30 Free Google Android Applications

There is lot of buzz in android applications development and last year Google Reveal Android developer challenge winners. If you are interested in development then you can also watch Android developers talk about their applications.

Introduction to Android

How to Download Android applications

To download android applications into your mobile phone you just need to launch the android market in the application menu, search for "desired application", and easily install them.

Here is the list of 30 Best free Google Android Applications available in Android Market.

1. Hi AIM – Its an AOL Instant Messenger(AIM) client for android. Data sent through network. No SMS fee. Support for smileys and chat bubble styles.
2. Android-rss – Its a fully functional Android RSS reader created as a way to learn the new Android platform SDK. This project is an ongoing effort to better understand and embrace the Android design philosophy, welcoming comments and additional contributors.
3. Twidroid – Its a one of the market leading twitter client on the android platform. today we’d like to share a sneak peak of the forthcoming twidroid pro – a new milestone release that will extend our current product line and includes features such as: multi-account support ,video posting, desktop widget, bit.ly support, follower listings, interface themes and others.
4. Loopt - It connects you to your friends and the places around you. See where your friends are and what they’re doing. Connect on the fly and instantly share photos, comments, and cool places. Turn your phone into a social compass and never be bored or lonely again!
5. FBabble – It lets you stay in touch with your friends on Facebook wherever you go! Features include real-time chat, uploading photos, changing current status and even automatic tweets to your Twitter account.
6. Opera Mini – It can browse the entire Web on your Android phone and save time and money. Opera mini is compressing pages up to 90%, making web browsing fast. Synchronize your bookmarks, history, notes and more between your computer and mobile phone, and a lot more…

   

7. 10001 Cocktails – Its another bartender in your pocket! Browse and search our most popular recipes on your phone by drink type or search thousands of alcoholic and non-alcoholic drink recipes on the shot-cocktail-recipe.com web site! Add fresh drink ideas and drink reviews and save your favorite drinks to your personal list.
8. ChompSMS – With a great UI, chat style SMS bubbles, touchscreen keyboards and many other great features! Also coming soon, T9 predictive touchscreen keyboard and color customizations.
9. Note Everything – A notepad application where you can create different types of notes in one app, including text-, paint-, voice-, checklist- & photo notes. Your notes can be organized in folders. You can create shortcuts on home, send notes, search, encrypt, reminders, use live folders & much more! All in the look & feel of Android UI.
10. Voice Recorder – This application is a handy voice recorder. The data are recorded to a SD card. Available the following items on the Voice Recorder – send a data as attached file via Gmail – timer & background recording – search by TITLE and DATE – register to ringtone.
11. Lyric Search – Lyric Search searches LyricWiki.org for Lyrics to virtually any song. Search by artist or song name, copy and paste lyrics into sms, email, or other applications, and save lyrics or buy the song on amazon mp3.
12. Comeks Fun Photo Blogger – IT can create and share funny cartoon-like images. Take and filter photos, add stickers and text bubbles on them. Lots of stickers and text styles to choose from. When done, share the funny image in Facebook, Tumblr, Flickr, Bebo, Twitter or Comeks.com. You can also send it as an email or MMS.
13. Pickup Lines – It can find out how to approach the other sex! With this app you can share your best pickup lines and view and rate the ones others have added. And send funny lines to your friends!

    

14. Save MMS – This application allows you to save pictures, audio and video from your MMS text messages directly to your memory card. Attachments are stored in the "SavedMMS" directory and are automatically accessible from the Pictures and Music apps.

    

15. Last.fm – Personal Radio – Your personal radio station on your phone: Choose an artist or genre and Last.fm builds the perfect playlist just for you, fresh every time, featuring your favorites and new discoveries powered by millions of Last.fm users sharing the music they love. You can skip any song and find out about concerts, too.
16. MultiReader 0.6.1 Text-to-speech app that reads your documents to you. It can speaks your document : text, PDF, Word, RTF, PPT.
    

    Note : this application which is designed primarily for adults and upper-level students can be sold on PDA, GPS, car embedded system, electronic paper (available in a near future).

    

17. My Tracks Record GPS tracks. Monitor your performance. My Tracks enables you to record GPS tracks and view live statistics while hiking, biking, running or participating in other outdoor activities. Once recorded, you can share your tracks with friends, upload them to Google Spreadsheets, and visualize them on Google My Maps.

    

18. Ringdroid 1.1 Record and edit sounds and create ringtones directly on your Android phone. So Why pay when you can create your own ringtones for free? Ringdroid lets you edit any MP3 on your phone or record a new sound and turn it into a ringtone, alarm, or notification. The only graphical waveform editor you’ll find on a phone!
19. OI File manager – The OpenIntents file manager allows you to browse your SD card, create directories, rename, move, and delete files. It also acts as an extension to other applications to display "Open" and "Save" dialogs.
20. Thesaurus – Retrieve the synonym for every word. If available you will get antonyms, related terms, similar word and user suggestions too. Tap one of the results to start a quick new search for that term. As well it keeps a history list of your search terms.

    

21. WikiMobile Encyclopedia Being a walking encyclopedia is now at your fingertips. With WikiMobile, you carry 2+ million Wikipedia articles with you, including pictures. Faster and uses just a fraction of the network data vs. the Android browser. Download free for a limited time!
22. Google Sky Map Google Sky Map: A star map for Android. Google Sky Map turns your Android-powered mobile phone into a dynamic window on the night sky. When you point your phone up you will see a map of the brightest stars, constellations, and planets in that part of the sky.

    

23. Meebo IM – Meebo is a free IM program that supports AIM, MSN, Yahoo, MySpace IM, Google Talk, Jabber and ICQ. You can also sign in using a Meebo account and your chat history will be saved forever, and can be accessed from anywhere by logging in at www.meebo.com.
24. Ringo Lite – Ringtones Manager Ringo Lite is a fun way to set unique ringtones and SMS tones for each of your contacts. Now you can make your phone truly your own – set soppy tones for your loved-ones and party tones for your mates! Ringo Lite is a friendly place to manage all your phone’s tones quickly and easily, making ringtones fun again.
25. Mobile Banking (from Bank of America) – Check available balances, pay bills and transfer funds all on-the-go! Locate ATM and banking centers with GPS. No address input required. Download now, for one-touch access to your finances, whenever, wherever you are.
26. StarTranslate Translator and dictionary. – Voice translation – Translate text – Translate SMS – Copy/Paste to any application – History – Swap translations – Get word definition in dictionary Many languages supported including : arabic, hebrew, thai, hindi. It is based on Google translate service.
27. Sharetones for Android 1.1 beta Get ringtones on your phone based on songs you already own.
28. ShopSavvy Scan barcodes with your phone’’s camera and compare internet and local prices. Have a look over the article of Rob Jackson on Shop Savvy for Android: Defining The Vision .
29. CraigslistChecker Want to find that rare vinyl to spin this weekend? Maybe a new car? Search craigSlist easily. Save your favorite searches and set them as alerts. Save listings and email them to your friend.

    

30. Yellowbook.com Mobile Search – Yellowbook.com’s free mobile search app is easier and faster to use – and now features voice recognition! Just speak what you want to find like "Restaurants", "Plumber", "Florist", or whatever and we’ll deliver local results to you. New Features: – Voice Search – Save to Contacts – Street View

    

(Note: All the below described applications are sorted from Android Market, all the image and descriptions curtsey belongs to Android Market and respective developers sites.)

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Top 10 mistakes of Google

Google is one of the biggest companies in the Internet today. It has been popular because of its search engine. Despite its size and popularity the company also has its own list of mistakes. Here are the top 10 mistakes of Google.

1. Gmail is recently experiencing outage and account inaccessibility. Is happens from time to time and Google has not yet addressed it until now. This will definitely tarnish the image of Google.You may check about the latest problem of gmail here. Stan Schroeder of Mashable published an article stating “gmail down panic mode on”.
2. Google Maps is another brilliant concept but it can also help terrorists with bad intentions do their strategic planning.May be you should know that “Terrorist Use of Google Earth Raises Security Fears” and “Google Maps aids terrorists”.Every technology have its own flaws but it can also be recovered.Their are so many severe questions on national securities.For example latest mumbai bomb blast terrorist “Kasab” is in arthur road jail so will google remove arthur road from its map?
3. The Chrome is yet another web browser. Who needs another one? Google already partnered with Mozilla for the Firefox so there’s no point in adding another web browser.John Brandon says that “Is Chrome the first epic fail at Google?”You should also read the chrome fail discussion on the reddit.More over this is the comment from a user in a Google groups
   

   I just updated Google Chrome to the latest version, RC 1 i.e. non-
   beta. And now my Gtalk within Orkut states that it doesn’t work with
   this browser. Come on, both are Google products… They should work
   better together, not fail on such an epic scale.

4. Google Finance is so US centered, you cannot find good information about other countries. There are competitions that are far better like Yahoo Finance.Felix Salmon questioned “Is Google Too Big To Fail?”.According to a blogpost “Minor disadvantages of Google Finance are that it doesn’t show all the popular ratios that Yahoo does, such as the PEG. For foreign stocks, it shows profit margin and operating margin information, but not the P/E or P/S”
5. Google Checkout is yet another mistake from Google. It is half-baked and it is so limited. Why should people use this when you have Paypal which offers more options.You check some advantages and disadvantages of Google Checkout vs Paypal.
6. Picasa is a good photo manager but Picasa Web album is definitely a bad idea. The user interface is confusing.I personally like to spend $25 on Flickr Pro rather than using Picasa.
7. Google Web Accelerator is another bad product from Google. It has many privacy issues. It also causes problems with some websites not loading properly.37signals reports in fact that the Google Web Accelerator “Google is essentially clicking every link on the page — including links like “delete this” or “cancel that.” And to make matters worse, Google ignores the Javascript confirmations“.Moreover checkout some “Hard facts about Google’s Web Accelerator”.
8. Google Video is also a bad idea. It did not feature popular TV shows. And it is so slow.Have a look on Why Google Video Will Fail and
9. Google Desktop is posing security threats among users. The software pulls personal data from your PC.
10. There are too many instant messaging software out there. Google Talk is too late.More over foxnews recently discloses that ‘ViddyHo’ Virus Spreads Through Google Chat”.In case you have the time ,look over the some interesting facts about Google Talk.

Last but not least newowin.net say’s that “Google to kill 6 of its failed projects” these are listed as follows:

• Google Video
• Google Catalog Search
• Google Notebook
• Dodgeball
• Jaiku
• Google Mashup Editor

The top 10 mistakes of Google are easy to correct. With the way the company works these can be done within months.I just remember this quote (find in a webmaster forum ) “Google seem to want to be the next Yahoo and Yahoo seem to want to be the next Google.”

Note:Help and suggestions to improve the articles and this blog are always invited.

Update on 18 march,2009:

Google Lively is addition in the list of Google fails. About Google Lively : Lively was a network of avatars and virtual rooms created and decorated by its users. Google launched Lively on July 8, 2008 as an experiment in providing people with more ways to express themselves on the Web.

Twitter Connect Brings Social Connect Like As Facebook, Google

Thursday, Twitter API Wiki which published a “Sign in with twitter” features — which is actually opening a great ways of integration with third parties websites. In before we have seen Google has “Friend Connect“, Facebook has “Facebook Connect” which is still working in different websites. Without signing to others networks, you can use to sign-in actions to other websites by using Facebook Connect and even without giving any confidential information to third party. Just twitter doing that same things and anyone can integrate that features to their websites.

Millions of user already using Facebook Connect and now Twitter Connect and if you enable this features — the same thing will happen for you. You don’t need to signup nor signin with different identity. You can use your twitter account’s identity and enjoy the full features and website’s surfing opportunity.

Twitter touts its integration of OAuth, the open standard for secure authentication, but most end users don’t care about that. What they would care about though is having the ability to sign in to a service with their Twitter names and interact with the micro-messaging platform to say, easily tweet out whatever it is you are doing. If you’re reading an article, you could tweet out the article with one click without leaving the page. If you’re playing a game, you could tweet that out from within the game - Mg Siegler says.

Facebook Connect mainly leveraging with different platforms by making this connections and though they are not affiliated with third parties. Hamer Lahav who have informed that Sign in with Twitter — “it is open done right” and Twitpic already integrated this features to their websites and he explains ” Twitter applications such as TwitPic use Twitter’s API as a delegated authentication provider. The way this works is that they ask users for their Twitter username and password, and then use these credentials to make an authenticated API call. If the call is successful, they know the user is really who they claim to be and let them use the service . Marshall Kirkpatrick who named calling card and as well myspace on the battle, Google’s friend connect too and right now twitter also landing on the social connecting battle and we know twitter archived double unique visitors which was around 93 millions in march, so it’s moving so faster for better connections.

Google Launches News Timeline and Similar Images

Google has launched Google Labs and this site will inform the user about the latest experimental activities of companies — it maybe search engine based or other web tools. Most amazing updates is Similar Images and Google News Timeline. Downloadsquad entitled, The new Google Labs is hosted on Google App Engine, and today Google rolled out the first two new labs features we’ve seen in the past few months: Similar Images and Google News Timeline.

Google Similar Image, it maybe showing results when you’re looking same pictures in whole results. Such as you wants to see world famous templates and you will see only the shots which is the just templates you’re looking and all photos has relevancy and as well same. Still it’s not implemented in search engine but maybe they will soon enable it.

Google News Timeline, revolutionizing service when has great power to move backward and find any specific news or information by using Google News Timeline. You know, if it’s paper based it’s quite harder but when it’s digital based then it’s easier and you can use searching features to find instantly.

However, both features are awesome and google more centralizing on images search engine updates and it’s really great that we will get our desired images by using google images engine.

Newly Released Google Webmaster Tools API

Webmaster Central blog of the Google has finally announced the vigin release of the Webmaster Tools API via it blog.[its ironical to find solar cooker and cooking related title of the post ].In short the main benifits of the features in this first version of the Webmaster Tools API are as following:

• For Managing Sites (Adding and deleting sites)
  1. Retrieving the Sites feed
  2. Adding a site to an account

Google's Trying to Help with NetNeutrality

"We're trying to develop tools, software tools...that allow people to detect what's happening with their broadband connections, so they can let [ISPs] know that they're not happy with what they're getting -- that they think certain services are being tampered with,"

This came from Google senior policy director Richard Whitt the other day. Google seems to have taken a firm stance on what ISP's are proposing to monitor. And why wouldn't they? In the end, Google would be the one that takes the hit.

People "Google" over any other search site. If you use Firefox, Opera or Safari, you have the Google search right at the top. For IE users, it's just a "Change Default" away. If you run a website with Google Adsense, chances are you are using the Google search engine to bring in a little revenue.

If ISP's start looking at what you do online, then people will stop searching for stuff. Other search sites might pop up to counter the ISP trafficking - masking information so it looks like your searching for flowers when it's really the Hulk movie. Google will loose it's 60-70 percent stature in all internet searches.

Now we all know that you should not download software, music or movies. It gets drilled in our heads on a daily basis. While Google is not trying to promote this, they know that if people need something and don't know where to get it, they will search first. Even if you do know where it is, you still will search for it.

"Feeling Lucky" is Googles' way of getting you to go through their webpage. According to statbrain.com, there are an average 91,201,253 visits per day. If people stop searching on a popular topic, imagine how that number would drop. If they feel they cannot safely go to the site, they will stop going to the site.

I am not saying this is what drives Google to help with Net Neutrality. However, if I was in the search engine market, I would definitely have a project team watching over these items. Any type of policing like this can really hurt on those who's life is online.

I don't torrent nor go to content that could raise a red flag for ISPs. Therefore I would continue to use Google on a constant basis. Even in writing this article I searched on Google about 10 to 12 times. It's really just a way of life on the internet for me. Before Google (and this dates myself), I was Metacrawling and Dog Piling.

So this brings up the question: Would your internet usage drop if you knew people were watching where you were going?

Source

Google goes out of its way to make Facebook roadblock obvious

Google goes out of its way to make Facebook roadblock obvious

After Google and Facebook could not come to terms over Google's Friend Connect service, the Mountain View-based search company has further snubbed Facebook, publicly noting Friend Connect users' incapability to access it.

Yahoo execs provide more details on Google deal

Yahoo execs provide more details on Google deal

The headend of Yahoo's search results, come this October, will probably continue to look the way Yahoo always intended it would. It's the tail that will change, in a deal where Google has apparently been offered the tail first.

Google, Yahoo make the deal: AdSense on Yahoo Search

Google, Yahoo make the deal: AdSense on Yahoo Search

Late Thursday afternoon, the news came from Google that it will indeed become a full-time provider of AdSense advertising for Yahoo's search pages, and the two companies' IM protocols will become interoperable.

Google opens up a lab for others to test new Gmail features

Google opens up a lab for others to test new Gmail features

With Gmail finally nearing the end of its nearly four year long beta, Google is looking to test out a few new features before it goes live.

Google opens up a lab for others to test new Gmail features

Google opens up a lab for others to test new Gmail features

With Gmail finally nearing the end of its nearly four year long beta, Google is looking to test out a few new features before it goes live.

Is Google living up to privacy legislation?

Google is coming under fire from members of 14 advocacy groups, who want the search engine giant to post a link to its privacy policy directly from its home page so as to assure compliance with a California privacy law.

Source

Microsoft will fix its 'Live' branding problem, says exec

With Google entrenched at the top of the search industry, and a deal with Yahoo looking less likely, a Microsoft division president said yesterday it's time for his company to deal with the confusion spawned by its own multiple online brands.

Source

Google refutes Android device delay, cites T-Mobile plans

Google refutes Android device delay, cites T-Mobile plans

Disputing rumors that the first Android-enabled phone won't ship until 2009, a Google spokesperson today pointed BetaNews to "public statements" made by T-Mobile as corroboration.

New Google Site Search lets Web sites shape search results

New Google Site Search lets Web sites shape search results

Tuesday, Google launched Site Search, a rebranded overhaul of "Google Custom Search Business Edition" that gives Web site owners tools to influence the search results that appear on their sites' custom search pages.

Google opens access to its App Engine, plans more Web tools

At its I/O developer gathering in San Francisco this week, Google offered more details about Android and Google Web Toolkit, while also opening up access to "everyone" for its new Google App Engine hosted development environment.

Not at all surprisingly, Google is delivering at least two conference sessions specific to Android, a controversial open source platform aimed at helping developers to create mobile applications that will interoperate across handheld devices from multiple vendors.

But other conference fare includes, for example, "Rapid Development with Python, Django and Google App Engine," "Getting Started with Google App Engine -- On Your Mac," and "Extend the Reach of Your Google Apps Environment with Google APIs."

Rolled out in mid-April, Google App Engine is a cloud-based hosted development environment, designed to let developers build applications on the same infrastructure that fuels Google's own applications.

"The goal is to make it easy to get started with a new web app, and then [to] make it easy to scale when that app reaches the point where it's receiving significant traffic and has millions of users," maintained Paul McDonald, a Google product manager.

More than 150,000 developers have signed up for the App Engine over the past six weeks, with most of them landing on a waiting list. But Google announced yesterday that, starting today, a free preview edition of the engine will be available to everyone, with no wait required.

As of about 3:15 pm PDT today, the App Engine download site still told visitors that it was only available to the first 10,000 developers who signed up for the software.

"[But] sign-ups [were] OPEN to all as of this morning (PT)," a Google spokesperson told BetaNews. "The language you saw on the site is old and will be updated shortly. You should be able to sign up [already] despite the language."

The preview period is expected to end later this year, according to Google officials. Until then, developers are required to stick to a "free quota" consisting of 500 MB of storage, and enough bandwidth to support around 5 million pageviews per month.

Google has also announced pricing for after the free preview period ends. Pricing will be based on CPU core-hour, outgoing bandwidth, incoming bandwidth, and monthly storage capacity.

But as McDonald wrote in his blog in mid-April, the preview release "is by no means feature-complete." Google is still seeking feedback from developers on what to include in the final release, BetaNews was told.

In the weeks ahead, Google plans to release new image-manipulation and memory cache APIs for Google App Engine.

In addition, Google is now targeting later this week for the availability of Release Candidate 1.5 of the Google Web Toolkit, a Java-based environment that enables developers to write applications in Java that are compiled into JavaScript and deployed through AJAX.

Google Health is one recently introduced application built with Web Toolkit. As previously reported in BetaNews, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told medical practitioners at a health care conference in March that third-party developers are also creating specialized applications for Google Health, a Web-based "cloud" initiative envisioned as storing consumers' health information online.

New features in Toolkit 1.5 will include Java 5 language support, a faster compiler, and more software libraries to help with building AJAX apps.

Special conference sessions are also on the agenda for YouTube and Google Maps development.

Google's OpenSocial API sandbox, just rolled out last week, is also sure to be a topic of conversation at Google I/O this week. The sandbox is intended to guide developers through the process of building and distributing interactive gadgets.

Facebook, Google's competitor in the social networking space, yesterday countered Google's OpenSocial efforts by acknowledging that it will now convert its own social networking code base into an open source platform.

"The major social networks are competing for the attention of the developer community, as the moves by Facebook and Google clearly show," said Ri Pierce-Grove, an analyst at DataMonitor.

Google opens access to its App Engine, plans more Web tools

At its I/O developer gathering in San Francisco this week, Google offered more details about Android and Google Web Toolkit, while also opening up access to "everyone" for its new Google App Engine hosted development environment.

Not at all surprisingly, Google is delivering at least two conference sessions specific to Android, a controversial open source platform aimed at helping developers to create mobile applications that will interoperate across handheld devices from multiple vendors.

But other conference fare includes, for example, "Rapid Development with Python, Django and Google App Engine," "Getting Started with Google App Engine -- On Your Mac," and "Extend the Reach of Your Google Apps Environment with Google APIs."

Rolled out in mid-April, Google App Engine is a cloud-based hosted development environment, designed to let developers build applications on the same infrastructure that fuels Google's own applications.

"The goal is to make it easy to get started with a new web app, and then [to] make it easy to scale when that app reaches the point where it's receiving significant traffic and has millions of users," maintained Paul McDonald, a Google product manager.

More than 150,000 developers have signed up for the App Engine over the past six weeks, with most of them landing on a waiting list. But Google announced yesterday that, starting today, a free preview edition of the engine will be available to everyone, with no wait required.

As of about 3:15 pm PDT today, the App Engine download site still told visitors that it was only available to the first 10,000 developers who signed up for the software.

"[But] sign-ups [were] OPEN to all as of this morning (PT)," a Google spokesperson told BetaNews. "The language you saw on the site is old and will be updated shortly. You should be able to sign up [already] despite the language."

The preview period is expected to end later this year, according to Google officials. Until then, developers are required to stick to a "free quota" consisting of 500 MB of storage, and enough bandwidth to support around 5 million pageviews per month.

Google has also announced pricing for after the free preview period ends. Pricing will be based on CPU core-hour, outgoing bandwidth, incoming bandwidth, and monthly storage capacity.

But as McDonald wrote in his blog in mid-April, the preview release "is by no means feature-complete." Google is still seeking feedback from developers on what to include in the final release, BetaNews was told.

In the weeks ahead, Google plans to release new image-manipulation and memory cache APIs for Google App Engine.

In addition, Google is now targeting later this week for the availability of Release Candidate 1.5 of the Google Web Toolkit, a Java-based environment that enables developers to write applications in Java that are compiled into JavaScript and deployed through AJAX.

Google Health is one recently introduced application built with Web Toolkit. As previously reported in BetaNews, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told medical practitioners at a health care conference in March that third-party developers are also creating specialized applications for Google Health, a Web-based "cloud" initiative envisioned as storing consumers' health information online.

New features in Toolkit 1.5 will include Java 5 language support, a faster compiler, and more software libraries to help with building AJAX apps.

Special conference sessions are also on the agenda for YouTube and Google Maps development.

Google's OpenSocial API sandbox, just rolled out last week, is also sure to be a topic of conversation at Google I/O this week. The sandbox is intended to guide developers through the process of building and distributing interactive gadgets.

Facebook, Google's competitor in the social networking space, yesterday countered Google's OpenSocial efforts by acknowledging that it will now convert its own social networking code base into an open source platform.

"The major social networks are competing for the attention of the developer community, as the moves by Facebook and Google clearly show," said Ri Pierce-Grove, an analyst at DataMonitor.

Manage your Yahoo & Google Groups in One Place

Are you an active member of Yahoo Groups, Google Groups etc? Does it take lot of time and effort in staying updated on all the groups? If yes and yes, then possible alternative is ‘Grouply’. It lets you manage your Yahoo and Google groups at one place together. With Grouply, you can keep up with your existing online groups in less time.

You receive a Grouply Smart Digest email each day that summarizes what’s going on across all your groups, highlighting what’s interesting to you and hiding what’s not. You can view a single cross-group event calendar, see what’s interesting to fellow group members, and quickly search or browse across all your existing groups from one place.

Here goes the procedure: Grouply aggregates all of your messages across all of your online groups into a single, easy-to-use website. Grouply is similar to online email services such as Yahoo Mail, Gmail, AIM mail, and inbox.com. Grouply works exactly the same way.

When you register with Grouply, Grouply assigns you a grouply.com email address (e.g., mark@grouply.com) and then automatically adjusts your membership settings in Yahoo Groups so that group messages will be sent to Grouply via this address.

Grouply: Website - Register - Take a Tour

You can read message but subscribing to Grouply Smart Digest email or visiting grouply website. Posting a Message also has two options of using email or using ‘Post a Msg’ button while using Grouply website. This website aims to save you time and easily manage subscription to various groups. Worth a try, if you are an active Groupie!

BetaNews Picks

Perspective: I don't Knol

Google's latest experiment in opening up its massive resources for the latest in knowledge and wisdom, has a familiar ring to it. And perhaps for that reason, the outcome of that experiment can be predicted.

Comcast sues NFL to block slanderous emails

Comcast yesterday filed suit against the National Football League, claiming it was acting in breach of contract for encouraging Comcast subscribers to drop their service.

Is the Linux/Windows interoperability deal paying off for Novell?

The Linux vendor partners with Microsoft in one respect and takes it head-on in another. This time, the results are mixed as Novell suffers a small quarterly loss.

Free remote PC access for iPhone and iPod Touch

Remote PC access software company Orb has announced support for iPhone and iPod Touch, allowing users to stream their music, movies, and TV without being locked into iTunes.

Online movie releases: the new 'straight to video?'

Jackass 2.5 from Paramount is believed to be the first studio-backed feature film to premiere online, and will be streamable for two weeks completely free of charge.

Google marked by Chinese company for trademark violation

A Beijing company has taken Google's Chinese division to court over the search company's Mandarin name.

Microsoft acknowledges Vista kernel elevation vulnerability

What was not supposed to happen in Windows Vista apparently has: Despite a layer of protection that was supposed to prevent against processes elevating their own privileges, Microsoft now says someone found a way to do it.

Netherlands war against Microsoft advances on two fronts

A junior economics minister in the Dutch government has made significant inroads this week in his battle against Microsoft there, both in transitioning his government to ODF and in decoupling bundled software from PCs.

Seductive Russian chat bot tries to steal your private data

A chatroom bot called Cyberlover and designed in Russia claims to be able to secure private information from unsuspecting users by seducing them.

How IBM could lead AMD to 32 nm

At this morning's analyst conference, AMD executives said they may scale back some on R&D. But earlier in the week, partner IBM unveiled a plan that could help fill the gap: a way to rework existing 45 nm parts designs for 32 nm.

The opportunities revealed by Sun's open-source CPU

By releasing the code for its new Niagara 2 processor into the open source community today, Sun is paving the way for its underlying architecture to eventually pop up in wireless and other embedded systems, and maybe even in future game consoles.

Mapping services find themselves today's hot commodity

Two major global information system (GIS) and satellite imagery acquisitions were announced on Wednesday, illustrating the continuing desirability of such services to both hardware and software manufacturers.

Nokia wins one round in Qualcomm IP battle

Just when it appeared Qualcomm finally had a fight on its hands after winning one round last month against Nokia, a judge has invalidated a good chunk of Qualcomm's original injunction request against the handset maker.

Most ReplayTV assets sold to DirecTV

The struggling DVR company has once again changed hands, this time to the nation's largest satellite provider.

Sprint customers get next-gen MySpace Mobile first

With its subscriber base declining, Sprint surely needs a lift in its heated competitive struggle with AT&T and Verizon Wireless. Could a newly unveiled deal with MySpace Mobile help do the job?

Apple iPhone and iPod Touch get their very own Picasa

Google brings its Picasa photo sharing application to Mobile OS X Safari, with an interface designed especially for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Bebo takes a page from Facebook with new API

By adopting its competitor's platform, the site will allow developers to port their applications to its network.

Microsoft releases HD DVD emulator software

In an attempt to further spur development for its chosen next-generation DVD platform, Microsoft is making the tool available for $2,999.

Another big beta: Microsoft releases Windows Server Virtualization test

After a major delay in the early spring which threw off the development cycle of Windows Server 2008, a public beta -- as opposed to a technology preview -- is being released by Microsoft this morning.

Patent infringement decision against eBay upheld

MercExchange, a tiny Virginia-based company that has taken eBay to all levels of the US court system for patent infringement, has won at the District Court level in Virginia.

Linden Lab CTO leaves the real world of Second Life

In an apparent split at the top, one of Second Life's founding employees has left the company, and his former boss apparently bids him a heartfelt good riddance.

Out of options, Opera files EU antitrust against Microsoft

UPDATED Just when Microsoft thought it had the EU out of its hair, Opera may have brought it back to the bargaining table.

AMD in trouble: Barcelona bug, ATI write-down cast bad shadows

At the opening of an analyst meeting this morning, the president of AMD lowered expectations for his company, saying it no longer needs to produce the best performing CPUs, and hinted at scaling back its R&D.

'PlaysForSure' logo being replaced with 'Certified for Vista'

Without much explanation, Microsoft's PlaysForSure Web page, which had once been the meeting ground for its portable media tech partners, now bears a statement to users that the logo is being dropped.

Analyst: Consumerism to blend with social networks in 2008

Where traditional Web sites provide content to visitors, social networking sites tend to offer sets of tools that allow "the consumers to become the content," a lead Parks Associates analyst told BetaNews this afternoon.

Study: The Internet's spam problem is getting worse

A study finds that only one out of every 20 e-mails is from a legitimate source, and business professionals now rate it the top form of junk advertising.

AT&T to put RFID and GPS in schoolbuses

The San Antonio telco announced today the availability of "black box" type solutions for K-12 school busses, working toward a day when school vehicles can be tracked like aircraft.

Pro sports teams embrace HDTV, but are unsure about wireless

Among professional sports leagues, high definition video is a permanent fixture, both inside the new stadiums where fans congregate and on HDTVs that fans are watching. But there's confusion there today, it seems, over wireless technologies.

Preview patch returns ActiveX to the way it was

More than a decade after Microsoft used an idea for making binary programs work with one click from inside Web pages, the company is testing a patch that restores that functionality in the wake of a settlement with the idea's creator.

Google's Street View expansion brings privacy jitters

Google's expansion of the street view option for its mapping service into another eight US cities has renewed privacy concerns over what it photographs.

The 2007 'Word of the Year' is...w00t!

That's not an interjection from the reporter. The exclamation "w00t" was chosen by Merriam-Webster's online users as 2007's Word of the Year.

Radiohead to bypass record labels, letting its publisher handle rights

Radiohead's album in Rainbows was revolutionary for its "pay what you like" availability. Now the band's plan for licensing that album continues the trend, further eroding the bond between bands and the record industry.

FCC commissioner compares DTV transition to Y2K

After a congressional report last month criticized the FCC and private industry for not working better together to ensure a smoother DTV transition, one commissioner responded by saying the executive branch should get involved.

How much open source software are businesses really using?

Open source vendor OpenLogic is today kicking off a new industry initiative meant to help both users and software companies find out precisely what kinds of open source software is being used -- and who is using it.

Microsoft ends free software for monitoring giveaway

Microsoft pulled the free software offer from its Web site Tuesday, which made free copies of Vista and Office among other applications available in exchange for feedback.

Office for Mac set to ship next month

The long wait for a new version of Microsoft Office for the Mac OS X platform is just about over, with development of the suite completed.

Vista SP1 release candidate goes live

This morning, BetaNews FileForum was alerted to the availability of the latest release candidate for Windows Vista Service Pack 1, just released from Microsoft.

Video search engine and indie film festival collaborate

Blinkx, a video search engine featuring over 18 million hours of searchable video with more than 200 media partnerships already, announced a new one yesterday with the Raindance Film Festival.

AT&T: 1 million U-verse subscribers by end of '08

This morning, the head of AT&T said his company expects to have attained one million U-Verse subscribers by the end of 2008, and coverage for 30 million by 2010.

OpenDocument debate resumes in the Netherlands

While Microsoft's Office Open XML format slowly makes inroads towards acceptance as an international format, the Dutch government debates whether the software behind that format must also be open-source.

Ask.com debuts erasable searches, with stipulations

Oakland-based search engine Ask.com debuted "AskEraser" today, a feature which can mark all of a user's queries in the company's servers for deletion.

Microsoft continues legal push against software fraud

Microsoft announced the filing of 52 lawsuits against sellers of pirated and fraudulent copies of its software, as well as referring another 22 cases to law enforcement.

NBC Universal content now for SanDisk video service

The entertainment group continues to move on from its breakup with Apple and iTunes, this time signing a deal with SanDisk to provide content for "Fanfare."

Canadian ISP flouts net neutrality principles again

Rogers Yahoo, which has repeatedly come under fire for traffic shaping, has now ventured even further away from neutral ground, by inserting usage messages into its users' unencrypted data streams.

Microsoft bug deletes files instead of sharing them

The company's FolderShare application is intended to allow customers to synchronize files across multiple machines, but a bug has ended up deleting them.

IDC: Fewer desktop PCs to be sold from now on

Emphasizing the declining role of the desktop PC form factor in worldwide sales, the analysts of IDC's Quarterly PC Tracker now predict portable PCs will constitute 65% of US PC sales by 2011.

New high-def owners may shake up format war

While Blu-ray has certainly won the opening salvos, new data suggests those new to HD seemed to have a preference for HD DVD.

Sony CEO replaces gloomy predictions with rosier outlook

Buoyed by Black Friday sales plus an investment in Sony last month, Sony CEO Sir Howard Stringer said this morning he believes a financially stressed-out US population will stay at home this winter and use CE products...like Sony's own.

Office 2007 SP1 goes live, Windows XP SP3 RC1 follows along

As anticipated and without much fanfare, Microsoft this morning made active links for downloads of Windows XP Service Pack 3 Release Candidate 1, as well as the complete Office 2007 Service Pack 1.

VoIP calls on iPod Touch now closer to reality

Developers are claiming that they are close to allowing users to place VoIP calls over the iPod Touch, with initial tests proving successful.

New Bourne released in streaming HD day-and-date with DVD

IPTV service Vudu has announced that The Bourne Ultimatum will be available as a 1080i high-def download today -- the same day as it is released on DVD.

Debate over telco immunity rages on between DNI, Senate

Setting up a fiery public showdown between the justice and intelligence communities and the Congress, the country's highest-ranking intelligence official argued publicly in favor of immunity for telcos that turned over private data.

Samsung at center of 'Korean Watergate' bribery probe

In South Korea, Samsung Electronics' politically powerful parent company stands accused by a whistleblower of creating a $220 million slush fund for paying off government officials. The investigation keeps intensifying.