Google

Want to add some pizzazz to your Google personalized home page? Google this week is offering six different themes that people can use to decorate their page. Google typically prefers simple, clean text-only pages for its sites, with the notable exception being the doodle on its main search page. With this announcement Google is recognizing that some people might want to add some some color to their personalized home pages.

The themes include a beach, cityscape, Japanese tea house, four seasons, sky and bus stop. They will change dynamically depending on the time of day and weather conditions. For example, … Read more

The latest Google press release isn't about a new Google Earth add-on or an advertising acquisition: rather, it sounds like it came from the Gates Foundation. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company has announced two separate partnerships with organizations in two African countries, the Rwandan Ministry of Infrastructure in Kigali, Rwanda; and the non-governmental Kenya Education Network in Nairobi, Kenya. Google's goal is to provide free access to its Google Apps software suite to students in both countries as well as to government officials in Rwanda.

In Kenya, when the program is instituted, the 50,000 students at … Read more

On Friday, Google announced it acquired in-game advertising company Adscape, according to a posting on Google's official blog.

News of the acquisition comes a month after press reports cited a $23 million deal was in the works between the two companies.

In a blog posting, the Adscape folks note: "Our charge at Adscape has always been to honor the game that was developed and find new ways to enable that game to continue so others can enjoy it. That's why we are so stoked to join Google--because these guys get it and are committed to helping us … Read more

Yahoo hasn't officially announced its Brickhouse program dedicated to launching innovative new products, but word has leaked that it has hired a start-up veteran to head up the program.

Salim Ismail, chairman of Confabb.com, a directory of conferences, and co-founder of PubSub, confirms on his blog on Thursday that he's joining Yahoo.

"At Yahoo, I'll be running the Brickhouse, the program spearheaded and created by Caterina Fake, inside Bradley Horowitz's Advanced Development Division," that is launching products like Yahoo Pipes, an interactive feed aggregator, he writes.

"While I've gotten used to … Read more

update--The head of Google in Spain and Portugal has confirmed that Google is working on a mobile phone. "Some of the time the engineers are dedicated to developing a mobile phone," Isabel Aguilera is quoted as saying on the Spanish-news Web site Noticias.com.

A Google spokeswoman in the United States released this statement when asked for comment: "Mobile is an important area for Google and we remain focused on creating applications and establishing and growing partnerships with industry leaders to develop innovative services for users worldwide. However, we have nothing further to announce."

Google stateside … Read more

Which business model is likely to be the most successful: MySpace, YouTube, Facebook or Second Life?

According to a war game played out at London's Business School last week, MySpace wins. But, in a conclusion that was validated by this week's Viacom lawsuit against Google and YouTube for copyright infringement, the participants concluded that both MySpace and YouTube are vulnerable to legal attacks and government regulations that target illegal activities and objectionable content, like child pedophilia and pornography.

Copyright lawsuits will be a "major distraction at best or they could undermine" the businesses, says Leonard Fuld, … Read more

Surfing Google's Blogger Web site is dangerous, warns Fortinet. Several of the blogs on the site have been taken over by miscreants and redirect to phishing Web sites or try to load malicious software onto PCs, the security firm said in an alert Wednesday.

In one example a Blogger blog redirects to what appears to be an online pharmacy, but is in fact a site hosted in China that's part of a scam to trick people into giving up personal details and financial information, Fortinet said.

In another example, a blog site that appears to belong to a … Read more

Web search company Ask.com has secretly launched a guerrilla marketing campaign in the United Kingdom in an effort to boost its profile in a land dominated by Google users. Posters with a hand holding a megaphone and urging people to "Stop the Online Information Monopoly" recently began appearing in London underground trains and stations. See a photo on Valleywag, which first reported on the ads.

Ask's name is not on the posters, but the company plans to reveal that it is behind the ads by disclosing that on the Web site listed on the posters on … Read more

If you have ever driven below 14th Street in Manhattan, anywhere in Boston or in the old cities of Europe, you are probably very aware that maps are only clues to finding your destination, not directions.

Roads descended from wagon trails can often be hidden down alleys, unexpectedly become one-ways, meander indiscriminately and start up again one block over from where they paused.

For this reason, many people direct by landmark, with street names in parentheses. And good luck if you are getting your directions from a non-human.

Google is adding photos to its Google Maps local search and Google Maps … Read more