Jicola.com Blogs

I regularly read what Google does, and in the past few days, I have noticed that Google has released quite a few things or made announcements of what they are about to do. So I have put together this list of things that Google has accomplished over the past few months.

• Creative Common Images – You can now search for images based on licence types.
• Announced Google Chrome OS – Google now going into the desktop market. Will they compete against Microsoft? We’ll find out in the second half of 2010.
• Google Chrome Web Browser – Finally, more competition against Microsoft
• Removed the BETA tag from Gmail and other Google Apps – After being in BETA for over 5 years, its about time you removed the BETA label
• Evolution of Gmail Labels – Improvements of managing your emails
• Bloggers 10th Birthday – a few stats about Blogger
• New Google Books features – better ways to browse and share books. Read all the new features here.
• Google Translator Toolkit – improvements of Google Translator
• Google Suggestions – surf the web faster with search suggestions given
• Google Apps Education Edition – Google hitting the schools with educational lesson plans and more
• Google Voice – One number for all your phones. Plus it is free and coming soon
• Property Listing – now lists real estate on Google Maps
• Google Latitude – Find the location of all your friends

Going back a bit further, lets recap on some of the best things Google has given us

• Google Web Search – What will we do (and Google) if it didn’t have the web search?
• Google Apps – Including Gmail, Calender, Docs, Sites, Photo’s
• WebMaster Tools – Adsense, Adwords, Analytics, Webmaster Tools
• Google Reader
• Feedburner
• Youtube
• Knol
• Blog Search
• Google News
• Blogger
• Google Checkout – buy things online securely
• iGoogle
• Web History
• Google Talk
• Groups
• Translate
• Google Labs
• Google Maps, street view
• Google Trends – See what the world searches for (Michael Jackson)
• Google Ad Planer – Find sites to advertise on, their statistics, demographics and more about the people who visit the site.

So you can see Google has a lot of very handy web apps that we all use everyday. The internet will be completely different if it wasn’t for Google.

Have we missed something out on the list? Please let us know in comments.

Today, Gmail finally removed its Beta tag after having it for more than 5 years now. As long with Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk also had the tag removed. The tag has been removed from both the Enterprise and consumers version so that is more than 1.75 million companies around the world out of Beta.

However, since you may miss the Beta label from Gmail, there is a lab feature that moves Gmail back to beta. If you feel a bit empty with the tag gone, bring it back and fulfil the emptiness.

You can read the official Google Blog post at Google Blog.

You can now try out the BETA version of Microsoft’s Bing search engine at http://www.bing.com

I somewhat like the image search feature better then Google, in some situations. Have a try and post comments on what you think of Bing.

Their will not be a BETA2 version of Windows 7, instead, it will be a release candidate.

It is still not clear when the release candidate will become public, but Windows 7 is still on track to be purchased in early 2010. But who knows, it could be released this year.

Today I have been playing around with Microsoft Office Live Workspace Beta, and frankly, Google Docs and Zoho is much better. It is easier to use and is purely web-based, unlike Office Live which asks you to install a setup file onto your computer.

You can view word documents online, but you cannot create or edit them without installing the software. What is the point of that, especially if your on a public computer.

If you are trying to have an Office online, make it so you don’t have to install software, otherwise, just use Google Docs. And with Google Docs, you can have it on your own personal domain name if you wish.

Even though Microsoft is trying to compete online with Google, they are not doing a good job with it.

To get started with Office Live Workspaces, visit http://workspace.office.live.com or you can download the optional Windows Update program Office Live Add-in which installs a link into your start menu.

The test version of Windows 7 will be available for download on Friday (Saturday AEDST) says Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer at Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show.

Windows 7 will improve the home network and media streaming programs through Media Centre to allow a more user friendly environment compared to Windows Vista. Ballmer also says that you would also be able to publish Facebook content through Windows Live.

Microsoft paid $US240M ($A338M) for a 1.6% stake in Facebook.

You can test all of Microsoft’s Windows & software when the BETA version is released. If you can not wait until then, check this out.

With the recent published article on Jicola.com Blogs with Google soon to leave BETA stage, it has now happened.

After 10 Million active Google Chrome users and 14 release updates to the browser, Google has finally removed its BETA tag. Users feedback of the browsers suggested that Chrome had “Better stability and performance of plug-ins (particularly video), even more speed, Bookmark manager and privacy controls.”

With security being a major issue on the online world, Google Chrome has an unique sandbox technology including a safe browsing option.

Even though the BETA tag is gone, their are still plenty more improvements that need to be done. This includes RSS support, form autofills, an extension platform and compatibility with Linux and Mac.

If you already have Google Chrome, don’t reinstall it, the auto update system which is implemented in the browser will ensure you get the latest bug fixes and security patches. Just click on the spanner button, go to ‘about Google Chrome’ and click on update.

With Chrome out of BETA, the war begins over the Internet between Microsoft and Google.

Other Google vs Microsoft Wars

Search Engine: Google vs Live

Email: Gmail vs Hotmail

Web Browsers: Chrome vs Internet Explorer

Online Docs: Google Docs vs Microsoft Office

Instant Chat: Google Talk vs Windows Live Messenger

via Google Blog

The ever growing web browser Google Chrome is soon to be released from BETA stage. This will provide heavy competition on Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, which Google helped promote through the Google Adsense program.

With Google out of Beta, their motives is to get computer makes to bundle Chrome with their computer systems.

However, their is no set date when Google Chrome will come out of BETA, but we all know it will decrease other browsers popularity.

Since Google Chrome was released in September, 3.1% of web surfers use the browsers. 26.6% for IE7, 20.0% for IE6 and 44.2% for Firefox. (w3schools)

Jicola has now launched their famous search engine Powersearch Version 2.0 for BETA release. This version now utilises a MySQL database to record search queries so you can stay up-to-date with what your visitors are search for. It also allows you to make money through your Google Adsense account. You can download powersearch and posts comments about it in its form located at http://jicola.com/forum?func=showcat&catid=11

Version 2 has many more features to come. The incorporation of an Admin Panel which allows you to view search queries through your web browser and allow you to configure the settings of powersearch without manually editing the config file.

Powersearch is one of the most popular free search engine download available on the Internet