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Google's Social Search and DiscoveryFebruary 7

Over the past year, 'discovery' (or the 'art of finding people and articles of interest on the web) has gotten both easier and more difficult.

Easier in the sense than there are now many more tools to sort through the so-called 'noise'.

Harder in the sense that the entire free world has descended on social media sites and services, and the lines are quickly blurring as to how much we can take in each day and from where (or whom).

Once relegated to social 'voting' sites such as Digg, discovery has matured, with people sharing information on services such as Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook and others.

A couple of weeks ago, Google announced 'Google Social Search', a new feature built in to Google that allows you to see who you're connected to across the web and numerous platforms.

While the somewhat subtle feature received some launch press, I didn't read anything about anyone taking it for a serious spin OR what the future implications and/or uses may be.

Google has been moving social in a measured way, connecting services such as GMail, Google Reader, Blogger and many other internal services. However, the Google social infrastructure has been some fragmented and Google's actual social initiative, Google Friend Connect, has been slow to take off. (This, aside from Orkut, Google's original social experiment, which still retains strength in South America and other areas).

While logged in this morning I decided to wander over to Google Social Search.  As an 'early adopter', I already had a pretty extensive network there prior to even looking at it.

What I found the most interesting was the stream of 'how' I was connected to people across the web.  Even more interesting was how the people I enjoy reading the most are connected to others .... and looking at why.

In minutes, I had come across LOTS of interesting and informative blogs and people I hadn't been tuned in to before.  It was eye-opening (and that's an understatement).

While Facebook, Twitter, and other services easily allow you to see who others are following, this latest product from Google had already scanned all types of social networks and services and even provided a window into who was reproducing some of my own content that was much more in-depth than Google Alerts.

While some rail Google for the amount of information they are harvesting every second, what most people don't realize is there are factually opt-out privacy measures for almost all of them.

If you don't, and choose to be 'visible', this new vehicle could prove to be a valuable addition to your networking toolkit and easily help you tune in to what you have time to read on the Internet each day.

The original launch video is below.  It provides a good overview of what you can do with Google Social Search.  I'm sure there are more than a few of you that either missed this one or would want to check it out.

Great weekend all
Charlie

Twitter Wants You to Change Your Password!February 2

In a post a short time ago, Twitter urged users to change their passwords.

Like many other high-profile websites in recent weeks, it seems the popular social networking site is seeing their share of server attacks, the most recent of which is coming from the Torrent world.

One of the results has been an usual climb in the number of followers for "a couple of accounts over the last five days".

"It appears that for a number of years, a person has been creating torrent sites that require a login and password as well as creating forums set up for torrent site usage and then selling these purportedly well-crafted sites and forums to other people innocently looking to start a download site of their very own.  However, these sites came with a little extra — security exploits and backdoors throughout the system."

The complete post from Del Harvey, Twitter's Director of Trust and Safety can be found here.

Bottom line.  Twitter users ... change your password.

Google News - What are those Stars?February 2

Google News users awoke this morning to a slight change in the page layout.

Small stars have been placed to the left of story headlines.

You will need to be logged in to your Google account for this new functionality to work or clicking on a star will take you directly to the log-in page.

Essentially, 'starring' a story block in Google News lets Google know that you're interested in this story, and when there are significant updates, the story headlines will be in bold .... and they will also be placed in a new 'starred' folder for later viewing.

The result is automatic and immediate :

Google (as always) wants your feedback. There's a link for your thoughts in the new blog post on this feature from Google News

Microsoft deadlines approaching - Are you ready? (Updated)February 1

By most accounts, millions of tech-saavy people as well as curiosity seekers downloaded the Windows 7 Release Candidate, and, there's a good chance that millions are still using it.

I suppose it was generous of Microsoft in a way to give this pre-release version away but at the same time, the Beta then RC testers were the people (unpaid) that helped the company debug Windows 7 or bring up other issues in forums and on their own blogs.

Technically (or officially?), at this time, there is no upgrade pricing for RC users. Whether it should have been a 'gift' or have a price, that, to me, seems like a mistake.

Here's the current timeline for Windows 7 RC users:

While Microsoft's earnings this past week showed that lots of copies are being sold, the question becomes how many and to whom .... and .... Is the rest of the world ready for the end-of-support for both Windows XP AND Vista?

Windows XP support and Vista support are both set to expire on July 13, 2010.

Despite the fact that Microsoft has extended XP support several times, there are still mill

Google's Chrome Browser updates to New Level 5January 30

It wasn't that long ago that Google threw a shock wave through the  tech world by announcing their own web browser, competing directly with Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Mozilla's Firefox, Apple's Safari and others, including the recently upgraded Opera.

Google Chrome debuted as a lightweight (meaning small program size with a very low drain on system resources.... rendering it quick) piece of software that many embraced right out of the box.

The biggest complaint at the time came from Apple users who didn't get their own version (since rectified).

Chrome essentially comes in three flavors.  For the general audience, a 'stable' channel.  For the braver bunch,  a 'beta' channel, and for developers, yes, a 'developer' channel.

Late today, after numerous upgrades and numerous feature additions over a VERY short timeline, several of us noticed something significant in the numbering sequence.

The developer channel, late today, moved above 5.0.