UberNoggin

If you’re interested in microblogging ala Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, you might be interested to know that Google purchased Jaiku today. Besides making all the Jaiku employees dance around in celebration of their upcoming stock options, this could mean something big. Other smart folks are talking about it too:

• BlogShmog
• Guardian
• Reuters
• Mashable
• Read/Write Web
• OReilly

This could mean some serious improvements in the way Google IM works. Jaiku’s functionality, if added to gchat, could mean that you could sort your friends, send chat via SMS or a web interface not attached to Gmail. I’m imagining the implications of integrating Jaiku into Gmail and it’s making my head spin a bit. Though, I don’t think any of us should hold our breath. It could be quite a while before Google does anything with Jaiku. Keep your eye on it!

Yep! The social network which is fast becoming all things to all people has assimilated and absorbed another part of your life. You can now check your gmail from inside Facebook with a new app called Fmail. Now you need never leave Facebook! Evaaar!!!

Pictures make blogs more fun to read. Sometimes when I write an entry I want a pic but I don’t have anything of my own so I start Google searching for an image I can use (and attribute to its source, of course). We can talk about the propriety of using other’s images some other time. Today I just wanted to have some fun with image searching. You just never know what you’re going to get. So some sample blog headlines and images to go along with them….. I think these search results say a lot about how search engines work and about how important image tags are.

——————-

Virus indicated in Bee Decline : Apparenly bad movies, not a virus or cell phones, are causing declines in bee populations

——————-

.

.

.

.

.

.

Depression Leads to Worst Health : This band is responsible for all your health problems. Can their music be that bad?

——————-

LaCrosse Player Seeks 30 million in settlement : Maybe it’s not money the Duke player is seeking but a campaign to fill a viking settlement with 30 million people. Those would be some crowded long houses.

——————-

Bush and Putin Seek to Engage Asia : I just don’t have any idea how this image is even closely related to the search terms “engage asia” but it would be funny to put Bush and Putin in this pic.

——————-

Rock Report: Not only the good die young: The study itself is quite the joke without a funny image to go along with it.

——————-

Black Comedian Cut Short for Using N-Word: a lesson for Michael Richards. When you search “n-word” you now get his pic. This is how internet infamy gets started, folks. Be careful.

What funny key-word searches can you find?

I’m a huge fan of Google apps. I’ve pushed the internal links in a Google doc to their limits trying to make something wiki-like to share with coworkers and collaborators so I’m really excited that Google might be announcing the release of wikis on Google apps.

Google acquired Jotspot a while back so let’s keep our fingers crossed!

The folks at Google are smart. They understand the sometimes difficult to imagine way that participatory media can actually create business. Take, for example, their latest campaign: Gmail Behind the Scenes Video. It’s simple. Record a 10 second video of the same envelope passing from one side of the screen to another. That’s it. The magic comes when the videos are all added together. But even this is nothing new.

What’s really new about this? It’s meant to advertise a free service: Gmail. A service which only makes money using sidebar ads, which I have NEVER clicked in the year+ that I’ve been using gmail but that’s beyond the point. Google understands that you can advertise the attitude of a service/product just as well as you can advertise the actual product. They understand that getting current users involved in the process increases their devotion to the product and that having thousands of people shoot 10 second videos is more financially smart that spending $1million on one commercial. Cheaper actually equals better!

I think it goes back to the old toothpaste ad adage. What does a toothpaste ad really sell?

Take this one, for example. It might have info about how the toothpaste can keep your teeth healthy (toothpaste = health) but what it’s really saying is Toothpaste = healthy teeth = beauty and success. It’s that leap from product to perceived impact that is critical to understand. But enough about toothpaste; let’s go back to Gmail.

So what the Gmail Behind the Scenes campaign is really telling us is gmail = fun with smart people. So not only can we use a great email service but we’ll be in the company of smart people (who doesn’t want that, right?) who do fun things (we all want to be fun!). Meanwhile, the campaign itself becomes another Google product because people are excited to submit something and watch what others have added. Oh, and to top it all off, the videos are all hosted on YouTube so Google gets to advertise another company they own at the same time. Brilliant!