FriendConnect, the Google service that lets Web publishers add social networking features to their Web sites, has gained a new feature that aggregates basic social media functions in a toolbar that can be added to Web pages.

The "social bar," as Google calls it, puts functions like logging in, editing profiles and settings, activity streams display and discussion wall postings into a strip that can be placed at the top or bottom of Web pages, Google said Wednesday. People can expand the view of each function by clicking on it.

FriendConnect is Google's offering for data portability, which allows people to control the information and content they enter at social networking sites and social media-sharing sections of Web sites, so that they don't have to manually update multiple accounts.

For example, one idea of data portability calls for people to have an online dashboard of their social information and content -- friends lists, photos, video clips, blog items -- that would be independent from any individual site. From there, people can control what information and content they post where, avoiding data lock-in.

Although data portability has gained popularity among users and Internet companies, it has proven technically complicated to implement as well as controversial, because it brings up questions about users' data privacy and protection.

In a prime example of the complexities of bringing broad data portability into reality, Facebook blocked FriendConnect's access to its site in May, saying the Google service violated its terms of service by redistributing the data of Facebook members "in a way users might not expect or understand."

Google Earth 5.0 Beta Released, Looks Incredible

Google Latitude coming to other devices, iPhone included

T-Mobile's decision to bundle Google's Latitude location-tracking service into the RC33 G1 update may have gotten all the attention this morning, but if you've got a BlackBerry, Window Mobile or S60 device, you can start oversharing right away -- Latitude is built into the newest version of the Google Maps app. Not only that, but it looks like iPhone owners will be able to get in on the fun soon -- Google says it's working on a Latitude app that will "hopefully" be available shortly. We're guessing that means El Goog is tied up in App Store approval shenanigans -- it's certainly been naughty before -- but what we're really wondering is if the next rev of Apple's Maps app will include Latitude, since it's basically just a really nice Gmaps implementation. We're guessing the developers of Loopt and Whrrl are equally eager to find out -- "duplication of functionality," anyone?

Google Earth dives under the sea

Google Earth goes underwater

Google has lifted the lid on its first major upgrade to its global mapping software, Google Earth.

Google Ocean expands this map to include large swathes of the ocean floor and abyssal plain.

Users can dive beneath a dynamic water surface to explore the 3D sea floor terrain.

The map also includes 20 content layers, containing information from the world's leading scientists, researchers, and ocean explorers.

Al Gore was at the launch event in San Francisco which, Google hopes, will take its mapping software a step closer to total coverage of the entire globe.

You can dive into the world's ocean that covers almost three-quarters of the planet Al Gore

In a statement, Mr Gore said that the update would make Google Earth a "magical experience".

"You can not only zoom into whatever part of our planet's surface you wish to examine in closer detail, you can now dive into the world's ocean that covers almost three-quarters of the planet and discover new wonders that had not been accessible in previous versions."

Approximately 70% of the world's surface is covered by water, which contains nearly 80% of all life - yet less than 5% of it has actually been explored.

Google Ocean aims to let users visit some of the more interesting locations, including underwater volcanoes, as well as running videos on marine life, shipwrecks and clips of favourite surf and dive spots.

Conservation organisations hope the tool will improve awareness of issues facing undersea life.

"With this, everybody can see the unbelievable beauty of our marine life and how incredibly threatened it is," said Carl Gustaf Lundin, head of the global marine programme at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

"We hope this major technological innovation will get the public more involved in marine conservation and encourage governments and businesses to stop driving ocean species to extinction."

Google creates momentary panic by labeling all sites harmful

Google logo

The search engine Google sparked online panic Saturday when a glitch in its security program temporarily prevented users from visiting any websites in search results.

Between 1430 and 1525 GMT, all search results were marked as harmful and users received the message: "Warning! This site may harm your computer."

"What happened? Very simply, human error," Goggle vice president for search products and user experience Marissa Mayer said on the company's official blog.

Google receives regular updates to a list of malicious websites from StopBadware.org, which investigates consumer complaints.

"We periodically receive updates to that list and received one such update to release on the site this morning," Mayer explained.

"Unfortunately (and here's the human error), the URL of '/' was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and '/' expands to all URLs."

Users who tried to access the site were blocked by Google, which directed them to StopBadware.org, which works with Google to determine which sites are dangerous.

"This led to a denial of service of our website as millions of Google users attempted to visit our site for more information," StopBadware.org said in a statement.

Google was back to normal between 1510 and 1525 GMT.

The Mountain View, California-based company apologized for the mistake and said it "will carefully investigate this incident and put more robust file checks in place to prevent it from happening again."

The outage, widely discussed on Internet blogs and forums, did not affect Google's news search service.

Google controls about 70 percent of Internet searches, a market share that has grown steadily in recent years.

Human error' hits Google search

Users were warned that all search results were dangerous Google's search service has been hit by technical problems, with users unable to access search results. For a period on Saturday, all search results were flagged as potentially harmful, with users warned that the site "may harm your computer". Users who clicked on their preferred search result were advised to pick another one. Google attributed the fault to human error and said most users were affected for about 40 minutes. "What happened? Very simply, human error," wrote Marissa Mayer, vice president, search products and user experience, on the Official Google Blog. The internet search engine works with stopbadware.org to ascertain which sites install malicious software on people's computers and merit a warning. Stopbadware.org investigates consumer complaints to decide which sites are dangerous. The list of malevolent sites is regularly updated and handed to Google. When Google updated the list on Saturday, it mistakenly flagged all sites as potentially dangerous. "We will carefully investigate this incident and put more robust file checks in place to prevent it from happening again," Ms Mayer wrote.

Acer confirms plans for Linux, SSD-equipped 10-inch Aspire One netbooks

It wasn't making any promises on launch day, but Acer has reportedly now confirmed that it will indeed be offering both Linux and SSD options on its new 10-inch Aspire One netbook, though you won't be able to get either option right out of the gate. Expectedly, the Linux distribution on tap is Linpus Linux, and it looks like the only SSD option will be a 16GB drive -- no word on pricing for either, unfortunatly. There's also no firm word on a released date, though it'll apparently be some time after the mid-February roll out of the Windows XP-equipped model.

Google launches Measurement Lab to monitor the tubes, expose meddling

There's not exactly a lack of internet measurement tools out there, but there's none quite as ambitious as the new Measurement Lab (or M-Lab) just launched by Google, along with a little help from the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute and the PlanetLab Consortium. While it's apparently just now getting up to speed, the tool will eventually let individuals and researchers of all sorts poke and prod the internet to their heart's content, measuring performance, and exposing attempts by telecoms to meddle with network traffic and clamp down on things like BitTorrent or Skype. Those efforts will be facilitated by 36 servers in 12 locations across the U.S. and Europe that Google will be opening up early this year, and all data collected using M-Lab will be made publicly available for other researchers to expand upon. Complete details are available at the link below, although Google seems to be having some bandwidth troubles of its own with the M-Lab site at the moment.

Negroponte raps about OLPC 2: 'designed as if we were Google'

Well, our interest was certainly piqued by that OLPC XO-2 mockup that surfaced yesterday, and now the Guardian is saying that the hardware development will take place open source. This is certainly fitting with the company's idealistic ethos, and it'll be interesting to see what other companies bring to the table as the reportedly $75 dual-screen device gets closer to real reality. "The XO-1 was really designed as if we were Apple," Nicholas Negroponte says in the interview. "The XO-2 will be designed as if we were Google - we'll want people to copy it. We'll make the constituent parts available. We'll try and get it out there using the exact opposite approach that we did with the XO-1." He let a few details slip too, saying that it will be dual touchscreen, with one of the displays featuring a touch-sensitive, force-feedback, haptic keyboard. When asked how he feels about the possibility that other companies might profit from all this hard work developing the laptop of tomorrow? "I wouldn't complain." Class act, that one. Bravo.

Google Delivers Offline Access for Gmail

Google will begin to offer browser-based offline access to its Gmail Webmail application, a much-awaited feature.

This functionality, which will allow people to use the Gmail interface when disconnected from the Internet, has been expected since mid-2007.

That's when Google introduced Gears, a browser plug-in designed to provide offline access to Web-hosted applications like Gmail.

Gears is currently used for offline access to several Web applications from Google, like the Reader RSS manager and the Docs word processor, and from other providers like Zoho, which uses it for offline access to its e-mail and word processing browser-based applications.

Rajen Sheth, senior product manager for Google Apps, said that applying Gears to Gmail has been a very complex task, primarily because of the high volume of messages accounts can store. "Gmail was a tough hurdle," he said.

Google ruled out the option of letting users replicate their entire Gmail inboxes to their PCs, which in many cases would translate into gigabytes of data flowing to people's hard drives. It instead developed algorithms that will automatically determine which messages should be downloaded to PCs, taking into consideration a variety of factors that reflect their level of importance to the user, he said. At this point, end-users will not be able to tweak these settings manually.

"We had to make it such that we're managing a sizable amount of information offline and doing it well in a way that's seamless to the end-user," he said.

For example, in Gmail, users can put labels on messages, as well as tag them with stars to indicate their importance, and Google can use that information to determine which messages to download. Sheth estimates that in most cases Gmail will download several thousand messages, preferring those that are more recent as well. Depending on the amount of messages users have on their accounts, they may get downloads going back two months or two years, he said.

Google will begin to roll out the Gmail offline functionality Tuesday evening and expects to make it available to everybody in a few days, whether they use Gmail in its standalone version or as part of the Apps collaboration and communication suite for organizations.

While the feature was "rigorously" tested internally at Google, it is a first, early release upon which Google expects to iterate and improve on. That's why it's being released under the Google Labs label. Users are encouraged to offer Google feedback.

Users have been able to manage their Gmail accounts offline via other methods for years, since Gmail supports the POP and IMAP protocols that let people download and send out messages using desktop e-mail software like Microsoft Outlook and others.

However, the Gears implementation will let people work within the Gmail interface without the need for a separate PC application. When offline, messages will be put in a Gears browser queue, and the desktop and online versions of the accounts will be synchronized automatically when users connect to the Internet again. This will come in handy for people who travel a lot and often find themselves without Internet access, Sheth said.

To activate the offline functionality, users of standalone Gmail service and the standard Apps edition should click "settings" after logging on to their Gmail account. There, they should click on the "Labs" tab, select "Enable" next to "Offline Gmail" and click "Save Changes." A new "Offline" link will then appear in the right-hand corner of the account interface. Users of the Education and Premier Apps versions will have to wait for their Apps administrators to enable Gmail Labs for everyone on the domain first.

Google is also rolling out Gears-based offline access for its Calendar application. However, it will be for now read-only and exclusively available to Google Apps account holders. Previously, Google introduced read-only offline access to the Spreadsheet and Presentation applications in Google Docs, which is also part of Google Apps.

Gmail Goes Offline

If you live in Gmail, but don’t always have a broadband connection available, today should be a happy day for you. Google is rolling out a new system for letting Gmail users access their accounts offline. Google will cache your messages on your system using Google Gears. You’ll be able to open your browser to Gmail.com, see your inbox, read and label messages and even write replies without a Net connection. Your messages will send once your system reconnects to the Web.

The system is beta (of course) and accessible through Gmail Labs. But it won’t be immediately available to everyone – Google is parsing out access as it experiments with the new feature. I don’t have access to the new feature yet, so I’ve still got lots of questions. But Google’s post makes it sound like the experience will be almost indistinguishable from using Gmail normally.

“Gmail uses Gears to download a local cache of your mail. As long as you're connected to the network, that cache is synchronized with Gmail's servers. When you lose your connection, Gmail automatically switches to offline mode, and uses the data stored on your computer's hard drive instead of the information sent across the network. You can read messages, star and label them, and do all of the things you're used to doing while reading your webmail online. Any messages you send while offline will be placed in your outbox and automatically sent the next time Gmail detects a connection,” Gmail Engineer Andy Palay wrote.

There will also be a “flaky connection mode” that’s supposed to give you the best of both worlds. It’ll assume that you’re disconnected and use the local cache to store your data, but whenever your connection is working, it’ll sync with Google’s servers in the background.

This all sounds pretty good, but here are my questions:

How much will Gmail cache? Just my inbox, my entire 6.2GB mail file or something in between? I work pretty hard to keep my inbox clear, so I hope that it’ll cache more than just my inbox.

How extensively can you search? The biggest reason I use Gmail is that I can find a message I got two years ago in just a few seconds with the right search terms. But depending on just how much gets cached, your search capability could be severely limited.

Will you work the same way in Gmail whether you’re offline or online? That’s certainly the way Google makes it sound. If so, that’ll be a big step forward from other attempts to bring webmail offline. You’ve long been able to access your Gmail account through a client like Mozilla Thunderbird. But that doesn’t give you all the Gmail functionality like labels. Yahoo Mail has offered offline access since last summer using Zimbra Desktop. But that also involves using a client on your desktop. For offline access to Windows Live Hotmail, Microsoft suggests using their Mail client software.

Is Gears up to the challenge? Google launched this system for creating offline access to Web apps nearly two years ago. For a long time, the only apps that used it were Google Reader and to do list Remember the Milk -- an indication that developing for and implementing Gears wasn’t quite as simple as Google would have you believe. In fact, bringing Gmail offline was an obvious use of Gears that has taken 21 months to come to fruition.

(Google also says it's readying an offline version of Google Calendar, also presumably using Gears, though the company didn't specifically say that. Offline Calendar will initially be available only for users of Google Apps Standard Edition and there's no firm release date.)

Is Gears ready now? We’ll see soon. I’ll check back in once I get a chance to play with Gmail offline. And let me know what questions you have. I’ll do my best to answer them. In the meantime, you can watch this relatively lame video from your friends at Google.

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