Google Calander Offline Support !

Thoughts of combining Google services and Gears seems to be quite popular these days, however only one service so far (Google Reader) officially provides offline capabilities. Hints of offline support for Gmail surfaced last month after a Google translator pointed out a telling phrase he was asked to translate.

The latest service to spill the beans, though, is Google Calendar. After Google Calendar and Gmail both get offline support, maybe we should expect the same for Google Docs?

Google’s OpenSocial platform is great!

By ZDNet's Garett Rogers

For the past several weeks, I’ve been using Google’s OpenSocial platform to develop a gadget that will work in the Orkut “container”. I have developed several applications for Facebook in the past, so I can say from experience that compared to Facebook, this new platform has some very cool features. For example, developers [...]

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Cricket Fever !

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Flock: My Favorite Web Browser

Although it doesn't have as many addons as Firefox have (infact it only has 8-10 useful extensions) but it is really a Social Web Browser. If you are a bloger then its really really useful and handy. It has special features for blogging, media sharing on Facebook, Photobucket, Flicker, Youtube etc. and an easy to use Feed reader that lets you blog any feed entry you like. It has a media bar through which you can do a lot that i cannot explain in words. Give it a try ! I am sure you will also love it as i do ...

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Yahoo Messenger for Windows Gets a Tune-Up with v9.0

Yahoo is releasing version 9.0 of its popular instant messaging software, Yahoo Messenger, for Windows tonight. All in all, the update contains nothing revolutionary but does introduce some useful features.

Most remarkably, you can now add embed objects - such as movies, images, and maps - into chat conversations. Also handy: you can synchronize the playback of online videos and share Flickr photos in a slideshow, although only with one friend at a time.

Yahoo has also redesigned the user interface of Messenger’s friends list, bumped up file transfer limits to 2GB per-file, begun automatically scanning transfered files with Norton AntiVirus, added call forwarding to its VoIP offering, and designed new skins. Users can now send SMS messages to their friends’ cell phones with the desktop client. And Messenger has been localized for six new markets - the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, India (in Hindi), and Vietnam - raising the sum of localized versions to 25.

While AOL has the most unique instant messaging users in the United States - and MSN has the most worldwide - Yahoo claims that their user base grew by 19% in the past year whereas AOL only grew by 2%.

I asked Yahoo representatives whether they were planning to integrate Yahoo Messenger with their other properties, such as the new social network Mash, but they declined to give any specifics. Hopefully their vague insistence that Yahoo is always looking for ways to integrate its products will lead to something experimental and new, like a Yahoo Messenger-Mash hybrid. A “real-time” social network with extensive chat, messaging, and VoIP calling functionality would be very interesting competition for Facebook and the like. It would also up the ante on MySpace and its integration of Skype, and take on startup FlickIM.

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Facebook’s Social Ad Network: What We (Think We) Know So Far

Just as Google is preparing to take Facebook head-on with its own social-networking platform, it appears that Facebook is preparing to take on Google with its own social ad network. The announcement of what people are already calling SocialAds is expected next week on November 6 at New York’s ad:tech conference (a day after Google was originally supposed to announce a new set of open APIs and third-party apps for its social network, Orkut—now expected to be pushed a few days).

What is SocialAds? We’ll have to wait for the actual announcement to see, but here is what we know so far (or think we know):

It will be how Facebook will actually start to make real money—both through ads on its own site and on other sites through a new ad network it is about to launch (presumably with its ad partner and new investor Microsoft). SocialAds will be an attempt to be like Google’s AdSense, except that it will allow ads to be targeted to Facebook members’ individual interests and profile data rather than the text on a given Web page. This targeting will be done by placing cookies on Facebook members’ browsers when they visit the social site, so that they can be identified later when they visit other sites hosting SocialAds. Facebook is already experimenting with targeting ads on its own site (through its Facebook Flyers program) based on demographic and psychographic data that it culls from members’ profiles. With SocialAds, it will be able to extend that targeting across the Web.

It remains to be seen whether targeting ads based on people’s self-expressed interests and demographics will result in better response rates than contextual ads like AdSense or search ads based on the specific intent of what people are looking for at that very second. And even if Facebook does indeed launch such an ad network, it will only be able to serve ads to people who are Facebook members—which is a large and growing number (Facebook claims 50 million), but still a fraction of all Web surfers. In contrast, Google’s AdSense ads can be served against anyone on the Web. Still, the number of Facebook users is large enough that other Websites would want to serve ads to them, and for advertisers an ad network would simply expand the reach of their existing Facebook ads.

What will be really interesting to see is what form these ads will take, and will they become social applications in and of themselves that spread virally like a Facebook app? It will also be interesting to see whether Facebook launches this social ad network on its own, or with its ad partner Microsoft.

You’d think that the ads would be served through Microsoft’s Ad Center. Why reinvent the wheel? Not to mention that Facebook might be contractually obligated to work with Microsoft on any ads served in the U.S., even those not on Facebook proper. If that is the case, that $240 million investment that Microsoft put into Facebook may soon look like a bargain indeed.

But what if the deal with Microsoft only covers ads on Facebook.com? If Facebook goes it alone on this one, it would confirm that it sees its financial future as being an ad network in its own right. It has already shown signs of this ambition. When Facebook announced that Microsoft would now be its ad partner internationally as well as in the U.S., for instance, the expansion of the relationship with Microsoft covered only remnant ads overseas (i.e., the ad inventory that Facebook cannot sell itself). This is the opposite of the relationship in the U.S., where Microsoft controls and sells the main ad inventory on Facebook. Ultimately, Facebook would be more valuable if it can create and control its own ad network.

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Google gives social networking another go

According to TechCrunch, Google plans to launch a new endeavor that seeks to take Facebook's open platform to a whole new level.

Expected or Unexpected ?

Pakistan Cricket Team coach, Jeof Lawson. He must be feeling great sorrow and helpless after the strange and unexpected result of last one day match between Pakistan and South Africa, in which Pakistani batsmen really worked hard to get the "(un)expected" result.

Somebody ask Lawson now that what he thinks of Pakistani team ? Does he still think that he can do something for them ?

I would say that the performance of Pakistan Cricket team was UNEXPECTED but they were successful to bring the EXPECTED result. Cheers !