New Legal Problems For orkut

In case you didn't know, Google has a social network called orkut. 72 percent of its 16 million users* are from Brazil. The rest are Google employees, their friends and some early adopters. MySpace has 100 million members, so orkut is not that far.

There are a lot of nice people on orkut, some of them promote racism, others like to spam the community. There are even some people who love kids there. But the Brazilian prosecutors don't understand that and ask Google to pay a $61 million fine as orkut has been used "to organize criminal activity and promote child pornography". They also want information about the users. But Google protects the user information. "We have obeyed all the judicial orders that requested we remove undue content. Some orders demanded that we turn over user information for investigation and we complied," said Nicole Wong about a previous request.

It's very sad to see a closed-circle community like orkut closed by a Government. And it's also very sad to see kids on social networks like orkut, instead of building their education and trying to become better persons. This way, when they'll get older, they won't promote child pornography.

* information from the Reuters article. Wikipedia claims there are 26 million users and 66% are from Brazil.

Also see:
Criminal activities on orkut

Audacity - Free Audio Editor

Audacity is an open-source tool for editing audio files. You can use it import MP3, OGG, WAV and MIDI files, mix them, add simple effects, remove silent portions or background noise. Audacity is also great for recording audio files, like a podcast. It's easy to use: you can cut and paste selections.

Audacity works on Windows, Linux and Mac. If you still use Sound Recorder or if you think you need to use a commercial audio editor, try Audacity.

You can find interesting things about the software from its site and from Audacity Wiki.

Other great software:
Real Player, clean version
FreeRam XP Pro, memory optimizer
Launchy, start menu replacement
Truecrypt - encrypt your sensitive information
More underground software

Use Google to Be a Better Student

Many children will go back to school in a short while, so I put myself a question: How would I use Google for my school projects, if I were in high-school again? Let's see:

For math, I could use Google Calculator for unit transformations and to compute complicated expressions. Google Scholar would be helpful to find interesting papers.

Geography would be more pleasant with Google Earth and Google Maps. Imagine all the great photos I could include from Google Earth. I would also use Google search to learn the capitals, the flags, facts about population, area or language. Just type: "Iran flag" or "capital of Iran". For economical information, I would definitely check out Gapminder.

For history, I would type historical events or figures in Image Search and try to imagine the whole scenes. I would also use Google Directory to find high-quality sites, like the ones about Napoleonic Wars.

For chemistry, I would learn more about interesting experiments with Google Video. Google Search may show information about the elements.

Google Earth would be nice for Biology too. The content from National Geographic would make a virtual visit to Africa possible.

Google Groups is helpful to solve many computer science problems. I could find interesting books with Google Books and even read some snippets from important books.


Google Translate would help me learn more foreign languages, I could use the define: operator to find word definitions, Google's spell checker to improve my English, Image Search to know more about art, Google Video to listen classical music, and Writely to write some of my papers or collaborate with my colleagues. I would also use Ask.com for the related searches that are useful to explore a field.

Sometimes you can be a better kid if you have some nice tools. They can't replace good books, but they can complement them.

Gmail Has An Audio Player

Gmail has a built-in player for MP3 attachments. If you receive emails that include MP3 files (maybe a podcast or a public domain recording), you can listen them directly from Gmail.

This is feature was initially used only for the voicemails sent from Google Talk. Google uses a Flash player, similar to the one from Google Video.

You can create a new filter for MP3 files, so it's easier to find them. You need to add a new label.



{ Thank you, Chance McClain. }

Why Google Talk Will Be the Best Instant Messenger

When all will be said and done, when Google Talk will implement the suggestions from this page, when Gmail will be out of beta, we will see why a program must be developed with the users in mind. After implementing file transfer and voicemail, Google Talk developers say:

"Now, we're off to the next version. I can't tell you what your #2 and 3 suggestions were, but I do know that they're on the way."

Cross-platform
While Google Talk is available only for Windows, Google will release versions for Mac and Linux. Microsoft doesn't intend to release Windows Live Messnger for Mac (there's just a limited Microsoft Messenger for Mac), while Yahoo has a very old Yahoo Messenger for Linux.

Open protocol
Google Talk uses an open protocol, XMPP, for instant messaging and Jingle, an extension of XMPP, for VoIP. While Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger are interoperable, the real basis of IM interoperability was put by Google Talk. There are also plans for AIM interoperability. In fact, you can already use GTalk to chat with your friends from other IM networks, but it's pretty complicated.

Simple interface
Unlike other IM clients, Google Talk has a very simple and clean interface. There are no ads, no menus with too many options.



Chat in a browser
While there are services like Meebo, that allow you to use multiple IM networks from your browser, Google has implemented this for Google Talk in Gmail, treating IM conversations the same way as emails. Google also records the chat logs and makes them searchable in Gmail.

Encryption
Google says: "Google Talk currently does not encrypt chats or calls. But we are working hard to make many improvements to Google Talk while it is in beta, and we plan to fully support encryption of chats and calls before our official release." Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger don't offer encryption.

Mobility
Google Talk is included in Nokia 770 tablet, and can be used on a BlackBerry (Yahoo Messenger is also available).

File size
You can argue that it has less features, but Google Talk setup has 1.45 MB, Yahoo Messenger has 9.5 MB and Windows Live Messenger has 15.3 MB. This is a good indicator for bloatedness.

I'll conclude with a small description from a review at FileForum:
"Lightweight and simple. I think it's great."

Google Tests Ad-supported Syndicated Videos

Google announced this month a deal with MTV that will allow bloggers to post content from MTV Networks and earn some money from the ads. Shows like Nickelodeon's "SpongeBob SquarePants" and MTV's "Laguna Beach" will be rotated in a video channel.

"This gives us access to top video content, plus a new source of revenue for our content partners," said at that time David Eun, vice president of content partnerships for Google.

Search Engine RoundTable has information from one of the 150 publishers that were elected by Google for the beta test.

"Google's Streaming Video Content + Ads enables website publishers to display streaming video ads and video content from MTV Networks on their own sites. Partners will receive the video and streaming video ads as a JavaScript object that will embed a Flash player on their site. Google manages all the hosting and streaming of video.

For the initial test, we will be using channels of video content provided by MTV Networks, such as from their Comedy Central, MTV, MTV2, The N, and Nickelodeon channels. The video content is mostly short-form clips of up to a few minutes in length."

The ads are provided by MTV, have around 30 seconds, are shown between segments of the video content and are CPM-based.

Here's one live example, that features an interview with Christina Aguilera.

Sergey Brin As Seen On Google

How is Sergey Brin presented on Google.com? The descriptions vary, but one word is repeated more often than the others: morality.

Sergey Brin

... is co-founder and President, Technology at Google.

... is under tremendous internal pressure to abandon his principles.

... is finding that purity just doesn't scale.

... is Google's moral compass.

... is well known for saying that the rule the company operates by is "Don't be evil."

... is jet-lagged; he has the vaguely disoriented look of a young man still finding his bearings after a very long, strange trip.

... realized search is number two online activity and checking e-mail is number one.

... is still cryptic about a possible Google browser.

... is taking Cambodian children as an example of how democratic and wide-spread their search engine is.

... is a perfect example of a young entrepreneur: young, good looking, and fabulously rich.

... is a technologist. He is woefully under-equipped to handle the subtle difficulties of human communication.

... is passionate about the intersection of biology, technology and genetics and envisions a day when computer users will be able to Google their Genes.

... is considering coming back to Stanford to finish his doctoral degree.

... was quite cocky about his intellect, often trying to prove teachers of various subjects (read: Math) just how wrong they were.

... is known to spend some lunch hours on the beach volleyball court [from] the Google campus.

... is not considering to buy Microsoft.

... is notoriously skeptical about the semantic web.

... has even compared the Google search engine to the computer HAL in the film "2001: A Space Odyssey".

... has said that the perfect search engine would be like "the mind of God".

... is a Russian success story.

... his birth date is August 21, 1973.

Happy birthday, Sergey Brin!

{ The facts and opinions presented here may not be accurate. }

Google's US Market Share Drops One Percent

This is something you don't see every day: Google's market share in search for US has dropped from 44.7% in June to 43.7% in July, according to data from comScore Media Metrix. After 11 months of consecutive gains, Google search drops one percent, and that results in more market share for Yahoo (up from 25.5% to 25.8%), AOL and Ask.com.

Here's a chart that shows Google's US market share in the first half of this year, as measured by the same source.


We'll see next month if this is a trend, and Google's traffic acquisition deals aren't effective, but, most likely, this is just a transitory decrement in popularity.

Update: Nielsen / Netratings says that Google's US market share in July was 49.2%, down from 49.4% in June.

Google Groups Updates

Some Google Groups have an interesting feature. While typing the title of a new topic, Google will show similar topics in a sidebar. This is useful to reduce the number of duplicate posts, as most user don't search for topics before submitting a new one. This implicit search is very powerful and it's currently implemented in the groups owned by Google (like Google Desktop group), but it will most likely be extended to the rest of the groups.

If you have a technical problem or you want to monitor a specific topic, you can also create alerts. There are two kinds of alerts: instant alerts (you'll be notified as soon as Google finds a new match for your query) and digest alerts (you'll get a daily or weekly digest if anything new is found). Besides groups alerts, you can also select web search alerts and news alerts. As Google explains:

"A 'News' alert is an email that lets you know if new articles make it into the top ten results of your Google News search. A 'Web' alert is an email that lets you know if new web pages appear in the top twenty results for your Google Web search. A 'News & Web' alert is an email that lets you know when new articles related to your search term make it into the top ten results for a Google News search or the top twenty results for a Google Web search. A 'Groups' alert is an email that lets you know if new posts make it into the top fifty results of your Google Groups search."

You can add operators to your group alert. Some examples:

* add [author:email@gmail.com] to restrict a search to posts created by an author. Be sure to use the author's posting email address.

* add [insubject:query] to search only on the subject lines of the posts. For example, if you want to find posts that contain Google Mini in the subject line, type [ insubject:"google mini"].

Google Groups is a good place to solve technical problems and most Google products have a support group.

Google's Master Plan

Maybe we should stop trying to guess the next Google services. What's next for Google is right here on a big whiteboard from their GooglePlex. The photo was taken last year by Niall Kennedy and includes a small part from their master plan. As you can see many projects that don't have a tick in the whiteboard have been launched.



A bigger and more comprehensive image is available here, but it's not very clear.

As you can see, there are a lot of verticals and new domains: travel, health, TV, games, reviews, marketplace, dating, real estate, jobs, mortgage, pets, music and many ambitious projects like redesigning TCP/IP, and HTTP and creating a new generation of web based on BitTorrent.

Other pieces from the puzzle (half jokes, half serious projects):