A recent study found that people prefer news portals —like Yahoo News, Google News, AOL — as their main online news sources rather than the online edition of major news outlets like CNN, CBS, and the New York Times.

[via Search Engine Land]

Public status updates from Facebook Pages now in Google's real-time search. The new features will be rolling out in the next few days --this time is just available globally in English. "Relevance meets the real-time web," Google says.

The key thing to remember, however, is that Google has much more limited access to Facebook’s real-time data than its competitor, Bing. Microsoft has deeper ties to the social network, as an investor in Facebook and as a search provider for the site. Microsoft has the ability to index public status updates, while Google’s access is limited to updates from Pages, which are vehicles for marketing rather than personal content.

[via VentureBeat]

If you frequently misspelled site addresses, it means you already sent cash to others --in this case, Google! A report says that Google supplied ads to almost 60 percent of these sites and earning some $497 million a year!

If these typo domains were treated as a single website, that site would be ranked by Alexa as the 10th most popular website in the world. It would be more popular, in unique daily visitors, than twitter.com, myspace.com, or amazon.com!

The answer is no, according to Silicon Alley Insider. There are too many options in the search market today, so that building a new search engine is not that easy. Another reason: The company is getting over US$100 million anually from Google, since Google is the default search engine in Safari.

For Apple, that's not a lot of money. But, it's enough that it doesn't make sense for Apple to put considerable resources towards building its own Internet search engine. And, if Apple wanted more money or options, there's Microsoft -- with Bing and a big checkbook.

Following the launch of Yahoo's "status-casting" for its email service back in August 2009, Google will also allow its email users to their update status. Google could announce "the Twitter-killer" as soon as this week, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The prompt reads, "let people know what you're up to, or share links to photos, videos, and Web pages." But every time a user updates their status, the previous update disappears into the ether.

The WSJ says the new feature will "allow Gmail users to view a stream of status updates from people they choose to connect with." It will be tightly integrated with Google's video-sharing site YouTube and its photo-sharing site Picasa.

[via Business Insider]

When it comes to the online activity, the following is my daily habit in the morning: checking my emails, Twitter and blog's Dashboard.

Frankly speaking, even having two email accounts are too many for me. But those [Yahoo! Mail and Gmail] really help in term of personal email management. I am using Yahoo! Mail for all services' subscriptions and Gmail for self-hosted domain name's mail. I even often Twitter's private messages (called DM) to ping some friends.

Getting notice recently that Facebook is now planning to launch its own webmail service, I am a bit surprised. Do we need a new [web-based] email?

Oh wait. Might be Facebook is not targeting user like me. If Facebook is eyeing common users, instead of a user like me, so it does make sense. Why? Because Facebook is becoming less relevant for me. I refuse to even use Facebook for message things.

With so much excitement around the device, the disappointing part is that though a week has passed since we saw the first iPad unit, Google Images still has no clue about the existence of this Apple device.

     

Facebook is now the fourth largest source of traffic to news and media sites, according to data crunched by Hitwise. "I always knew it would happen, but not this quickly," my friend Alan Soon wrote.

If you can't wait any longer your country listed on Google Nexus One's shipping policy, the following trick could be worth trying, thanks to Gamaze website. However, you have to pay the additional shipping cost for that. Your call!

1. Get access to the ordering process by downloading and installing the free Hotspot Shield software (Windows & Mac only), in order to protect your location and IP address so that Google’s web store won’t block you out from the ordering process.
2. Sign up for a US based shipping address at MyUSABox.com. This is free but they charge amount of US $5 for registering and will be credited to you when you use the service for the first time.
3. Sign up for a Google Checkout account. If you already have a Google / Gmail account, you can add that easily through your Google account settings. Note that you can use any international shipping address and credit card for this purpose, it does not have to be the MyUSABox address you just signed up for.
4. Order your personal Nexus One phone phone by pointing your browser to http://www.google.com/phone. Please make sure you opt for the SIM free phone at $529 + sales tax. Also, make sure you enter the MyUSAbox shipping address and Google Account billing address to the order.
5. Wait for your N1 to arrive to MyUSABox. You should get notified by email as soon as it arrives unless your e-mail spam filters are too tight.
6. Log in to MyUSABox and forward your box to your home address, it should arrive within a few days.

Indeed, it's the next logical step for Google to win the smartphone war: eyeing the enterprise market that's still dominated by RIM's BlackBerry. But it seems not easy for Google to be the mobile player, since the Internet giant is facing Nexus One customer complaints regarding the device's poor 3G performance.

Last Friday at CES, Google VP of Engineering Andy Rubin has indicated that the next version of the Nexus One "Superphone" will be an enterprise edition for business users. The phone it self will probably have a longer battery life and also a better physical keyboard.

Rubin have been very secretive about this matter though, as he won't tell us anything about the other details like the release date, what version of Android will it be running, etc. He only said that, The Nexus One is the first in a series, or "program", which could include some other new devices, including the enterprise edition of the Nexus One.

[via Gajeto, SlashGear]