Google Toolbar is a popular browser add-on for Internet Explorer that makes it possible to quickly perform Google Web searches, prevent annoying pop-up ads from appearing, and fill in Web forms with one simple click.

• Bookmarks
Want to create and label bookmarks that you can access from any computer? Simply click the Toolbar’s star icon, or right-click the star to add and label a bookmark. You'll be able to access your Bookmarks menu on any computer with the new Google Toolbar installed.

• Enhanced Search Box
As you type a search query into the new Toolbar's search box, you'll see a list of useful suggestions based on popular Google searches, spelling corrections and your own Toolbar search history and bookmarks. You can also click the 'G' icon in the search box to search different Google sites, the current site, or sites for which you’ve installed custom search buttons.

• Custom Buttons
You can add buttons to your Toolbar that will let you visit and search your favorite websites and keep up with interesting feeds.

• Send To
You can use your Google Toolbar to share web pages via email, text message (SMS), or blog.

• Google Account Sign-in
Your Google Account is your access point for Google services like Personalized Homepage, Google Groups and Gmail – and now you can sign in and out right from your Toolbar.

More Features
• Block annoying pop-ups
• Fill out web forms with one click
• Translate pages into English instantly
• Check your spelling in webmail messages

Download: Google Toolbar 4.0.1019.2378 Beta Windows 98/ME/2000/XP & IE 6.0+ 

They say talk is cheap. Google thinks it should be free. Google Talk enables you to call or send instant messages to your friends for free–anytime, anywhere in the world. Google Talk offers you:

• Choice: Get in touch how and when you want to–over email, IM or a call

• Quality: Talk through your computer but hear your friends as if they were in the same room

• Convenience: Your Gmail contacts are pre-loaded into Google Talk so inviting or talking to your friends is just a click away

• Pictures and themes: See pictures in your Friends list and chat sessions.

Requires Windows XP/2000, minimum 56k (broadband recommended).

Mac and Linux users can connect to Google Talk using other other IM clients.

Google Talk is in beta and requires a Gmail username and password.

Download: Google Talk 1.0.0.95 Beta | Google Talk for BlackBerry devices (most commonly accessed via your BlackBerry) 

Picasa is software that helps you instantly find, edit and share all the pictures on your PC. Every time you open Picasa, it automatically locates all your pictures (even ones you forgot you had) and sorts them into visual albums organised by date with folder names you will recognise. You can drag and drop to arrange your albums and make labels to create new groups. Picasa makes sure your pictures are always organised.

Picasa also makes advanced editing simple by putting one-click fixes and powerful effects at your fingertips. And Picasa makes it a snap to share your pictures – you can email, print photos home, make gift CDs, and even post pictures on your own blog.

Download: Picasa 2.5.0 Build 32.43 

Search giant Google has launched a new project hosting service for open source software. Designed to leverage the robust Subversion version control system, the new service provides repository hosting and support for issue tracking. With extremely limited functionality and plenty of rough edges, the nascent open source project hosting service is noticeably inferior to most other Google betaware. Despite the deficiencies, the project has potential, and it will probably become more useful as it continues to evolve. The main page bears the common open source meme "Release early, release often," a principle that Google seems to have embraced with great enthusiasm given the raw status of the system.

After creating a test project and experimenting with most of the features, I have concluded that the service is far from ready for production use. With the exception of the issue tracking feature which has a very nifty (albeit buggy) filtering list view widget, the interface is plagued with an uncharacteristic lack of useful ajax flourishes.

Full article: Ars Technica 

news analysis. If you're trying to catch on in radio, Motown is probably a good place to start.

Google-powered ads, which have become a mainstay on Web sites, are now being played on at least one radio station in Detroit. And like so many other Motor City radio products, it won't be long before they go global. Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said in a conference call with analysts last week that the search giant plans to make its radio-ad business generally available within three months.

"We are in the process of introducing AdSense for radio, which is essentially the integration of the dMarc console and management tools into our advertising system. There are a number of very interesting deals being negotiated," Schmidt said. It's a typically ambitious effort for Google, which got into the radio business in January with its $102 million acquisition of dMarc Broadcasting, a company that had an automated radio advertising system.

If Google radio ads actually catch on, they could have significant implications for the way radio ads are sold. That could be a good thing for an industry that saw April revenues, for example, drop 5 percent from a year ago, according to the Radio Advertising Bureau trade association.

"I think dMarc has an opportunity for us to connect with advertisers we don't normally interact with," said John Fullam, vice president and market manager for Greater Media Philadelphia who said this week that Google ads were already being tested on Greater Media radio stations in Detroit. "It's big for radio."

Full article: c|net News.com 

Responding to concerns about click fraud in the online-ad industry, Google will be revealing to advertisers the number of invalid clicks on their ads with changes it's set to make to its AdWords system late Tuesday.

Now advertisers will be able to see the number of invalid clicks Google found, as well as what percentage that represents of total clicks registered, said Shuman Ghosemajumder, business product manager for trust and safety at Google.

Click fraud occurs when Web site publishers click on ads on their site to boost their revenue or when companies click on rivals' ads to eat away at their advertising budgets. Invalid clicks, for which Google does not charge advertisers, include inadvertent double clicks on an ad, according to Ghosemajumder.

"Advertisers asked us for more transparency on this issue," he said. "Until now advertisers haven't had a great deal of data to compare from their own accounts in order to be able to understand what Google is doing for them."

Without relevant click fraud data from Google, advertisers have had to rely on estimates from third-party companies that provide services to combat click fraud and that Google accuses of inflating numbers to drive more business.

Industry reports say fraudulent clicks range from 14.1 percent to 14.6 percent to as high as 20 percent of total clicks.

Full story: ZDNet News 

A start-up called Spiceworks is testing whether Google Ads--commonly seen on blogs and other public Web sites--can finance a software company that sells to businesses.

On Monday, Spiceworks is expected to launch a beta of its namesake software, which monitors the networks of small- and medium-size businesses. Administrators can download the software, install it and get an inventory of what's on their network within a few minutes, according to Scott Abel, founder and CEO of the company.

To set itself apart from existing providers, Spiceworks designed its product to be very simple to use. And it's free to use, supported by Google Ads appearing on the right side of the administration console.

"When we were starting the company (last year), we looked at what you can do for free in the consumer Web, or Web 2.0, world and we see how that's pervading into the enterprise," said Jay Hallberg, vice president of marketing and another founder at the company.

"We think we will see more and more ad-based services in the enterprise," he said.

Full story: CNET News.com 

Google was set to unveil a Web search site on Thursday designed to help blind people find results that will work best with their text-to-speech software.

The new Google Accessible Search site, which will be available at labs.google.com/accessible early on Thursday, prioritizes the list of search results based on how simple the Web page layouts are, said T.V. Raman, research scientist in charge of the service.

For example, a user searching for "weather" will find pages with a lot of other content on them.

"To a user who can see, that might be fine," Raman said. "But if you are listening to the page (via screen reader software), a lot of information can prevent you from finding what you are looking for."

The service, which Raman characterized as an "early-stage experiment" out of Google Labs, looks at a number of signals by examining the HTML markup found on a Web page. It tends to favor pages that have few visual distractions and that are likely to render well with images turned off.

Read more: CNET News.com 

'Pull' videos only start when a user clicks the play button

Google has launched an advertising service that allows businesses to show videos online. An example can be seen on the Google Video Ads demo page.

The service only plays videos when a user clicks the 'play' button, which Google said is designed to protect the user experience and provide advertisers with genuine leads.

To simplify the process, once an advert of up to two minutes long has been uploaded by a company its management is handed over to Google.

Advertisers can then buy space on specific sites or spread the ads around related sites based on the context of the material.

Google said that the video ads will compete in the advertising auction with other text, image and Flash ads for placement on a site. Adverts are paid for on either a cost-per-impression or cost-per-click basis.

Advertisers can measure the effectiveness of their video ads by tracking play-back rates and click-throughs to their destination site, as well as how long users interact with the video.

Read more: vnunet.com 

The Google Video Upload program lets anyone who owns the necessary rights (including copyrights, trademarks, rights of publicity, and any other relevant rights for your content) submit videos electronically to Google Video. Google Video Uploader lets you upload your video files in Google Video.

You can upload several types of video files through the Uploader: .mpg, .mpeg, .avi, .ra, .ram, .mov, .wmv, .asf, .mod, .mp3.

We're accepting digital video files of any length and size.

Download: Google Video Uploader 1.0.5 Windows, Mac, Linux/Solaris 

The idea is simple. It’s a globe that sits inside your PC. You point and zoom to anyplace on the planet that you want to explore. Satellite images and local facts zoom into view. Tap into Google search to show local points of interest and facts. Zoom to a specific address to check out an apartment or hotel. View driving directions and even fly along your route. We invite you to try it now.

Google Earth is free for personal use. No registration is required. You may (optionally) choose to upgrade to Google Earth Plus.

Features:

• Free for personal use.
• Sophisticated streaming technology delivers the data to you as you need it.
• Imagery and 3D data depict the entire earth - Terabytes of aerial and satellite imagery depict cities around the world in high-resolution detail.
• Local search lets you search for restaurants, hotels, and even driving directions. Results show in your 3D earth view. Easy to layer multiple searches, save results to folders, and share with others.
• Layers show parks, schools, hospitals, airports, shopping, and more.
• KML – data exchange format let your share useful annotations and view. thousands of data points created by Google Earth users.

Use it for:

-Planning a trip
-Getting driving directions
-Finding a house or apartment
-Finding a local business
-Exploring the world

Download: Google Earth 4.0.1693 Beta Windows 2000/XP, Mac OS X, Linux 

Watch videos from Google Video right on your desktop

Google Video player features:

• Watch videos downloaded from Google Video
• Browse scenes within a video using thumbnails
• Skip to anywhere in the video, even if that portion hasn't downloaded yet
• Sit back and watch videos in full screen mode
• Resume video downloads automatically

System Requirements:

· Windows XP or 2000
· Video card with at least 16MB of RAM
· 1GHz Pentium 3 or faster

Download: Google Video player 1.0.3.1 Beta 

BOSTON--Microsoft is digging in for a fight with Google in the enterprise search market.

"Enterprise search is our business, it's our house and Google is not going to take that business," Kevin Turner, Microsoft's chief operating officer, told a conference of more than 7,000 business partners here Thursday.

It's the largest gathering that Turner has addressed, and only his second appearance at a Microsoft conference, since joining the company from Wal-Mart 11 months ago.

Turner said the company is also gearing up to take on IBM and Oracle, among other competitors, with new products slated for debut in the next few months. But he saved his most acerbic comments for Google.

"Those people are not going to be allowed to take food off of our plate, because that is what they are intending to do," he said.

In recent months, Google has unveiled new search appliances. But it hasn't spelled out its overall enterprise search plans.

Full story: ZDNet 

Google Web Accelerator works with your browser to help web pages show up in a snap.

Google Web Accelerator is...

‣ Designed for Broadband – Web pages load even more quickly on DSL and cable connections

‣ Easy to use – Simply install and enjoy faster web browsing in seconds

System Requirements
Operating System: Win XP or Win 2000 SP3+
Browser: IE 5.5+ or Firefox 1.0+

Download: Google Web Accelerator 0.2.65.83 Beta 

Google has joined a group that is promoting an OpenDocument Format standard that allows people to open documents regardless of the application they were created in.

The group, the ODF Alliance, was formed to solve the problem of users getting locked out of files when they are using an application other than the one the document was created with.

Google, whose Writely online word processing program supports ODF, joined the roster of 240 ODF Alliance members this week, Marino Marcich, managing director of the ODF, said on Tuesday.

Google also unveiled its Google Spreadsheets application last month, but has not said whether that program will support ODF. Company spokespeople did not return calls and e-mails seeking comment.

"Google is a major player obviously and a tremendous boost to the alliance," which launched with just 36 members in March, he said. "It demonstrates the depth and growing support behind the ODF.

Full article: ZDNet Australia 

GOOGLEGRAB is a tool to download images from the google image search service.
It makes image research very easy because they are downloaded directly to your harddrive.

Never again the pain of clicking waiting and downloading images one by one !

Download: GOOGLEGRAB 2.1 PC and Mac OS X 

Nearly everyone has been affected by Google and its sheer ubiquity—to the point where "to google" has even become an officially recognized verb. Google gained this dominance by providing the best web searching service, which required the ability to quickly "crawl" the web, finding and indexing all the content it could get its hands on. Anyone who has set up a web server and peered at the access logs know that the Google spiders come quickly and often.

One thing that most people weren't aware of, however, is that Google is indexing more than just text and images. The search engine is also capable of indexing and searching binary files, a feature that the security firm Websense has been taking advantage of to uncover malicious and hacked web sites all over the world.

The company utilized a little-known feature of Google to search for binary strings representing Windows-based worms such as W32.Bagel and W32.Mytob. "They [Google] actually look inside the internals of an executable and index that information," said Dan Hubbard, senior director of security at Websense.

Full article: Ars Technica 

Virtual handbags drawn...

eBay has blocked customers from using Google's recently launched online payments service, Checkout.

The move could be seen as a protective measure over its own payment service PayPal but eBay has insisted it is because Google's product does not meet the security and safety standard set in its payments policy.

Rob Chesnut, head of eBay's trust and safety, said in a statement: "While many of the payment methods offered by eBay sellers offer a high degree of safety and convenience, a few simply are not appropriate for the eBay marketplace.

"We've updated the policy to identify those payment methods that we've determined are not appropriate for the eBay marketplace. Please note that eBay's evaluation relates only to whether a particular service is appropriate for the eBay marketplace. These payment methods may, in fact, be useful services for consumers in other contexts."

Read more: silicon.com 

YouOS is a web operating system, and as its authors state on youos.com, it also is an experiment in a new kind of computing platform. The
applications provides customers with the possibility of integrating their
Internet browser with the web operating system in order to metamorphose the browser window into an independent browser.

The authors themselves admit that the Web based operating system is at a very early stage and are actually limiting user access to it. As it is not a Windows competitor as yet it has great potential to achieve that standard provided there will be an influx of capital, time and given the necessary human resources. That’s because even in its demo phase the YouOS is already a viable and potentially lucrative project.

Read more: Softpedia 

Google Desktop gives you easy access to information on your computer and from the web. It's a desktop search application that provides full text search over your email, computer files, music, photos, chats and web pages that you've viewed. By making your computer searchable, Google Desktop puts your information easily within your reach and frees you from having to manually organize your files, emails and bookmarks. It makes searching your computer as easy as searching the web with Google.

Google Desktop doesn't just help you search your computer; it also helps you gather new information from the web with Sidebar, a new desktop feature that shows you your new email, weather and stock information, personalized news and RSS/Atom feeds, and more. Sidebar is personalized automatically, without any manual configuration required (though you can certainly make your own customizations if you want to).

We've also improved your desktop search experience. With Quick Find, you can now launch applications and see search results as you type without even opening a browser. We've also extended our Outlook integration, so you can search Google Desktop with the Outlook Toolbar and see results within Outlook itself. Finally, you can search even more stuff, including your Gmail, files on network drives, many Outlook data types (including Contacts, Tasks, Calendar, Notes and Journal) and MSN Messenger chats. And if you yearn for even stronger security, you can encrypt your entire index.

Add Google Gadgets to customize your desktop and Sidebar, Developers: Create and share your own gadgets.

Requires Windows XP or Windows 2000 SP 3+

Download: Google Desktop 4.2006.0627.443 Beta | Gadgets | Screenshots  

Google Pack is a free collection of essential software from Google and other companies. The software in the Google Pack helps you browse the web faster, remove spyware and viruses, organize your photos, and more.

Google Pack is:

• Essential: Enjoy safe, useful software for your computer
• Simple: Download and install everything in just a few clicks
• Customizable: Choose only the software you want
• Up to date: Get updates and new software via Google Updater

Google Pack is only available for Windows XP

Download: Google Pack 1.2.544.18888 Beta 

Popular search engine has made it into the latest Merriam-Webster dictionary

Though you may have been "googling" people for years, the verb you were using was technically slang, until recently.

In fact, many regularly used tech words are just now getting the official stamp of approval from English-language dictionaries.

On Thursday, Merriam-Webster announced its latest update, and the new science and technology words added to the venerable dictionary include agritourism, biodiesel, mouse potato, ringtone and spyware.

And google is defined as a transitive verb meaning "to use the Google search engine to obtain information about (as a person) on the World Wide Web." While the entry retains capitalisation in explaining the word's etymology — "Google, trademark for a search engine" — the verb google is lowercase.

"A noun turns into a verb very often. Google is a unique case. Because it has achieved so much prominence in the world of search, people have been using the word google as a generic verb now. Our main aim is to respond to the use of the language that we see. We consider ourselves very respectful of trademark. That (google as a lowercase verb) is really a lexicographical judgment based on the evidence that was analysed," said Thomas Pitoniak, the associate editor and composition manager for Merriam-Webster.

Full story: ZDNet UK 

 

Music video of family obsessed with Google.

Watch: Googlehead