Touted as the version built entirely for the tablet, the next version will include:

Honeycomb is the next version of the Android platform, designed from the ground up for devices with larger screen sizes, particularly tablets. We’ve spent a lot of time refining the user experience in Honeycomb, and we’ve developed a brand new, truly virtual and holographic user interface. Many of Android’s existing features will really shine on Honeycomb: refined multi-tasking, elegant notifications, access to over 100,000 apps on Android Market, home screen customization with a new 3D experience and redesigned widgets that are richer and more interactive. We’ve also made some powerful upgrades to the web browser, including tabbed browsing, form auto-fill, syncing with your Google Chrome bookmarks, and incognito mode for private browsing.

Honeycomb also features the latest Google Mobile innovations including Google Maps 5 with 3D interactions and offline reliability, access to over 3 million Google eBooks, and Google Talk, which now allows you to video and voice chat with any other Google Talk enabled device (PC, tablet, etc).

Sounds good to me and it will bring much demanded things like home screen customizations, web browsing enhancements and video chat in Google Talk.

But will Honeycomb come in a version tailored for mobile devices or will Gingerbread be the last version that mobile devices will be able to use?

Via Google Mobile Blog

You can easily install Google Chrome browser on your Ubuntu Linux. Follow the below steps to install Google Chrome browser on Ubuntu Linux.

1. Go to this page and download the 32 bit or 64 bit deb of Google Chrome for Linux. These are the Dev channel builds for Chrome, so you always get the latest updates.

2. Open Terminal and type the below command to install Google Chrome:

If you have downloaded the 32 bit version:

sudo dpkg -i google-chrome-unstable_current_i386.deb

If you have downloaded the 64 bit version:

sudo dpkg -i google-chrome-unstable_current_amd64.deb

This will automatically add Google’s repo to your Software Sources. So you receive all future updates from Google automatically.

If you are using Adobe Flash on your Ubuntu, here is how to enable Flash on Google Chrome. Type the below commands in Terminal:

sudo cd /opt/google/chrome/

sudo mkdir plugins
sudo cd plugins
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so

/opt/google/chrome/google-chrome --enable-plugins %U

Now open Google Chrome. A faster internet browser with Flash.

The Google Adsense team has announced that starting today you will be able to put Google Adsense video ads on your website. Along with India the other countries where video will now be available are Brazil, Germany and Mexico.

Before you start using Adsense video ads you will need to link your YouTube and Google Adsense accounts. You can do that by logging in to your Adsense account and going to the Adsense setups tab.

Hoping for better CPM from video ads. 

Inside Adsense : Video Units more widely available

An excerpt from Microsoft’s press release …

Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) today announced that it has made a proposal to the Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) Board of Directors to acquire all the outstanding shares of Yahoo! common stock for per share consideration of $31 representing a total equity value of approximately $44.6 billion. Microsoft’s proposal would allow the Yahoo! shareholders to elect to receive cash or a fixed number of shares of Microsoft common stock, with the total consideration payable to Yahoo! shareholders consisting of one-half cash and one-half Microsoft common stock. The offer represents a 62 percent premium above the closing price of Yahoo! common stock on Jan. 31, 2008.

But what does this mean for me ?

A bigger competitor for Google but no idea how effective the acquisition will be if at all it happens.

Whatever will happen to Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger and Flickr, three services I use almost all the time.

What do you think of this acquistion ? Does Microsoft buying Yahoo! make sense ?

Microsoft Press Release

The TechCrunch post

The first type of Google Adsense ad shows a list of products (related to the post) available at eBay for sale. Look at the screenshot on the right. This ad was appearing on this post of mine. No “Ads By Google” on this ad. I think this ad will increase CTR.

The second one is the ad which is displaying a “Show More link” below the ads. On clicking the link I was taken to a page with more contextual ads.

Have you seen these ads sometime in your blog ?

From Google Reader Blog

As a blogger I like to include a blogroll on my site so that friends, family and other readers can take a look at what I like to read. It’s also a nice way to give a shout out to the authors of the blogs that I like. However, maintaining a blogroll can be a bit of a pain as your subscriptions ebb and flow.

As a heavy user of Google Reader, I figured that the best way to get a blogroll would be to have Reader generate it for me, based on my subscriptions.

Google Reader has added a feature which enables you to make a blogroll right out of your subscriptions list. Here’s how to do it :

1. Go to Settings — > Tags.
2. Make the tag public whose subscription list you want to share.
3. Then click “Add a blogroll to your site”.
4. Get the code and paste it where you would like to display the blogroll.

That is it. Simple…. Get your blogroll now !

Google Reader Blog – Attack of the %20′ers

Pidgin (earlier Gaim) is a multiple protocol Instant Messenger client which can be used to chat using MSN, Yahoo, AIM, Google Talk and many other protocols.

How to configure Pidgin to work with Google Talk (Use Pidgin to chat with your GTalk friends)

1. Download & Install the latest version of Pidgin. On Kubuntu / Ubuntu you can just type

   aptitude install pidgin

   in terminal to install Pidgin.

2. Open Pidgin and go to Accounts –> Manage Accounts –> Add window of Pidgin.
3. From the drop-down box choose Google Talk as the Protocol.
4. For the Screen name enter your Google Id (Gmail Id) just the user name without the @gmail.com in it.



5. In the Password field enter your Google ID password.

That’s it. Now you can start chatting with your GTalk buddies using Pidgin while keeping in touch with users of other IM users also. No need to install GTalk software.

Let us know if you have any problems configuring it.