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One of the coolest features that comes with the Motorola Droid is the new Google Maps Navigation application. It provides free, voice-guided navigation for the Android 2.0 platform. Google decided to spread the Maps Navigation love around a bit and recently made the app available to devices running Android 1.6.

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Microsoft is reportedly discussing a deal that would see News Corporation remove its Web sites, such as the Wall Street Journal, from Google's index.

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Hey there, Word. How're things? Seems like you're doing okay. I hear you have a new release coming shortly, in Office 2010. In fact, I've been meaning to talk to you about that.

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The U.S. government's Apps.gov Web site provides new visibility into what federal agencies pay for cloud-based applications and commercial software, with offerings from vendors such as Hewlett-Packard, Jive, Microsoft, and Salesforce.com. One of the priciest products on the site: Google's Maps API, which lists for nearly a million dollars.

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Today Google shared some information about its upcoming Chrome OS. First, it said there are no betas, no devices, and the operating system is a full year away from actual launch. The good news is that Google open-sourced the code for Chrome OS today. Updated! Video included.

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Members of the media were invited to Google's headquarters for the official unveiling of Chrome OS, the new operating system from Google. Details were few and far between, but don't expect Chrome OS to become widely available until 2010.

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YouTube on Tuesday introduced YouTube Direct, a Web platform designed to help media organizations solicit, screen and rebroadcast video clips submitted by citizen journalists.

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Trained journalists are under increasing pressure from average citizens who are often first to take pictures, shoot video, and report on events as they unfold. Rather than pit them against one another for eyeballs, Google is unrolling YouTube Direct, a way for journalists to reach out to citizen contributors and re-broadcast their videos to regional or national audiences.

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Laugh (or cry) if you want. But with each successive release of Android, and with each new iteration of Chrome -- soon to be ChromeOS -- it's looking more and more like Linux's future as any kind of mainstream product is in Google's hands. There's a lesson here.

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Starting next week, YouTube users will be able to upload and watch high-definition videos in full 1080p resolution. Have a high-def video camera? Now you can put it to good use.

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Google's Chrome browser has been available to the Windows platform for well more than a year. Apple fans have been waiting -- impatiently -- for Google to show them some Chrome love. Turns out the wait is nearly over, as Google is preparing to release a beta version of Chrome for Apple computers in early December.

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Last time I checked, Google offered 7.39GB of Gmail storage to all users for free. I am using 64% of that total, or 4.79GB. If you're a real email hog, you can buy 20GB of additional storage for just $5 per year. The same applies to Picasa Web Albums.

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What's different about cloud computing versus the forms of computing that have gone before? It's really just a matter of scale, isn't it? The Google or Amazon.com or eBay data centers are maybe a little bigger than a big enterprise data center, right? Wrong. One answer lies in an example like Hadoop.

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In what could be called a thinly veiled attempt to shine up its image, Google is offering holiday travelers free Wi-Fi at approximately 47 U.S. airports from now until January 15, 2010. Make sure your employees are protected.

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Right now, Google Voice's primary function is to provide call-forwarding and message transcription services. That may change, however, with the reported purchase of Gizmo5 by Google.

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Having looked over Google's explanation of its Google Voice call blocking practices to the Federal Communications Commission, it's clear to me that U.S. telecommunications regulations need to be thrown out and re-written from the ground up.

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Google understands that sometimes people -- and businesses -- have to pack up and move on to some other service. It is now offering a tool for users of Google Docs whereby they can convert, zip, and download all of their documents at once.

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Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, says "the cloud" is a phenomenon that is bigger than the advent of the PC. I think he's almost got it right. Cloud is bigger than the PC Revolution, but it's big in part because it incorporates and extends the PC revolution to Internet server clusters. The cloud owes more to the PC than Eric acknowledges.

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Google has been busy this week. Beyond announcing a search deal with Twitter, it also brought more options to its RSS Reader, layers to Maps for Mobile, support for Windows 7, and customized mobile search.

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Google is going to launch a music service? Really? That's what reports suggest today, with informed sources confirming that Google is set to bow the service with partners LaLa and iLike -- complete with blessings from the four major record labels. Does Google really expect to be able to make money with this venture?

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This weekend Verizon Wireless kicked off an online and TV-based ad campaign that takes direct aim at Apple's iPhone. The ad taunts "Everything iDon't, Droid Does." Verizon's first Android phone -- made by Motorola -- is finally ready.

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Oh, this is awesome. Google is taking its street view idea, well, off road. Due to the limitations presented by the size of its street view cars, Google has created a street view trike that can go where the cars can't. Not only that, but it is opening up the floor to requests on where it sends the trike for mapping.

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Gmail users can take advantage of Gmail Labs to preview things such as YouTube videos and Picasa Web albums without leaving their Gmail inboxes. Now, users can do the same with Google Docs.

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Another day, another new Lab for Google's Gmail. This one handily prevents you from accidentally sending an email to the wrong Tom, Dick, or Harry (which, admittedly, I have done).

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Google on Tuesday introduced a new online graphics tool called Building Maker that allows users to create 3D buildings and place them in Google Earth.

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Users of Google Docs have long asked for one feature in particular: the ability to share entire folders of content with others. Today, that feature goes live. So does the ability to upload multiple files at once. Which one has you more excited?

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In Europe, where worries about Google's Street View imagery at one point led villagers in England to set up a roadblock and have generally enraged bureaucrats who believe that only the state should take pictures of people, Google has struggled to present the snapshots it takes on public roadways without being criticized for invading someone's privacy.

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IBM released a $3-a-month, online subscription email service this week, called LotusLive iNotes, and really, it had no choice but to get very aggressive on the SaaS front. I know of at least two big company CIOs that recently left Notes and migrated to Google Gmail or Microsoft Exchange online, after considering upgrades to both on-premises Notes and the existing Notes subscription service that starts at $8 a month.

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The former head of the Google Health team has launched a startup designed to allow people to get personalized medical advice on the Internet, based on their own e-health records. If it catches on, the service will accelerate the trend of people using Internet research to take charge of their own healthcare. That trend is both a help and a hindrance to healthcare providers, depending on the kind of information patients find online, and what the patients do with that information.

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Google's plan for world domination via its Chrome browser slammed headlong into reality when the company's technical elite realized that the average Joe doesn't know what a Web browser is.

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Performing searches on mobile phones -- especially those without readily accessible QWERTY keyboards -- can be a pain in the, er, thumb. Google recently made some changes to how local search works on mobile phones, and it requires fewer keystrokes.

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Google Wave is being made available on Wednesday to 100,000 or so developers, early adopters, and Google Apps customers. Unfortunately, cybercriminals are making the most of the launch: They've rolled out a blackhat SEO poisoning campaign to turn interest in Wave into a computer infection.

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Imagine for a moment what would happen if Adidas or Reebok began giving away free shoe liners for the ostensible purpose of making Nike shoes comfortable enough to wear. It would be something of a slap in the face to Nike.

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Google recently made a new version of Picasa available for desktop computers. Picasa 3.5 adds a nifty new feature in that it can group together collections of pictures based on the faces in them.

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In its second acquisition this year, Google has bought reCAPTCHA, a company that provides CAPTCHA images as a barrier to online fraud.

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Google's new Fast Flip is a half-baked attempt to solve two problems with one service, which isn't entirely a bad thing, since half-baked is in many cases better than raw.

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Yesterday, Google announced that it has a small team of engineers working in Chicago to make it easier for users to quit its various services. This is a novel and smart approach to building its brand.

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Over the past few weeks I've been keeping track of the different ways each Google service handles login procedures. I would have thought that once I am "cookied" by a Google service that all services would authenticate my session in the same manner but this is not the case.

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This week Google quietly updated some of the features within Google Voice. One new feature enables threaded SMS messaging conversations within Gmail, and the other eases the pain of listening to voicemails from within Gmail.

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Google's ongoing inability to anticipate the privacy concerns surrounding its services is baffling. The company should know better by now, given its ongoing struggles with Street View and search privacy.

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As part of its never-ending pursuit of perfection, Google has rolled out some updates to a few of its services. Gmail now has more themes, there are new tools to use when creating forms in Docs, and Google has more tips on how to be a Gmail ninja.

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The Google Books database is riddled with errors, millions, of them by Google's count.

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There's been plenty of blogging, twittering, and general hand-wringing about Google's Gmail outage Tuesday. But rather than extend this into yet another philosophical discussion about the viability of cloud computing, let's keep this in mind: Businesses who've signed on for Gmail don't expect perfection. In fact, both Google and Microsoft only agree to 99.9% uptime for their online email offerings.

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After long and careful consideration, and with a deadline looming, I chose to opt out of the Google Books settlement. Sorry, Google, this time you were evil.

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Google Wave, the strangely compelling mixture of e-mail and instant messaging that was demonstrated at the Google I/O developer conference in May, will admit a limit number of school and business users this fall, with general availability promised next year.

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Microsoft is conducting secret meetings to discuss ways to hobble Google, DailyFinance reports. Phrased in a less incendiary way, such as "Microsoft lobbyists are working to advance Microsoft's interests and blunt revenue threats from competitors," this hardly qualifies as news.

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If your enterprise is spread across more than one country or region, chances are your employees don't all necessarily speak the same language. In order to help facilitate communication, Google Docs can now translate documents to 42 different languages.

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When it comes to privacy, Google can't seem to get a break. The Swiss data protection commissioner recently blindsided Google by calling for the suspension of the company's Street View service.

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Remember the Google Voice Debacle? Apple pulled the Google Voice application from the iPhone Apps Store and an uproar ensued. Eventually, the FCC decided to stick its nose into the matter. Well, Apple, AT&T and Google all owe the FCC some answers today.

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Google recently added better collaboration tools to its Docs product and decided that Picasa deserved similar treatment. Now, Picasa Web Albums will support multiple contributors, making it easy to create a group album.

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