Today, TechCrunch reports on some secret meeting where Google has something “really really big” in the works to take Facebook on head to head. Sounds kinda sneaky and strange (and a little Dr. Evil) but this is Silicon Valley.

 Read the rest of this entry (430 words await you)

Although Internet video ads generally annoy me, the solution Google has developed for YouTube is quite decent. Check out a YouTube video advertisement in action via this video.

 Read the rest of this entry (356 words await you)

CNN recently aired a debate where the Democratic candidate hopefuls answered questions asked by YouTube users. I checked out several of the YouTube videos on YouTube and the candidate’s responses on CNN.

 Read the rest of this entry (376 words await you)

According to Business 2.0 the “Google backlash has begun.” This souring stems from the recent earnings “miss.”

I think the article is overly negative. Google missed earnings expectations ever so slightly, while they still made a big profit. But this is Wall Street where expectations are everything.

 Read the rest of this entry (739 words await you)

Recently Google was accused by some group as being very disrespectful of privacy. I’m rather hooked on Google, as I use Gmail, iGoogle, Google Reader, Google Analytics, and Google Adsense. Still, I feel rather uncomfortable with any one company having too much control over my online life. I don’t surf with Google history on and am one of those folks who has their cookies deleted on every exit of the browser. Yes, it forces me to re-enter passwords repeatedly, but I’m willing to tolerate that inconvenience.

 Read the rest of this entry (681 words await you)

I just designed a new Webomatica home page. It has links to various parts of this site (including this blog) as well as featuring the five most recent blog posts and some articles I’ve decided to share via Google Reader.

Anyhow, I thought I would explain how I set up the sharing in Feedburner and Google Reader and what styles I applied to the resulting content, since doing this was a bit opaque.

 Read the rest of this entry (489 words await you)

Alright. I’m offloading all the technology stuff into a “Tech Notes” moniker because there’s just too much stuff going on and I can’t flesh everything out into a full post.

Google Gears

Holy frak. I was excited about Adobe’s Apollo and Microsoft’s Silverlight but here we go: Google is starting to make their web applications workable on the desktop, without an Internet connection. The simplest way to demonstrate how this can be practical is through the most obvious, useful example: Google Reader can now be used offline.

 Read the rest of this entry (1052 words await you)

Google is beginning to disable “arbitrage” AdSense publisher accounts. Although I use Google Adsense myself, I read “arbitage” over at JenSense and thought, what’s that?

So here’s the low down, with images of arbitrage varieties at Marketing Pilgrim.

 Read the rest of this entry (488 words await you)

Several Web 2.0 sites have recently done redesigns, with an overall trend of simplifying their user interfaces, making things easier for us users.

I like this. I’m starting to value accessibility and usability over cool yet complex features and the display of every statistic available. There are so many Web 2.0 sites competing for a attention that one way of turning “catch and release” into “catch and keep” is to make the act of a user returning and participating super easy.

 Read the rest of this entry (991 words await you)

This speculative news is all over everything (which may mean nothing, as last I checked eBay still hadn’t bought StumbleUpon) - that Microsoft is looking into a merger with Yahoo!. Yeah, that’s huge.

 Read the rest of this entry (316 words await you)