Yahoo Phone, Google Office, Google Finance

Yahoo Phone

Now you can call from the Yahoo Messenger to a traditional phone for real cheap. That is quite an improvement. And you can give your Messenger a number so people can call you, and it costs you $25 a year.

I hope Google comes swinging to offer the same for free. Until down the road the idea of having a phone number sounds ridiculous. Don't you yave a messenger ID? Like your name? Or some version of it? And with broadband wireless, you have a cellphone with the same.

Yahoo launches Internet phone calling service San Jose Mercury News
Yahoo! offers phone calls via IMCNN International

Google Phone

Google has acquired a company that makes it look like it is now going to try and offer "Office" online. Hey, I talked about that prospect a long time back. This was but inevitable. Sergei, Larry, read this blog. I got vision alright. (Google's To Do List Keeps Growing)

Google steps into Office's domain VNUNet.com

Of course word processing has to go online. So has everything else.

Help Users Create Content

Email, search and news are great and seamless at Google. But user created content has so many glitches. That is another growth area for Google.

Blogger has too many template problems too often. Next you know, your template has truncated, and your blog looks like Egyptian calligraphy.

And give many more template options.

Also Google Pages is not as easy to use as advertised. Make it easier. Much easier.

Google Video pay per view has been postponed, looks like forever. If they could make this possible, that would be an attack on traditional TV. Google Video has the potential to become a disruptive technology. But instead of empowering the individual, Google is too busy empowering the fat companies.



Offer an audio version of Google Video. Make it easy to create audio files and host them and publish them.

Audio, video, text. That's a finity.

The utter lack of anything close to seamlessness for user created content is Google's number one weakness right now.

Google Finance

Google launched it.

Google Finance doesn't reinvent on-line investing, but it's still ... Globe and Mail, Canada
Google Finance is Something Else WebCPA
Google Finance, a bit thin ZDNet
Google empire to move into the money This is Money
Why Google Finance Makes Me Sad WebProNews, KY
Yahoo Responds to Google Finance Portal Marketing Vox News
Mixed Reviews of Google Finance Corante, MA
Google Launches Yahoo Finance Rival WebProNews, KY

Google, Yahoo, Microsoft

Yahoo is not a direct Microsoft competitor, Google is. Google is also a direct Yahoo comptetitor. That is why Google's market cap is so much larger than that of Yahoo.

Visitors

13 March

12:24

Deloitte & Touche, Hermitage, United States

13 March

13:32

Verado Inc., United States

13 March

13:34

United States Army, United States

14 March

21:47

U s Communications Corp., Japan

15 March

14:39

NTL Internet, Luton, United Kingdom

17 March

19:48

QUALCOMM Incorporated, San Diego, United States

18 March

15:24

State University of New York, United States

19 March

11:20

Datastream, Malta

20 March

00:18

Saudi Arabia Backbone, Saudi Arabia

20 March

16:44

XMission, Salt Lake City, United States

22 March

06:04

Wanadoo France, France

22 March

14:50

Telepac II, Portugal

Are You A Fonero?

I have been following the universal, wireless broadband vision furiously at this blog over the months. First Wimax, then xMax, but someone has come up with an idea that goes over the curve for its simplicity and practicability. And I read about that in the news earlier today, and only an hour earlier I ended up doing a technorati search on my Nepal blog, and it appeared that some Rebecca Mackinnon has been linking to my blog posts quite a lot, and from a respectable, experimental Harvard blog too. So I googled her, found her email address and emailed her to say thanks: all that helps the movement back there, I said. Then I proceeded to read a little of her, and bam, there she was, she sits on the board of this hot company.

My friend Martin Varsavsky has just made an exciting announcement: his new Wifi startup, FON, has received investment and backing from Google , Skype, Sequoia Capital, and Index Ventures. ........ (Disclosure: I am a member of FON's U.S. board of advisors) ......... Three months after Martin launched FON on his blog, the $21.7 million dollars worth of funding shows tremendous support for FON's vision: a global community of people who share WiFi connections, known as "Foneros" in a tribute to the company's Spanish origins.

Wow. This is quite circuitous, don't you think?

RConversation
RConversation: Microsoft takes down Chinese blogger
Techjournalism News :
Rebecca MacKinnon
North Korea zone
Rebecca MacKinnon - Berkman Center for Internet & Society
North Korea zone
IT Conversations: Newbies - Bloggercon III
Blogging, Journalism and Credibility
CJR Daily: Rebecca MacKinnon, Pretend Tourist No More

FON In The News

Speakeasy: No deal with FON, despite what FON says Seattle Post Intelligencer
Google, Skype Make Wi-Fi FON Red Herring
FON Raises $22 Million for Open Wi-Fi Access Sharing Converge Network Digest
FON Raises $21.7M Light Reading
Fon takes Freenet cue for WiFi hot spot plan Globe and Mail, Canada

02/07/06 1:45 AM Update. I just saw someone on the FON Board who I have met personally when the guy was running for New York City Public Advocate. We had a brief conversation at the MeetUp.com headquarters hosted by Scott, the CEO. (Social Networking: Where The Internet Comes Down From The Clouds, MeetUp, LinkUp)

Andew Rasiej is the Founder and current Chairman of MOUSE. He has also served on the New York City Board of Education’s task force on technology and has spearheaded several innovative projects that support efforts to bridge the "Digital Divide" in public education. He truly believes in the need for WiFi as a way to empower citizens to do more then connect to the internet and read email.

Rebecca MacKinnon was one of CNN’s youngest Bureau Chiefs (China, fluent in Chinese), named as a Global Leaders of Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum. She left CNN and became a fellow at Harvard’s Berkmen Center and founded Global Voices with Ethan Zuckerman.



2:33 AM Update: Browsing around I bumped into this: WiFi Phone. In the works. It's all coming together: the chips are falling in place. The Skype people have funded FON, and Netgear is to carry Skype. The dots are connecting. (Internet Phones, Video Blogging, Nano)