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Sidewiki–shown on the left-hand side of this page–lets Google Toolbar users add comments to any Web page.

(Credit: Google)

Google plans to try its hand at the bane of many a Web publisher’s existence: comment moderation.

Sidewiki is a new addition to the Google Toolbar that will let users read comments on any Web site and add their own in a special interface on the left hand side of the screen enabled by the toolbar. This idea has been tried before by others, but Google is proposing to use an algorithm to rank comments by quality and to link comments to a user’s Google Profile.

Google has developed an algorithm that it says can filter out obvious spam, naughty words, and the classic all-caps technique employed by some of the Internet’s more unhinged pundits, said Caesar Sengupta, group product manager at Google. As comments build over time, a recursive algorithm can analyze the quality of past comments using reader votes on the comment’s usefulness.

You can share your comments with your Facebook or Twitter accounts, and can post a link to a blog item discussing that Web page with a snippet of the text, Sengupta said. Only Google Toolbar users will be able to see the comments on the Web page, obviously, but Google plans to work on an API (application programming interface) that will allow developers to use Sidewiki in other places.

This kind of service will likely sink or swim on the strength of its ranking algorithms, but could give readers a way to discuss, correct, or clarify static Web pages that don’t allow reviews or comments directly on the page.

Google Toolbar is available for Internet Explorer and Firefox, and you’ll need to download the toolbar to get started with Sidewiki. Current Google Toolbar users will see the Sidewiki button shortly as Google works out a few kinks in the delivery process, but they can re-download the toolbar if they want to get started.

Originally posted at Relevant Results

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Google Toolbar adds comments with Sidewiki

New search engine Goby is launching Tuesday night, and unlike Microsoft’s Bing, or Hunch, Goby really is a “decision engine”–enabling users to very quickly find something to do nearby or in a far away place.

Its task-centric search tool is comprised of three boxes–a “what,” “where,” and “when.” You just tell it what you want to do and where you want to do it, as well as some general date (or no date at all), and it goes through its index to find you places or activities that match up with those simple parameters. Oftentimes this results in it finding events that fall during the time period you originally selected, which is a pretty neat trick for a search engine and potentially a huge time saver if you’re using it for vacation or business travel search.

The tool does many things to help you fill out its three search boxes quickly, and get straight to the results. For one, it offers up suggestions as you type. You can also cruise through a nested folders of activities in its index for suggestions. In my case, it did a spot-on job at turning “tomorrow” into in real date. It also rolled “beers” into its food and drink category, along with providing other category suggestions like “beer tastings”, “breweries” and “bars and pubs.”

You tell Goby what you want to do and where you want to do it, and it searches the Web to find events and happening places.

(Credit: CNET)

Along with helping users fill out the beginnings of a search query, it also does a decent job at letting them whittle down the results. For instance, if you want to limit the results to a specific area, you can just grab a pin from the map that sits on the right of the results page, and it filters points of interest down to that vicinity. You can also restart a search query within one or more genres just by clicking on their check boxes.

One thing it’s missing though (and it’s a biggie) is a way to tell you how good any of these places are. If you’re used to hitting Yelp to hunt for a new place to eat, or something fun to do on the weekend, Goby doesn’t offer any kind of social-rating system or tools of its own.

But it’s not going to be like that forever. Goby’s CEO Mark Watkins tells me that there will eventually be review links from places like Yelp, as well as mentions on places like Facebook and Twitter–something that should give results some social flavor. For now at least, you’re going to have to hoof it over to Yelp, CitySearch, or some other local reviews place to get ratings and reviews for restaurants and other local businesses.

Other things on the way include a personal search history, which will let users save their queries for future searches that will show updated results based on date and index changes. The company is also working on an iPhone app that will be able to automatically fill out the “where” field based on the user’s location, however this and the personal search history will not be immediately available on launch.

See also Diddit, a service that launched back in February, that helps people make lists of things to do, as well as discover local lists made by others. There’s also Yahoo-owned Upcoming, which provides local events and venues listings.

Originally posted at Web Crawler

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Bored? Goby helps you find things to do

Point of Wealth co-founder David Prehn (left) pitches to USA Today writer Ed Baig. The POW system lets employees who are paid in cash deposit their money, pay bills, and top off pre-paid credit cards.

(Credit: Rafe Needleman/CNET)

At DemoFall 2009, one of the few hardware companies launching is Point of Wealth, which makes a bank machine. It’s like an ATM, but in reverse: You can only put cash in, not get it out.

The kiosk is designed to be placed in businesses where employees are paid mostly in cash. The idea is that the employees, when they’re paid, can then deposit their cash in the machine and distribute it as they wish — to pay bills, put money into IRAs, or top off debit cards for use later. Of course they can keep whatever cash they want in their pocket, too.

CEO and bar owner Doug Lindstrom told me that the kiosk can also be used by business owners to pay their employees, by transferring funds from their bank account to their employees’ pre-paid debit card accounts.

Full-service ATMs do many of the same things, but they generally don’t serve the “unbanked,” like this business does. Point of Wealth is a very solid concept with a strong business model: The machines are free to the establishments that install them, and Point of Wealth takes small fees for each transaction.

Originally posted at Rafe’s Radar

Read the original here:
Point of Wealth: The reverse ATM

Updated 2:18 p.m. PDT with comment from Google.

The parties involved in the Google Book Search settlement have asked a federal court to postpone an October hearing to approve the proposed settlement while they work out a new deal.

When the Department of Justice made it clear last Friday that it could not support the settlement as written–which would give Google unique rights to scan out-of-print books still protected by copyright law–it said the parties were in talks to amend the settlement. In a joint brief (click for PDF), lawyers the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers, and others asked Judge Denny Chin to delay a hearing on whether to approve the settlement while the parties work out the new terms of the settlement with the DOJ.

“Because the parties, after consultation with the DOJ, have determined that the Settlement Agreement that was approved preliminarily in November 2008 will be amended, plaintiffs respectfully submit that the Fairness Hearing should not be held, as scheduled, on October 7,” the plaintiffs in the case said in a briefing. They said Google had given them permission to indicate that the company was not opposed to the motion.

The Open Book Alliance, a group of companies and organizations opposed to the settlement, declared victory.

“This is a huge victory for the many people and organizations who raised significant concerns that this settlement did not serve the public interest, stifled innovation, and restricted competition. It’s also an enormous loss for Google, which had been saying for months that no changes were necessary to the settlement. Now, that settlement, as we know it, is dead,” the alliance said in a blog post Friday.

In a statement, Google has this to say: “The plaintiffs moved for an adjournment of the final Fairness Hearing, currently scheduled for October 7. We are considering the points raised by the Department of Justice and others, and we look forward to addressing them as the court proceedings continue.”

The parties had originally settled in October 2008, ending a dispute over Google’s legal right to scan copyright protected out-of-print books. But the settlement gave Google the sole legal right to scan those books, raising anticompetitive fears and provoking strong opposition from authors, academics, privacy advocates, and some libraries.

Judge Chin had been scheduled to decide whether or not the settlement should go forward in a hearing at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The parties asked for a November 9 status conference to discuss the modifications they plan to make to the settlement.

It’s not clear whether Judge Chin will automatically approve the request. He could still hold the hearing as scheduled and make his own decision about whether or not to approve the settlement, although that seems highly unlikely given the recent developments, especially the involvement of the DOJ.

It’s likewise not clear what types of modifications to the deal are being discussed. The DOJ’s main objection to the deal was that “the Proposed Settlement seeks to implement a forward-looking business arrangement rather than a settlement of past conduct,” which is not what class-action suits are designed to do, it said in a filing with the court last Friday. It is also concerned about potential violations of antitrust law, concerns that Google has grown accustomed to hearing with mounting government scrutiny this year.

Originally posted at Relevant Results

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Parties seek Google Books hearing delay; new deal brewing

Roughly a year after rolling out facial recognition on its Picasa Web Albums site, Google on Tuesday is introducing an updated version of its Picasa software (for Windows | Mac) that can recognize faces in photos stored on users’ computers.

Just as it does on the Web, Picasa scans your photos for faces, then groups together photos of specific people. It’s then your job to tell it who they are as well as confirm its guesses. If someone you’re tagging is in your Google address book, you can also look them up very quickly with auto-complete. Otherwise, Google gives you the option to add them as someone new; this information then gets synced back up your Google address book.

Picasa's software can now scan for faces, and offer up recommendations of people it thinks are your contacts.

(Credit: CNET)

The system worked very well for me, but it was slow going. I had to leave the program running overnight for it to finish processing my 3,700 or so photos for faces. It also had my processor humming, since it was doing all the work on my machine instead of Google’s giant server farm.

That’s not to say Google hasn’t included a few things to help speed up the process. For one, if you’ve got photos that are both hosted online and on your hard drive–and that have already been scanned for faces, the Picasa software can grab that information and add it to your local library. This saves it from having to scan the same photos twice.

And for photos it thinks contain people you’ve verified as contacts, it gives you quick “yes” and “no” buttons that can add or reject name tags. Oftentimes, clicking “yes” adds a few more suggestions for photos of that person that the program feels is safe enough to recommend. There’s also a way to group accept or group decline its suggestions, which saves time you would have otherwise spent clicking the buttons one at a time.

Users can now geotag their photos right in the Picasa, just like they can in Picasa Web Albums.

(Credit: CNET)

As with Picasa Web Albums, your reward for trudging through your photos to add tags is better organization, which for a massive library of old, archived shots can be hugely helpful. And unlike Picasa’s albums feature, name tags let you quickly sort all of your photos by who’s in them–not when they were taken or how you’ve personally organized them. It also continues to do this with any photos you add to your library in the future.

Along with facial recognition, the new version of the software integrates Google Maps–a much-wanted feature among geotagging fans. Just as you’re able to do in Picasa Web Albums, you can search for a location in Google Maps, then amend that geographic data to your photo. You can also view groups of photos by place by clicking on little red map markers that show where individual photos have been placed. Unlike the facial recognition feature though, this is still largely a manual process of doing a search for each location then adding it to a photo, or group of photos, at once. That is, unless you have a camera with GPS (which most people don’t).

One big thing Google is bringing to the table with this release over something like Apple’s iPhoto (at least for Mac users) is the capability to tag items that are spread out across your entire computer, as well as external drives. In that regard, it does a much better job than iPhoto when it comes to automatically importing and organizing photos–all without disturbing where they’re stored. Considering it now does much of what iPhoto is able to do with faces, with the added bonus of grabbing that contact information from your Google address book, it makes for a very seamless experience.

The new version of the software should appear as an update for users of Picasa v3.1 the next time they start the program. It can also be forced to update by clicking the “check for updates online” option in the help menu.

Previously: Revamped Google Picasa site identifies photo faces

Originally posted at Web Crawler

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Picasa 3.5 brings facial recognition to the desktop