Google has licensed Gmail to Japanese mobile operator KDDI Corp.The email service will be branded by KDDI and work on the “auone.jp” domain. Google will provide the backend for the service and account holders will have the same functionality as provided by Gmail itself, including 2GB of storage.

The announcement continues a recent string of deals in Asia for Google as it attempts to build market share and presence in countries it does not dominate. More recently, Google has licensed search to a number of Chinese search portals.

KDDI is currently Japan’s second largest mobile operator behind NTT DoCoMo. Third ranked mobile operator Softbank owns Yahoo Japan, which according to Smart Money is not as strong in search, but leads Google in other services including email.

Source: TechCrunch 

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Who needs an HD TV? All our PC’s can handle HDTV, though obviously the better your monitors resolution the better quality you will get. To view the HD shows, viewers will be prompted to download a player from Move Networks. With the new player, you can watch the shows in either full-screen or mini-mode, but ad viewing is still mandatory.

Now I would do my own review of the system but as my IP is based in the UK it stops me from using it! So if someone has a review feel free to message me and I will link to it. It will help you by addigna  free link to your site!

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Microsoft’s image search engine added a new operator that lets you restrict the results to faces and portraits. You just need to append filter:face or filter:portrait to your query (for example, [larry page filter:portrait]). The search engine uses face detection algorithms that try to see if an image contains human faces, so you shouldn’t expect to only find pictures of a certain Larry Page because that would imply face recognition.

Google also added a similar option in May, which is now accessible in the advanced search interface. Unlike Windows Live Search, Google is a little bit smarter and finds pages that contain the exact name. The first result from Microsoft’s search engine shows Larry Ellison from Oracle, the third one shows Larry Lloyd (an English football player) and only the sixth image shows Google’s Larry Page.

Google makes mistakes too by including a photo of Marrisa Mayer as the second result for [Larry Page]. The reason? They both appeared in the same phrase: “Biz Week profiles Google hottie Marissa Mayer but doesn’t mention that she’s rumored to be Larry Page’s girlfriend” (hottie links to Marissa Mayer’s photo).

Overall, you may find Microsoft’s image search engine more interesting because it includes infinite scrolling so you don’t have to click on “next”, a list of related people which is fairly accurate, a sidebar for image results so you don’t have to go back to the results page and a scratchpad that lets you collect interesting images. Unfortunately, Microsoft’s index is much smaller than Google’s and the relevancy is often lower.

Another search engine that offers face filtering is Exalead. Even if the results aren’t great, you’ll love the advanced options: regular expressions, defining the width or the height of an image (you can find all the images related to words that start with summer, have 800 pixels width and less than 600 pixels height).

It’s interesting to see image search engines becoming smarter and starting to actually analyze images and not just the filenames and the text that surrounds them. Google’s acquisition of Neven Vision and the effort to label all the images from the web are also steps in this direction.

Source: Google Operating System

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Google has announced that business and government users of Google Earth Enterprise will be able to view their organization’s geospatial data in 2D on a browser, behind the firewall. Through a special version of the Google Maps API (the programming interface for Google Maps), administrators can also embed this 2D view into any web application (much like a Google Map) and create mashups with information from external databases, spreadsheets and other data sources.

Yes you did read it right. This is not the same as Google Maps that’s also 2D. This is an additional tool that comes with the Google Earth Enterprise edition.

The Google Earth Enterprise edition is a premium package that comes with the following, taken from the new “Key Features” list:

1. Browser view lets anyone in the organization securely access Google Earth Enterprise through a browser. In addition, organizations can embed a map view with proprietary data into any web-based application. (A real estate firm, for example, can now publish 2D images of all properties in a given area and overlay those images with a spreadsheet’s pricing data or availability notes - all on the firm’s website.)
2. Enhanced search framework allows integration with multiple search services through Java plug-ins, including the Google Search Appliance. (A manufacturer might use this feature to find a set of customers with certain product preferences using the Google Search Appliance, and view the geographic distribution of those customers in Google Earth.)
3. Regions-based KML imagery data processing tool for creating super-overlays. These overlays enable organizations to easily publish large collections of images. (A government agency would be able to publish local aerial photography to citizens.)
4. Faster data processing and serving performance produces time savings of up to 10x for vector processing (points/lines/polygons) and computational savings of more than 2 xs for server responses to imagery data requests.
5. Industry standard security methodologies are supported for easier implementation of LDAP and SSL.
6. User interface improvements make the process of ingesting, previewing and publishing data easier and more efficient.

Matthew Glotzbach, Product Management Director, Google Enterprise:

Not only is it now easier for employees who need to access their organization’s geo data - whether it be satellite images, terrain and elevation data or aerial imagery - to do so from almost anywhere, but they can integrate additional layers of information within their existing web applications without ever having to leave the browser.

You can see from option one that the new browser view uses the Google Maps API. But sure that means it is just Google Maps with extra KML overlays? Well The enterprose edition allows you to import data from other GIS (Geogrpahical Information Systems) packedgeds like ESRI or MapInfo and can then generate layers viewable in Goolg eEarth, so these are not just KML files. They are much more then that!

Soon I believe Google Earth and Goolg eMaps woth somehow merge and will become full-blown GIS packages.

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For those of you that don’t know what Thunderbird is, its not the great TV series and film a few years ago, no is it the car! But this is an e-mail client a bit like Outlook. But this is made by the team behind the great Firefox browser, Mozilla.

Mozilla CEO Mitchell Baker gone to the mozilla community to get some feedback on an idea. This idea is quite drastic, hence why he has asked the users about spinning Thunderbird off into a separate entity.

Mitchell wrote that Thunderbird is being dwarfed by

The enormous energy and community focused on the web, Firefox and the ecosystem around it

and that as a result, Thunderbird was not getting the attention it deserved. This is perfectly understandable as Firefoxs’ market share is increasing all the time. So much so that new users have no idea what Mozilla is and just think the Firefox is a company in its own right.

Options floated by Mitchell include:

1. A new non-profit organization analogous to the Mozilla Foundation - a Thunderbird foundation
2. Create a new subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation for Thunderbird
3. Thunderbird is released as a community project much like SeaMonkey, and a small independent services and consulting company is formed by the Thunderbird developers to continue development and care for Thunderbird users

Thunderbird has many fans. and yet what is a solid and mostly reliable program hasn’t grown at anywhere near to the rate Firefox has. Hopefully the change will see a renewed focus on brining new functionality to Thunderbird, changes that could well position Thunderbird as a fully featured future Outlook alternative.

Source: TechCrunch

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This may be quite random but U-Cast a social networking site along with a YouTube style video area. Has gone on sale at SitePoint. This site site is partnered with VideoEgg and uses the video upload client and video player. Here is how it is described.

The site built to be transportable. IE built on Microsoft Access with so it can be moved anywhere. Uses ASP throughout. Partnered with VideoEgg who provide the video upload software, storage and video player. No storage space needed. VideoEgg also hosts bebo’s videos too!

The site was initally based in the UK, as i am based here. But because it is transportable you can always just make a copy of the site! Or create an alias and redirect users from any country.

The 1800+ users signed up are mainly from the UK around 13-25 year olds. All users get a customiseable profile, like MySpace. A blog, photo uploads, video uploads. Access to the forum. Whole thing based on a points system. They get points for referring users. All automated. I can go away for a week and the site will still keep going.

There is a small admin area where you can give people points, ben them, delete them, approve photos. Videos don’t need to be approved as VideoEgg does them but you can manually ban them. You can give some of the users access to the admin area for simple tasks like approving photos.

If you wanted you could advertise and leave the site to run itself!

It’s pretty cheap at the moment, only $200

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