Freddy Duarte

We all know Google works… by the end of the year we should all have free phone service supported by adsense!
- freddy

Google said Tuesday that it had bought the Finnish start-up Jaiku, which makes a mobile phone application people can use to send short messages about where they are and what they are doing.

It has made no formal announcement, but Google is reportedly working on an operating platform for mobile devices to make it easier for people to get access to Google when they are away from their personal computers.

Founded last year in Helsinki, Jaiku specializes in mobile phone software that makes it easier for users to share updates about their whereabouts and thoughts. The concept, known as microblogging, is also being promoted by Twitter, a San Francisco start-up.

View NYT Article

NYT

Tired of having to login to tons of different sites on a daily basis? Seems like Yahoo! and Google are on to it… finally!
- freddy

People with a Yahoo user name and password will be able to use that ID information to access non-Yahoo Web sites that support the OpenID 2.0 digital identity framework, reducing the amount of different log-in information people need to create, remember and enter online.

Already, almost 10,000 Web sites support OpenID, an open framework available for free to end users and Web site operators alike, according to the OpenID Foundation.

Yahoo’s move will triple the number of OpenID accounts to 368 million by adding its 248 million active registered users to the rolls, the company said Thursday.

OpenID addresses one of several issues related to giving people more control of their online activities. Other groups are focusing on data portability, to let people move around the data and content they create online, so that they don’t have to enter it manually in, say, every social-networking site they sign up for.

Yet other initiatives, like Google’s OpenSocial, aim to create standard interfaces so that developers can create applications that run in multiple social-networking sites, instead of having to rewrite the same application multiple times for every site.

For all of these initiatives, it’s critical for major Internet players to get involved, so that the benefits of standard technology and methods developed by groups like OpenID can have a real-world impact.

Other major players that have expressed interest and gotten involved in varying degrees with OpenID include Google, Six Apart, AOL, Sun, Novell and Microsoft.

Yahoo participated in the development of version 2.0 of the OpenID framework, which the company said provides new security features. Yahoo users who log in to third-party OpenID sites should know that the log-in process doesn’t reveal e-mail or instant-message addresses, Yahoo said Thursday.

Yahoo’s initial OpenID service will be available in public beta on Jan. 30 and the company is working with several partners, including Plaxo, so that the Yahoo ID will work on their sites that day.

View NYT Article

NYT