Itamar Kestenbaum

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I swear this must be the Year of the Awkward Non-Asked-For-Alternative-User-Interface! Google just came out with Google Reader Play – an alternative view for Google reader that allows you to flip through all of the top news you might be interested in. As you star articles, it will get smarter and suggest more articles you might like! Wait a minute… I said “flip” – there already IS something like this! It’s called Google FastFlip! Oy vey! Anyway, any new feature is exciting and shiny and new.

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Earlier tonight, Google announced their opening up of the Google Apps Marketplace to the public. This way, developers can create integrations for Google Apps as well as new applications for businesses to use. The concept behind the marketplace is, of course, that the developers can then sell the services to companies at a fair price. And they definitely are! Many of the services are not cheap by any means.

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Google are taking advantage of their huge user base once more to identify logos, landscapes, artwork, landmarks, and lots more! Why? Because they want to use the info to make their new Google Goggles into a working Search Engine that uses images instead of text! The application is available now on Android phones.

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So MyBrandz just came out with a new test you can take that will measure which one of the two large brands - Google, or Facebook – is the more Social brand for you. It’s a cute idea – but it’s not being done in the most tactful way…

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Yesterday, it was announced that Aardvark was being bought out by Google for $50 million. Today, both companies sent out their official blog posts and mass emailings, and immediately afterwards – TechCrunch broke the news that Aardvark was already live in Google Labs! And here it is:

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Yesterday I wrote a long intricate rant against Google Buzz.  It’s not because I hate Google – it’s actually quite the opposite. I was mad at Google for Google Buzz because I love Google. And I think they can do so much better. Well – since most of the 9 million posts (in 2 days!) on Buzz have been complaints about it’s features, they caught on pretty fast and are doing a wicked-good job of cleaning up the mess they made!

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GO Aardvark!

According to TechCrunch, Google has just bought Social Q&A site Aardvark for $50 million!

Aardvark, who I’ve reviewed here before, raised $6  million all together in venture capital to build a Social Search Engine that would answer and receive questions from users. I personally use it all the time,  and am quite the evangelist for this brand. Here’s a research report Aardvark have published recently:

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Dear Google,

Over the past few months, you have hyped yourself through the roof on two tools that fell not short – but dwarf-sized of the expectations. You rolled out Google Wave after months of speculation and hype – you rolled it out slowly, over a long long period of time. You rolled it out so slowly that by the time everyone had access to Google Wave, they still wanted access to it – and couldn’t understand why. You’re that good.

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Forget Orkut. Okay, don’t forget it – but Google wants you to. Orkut was Google’s crack at a social network a while back, and while it’s popular in Brazil, it never took off that much here.

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Google has recently published a video that explains in plain English what their privacy principals are. Their principals are as follows: