Google & Apple Teaming Up?

TechCrunch is reporting that Google and Apple are in talks regarding a deal that would bring Google Videos to Apple’s just announced iTV set top box. iTV will deliver iTunes and iPhoto content to your TV via wi-fi. Now, possibly, Google Video will be one of the choices available to you via this new product.

Google is quickly becoming ubiquitous; who haven’t they partnered with? AOL, Sun, NASA, MySpace, eBay, Blackberry, Nokia…wow, who am I forgetting? One day, you will work at a job where you find your documents using Google desktop and Google Enterprise search; when you leave work, you will drive your Google car home while navigating with Google satellite data; at home, you’ll watch Google Videos on your iTV while googling about Google for content for your Google blog, connecting via the  GoogleNet, using your GoogleOS Google laptop.

"I, for one, welcome our Google overlords."…Who said that first?

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There’s currently a promotion on iTunes where some ABC TV shows are being offered as free downloads. The shows available are the season finales of Lost, Grey’s Anatomy, and Desperate Housewives, as well as some additional "fun" clips, like "The Lost Survival Guide." If you don’t see the advertisement for this promo on the iTunes Music Store’s homepage, then do a search for "Million Hit Lowdown," and all the freebies will display.

You will need the latest version of iTunes to access these downloads: iTunes version 7. It’s worth the download. This new version offers, of course, movie downloads, but it’s the redesigned user interface that really stands out. The navigation pane on the left side is now better organized into a Library section (Music, Movies, TV Shows, Podcasts, Audiobooks, Radio), the iTunes Store (iTunes Store, Purchased), Devices (iPods, CDs), Shared, and Playlist sections. You can manage your iPod settings within iTunes without having to open up the iTunes preferences window. A new feature called "gapless playback" will thrill music fans who would prefer to hear tracks without gaps in between songs (especially important for dance tracks or classical music).

However, the coolest feature is the automatic downloading of album art. As long as iTunes carries the song in their store, the album art will be automatically imported for your mp3s and iTunes files. You can then view your music library in one of three ways: the simple list like in previous iTunes version; a list grouped by album showing the album art to the left of the tracks; and then the new "cover browser," that lets you virtually flip through albums’ cover art as if your iTunes software was a jukebox. This is too fun! You’ll need a decent video card for this to work, and probably a couple hours to spare, if you have a good-sized collection, as you’ll be inspired to start cleaning up your mp3s’s titles, artist, and album tags to get this new feature working!

Nothing too crazy going on in the blogosphere or the web two-oh-osphere (good word, huh?) right now, but there were a few stories worth noting:

• Google’s philanthropical arm, Google.org, will be a for-profit charity (do what?) whose first project will be a hybrid car that runs on ethanol, electricity, and gasoline. The Google car will have built-in navigation systems by Google maps. It can also download your Gmail & newsfeeds and read them to you (like Kitt!). Ads will appear in the high-tech glass of the windshield as you drive past stores and restaurants Google knows you like. Okay, maybe I made that last bit up, but the first sentence is true. (via NY Times)

• Google & Intuit form a partnership. Yes, you will now be able to google your Quickbooks. (via Intuit)

• Apple’s big announcement was movie downloads & iTV, not new iPods. NO NEW iPODS, PEOPLE! This really bums me out because if there were new iPods coming out, I would have been all over Ebay to find the previous generation iPods at seriously reduced rates. And frankly, last year’s used iPods are all I can afford….(more on the announcement via TechCrunch)

• Microsoft revealed details about their iPod killer, Zune. Zune’s big feature is the ability to send songs to other people with Zunes. They can play the song 3 times or save it for 3 days, whichever comes first. Whoopee. (via CrunchGear)

• A mystery logo appears on T-Mobile phones touting a "yet-to-debut" service. Please be videos. Please be videos. Please be videos. (via MobileCrunch)

Amazon has recently launched Amazon Unbox, an online video rental and download service. Although I haven’t tried it yet, I just finished listening to a CNET podcast where it was thoroughly trashed. The following information comes directly from that podcast:

To begin with, you have to download the proprietary Amazon software to your computer in order to purchase any of the Amazon videos. Once the download of your purchased video completes, you can only view the video within the Unbox software — not with Windows Media Player or any other 3rd party media player that you prefer. The podcaster, Tom Merritt, also found that Amazon Unbox automatically loaded itself into the system tray with no option to remove it without going into "msconfig" and removing the entry from there (which he did). A short time later after manually removing the entry from msconfig, his firewall alerted him that an Amazon Unbox process was trying to access the internet! Fed up, he went to uninstall the software, and - get this! - it asked him to log into his Amazon account in order to uninstall the software! So you have to be online in order to uninstall it! However bizarre is that?! Not a good start for Amazon if everything he is saying is true. Has anyone used Unbox? Are your experiences the same? Better? ….Worse?

When it rains, it pours (widgets, that is)! Today, it was announced on the official TypePad blog that they’ve added more widgets to the TypePad Widget Gallery. Some of the new widgets include a polling widget, some widgets that allow for online calendar integration (including Google calendar), and a trivia game widget from blufr.

Meanwhile, Google Blogoscoped posts about the FeedButton Beta (see above), which offers a feed button widget with which you can use to replace all the various feed buttons on your site (e.g. "Add to Google," "Add to My Yahoo," etc. The FeedButton widget offers one, clickable button that drops down a list of all the feed readers. Even better, you can customize which ones display in the drop-down box and how the box displays. The only thing I would change about it is for it to automatically close when the mouse cursor moves out of the box.

So there you go - more widgets! It must be widget week…

I have 5 more Vox  invites - they’re starting to come faster these days! Does anyone still want one?

I have widgets on my mind today, and I guess I’m not the only one.
Both Google & Yahoo are offering desktop widgets these days (Google calls them Gadgets), but which widgets are better? To put them to the test, I again browsed through both sets of widgets this weekend. The big difference between the offerings are that the Google Gadgets are part of the Google Desktop software, whereas the Yahoo Widgets are a stand-alone program. To use the Google Gadgets, you have to use the Google Desktop program in "sidebar" mode, where an expanding and collapsing sidebar parks itself on the side of your screen. I know Vista will bring a sidebar as well, but, I must confess, I hate sidebars. The Google Desktop sidebar is always popping up in my way when my errant mouse pointer drifts off to the side of my screen. Annoying. Yes, I know you can uncheck the option "stay on top of other windows," which will help, but truthfully, I just don’t see the point of the sidebar, any sidebar. I know you can get news feeds and emails from the sidebar, but I’d rather use an RSS reader and and email program, where you can actually *see* those items. I changed the Google Desktop setting back to "none" (no deskbar, no sidebar, nothing!) by the end of the weekend; it just wasn’t worth it.

Compared to Yahoo!, there are a lot less widgets available from Google, but then the Google Gadgets haven’t been around for that long. (Yahoo Widgets used to be Konfabulator, which started in 2003). Surprisingly, in the "Google Google Gadgets" (that’s the Google section of the Google Gadgets), there are only 6 Google Gadgets available; at Yahoo, there are 63! The selection of widgets at Yahoo is what finally sold me one way or the other.

So what widgets do I use? My favorite Yahoo Widgets are:

1. Sticky Memo - post-its for your desktop; the OfficeSpace version is pretty good too; but My Memo Pad is my current fav
2. Yahoo Weather - this widget is installed by default, but I couldn’t live without it
3. Picture Frame - shows your favorite pictures from your computer or flickr
4. Fare Compare - still over $200 to get to the Dominican Republic…darn!
5. Gmail Geiger - because I’ll never have enough ways to check on my Gmail
6. Wi-Fi Signal Readers - there are 24 of these! currently, I’m using this one, but any of them are better than squinting at your system tray
7. The Chrome Clock -  hey, there are over 200 clocks, I had to pick one!

…there are others I swap out from time to time, but those are in the core set. Since there are 1000s of widgets, I’d rather hear recommendations from you than surf page by page through the widgets online. Do you have any favorite Yahoo Widgets?

If you’re into photography and interested in photoblogging your pics, you might want to take a look at this site I just came across; this free (ad-supported) photoblogging site is called, simply, Photoblog. Only around since April 2006, the site still bears the "beta" tag, but they say they’re adding new features regularly. From perusing some of the photo blogs hosted there, I see they offer tagging, rss, archive calendars & monthly lists, personal profiles, privacy settings, messenging, and the ability to add people as friends. Worth a look!

I have one Vox invite right now. Anyone want it?

In an effort to make Digg system fairer, the Digg developers have made some changes that lessen the influence of the top Diggers. Specifically, the changes are to the algorithm that determines what gets on the front page. Via Digg Blog: "This algorithm update will look at the unique digging diversity of the individuals digging the story. Users that follow a gaming pattern will have less promotion weight. This doesn’t mean that the story won’t be promoted, it just means that a more diverse pool of individuals will be needed to deem the story homepage-worthy."

Read-Write Web reports that the top Diggers are protesting this action: "…most of Digg’s top 20-30 users have refused to contribute or digg stories since the uproar happened. Or if they have dugg stories, they’ve been buried by other users…"

Although Digg won’t reveal the details of their algorithm, my theory is that it has to do with top diggers digging each other’s stories…A LOT. With 20 to 30 people all digging each other’s stories, they’re guaranteed to be the top users, stay the top users, and almost always hit the homepage.  

This change is causing some turmoil. Some people think it’s not fair and is essentially punishing people for being popular. Others say it’s making the system fair and giving newbies a chance to get their stories dugg, too.

What do you think? Was Digg gamed?