Twitter: Soon adding “Nifty” site features
Twitter appears to be on the verge of some big changes to its website if a tweet that Twitter engineer Alex Payne sent today is any indication. In fact, the new features may be so good that they could make some people re-examine their use of desktop Twitter clients, apparently. As Payne writes:
If you had some of the nifty site features that we Twitter employees have, you might not want to use a desktop client. (You will soon.)
Not surprisingly, that tweet had a few third-party Twitter developers worried.
Google Adds Nearby in Local search
Google has just turned on a nifty location feature in search. Now, you can refine search results with a “Nearby” button, which will filter your results that cater to your location. So if you do a Google search for Italian restaurants, you can click the “Show Options” button to access a “nearby” filter to see results for Italian restaurants in the city/area you live in. You’ll also be given local business results as well.
Google says that it will shows you Nearby results according to your IP address or your preferred location, if you customized your location in search settings.
PayPal To Restore Bank Withdrawal Service In India
About three weeks ago, eBay’s electronic payments daughter PayPal suddenly started blocking personal payments going in or coming out of accounts from Indian customers, resulting in a flood of online complaints from the latter that ranged from accusations of racism to sheer amateurism.
Last week, rumors that PayPal was actually forced into halting personal payments by Reserve Bank Of India (RBI) because they did not comply with all relevant regulatory requirements, were confirmed. Last night, PayPal posted a status update on its corporate blog, saying that they anticipate to resume part of its service, namely bank withdrawal abilities, as of Wednesday, March 3rd.
From the blog post:
We have been diligently working with the RBI and our business partners to resume Indian bank withdrawals for the thousands of Indian businesses who use PayPal to sell their goods or services in the global marketplace.
I’m pleased to tell you that the RBI has now allowed us to resume bank withdrawals for settlements for exports of goods and services. We are currently making changes to comply with Indian regulations for settlements for exports of goods and services, and we anticipate that as of Wednesday, March 3rd, we will be able to resume the bank withdrawal service.
As part of the changes, Indian customers will be required to fill out a new field dubbed ‘Export Code’ when they request a withdrawal (here’s how to get one). This information is apparently required under current Indian laws in order to identify the nature of cross-border merchant transactions. PayPal will share specific instructions on how users can move money into bank accounts on Monday, March 1st.
But Reserve Bank Of India has informed the eBay company that it requires specific approvals to allow personal inward remittances to India, which it currently does not have. In other words: PayPal is still forced by law to effectively suspend personal payments going into the accounts of its Indian customers for the foreseeable future, unless they are exporters.
We’ll provide an update when that changes.
Gmail in Labs graduating and retiring new features
Gmail is known for launching a plethora of nifty little features through Labs that make the email platform more attractive and easy to use. In total, Gmail Labs has 60 features that can be turned on and off and is steadily adding more enhancements. Yesterday, Google announced that six features will be graduating from Labs and will become regular features of Gmail. And Google will also be retiring five features. The decisions were made based on usage and user feedback. Here are the graduating and retiring features:
Graduating:
- Search Autocomplete: Auto suggests terms, keywords, contact names and labels within the Gmail search box.
2. Go To Label: Allows for labels to pop-up without having to click on labels.
3. Forgotten Attachment Detector: Prevents sending an email without the appropriate attachments; will alert if you mention attaching a file but forget to do so.
4. YouTube Previews: Lets you watch Youtube previews and videos from within your emails.
5. Custom Label Colors: Allows you to create your own custom color combinations for labels.
6. Vacation Dates: Lets you specify which dates you’ll be away on vacation in advance.
Editions included:
Standard, Premier, Education and Partner Editions
Languages included:
All languages supported by Gmail
* Search Autocomplete and Go To Label in English only
Retiring:
1. Muzzle: Hides friends shat status messages.
2. Fixed Width Font: Allows you to view messages in a fixed width font.
3. Email Addict: Shuts down your Gmail for 15 minutes, forcing users to take a break from email.
4. Location in Signature: Allows you to choose to include your location in your signature, using geographical data associated with your public IP address
5. Random Signature: Rotates among random quotes for your signature.
Now Google Real-Time Search Now Includes Facebook Status Updates
Filed under: FaceBook Integration, Facebook, Featured, General, Google, Google API, Technology News
Google has just announced via tweet that it’s integrating Facebook Page updates into its real-time search results. Google first revealed that this was coming back in December, when it first started including real-time data in its search results. Other data sources for Google’s real-time results include MySpace and Twitter.
The only problem with the new addition is that Facebook is only granting Google access to updates from its 3 million Pages, which are generally for celebrities, politicians, brands, and local businesses — not your average Facebook user. That information could occasionally be useful, but the power of real-time search comes from having a large number of contributors. Facebook has a huge amount of data from its 400 million active users, but it isn’t sharing most of that with Google. Instead, it’s only granting full acess to user updates to Bing (though that isn’t live yet). Bing will still only be getting status updates that are shared with /06/24“Everyone“, but with its recent privacy overhaul in December, Facebook ensured that it would have far more of those than it used to.
Unlike Twitter, which is reportedly making money off of its search deals with Bing and Google, Facebook isn’t charging the search engines for its data. According to Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land, Facebook is giving away the status updates because they may drive more people back to the social network.
ManageTwitter: Yet Another Twitter Tool
This is not another Twitter tool. But compare to all the other tools this is very fast. Try use it.
A few days ago, I noted that Seesmic Web had perfected the management of Twitter contacts. I was wrong. A new service has been brought to my attention that is much, much better. Actually, it’s a must-use.
While Seesmic Web is great for a number of things (it’s arguably the best Twitter web client out there), ManageTwitter is great at one thing: managing your Twitter followers. To use it, you simply link up your Twitter account (via OAuth) and it lets you know which of the Twitter users you follow aren’t following you back, who is inactive, who is talkative, and who is quiet. Each of these are great gauges for whether you should still be following them or not.
Personally, I was able to eliminate over 200 people I was following that I determined I shouldn’t be. Most of these were users I followed a couple years ago that either were simply not using the service any more, or were no longer that interesting to me.
Unfollowing users is as simple as selecting their name and clicking the “unfollow” button. You can also do this in bulk. And hovering over any users gives you more information about them including their average tweets per day. You can also sort the various ManageTwitter fields by ‘date followed,’ ‘username,’ ‘followers,’ or ‘timezone.’
While there are no shortage of services that recommend people you should follow, I’ve long needed one to suggest who I maybe shouldn’t be following. Of those, ManageTwitter is easily the best.
Created by the Australian company Melon Media, the site notes that it has unfollowed 17092 people for 381 users in the past 3 days.
Facebook background Checks-In On Loopt
Filed under: FaceBook Integration, Facebook, Featured, Technology News
Facebook has been doing background checks, known as due diligence, on the location-based social network Loopt, a source with knowledge of the talks tells us. Generally speaking, due diligence of this kind is only performed when a company is in acquisition or fundraising talks.
Loopt won’t comment on this story, and a Facebook spokesperson says “As a practical matter, we don’t comment on rumor and speculation.”
There is no indication that Facebook has made an actual offer to buy Loopt at this time, and in fact we don’t even have direct information that negotiations are taking place. But it’s clear that Facebook is at least considering acquiring Loopt, and/or others in this space.
It’s also not clear that Facebook is the only company taking a look at Loopt. Google is also highly interested in the mobile social and location space. Their recent launch of Buzz, which allows check-ins of locations via a mobile device, is just one indication of that.
But Facebook is clearly furthest behind. They have one of the most popular mobile applications but have to date ignored location features and the increasingly popular checking-in at locations via mobile devices. Part of their hesitation is likely due to privacy concerns around disclosing location information, even at the user’s request. But they’ve also clearly just sat on the sidelines as well as the space developed, and recently surged in activity.
It’s time for Facebook to make their move. Jupiter Research recently stated that location based services could generate nearly $13 billion in revenue by 2014. Facebook wants their share of that.
Loopt competitors like Foursquare and Gowalla have the biggest press footprint with mobile location applications, getting lots of attention from the early adopters in Silicon Valley. But Loopt has the most users by far. And they also have longstanding carrier relationships that bring in real revenue.
Loopt was one of the hot location-based networks early on, with founder Sam Altman even getting stage time during the initial App Store unveiling event. But Loopt, like Google’s Latitude, was intially built around the “always-on” idea of location. This is something that hurt it because the iPhone did not allow third-party applications to run in the background. Meanwhile, “check-in” based services like Foursquare and Gowalla grew in popularity. Loopt has since repositioned itself as more of a check-in based service, but despite its large user base, it’s not clear if its users will adapt to this change.
Potential advertisers pitching them about a new app completely built around the idea of check-in specials. Notably, this app was to be entirely built on top of Facebook’s social graph, utilizing Facebook Connect. This app is an offshoot of GeoGraffiti, a Y Combinator startup that Loopt itself acquired last year.
SugarSync : Now Upload files via Emails ; Adds 500 GB Storage Plan
Sharpcast’s SugarSync,, an application that synchronizes data across desktop computers, laptops, mobile phones, and even televisions, is making it easier for users to backup their data via email. The startup is launching an “Upload by Email” feature that lets users store email attachments in their SugarSync account with the ease of sending an email.
The new feature allows a SugarSync user to sync any email attachment to a dedicated folder in their SugarSync account by simply forwarding it to a special email address. Instantly, the file(s) is available on all synced devices and accounts. For example, if a user receives an email with many attachments, they can simply forward it to their SugarSync email address (comprised of random numbers and letters for spam protection). All attachments will transfer to their SugarSync account.For added security, SugarSync will scan all file attachments for viruses prior to syncing, and certain file types are not accepted (e.g., .exe, .cmd, .bat) to prevent malicious files from landing in an account.
At the moment, SugarSync is supporting 2 petabytes of data from users. SugarSync’s CEO Laura Yecies says that because of the popularity of the product, the company is adding a new power-user storage account that has 500 GB of storage, priced at $39.99 per month. Previously, the highest level of storage available was 250 GB.
SugarSync recently launched a small business friendly offering, which Yecies says is gaining considerable traction. You can read our past reviews of SugarSync here and here. The startup has ramped up its mobile offerings, with supports for Android, iPhone, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile powered phones.
iPads in Future To Have Front-facing Cameras, Flash (Bulbs, Not Software)
What the deuce? It seems that the new iPad SDK 3.2 Beta 3 has some very interesting bits of code and UI components that point to a front facing camera – a boolean called hasFrontCamera – and a boolean for a flash LED (not Adobe Flash) called hasFlash. There are also two buttons in the interface for accepting and declining video chats. Now remember: the iPad has a little spot for a front-facing camera in it already but all signs point to the fact that it won’t be implemented in this first version. Unless there’s some amazing October surprise that pops up when they ship final hardware, don’t expect to be comm-screening with J.F. Sebastian using your futuristic videophone this time around.
The Bloom Box: The real energy
Now get this, skeptics: there are already several corporate customers using refrigerator-sized Bloom Boxes. The corporate-sized cells cost $700,000 to $800,000 and are installed at 20 customers you’ve already heard of including FedEx and Wal-mart — Google was first to this green energy party, using its Bloom Boxes to power a data center for the last 18 months. Ebay has installed its boxes on the front lawn of its San Jose location. It estimates to receive almost 15% of its energy needs from Bloom, saving about $100,000 since installing its five boxes 9 months ago — an estimate we assume doesn’t factor in the millions Ebay paid for the boxes themselves. Bloom makes about one box a day at the moment and believes that within 5 to 10 years it can drive down the cost to about $3,000 to make it suitable for home use. Sounds awfully aggressive to us. Nevertheless, Bloom Energy will go public with details on Wednesday — until then, check the 60 Minutes sneak peek after the break.
[Thanks, Abe P.]
In the world of energy, the Holy Grail is a power source that’s inexpensive and clean, with no emissions. Well over 100 start-ups in Silicon Valley are working on it, and one of them, Bloom Energy, is about to make public its invention: a little power plant-in-a-box they want to put literally in your backyard.
You’ll generate your own electricity with the box and it’ll be wireless. The idea is to one day replace the big power plants and transmission line grid, the way the laptop moved in on the desktop and cell phones supplanted landlines.
It has a lot of smart people believing and buzzing, even though the company has been unusually secretive – until now.
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