Google Friend Connect

With Christmas just around the corner, the battle for online supremacy has never been won, it is just starting to heat up for Google and Facebook.

Just recently, Google launched it's Open ID style login option - Google Friend Connect,OpenSocials answer to FB Connect. Though still on its beta phase, it poses a great risk on Facebook's own FB connect.

So what does Friend Connect do? Well, since it is solely based on OpenID, it works pretty much the same as OpenID as long as the users add the Friend Connect Code. They will be able to sign in using their Google, Yahoo, AIM, or OpenID usernames and passwords. The Websites will also be able to add any OpenSocial apps developed by third parties.It also supports the OAuth data portability standard.

You might be wondering though what's at stake if these two applications functions pretty much the same... The ultimate stake is what will become the identity and data portability standard on the Web, and who will control it.

As we all know, Google has become a major player in the internet industry BUT there will always be other players out there like Facebook who always play their cards right.

So who are you betting on?

Delicious Celebrates 5 Years

Launched back in 2003, Delicious, a social bookmarking site that was largely responsible for making ‘tagging’ one of the defining elements in today’s web recently turned 5.

-In December 2005 the site was acquired by Yahoo, and has brought in up 5.3 million users since launch.

-In September 2007, Delicious 2.0, a complete-code rewrite of the site that was due to introduce a more intuitive interface and some new features.

-In January 2008 this year there were hints on the Delicious blog that the release was imminent, but nothing materialized.

-By June 2008 - Delicious 2.0 was still nowhere to be seen. A week later delicious founder Joshua Schachter left from Yahoo, explaining that he had been sidelined by Yahoo management.

-In July 2008, Delicious 2.0 was finally out the door.

With a platform as popular as Delicious, management issues should be given a thought and hopefully make a strong impact on 2009.

Jerry Yang: Smashing Walls

Jerry Yang, CEO of Yahoo Inc. was invited to Web 2.0 Summit and the reviews so far was downright sad. People felt that Yahoo needs to have a new general to lead its fleet to a new era - as what TechCrunch's Mike Arrington wrote that Yahoo needs its Barack Obama, "someone to make everyone believe that a true leader is at the helm, ready to fight. Someone with a believable plan. Someone who can inspire Yahoo--and Yahoo users--to believe that Yahoo can once again become a force on the Internet."

After the failed merger with Microsoft, Yahoo smashed again another deal with Google recently which leaves Yahoo high and dry.

CNN Views Hits Millions

With all the coverage that the US Presidential elections has had for the past few months, CNN brought the house down with a whooping 27 million unique visitors for the day! Wow! Imagine how many people were tuning in and browsing the net for the freshiest news on the Obama-Mccain race.

Aside from the millions of unique visitors, the site also garnered 276 million page views, beat that!

What's with GAudi?

As if text indexing was not enough for Google, the search engine giant recently released in their Google Labs, "GAudi", short for Google Audio Indexing. GAudi, though still on beta stage, is Googles new tool for indexing.

GAudi aims to automatically convert audio files in Youtube to text thereby it would be easier for users to search and watch video in different video channels. On the play bar of the video, there are a couple of yellow dots which indicates at which point the keywords are mentined, cool huh?

As of this writing, Google only index keywords for videos on Youtube exclusively. So if you want your videos become more searchable, upload it in Youtube...but that's not the end of it. Since we are talking about keywords, you should make sure that your keyword get spoken in the videos!

Google Audio Indexing has started another revolution on how users and SEO's deal with searches and ranking, I will not be surprised if Google would develop another process on how to index content.

Memo, Memory Memiary!

Can you still remember what you did at 4pm last month, last week, yesterday?With a lot of things going on in your brain everyday, It is very impossible to track the things you have done for a particular moment. Not all highlights of the day could even be remembered. Come Memiary,a site which can help you remember what you’ve been doing with your life.

Memiary is a micro-diary or journal wherein you can fill in your thoughts. You might want to ask, how different it is from blogging. Well, it is very different for the following reasons:

1) It is private - unlike blogging, Memiary is a niche for you only. It cannot be shared, well ,unless you give out your credentials. This is an aspect of Memiary that strikes me as interesting. With all the available blog platform and social networks on the web, privacy is already a scarce commodity. And to those who value Memiary more than traffic, then Memiary is for you.

2) Snippets work well and sometimes better than blog. People are too busy these days and they simply don't have the time to fill out long entries.

3) Easy Login - You just need an email address and password and voila! You can now start logging your 5 highlights of the day. No need for addressses and confiramtion emails.Memiary is a fun little site and pretty handy for most users. It can even drive change in one's life as they realize that they are doing the same thing everyday for the past couple of years.

Why not try Memiary now, make a change!

Gmail Saga and More

As we all know, Google Labs is always cooking up some new and fresh recipe, so to speak, on its already long list of product menu. And once more, search engine giant Google is adding two interesting features on its Gmail sidebar: the Google Calendar and Google Docs.

These two features has been requested in the past and engineers at Google Labs has never ceased to keep Gmail fun and user friendly by being able to deliver what Gmail fans want!

Google Calendar: Just like your normail email client, you can now show appointments, upcoming events, details and you will also get alerts for meetings - in the comfort of one screen. That means you do not have to toggle in between features just to see what is in store for you.

Google Docs: This feature let's you see the last five accessed document. Best of all, it lets you search accross all your documents within Gmail!

For many of us who love Gmail, these features are a real treat!

SiteMaps: a road to Success

Sitemap is a page that contains an organized listing of links to all pages within the web site. You will usually find links to these pages somewhere on the home page of a web site, and on more proactive sites, every page. Often site maps are found at the top right or bottom navigation links, away from the main components and natural site navigation, but still positioned in areas of high visitor focus, based on eye-tracking tests that have been performed by knowledgeable Internet marketers.

Ever wonder why websites have sitemaps?Well simply because, sitemaps are roadmaps for search engine spiders which lets them know exactly where each and every page to your website is. In doing so, when the spiders pay their visit they will have clear direction as to where to find your website and post it successfully to the search engines. Also, sitemaps are a useful tool to guide visitors in navigating your site. It will lead them to the depths of your site where others might not have been able to do without the sitemap. With that said, I'm sure you can see why you need to create a website sitemap for all your Internet Marketing endeavors.

So now that we know why sitemaps are important, the next big question is : How do I make one?There are two options: Google sitemap and Site generator.

Google Sitemap :Log on to : https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools . From there you can follow the instructions. Reviews I've found for these tool can be summarized as "waiting for a paint to dry on the other side". If you have the time to burn then this method is for you.

Site Generator:These are automated services...for a fee. Examples are XML-Site Maps.com and HitTail.com. Since it's a paid service, it's quite faster. Quite the opposite of Google Sitemap. Additionally, it offers other services such as:

* Real time reporting of exactly who's visiting your website.

* Longtail graph of exactly where your traffic is coming from.

* E-mail support systems in the industry.

* And more

So you see, SiteMaps are just one of the many solutions out there to increase traffic and PR to a site. With these end in mind, If these site map formats are not yet in your web site building plans, consider adding them today!

Yahoo! PPC+ZIP

Recently, Yahoo! launched its PPC online marketing strategy - this time targeting Zip Codes. SEM professioanals from US and Canada can utilize this new service to add relevance to their campaigns.

Yahoo! was able to manage to type of marketing by using the queries, IP addreses and similar data to determine location of the user and create relevant searches from it.

However, this type of online marketing strategy has its down side : you are limiting your market base by targeting your audience. According to Yahoo! communications manager Kastle Waserman said "Keep in mind the more you target, the fewer users your ad may reach."

Smart Table : "Surface" for Kids

Meet the world’s first multitouch, multiuser table for primary education - Smart Table.

This fun gadget is a brainchild of Smartech. If adults can have Surface, whay can't the Kids have them too, right? They would probably appreciate it better and can learn more from it.

SMART Table has a nearly identical — if not better — set of capabilities to the Surface:

multitouch
gesture support
a 27-inch screen
and a super-simple SDK

Details are not yet available for this interactive gadget but one thing is for sure, it is offered comparatively low than Surface at $7000. Stay tuned for more updates!