The VanityRing doesn’t have a jewel, instead it shows the number of hits one gets, when he searches Google for the name of the person who wears it, a more adequate value in our time. It is personalized using a custom software, and after the name is typed the ring will change its display to show the personal “attention carats”, while every night, when it is inserted into its docking station the ring is reloaded and updated.

- via BoingBoing

Search queries can be typed in english as usual and google suggest will suggest hindi transliterated suggestions.

Google says that most people hit with a PageRank decrease will likely notice this, and then they can request a review.

Full article here.

http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-09-04-n51.html

The search giant has notified a number of Web publishers in the last few days that they will be dropped from its popular “AdSense” program starting June 1.

More details

October 6 2006 Techcrunch has a post titled Completely Unsubstantiated Google/YouTube Rumor about the possible acquisition of YouTube by Google based on an Email which was confirmed later on by some VC. Michael Arrington of TechCrunch claims the source on this one to be really good and puts a 40% probability of deal going through.

October 6 2006 Wall Street Journal reports about the deal based on the above post from TechCrunch.

October 6 2006 TechCrunch now has a post titled WSJ reports Google and YouTube are in acquisition talks

Then over the weekend this news started appearing on almost every news site and blog based on TechCrunch and WSJ reporting about it. Neither Google nor Youtube confirms  that such a disucssion is going on.

October 9 2006 TechCrunch has one more post titled Will GoogleTube Be Announced This Week? based on reports in WSJ and NYTimes and rumours… which were again based on reports from TechCrunch. Here is an excerpt from the post

“…The Google/YouTube acquisition rumors developed quickly over the last few days. After our initial post discussing the rumor, the WSJ (behind a paywall) and the NY Times quickly followed up with their own articles. Neither publication contacted me, and I have no idea who their sources are…

“…We don’t have any additional verified information, other than a bizarre story Marshall Kirkpatrick was tracking and that developed on Friday and Saturday. We got word that a lawyer representing Google may have told at least one person that the “deal has officially gone through.” The person who was supposedly told this then sent an email out to a number of people summarizing the conversation, which we got wind of. I spoke to the attorney, who denied having “any knowledge of the deal” or making that statement. I also spoke to the person who wrote the email, who backtracked and stated that he exaggerated the lawyer’s statements, and that, in short, the email he wrote wasn’t true. At that point Marshall and I decided to drop it. But I will say this - the fact that the lawyer repeately told me that he had no knowledge of a deal instead of “no comment” means he was either lying (unlikely), that a deal is happening and he doesn’t know about it (unlikely), or that there is no deal. We’ll see.”

Nobody is sure about it but the news about the deal is spreading like a wild fire.

October 9 2006 TechCrunch has one more post  saying NYTimes is confirming the deal.

Wow!! The rumour mill’s running around in news circles(pun intended!) - NYtimes has reported that WSJ has reported that Reuters has reported that TechCrunch has reported that deal between Google and Youtube is going through…

O well! deal or no deal, the unsubstantiated rumour has definitely pushed up Google’s stock price as well as YouTube’s acquisition value.

Google product manager Tom Stocky said the Mountain View, California-based company is set to help programmers sift through billions of lines of computer source code using its familiar search box to uncover snippets of reusable software.

“For a long time it has been sort of an unsolved problem,” said Stocky, a product manager in the developer products group. “It is hard to find references to this sort of data.”

Google has been taking series of initiatives catering to developers like

• Google Summer of Code
• Google Projects
• Project Hosting

This places them in direct competition with http://www.koders.com and http://www.krugle.com/

Google in association with Frankfurt Book Fair Literacy Campaign (LitCam) and
UNESCO’s Institute for Lifelong Learning Launches Literacy Project site.

More information is at Google blog.

Site uses Google projects like Google Book search, Google Scholar, Google Video, Google Maps, Google Blogger and Google Groups.

Video section… purpose is to “See what literacy organisations, schools, and educators around the world are doing to promote literacy or share your own project with the world.”

The very first video is a song from Bollywood movie… to promote literacy wow!!.

In the map section only literacy organisation in India is in east of india with address of Rajasthan which is in west india. Grossly misplaced.
One more pre-baked offering from Google kitchen.

The site is available in German and English.

This is straight from Writely help.

“No need to wait until Writely registration opens up again. When you have a Writely account, you have the power to get your 12 friends in immediately. Just add them as collaborators on a Writely document and click “OK” to email them. You can invite up to 50 new people by adding them as collaborators to Writely documents.”

http://www.google.com/support/writely/bin/answer.py?answer=39642&ctx=sibling