Ever since the search engine giant announced their Google Fiber project, cities around the US performed various stunts in order to get Google’s attention.

Google was suppose to announce a winner by December of 2010, but decided to push back the announcement in order to gain more time researching every city who applied.

Although Google has not indicated an official date of when the winner would be announced, it’s probable that the winner will be revealed next month (at least according to an archived blog post). More →

Yes, I know what you’re thinking. Why on Earth would Facebook launch a phone with Microsoft jumping in the fray and HP attempting to resurrect Palm in order to take on Apple and Android.

Apparently Micahel Arrington from TechCrunch fame received a tip from a credible source saying that Facebook is about to launch its own mobile phone.

Facebook is building a mobile phone, says a source who has knowledge of the project. Or rather, they’re building the software for the phone and working with a third party to actually build the hardware. [...]

Specifically, Facebook wants to integrate deeply into the contacts list and other core functions of the phone. It can only do that if it controls the operating system.

Two high level Facebook employees – Joe Hewitt and Matthew Papakipos – are said to be secretly working on the project, which is unknown even to most Facebook staff. (via TechCrunch)

Some people are already claiming that this rumor is a farce, with public denials from Jaime Schopflin (Facebook’s spokesperson).

Despite the the apparent absurdity of a Facebook phone (at least to those within the geekosphere), a Facebook phone could potentially threaten both Apple and Google’s reign in the smart phone world (key word is “potentially”). More →

In an effort to remove the chorus of a thousand voices saying the same thing, the Google News team is now allowing users to view news services from the original source, a move that will probably appeal to many news organizations.

Enter “duplicate detection.” Duplicate detection means we’ll be able to display a better variety of sources with less duplication. Instead of 20 “different” articles (which actually used the exact same content), we’ll show the definitive original copy and give credit to the original journalist. (We launched a similar feature in Sort-by-Date and got great feedback about it.) Of course, if you want to see all the duplicates on other publisher websites with additional analysis and context, they’re only a click away.

By removing duplicate articles from our results, we’ll be able to surface even more stories and viewpoints from journalists and publishers from around the world. This change will provide more room on Google News for publishers’ most highly valued content: original content. (Google News Blog)

By highlighting original news sources, blogs and media outlets that break the news will be able to receive the lions share of internet traffic from Google News instead of rival (which could have a greater page rank).

Although this change will probably result in a greater de-emphasis of blogs being highlighted on Google News (to the joy of a few media outlets), it should help Google compete against larger rivals in the future (like Yahoo News).

After releasing a web app that made the native YouTube iPhone app irrelevent, it looks like the boys and girls at Google have (finally!) updated their mobile app with push notifications for Gmail and gCalendar fans.

Ever missed an appointment or important email because you were away from your desk? Now Google Mobile App can help with push notifications from your Google account to your iPhone — an icon badge shows you’ve got new mail in Gmail, and Google Calendar event reminders appear right on your home screen.

We’ve also added spiffy features to get you information faster — when looking for flight info, weather, stock quotes or currency conversion you’ll see answers before you even hit ‘Search’. (Google Mobile Blog) More →

The Wall Street Journal has just launched its premium news content service – the Wall Street Journal Professional Edition. This premium online service provides news coverage and analysis of the Wall Street Journal combined with global business and news sources from Dow JOnes Factiva and Dow Jones Newswires.

The WSJ Professional Edition gives you business and specialized news and information across all major industry, and the hottest discussion trend that matters to everyone.

The Wall Street Journal Pro Edition is a useful tool for analyzing and understanding hottest issues, industries, companies, people and ideas buried deep within news  headlines. The premium service is anchored by leading news and analysis works from WSJ.com. It gives you a new view into key industries as well.

In addition, the premium service also has a powerful search capability.

According to Robert Thompson, editor-in-chief of Dow Jones & Company and managing editor of the WSJ, there has no business leaders and professionals given access to the sophisticated, customized service.

“The Wall Street Journal Professional Edition combines the full power of our unmatched global reporting with a unique database.  Users will be able to access this service without being tethered to a clunky terminal, ” said Mr. Thompson.

The Wall Street Journal Professional Edition premium service cost $49.monthly. Existing WSJ subscribers can easily upgrade their subscription at a discounted rate.

The WSJ Professional Edition also allows you to personalize the service to suit your needs. WSJ editor are monitoring and selecting top news and trends across key industries such as Pharmaceuticals, Healthcare, Energy, Media and Marketing, Finance and Technology.  You can customize news alerts and company profiles that are important to you.

YouTube is currently overhauling its standard video page view into something that it considers as one of the site’s biggest redesigns ever. Basically once the redesign is finished, you will noticed two major changes – new playlist interface, search queue and integrated comments.

The new playlist interface will now include an option for autoplay mode which if turned on will automatically bring you to the next video once the current video has finished playing. If you don’t want like this feature, you can always turn it off anytime. But if the search results consist of robusts set of videos You Tube will automaticall play these videos one after the other. This will now become a standard in all of the YouTube videos.

As for the search queue, this feature will let you add videos to your queue. While the integrated comments will now lists both text and video responses to trigger conversation around a video.

The new video page view is currently being tested by selected individuals. Once testing is done, expect the new video page view to appear the next time you check out YouTube.

Or, if you can’t wait that long, check out this preview site to prepared yourself for the coming changes in the way you watch video on YouTube.

Hope you like the new page view. Honestly, it’s way cleaner and more organized than the current interface.

Via Business Insider

 

It seems that Amazon doesn’t want me to miss its Kindle app. After getting Kindle for iPhone and Kindle for PC, here comes its latest iteration – Kindle for BlackBerry. I was actually waiting for the Kindle for Mac but it seems that this would still take some time. To think that I just got a BlackBerry Bold 9700 a fews ago. So, there you go folks, if you’re a BlackBerry User you may now download Kindle for BlackBerry.

The app syncs across all your Kindle accounts of course. So that when you purchase an e-book from the Kindle store through your BlackBerry app, you can still read from your PC, iPhone, iPod touch and possibly soon on your iPad, if you’re planning to get one. Of course, it goes without saying that it’s also available on the various models of Kindle e-Reader, whichever you have right now and whether you are planning to get one soon. More →

With the success being reaped by location-aware social recommendation sites such as Gowalla, Foursquare, Yelp and even Google Places, it’s not surprising that a new player wants to join in the party – AT&T.  According to a report by Forbes, AT&T is currently testing a new social recommendation site called Buzz.com.

The site which is currently on a by-invitation-only alpha mode is geared to provide  ”deeper and more relevant” local business searches that will utilize AT&T’s information about local businesses.  Through social connections and technology, AT&T hopes to give  the most reliable and useful search recommendations to users based on what other people’s  favorites and comments.

But don’t think of Buzz.com as just another social networking site despite having some similar features with Facebook or Foursquare.  The site was developed  by leveraging social graphs that already exist. So the site’s would-be members will be able to invite groups of friends from their email contacts or even Facebook profiles and link their activities on Buzz.com instead of duplicating their social networking profiles.

In addition, Buzz.com is not a review site.  You either post a brief comment about a particular local business or favorite that site instead.  This in effect will spare AT&T of all the troubles that may arise from not so great reviews about business establishments that might be posted by people.

Buzz.com is set to debut to some 500 users next week . In the meantime you might want to sign up to make sure that you’d get an invite as soon as they let people in.

Imagine all the great stuff about group gift giving – the cost sharing, the message “we care” thoughtfulness, the pooling of funds so you can give something bigger and better – without the pain of collecting cash, laboring over a gift choice or schlepping to a store. It’s all precisely why eDivvy was invented. eDivvy.com makes it a snap for friends, family, business associates – any kind of group – to choose and split the cost of a gift.

eDivvy.com is easy to use. The organizer of the group gift creates their group gift event by choosing the occasion and an invitation design to match. They customize their invite information and then select the product(s) they want to group gift. After a few more simple customizations, they add the email addresses of those they wish to invite to group gift and send. eDivvy.com takes over from there. Once each e-mail recipient receives the email on behalf of the organizer, they can choose how much they want to contribute, and charges that amount to a major credit card through eDivvy’s highly secure process. Once the group gift is fully funded, eDivvy.com ensures the gift is shipped directly to the recipient from the retailer from which it was chosen. All of those who contributed to the gift can also sign a virtual gift card for the recipient. The organizer can check in throughout the process, see who has contributed and the remaining amount needed to purchase the gift, and send gentle reminders if need be.

Starting April, voting members of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (ATAS) will be able to exclusively view full seasons of Showtime original series through their iPhones and iPodTouch devices. Building on its innovative and eco-friendly Emmy campaign from last year, this application developed and implemented by Transpera, the largest mobile video delivery and advertising network in North America, will allow voters, upon entering their passcode, the ability to stream full episodes directly to their handheld devices.

Showtime also announced that as of February 28, its password protected website has launched and will be available to voters throughout the June balloting and final August judging periods. Showtime will once again be working with leading online video platform Brightcove Inc. to deliver a customized Internet-based experience that allows voting members to view full seasons of Showtime original series.