Monday, May 19, 2008

Condolence to Si Chuan Earthquake Victims

Black and White Google Logo
Google China turned its logo to black and white in memory of those who died in the Si Chuan Earthquake. Also, the banner below is showed on Google.cn which is translated into: "Let us remember the moment [of earthquake]. Hope that those who died with rest in peace, those who survived will strive on."
gSpy would like to express deepest condolence to the 32476 [to date] who died in the Si Chuan earthquake.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Happy Mother's Day

The Mother's Day doodle is up in Google Hong Kong and China:
If you search for Happy Mother's Day on Google, you would see the power of OneBox as you would see related searches, iamges, news and blog posts all mixed together. ;)

Friday, May 9, 2008

Social Networking Potential for Google

Google Reader recently launched something called Notes which a combination of Twitter and Google Shared Stuff. Basically, notes made Google Reader a platform for you to stay connected with your friends and update each other on stuff you are up to lately (kind of). But it seems so far that Google's attempts to socialize its products have been bits and pieces here and there. Imagine grouping all Google product feeds into one place, probably your Gmail Chat window, just like this:
Google Social Networking PotentialNot just your shared notes would be showed, but also public events in Google Calendar, Google Docs documents you share with your friends, YouTube videos, photos in Picasa Web Album, or even comments you make on Blogger. One platform that informs you of your friend's latest Google activities just like what Facebook is doing. However, this could potentially be more powerful than Facebook since Google products focuses on productivity while Facebook is just for fun. Corporates would find this a perfect tool to better connect its employees and improve efficiency. What do you think?

Google Maps in Hong Kong

Today is a rather big day for Hong Kong users since Google has updated their Google Maps database in Hong Kong and Google Finance now supports Hong Kong stock listings. Google Maps will now show building names and MTR exits in Hong Kong. However, searching building names will only return user-created content (if any). Although there is still no official word from Google yet, the copyright notice at the bottom right suggests that Google has partnered with MapKing, a famous local mapping company. Hopefully, business listing will soon be available in Hong Kong.