grow their brand name and find new leads, and getting new business. Many companies are starting to realize the strength of online advertisements and business. Most of the bigger companies already have their own websites and presence on the web. Outsell’s study shows that the highest ratings among advertisers are their own website, conferences, trades shows, direct mail, search engine keywords, and other e-marketing.

Another interesting finding is that more than half of B2B marketers rate FaceBook as valuable. LinkedIn, Twitter and MySpace were also in the findings showing that social networks are on the rise among advertisers as a way to increase their presence on the web. These sites offer very targeted advertising and most use a similar pay per click system to the popular Google Adsense system. The advertising of the future may be right in front of you!

Setting Up Google DNS On Your PC

So I had to check it out for myself.  They offer these DNS Server IP Addresses:

Free DNS Servers From Google : 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4

For complete instructions on setup, check out this information on Google Code : Google Public DNS

From their on-line suggested instructions, they will walk you through setting up your PC to connect to these name servers in the DNS tab of your Internet settings.  However, I figured we may as well go to the route of problem and drop them right on the router, so that is exactly what I did.  I am not suggesting this, just stating how I went about making the change on my home network.  If you are connecting wirelessly, you may find this to be the only way to make the change too.

Personal Experience From Google DNS

I know of  a few sites that I frequent that normally simply spin in the browser as they load and using the new Google DNS these pages now load snappy, just like any others. I was actually amazed instantly by the change that using these alternate name servers made in my browsing experience. Of course you are not going to find a faster way to connect to any Google ran service than using their own name servers, but google apps and gmail seem to be loading in record time now too.

How Does Google DNS Work?

So all in all, I think that this is a great service and it is free so you have nothing to loose in trying it.  Just write down your old name server before you switch just in case and if your DNS servers are being picked up by your ISP, you need not write anything down, just remove the public DNS provided by Google if you do not experience a positive result and you will be back to where you started.  For those that have security concerns, “What are you doing that your so worried about” is our question to you.  If you think that nobody is watching your Internet traffic now, then we don’t know what to tell you.  But if you want to experience a faster web, Google has the answer for you.

Yep, Pay Per Click Just Got A Lot More Interesting!

This service has been offered by Google for a little while, but is still very new and many advertisers do not even know about it yet.  However, if you are using Google to help you spread the word about your website, now you can utilize the biggest Television networks out there to get even more exposure.

One of the biggest advantages offered by Google that you will not get from standard TV ads, is the low price to enter this advertising market. Traditional Television advertising would require the advertiser to purchase large blogs of time or huge packages that may not have been cost effective. Now you can grab as many or as few ad slots as you need using this new feature on Google Adwords.

You can also choose from all sorts of demographics to make sure that your ads are being viewed by your target audience.  You can choose specific shows to allow or even block shows that you do not want you ad to be displayed on.  Google continues to bring the good for advertisers so I guess that this is was the next logical step and we should have seen this as a future option for them a long time ago.

Now, keep in mind that these are TV ads so the ppd or price per display will be considerable larger than other advertising medium.  The response has been pretty good so far, so this may be a great option for you and your business if you are looking to get some new exposure that is measurable, scalable and target-able.

Currently there is a Android Market and you can purchase paid apps and download free apps for your Nexus One here.  However, apparently Google has their eyes set on something bigger. This year AT&T will get 3 new phones that are running the Google Android OS and these phones will be utilizing this new Google App store as their primary source for new games, utilities and more!

It seems like everybody wants to jump on the mobile device App bandwagon and we don’t blame them.  This is obviously what the consumer wants and there are plenty of buyers out there.  We wonder if Apple will release a standardized version of their own app store soon to compete with all the new competition as it pops up, but only time will tell.

We know that there seems to be about a million different apps to help you view, manipulate and control your twitter account, but this is the first ever, that we know of at least,  to allow you to backup your twitter account! We don’t know how important all the tweets you send out are, but if you have ever wanted to look back and see what others have send you there is no better way than using this absolutely free twitter tool.

If you are a business, looking back at the past messages you sent may be a good metric to see the success of your twitter marketing campaign.  However, this could be just as interesting for the individual too.

Tweetake Allows users to login to twitter and then back up all of there account data. The output file is created as an easy to use Excel .csv file, so if you have MS Office, OpenOffice.org or pretty much any other office program in the world you can view all your followers, messages and friends in one spreadsheet. No more scrolling and scrolling on twitter and waiting for twitter to quit timing out. Just download your info and your on your way!

There are so many twitter apps out there these days, we are always surprised when we run across another one that was actually helpful, useful and free.  This twitter app may not be for everybody, but it sure is a great service for those who will use it.

Tech Bloq Admin

Now this was released almost a week ago, well it will be one full week on Tuesday the 16, 2010.  The point is that this Buzz is getting a lot of Buzz, but it is in every Gmail inbox across the globe, so there is no surprise that it is getting noticed.  The service does fit nicely into the inbox and gives you a new way to follow friends and share photos, videos and more, socially that is.

If you want to see how big the response really is to Google Buzz, check out this article: Google Buzz – Mobile and Gmail Social Features

The question is, will this continue to grow and thrive or is this one going to go off like a firecracker and then be done?

Only time will tell and we will keep you posted.

Taylor – TechBloq Social

This article is quoted in it’s entirety from http://nicksimpson.info and we do have full permission to do so.

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Yes, Facebook.  You have heard of it, you have profile there now most likely.  If you are trying to get ahead with your marketing efforts on the internet the question is are you using it?

It is pretty much common knowledge at this point that social sites are some of the most effective places on the web to market a product or service.  By their very nature, they allow for you to find your target marketing and well, market to them.  So, if you are not using Facebook, I have a couple topics to bring up that may change you mind on this subject.

I often get asked which is better Facebook.com or Myspace.com.

There is really no competition between the 2 any more.  Years ago, when Facebook started I am sure that there was a power struggle for which would prevail as the most popular social network.  The race has long been over now and Facebook.com is the obvious winner.  Facebook is no the 2nd most popular site on the planet only bowing down to the king Google.  There may be some people still using Myspace.com for friends and family and there is nothing wrong with this.

Most of the information I share here is for people who are either trying to promote a product or make money using affiliate systems. Because of this, I do look at the sites from a different aspect than the common web surfer.  However, many of the reasons I love Facebook and suggest its usage so highly are the same reasons that anybody would like to use a social network, for any reason.

Top 5 Reasons To Use Facebook For Marketing

1. Exposure – If you want to get your links out and on a site that is popular, the only site that gets more visits in the world is Google.  So don’t think for a minute that you are going to get more exposure on some other social network!
2. No Spam – Well, I am sure there is some, but it is almost invisible compared to myspace.  It seems that Facebook has taken all the right steps to keep junk out of your inbox and off your pages, so this seems to make it a clear choice where I would want to spend my time.
3. Facebook Pages – Unlike myspace who only lets you take advantage of “groups” Facebook allows you to make static pages to advertise, promote and grow you business.
4. Less Flash, More Bang! – There are so many distractions on other social networks that it is like going to Wal-Mark to get milk and coming out with a shopping cart full of stuff you didn’t want in the first place.  Facebook has a clean layout that does not have a bunch of moving pictures, flashy ads all over and other various junk.
5. Effective Communication – The setup of Facebook groups, chat and messaging really makes Facebook my choice for communicating with folks on social networks.  After all a social network should be setup to allow you to be social!

You can get a lot of return for your time invested on sites like these.  I will be writing some new articles on how to use social sites effectively very soon, so subscribe to our rss feed now and we will keep  you updated.  If you want to find me on Facebook, just click the little facebook icon on the right side of the screen.

To Success,

Nick Simpson