As covered by Google Blogoscoped, the new “iGoogle” logo refers to the personalization of Google. I use Gmail and have customized home page with my favorite RSS feeds, but when is too personal too much?

I was surprised to find out a few months ago that Google Web History had been tracking ALL of my search history under my profile – not just for their own stats, but for anyone logged in under my profile to view! That’s when I thought things had gone a little too far.

Think about it… if you’re sharing a computer in the house, Google will collect and make readily available all of the searches you and anyone else has made while logged into your profile.

You may have given someone your Gmail password – if so they can now see much more than just your email.

Also, I sometimes log into client’s Google Analytics accounts – If I don’t log out and they have Search History enabled, I can see all of the things they were searching for and they get a record of all the searches I made until I remembered to log out.

Luckily, you can turn search history “off,” and clear your history, but like everyone else that I’ve talked to, search history was enabled and collecting data long before we ever realized it.

Google spins the search history feature differently. They highlight the benefits of being able to search through your OWN history to find things that you may have forgotten to bookmark, or didn’t know you wanted to bookmark until too late. I think there are other checks and balances for that, like my browser’s history tool and the results page link color change from blue to purple that shows which links I’ve clicked on in the past.

Google search history just seems a little TOO personal – what do you think?

Bookmark to:

Word broke on Tuesday that Google had purchased Tonic Systems, a software company with an online web app similar in functionality to PowerPoint. Google execs say that the new spreadsheet application will join the Google Docs & Spreadsheets suite this summer.

Google’s Mike Schmitt says that he “doesn’t think” their goal is to kill Microsoft Office, all logic points to the contrary. Whether or not it happens remains to be seen, but it does seem that this is the goal Google is trying to achieve.

Google is the first to admit that the slideshow application, just like its Word-type and Excel-type applications are not equal in functionality to that of Microsoft’s similar applications. As someone who has used both, I can certainly vouch for this. The applications are slow and only offer basic features—at least for now.

Google’s dabbling in traditionally desktop applications makes me wonder if they will face a similar fate as when Microsoft tried to move into search. Microsoft, the once technology giant, fell flat when it attempted to move into new turf and many would say has been on a downward spiral ever since. But so far, Google has a history of having a Midas touch and succeeding in just about everything it tries.

Bookmark to:

Salesforce.com recently launched CampaignForce, a new type of CRM app designed specifically for politicians to manage their campaigns.  The new app gives campaign managers a slew of benefits including, a web based single point of access to campaign-related and a view of important info such as polls, fundraising progress, media buzz, etc.

If demand drives innovation, then it’s interesting to note that SalesForce.com, the leading CRM application that allows business to understand their client base in order to better address the needs of their customers, began offering services in 2000.   Now, 7 years later, enough demand has finally led to the launch of the same type of application for the political arena. 

Can CampaignForce do for politics what it has done for businesses?  Let’s hope so.  The intuitive information collection process and instant mashing up and comparative analysis of different types of data available through Salesforce has a tendency to really open the eyes of businesses about what their customers really want.  Information is easy to ignore when there is no real way of seeing it clearly and analyzing it effectively in real time. 

This is certainly the year for e-lections.  From the widely publicized Barack Obama fan video on You Tube depicting Hillary Clinton as on the classic 1984 big screen, to candidates creating profiles on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, to the launch of CampaignForce, the web is a major force in today’s campaigns. 

Bookmark to:

Some of you have probably seen this video about a new Google TV gadget from “Infinite Solutions” which claims to offer real-time streaming of primetime TV programs. It probably had you thinking “So nice of Google!!!” Unfortunately, it’s just a fake.

Here’s the clip:

The domain displayed in the video, tv.google.com, raised my suspicions. So I tried entering the address in my browser. Also, I followed the instructions on the clip a dozen times—Nothing worked.

Finally, my curiosity led me to the answer to this “controversial issue”. By researching the Net I found out that Google TV beta is some funny joke made by Google staff =]

Yet, I came across another video on Youtube.com where a guy shows how he managed to make Google TV Beta work after 114 logins… Well, is it another attempt to play around with naive users who’ll keep trying to make Google TV work on their desktops…? I didn’t go too deep researching that one. You can try for yourself and see what happens

Here’s the second controversial video:

Kev

Bookmark to: