Windows Live Expo is Live

Windows Live Expo is Microsoft’s answer to Ebay. However, it claims to be more than just an ad listing service — it’s described as a "social listing service that allows members to find and sell items, discover information, and meet other parties in their area." The key word here is "social." Windows Live Expo is  hoping that its unique features draw people away from the auction powerhouse and onto their service instead. Some of these unique features include:

* Browse and sell listings from only your buddies.
* Limit your listings to those that you are more likely to trust – your coworkers or fellow students
* Map the listings using MSN Virtual Earth for easy navigation
* Instant Message with other members to quickly ask questions

And then there’s the fact that you can post ads FOR FREE. However, are free listings and the social aspect enough to beat Ebay? It’s an idea that has potential and fills a niche.  Could be huge…

Still, I’m looking at the Expo site, and I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there is something about it that seems kind of hokey. Depsite the fact that the site has some AJAX, the result isn’t the AJAX version of Ebay, or anything close. There’s a definite Microsoft feel to the site - links on the left, content on the right…oh, just like using the Preview Pane in Outlook?

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Rumor has it that this is the GoogleOS, but I think it’s just a skinned Windows XP. Still, I’d like to have that skin!

Goodness. You know a website has gotten HUGELY popular with the kiddies, when "cheat sheets for parents," like this one from Wired, are being published. Like the chat rooms of the 90’s, MySpace has become big enough to incur parents’ fear. The schools are blocking the site at the firewall, the predators are surfing the kids’ profiles, and the nightly news is warning all of the newest online danger. MySpace became popular because of its music scene and customizable profiles, and once EVERYBODY went on MySpace, so did you (unless you’re boycotting on principle). MySpace is the site of the ’00s (what are we calling this decade, anyway?), and honestly, that’s quite a shame. It’s so old-school that it looks like a throwback to Web 1.0: you can copy and paste HTML code to jazz up your profile? Go blind watching blinking flashy banner ads? Fall asleep to the loading of pages so slow it’s reminiscent of dial-up? Deal with bugs and broken features so often it has become part of the MySpace experience?

For all the glitz and glamour surrounding us bleeding-edge bloggers cheering on the Web 2.0 company du jour, the fact is, the majority of the population is years behind us, having just discovered personalized pages and, wow!, social networking.

So, anyway, yeah, I’m on there.

TechCrunch has an exclusive look at the upcoming Google Payments system that’s soon to be integrated into Google Base. However, there has been a lot of talk lately about Google and whether or not your data is safe with them…or rather, whether your secrets are safe with them. There was the EFF warning about the new version of their desktop software, a Time magazine cover, and online, a bit of a Google backlash. So, will people trust storing their credit card information with this web giant?

My question to the community is this: what has Google done to deserve the ire of the online community anyway, besides becoming rich and powerful? Are people intrinsically afraid of any company that makes money, immediately assuming that the "evilness" of a company increases proportionally with the stock price? Or is the company, whose motto is "don’t be evil," just asking for it when they have to make valid business decisions, like whether or not to do business in China?

Ironically, of MSN, Yahoo!, and Google, the only company that didn’t just hand over our data to the government was Google; instead they took the matter into the courts to keep the data private.

Are you afraid of Google?

BlogBurst is a brand-new syndication service that gets blogs placed on “top-tier” websites. If your blog is deemed a “high quality, topic-focused blog,” you will be invited to join their service. I suppose that means they’re not taking just anyone (no mommy bloggers perhaps?) According to BlogBurst, once accepted, a blogger will gain visibility, audience reach and traffic, while publishers weave the rich and diverse fabric of the blogosphere into their sites. In other words, major websites are going to syndicate your content…sites like washingtonpost.com, for example. Sounds intriguing. You know I signed up!

Just when you thought Google had slowed down there for a minute….well, they’re at it again! The latest offering from the web giant is Google Pages. Google Pages is an online WYSIWYG editor for creating and publishing "useful, attractive web pages in just minutes."  Google Pages are hosted by Google, of course, at http://yourgmailusername.googlepages.com. As of right now, they are not taking any more signups, but you can fill in your email address to be notified when they are ready. Who wants to bet this will soon be integrated into Gmail somehow? I’m betting that Google Pages/Gmail users’ website URLs will automatically show up in their Gmail contact information form — a field that is still curiously missing, forcing you to store this info in the "notes" section. Not too handy for business contacts, is it?

I saw this over at TechCrunch: Mabber is another online IM app that’s giving Meebo a run for its money. However, what makes Mabber stand out is that there is a mobile version you can use on your cell phone. I’m curious to see if this app will work without a data plan, since I haven’t found a mobile app yet that would. Unfortunately, it what is rapidly becoming the de facto way to launch, Mabber is invite-only at this time.

Update:

I got the invite and I have 9 left to give out. I signed up and set up my username/password combinations at mabber. Oddly, a pop-up window appeared for every MSN contact I had, asking me to accept or deny. 35 windows later, I was in. Getting the mobile app sent to your phone wasn’t cake, either. You had to use your "international country code" before your phone number. Well, call me a homebody, but I haven’t been out of the states since the pre-cell phone era –  I thought there must be some special code or something. Well, one Google search later and I learn it’s just the number one…oh, and the plus sign in front of it. Whatever that means. (Do phones overseas have a plus sign? Just curious…) The app was sent to my phone but didn’t work. Again, Sarah needs a data plan. Apparently, nothing works without one. T-MobileWeb just doesn’t cut it.

If only there was a way to hack my phone to make it think I had a data plan…Razr? V3? Anyone? Just kidding, of course….

Box.net is about to relaunch with a new, redesigned site, and I got a sneak peek. Box.net is an online storage website with Web 2.0 flair. But beyond it’s bright and cheerful AJAX-ian shell lies a truly useful, and dare I say, affordable service.

With Box.net, you get a gigabyte for free (compare to Backpackit or Xdrive, where no storage is free). With the free account, you have a 5 MB file size limit and can share those files privately with friends. Upgrade to the premium account for $5/month and you get 5 Gigs, public file sharing with 20 Gigs of bandwidth per month, no file size restrictions, and direct blog posting. The Premium account also offers workgroup access, where you can create sub-accounts (max 3), set security on files and folders, and track access to the shared files. And finally, for $10/month you get 15 GBs, 50 GBs of bandwidth, up to 20 sub accounts, and mobile access.

Sharing files with others at Box.net is as easy as drag and drop, as is uploading files. Other features are the ability to tag and search files, and coming soon you can sync Box.net with your "My Documents" folder.

I’m uploading some files now so I can access them from whichever computer I’m using. I can’t wait for the syncing feature!

Found posted on CNet:

"If Google is forced to compromise its privacy principles and produce to the Government on such a flimsy request, its search query and URL data, Google will, without a doubt, suffer a loss of trust among users. Google’s success can be attributed in large part to the high volume of Web users attracted to Google.com every day. The privacy and anonymity of the service are major factors in the attraction of users–that is, users trust Google to do right by their personal information and to provide them with the best search results. If users believe that the text of their search queries into Google’s search engine may become public knowledge, it only logically follows that they will be less likely to use the service."

So, as much as we all would like to believe that Google is sticking up for what’s right by telling the government to stay out of our business, it’s pretty clear that Google knows that they need the trust of their users. And they need that trust now, perhaps more than ever, as they cache more and more of our private data on their servers. According to another article at CNet:

Google can produce a list of people (identified by Internet address or cookie) who searched for a given term. Second, given a collection of Internet addresses, Google can produce a list of the terms searched by the user of a given address. That effectively creates an electronic dossier of an individual.

Then there is the latest news from the EFF, warning users not to download the latest version of Google Desktop:

Google today announced a new "feature" of its Google Desktop software that greatly increases the risk to consumer privacy. If a consumer chooses to use it, the new "Search Across Computers" feature will store copies of the user’s Word documents, PDFs, spreadsheets and other text-based documents on Google’s own servers, to enable searching from any one of the user’s computers. EFF urges consumers not to use this feature, because it will make their personal data more vulnerable to subpoenas from the government and possibly private litigants, while providing a convenient one-stop-shop for hackers who’ve obtained a user’s Google password.Anyone who actually still thinks they’re anonymous on the internet is crazy.

Next up is Time Magazine’s new cover, posing the question: "Can We Trust Google With Our Secrets?"

Personally, I think we can trust Google themselves, but we can’t trust that they can effectively keep our data out of the hands of our own government. It may be 2006, but it’s beginning to feel a lot like 1984. Concerned? You should be! And hopefully in the next election, citizens will shrug off their ever-so-cool apathetic attitudes and vote.

To paraphrase Paris Hilton….this is hot. There is this post over on ZDnet where Garett Rogers has examined a new version of the Gmail source code and discovered that voicemail and Evite.com integration are both referenced, implying that they might be upcoming features of the Gmail service.

He writes: "A voicemail service will allow people to use Gmail as an answering machine that won’t run out of space or need rewinding — who knows, maybe it will be searchable using speech to text technology.  This service will be most useful when Google starts providing full VoIP services, but until then it could be used for missed GTalk calls.  Recorded messages will be available for listening through Gmail — possibly with a flash applet designed to play them like Google Reader’s podcast feature."

For anyone who has said "what has Google done lately?": HA! First chat integration, then Gmail for your domain, now this? Amazing. I’m sure this is for real, and not just an internet rumor. Now if we could just figure out how to get every person on the planet to use Gmail….