Windows Live Maps continues to do amazing things with its 3D view, adding an experience that in many ways matches or surpasses Google Earth, all while running in nothing more than your regular web browser. The latest new feature is the ability to add 3D models to the map, a feature Google Earth accomplishes with Google SketchUp, and Live Maps now manages with the 3DVIA Technology Preview, a new, free online application developed by Dassault Systèmes.
If you’d like to make it easier for people to contact you via your blog (or MySpace or whereever you can post code), Windows Live Messenger has a site where you can create a nice-looking button in seconds that will get them in touch with your Live Messenger screen name.
Ionut Alex found evidence in the source code for the newest version of Gmail that hints at features we may be receiving soon.
He found code for Jabber transports, which would allow contacting people from other instant messaging networks over Google Talk/Chat’s Jabber connection, which makes sense given the fact that Gmail’s new contact manager asks for Yahoo, MSN and AIM usernames now.
Google has decided that when it comes to Facebook, if you can’t beat ‘em, API ‘em. Google’s OpenSocial, which will launch at code.google.com/apis/opensocial tomorrow, will be a set of APIs that developers can use to create applications that work on any participating social network. Google’s goal is to create an open layer that runs atop all social networks, diminishing the power of all the networks in the process.
There are four posts at Resource Shelf, chock full of domains registered by or transferred to Microsoft, that you might be interested in.
Yahoo has announced it is shutting down Yahoo 360, its never-popular social networking service. 360, which launched on March 29, 2005 (apparently the last time I was ever hopeful about Yahoo), never caught on the way Microsoft’s Spaces did, having a less-appealing interface, and bad decision to start as invite-only, and a lack of promotion and integration from its host company.
Google has stopped using Systran for its translation services, switching over to an in-house translation system that it has been building for a long time. Google Translate, which translates words or phrases, whole web pages, and is used in the “Translate this page” link you’ll occasionally see by a foreign language search result, is now powered by Google’s own machine translation system.
With Microsoft buying a portion of Facebook, it’s only appropriate that tonight’s Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget is a Facebook one.
Amidst rumors that Google has pulled ahead of Microsoft in the race to buy a portion of Facebook, Google News now has its own Facebook application.
Bloglines beta keeps adding commands to the console.
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