Google Vs Facebook - who will win ?

Google has finally unveiled Google+, the company’s top secret social layer that turns all of the search engine into one giant social network.

Google+, which begins rolling out a very limited field test on Tuesday, is the culmination of a year-long project led by Vic Gundotra, Google’s senior vice president of social. The project, which has been delayed several times, constitutes Google’s answer to Facebook.

The search giant’s new social project will be omnipresent on its products, thanks to a complete redesign of the navigation bar. The familiar gray strip at the top of every Google page will turn black, and come with several new options for accessing your Google+ profile, viewing notifications and instantly sharing content. The notification system is similar to how Facebook handles notifications, complete with a red number that increases with each additional notice.

At its core, Google+ is a social network. The first thing users are introduced to is the Stream. It’s much like the Facebook News Feed, allowing users to share photos, videos, links or their location with friends

Source : http://mashable.com/2011/06/28/google-plus/

New Domain Names are coming

The Internet's global co-ordinator today voted to allow the creation of website addresses ending in company names, enabling big firms to replace '.com' with their own brand.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) voted overwhelmingly in favour of the radical proposal at a meeting in Singapore despite fears that opening up new website suffixes could cause some confusion.

'This is the biggest change to domain names since the creation of '.com' 26 years ago,' said Theo Hnarakis, chief executive of Melbourne IT Digital Brand Services, a California-based company that provides online branding advice.

Under the changes, businesses will no longer be restricted to the list of generic top level domains (gTLDs) that include .com, .net and .org when they apply to register a website address.

Industry observers say global giants such as Apple, Toyota and BMW, to cite examples from various regions, could be in the vanguard of launching websites with their own domain names ending in '.apple', .'toyota' and .'bmw'.

Hnarakis said the companies that will benefit most are 'big brands with a clear marketing and customer education strategy to exploit the name for competitive advantage'.

'Brands need to act now if they want to apply for one of these new domain names as it is not as simple as registering a .com address. It is a complex task that needs thought and investment,' he added.

The ICANN board voted 13-1 in favour of the change, with two abstentions, a spokesman said.

ICANN, a non-profit body managing the Domain Name System and Internet Protocol addresses that form the technical backbone of the web, is holding a global meeting in Singapore this week to discuss a range of matters.

ICANN communications manager Michele Jourdan said corporations will now have 'new possibilities for structuring their online and offline presence'.

But it will not come cheap. It will cost a company $185,000 just to apply and there are a number of criteria that must be met before ICANN will give the nod for a firm to own the domain name of its choice.

The fee is needed to recoup the costs associated with the new gTLD programme and to ensure that it is fully funded, ICANN said. It would also weed out opportunistic applicants seeking to resell domain names for a profit after buying them cheaply, a problem in the earlier days of the Internet.


RTE NEWS 21st June 2011

Where should I host my website

This something that is ealily overlooked by many site owners and the importance of the Domain Name "Country Code" to your website rankings, traffic and consequent success.

The problem here is the "location" of search - the way in which the major search engines have split their indexes up into country-specific search opportunities. Google (and other SE's) know where you are, or where you should be associated with, by either the Country Code (.ie) or the IP address allocated to your site. IP addresses are allocated in numeric blocks or ranges, by country.

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