Google Wave is a pioneering real-time joint tool that has the potential to be a perfect method for members of a group to work together. Yet, it's not lucid how useful it will be in the real world. It's the sort of tool that you prefer to use, but one that you might not be able to figure out easily, how to fit into your work life.

In fact,Google Wave seems to be one of those tools that's extremely difficult to explain to those who haven't started using it. One way to think of it is as a collection of threaded e-mail conversations and instantaneous messaging. Rich content, together with Google maps, interactive polling, videos and much more, can be embedded in conversations (known as waves). Additionally, the rich content is live and interactive. As an example,if you embed a Google map, all members in the conversation can utilize it as if they were on the Google Maps site.All the above features makes for a kind of profound collaboration that's impossible with more conventional means of Internet communication. Theoretically, Google Wave can help groups distribute information, take decisions and actions faster.In practice,however, it's difficult to predict the future of Google Wave, as most people still prefer to use the traditional e-mail.



Presently,Google Wave is still in a fairly strongly controlled, invitation-only beta. Considering that it's free, however, when it becomes public, or if you're fortunate enough to obtain an invite, it's definitely worth to test it out, just for the "coolness" factor.For further details, check wave.google.com

Microsoft may be the only company with the means to challenge Google's Internet search dominance head on, but a number of firms are trying to compete with Google with services that tackle aspects of search that is not covered by Google's index of Web pages. Aardvark - a firm whose cofounders also include two ex-Googlers - is tackling something that it calls "social search."

This is how aardvark functions.Instead of looking at Web pages to search answers to obtain queries, Aardvark's service tracks a person's network of social contacts. Ask Aardvark for any kind of question ranging from restaurant recommendations to home enhancement tips, and the service will pass on the question to Facebook and Twitter friends who have recognized themselves as "experts" on a variety of topics.



The aardvark service, which has obtained praise from the New York Times' David Pogue and other tech bloggers, was started as a beta version earlier this year but accessing Aardvark required utilizing instant messaging software or an iPhone app.

Recently, the company put the search box directly on a website - vark.com - enabling it to become more reachable for a wide range of people.

Similar to the so-called real time search engines popularized by Twitter, Collecta and OneRiot, though presently Aardvark depicts a small segment ,it might be quite dangerous for Google in future . Most of the content that transmits through these new types of search services is not essentially reachable by Google's search engine.Google is making its efforts to tackle the situation by licensing the Twitter data feed. As more innovative forms of search evolve,Google will find itself having more such talks.

An Indian local and media search site Zook.in (http://www.zook.in/) is using search engines from Yahoo and Microsoft at the back-end of its site to keep its costs low.Rather than pay yellow pages companies to provide local data, which is often limited to only key locations, Zook.in analyzes content thrown up in searches by mainstream search engines, to offer immediately consumable data in the area of local search and media search, said Ajay Sethi,CEO of Ziva Software, the company that runs the new web site.

Zook.in is launching at one go in India and abroad, as it believes that to succeed as a viable business proposition, it has to scale quickly to millions of users.Local searches and searches for media are key search categories for mobile phone users, Sethi said.

While mobile phone users can also search for other general information on the Zook.in web site, the results displayed on its "Web snippets" section will be of a similar quality to those offered by the back-end mainstream search engines.On local searches, the site returns data such as the address and telephone numbers of hotels, restaurants, government offices, consulates, malls, hospitals, and other key places. Users can click on the telephone numbers provided, and dial out immediately.

source:pcworld.com