Google is making familiar tools like email and office applications much more collaborative than traditional software, but with Google Wave, we started with a blank slate to try new approaches to teamwork without the constraints of existing applications. Today – one year after first introducing Wave – we’re extending Google Wave (Labs) to businesses, schools and organizations to let more people try this tool and to learn how we can improve the Google Apps suite.

Since we began previewing Google Wave last fall, we’ve consistently heard …

Read more at: http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/landing/translateforanimals/
Download the app at:
___________
See also this, if you can bark in Japanese,

From the Google Voice Blog:

It’s impossible to watch the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake without wondering how one can contribute in helping the thousands of families who lost everything in this disaster.
Google set up a disaster relief page, which includes information and resources for anyone interested in helping out, and the Google Voice team also wanted to respond in our own way.
Particularly in the wake of such a catastrophe, for people in the US who have family in Haiti, it is critical to …

Old media loves nothing quite so much as writing about their own impeding death. And we always enjoy adding our own two cents – the AP not knowing what YouTube is, the NYTimes guys reading TechCrunch every day, etc.
Speaking broadly, I like what Reuters, Rupert Murdoch and Eric Schmidt are saying: the industry is in crisis, and the daring innovators will prevail. Personally, I still think the best way forward for the best journalists, if not the brands they currently work for, is to leave those brands and do …

(NOT the actual Google Phone)
A post on the Official Google Blog confirms the company is currently “dogfooding” a “mobile lab” device. Beyond that, we’re still in the dark, but it all falls in line with what we heard before. Updated:
Google isn’t saying much, but the way the post ends with “We hope to share more after our dogfood diet” suggests that there’s something coming. It’s much more coy than their usual outright denials (by the way, Google, what about those?).
Read more at: GIZMODO
Related news: Google Phone (HTC Passion?) being …

Each Winter, the United States Congress adjourns through the end of the year. Before that recess occurs, there’s usually a flurry of legislative activity happening to squeeze it in before the break, during which time nothing gets done. This week, there has been a curious amount of activity coming out of Google at a time when many companies are in holiday mode. And guess what? It’s the same idea.
Okay, not exactly the same, people at Google are still working, but apparently Google has a “code freeze” policy that goes …

Who will emerge victorious in the fight for the future?

Back in the good old days, Microsoft did desktops, Google stuck to search and Apple made toys for people in polo necks. No more.
The superpowers of the technology world are at war, and like real wars, the battle is happening on several fronts. They’re fighting on the desktop, they’re fighting on mobile phones, they’re fighting in the browser and they’re fighting in your front room.
Who will prevail, and who will end up in a bunker? We chart the key battlegrounds …

Found in my inbox:

Hi there,
Thanks for signing up to hear from us regarding Google Chrome for Mac! We’re excited to let you know that Google Chrome is now available in beta for Mac OS X.
Here are a few fun facts from us on the Google Chrome for Mac team:

73,804 lines of Mac-specific code written
29 developer builds
1,177 Mac-specific bugs fixed
12 external committers and bug editors to the Google Chrome for Mac code base, 48 external code contributors
64 Mac Minis doing continuous builds and tests
8,760 cups of soft drinks and coffee …

Everyone likes a good riddle, and when the riddle has embedded an iconic name like Albert Einstein or Google, it makes for a more intriguing reading and conversation topic.
I am sure that I am not the only one who bookmarked The Business Insider’s article: 15 Google Interview Questions That Will Make You Feel Stupid (GOOG), as well as emailed to a few friends. Having been on both sides of the equation, both serving riddles as part of interviewing candidates (many times), and as part of an interview process; I …

Google has just announced that it has acquired AdMob, the mobile ad platform that has been especially popular on the iPhone, for $750 million. This is a big win for the company’s early investors, which include Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners (this is a huge day for Accel — they were also investors in Playfish, which was just acquired by EA). More recent investors include DFJ and Northgate Capital.
AdMob founder Omar Hamoui sent the following letter to customers:

Today we announced that AdMob has signed a definitive agreement to be …

Last month Skype was in talks to acquire VoIP startup Gizmo5. It was a perfect backup plan in case all that IP litigation didn’t work out. – Gizmo5’s SIP infrastructure could theoretically replace Skype’s proprietary P2P back end.
After the Skype settlement, though, Gizmo5’s strategic value to Skype sort of plummeted. In the meantime, Google bought them, say multiple sources with knowledge of the deal, for around $30 million in cash. The deal is done, say our sources, and will be announced shortly.
Read more at: Tech Crunch
___________
{Photography by Denbow}

Mountain View wants your exabyte

Google’s massively global infrastructure now employs a proprietary system that automatically moves and replicates loads between its mega data centers when traffic and hardware issues arise.
The distributed technology was first hinted at — in classically coy Google fashion — during a conference this summer, and Google fellow Jeff Dean has now confirmed its existence in a presentation (PDF) delivered at a symposium earlier this month.
The platform is known as Spanner. Dean’s presentation calls it a “storage and computation system that spans all our data centers …

Just about every big brand seemingly has a Twitter presence at this point, but which are generating the most buzz? TweetedBrands provides a simple answer to the question, by looking at the brands receiving the most mentions over the past 24 hours.
Not surprisingly, Twitter tops the list, and in fact, the first 9 brands listed are all Internet or tech related products. This makes sense – you’re a lot more likely to tweet about the various devices and services you’re using throughout the day than the brand of shoes …

eBay Link here
I want an invite myself! I did sign up looooooont time ago, alas I was not one of those lucky 100,000 men and women selected to be the pioneers of the “Wave”.
And then, each one of those selected will have 8 invites to share with their loved ones, or . . . with the highest bidders on eBay. It is nostalgically reminiscent of gmail’s early days. So, there is a float of 800,000 invites out there, not a bad number. If you read this and can you …

Today has been dominated by news and excitement surrounding Google Wave (), Google’s () new real-time communication platform that will launch to the public on September 30th. In fact, there’s been so much buzz that you might just not have enough time to read the thousands of articles being released on Google’s biggest product launch in recent memory.
To make sense of it all, we have compiled key information, definitions, and links related to the launch of Google Wave. This in-depth guide provides an overview of Google Wave, discusses the …

Voting ends Oct 8 at: Project10tothe100.com
___________

For a startup that was founded less than a year ago, Cloudera has seen some pretty amazing growth. Backed by an impressive list of investors and advisors and run by a team of experienced technology veterans, Cloudera commercially distributes and services Hadoop. It’s similar in theory to Red Hat’s distribution of Linux.
Hadoop is a Java software framework born out of an open-source implementation of Google’s published computing infrastructure which is fostered within the Apache Software Foundation. Hadoop supports distributed applications running on large clusters of commodity computers processing enormous …

At the end of July I declared my intention to quit the iPhone and AT&T, port my mobile phone number to Google Voice and use any mobile device that I pleased (or lots of them at once) in the future. Like others, I will no longer blindly follow all things Apple. Today I’m pleased to report a status update on those efforts: complete. I am no longer a member of the Cult of iPhone.
Porting my phone number to Google Voice was a three day process, which I was pre-warned …

Google on Wednesday said it will acquire On2 Technologies, a video compression company, for $106.5 million.
Under the terms of the stock swap, each share of On2 will be exchanged for $0.60 worth of Google common stock.
Google just made a few penny stock investors very happy. On2 shares closed at 38 cents a share on Tuesday.
Read more at: ZDNet
Related Links:

On2 Technology official Web Site
AMEX (ONT)

___________
{Photography by}

Should have seen this one coming, right? Google CEO Eric Schmidt has resigned from Apple’s board today citing a conflict of interest. Apple (Steve Jobs, in fact) says that “Unfortunately, as Google enters more of Apple’s core businesses, with Android and now Chrome OS, Eric’s effectiveness as an Apple board member will be significantly diminished, since he will have to recuse himself from even larger portions of our meetings due to potential conflicts of interest.” Android and Chrome OS — something had to give, but the timing sure does …