SEO News
Project ‘10^100’ from Google receives overwhelming response
The deadline for people to submit their ideas for the Google initiative, termed Project ‘10^100’ expired in the third week of October, and the response has been overwhelming, according to the technology giant. A call given by Google for beneficial, innovative ideas has been responded to by over 150,000 people.
Google employees will now be sifting through the ideas that have been submitted in 25 different languages. They will now choose the semi-finalists - 100 of them - by January 27, 2009. Funding for five winning ideas will be declared in May.
“We are thrilled by the wide array of enthusiastic responses to our project. That number has indeed exceeded our expectations,” stated product marketing manager at Google, Bethany Poole.
Google launched this ambitious project in September as part of the celebrations of its 10th birthday. In announcing the Project (pronounced ‘10 to the 100th’), the internet firm hoped to solicit and bring to the fore fresh ideas that it believes will have broad beneficial effects on our lives. The project’s website suggested successful ideas are those addressing critical issues like building communities, providing food and shelter, granting better access to education, improving health and promoting clean energy.
Telling the tale of Bebo
In an interesting and insightful article entitled “Valley Girls: Xochi Birch”, technology reporter of BBC News, Maggie Shiels, portrays Xochi Birch and her success. The brains behind popular social networking platform Bebo (Blog Early, Blog Often), she has brought a new dimension to the networking phenomenon.
Alongside husband Michael she has been a serial entrepreneur, and has spent years starting new companies, nurturing and building them, even scrapping them to move on, and starting all over again. The two have sold some for real cash in the process.
“I was never a big company kind of person. My ideal job profile was to get self employed. The ironic thing is that you tend to work a lot harder - for yourself - than for anybody else,” she points out.
This was by the end of 1999 when she left a computer programmer’s job to go self-employed. Curiously, it was not such a good time for budding internet entrepreneurs as the dotcom bubble had burst, venture capital had dried up and many companies faced ruin.
“It was definitely the most stressful time for us. We were living in London month to month - not knowing where the next mortgage payment would come from,” Xochi recounted.
No surprise then that Bebo was received with scepticism when it was launched as a social networking website. Of course, now Bebo is touted as their biggest success.
A Minefield of a browser
Here is a cool new browser that some tech-savvy people have started using, and it allows surfing at blistering speeds. The browser is called Minefield, from Mozilla.
Mozilla is famous for the Firefox browser, and Minefield gives a glimpse into what Firefox has in store for us. It is a pre-release version of the new Firefox browser.
If you spend a short time using Minefield you can sense that the future of Firefox is lightning fast. How fast? Well, some experts claim it has the fastest ever JavaScript engine, which means that the browser leaves behind Google’s Chrome. They peg it to be 10 percent faster than Google Chrome. Users who have tested it say this assumption is correct.
You can download the latest version for Mac OS X, Windows or Linux. But it is alpha code. There are a few issues as to stability and the new Minefield browser may not support some of your favourite Firefox extensions like Adblock Plus.
If you feel that your browser is slow, give Minefield a try. It is a separate install so it will not affect your existing Firefox install.
Brash.com: a new networking website for men
A new website called Brash.com has recently been launched by Glam Media. Glam Media is a female networking platform which has grown at a rapid pace since its inception. In light of the female networking success Glam Media has now created Brash.com, the male equivalent of Glam Media. The basic idea behind Brash.com is similar to the idea behind Glam Media. Brash seeks to attract and retain the men on its networking website. It will be hosting content from various third party sites.
Content websites like ArtistDirect, DigitalTrends.com, eCoustics.com, Squidoo and MonstersandCritics.com have joined the Brash.com network. At least 25 different content websites have already become part of the Brash network since the time of its launch. Time.com will be providing the news related information and music news along with updates from Rolling Stone. In the sports news category, information will be given by SB Nation while technological news coverage will be provided by CNET.
Brash.com will also be providing Brash TV, a video channel, which has been created keeping technologically inclined men in mind. Brash has also received a lot of attention owing to its Brash 100 list and the Brash Hall of Fame, which talks about ‘men across the fields of sports, politics, business and entertainment that are game changers.’
Android gets Open Source Licence
When Google released Android in November 2007, it had also declared that it would eventually release the code under an open source licence. The organisation did it very recently along with its partners in the Open Handset Alliance. It is now possible for users to download the code and in turn help Google develop it further. The code is released under the Apache 2.0 licence and consists of Android’s codebase.
It also includes all the libraries, media codecs and various applications. The timing of this announcement could not have been better. The release of the code comes with the release of the first Android Phone, the T-Mobile G1. It is to go on sale in this week. An Apache licence enables developers to distribute and modify the source code in any way that may seem right to them. It is also not necessary for the developers to distribute the new code under the same licence.
The licence also need not be an open source licence that would let companies have the option of developing their own proprietary platforms on the basis of Android. It is going to be very interesting to see if developers actually take the Android platform. There already have been some interesting software releases in the wake of the release of G1.