Amazon launches Kindle on Monday

It is offcial Amazon has launched a new eReader called Kindle. Most viewers find it ugly but I find it really well designed somehow!

It is, in fact, retro designed but seems to me like a tool coming directly from the spacecraft "Galactica":)

In addition to its killer design and holds inside some impressive features that will make shy Sony Reader's developers for a while.

Whiel this latest needs to synchronize its content with a computer, the Kindle can have access to cellular networks and even wireless internet (not sure!)

The only two things that can be taken as negative about this product is that primarly, it costs about $400, which means $100 more Sony Reader and secondly, it doesn't use an open standard ebooks reader format. It uses Amazon's proprietary format called Mobipocket.

Is skype to be acquired by Google?

It is only a rumour, you said? Well, this is not what Jemima Kiss seems to say.
According to her, Google is holding talks with eBay the current Skype owner in order to bring this 10 million users wireless operator to its stabe.

All observers agree on the fact that this makes a sense for both Google and eBay. For Google this will strongthen its new open mobile development platform Android. Google which isn't actually hiding any more its ambition to have more presence in the wireless field and Skype acquisition is a good move in that direction. On the other hand, eBay is yet struggling to make Skype a profitable project and shareholders are getting impatient about that .

This rumour becomes more significant when we know that Google has moved its mobile activity to London!

23andMe:Google wants to control human's genome too!

It seems that after controling a diverse set of people's data; both private and professional, that Google is aiming now to control their own DNA "data". Do you want to know why am I saying this?

Well, it is, in fact, Sergey Brin’s wife Anne Wojcicki who is behind this new announcement (Sergey Brin is one of the Google founders, for those who still have doubts:-)). And your conviction will be complete when you know that Google's put about $4 million in this startup.

According to Techcrunch, "23andMe will offer a genetic screening service for $999. The short story is that 23andMe will administer a test (presumably a swab or saliva test) that will take your DNA and screen it. In return you will be told your genetic history including whether you are likely to suffer from a range of diseases or similar life altering events, including heart disease."

Isn't this quite intriguing? Isn't this another manifestation of Google's obsession to control people's life?

Is Google in Trouble & Facing Bankruptcy?

This is an article that I found of great interest for me and that I want, therefore to share with you.

[NEW YORK - Wednesday] - by Devon Melk. Rumors are now running amok
that the 2nd most powerful website on the entire Worldwide-Web may
file BANKRUPTCY, with the deadline set for this December; being the
date of both discharge and dissolution in a Federal Court of Law.

This would come as a SHOCK to investors and "Googlers" alike who
both profit and benefit from the use of the World's largest and
most powerful search engine which receives far in excess of
100 MILLION unique daily visitors and well over 300 million
individual searches daily - making it perhaps the single most
valuable public data resource as an "information bank" online the
world over.

But is the rumor true or false?

The origin of the rumor occurred when some savvy Internet marketers
began making statements that they had heard "insiders' talk" that
the company (now publicly traded since April 30, 2004, just over 3
years ago) may face financial disaster with the release of a "new
system" that would allow advertisers to get their otherwise
pay-per-click (PPC) advertising completely free.

This, of course, would naturally lead directly (like a domino-
effect) to the collapse of Google's sibling program AdSense; as its
only revenue comes from the direct sales of AdWords "clicks."

The "new system" in question and responsible for the controversy
over getting AdWords pay-per-clicks free is that developed by
Dr Jon Cohen of New York City, New York (now retired) who discovered
a simple, yet effective means, for getting Google PPC ads without
having to suffer the costs involved.

The retired New York doctor and native has a publicly disclosed net
worth now in excess of $70 million [US], having generated well over
$377 million in product sales from sixteen (16) separate online
businesses within just nine (9) years since first venturing online
in 1998 (about the same time as Google was founded).

It is estimated by company insiders and leading financial analysts
that the "good doctor" (as he's called by "all who know him") has
purportedly saved well over $93 million (some estimates suggest
closer to $136 million) in otherwise paid advertising at Google and
the other major players in the PPC targeted-search arena online -
including Yahoo, MSN, AskJeeves, AllTheWeb.com, HotBot, AltaVista,
Lycos and Netscape, just to name a few.

The "secret" became available to the general masses last April, and
its very release caused such a major sweeping stir among the
community of Internet-marketers, affiliate-marketers, webmasters,
ecommerce company owners and surfers alike that the site quickly
rose to break the top most visited 1,000 websites on the entire
planet briefly; and as can be seen here:

http://tinyurl.com/39lnjn (Alexa data on this!)

When asked if the "secret" would somehow ruin Google, Dr Cohen
revealed almost cryptically that it actually would bring about just
the opposite effect, and "stimulate" even more business volume for
the virtual giant.

Many people were dismayed to find that Google itself is deliberately
allowing the purchase of 100,000's of PPC ads offering the secret
system to the general public -- which indicates to most observers
that either they [Google] haven't caught it, or they simply feel
that it somehow is not a threat to their continued operation.

For anyone's inspection factual and hard evidence supporting this
can be seen by simply looking to the right-hand column when doing a
search for "get google ads free" (specifically in quotation marks)
at Google.com under the "Sponsored Links" section.

Or take this direct and instant SHORTCUT:

http://tinyurl.com/2ctu6j

You can also see nearly 100,000 specific results in the "organic"
fields index located in the center and which occupies the bulk of
the results pages.

One would think that if Google felt threatened by such a release as
this earth-shaking "secret" is, they would hardly allow for either
paid-ads or organic content to make the top searches regarding it.

However, evidence supports to the contrary - and this being the
case now for a full six (6) months.

Mysteriously, within just two (2) hours of its initial release last
April, Google itself actually did in fact 'pause' the parent firm's
attempts at advertising the new system using PPCs on their search
engine - only, however, to release the hold after a Review Team
consisting of some of Google's top executives completed performing
an in-depth investigation and made the determination to ALLOW the
ads to run.

The secret system was recently revised however to include "major
new content" and "more exhaustive instructions," and is now
available at its Home Site:

http://alfredperl.freegoogle.hop.clickbank.net

The most important addition is that of a so-called "string of code"
(tech-talk for some HTML) that can be added to any webpage(s) that
instantly causes the elimination of the page owner's AdWords costs
right away.

Even a "live" woman spokes-representative ("Rachel") has been added
to the site, and who appears to literally walk out onto the webpage
and talk to visitors and explain a bit more how the mysterious new
breakthrough system works.

Since the addition of this new "live" spokes-woman has now appeared
at the site, company Vice President of Sales & Marketing, Mr Todd
Coutrin states that "sales for the system have skyrocketed above
2,430% suddenly and with no limit in sight."

Coutrin continues: "With the newest revision now in place, plus all
the additions added, affiliates for the new system can expect to
earn even more than ever before!" (Note: Affiliates make up the
bulk of the firm's sales generation.)

The refund rate for the new revised version of the secret (named
V5.1) has dropped to less than half of what it was before the newer
version's release; meaning it's now even more readily-received and
put to use than ever before (perhaps in large part to the newer
simplicity of application) - now making it the safest and one of
the best resellers for the networks of affiliate marketers who earn
their revenues from the reselling of other electronic publishers'
stock and digital product lines.

When asked, Google company representatives stated matter-of-factly
that the rumors of bankruptcy for the ecommerce giant are simply
not true, and that the rumor millings are in fact simply the result
of "panics" brought on by the usual hysteria associated with
anything large, new or revolutionary - or in this case, all three.

Attempts to contact both Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the former
Stanford University students who founded Google in 1998, to request
comment were unsuccessful.

Again, Google itself seems to be the biggest supporter of the "new
system" as it's allowing more and more advertisers to promote the
new system on its search engine before over 100 million daily
searches and surfers.

Quigo to be acquired by AOL

Announced earlier today by Reuters and confirmed later by techcrunch, AOL has acquired the Internet advertising company Quigo for a price that is told to be about $340 million.

This move is done while either Google Inc or Yahoo Inc are stronghtening their armadas!(See my last post about Google's social ads!)

AOL, which is a unit of the Time Warner, wants by this operation to re-adjust its growth graph and to "transform itself into a non-stop online advertiser shop"! AOL Chief Executive Randy Falco told Reuters in an inteview that he expects Quigo to add to the company's growth in 2008.

Quigo, will join in this acquisition other advertising entities that belong to AOL like adtech, Tacoda and Advertising.com in what is called Platform A. It will bring to the group its 500 publisher relationships and its AdSonar product that "lets advertisers place their ads on specific Web pages, including pages featuring topics or keywords such as "mutual funds" or "health and science."" (See techcrunch)

Facebook: A new social ads announcement

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, the very hot social network, announced today, that his company will join the advertising sphere very soon.

To a brighter idea of what will be the Facebook Ads, let's read below this snap from a Erick Schonfeld' post on Mickeal Arrington's page:

Facebook is announcing three things: Social Ads (ads targeted based on member profile data and spread virally), Beacon (a way for Facebook members to declare themselves fans of a brand on other sites and send those endorsements to their feeds), and Insight (marketing data that goes deep into social demographics and pyschographics which Facebook will provide to advertisers in an aggregated, anonymous way). These three things together make up Facebook Ads.

“Facebook Ads represent a completely new way of advertising online,” Zuckerberg told an audience of more than 250 marketing and advertising executives in New York. “For the last hundred years media has been pushed out to people, but now marketers are going to be a part of the conversation. And they’re going to do this by using the social graph in the same way our users do.”

What Zuckerberg means by a social graph is the network of real connections through which people communicate and share information in the Facebook social network. So, everytime a person in a network gets access to a business page an information about this business is spread throughout his network or social graph.

With the 50 million usrs of Facebook and 25 million daily visitor, Zuckerberg says that " the company displays 65 billion pages on which advertisements can be displayed each month".

Introducing Android

For those who didn't yet enjoy this special introduction of Android by its creators! Click here.

Google is on the verge of launching a new mobile platform, Android

It will be called Android and it includes a user interface, a middleware and OS. This complete platform enables Google to compete with Symbian and Windows Mobile, at a time when the mobile Internet is beginning to take off.

Google says that this truly open and comprehensive platform for Linux mobiles will work either with Google's applications or others'.

34 telcos and Google, members of the Open Handset Alliance, have joined their effort in order to bring to developers, wireless operators and handsets manifactorers a tool that will make it easy for them to come ouyt with innovative products to the 3 billion mobile users that the world counts. "Today's announcement is more ambitious than any single 'Google Phone' that the press has been speculating about over the past few weeks. Our vision is that the powerful platform we're unveiling will power thousands of different phone models." said Eric Schmidt Google's CEO. Well this really ends this late discussion that took place in several blogs about the Gphone!

My hope is that the Android will participate to make handsets less expansive and as well featured as possible.

More details about Android are available in a confcall made by John Biggs with Eric Schmidt at CrunchGear , liveblogging

Doing real estate business by text SMS

HouseFront, a US start-up has launched a new service based on text SMS, that will really make buying a new home a matter of minutes!. All one has to do is to just send the home's address followed with "house"to a short number 46873. Then, all details about this house are sent back a moment later " from its estimated worth to the number of bedrooms and baths. There is another possibility for users, which is to post comments about houses to help others to make their minds about one or th eother of the houses offered to them on this site. Users can also save thier searching results on th ewebsite for a later use.

Other sites which are based on this same principal (of text SMS commercial use) launched slsewhere. In the UK, there is this auto-pricing guide publisher Parkers, which lets users get all a car's information just by sending text SMS's. And according to springwise, other similar sites are being launched.

First OpenSocial application hacked within 45 minutes

See Mickeal Arrington's post on techcrunch.com.

Intel’s CEO Craig Barett in Morocco to promote e-Morocco

This visit was an occasion for the N°1 of processors construtors worldwide to appreciate the developement made by Morocco in terms of integration of the Internet society. Craig Barett had also signed three agreements about Teachers’ training in the “Teach to the future” program, the internet access through “World ahead” and the installation of a multicore research lab in the “INPT” engineering school Craig Barrett is making a world tour to promote the access to new technologies and to help developing countries where he goes to integrate this new economic era.

$55 billion investment promised to develop internet in Africa

Several African countries and international institutions have agreed to invest more than $55 billion to accelerate access to internet on the continent, said Wednesday the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

Among the donors include the European Commission and the World Bank (WB), which has pledged to double its funding for ICT in Africa to reach $2 billion by 2012 . They commited on that during an international conference on the development of the Internet in Africa, entitled "Connecting Africa", which took place Monday and Tuesday in Kigali, a statement of the ITU published Wednesday.

Participants at the conference pledged to connect all African capitals and major cities to strengthen connections with the rest of the world by 2012. Africa has a serious delay in the development of the Internet. Less than 4% of Africans today have access to the Internet, the ITU points out.

In addition to Rwanda, six African countries attended the conference: Mali, Malawi, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Djibouti and Burundi.

MySpace, Bedo and Six Apart will join OpenSocial of Google

It is confimed now. MySpace has decided to make a jointure with what it is announced to be the first social network in the world. Google has also confirmed that Bedo and Six Apart will join OpenSocial too.

According to our sister site techcrunch, Google will make an announcement about that later on today. Already in this week Friendster, LinkedIn, Ning, Hi5, Plaxo, Orkut, Viadeo, Oracle and Salesforce have joined this new Google project as well.

Let's wait and see what will be Facebook's coming step to counter this very clever move from Google's strategists?

Adil Kodsi