The first Website to provide a vendor-independent assessment of online meeting tools has now gone live at Webconferencing-test.com (www.webconferencing-test.com). The portal provides comparisons of all leading solutions – including Microsoft Live Meeting, Macromedia Breeze (now called Acrobat Connect Professional) Webex, and GoToMeeting from Citrix.

Google Germany is running a Doodle in honor of the 16th anniversary of the day East and West Germany became one.

Google is locked in a trademark battle in Germany for the right to use the name Gmail for its mail service.

The next Big Nerd Ranch session of Perl Bootcamp occurs in Germany in September, and will cover Intermediate Perl.

The UK and Germany now have releases of Google Base for their Internet users; meanwhile, Ask.com has expanded its mapping imagery throughout Europe.

Adding to the calendar of events I’ll be speaking at during 2006 are two more I’ve agreed to take part in:

Microsoft takes down a Chinese language blog on MSN Spaces, while a German blogger’s appearance in Google rankings for a court’s name earns him a cease-and-desist letter from the court.

It’s bad news for 2,400 German employees as Berlin-based electronics company Siemens AG downsizes its staff as part of a “major restructuring” of Siemens Business Services (SBS). Siemens shares were up after the news.

Last Friday evening, MSN took their search toolbar to the International community by releasing an updated version, which increases the amount of language support given to foreign countries.

With more than half the web’s content being produced in the English language, web searchers who do not speak the English language may be at a loss when it comes to finding sites of interest.

In Germany the CRM agency Proximity has asked 2,700 internet users about weblogs. And the results are both interesting and valuable …

A naming rights issue has forced Google to change the name of their German email service. Because another party owns the rights to “G-Mail,” Google will now call the German service “Google Mail”.

One of the largest advertising agencies in the world is now blogging, at least in Germany.

Things are happening in and around the German blogosphere according to BlogInitiativeGermany.

Beginning in October, Overture Germany will begin use of an account control feature called Budget Smoothing. Serving as a spending limit option, Budget Smoothing allows Overture to control the amount of appearances member listings make, depending on their daily budget.

Wotbox is an independent Search Engine that over the last year has developed a strong following on the web.