So what exactly is Google Buzz? Buzz combines all of the social networking attributes like conversing, sharing and updating  -- all within the existing Gmail and Google.com infrastructure.

Buzz's features include:

FRIENDS LISTS - friends are added automatically who you have emailed on Gmail (there is also public and private sharing if you so desire)

SHARING - combines sources like Picasa and Twitter into a single feed, and it includes full-sized photo browsing

REAL TIME INTEGRATION - instead of emailing you with updates, like Facebook, Buzz features emails that update dynamically with all Buzz thread content

RECOMMENDATIONS - puts friend-of-friend content into your stream, even if you're not acquainted. Recommendations learn over time with your feedback.

To see how it all 'comes together' - view the latest YouTube video on Buzz:

Best

Denice MacDonald

Google has a new feature that allows users the ability to leave annotations or notes within in analytics charts, helping to explain sudden spikes or drops in traffic.

Annotations allow analytic users to leave shared or private notes right on the over-time graph in an effort to let users bring intelligence to data.

The Annocation's feature will be available in January of 2010.

To learn more about this powerful new feature before it's official launch, access this YouTube video.

More about "Annotations":

From Google Blog: Holiday Bonus - More Great Features 

From TechCrunch: Google Analytics Gets An Upgrade With Annotations, New API And More

Best,

Denice MacDonald

My colleague James Davidson just forwarded a Google Wave invite to me – what an amazing application.   

Google Wave, accessible through Google Browser Chrome, is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more. 

To make sense of it all, Mashable has compiled a complete user guide offering key information, definitions, and links related to the launch of Google Wave.  

This in-depth guide provides an overview of Google Wave, discusses the terminology associated with it, details information on Google Wave applications and goes over ways to keep you informed. Get it here: Google Wave – A Complete Guide by Mashable  

YouTube also has several abridged videos on how Google Wave works along with key attributes. 

Google Wave is closed to the public and available only to developers. Google plans on opening the service to the public at some point later in 2009. If you are interested in getting on the list for an invite, you will need to go here and sign up. 

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Denice MacDonald                                                                         View YouTube Video

According to Nielsen, Bing is the fastest growing search engine. Although Google still leads the pack with a 65 percent share of searches, Bing’s overall search share rose by roughly 22 percent to almost 11 percent of total searches.  

Bing is not trying to grow expedientially – rather, they are trying to build market share one great application at a time. 

Check Out Visual Search! 

Bing continues to tech-up its attractiveness by introducing a visual search feature. When users perform a search and click the ‘visual’ button (left side of screen), search results are arranged into rows of virtual data arranged into galleries. Because most individuals ‘browsing’ the web prefer graphic images over text, this is an awesome solution. 

Take my recent search for ‘movies’ – I am able to view, visually, movies that peak my interest. Or, I can simply refine my search by ratings, genre and more. The only downside to this feature is you will need to have Silverlight enabled. But non-the-less, after using this feature, you have to admit that it’s a great way to search. 

More on Bing:  

Microsoft’s Bing vs.Google: Head to Head Search Results by SearchEngineLand 

Search Smackdown: Bing vs.Google by TechCrunch 

Best

Denice MacDonald

Google News is one of the top five visited news portals on the web - making it a very desirable place to get your web site AND business noticed.  

The benefits of listing at Google News are twofold; first, most visitors end up back at Google News if they subscribe to news alerts or RSS feeds. Secondly, there are numerous SEO benefits as other web sites or bloggers will link back to Google news articles increasing both link reciprocation and heightened traffic.   

How can you get your articles submitted to Google News? There are some fast and simple rules that Google News will use to consider your organization. They include: 

Original/Validated Content - Google News scrutinizes content for professionalism, relevance and authenticity. Organizations cannot submit repurposed content or content that is not from the originating web site organization.  

Authors and Editors - Google News looks to organizations with multiple authors (not bloggers) to qualify an organization. 

Evidence of Organization - Google News will need to validate the organization as an existing/operating entity. That is, Google News will look for a dedicated, templated 'news area' that clearly defines the industry that the organization is in. Google News tends to approve web sites with a minimum of 100 active/achrived articles. 

To apply to Google News, click here. 

Additional News Portals for Article Submission:

Yahoo News

Topix.net

Best,

Denice MacDonald

I’ve had a chance to download and test Google's new Chrome browser and what a gem it is!  As a 1.0 product built in open source, Chrome is ahead of the pack leveraging the same base WebKit as Apple's Safari browser and launching the product in unison with the release of Windows IE 8.0.   Although considered in beta, Chrome offers some unique advantages over other browsers.

First and foremost is the slick user interface – keeping it simple and clean, Chrome combines several features into one, allowing more screen room for more important content. No doubt, it takes a bit to get used to, but once you’re in play, you won’t miss the clutter that was there before. 

The new-tab page is one of Chrome's most critical and useful design elements. This is the page that comes up by default every time you launch the browser or open a new tab. It shows you thumb images of the web pages you most frequently visit, and input boxes for the search engines you most frequently use and for searching your browser history.  

The new-tab page also shows a list of recently bookmarked pages, and another list of recently closed tabs. All of this is populated automatically -- you don't need to do a thing to create the page! 

Chrome is faster than most browsers and can multithread. Other browsers are single-threaded, which means they can only do one thing at once. If your Gmail session hangs for example, your entire browser is frozen.  

You have the option of importing bookmarks, passwords, and other settings from Internet Explorer or Firefox. So, you won’t need to re-establish all your credentials after installing Chrome – you’re basically up and running immediately. 

Lastly, Google has done a great job of launching Chrome by using a web comic book to introduce the product and its main features. You have to check it out!

Best

Denice MacDonald

We've been sitting on the sidelines watching with wonder the latest Yahoo - Microsoft - Google triangle of events.  Finally, an outcome worth commentary. I agree with Venture capitalist Fred Wilson that Yahoo did the right thing by choosing Google over Microsoft as a partner. 

Wilson contends, "Yahoo! finally woke up and did what they should have done years ago, cede search monetization to Google who simply does it better and will always do this era of search better than anyone else. Now Yahoo! will do what it needs to do. Clean house, get lean, and get out of businesses it shouldn't be in. Focus on what it's good at. And start making money and growing again. They may need new leadership to do that. But selling this asset to Microsoft just because they had the wrong leadership and probably still have the wrong leadership is a mistake."

Google CEO Eric Schmidt couldn't be happier.  In a press statement he indicated: "This commercial agreement provides Yahoo with the opportunity to deliver more relevant ads to users and provide advertisers and publishers with better advertising technology to help them succeed in their own businesses. This agreement will preserve the competitive and dynamic online advertising space."

It will be interesting to see if Yahoo can redefine themselves in short order and do what they have to do to keep everyone happy - but partnering with Google will lessen the burden.  It will be interesting to watch and we certainly will learn a lot.  That's the best part about being the small guy on the sidelines.