You might be used to the extend of freedom of press allowed in large  democracies like the U.S or even India but some countries do not take certain controversial material too lightly.

Thats the case in Turkey where YouTube was banned due to some material criticizing the founding father of the country was found. It’s only natural that YouTube would be banned since there is a law in Turkey prohibiting anyone to post material that may be insulting Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founding father of modern day Turkey.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk is a revered figure whose image graces every denomination of currency and whose portrait hangs in nearly all government offices.

Originally the Istanbul Court had said it would lift the ban as soon as the suspected material insulting the founding father was removed by the YouTube adminstrators. YouTube did just that, and as promised the courts lifted the ban today followed by rejoice among the users of the video uploading website.

As you can see, Turkish people hold their national founding father high in their hearts, and so its not suprising such a decision would come from their courts. I hope YouTube will become efficient in detecting questionable content in the future, which would save them from unwanted press coverage.

Google has always held a strong reputation among tech enthusiasts and the geek  community for some time now. Part of the reason being it’s high standard of morality and buisness ethics when it comes to promoting it’s own products.

In fact, Google has always pledged to compete with all buisnesses in a fair manner. Its easy for a company holding the majority share of all online search to self-promote products of it’s own interest, but google has strieved to play it fair. Google fans often to refer to this type of buisness practice as being the “Anti-Evil” Policy.

However, some recent actions by Google point to a violation of their self-claimed “Anti-Evil” policy.

A few months ago, Google displayed small notes called Google Tips on top of organic search results, which promoted their own products like Blogger, Picasa, Google Calender, and several others. That decision produced an outrage in the tech world resulting in Google actually putting an end to Google Tips. 

Google is currently displaying Google Checkout icons next to their own products which is simply a tactic to promote their own software. In addition to icons/logos, Google is also adding other graphical components such as wide badges and text descriptions to ads displayed on Google Search results pages to “help shoppers identify Google Checkout merchants” more easily.

An icon, which can be classified as an image next to the given advertisement would naturally result in better exposure and a much higher rate of click through. This action can certainly be seen as a unfair method of self-promotion and has the potential to gain a large press coverage in the coming days as this topic gains heat.

[via:Digital Inspiration]

Let’s be honest now, we all make a mistake from time to time. But, would you      expect a large corporation like Google to ever make a mistake, especially when it comes to their own logo.

You may be aware of Google’s habbit of changing their logo design upon certain cultural celebrations like Christmas, Presidents Day, Lincoln’s Day, and ofcourse Valentines Day.

Well, Google decided to display a logo containing a rather confusing design to celebrate this year’s Valentines Day. The logo consisted of a strawberry with a large green stem, most likely representing the [L] in Google. There is no doubt in my mind that this logo can definitely be confusing at a first glance.

Many have gone to the extent of claiming Google has misspelled it’s own name as being “Googe”. The Google Blog did however react to the claims by clearing up the whole situation with a post stating that there was no mistake, but only a misinterpretation by the users.

Hopefully, Google will stick to designs that are not so vague in the future. Atleast that way they can avoid a whole lot of undeserved embarassment.

Many were speculating about the true release date of Google’s popular web  based email client known as Gmail for some time now. Rumors were fueled with an additional boost, when Google (by accidently or not) released a page allowing anyone to sign up to use Gmail.

Then to everyones suprise, the page was pulled down for reasons unknown to anyone. It could’ve of been a mistake, like the many made by google blogger team last year.

Since the release date of 2004, Gmail was limited to those lucky few invited by email or registered through mobile phone. These were methods ensuring the quality of Gmail remains stardard and to prevent spam accounts from being created.

The long beta period does seem unusual for a google product as popular as Gmail. Google has become extremetly efficient at providing users with quality products and so this waiting period does seem legitimate.

Google being the generous company it is today decided to gift you this valentines day with a completely free registation process. By free, I mean without those hassles I’ve mentioned. Anyone can now sign up for a free Gmail account offering 2.8GB of storage space.

Some of the features you will find useful with gmail include advanced spam protection, integration with other google services, and ofcourse the much loved search feature. Additionally, you can even access your email on the go with complete mobile access.

Sign Up For GMail

[Source: Google Blog]

The navbar was originally made to help enhance the readers experience by allowing them to search through millions of blogs of their interest. Intentions are worthy of admiration, but a blogger set on representing professionality might find it disturbing or even turned off by the diversion of traffic this feature causes.

Bloggers were able to disable the navbar found in the previous version of blogger using a simple CSS code. However, if you have switched to the new version of blogger, you might of noticed that the CSS code seems to stop functioning. This is due to the fact that google now uses a different CSS tag to control the navbar in Blogger Beta.

If you want to hide the display of navbar in the new Blogger, then simply copy and paste these lines into your blogger template.

<style type=”text/css”>
#navbar-iframe {
height: 0px;
visibility: hidden;
display: none;
}
</style>

Note:If you are using a classic template in the new version of blogger, then simply search and replace the #b-navbar with #navbar-iframe, which will successfully hide the navbar.

Now, you might be wondering if this method is violating any google blogger TOS or any type of licensing. There is no mention of anything relating to the removal of navbar in the google policy. Also, many have been using methods such as this, since the early days of blogger in itself.

[via:Digital Inspiration] 

Google is by far the dominant player in online contextual advertising with little to no competition at all. But, what do you do when you run out of ideas to advertise material?

A couple of months back, Google daringly entered the radio advertising area with somewhat success. Google lives and breathes advertising and besides its the only way they can monetize. After all, a service cannot survive without sufficient funding, especially one that of Google’s size and power.

Their newest approach to expand Google’s advertising empire involves a certain old fashioned idea with a much modern twist. A traditional method of advertising at best but one that of great value.

Its no secret that the future of advertising is no where other than the internet itself but at present, physical means of advertising still play a significant role in our lives.

All hints to Google’s interest in developing a digital billboard advertising network. According to a report by the New Scientist, Google has already filed for a patent regarding this matter. The author gives us a detailed view of how such a service might work.

Stores buying advertising time on local electronic billboards are able to connect their stock-control computers to the network. The ads are displayed in rotation, but only until the stock-control computer reports the product as sold out. At that point, the ad is omitted from the cycle until the product is restocked.

Google claims that electronic billboards often display products that are not found in local stores which would mean the advertisement is simply useless. Google has come up with a system that only advertises products available at nearby stores.

There is no doubt in my mind that this would truly revolutionize the current electronic billboard advertising industry. As for it’s success among competitors in the field, I couldn’t possibly tell but if Google’s past is considered, then success is where Google Lies.

[Via:Google Blogoscoped, Search Engine Land]

Google Talk is infact one of my favorite google services due to it’s variety of features and intergration to GMail. Even though Google Talk does provide simplicity in every way possible but one small problem still presists.

If you have ever used Google Talk, you should have noticed the lack of an option to choose font style, size or color. There is however a work-around which allows you to send bold or italicized messages in Google Talk.

To send a message in bold, you simply need to add asterisk (*) before and after the text.
For example: *Hello World* would look like Hello World

To send a message in italics, you need to add underscore before and after the text.
For Example: _Hello World_ would look like Hello World

If you prefer to send the message in both Bold and italicized style; add both underscore and asterisk before and after the text.
For Example: _*Hello World*_ would look like Hello World  

[Thanks Thilak]