4 Years Later, Google Suggest Finally Goes Primetime

Over the next week, Google will finally be implementing Google Suggest, its auto-complete for searches, on its homepage at Google.com. The service allows users to see the most commonly searched phrases after entering only a few letters, helping users cut back on typing time and check for spelling errors. If you’d like to try the service out now (it isn’t currently activated for everyone) you can find it here.

According to the company’s blog post, the feature has been a long time coming, and has made its way across much of the Google empire already:

“The Google Suggest feature originally started as a 20% project in 2004, and has since expanded to Google Labs, Toolbar, Firefox search box, Maps and Web Search for select countries, the iPhone and BlackBerry, YouTube, and now Google.com.”

Similarsearch autocomplete can be found on a number of major competitors, including Yahoo and recently-launched (and much hyped Cuil).

Courtesy: Techcrunch

Google Tops Website Customer Satisfaction Index

 The University of Michigan’s quarterly customer satisfaction index came out today, and in the Website category Google came out on top with a score of 86 out of 100 (up 10 percent from last year). Yahoo slipped 3 percent to a score of 77. MSN’s score was flat at 75, and tied with NYTimes.com and ABCNews.com. AOL came in at 69, and that is 3 percent better than last year.

Here are some select scores, with the comparable 2007 numbers in parentheses:

American Customer Satisfaction Index Scores (2nd Quarter, 2008)

Google: 86 (78)
Yahoo:77 (79)
MSNBC.com: 76 (74)
ABCNews.com: 75 (74)
MSN: 75 (75)
NYTimes.com: 75 (73)
Ask: 74 (75
CNN.com: 73 (73)
USAToday.com: 73 (72)
AOL:69 (67)

The only surprise here is Google’s massive jump. Is it really doing that much of a better job than last year, or is it just that its halo effect keeps growing?

Courtesy: TechCrunch

First Android Phone Just Approved By FCC

 

Today, the news broke that the HTC Dream, the first handset to run Android (aka "the Google Phone") has been approved by the FCC. In the documents provided, it appears that we have now a release date for this highly anticipated phone: November 10th, 2008. So what will the HTC Dream offer? We take a look at some of the details and unknowns surrounding this device.

This morning Engadget Mobile broke the news of the HTC Dream's FCC approval, and confirms that it is indeed the long-awaited Android phone. T-Mobile, HTC, and Google should be announcing the Dream's launch in either September or October, depending on who you believe. Originally, the launch was thought to be in October, but today, VentureBeat is reporting that, in the FCC document, HTC requests the commission grant it a short-term confidentiality request on "attachments" until Nov. 10th, 2008. That date seems to confirm that the phone will be released on November 10th.

What's Inside

A recent post in the unofficial T-Mobile blog, TmoNews, confirms that the HTC Dream will offer the following features:

• Touch screen
• Full Qwerty keyboard
• 3G/ WiFi
• Full HTML internet capabilities
• Easy access to all Google applications (Gmail, Gtalk, search)
• Maps
• Street view
• YouTube
• Phone
• IM/Text
• Email
• Camera 3.0mp; no flash
• Video (playback only, no recording)
• Music player & 1GB memory card pre-loaded
• Applications, all available in Google marketplace (icon on the homescreen)

Engadget adds that the Dream will also offer Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR compliance and has a "jogball" as seen this video:

Unconfirmed at this time is GPS, but it seems likely that the handset will have this considering that T-Mobile can provide the service and the phone will offer Street View, which would require its use (although it could work through triangulation, we suppose). TmoNews also adds that the phone will offer two data plan options: Unlimited data and 400 messages or Unlimited data and unlimited messages. Prices for these plans will be in the $35 range, they say.

Courtesy of ReadWriteWeb

Facebook Is Not Only The World’s Largest Social Network, It Is Also The Fastest Growing

Call it the Facebook World Tour. Even though Facebook is now the largest social network in the world,—with 132 million unique visitors in June—it is also still the fastest growing.
(Atleast among the major social networks). According to figures compiled by comScore, Facebook’s visitor growth is up 153 percent on an annual basis. This compares to anemic 3 percent growth for MySpace. Other social networks showing strong global growth include Hi5 (100 percent) and Friendster (50 percent), despite each of those being less than half the size of Facebook. Orkut and Bebo fall in at 41 percent and 32 percent growth, respectively.

If you break down Facebook’s growth into regions, its presence in North America is still growing at a healthy 38 percent rate (with 49 million visitors a month). Europe (with 35 million visitors a month) is growing nearly ten times as fast. And growth in rest of the world is on an even faster tear (403 percent growth in the Middle East and Africa, 458 percent growth in Asia Pacific, 10,555 percent growth in Latin America), albeit from a smaller base. (For another cut at the regional popularity of social networks based on Google search activity, see these maps at Pingdom)

Much of these huge growth numbers come from the fact that Facebook had hardly no presence in many of these regions until recently when it started its major push to translate the site to other languages. A year ago, it had only one million uniques a month in all of Latin America, three million in the Middle East and Africa, and four million in all of Asia Pacific. When you look at it that way, 10,555 percent growth isn’t as amazing as the raw numbers would suggest. And within these regions, it still has a lot of work to do. For instance,it is floundering in Japan.

The takeaway here is that Facebook’s growth is now coming from abroad, and it still has a long way to go in other countries. Will it get lost in translation, or are we looking at another global superpower here?

Skyfire Brings Full Browser Experience To Nokia S60 Phones (200 Private Beta Invites)

Throw out that WAP browser on your cell phone. We are quickly approaching a point where a full browser experience is available on our mobile devices. And it is not just the iPhone. A startup called Skyfire is in some respect even further along than Apple in bringing the entire Web to your phone. Its mobile browser lets you slide Web pages around and zoom in like with the mobile version of Safari. But it also supports Flash and Ajax sites. (It does this by offloading most of the heavy lifting to its servers rather than the mobile client). That means you can watch Youtube videos and go to Google Maps right in the mobile browser instead of having to download separate apps. In contrast, the iPhone’s Safari browser still does not support Flash and so to watch a a video you have to launch the separate Youtube app.

As it becomes possible to do more and more inside the mobile browser itself, it raises the question of whether that indeed is the killer app for mobile Web phones. For the most part, you still get a richer experience by downloading a separate single-purpose app to your phone. But efforts like Skyfire’s point to a future where that may no longer be necessary for all but the most sophisticated apps and games.

Skyfire launched on Windows Mobile, but as of today it is also available in a private beta for Nokia phones running Symbian’s S60 operating system. The first 200 TechCrunch readers to sign up for the beta here will get invites (enter invite code: Tcrunch).

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