Life On The Web, In The Browser

Life on the web, in the browser.

byJack Hudson,

Google Buys Innovative Startup Angstro to Help Build GoogleMe

Angstro, an experimental social-graph and news-crunching startup, has been acquired by Google to help lead the company's charge against Facebook in social networking. The acquisition was first reported on by Jessica Guynn of the LA Times.

Here's how Angstro describes itself on its website: "Inspired by the angstrom unit of measure (0.1 nanometre) named after Swedish physicist Anders Jonas Angstrom, Angstro represents the ability to hone in on highly focused, relevant news across professional networks. Where search engines such as Google and other news aggregator services have immense infrastructures that return a huge array of random results, Angstro analyses a wide breadth of information from multiple data sources to deliver very few, yet very intelligent results."

Goldman: Google Voice about Facebook, Not Telcos

The investment bank's analysts think that the phone service in Gmail isn't about the smaller Skype picture, it is about social networking and taking on Facebook.

In a note to investors today, Goldman Sachs analyst James Mitchell says that Google's VoIP move will beef up its Social Networking status, rather than put it in a position to becoming a virtual telco.  Verizon (VZ) and Google are very chummy these days so the move was likely discussed alongside the recent net neutrality negotiations.

Goldman anticipates that Google (GOOG) will be paying the telcos something in the neighborhood of tens of millions of dollars per year in termination fees.  Google will eventually recoup that cost in keeping people in Gmail for long periods of time where they will be viewing ads.  Google will charge fee on international calls which should be a break even with foreign telcos.

Facebook Just Patented The Feed – What Does That Mean For Everyone That Uses Them?

There are times when you file a patent that you might never use and forget about it. Then there are times you file a patent and later have granted at the best possible time. Facebook is at just such a moment it seems with the granting of US patent number 7,669,123.

Facebook in 2006 filed for a patent covering ‘the feed,’ as it is known among the tech world. That patent was just granted. Something to note, Facebook filed this before feeds were in vogue, before some social darlings were even born. Meaning: some people seem to stepping on Facebook’s toes in a serious, legal way.

GoogleMe Pieces Fit Together

We know that Google bought Slide. What we do know for a fact is that the Mountain View-based company is dumping Google Wave while also launching new features. Looking closer, all those separate moves seem to point to one thing: Google Me is on its way, big time.

Why Facebook Is Still A Small Company [Infographic]

Want to know why Facebook is still a small company despite having 500 million users? Look no further than this new infographic designed by the team over at JESS3 titled, “The Geosocial Universe”. The graphic illustrates how large of an opportunity the social networks have given that the mobile market reaches approximately 5 billion people. With that in mind, it doesn’t seem unreasonable that Facebook would reach 1 billion people at some point in the near future. Check out the graphic below.

IDN : Internet Identity For All

About IDN The abbreviation of IDN stands for Internationalized Domain Name, also called a multilingual domain name. An IDN is a domain name that contains Unicode characters and you are no longer restricted A-Z. In other words, Internationalized Domain Names may in letters with diacritics ex: (façade) as required by many European languages or characters drawn from non-Latin scripts such as Jawi, Tamil and Chinese.