At the end of next month, September 30, Google will expand the current "developer preview" of Google Wave to roughly 100,000 consumer users. According to Google, "included in this group of early testers will be some of the businesses using Google Apps." In anticipation of this wider release, Danny and I got some time with Lars Rasmussen and the rest of the Google Wave team the other day. By way of background, Danny and I wrote about Wave when it was first announced earlier this year and then offered some third-party developer observations. Without doing a full "review," I'll offer [...]

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This morning Google is rolling out a program in Australia enabling developers to create "social gadgets" that permit sharing, collaboration and groups on the iGoogle homepage. The social gadgets will come to the US and other markets in the future, but the timing is undetermined. I spoke yesterday with Google's Marissa Mayer about the new initiative, built on the Open Social platform. At the outset there are apparently 12 social gadgets, eight of which were created by third party developers. For example, there's a chess gadget and other casual game gadgets -- casual games have become huge on [...]

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Steve Rubel reports that Google has released a new iGoogle Gadget named What's Popular. The gadget looks like a small little Digg clone to me. Here is a screen capture: As you can see, you can mark up or down a story and it shows the number of "pops" next to the story, plus when it was first added. You can even submit your own stories and keep track of your submissions and "my pops." If you maximize the gadget, you can further filter the stories. Here is a screen capture: I wonder if this will catch on? We remember when AOL turned Netscape into a Digg clone and it failed. [...]

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Contrary to some earlier reports, Google's new Friend Connect, launching today, is not focused on data portability or a direct answer to MySpace "Data Availability" or the new Facebook Connect. While there's a data portability dimension, it's focused on the flip side of the equation: site owners who want to make their sites more "social." Accordingly, it's more like a Ning competitor. Right now Friend Connect is in a very limited beta with a few "white listed" sites. However, eventually, site owners will be able go to a wizard (available here later today), select "social gadgets" or modules, [...]

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Patrick Sexton at SEOish created a Sphinn Google Gadget that you can add to your Google Personalized Home page. The Sphinn Google Gadget displays the most recent hot items at Sphinn, the what's new items, and also the most recent comments. To add the Sphinn Google Gadget to your Google home page, click here. After you click on that link, Google will take you to a confirmation page that looks like this: After you confirm by clicking "Add to Google," Google will take you to the Google home page with the gadget on your front page: Don't use Google's personalize home page? Well, Patrick [...]

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