Google is reknown for launching brilliant services, offering it free to use with little if not any monetization model at all on the service, in then move on politely to kill the next big thing. They did this with mail with the launch of their GMail service, with Picasa, the photo management software and site, GTalk, the IM and VOIP service, etc. Disruptive technologies with high impact viral marketing from the geek world with their blogs, Twitter accounts and other sharing platforms work for Google.

Their latest offering is a stab at content sharing and uses GMail as a platform to house the technology and fuses the concepts of Google Wave, Twitter and GMail into a seamless inteface that is usable, easy to understand and practical.

The biggest advantage that it has to other services, is that all Google products use the same consolidated Contacts list. Google Buzz looks to integrate Twitter, Picasa, Flickr, YouTube, etc.

Here is a video released by Google to highlight the concept of Google Buzz:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi50KlsCBio&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

GMail has really grown up since its launch as it now hosts mail, IM, docs, and now Buzz. Best of all, it’s available for mobile too!

I have been lucky enough to score a Google Wave invite a few weeks ago from @mandalareopens and have been using it a fair bit. It’s a true paradigm shift in the way we communicate and I’ve been truly excited about it, since the first time I saw the Wave intro video months back.

Anywho, I have been blessed with a few Google Wave invitations to hand out and I’ll be giving away ten of them right here on my blog. All you need to do, is connect with me on Twitter and send me a DM with a valid GMail email address. The first 10 DM’s will each receive an invite. My ID is @DChetty!

I would really appreciate it, if these accounts go to people who will actually use them. So if you don’t know what Twitter or Wave is or if you know that you won’t really be using the Wave account, please do not enter.

If you already have a Wave account and would like to connect, comment here and I will contact you with my Wave ID.

HTC has announced the official arrival of its latest Android powered handset in the form of the HTC Hero.

Sporting a heavy weight processor by Qualcomm, the  MSM7200A™, 528 MHz power house, the handset is set to be touch-phone king’s most prized handset and weighing in at just under 135grams inclusive of the battery, it is safe to say that the hardware manufacturer has done its best work with the HTC Hero, especially considering that it also includes all the usual RAH RAH features like wifi, Bluetooth, GPS, 3.2″ TFT-LCD HVGA screen with enough colours to have you asking yourself if you REALLY need so many :p,  etc etc.

The official press release reads as follows:

HTC HERO AVAILABLE IN S.A

POWER OF GOOGLE, FREEDOM OF ANDROID

Johannesburg, South Africa, 29 September 2009, Leaf International Communications, the ex

clusive distributors of HTC handsets in South Africa, today announced the much anticipated launch of the HTC Hero.

“The HTC Hero is a blend of form and function, taking the Android operating system functionality to a league of its own,” says Quinton Leigh, Managing Director of Leaf International Communications. “The HTC Hero is the world’s first Android-based phone with a customised user interface that allows for a level of customisation never before experienced on a mobile phone. With the new HTC Hero, you are not getting a phone, but rather, you are choosing a phone which gets YOU!”

The Hero is the first phone to embody HTC Sense – an intuitive and seamless experience that will be introduced across a portfolio of future HTC phones. HTC Sense is focused on putting people at the centre by making your phone work in a more simple and natural way. This experience revolves around three fundamental principles that were designed by quietly listening and observing how people live and communicate – true customisation, people-centric communication and unexpected simplification.

“HTC Hero introduces a more natural way for reaching out to the people and accessing your important information, not by following the status quo of today’s phones, but by following how you communicate and live your life,” said Peter Chou, Chief Executive Officer, HTC Corporation. “HTC Sense is a distinct experience created to make HTC phones simpler for people to use, leaving them saying, “it just makes sense”.

Another exciting feature which is unique to the HTC Hero is “scenes”. With this function, your HTC Hero has the ability to become multiple phones in one – you can create and switch between scenes that reflect different moments in your life…. at the touch of a button. You know the difference between the “work you” and “weekend you” – so should your phone!

And with 7 customisable screens to play with per “scene”, you can have instant access to all your important content – ALL ON THE SURFACE OF YOUR PHONE – not hidden under layers of menus.

It’s your phone, so enjoy the freedom to add “quick-glance” widgets and applications that push content to the surface and help you stay on top of the news, relax with your favourite tunes or catch up with your friends on facebook or twitter.

With its 3.2-inch HVGA display, the HTC Hero is optimised for Web and multimedia content while maintaining a small form factor that fits comfortably in your hand and against your face. It also boasts a broad variety of hardware features including a GPS, digital compass, gravity-sensor, 3.5mm stereo headset jack, a 5 mega-pixel autofocus camera and expandable MicroSD memory.

Other features include a dedicated Search button that goes beyond basic search, providing a more natural, contextual search experience.  This functionality enables users to search through Twitter, locate people in the contact list, read emails in the Inbox, and search in any other area of the phone.

And, all of this before you even start exploring the amazing world of Android Market – where you can download literally thousands of free and exciting applications for your new HTC Hero.

The HTC Hero…whatever, whenever, wherever…let’s go!

The HTC Hero is expected to be available from 7th October 2009 in South Africa at selected stores.

Google Street View has been criticized for quite a few controversial images that it has on its service and there have been quite a few funny ones that I have seen, but this one is just brilliant

Click on the image to view full screen!

Google has launched a new service for trend monitoring geeks who find this info important. Bloggers are the most likely user of this service, called Google Insights for Search.

With Google Insights for Search, you can investigate popular searches, compare the popularity of different searches and get a general insight into the zeitgeist.

As of today, Insights also offers a couple of new services. You can now see forecasts of future search trends for certain queries, based on an extrapolation of historical trends and search patterns. In addition, you can now visualize the way interest in given terms has changed over time, using the animated map feature. These maps show an animated depiction of how search interest changes over time in different locations.

Whether you are an advertiser looking to expand keyword lists, an economist analyzing economic trends, or even if you are just looking to settle a popularity contest, Google Insights for Search can help provide the answers. With insights you can:

• See projected future interest in a given term – using the forecasting feature, you can see a forecast of future searches for many different queries.
• See an animated map - watch the way global interest in a particular subject has changed over time.
• Embed comparison charts on your website - you can now easily embed any of the graphs produced by Insights for Search in your website.
• Search trends over time - See how user interest rises and falls around a particular subject. Type in more than one keyword, separated by a comma, to compare keyword popularity.
• Regional interest – See which countries, cities and regions are most interested in a certain topic; click on a part of the heat-map to see more about search volume in a specific region.
• Top and rising related searches – find out what queries related to your own are most popular, and which ones are gaining in popularity.
• Refine your insights searches by category – see top searches in a category–rising searches in ‘Celebrities’, for example, or popular searches in ‘Vehicle Brands’. Specify by date, region or subject to get more detailed results. You can also find the general trends in a category by not entering any search term at all, giving you a broad view of trends in that category.

“Insights for Search offers a glimpse into the spirit of the times,” said Yossi Matias, Director of the Google Israel R&D Center, where Trends and Insights for Search are developed. “What the world is searching for offers an insight into what’s interesting to people around the world. An understanding of broad as well as particular trends can be useful for advertisers, marketers, economists and everyday people interested in knowing more about their world.”

To check out Google Insights for Search, go to www.google.com/insights/search

The guys at Google have announced that they have recreated the way we communicated with a project that they have called Google Wave. The project has not yet been released to the public, though developers have been invited to soak their teeth into the API and develop applications for the open source project.

From the various press-releases and the Official Google Wave Keynote Video, it is very clear the Wave will change the way we communicate.

The premise is that Wave integrates multiple levels of communication into a single application that supports multi-protocol technologies to interact with eachother. So a fusion of Mail, IM, Document Management and File Storage into one platform that allows its users to interact amongst them seamlessly.

The brains behind the project explains it, as found on the Google Blog:

Here’s how it works: In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It’s concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use “playback” to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.

What’s important to note, is that Google Wave was conceptualized and developed by the brains behind Google Maps, so you can definitely expect to be awed cos these guys are serious innovators!

Watch the Official Keynote Video here:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_UyVmITiYQ&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

You can be sure to expect more here as and when I hear more.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_UyVmITiYQ&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

I found this article on how to get Silverlight to run on Google’s browser, Chrome. It seems like a simple and easy to follow how-to guide.

Give it a shot and let me know how it works out for you!

When Twitter first launched, I looked at the whole thing and I just didn’t get it! I couldn’t understand one simple principle, “Why?”

I started using the service and after following a few people, I sat back waiting for the answer. Nada, Nothing, Zilch! I still didn’t get the whole point of Twitter. I owned the blog that you are reading right now and I used it as a platform to communicate my stories to the world in a lot more than 140 characters, I had multiple IM accounts that I have so wonderfully aggregated using Digsby, I had a Facebook account with “friends” that I knew, “friends” that I met once, “friends” that I didn’t like and “friends” that didn’t deserve the title of “friend” but I knew them none-the-less!

My curiosity and stubbornness prevailed and today, my Twitter account stands tall after 923 updates, 130 followers and me wired into the minds of 158 other Twitter users! I get news faster than BBC can deliver it, I get links of interesting articles faster than I can browse for them myself, I get a live search engine that updates itself faster than Google with a more relevant search result as it is purely user recommended content, I can speak to 130 ppl at once and raise an army within seconds!

Anyway, the point is, the big kahuna at Google (Eric Schmidt, the CEO) has recently (late yesterday afternoon) said that and lemme quote here, “Speaking as a computer scientist, I view all of these as sort of poor man’s email systems.”

Eeeerrhhh, Chyna, don’t be a wet rag, catch a wake up!

Further, he goes on to say,

“In other words, they have aspects of an email system, but they don’t have a full offering. To me, the question about companies like Twitter is: Do they fundamentally evolve as sort of a note phenomenon, or do they fundamentally evolve to have storage, revocation, identity, and all the other aspects that traditional email systems have? Or do email systems themselves broaden what they do to take on some of that characteristic?

I think the innovation is great. In Google’s case, we have a very successful instant messaging product, and that’s what most people end up using.

Twitter’s success is wonderful, and I think it shows you that there are many, many new ways to reach and communicate, especially if you are willing to do so publicly.”

Just give it time dude! Hang in there and you’ll get it! With that said, Eric then went on to advertise Google’s Twitter account, @google!

I’ve always been criticised about my Google world domination comments, but I will continue to support the notion that if ever a company takes over the world, Google should be it! I simply couldn’t help but smile when Google actively got involved in Obama’s campaign, when Google launched a blog dedicated to Public Policy and when Eric Schmidt spoke about his Energy Security Strategy!

A few months ago, the Big-G, surprised us all by launching a web browser that that they have built without a whisper of it ever happening. Taking us all by surprise, Chrome was launched and distribution was super successful. Its worth is still up for debate: I’m leaning towards Firefox on this one!

Google Desktop was also another reason to get all ansy about the search giant moving towards a full blown OS, but the biggest indication of such trends came when Google launched their mobile OS, Android. Rumours have consistently surfaced about an OS from Google, but no credible evidence has emerged.

However, the guys at Net Applications, a market research company, has discovered that about a third of all Google staff are using a deliberately masked indentification string. It seems that the OS version used by Googles staff is currently being labelled as “Withheld”. Is this the biggest sign yet that Googles world domination will kick off by taking on the PC OS market next?

What about the launch of a cloud computing powered OS designed to further drive the semantic web into a whole new domain? Your guess is as good as mine here, but you can betcha your bottom dollar that I’m excited!