A New York City startup called Howcast is launching today that wants to be the YouTube of instructional videos. In fact, the three founders—Jason Liebman, Daniel Blackman and Sanjay Raman—are ex-Google employees who worked on Google Video and YouTube before they left eight months ago. They actually are going for a little more polish than YouTube, trying to bring some production values to the world of Web video.

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As companies make philanthropic efforts many are looked at as trying to make themselves look more ethical than they actually are. We have heard terms like ‘green wash‘ which is where a business presents themselves as eco-friendly when they are actually not. Well, I am quite fond of Google’s efforts in the philanthropic area and here are some examples why:

Google.org has announced five core initiatives that will be the focus of its philanthropic efforts over the next five to ten years. The philanthropic arm of Google announced $25 million in new grants and investments to initial partners as the part of the core initiative roll out.

Google.org’s five initiatives and partners include:

Predict and Prevent: supporting “efforts to empower communities to predict and prevent events before they become local, regional, or global crises, by identifying “hot spots” and enabling a rapid response.” Grants as follows:

• $5 million to InSTEDD (Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases and Disasters) to improve early detection, preparedness, and response capabilities for global health threats and humanitarian crises.
• $2.5 million to the Global Health and Security Initiative (GHSI), established by the Nuclear Threat Initiative to prevent, detect, and respond to biological threats.
• $600,000 to Clark University, with equal funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, for Clark Labs to develop a system to improve monitoring, analysis and prediction of the impacts of climate variability and change on ecosystems, food and health in Africa and the Amazon.

This information was excerpted from TechCrunch (as usual) so if you would like to read it in its entirety, go here.

I just realised there is another ‘competitor’ to Google that is worth a mention. The site is called Mahalo. It’s a human-powered search engine that looks oh so nice. I just had a play with it for a couple of minutes, to develop a first impression and I like it. I like it a lot. The reason I like it so much - if first impressions are anything to go by - is that it works like an expansion of Wikipedia. I tend to search for most things - like iPod Touch - by typing ‘iPod Touch wiki’ into Google. This ensures Wikipedia is the top search result and I go in from there. I guess I could search directly through Wikipedia but it’s not so friendly toward typos.

Mahalo has a touch of this. It is a Google-esque search engine that is loaded with good stuff. Stuff that has been vetted by humans and not tricked by algorithms written by inhumanly clever geeks. First thing I like is the Guide Note at the top-right which gives you a a brief definition/explanation of the search topic. Below this is some Fast Facts - 2-10 short facts about the topic-, again, a very intuitive, helpful feature.

The meat of the result page begins with a Top 7 section which generally starts with an official website of the topic searched. If you were to search, say, Jason Calacanis, founder of Mahalo, next you will find a section called Professional Profile - very Linkedin. I won’t go on an explain all the other features as it takes all the fun out of it for you. But I will paste what Mahalo has listed as the key features of Mahalo:

* Edited By Humans: Every search result you see was painstakingly handcrafted by a Guide in our workshop in sunny Santa Monica, California.

* Spam-free: Humans detect spam. Computers don’t. Our Guides keep your search results free of spam.

* Warnings: Tired of clicking on links full of pop-ups, information in a language you don’t speak, full of Flash animation and auto-starting music, or other problems? Mahalo Warnings tell you in advance. Just hover your cursor over the Warning Symbol Warning symbol to know before you click.

* Guides Choice: This symbol ( Nicole Gustas: It’s a shaka, used in Hawaii as a greeting) tells you which sites our guides especially liked. Hover your cursor over it to find out why.

* Fast Facts: We provide 2-10 quick facts about most search terms.

* Email This Search Result: If you’ve found a search result useful, you can email it to yourself, or someone else. See the sidebar.

* Recommend a Link: Think the search results page you’re looking at is missing an important resource? Click on the “Recommend a Link” in the Top Submitted Links section of the right-hand sidebar to tell us about it.

* Message Board: Discuss our search results with other people interested in the topic by clicking on the Message Board link to the right.

* Today’s Top 20 Searches: Look in the “Today’s Top 20 Searches” in the right-hand sidebar to find out what’s hot right now!

I read today that Co-founder of Topix, Rich Skrenta is looking at taking on Google with new search engine, Blekko. I discussed this with a few people at work today and the response seems to be very negative. The responses I got: “Sif!”…”As if anyone can compete with Google”. To be critical of yet another so-called competitor of Google, I believe, is rational. It’s been tried before and giants like Yahoo! and Live haven’t even managed it. So what is so good about Blekko?

Well, one of the problems I think Skrenta and his team are trying to fix is when you type in a word like “Kylie Minogue” you get many pages of results: images, news, scholar, books, et al. Not to mention the hundreds of pages of search results. I feel, Blekko is trying to achieve a more integrated Google. One page and summaries of what you actually need (want) to know. And apparently no PageRank algorithm.

I’m really excited to see what Blekko has in-store. I am, admittedly a Google-aholic but I am also open to better ways of doing things. For example, I am looking at making the move from iGoogle as my home page to PageFlakes as the latter looks and moves a lot better, whilst still being integrated with the likes of Gmail.

Apparently, Blekko will not be live until 2009. At the moment by going to the domain you get a picture of some cute, puppet-looking creature. I wonder how cute and fun Blekko is going to be…

Here is some exciting news for those that are anticipating the GooglePhone (GP). Believe it or not, but I am not one of them - I know little of the up-and-coming GP.

WhatsOpen.com is to be the first app for the GP. The WhatsOpen.com app - and the website which can be accessed here - allows you to search for ‘what’s open’ at a given time of day. It combines Google Maps and a directory tool to display the results. So, if you would like to know where you can get a pizza at 4am, give it a shot. Very handy for home or mobile.

I am number 2 for ‘australian business blogging’ on Google. Under EJ. Very happy with that result.

According to Techcrunch:

2007 was another big year for Google with the company growing to become America’s fifth largest listed stock (by market cap) whilst continuing its march towards world domination.

According to figures from comScore Google traffic increased 22.42% this year across its main web properties (excluding non-US sites and acquired sites such as YouTube). The star performer for the year was Google’s personalized start page service iGoogle which increased traffic in the 12 months to November by 267.64%. Other strong performers included Google Book Search up 54.66%, Gmail up 53.6% and Google Maps up 51.57%.

It would appear that users aren’t using Google to buy goods, with Google’s worst performer in 2007 being Google Product Search (shopping), down a whopping 73.26%. Google Scholar search dropped 32.14% and perhaps oddly in a year that Google added YouTube videos to its index, Google Video search dropped 11.82%.

Google’s core search engine still remains the most highly trafficked part of Google with other products a long distance behind. Google’s most popular products in order of traffic for 2007 were: search, image search, Gmail, Google Maps and Google News.

In reply to Valleywag’s 25 Predictions for 2008, I shall do my own version. Well, lets make it 6 Predictions for 2008.

Telstra:-

I don’t think Sol Trujillo will be at Telstra by the end of 2008. Who replaces him: I don’t have the foggiest. I think Telstra will chip away at extending the reach of its HSDPA network and the other carriers will try their best to match all but its remotest coverage. Telstra won’t win the iPhone contract. I feel Vodafone will: the two align much better than Mac-unfriendly Telstra.

Apple:-

Hopefully Apple will release the iPhone to Asia by the end of 2008. It will be a 3G model and the battery issues will be worked out. The 13″ Macbook Pro will be announced at Macworld Jan. 08 (please let this be true).

Google:-

Google’s share-price will hit $800 (I agree with Valleywag on this). They will go on an acquisition-rampage.

The Internet:-

The whole Web 2.0 movement will charge ahead and brilliant ideas will continue to rise, survive and/or die out of Silicon Valley. Social networking will continue to be dominated by Facebook, MySpace and Linkdin (in order). There will be loads of consolidation and acquisitions in this space.

Telecommunications:-

All I have to say is one thing: ULL.

Pajago.com:-

We shall continue to tap-away at the keys - hopefully - producing content that you, the readers, enjoy to read. Again, feedback and suggestions is important for us to continue to produce quality. Contact us here: suggestions@pajago.com

Done.

P

Cari Spivek thought it was wasteful that so many employees like her were driving to work in different cars. Her idea became the Google Shuttle, a private transit network made of biodiesel-powered, wi-fi-enabled, air-conditioned buses transporting employees from around the Bay Area to Google headquarters in Mountain View, south of San Francisco.At first it was used by a hundred employees from the entire area. But Google has been growing and now shuttles more than 1,200 Googlers every day, many from the Mission District, which has recently added a second bus.

Anyone who has ever taken a population class knows that every migration has a countermigration. In addition to all of the Google employees already living in the city and doing less environmental damage by taking the shuttle, many employees are choosing to move to the city because there is now a comfortable shuttle to take them to work.

Read the rest of this article here.

I absolutely love Google. Anybody that knows me, knows how much I love it. I feel I get a lot out of Google and know a lot of the nifty tricks and about its sheer power. Many friends, acquaintances, colleagues (et al.) of mine, however, don’t seem to know how powerful Google actually is. What I intend to do over a few up and coming blogs is explain to my readers some of these tricks and talk about Google’s power and reach.

Before I sign-off on this blog, I’ll talk about to common mistakes I have seen people make when searching with Google:

Using Quotations when Searching Broadly:

Ok, so you’re searching for restaurants in Darlinghurst lets say. By using quotations (”restaurants in Darlinghurst”) you are narrowing your search down to pages that contain that exact arrangement of words. In fact, because I have used that arrangement as an example here, at Pajago.com, if you were to search for “restaurants in Darlinghurst”, once this post has been crawled by Google, it will come up in the search options.

To search broadly, allow Google to do what is does best. Search for relevent keywords. If you are searching for a restaurant in Darlinghurst; search as if you are asking a friend. After all, Google is your friend! So, if you were to ask your friend “do you know of any good Thai restaurants around Darlinghurst Road?” use this as the basis of your Google search. Here is an example (ignore the apostrophes by the way): thai restaurants Darlinghurst Road. Because you are not using quotations it will not narrow your search to the exact arrangement of words.

Being shy:

People are often shy with Google but I see it more with Google Maps (Earth). I displayed the power of Maps to some friends yesterday. We were looking for a business on a street in the CBD. For the purpose of this post it shall be known as 234 Smith Street, Melbourne. I typed in the address as you see it and it zoomed straight in and showed us the exact building of XYZ company.

These friends never realised that Google Maps had this power. They presumed that Maps was more of a browsing tool. The sort of thing you play around with on a Sunday afternoon.

I feel a lot of people are too shy or uncertain to just have a fiddle around with Google’s many products. Have a play; I say. Nothing will break.

PJG