Google has released a new tool called Google Data Explorer which enable people to comprehend data and statistics through rich visualizations. With the Data Explorer,you can mash up data using line graphs, bar graphs, maps and bubble charts. The visualizations are dynamic, so you can watch them move over time, change topics, highlight different entries and change the scale. Once you have a chart ready, you can easily share it with friends or even embed it on your own website or blog. We’ve embedded the following chart using the new feature as an example:

Currently Google is providing data from World Bank, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau. Google has also added the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), the California Department of Education, Eurostat, the U.S. Center for Disease Control, and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis data providers.

How to use Google Public Data Explorer

YouTube has added a new feature called Safety Mode, enabling users to get more controlled YouTube experience. Safety Mode settings will help users to screen out potentially objectionable content that you may prefer not to see or don’t want others in your family to stumble across while enjoying YouTube.

It’s easy to opt in to Safety Mode: Just click on the link at the bottom of any video page. You can even lock your choice on that browser with your YouTube password.

YouTube Safety Mode Demo

Although this Safety Mode is nice feature but i would like to see how people can use this feature with wider audience and YouTube can also give video up loaders an option on if videos should be allow to be watched in safety mode or not.

Google Buzz is just launched by Google and people are raising privacy concerned about Google Buzz. This privacy issue is  noted by the Silicon Alley Insider on Wednesday. By default Google Buzz show the list of people you follow and people that follow you. This list is a public list so any one visiting your Google profile would shown with a complete list of people that you follow and people follow you. In other words any one can go and see who are the people you email and chat with most.

Two obvious scenarios according Silicon Alley Insider

• Imagine if a wife discovering that her husband emails and chats with an old girlfriend a ton.
• Imagine a boss discovers a subordinate emails with executives at a competitor

The good news for Google is that this is a very easy problem to fix. Google must either shut off auto-following, or it must make follower lists private by default as soon as possible.

How to Stop following Someone in Google Buzz?

Click into Buzz on Gmail

In the middle of the page, it’ll show you who you’re automatically following. Click "View and edit"

Click "Unfollow" for everyone on your list you don’t want the world to know you’re emailing.

Or just scroll to the bottom of the page and turn Buzz off

Google is now sending an E-Mail, That it will phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 ?as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers. Recently they also published a blog entry on this.

Here is the complete Email :

Dear Google Apps admin,?
In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology.  This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5.  As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 ?as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.
We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010.  After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.
Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.
Starting this week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser.  We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.
In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience.  We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.
Thank you for your continued support!
Sincerely,
The Google Apps team
Email preferences: You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important changes to your Google Apps product or account.
Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

As of March 2010, Google will not support older browsers including Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 for its Google Docs and Google sites services. According to Google, they are stopping the support of older browser because old browsers cannot run many of the modern web application. Web is completely changes its all about web application not web pages or websites.

It think its a good move instead of supporting old web browsers companies should stop their application support for old browsers. These old browsers are also more vulnerable for security attacks. Recently a security flaw in Internet Explorer 6 is used by cyber criminals to steal data from Google Server.

Google encourage you to update your browsers as soon as possible. There are many choices:

• Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0+
• Mozilla Firefox 3.0+
• Google Chrome 4.0+
• Safari 3.0+

Thursday, January 28th marks International Data Privacy Day. Google recognizing this day by publicly and publishing their guiding Privacy Principles.

• Use information to provide our users with valuable products and services.

• Develop products that reflect strong privacy standards and practices.

• Make the collection of personal information transparent.

• Give users meaningful choices to protect their privacy.

• Be a responsible steward of the information we hold.

Ben Edelman, Harvard privacy researcher and guru found that Google toolbar is continuing to transmit users browsing information even it is disabled. Not only does it track a user’s Google searches, but it also phones home information about searches done in other search engines. Internet Explorer users who enabled Google Toolbar’s enhanced feature including Google PageRank and SideWiki are affected by this bug. 

Ben Edelman conclusions about what Google should do:

When a user disables Google Toolbar, all Enhanced Features transmissions need to stop, immediately and without exception. This change must be deployed to all Google Toolbar users straightaway.

Google also needs to clean up the results of its nonconsensual data collection. In particular, Google has collected browsing data from users who specifically declined to allow such data to be collected.

But these records never should have been sent to Google in the first place. So Google should find a way to let concerned users request that Google fully and irreversibly delete their entire Toolbar histories.

The current Toolbar installation sequence suffers inconsistent statements of privacy consequences, with poor presentation of the full Toolbar Privacy Statement. Toolbar puts a button on users’ Taskbar unrequested. And as my videos show, once Google puts its code on a user’s computer, there’s nothing to stop Google from tracking users even after users specifically decline. I’ve run Google Toolbar for nearly a decade, but this week I uninstalled Google Toolbar from all my PCs. I encourage others to do the same.

Google said it will publish a download update today that will truly disable the monitoring when a user tries to do it. According to PCWorld

A Google spokesperson said Monday night.

Google confirmed the bug and said that only a tiny number of toolbar users are impacted. a fix for the toolbar would be pushed out Tuesday and the software would automatically update. Google declined to say how many toolbar users use IE8 and would only estimate the number of all its toolbar users as hundreds of millions.A fix that doesn’t require a browser restart will be available in an automatic update to Google Toolbar that we are pushing tomorrow.

YouTube is introducing an experimental version of HTML 5 supported video player on YouTube. HTML5 is a new web standard that is gaining popularity rapidly and adds many new features to your web experience. Most notably for YouTube users, HTML5 includes support for video and audio playback. This means that users with an HTML5 compatible browser, and support for the proper audio and video codec’s can watch a video without needing to download a browser plugin. HTML 5 supported video player does not support videos with ads and full screen support.

As of now HTML 5 supported video player work only with Google Chrome ,Apple Safari (version 4+) and Microsoft Internet Explorer with Chrome Frame installed. It won’t work in Firefox,Even though Firefox supports HTML <video> feature but it does not support H.264 Codec. Even in the browsers that do support it, the HTML5 player is a pale copy of the Flash-based one. A lot of features are missing and some things aren’t as smooth as you’d expect.

Kevin Carle, a software engineer at YouTube Wrote,

To try it out, go to the HTML5 page via TestTube or visit this page and join the experiment. This will enable HTML5 video for your browser, provided that it’s one of the browsers mentioned above and fits in with the parameters we already referenced. (If you’ve opted in to other experiments, you may not get the HTML5 player.) You can also enable Feather watch (visit http://www.youtube.com/feather_beta) along with HTML5 video for an even simpler, faster YouTube experience.

If you are using built-in apps of BlackBerry for messages and contacts than Google Mobile App could be very useful for. The new version of Google Mobile App allows BlackBerry users to search email and contacts on your BlackBerry device with new Google Mobile App.

Just type (or speak) your query – perhaps the name of the person who sent you the mail or a phrase from the text – and Google Mobile App will search through the emails and contacts on your device and return the results. You can quickly reply to an email or forward it on.

You can also quickly call, SMS, or email contacts by typing the first few letters of your contact’s first or last name, and then pressing the corresponding button. Google Mobile App will suggest contacts as you type and you can scroll down to select one. Google Mobile App will promote the people you contact frequently to the top of the suggestions list.

Google Mobile App does not send information about your contacts or content from your emails to Google. This data is only accessed on your device.Searching email requires BlackBerry OS version 4.5 or higher. Searching contacts is available on BlackBerry OS 4.2 and higher.

The new version of Google Mobile App also includes other improvements, such as the ability to use your BlackBerry’s Wi-Fi connection to access the Internet.

To download Google Mobile App to your BlackBerry, visit m.google.com

Google Pack gets a new member to its family that is Avast Free Anti Virus Version 5. Google Pack includes Avast antivirus for French, German, Italian, Czech, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, and Polish languages.The Avast Free Antivirus included in the Google Pack is the same as our regular Avast Free Antivirus. Following the philosophy of Google and Avast, the product is fully featured and does not constantly try to up-sell users to a premium product. The features of this product include:

• Antivirus
• Antispyware
• Blocking of malicious websites
• Blocking of hijacked or infected websites
• Behavior blocking
• Heuristics and signature detections
• Scheduled, on-demand, and real time scanning
• Gaming and full screen mode

Avast Free Antivirus provides all of the protection most Internet users require. Install Google Pack with Avast Free Antivirus for any of these languages: French, German, Italian, Czech, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, and Polish.