Introducing the New Profile on Facebook

Your Facebook profile page has just undergone a few changes. According to a Facebook blog by Josh Wiseman, Software Engineer, Facebook, the changes will let 'you to tell your story and learn about your friends'.

The new profile page will be a sort of 'conversation starter', starting with basic information like where you are from, information about your school and job. There are new avenues in the profile page to share your interests and activities.

And since there's often no better way to learn about a person than through photos, the ... profile now includes a row of recently tagged photos of you. In my case, my profile features pics from my engagement and wedding, two of my life's most recent and happiest moments.

Featured Friends

You can now highlight the friends who are important to you, such as your family, best friends or teammates. Create new groups of friends, or feature existing friends lists. I opted to feature my Ultimate Frisbee teammates, giving the rest of my friends a way to learn more about that part of my life.

New Experiences

The profile also gives you new ways to share your interests and activities. You can list the projects you worked on at your job, classes you took in school, your favorite musicians and sports teams, and more. You can also share your life philosophy by connecting to the religions, political affiliations, and people you follow and admire. All your interests and experiences are now represented with images, making your entire profile a more compelling visual experience.

Facebook e-mail could be a game-changer

The announcement of 'Project Titan' could see '@facebook.com' e-mail addresses being unveiled, an overhaul of the site's entire messaging system.

No British event is planned, however, so it seems that the so-called "Gmail killer" may have a limited launch, if at all.

TechCrunch has reported that the product may be limited at launch, while pointing to the significant potential of a service that integrates e-mail with Facebook's popular places, photos and events applications, reports the Telegraph.

Unusually, Facebook has chosen not to use its Palo Alto headquarters for the launch. Instead, the event may be held at Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.

According to social media news blog Mashable, Facebook's current messaging system is "difficult to manage. Users are unable to send messages outside of Facebook, and the system can't handle simple things like attachments and forwarding".

"If Facebook really wants to take on Google, it needs to have a far more robust messaging system, akin to web-based e-mail. Monday may be the day we see that happen."

Project Titan was first mentioned by Michael Arrington on TechCrunch in February. It has not, however, received any official confirmation from Facebook yet.

Google now recommends places via Hotpot

San Francisco: Google has commenced its new search engine that makes location based recommendations. The search results cover local shops, restaurants, theatre among others.

Lior Ron, Product Manager said in a blog post, "We're making local search results for places on Google more personal, relevant and trustworthy. When you rate places you like, we'll tell you about other related places you'll love."

With a user friendly UI, Hotpot scores where Places lacked. Its fresh presentations appeal both visually and functionally. There are levels in the search. First it presents high impact data like star ratings and images of each place in a grid format without confusing with too many details. Then if the user intends to move to next level, he can dig down to other details such as phone numbers or URL.

Hotpot also allows you to maintain a separate social profile. Users can create a profile nickname to separate their Hotpot account from their general Google profiles. Gmail and other Google profiles help users to track their friends, and find reviews and ratings by friends.

It goes without saying that Google has allowed Hotpot integration to Android phones. So Android phone users can rate and review on the go.

Google's Hotpot comes to news just weeks after Facebook launched its own location based function called Facebook Places, posing competition to the latter.

Facebook worth $ 41 billion, surpasses eBay

Just an hour before Facebook is set to announce its 'gmail killer', it now ranks as the third largest web company, with an estimated valuation of USD 41 billion which is greater than EBay.

According to Bloomberg, the social network's latest valuation, based on the selling price of shares on SecondMarket, an exchange for privately held companies, makes it the country's third-largest online business after Google (USD 192.9 billion) and Amazon (USD74.4 billion).

Since Facebook has yet to go public, its forecasted revenue and worth in the public market is all still theoretical. Facebook, which expects sales of at least USD 1.4 billion this year, has called the figure "fundamentally speculative."

Based on recent private-market transactions, Facebook has a total estimated value of USD 41 billion, exceeding eBay's USD 39.4 billion in market capitalisation.

The only two web companies worth more than Facebook are Amazon, at USD 74.4 billion and Google, Inc., at USD 192.9 billion.

Today's value of Facebook comes from an "off-the-record" conversation that Bloomberg BusinessWeek's Brian Womack had with someone who had access to recent transaction data on SecondMarket.com.

Now if Facebook were trading on an exchange that the public could access, the size of the company's total market capitalization might increase over the course of the trading day depending on the exact details that Mark Zuckerberg announces at today's 10 am PST press conference.

Facebook's value has been growing for almost three years now, but it seems to be accelerating recently.

While there's no doubt that Facebook is one of the biggest websites and one of the biggest companies of the moment, it's hard to know if the company's estimated valuation has anything to do with its actual worth.

And there is no way of knowing that until Facebook finally files for an initial public offering.

Based on what Facebook has been saying so far, that may be at least a couple of years from now.

The reason why Facebook is not jumping ahead and filing for an IPO is that, while the company is growing fast, its revenue is still not spectacular.

Facebook could bring in close to USD 1.5 billion or as much as USD 2 billion in revenue this year, depending on who's doing the estimates.

BlackBerry unveils new server to access work email

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) Tuesday unveiled new server that will allow its smart phone users to wirelessly access their work or corporate email 'without compromising security.'
A RIM statement here said the free BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express software will meet many demands of two segments of its market.
First, the software will offer economical advantages to small and mid-sized businesses seeking enterprise-grade security and manageability of (its higher end) BlackBerry Enterprise Server without requiring all of its advanced features.
Second, the free software will enable IT departments to connect employees' personal BlackBerry smart phones to their work email and allow many other functions.
'BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express works with Microsoft Exchange 2010, 2007 and 2003 and Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2008 and 2003 to provide users with secure, push-based, wireless access to email, calendar, contacts, notes and tasks, as well as other business applications and enterprise systems behind the firewall. Importantly, the new server software utilizes the same robust security architecture found in BlackBerry Enterprise Server,'' the RIM statement said.
'Today we are announcing an exciting new offering that further expands the market opportunity for the BlackBerry platform,'' said RIM c-CEO Mike Lazaridis in the statement.

Google plans a superfast Internet

San Francisco: Google plans to build a fibre optic broadband network that will connect customers to the internet at speeds 100 times faster than most existing broadband connections in the US, the company announced on its corporate blog.

"Our goal is to experiment with new ways to help make internet access better and faster for everyone," two Google product managers, Minnie Ingersoll and James Kelly, wrote in the blog post Wednesday.

They said that Google plans to build and test the network in trial communities around the country starting later this year and that the tests could encompass as many as 500,000 people. They cited 3-dimensional medical imaging and quick, high-definition film downloads among the applications of such high-speed internet access.

"We'll deliver internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fibre-to-the-home connections," the post said. "We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people."

"We're doing this because we want to make the web better and faster to everyone," said Kelly, who also promised that the network would operate on open access network, in which users could choose various internet providers and which would not give preference to any one kind of content. Kelly appealed to local officials who were interested in having their community participate in the trial to contact the internet giant..

Apple own chip for iPad

Usually device maker buy their primary chips from specialized microprocessor companies, but Apple has defied the normal procedure by designing an A4 fingernail-sized chip for iPad. By designing its own processors burdens Apple with additional engineering costs and potential product delays, reports New York Times.

Steven P. Jobs, Apple's Chief Executive Officer, says that the A4 chip is "the most advanced chip" Apple had ever used and said it was crucial to the iPad's speed, reliability and 10-hour battery life. Apple had entered the chip business in 2008 by acquiring the 150-employee start-up PA Semi. That company had been working on chips that could handle large volumes of data while consuming very low amounts of power.

"From what we have seen so far, Apple's product seems to stack up evenly with the competition," said Dean McCarron, a chip analyst with Mercury Research. "Clearly, Apple is using their own metric for whatever 'best' is." Apple's laptops and desktops run on Intel chips, while Samsung has been selling Apple the primary chips for the iPhone.

Apple still appears committed to its chip plans. "This is somewhere where Apple thinks it can make a unique product, and it definitely signals a new direction for them," said Nathan Brookwood, a Chip Analyst at Insight 64.