Earth to the Enterprise

With more than 200 million downloads and counting, Google Earth is known around the world. Less well-known is our Google Earth Enterprise which companies, organizations and government agencies use to view their global data and imagery. Experts and amateurs alike use it for everything from designing new buildings to exploring for energy to responding to emergencies, because Google Earth Enterprise offers access to geospatial info that was once limited to specialty applications.

For instance, check out Dell's implementation showing a geographic view of traffic to Dell.com:



Today, we're releasing the latest version, which makes it easy to publish and view Google Earth datasets in 2D using a browser. By accessing Google Earth Enterprise from a web browser, employees across an organization will benefit from the rich geographic tapestry.

Like making videos? Love Gmail?

A couple weeks back, some of us on the Gmail team were talking about how simple it's become to connect with people around the world through email. And we got to thinking: what if email was delivered via a Rube Goldberg machine, but instead of gears and levers, people on everything from bicycles to submarines brought messages from one place to another? So we had a little fun with a collaborative video depicting just that (well, not the submarines).

Now it's time to let everyone in on the action. Learn more at our new Gmail Blog, or go directly to http://mail.google.com/mvideo where you'll find directions on how to submit your clip.

Yahoo India Hit With More Copyright Complaints

Yahoo Inc.'s problems with Indian bloggers over unauthorized reproduction of their content on its Indian portals may be just beginning.

Bloggers claim they have identified more instances of their content being reproduced without permission on Yahoo's Indian portals. Yahoo's Indian subsidiary has yet to come up with an appropriate response that satisfies the bloggers.

After bloggers complained about Yahoo India's unauthorized publication of recipes from a blogger called Su, the subsidiary apologized on Thursday. In a statement, it said it regretted any inconvenience caused by the inadvertent posting of the recipe without attribution on its Malayalam-language portal.

Yahoo did not refer to Su or her blog by name, and also blamed the mistake on its content provider Webdunia.com (India) Pvt. Ltd. A Malayalam-language version of the statement was posted by Yahoo on its Malayalam portal, but that did not satisfy the bloggers.

The issue is not about Yahoo publishing her content without attribution, said Su reacting to Yahoo's statement in an e-mail Saturday. The bloggers, whose content she said was stolen, are fighting against Yahoo violating their copyrights, she wrote.

Su has demanded a written apology from Yahoo for allegedly stealing her blog content. The blogger describes herself as a housewife from Kerala in south India in her blog.

She said that her next step would be to take the dispute to court on a number of charges including copyright violation, if "Yahoo keeps on washing their hands off and tries to do a mockery of an apology."

Bloggers in India are also compiling a list of content allegedly stolen from them by Yahoo's content provider, and posted to Yahoo's portals in India. The 12 incidents of copyright violation and content theft identified so far may be only be the tip of the iceberg, a blogger wrote Sunday.

The content on Yahoo's seven Indian languages portals is provided by Webdunia.com under the express representation that Webdunia.com has all the necessary rights and authorization for all the content provided by them, Yahoo India said last week. Yahoo India did not comment on the most recent allegations by bloggers, but a spokeswoman said on Monday that the company is likely to issue another statement soon.

Google May Pay Another $1B for YouTube

Google's plans to combat piracy on YouTube may be too little, too late, if Viacom gets its way. The media giant has sued Google for a billion dollars in damages for infringing the copyrights on at least 160,000 media clips snatched from programming on MTV, VH1, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and other cable networks.

MTV's parent company Viacom (NYSE: VIAb) Latest News about Viacom is seeking more than US$1 billion in damages from YouTube Latest News about YouTube and its owner Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Latest News about Google for thousands of alleged copyright infringements.

A complaint filed by the media giant in U.S. District Court in New York contends that almost 160,000 clips of Viacom's programming have been made available on YouTube without authorization, and that those clips were viewed more than 1.5 billion times.

In addition to MTV, Viacom also owns a number of other cable networks including VH1, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon.

Stealing Efforts?

The New York-based company charges that YouTube, which Google acquired late last year in a $1.6 billion stock deal, is a for-profit organization that has "built a lucrative business out of exploiting the devotion of fans to others' creative works" in order to enrich itself and its corporate parent Google.

"There is no question that YouTube and Google are continuing to take the fruit of our efforts without permission," the company said, "destroying enormous value in the process."

The value of those efforts, according to Viacom, rightfully belongs to the writers, directors and talent who create the entertainment, as well as companies like Viacom that invest in its development and production.
Legal Battles

Google has been hoping to avoid this type of legal confrontation. In an attempt to fend off growing criticism, the search giant recently decided to tackle copyright issues head on by offering antipiracy technologies to stop unauthorized video-sharing.

The tool is designed to help media companies identify and remove pirated videos uploaded by users, the search giant said.

However, little technical information about the antipiracy software has been forthcoming from Google, said Forrester Research Analyst James McQuivey.

"It is very hard to do," he told TechNewsWorld. "You can't push a button and make it happen."
Protecting Partners

Compounding the issue, said McQuivey, is the fact that Google has told content providers it would release the tool to its own partners before anyone else.

"Then we get into the issue of 'Do we have to sign a deal before they enforce the copyright laws?'" said McQuivey.
Media Groups

Several media groups have been involved in a pitched battle with Web sites like YouTube and MySpace Latest News about MySpace -- which also has been accused of illegally hosting Get FREE CDN for 3 Months. PEER 1 Dedicated Hosting. Click Here. copyrighted material.

Universal Music Group, the world's biggest record company, late last year accused YouTube of being a serial copyright infringer, and CEO Doug Morris blasted the outfit during a recent Merrill Lynch investors' conference speech.
Generating Revenues

Now, Viacom claims YouTube's strategy has been to avoid taking proactive steps to curtail the infringement on its site, while generating significant traffic and revenues for itself. In turn, it has shifted the entire burden and cost of monitoring YouTube onto the "victims of its infringement."

If Google's momentum is slowed at all as a result of the suit, media companies can expect other firms like AOL Video and iFilm to cozy up to them quickly, says McQuivey -- and the feelings will likely be mutual.

"Media companies are going to want to punish Google a little," he said.

A YouTube representative could not immediately be reached for this article.

Google Updates Desktop Search

Google has released a new version of its desktop search tool, adding a preview feature to help find information more quickly and making some improvements to the interface design.

The update, Google Desktop Version 5, also has some new security features to fight phishing and other online attacks. Its release comes after security researchers reported some security holes in the search tool last month.

Google Desktop is a free downloadable tool that indexes the content on a PC, including e-mail, text documents and Web pages visited, and makes it available for searching. It also includes "gadgets," or small applications that sit on the desktop and display news headlines, a calendar, a to-do list, and other information.

Competing tools are available from both Microsoft and Yahoo.
New Features

A search in Google Desktop produces a list of results, including the file name and a snippet of the text. Several results can sometimes look similar, so Google has added a preview tool in version 5 that can show the contents of a file without having to launch the application it was created with, it said.

The update also aims to fight phishing and malicious code hidden in Web sites. If a user clicks on a Web link in an e-mail message or other document, the new Google Desktop will alert the user if it thinks the Web site is going to try to steal information or download malicious code.

Version 5 also updates the sidebar, a vertical control panel on the left of the screen. It can now "sample" the color of wallpaper on a PC and change its color to blend in, Google said. It also updates the appearance of the gadgets to make them easier to sort through and view.

The new version, which is still in beta like a lot of other Google software, was announced Tuesday in the Google Desktop Blog.
Other Efforts

Google Desktop has come under fire from security researchers in recent weeks. In February, researchers at Watchfire said they'd found a flaw that could allow attackers to read files or run unauthorized software on systems running Google Desktop. Google patched the flaw, but the researchers said the software could be vulnerable to similar threats in the future. They reported a second flaw later in the month, and Google began investigating it.

Google is also trying to enter the broader desktop productivity market. In February, it launched a suite of Web-based software called Google Apps Premier Edition, which analysts say could become a competitor to Microsoft Office.

My Yahoo Upgrade Coming Soon

Yahoo Inc.'s My Yahoo service, which lets users aggregate content and services on a single Web page, will soon get a significant upgrade, the company's chief executive officer said Tuesday.

The enhancement to My Yahoo is part of the company's continued emphasis on giving its users tools to personalize their Internet experience, said CEO Terry Semel at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference in San Francisco, which was webcast.

"In the next few weeks, you'll see My Yahoo take on a new form and a new shape," Semel said. "We've been working on it for some time."

My Yahoo was launched in July 1996, and as such is a precursor to the many customizable Web pages and personalization services that came later and are a standard feature of many news sites and consumer and enterprise portals.

At My Yahoo, people can access services like Yahoo Mail and choose, to an extent, the types of news, information and sources that get featured on the page.

Some of My Yahoo's most recent enhancements, introduced over two years ago, include support for content syndication feeds like RSS and Atom and a version for mobile devices.

Yahoo To Preview Messenger For Windows Vista

Yahoo will give users a preview of what it will be like to use a new and improved version of Yahoo Messenger on Microsoft's Windows Vista at the 2007 International Consumer Electronics Show this year.

Yahoo will show off an early version of Yahoo Messenger optimized for Vista, with new features that take advantage of some of the user interface enhancements Microsoft has added to the OS.

"It feels very much at home as though it's living and breathing in Windows Vista," said Joshua Jacobson, a Yahoo senior product manager, of the version of Messenger built for Vista. The company plans to release a beta of the application in the second quarter of 2007, and a final version should be available four to six weeks after that, pending feedback, he said.
New Features

Windows Vista is already available for business users, and is expected to be available to consumers on Jan. 30.

Yahoo used the new GUI (graphical user interface) development framework in Vista called Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) as the basis for several of the new features of Messenger. New abilities to scale up in size the avatar and contact information for people in a user's contact list, a color wheel that allows users to choose a new color for Messenger's skin, and a feature that shows a large-sized emoticon that goes beyond the boundaries of the Messenger window before shrinking to its normal size all use WPF, Jacobson said.

Yahoo also has added a feature called Yahoo Show and Tell that allows users who are connecting via voice on Messenger to share photos so they can converse or send IMs (instant messages) about them while they are talking. Eventually, Messenger will allow users to share videos this way as well, Jacobson said.
Tabs Similar To Firefox

Another new feature in the Vista version of Messenger follows the lead of both Internet Explorer 7 -- the browser included in Vista -- and Mozilla's Firefox browser. Like those applications, which allow users to create tabs for new browser windows to more efficiently keep track of where they are surfing, Yahoo Messenger will do the same for instant messages, Jacobson said.

The application does not automatically create tabs as some IM software does, however; it lets users create the tabs themselves so they have control over which conversations they would like tabbed, he said.
Voice Visualization

Finally, Yahoo has added a new "voice visualization" feature to Messenger that lets Vista users see their voice on the IM window coming through as a visual sound wave, Jacobson said. This will help let them know if the person they are speaking with can hear them and if their voice is at an appropriate volume level, as well as to make the connection between users a more "intimate" experience, he said.

"We're trying to let people express themselves through Messenger and make it more engaging to communicate," Jacobson said.

Yahoo will be exhibiting at CES, which is being held this week through Thursday in Las Vegas.