Google Labs is over, the company announced today in a short post to the official Google Blog. Labs was the official home of many of Google's experimental projects - from a map of the human body to a Gmail plug-in that tried to stop people from sending emails while drunk. To be frank, it was an incoherent, unsatisfying, poorly supported tangle of perpetual alpha and beta technologies. Google would likely prefer it be seen as a relic of the Pre-Plus Era, back when Google 'didn't get social software.' The whole company is remaking itself now, with a very well received social network as the common thread now running through all the company's sprawling properties around the web. Google Plus wasn't a Labs Beta, it was a company-wide 'field test' developed in deep secrecy and then shared with 10 million people who couldn't get enough of it. 'In many cases, this will mean ending Labs experiments--in others we'll incorporate Labs products and technologies into different product areas. And many of the Labs products that are Android apps today will continue to be available on Android Market.' Reactions among Google Labs app users range from concern that the news signals an end to a period of experimentation at Google to hopefulness that existing products will be better-supported as a result. There was a sort of a flow with Labs, though. Ideas would be launched there, the company would see what kind of uptake they got, sometimes they would 'graduate' from labs and sometimes they would be ended instead. Most of the time they would just hang out there forever, being just ok. What the new flow for experiments to be productized will be is something to watch for. A Google spokesperson said in an email, 'there won't be any immediate changes to in-product experimentation channels like Gmail Labs or [...] Visit us at FastFind FASTFIND http://fastfind.co.tv
Social networking access seems to be that one important feature that would complete a mobile service. Taking a cue from this, one of India's rapidly growing mobile service providers, Tata Docomo have announced their USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) based access to popular social networking services like Facebook and Twitter. According to a report in TELECOM TALK, the catch here is that users will not have to subscribe to any data plans to avail these services. By dialing *325# and *515#, users will be able to access Facebook and Twitter – can see and post status updates, post comments, poke, like, among others. In order to subscribe to Twitter, the user can dial *515#. On reaching a landing page, hereafter, customers can punch in their Twitter details, and begin tweeting. Facebook services, on the other hand can be accessed by dialing *325#, and like mentioned before, users can enter their details on the landing page that follows. 
One of Microsoft's research teams mistakenly pressed the big green button on a social search project codenamed Tulalip, which was briefly online at 
Google announced its second quarter earnings today and the numbers are a significant reversal from the slight dip the company saw in Q1. Google's gross revenue was $9.03 billion, more than what investors had projected. CEO Larry Page kicked off the earnings conference call and described not only the financial data but some other notable figures as well: the number of Google Plus users, how much they're sharing, how widely Chrome has been adopted and the current activation rate for Android devices. 
According to the reports, India's premier mobile service providers – Vodafone Essar, Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular have gone full throttle with their plans of rolling out revolutionary 3G Roaming services in the country, on a massive scale. Interestingly, the 3G Roaming services are being planned not only on a massive scale as far as the reach is concerned, but also in a manner that is not too heavy on the pockets of the average Indian. Signing on the dotted line of the ICRA (Intra – circle roaming arrangements) agreement, the leading telecom trio has agreed to roll-out the 3G services by using each other's networks. Vodafone Essar has got into what it calls a bilateral agreement with Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular to bring forth to the customers 3G services, across major demographics. For example, Bharti Airtel that has a considerably widespread presence in the country doesn't possess a 3G presence in Gujarat. A void, it hopes to wipe out with its agreement with Vodafone Essar and Idea Cellular. Each of these 3 telecom giants have bagged 3G licenses in various parts of the country. Bharti Airtel owns 3G licenses for Delhi, Mumbai, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh (west region), West Bengal, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar, the North East, and Jammu and Kashmir. Vodafone Essar, on the other hand has 3G licenses for Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh (east region) and West Bengal and Idea Cellular has 3G licenses for Maharashtra & Goa, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh & Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, UP (East) UP (West), Punjab, Haryana and Kerala. 
The Government of India has asked Google, internet telephone company Skype and other such companies to allow the country's security agencies to monitor their user services to guard against terrorism and other crimes. Minister of State for Telecom and IT Sachin Pilot has said that there is a whole list of companies that have been asked to give access and provide solutions. "We can't afford to take chances with national security. There is a whole list of companies that have been asked to give (access), provide monitoring solution, because law enforcement agencies, the home ministry and intelligence agencies want information for national security. Papers were exchanged months ago, the discussions are on and we are looking at finding a solution soon, since it is a matter of national security," Pilot added. India's fear is that terrorists will use services such as those offered by Skype and Google as they are heavily encrypted and security agencies can't monitor them. The government had also made efforts to find ways to monitor the corporate email services offered by Canada's Research In Motion Ltd. are still under way. While the BlackBerry maker has already offered systems to monitor internet browsing and messenger services used on its smartphones, it maintains that intercepting corporate emails is impossible as there is no technology available to allow monitoring of the service. In December 2010, mobile handset maker Nokia Corp. said it has set up servers in India so as to allow security agencies to monitor its consumer email services. 
Google+. Applications and websites that enable this migration are already showing up. Move2Picasa is a small application that allows users to move their photos from Facebook to Google+. Coded by Pune-based Web developer Aman Kumar Singh, Move2Picasa saw over 10,000 users put in requests for migrating their photos from their Facebook accounts to Google+ profiles. 
Microsoft said it will issue four security updates next week, only one of which is pegged as critical, to patch 22 vulnerabilities in Windows and Visio 2003. Next Tuesday's patch lineup is smaller than June's, when Microsoft shipped 16 updates that fixed 34 flaws . The company typically delivers a lighter load in odd-numbered months. In May, for instance, Microsoft shipped just two updates -- the company calls them "bulletins" -- to patch only three vulnerabilities. Of the four updates slated, one will be rated "critical," the highest threat label in Microsoft's four-step scoring system, while the other three will be marked "important," the second-most-dire ranking. Next week's Patch Tuesday vulnerability count will be among the largest for the year, with its 22 bested only by April's 64 and June's 34, and tied with February's collection. But the bugs-per-bulletins ratio is the highest for the year, observed Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Security, hinting of next week's releases. In April, Microsoft patched 30 vulnerabilities in the Windows kernel device driver with a single bulletin, a record for one update. Microsoft has issued more than a dozen DLL load hijacking updates since last November. In May, the Slovenian firm Acros Security announced that more DLL load hijacking updates were necessary to plug holes in Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 9 (IE9). At the time, Microsoft said only that it was investigating the Acros report. The sole critical update scheduled for next week affects Windows Vista and Windows 7, but does not impact the much older Windows XP or any of Microsoft's server operating systems. Because Windows XP will be immune to the one or more vulnerabilities in that update, Storms said the bug had to be in code first used in Vist 
European Space Agency takes cameras to the next level, builds one where you can see a human being's fingernail on the moon (from Earth, of course). They're calling this camera GAIA and it creates images with one billion pixels. The Space Agency enlisted UK based e2V Technologies. They built a huge digital camera with 106 charged coupled devices packed in together. This is the largest camera created ever for a space program. The reason behind the building of this camera is that at the beginning of the new millennium, the European Space Agency planned to map 1 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy in 3D. Each of the charged coupled devices are shaped like credit cards and are the width of human hairs, made of slabs of silicon carbide, and each store light in the form of a single pixel. The device is set to launch on the Soyuz-Fregat sometime this year. This ship will be out and beyond for five years, settling in the Earth-Sun L2 Larange Point. The discoveries it makes will be beamed to radio dishes in Spain and Australia. 
The Mini DisplayPort-to-HDMI cables used mainly by Apple in their Mac range of computers will now have to search for another solution. The company behind HDMI, HDMI Org has stated that the manufacturers of these cables have been told that their products are unlicensed and should not be sold. According to a report by Tech Radar, HDMI Org has confirmed that any cable that has a DP male connector on one end and an HDMI male connector is unlicensed and should not be on sale. According to the report, the company explained that the HDMI specification defines an HDMI cable as having only HDMI connectors on the ends. Anything else is not a licensed use of the specification and therefore, not allowed. All HDMI products undergo compliance testing as defined by the Compliance Testing Specification. HDMI Org went on to state that the CTS (Cognizant Technology Solutions) clearly defines necessary tests for all products defined in the HDMI specification. Since this new cable product is undefined in the specification, there are no tests associated with this product. It cannot be tested against the specification. This comes as a major setback to companies such as Apple, Toshiba, HP and Dell who all supply their products with these ports. As of now there is no concrete solution to the connectivity option that is used to connect these computers to an HDTV for mirroring video content unless one is to rush to the market now and pick up a cable before they are removed from the shelves. 
One of the reasons for Mozilla's recent drop in popularity has to do with its memory consumption. While the latest version Firefox 5, hasn't been too bad, it's been a problem plaguing Mozilla's browser, for a while now. A fix to this problem might soon be in sight. The common problem has been sourced to the browser's Javascript garbage collector, which clears out garbage after a certain interval. This will be repeated more often so memory is cleared faster. There are some other updates as well - specifically to Firefox's Sync feature, which will sync in realtime. Font rendering also has been improved in the latest built. If you want to take a look at how well the feature works, go ahead and check out Firefox's Aurora channel to download one of the latest development builds. If you're already using it, it's only a matter of updating it. The memory optimization feature has been implemented there. The latest Aurora build isn't working towards Firefox 6, but Firefox 7. Understand this is a an early build and instability and bugs are going to be present. We'll have to wait and see if this memory optimizer fix will cure problems brought in by plugins installed on Firefox. 
Google intends to retire several non-Google name brands and rename them as Google products, Mashable has learned.The move is part of a larger effort to unify its brand for the public launch of Google+, the search giant's social initiative. Blogger and Picasa aren't going away, of course — they're two of Google's most popular products. Instead, according to two sources familiar with the matter, Google intends to rename Picasa "Google Photos" and Blogger will become "Google Blogs." Several other Google brands are likely to be affectGoogleed, though YouTube may not be rebranded. The technology giant shut down Google Video, its failed web video service, in May. The move isn't without precedent; Google acquired JotSpot in 2006 and rebranded it as Google Sites in 2008. In 2007, Google acquired VOIP platform GrandCentral and relaunched it as Google Voice in 2009. Picasa and Blogger were also Google acquisitions, although both companies have been part of the Google empire for far longer. Picasa was acquired in 2004 and Blogger was acquired in 2003 and is one of the top 10 most visited websites in the world. Although the rebranding could upset some existing customers, it also gives Google the ability to completely integrate both services into Google+. The transition from Picasa and Blogger to Google Photos and Google Blogs will occur "in a month to a month and a half". The date aligns with the likely public launch of Google+. It is expected that, the public debut of Google+ on or before July 31. The date is important because it's the day all private Google Profiles will be deleted. Google doesn't want to have private profiles after the public Google+ launch. Instead, the company is likely to encourage users who want more privacy to use Circles to cu 
Google updated their PageRank scores within the Google Toolbar yesterday. Some webmasters have noticed that Google.com lowered their own PageRank from a 10 to a PageRank of 9. While these numbers aren't as important as they used to be, it's still an interesting metric. Google has been the most authority website on the planet for a long time, it was always in the upper echelon of websites in any metric you could find. Now there is one stat you can bring up that doesn't show Google in the digital elite, and strangely enough that metric is their own. No surprise to most of us, Facebook remains a perfect PR10 website. Sites that maintain a PageRank of 10 as they are called, can be confident that are among the most linked to on the web. While it appears Google's growth slowed enough to downgrade their PR, it appears Facebook continued to gain enough links to maintain their PR10 status. Since PageRank is scaled logarithmically, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain the same rank over time. So go ahead and bust out open site explorer, or linking root domains, or how many unique IP's you have in your backlink profile. Social gurus can talk about Facebook shares, and show you recent SEO moz data for that one as well. Guess what? It's still not Google PageRank. Who cares when you go from 500 unique linking domains to 1,000? But lose all your PR overnight, and it might cause you to stop and think for a moment about what happened. 
Google Realtime Search, the once company-lauded realtime search index featuring tweets and as-it-happens updates, is temporarily defunct. The realtime search option has disappeared from the search results sidebar, and the standalone Google.com/realtime product returns a 404 error page. Realtime search was suspended after Google's contract with Twitter for access to the full feed of public updates passed its expiration date on July 2, 2011, according to information Google shared with Search Engine Land. The original Twitter search agreement dates back to October 2009. "While we will not have access to this special feed from Twitter, information on Twitter that's publicly available to our crawlers will still be searchable and discoverable on Google," the company said Monday. "Our vision is to have google.com/realtime include Google+ information along with other realtime data from a variety of sources." It's not yet known if Google is negotiating with Twitter on an extension to the original agreement, although a reworked Google Realtime Search product is in the works. A Twitter spokesperson added, "Since October 2009, Twitter has provided Google with the stream of public tweets for incorporation into their real-time search product and other uses. That agreement has now expired. We continue to provide this type of access to Microsoft, Yahoo!, NTT Docomo, Yahoo! Japan and dozens of other smaller developers. And, we work with Google in many other ways." Google Realtime Search started with Twitter search results and quickly expanded to include Yahoo Answers, news articles, MySpace updates and public Facebook Page updates. A slew of social services, including Quora and Gowalla, were later added to the product. These other social search featur 
Malicious hackers have targeted Google's social networking service, Google+, for the first time in a scam that involves fake invites to the service, Naked Security reports. The fake invites are spreading through e-mail, and they look very similar to the actual invites to the service, down to the e-mail address which seems to be coming from a Google+ member. However, if you click on a link in the message – which we definitely do not recommend – you'll land at a site trying to send you penis enlargement products. Scams such as this one are very common with major product launches; most recently, we've seen a similar phishing scheme involving Google Music invites. Whenever you receive an "invite" to a service, especially from a third party, be extra careful before clicking any links and make sure that the invite is really coming from a legitimate source. 
Facebook will reportedly be unveiling a Skype-powered video chat platform. Facebook's Seattle team was behind the new feature. Skype and Facebook already have a serious partnership that integrated Facebook social data directly into the Skype client. Now it looks like Skype will be coming to Facebook. This isn't even the first time we've heard about Skype-powered video chat on Facebook. Rumors surfaced last year about such a product, but it never materialized. The report is sparse on details about how it will work. Will it require a software download? Will it support group video chats? Undoubtedly it will be a major addition to the Facebook platform. Google+, the search giant's answer to Facebook, launched with a group video chat feature, Google+ Hangouts. Google is seeing a lot of traction with the feature, but if Facebook can release a video chat product next week, Google+ Hangouts may not seem as revolutionary. 
In keeping pace with Firefox, Mozilla's email client Thunderbird have also adopted the rapid release cycle with the latest version of Thunderbird 5. The new release of the email client is said to deliver faster performance, safer email experience and a new add-ons manager. The latest build of Thunderbird includes more than 390 improvements and performance enhancements that make Thunderbird more responsive, faster to start up and easier to use. The highlighted features of Thunderbird 5 include: 
Google+ has seen a wave of attention since its inception a couple of days ago; however one interesting release that made a rather quiet entrance was Google Takeout. Google+, in addition to a standalone service also features Google Takeout. This new service allows users to export number of personal information stored within the various services that Google offers like Buzz, Picasa along with Google contacts and circles. 
According to the Data Liberation Front, creators of the service say, "Google Takeout lets you take your data out of multiple Google products in one fell swoop. Moreover, you'll find that all your data is in portable and open formats‚ so it's easy to import to other services quickly." They go on to add that since they began in 2007, the Data Liberation Front has been focused on one thing to make it easier for users to take their data in and out of Google. They say that their first step was to make it easier to get users data out of Google products, one product at a time. 
Leading cellphone maker Nokia said it will stop using its mobile operating system Symbian by 2016 and recently showcased Nokia N9 will be the first and last handset in its portfolio on Meego platform. Nokia and leading chipmaker Intel have jointly developed the Meego platform. "We will have work on Symbian till 2016," Nokia India Director (Marketing) Viral Oza said at an event. Oza also mentioned that Nokia N9 smartphone will be the first and last phone to have Meego platform. Meego was seen as Intel's strategy to enter into mobile handset business. Oza added that Nokia will continue to provide full support to Nokia N9 users throughout the product lifecycle. While N9 has earn accolades from mobile phone analysts, they feels it will take more effort for Nokia to develop the applications that are attraction of high end smartphones nowdays. "Interface is good but they need to add more applications to it," opined Sonia Sharma of telecom magazine My Mobile.