Don’t even get me started on the Google Voice fiasco that just happened and landed Apple in some hot water with the FCC….

Now the iphone application store has rejected a new application because the application allows the reading of the Karma Sutra. It is to be noted that the book reader Eucalyptus does not come with any books, but the K.S. is available for download onto devices and could be read at another time.

Whether it be the fact that Apple’s development team may decide that your application isn’t good enough for their devices or good enough to be released to their “cloud,” there are different places for software developers to go to have their programs viewed by many.

Apple has also been thinking of releasing a “net book” also. I suppose the net book would run like net books that run on Windows or Linux and are just able to run simple programs or surf the internet. Apple would undoubtedly make a net book that would be impossible to make programs for and far less powerful than any of the current mac books that are out there today.

The mac/pc commercials make me so mad because the pc just gives up when “the Megan” asks for a computer that doesn’t have software issues like crashing or viruses. Well guess what “Megan,” Mac’s have all those same problems too. As a matter of fact, I have been on a Mac many times in the past and gotten their version of a blue screen of death. I mean the iMac may have been the worst personal computer I have ever used, however there are so many people who think that the Macintosh name and product line is the best thing that has ever happened to the computer industry.

Whatever the reason, I think that people will enjoy PC’s and Windows mobile, Android, WebOS, and Symbian phones for much longer once the novelty of the iPhone wears off (like everyone knows it will).

While the scam is fairly old, you really have to watch out sometimes when it comes to letting your guard down. There is a scam going on right now that is picking up steam. Known as the missed call scam it runs fairly simply.

A computer generates a list of numbers and calls them. The phone will ring one time and hang up or they will call and hang up immediately once the person picks up the phone. This makes sure that you see a missed call on your phone or that you’re aware that someone is trying to reach you. What the scammer is banking on is that you will call the number back and listen to them give you some kind of sales pitch.

What you don’t know is that they’ve already got you.

What is happening is they have made you call a “premium” number. Meaning, you’re being charged anywhere from $2-$5 or more per minute these people keep you on the phone.

This seems like a pretty easy way to scam people and there are plenty of scammers out there making serious money doing this to unsuspecting people.

There are a few ways to avoid being scammed like this:

First, do not answer calls that are from numbers that you don’t recognize. This might sound a bit harsh, especially if you’re expecting a call from a number that you don’t recognize.

Second, if you have to answer a call you don’t recognize let it ring through to voice mail first. If they leave a voice mail, that’s at least good enough to where you can tell who it is that called. On the other hand, if they don’t leave a voice message, proceed to the next tip.

Third, Google the number. If it’s a scammer’s number the chances of you being the first person to ever be scammed like this is slim. If someone has been scammed by the same number in the past, it will likely be on Google or WhoCallsMe.

In a act only a crazy, but extremely wealthy, old man would decide to use, Rupert Murdoch has announced that he wants to make his websites invisible to Google’s search engine.

Why would anyone want to do that? After all, if someone has never discovered the site, the best way to obtain that reader is through a search engine. Well, he doesn’t see it that way. He said, “If they’re just search people, they don’t suddenly become loyal readers.”

However, in my opinion, having someone be able to find your site through search is the best way to GET new readers and if someone is reading your site that’s better than them not reading your site, right? Plus, how is someone going to become a loyal reader if they don’t know about the site? I always thought the best way that sites become popular is because they are able to be searched for.

I have a list of websites I read everyday; many of them are websites I searched for.

Murdoch is also planning on doing something that has really failed to “take off” in the past; he wants to put his news sites behind a “subscription wall.” His reasoning behind this move is that websites as well as blogs don’t earn “serious money.” He currently has this in place at the Wall Street Journal; at the site you can read the first couple of paragraphs of an article but if you want to read more, you have to be a subscriber. Typically, the same article or something with similar content can be found by searching through Google or some other search engine for free.

He did say that he feels that the same “search engine people” are the ones who “steal” stories from his sites. He said, “they just take them.”

This man really underestimates the power of Google and other search engines. I also think that he is too stubborn to realize when he’s made a mistake. What I mean by that is when his plan fails to work, he won’t go back to the way things were. He will keep his “news” sites subscription based where very few people will read it and the sites will quickly fall in every ranking.

So, Google Voice is a really neat thing to use if you really don’t have a great calling plan or you like features like voice mail to be in your inbox like an email rather than having to go through every single voice mail on your headset.

Well, it turns out that that’s not always so great.

What’s the one thing that Google does really well? It seems like the company is pretty well known for its really popular search engine. The search engine on Google is integrated so well throughout Google’s other projects that it has actually been making private voice mails that people have left for other people on Google Voice search-able through the public search engine.

Luckily, it wasn’t long before someone at the company decided that they had to change this. All Google had to do was change the way it indexed sites to ensure voice mail transcripts would not find themselves in search results.

News reports about this spread all across the internet on Monday. By Tuesday night the issue was fixed. It turns out that the searches were pulling up voice mails and transcripts that people actually posted to be public, but nevertheless, Google wanted those search results to stay omitted.

Even though it was only a small snafu, it is still kind of worrisome for that day or so to think that people could have been searching through my voice mails. It really made me think for a minute about my Gmail account. This is my only email account right now and if someone could search through that, I would really be unhappy.

Do you remember the days when you had to know someone to get a gmail account? It was only a few years ago and since then millions have signed up for the free e-mail accounts from Google. Not only that, but because of the huge amount of email that can be stored in one account, it revolutionized free e-mail. Now, Google wants to open up its Voice to those who want to hear it.

Google Voice is a Skype-like VoIP service. I can’t exactly tell you how it works, but you get a number through Google and you can make calls with your phone through either a dialer (like GDialPro for the Palm Pre) or through the Voice.Google.com portal. All you do is enter the number you want to call and Google Voice will call your phone and connect you with the number.

Right now, you have to go to a website to sign up and be put on a waiting list for a Google Voice account. I was lucky enough to get one just a couple of weeks ago. I really wanted one after reading all the hoopla that was going on between AT&T, Apple, and Google regarding a Google Voice app for the iPhone.

Google is now wanting to take a viral approach to marketing the program. It said that in the coming weeks it wants to offer current users the ability to invite their friends and family to the program.

I believe that Google can benefit greatly by a viral approach to expansion with the Voice program. Look how much attention has been brought to it just by publicity alone. Whenever people can make calls for free, it is exciting. I recently had a family member move to Canada and I would love to talk to her on the phone sometimes, but it is so expensive to call with my cell phone (and, like many people my age, I don’t have a land line anymore. I don’t even have a Vonage line).

Google Voice has a lot of features that people have to pay for with traditional lines. You can even send text messages through Google Voice. That is so neat considering that many times a SMS account costs $.20 a text message unless you have a plan.

Eric Schmidt, the Google CEO, said that the worst of the recession is over, well at least the advertising part anyway. He continued by pointing to signs of recovery in the United States as well as Europe. He said that Google first noticed signs of recovery in May and June.

Advertising has really taken a hit in the recession. I’ve said it before, because marketing professors burned it into our brains, whenever a recession happens, marketing is one of the first departments to feel the heat. Companies often turn to their marketing departments first when it comes time to cut jobs and start the lay off process.

Many companies do not feel as though marketing is a department that is necessary or vital to everyday operations.

I beg to differ. I feel as though marketing is extremely vital to the longevity and prosperity of a company through a recession. There are other places in a company that should be cut first, or at least downsized while the marketing department should grow. Then again, this is my opinion and I graduated with a marketing degree so I’m a bit biased.

If you take away your advertising budget, how do you expect to get any sales to keep your business afloat? I suppose there is word of mouth marketing, but there’s really nothing like a good advertising saturation to imprint your brand in the minds of consumers.

At least someone is saying that advertising is beginning to come out of the recession a bit. That is actually, really good news. When advertising comes out of the recession, other things can start to thaw out a bit as well. The more spending that is happening, the more the economy will grow. It is truly good news for everyone (even if some of those ads do get a bit annoying, teeth whitening anyone?).

Without even knowing it, there are things that we do that hurt our chances at advancing in our careers or even getting into the right fields. Here is a list from Kiplinger with seven of the worst offenses when it comes to your career:

1. Procrastinating. Putting together presentations and lectures at the last minute may have worked in high school and sometimes in college, but it won’t work out so well for you in the workplace.

2. Having a sense of entitlement. You can’t step into a job and expect to be the big cheese. According to the article, many young workers feel as though they should be promoted more often and have a sense of entitlement due to their level of education.

3. You just settle into your job description; you really have to go above and beyond to advance. You need to be able to see and take the opportunity to show your talents when the time arises. It will show your boss that you have initiative and that you can handle more responsibilities.

4. You completely avoid office politics. Sure, there’s gossipy and catty things that can go on in an office environment, but you shouldn’t avoid everything. You have to build relationships with your co-workers so that you have support from them. You need to show that you’re not just all work.

5. You aren’t a team player. You need to be a team player, but not so much that the things you do individually don’t get recognized.

6. You don’t ever look the part. You have to actually make yourself presentable and dress the part of your career. If you want to be a professional, dress professionally, brush your teeth, and smell good. However, make sure you dress like those around you…you don’t want to go to work in a suit and tie when everyone else looks like they’re going to the Bahamas.

7. You have to network! Networking is the biggest tool that can help you find a job. You need to be able to maintain the relationships you make when you network. Networking doesn’t have to be a daunting task either, you can join an online community through groups.google.com.

Source

What you can learn from this booklet

Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, met by chance on a Stanford University tour in the summer of 1995. Page, at the time, was working on a PhD research project involving the mathematical properties of the link structure on the internet. The research project, “BackRub”, used an algorithm to follow the links in a webpage and analyze all the connections. The PageRank algorithm generated a popularity index for each web page based on the quantity and quality of incoming links. By 1998 Google’s web crawler had indexed 60 million URLs and the company had been formally incorporated.

In the next few years Google became the gateway to the internet for the masses, as well as a traffic director that could make or break a company with its search rankings. Google Docs, Gmail, and Google Earth demonstrated the company’s aspiration to move beyond simple web queries, and its ability to merge playfulness with unparalleled functionality.

While other companies were busy cramming more motion ads on their homepages and squeezing every last hour of productivity out of employees, Google created an enjoyable experience for every party involved, including users, employees, and investors. Google’s success has come as a direct result of keeping people happy.

To download this e-book, or any of our current e-books, please visit the ebook page where you may choose the e-book(s) you wish to download. *Download an e-book by clicking on it’s title.*

Do you agree with the “mutual decision” of Eric Schmidt leaving Apple’s Board of Directors?

Question:

Yesterday Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, announced that he would be stepping down from Apple’s board of directors. Do you agree with the move?

Answer:

I do because Google has too  much interest in the products and innovations coming out of Apple. Even if Schmidt were to excuse himself from every single meeting when a competing product came up, he would be nearly useless when it came to make board decisions. The seat is better suited for someone else at this time.

I don’t think he should have been on the board for as long as he was. I think that he should have left the board once Android went into development.

In an attempt to compete with Windows, Google announced an open source operating system for the PC that will be released later this year. The name will go along with the company’s already popular Chrome browser; Chrome OS.

It is intended to be a quick staring OS and the central focus is to support the Chrome browser. Applications will mostly run inside the browser. This will make the web a main component of the operating system; compared to Windows where the “desktop” is the main component of the operating system.

The idea of running applications inside the web browser is called “cloud computing.” Cloud computing is where the computer has a connection to the internet at all times and data is stored “in the cloud” (remotely) and the information processing happens between the browser and remote servers. This is how many applications on the iPhone run.

Chrome OS will be initially meant for netbooks and will begin being installed on new netbooks by the second half of 2010. While it will take that long for computers to already come with the OS built in, the code for Chrome OS will be released under an open source license by the end of 2009.

“Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work. People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them. [...] Even more importantly, they don’t want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates,” said a blog post from Google.

If you look at all the things we already do through the internet browser, like check our email, play on Facebook applications, or listen to Pandora while we’re working, you can easily see how a company would want to get into a project like Google is taking on.

T-Mobile announced today that it would be releasing a follow up to the G1 Android based HTC phone. The myTouch 3G with Google will be the carrier’s newest flagship phone and will go on sale in early August. The rebranded HTC Magic is the newest device to offer Android in the United States.

It will be a touch screen phone that will not have a physical keyboard like the G1 does. In the face of such strong competition, the myTouch 3G hopes to compete against the “power players” in the phone industry right now. The myTouch 3G has a screen similar to the iPhone and includes a lot of the same features. It has a 480 x 320 touch screen, 3G service where T-Mobile offers, EDGE for global roaming, WiFi, a 3.2 megapixel camera, and virtual keyboard software. Pre-orders for the phone will begin on July 8^th for $199 for existing customers with a 2 year contract. It will come in black, white, or merlot.

The competition that T-Mobile and the myTouch 3G are facing is pretty fierce. If you look at AT&T, it has the iPhone, and the 3G S just sold over a million handsets in the first weekend of its release. Although it doesn’t have a real revolutionary phone, Verizon Wireless, offers a huge network and great CDMA coverage. It also has the BlackBerry Storm, and while it hasn’t been the most welcomed touch screen phone on the market, it is the first touch screen BlackBerry device. Sprint, T-Mobile’s next closest competitor as far as subscriber numbers, just launched the Palm Pre.

A lot of gadget geeks have been really looking forward to other carriers having Android based phones. T-Mobile is a good carrier, but their coverage leaves a lot to be desired. A problem that I have with T-Mobile is its lack of 3G coverage. While Sprint, Verizon, and At&t all offer 3G coverage in my town, T-Mobile barely has EDGE coverage outside city limits. Unless you live in a major metropolitan area with 3G coverage, this phone is sort of limited in my opinion.

You can always check your T-Mobile coverage on the company’s website before you commit to a 2 year contract and a phone that may or may not work at your house.

YouTube, a Google subsidy, has incurred losses that some analysts may have overblown. Google does not seem to mind the misperception, according to an internet economics study released yesterday.

RampRate Inc. projected a $174.2 million loss by YouTube, a far cry from the $470.6 million loss estimated by Credit Suisse analysts in April. This Credit Suisse research report that became a popular read on Wall Street and the internet. Since Google bought YouTube for $1.76 billion in late 2006, it still has yet to prove it is financially lucrative for Google. It has, ironically, proven financially lucrative for many YouTube users, reminiscent of Chris Crocker (“Leave Britney Alone”), “lonelygirl15” (an international drama sensation) and Brandon Hardesty (the kid with the strange faces and noises in the Geico commercial who has also signed on for several movies).

Google has agreed that YouTube is not profitable, though they have refused to provide any specifics. Google’s CFO, Patrick Pichette, says that estimates by analysts tend to lead to inaccurate conclusions. “Most people build outside views of what it costs us to do things, and often they exaggerate,” Pichette said in an interview with Mclean’s, a Canadian magazine, just after Credit Suisse released their report.

RampRate says that Google does not seem interested in setting the record straight about YouTube’s actual losses. They believe that the enormously high loss perception by analysts helps Google negotiate more favorable contracts with movie, TV and music studios. Copyright owners tend to be less likely to pursue legal options to receive unpaid royalties and damages if they believe YouTube is a debt maker. “Google is no doubt thrilled to let YouTube be known as a financial folly,” RampRate said in their recent report.

YouTube spokesman Aaron Zamost said that Google has been running advertisements around millions of user created videos to lessen YouTube’s losses, though he would not actually comment on RampRate’s report. He also said YouTube shares revenue with its business partners, giving Google little reason to purposefully allow YouTube’s losses to be magnified. “We want our partners to do well, because when they succeed, we succeed,” Zamost said.

The real question is how much it costs Google to run YouTube. 20 hours of video are supported by Google every minute, requiring high numbers of bandwidth and storage space. Credit Suisse, after lots of research and interviews, believes operation costs to be as high as $380 million. RampRate believes it is only $83 million, believing that Google has negotiated lower costs with broadband providers and data movers. RampRate also believes Google has helped keep down YouTube’s costs with their own innovative technology, an idea that Pichette supported when he spoke with Mclean magazine. “When people run models, they generally use standard industry pricing for bandwidth, storage, but we build everything from scratch,” Pichette said in the interview. “So we know our cost position but nobody else does.”

The FTC may be getting involved to avoid any antitrust claims that may come up.

The Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 bars someone from serving on the board of two rival companies. Until recently Apple and Google haven’t been rival companies, but now with Google’s Android OS and Apple’s insanely popular iPhone both out, it does seem like they are rival companies.

Schmidt told reporters that he would excuse himself from Apple board meetings when the iPhone would come up, but what is someone’s word when it comes to a main product?

I was wondering if Google is trying to avoid violating antitrust laws by not having multi-touch capabilities on any Android phones that have come out…hmm.

If it does spin off AOL, it will likely buy back the five percent stake in AOL that Google purchased in 2006.

“Although the company’s board of directors has not made any decision, the company currently anticipates that it would initiate a process to spin off one or more parts of the businesses of AOL to Time Warner’s stockholders, in one or a series of transactions,” the company said in a regulatory filing.

“Based on the results of the company’s review, future market conditions or the availability of more favorable strategic opportunities that may arise before a transaction is completed, the company may decide to pursue an alternative other than a spin-off with respect to either or both of AOL’s businesses.”

Source

TechCrunch proprietor Michael Arrington, citing three unnamed sources, said on Thursday night that Google would pay for Twitter in cash, stock or a combination of the two.

The companies are also considering working together on a new search engine, he wrote.
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Hours after Arrington’s blog entry, Kara Swisher reported on her Boomtown blog said the story was inaccurate, citing “a number of sources.”

“In fact, Twitter and Google have simply been engaged in ’some product-related discussions,’ according to one source,” Swisher wrote.

I know that I write a lot about Twitter, but I still can’t understand why some people want to use it. Someone commented on the last post I wrote about Twitter with a YouTube video that basically sums up exactly how I feel about it.

So far 10,000 websites have been compromised since the flaw was discovered and the number is growing.

Microsoft officials haven’t released a statement telling IE users to switch at this time. They say they are working on a fix for the problem.

“Security pros fear that the attack will soon spread beyond the theft of gaming passwords and into more criminal arenas, as the malicious code can be placed on any website and can be adapted to steal any password stored or entered using the browser,” says Christopher Null: The Working Guy on Yahoo! Tech

People need to switch from Internet Explorer as soon as possible to avoid this risk. Some of the choices are Mozilla’s Firefox, Opera, Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome.

So instead of that $500 bag (I know that isn’t so expensive to some of you, but a $50 purse is enough to make me almost faint) perhaps a step in the drugstore lipstick direction is more necessary.

Why would we buy more lipstick? For the same reason makeup sales don’t ever decline…Women like to look as pretty as they can.

So, what’s the tones for this recession?
Neutrals.

If you’re more curious about this phenomenon Google “The Lipstick Index” and read into it. I find it pretty interesting.

MGM will begin by offering the old school American Gladiators, the kind they show on ESPN classic. Eventually they will offer more popular shows and movies.

This is a good option, but if you miss a favorite tV show, or you DVR “forgets” to record it, many times they are offered on the network’s website.

Because the phone is run on the Google platform Android and not Apple’s software, it is open source and developers can program their own applications for the phone.

This one makes me want to switch back to t-mobile, if only they provided adequate service for my area.

Here’s a video from CBS talking about it and how it differs from the iPhone.

When I read the article announcing the launch of the Google browser, I had no idea that 75% of internet users still used Internet Explorer. I haven’t used it in 3 years, Firefox has had better features, so that’s what I’ve been using. Last week Microsoft came out with the beta version of IE 8, so Google acted pretty fast in getting Chrome out for download.

We’ll see how everyone responds to the new browser soon enough. I still haven’t jumped on the “Google bandwagon” but I’m willing to try out a new browser that isn’t supported by Microsoft.

What Google is hoping for is to be able to invest into Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS). The EGS, in theory, will be able to drill far enough underground to hit “hot rocks.” Once the “hot rocks” are drilled into, water will be pumped into them, causing steam. The power generated from the steam would be able to reduce dependence on coal.

In theory, geothermal power plants are a great idea. I really see the energy alternatives like a race. Everyone is looking for the best and cheapest way to get power. It’s happening with cars, instead of looking for a better source of fuel, car companies are coming out with hybrids and people are satisfied. Why??? It does not eliminate the fact that they still have to fork over their money to Exxon.

That’s really another discussion, however.