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By scrutinizing the traffic Google searches produce, Internet analysis firm Hitwise in January predicted that Google might launch a virtual world. Lo and behold, Google launched Lively on Tuesday. So what's next?

Google Autos or Google Music are the guesses that Hitwise hazarded Wednesday. "Our thinking was that Google might want to fill natural gaps in its portfolio of offerings based on the interests of its users. We looked at which categories are receiving the most traffic from Google in which Google does not have its own property," Hitwise's Heather Hopkins wrote in a blog post. … Read more

As part of Google's effort to shed a bit more light on its search work, the company on Wednesday detailed some of the process it uses to order the results its search engine produces.

The most interesting element of the post by Amit Singhal, a Google fellow who oversees the area, is a discussion of why the company doesn't manually elevate particular search results to obtain the right order. However, the company does of course hand-tune the algorithm that ranks the results, so you can consider manual intervention still relevant at a higher level.

Google gives two reasons … Read more

Fans of microblogging service Twitter are apparently impervious to repeated outages and technical problems--and their enthusiasm is spreading.

Research firm Hitwise on Tuesday reported that traffic to the Twitter site increased 500 percent the week ending July 5, 2008, compared with the same period last year. That's a significant jump for a service that's continually up and down--and still lacking a clear revenue stream.

What's more, many users of the service appear to be unruffled by Twitter's technical issues. The share of returning visitors has averaged approximately 53 percent over the past four months, according … Read more

Update 8:17 p.m. PDT: Google amended one Lively detail: the application for MySpace is under development but not yet ready. Also, I corrected a name misspelling.

Google on Tuesday plans to unveil an online 3D social arena called Lively, the Internet giant's take on Second Life. But Google wants it to be part of your first life.

Second Life requires users to download and install a separate "client" software package that taps into the online world. Lively also requires a download and installation--Windows only for now--but then people can use Internet Explorer or Firefox to … Read more

Geek culture is once again showing its influence over the mainstream lexicon in the latest version of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, which includes word additions such as webinar, malware, netroots, pretexting (thank you Hewlett-Packard), and fanboy (thank you Apple).

Webinar is "one more example of the significant ongoing trend for electronic technologies to add words to the language," Merriam-Webster publisher John Morse said in a Monday press release about the 100 or so new words in the 2008 edition of the influential reference guide.

That's in line with Merriam-Webster's choice of the term "wOOt"… Read more

For more than a decade, the Internet has suffered from multiple incompatible communication standards for instant messaging. Now it looks like Yahoo, one of the major IM players, is open to breaking the logjam.

I'm a power user of IM who struggles to find software that supports chatting with people on the four main IM networks: AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google. Today's situation, for me at least, is like having to own four e-mail programs for different networks or four telephones for incompatible phone systems.

So I was encouraged by words from Scott Dietzen, Yahoo's new head of communications products including Yahoo Messenger and Yahoo Mail. … Read more

At first glance, Kevin Connolly's photographs simply capture random people on random streets around the world. But look again, and it becomes clear his photos tell a much more complex story--the split-second shock and curiosity on strangers' faces when they encounter a man with no legs, gliding past on a skateboard, propelling himself with his hands.

Connolly, 22, was born legless. He has gone from award-winning skier who tears down slopes in his custom-built mono-ski to professional photographer probably best-known for "The Rolling Exhibition," his series of digital photos that show strangers looking at him with expressions … Read more

Yahoo has signed up 3 UK, a mobile-phone network operator in the United Kingdom, to sell banner ads and sponsored links on the company's Planet 3 portal site for mobile Internet use.

Yahoo will begin supplying ads from its partners later this month, the company said Wednesday.

"We believe Yahoo has the experience to help us take full advantage of our advanced portal and unique all-3G subscriber base," Neil Andrews, 3 UK's head of on-portal advertising, said in a statement.

Yahoo already is the exclusive mobile-advertising partner for 3 UK competitor Vodafone.

Google, which has a 5 percent stake in Time Warner's AOL division, has the option to sell it beginning Tuesday.

Google got the stake in AOL through a 2005 deal with Time Warner under which Google invested $1 billion.

According to a Time Warner regulatory filing, Google can sell that stake if it wants, with Time Warner, which owns the remaining 95 percent of AOL, getting first crack at buying the shares.

"Beginning on July 1, 2008, Google will have the right to require AOL to register Google's 5 percent equity interest for sale in an initial … Read more