Google has a patent for a "Leasing scheme for data-modifying operations". If we look closely at the abstract, we'll notice that the patent refers to Google File System (PDF), "a scalable distributed file system for large distributed data-intensive applications".

"A system may facilitate performance of a data-modifying operation in a file network that includes multiple servers that store replicas of data. One of the servers may serve as a primary replica for one of the replicas of data and at least one other one of the servers may serve as at least one secondary replica for the replica of data. The system may send data associated with the data-modifying operation to the primary replica and the at least one secondary replica based on a network topology and independently send a data-modifying control signal that requests execution of the data-modifying operation using the data associated with the data-modifying operation to the primary replica and the at least one secondary replica."

The file system deals with error detection, fault tolerance, automatic recovery and files that have more than 1GB. This is one of the most important assets of Google and this is responsable for you not losing your mails when a disk failure happens in one of the machines that store your documents.

{ Via Search Engine Watch. }

Windows Live Mail Desktop, currently in beta, is a replacement for Outlook Express, although you won't find it in Vista. The program looks so similar to the Live Mail site that it's hard to notice you're actually using a software. This is probably the first program built from the interface of a web application.

The first thing that strikes you after installing the program is that you have to sign in with your Windows Live (MSN) account. You can ad more accounts later (and even your Gmail account, that is just a regular POP3 account).

WLMD has a 3-columns interface: the navigation, mails and contextual web results and ads. If you click on a mail, the programs scans the text of the mail, finds the most relevant keywords and shows the first web results for each one of them along with some ads from Microsoft adCenter.

The program has a feed reader, but it doesn't work unless you have Internet Explorer 7. That means it just reads the feeds from IE7.

I imported all mails from Gmail to test the speed of WLMD and I must say it's fast. But fast doesn't necessarily mean smart. The program sent a lot of random mail to the Junk folder, mostly short mails.

The attachments are very easy to miss. The icon is very far away from the mail and should have been replaced with the name of the files.


The search function works fast, but it doesn't highlight the results in the mail body.

You can compose more mails at once, attach files using drag-and-drop, forward more than one mail, insert photos directly into the message.

You don't have advanced options like "see the raw mail", filters are created as non-intuitive as in Outlook Express, while contacts are added through Live Messenger.

While WLMD is an improvement to Outlook Express, it lacks a powerful spam filter, a contact management feature, mail threading and a real desktop look-and-feel. Plus it needs a lot of RAM (on average, 70 MB, which is too much for a mail client).

Here's the direct link for Live Mail Desktop (13.5 MB).

More Windows Live:
Live Messenger review
Live Mail review
Live Toolbar is impressive

Until recently, Adobe Reader included Yahoo Toolbar as an option to install. Macromedia Flash Player gives users the chance to download Yahoo Toolbar. Now Adobe has signed a multiyear agreement with Google to redistribute Google Toolbar with most free Adobe products.

Adobe says that Google Toolbar is offered for the moment to users who download Macromedia Shockwave Player from Internet Explorer. I can't confirm this, since the upgrade to Shockwave player crashed my browser.

Related:
Google Toolbar 4.0 Beta
Windows Live Toolbar shines
So what's the connection between Flash and a toolbar? Maybe money?

David Jackson reports he got a mail from AdSense team that invited him to test some "ads that are compensated based on a Cost-Per-Action [CPA] basis".

What does this mean? You get paid if someone clicks on the ad and performs an action (like buying the product). These ads won't compete with the regular pay-per-click ads and will be on a separate network.

I think a product should be really good and very well promoted to make me buy it the first time I see an ad. Most people compare different products and read reviews before making a purchase.

{ Via Blogoscoped. }

"Google is kind of a metaphor for investing today. People want a short-term fix and they want something that has momentum," says Fred Kobrik, a successful growth fund managers, for CNN Money. He doesn't recommend buying Google's stocks.

Kobrik also says the competition in search market is not over as "winners often come from behind and original leaders wind up running into problems". He talks about companies like Apple or products like Lotus that were once market leaders.

Kobrik thinks that Google launches too many products just as experiments. "Google's throwing a lot of mud against the wall to see what sticks. That's pretty scary."

"Google has no ability to lock in users the way Microsoft and Yahoo have. Google has had a lot of success but they look a lot like the old Xerox to me." Google has a big user base in search, but these users don't find the other Google products as attractive. Google didn't create a real community, like Yahoo or Microsoft have done, so the users that come to Google for the great search engine may easily go elsewhere if another great search engine launches.

Search engines' user base is volatile.

Crazypack is a collection of essential portable* software designed to be included on a small USB drive. It only occupies 12MB and includes:

* Opera 9
* Google Talk instant messenger
* Small CD Writer
* Steganos LockNote, that saves notes and encrypts them
* PuTTY, a free implementation of Telnet and SSH
* A very nice launcher, that lets you select the program you want to launch, indexes the programs in Start Menu and gives information about the system (CPU, memory, HD space, display).

Although the selection of programs in this collection is subjective, the nice about this package is that you can include any portable program you want. Just save it in a subfolder of the usb folder and include an entry in PStart.xml file.

You can find many other portable applications at Wikipedia.

* A portable application is a computer program that doesn't need a setup to be installed. It can be stored on a removable storage such as a USB flash drive and used on multiple computers.

The same day when Yahoo Messenger 8 Beta launched, Windows Live Messenger came out of beta. Is this a coincidence?

Let's install the software. If you do that, you'll see there are a lot of opt-out options and bundles.



You'll also notice that Live Messenger cloned Yahoo Messenger interface. If Yahoo has Launchcast, Microsoft has Rhapsody Radio (but you have to pay for it). Both have an ad and a search bar at the bottom of the window.


So what's new in Windows Live Messenger?

* Live folders - share files with your contacts and synchronize the updates.

* Live contacts - update your contact card and it updates for everyone you want it to.

* PC-to-PC calling.

* PC-to-phone calls: sign up for service with Verizon.

* Video calling: 640x480 videos.

* Live Messenger will offer users a sneak-peak at the upcoming Walt Disney movie release "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dean Man's Chest," as well as an online video game based on the movie.

Live Messenger will replace MSN Messenger, that will still be available for users that have older versions of Windows.

Yahoo Messenger - Live Messenger interoperability is not yet available.

You can see a video that shows the new features of the Live Messenger and they are described by a member of Live Messenger team.

Download Windows Live Messenger (15.3 MB, requires Windows XP).

Yahoo Messenger 8 Beta adds more features to the over-bloated interface. If you look closely at the screenshot (click to enlarge), you'll barely see the contacts. On the other hand, the plug-ins that replace the tabs are quite visible.

The plug-ins can be built using JavaScript and Flash on top of Yahoo! Messenger Plug-in SDK. Plug-ins run in the main Messenger window, or as part of an IM conversation. Yahoo Messenger includes 3 plug-ins: Yahoo 360 (Yahoo's social network), Yahoo Answers and Launchcast, but you can add more from the gallery.

Yahoo invites developers to "create plug-ins that are as simple as an HTML web page, or as sophisticated as a map collaboration tool that uses ActiveX, Flash, DHTML, AJAX or any other browser-based technology."

There's also a new shortcut: Windows Key + Y that shows the main window of the Messenger and lets you type the name of a contact (or the first letters as it auto-completes) you want to talk to.

Plus a new message under the status: "Microsoft LCS Status". Is this a sign of Yahoo Messenger - Live Messenger interoperability?


Download Yahoo Messenger 8 from Softpedia (direct link to setup, no bundles) or Yahoo.

Related:
Remove ads from Yahoo Messenger

Opera released Opera 9, available in 30 languages and including many new features: support for BitTorrent, widgets and site preferences.

Since the first beta many things have changed in Opera, and not for the better. Widgets can be accessed in the Widgets menu and every widget creates a new entry in the taskbar. Unfortunately, you can't control the window from the taskbar. Widgets have a smoother font, but are somewhat buggier that in the beta version.

Some sites that still don't work: the chat in Gmail, Yahoo Mail Beta, Google Calendar, Blogger's toolbar (that worked in find in Beta 1).

Opera 9 implements many features available in Firefox and tries to catch up in the market share arena. Unfortunately, Opera seems to duplicate Firefox's memory problems: Opera 9 uses more RAM than ever.

On the bright side, there's Atom support, Web Forms 2.0, SVG, improved security and better XMLHttpRequest support.

* Download Opera 9
* Opera 9 changelog
* Google Operating System widget

Related:
10 features you'll only find in Opera
What's new in Firefox 2

Google has developed an extension for Firefox that integrates with the social network Joga and allows you to view the latest scores from the World Cup, videos of the best goals, and talk with other fans about your favorite teams.

You can view the score of the latest match in the status bar. The extension will alert you when a goal is scored.



There's also a scoreboard that includes the upcoming matches and the most important news about World Cup. You can select the flag of your team to customize Firefox theme.

The best news about this extension? Google intends to release as open source the underlying framework and code they developed to build Joga Companion (that's the name of the extension).

Related:
World Cup results on Google.com