Google News has gotten a makeover where a featured photo, images, and popular stories have become the center of attention.  When clicking on the link below news stories that say “all xxxx news articles,” you are redirected to a page that has all the articles related to the original story and features photos and videos on the side.  At the bottom of that page is a link to relevant blogs too.  This is great for bloggers because now their content doesn’t necessarily have to be just on Google Blog Search.

Google News uses an algorithm to collect all relevant stories.  This algorithm has been the subject of controversy when dealing with The Associated Press.

TechCrunch gave the new Google News interface a negative review, but I believe the changes applied are quite beneficial.  The images and videos provide more clarity on what the news articles are about and it levels the playing field between news agencies and bloggers.

[via Google News Blog]

About two months ago, RealNetworks made a claim that they did not anticipate a lawsuit from the MPAA.  However the MPAA has been trying to block the distribution of the company’s RealDVD software.  The litigation issue is not stopping RealNetworks from hiring engineers to work on a project calld Facet.  Facet is DVD player software that copies and stores DVDs.

RealNetworks posted a job on Craigslist earlier that requested Linux engineers to apply for the job based in Seattle.

“RealNetworks Inc., based in Seattle, WA, has recently formed a new consumer media platform team whose charter is to deliver Facet, a game-changing home entertainment system. Formed as a startup within RealNetworks, the Facet team is being led by one of the founders of RealNetworks, Phil Barrett, and has already attracted executives from Amazon.com, Microsoft, Disney and Intel, and RealNetworks. The Facet team is creating a rich set of consumer media experiences that will make the consumer electronics industry stand up and take notice,” stated the Craigslist ad.

“You will be working with innovative managers and engineers to create the next generation home entertainment platform. You will design, code, debug, and optimize your software to run on a variety of CPU architectures and graphic subsystems. Your software products will be embedded into large-volume consumer electronic devices. Therefore code quality, robustness, and performance are critical.”

The lawsuit between the MPAA and RealNetworks will continue on May 21.  Both parties will make their closing arguments.

[via CNET]

The developers that are making money on applications placed on Facebook are generally selling virtual goods and games on the social network.  Facebook itself hasn’t created a payment platform yet.  However Facebook is currently testing a payment system platform over the next several weeks where real money can be exchanged.

A payment system made available through the social network could be huge.  Similar to how Apple sells music and applications for a small cut of each transaction, Facebook could do something similar.  Facebook currently makes most of its money from advertising and hasn’t done much to monetize applications on their own website.

Last month Facebook tried an experiment called Credits.  Credits was a virtual currency where users could give virtual points to each other for things such as favorable shared links.  As we receive more news on the payment systems rumor, we’ll continue to update Pulse2.com.

[via VentureBeat]

Evernote is a storage service where users can clip notes from the web, take snapshots, record audio, and search on the computer for that saved information.  Information that is taken can be stored on Evernote’s cloud servers.  Evernote has software available for the PC, Mac, iPhone, Windows Mobile, the Web, and now they have a BlackBerry application available.

To use the software, BlackBerry users can navigate around the interface using the track ball.  At the bottom of the application is a search box that allows you to find notes by tags.  The Menu button allows you to view recently created notes, pending notes that are uploading, and the ability to activate the GPS.  Playing back voice notes requires opening the BlackBerry media player.

The application is free, but subscriptions costs $5 per month for 40MB.  The application works with the Bold, Storm, and the Curve 8900.  It is currently only available through BlackBerry App World.  Evernote raised $4.5 million this past January.

[via DownloadSquad]

One of the reasons why The New York Times is struggling to compete is because of the speed of information delivery through the Internet.  The New York Times has a tendency to not be able to publish information fast enough compared to blogs and Twitter.  However The New York Times is one of the few newspapers that have a blog section where information is published fairly quickly.

When content is published on NYT it is difficult to track what information has been updated.  This is why they have created a new service called Times Wire which shows the most updated news at the top of the page.  The articles appear in reverse chronological order.  Times Wire updates every minute.

On Times Wire, there are currently three tabs: All News, Your News, and Business & Tech.  Times Wire will most likely appeal to those most interested in Business & Tech, who want their information delivered quickly.   The Times Wire page has an RSS feed and has a link to it available on the New York Times homepage now.

[via TechCrunch]

On May 31, Google will be officially ending their radio advertising service.  Google was working closely with Chad and Ryan Steelberg, who  had developed technology to transmit and schedule radio advertisements over the last couple of years.  But now the service will be shutting down on May 31.

One of the problems was the business model itself.  The radio stations refused to give Google airtime for advertising rates that were much lower than what they were offering.  Even though Google runs about 30% of the online advertising market, they have been unable to break into traditional mediums.  Their TV, print, and radio advertising attempts have not done very well.  About 97% of Google’s revenue in 2008 was from online advertising.  Google’s 2008 revenue was about $22 billion.

David Friedberg, a former executive at Google discovered dMarc Broadcasting Inc., a three year old company that transmitted radio ads automatically.  Google bought them out for $102 million and offered an additional $1.1 billion based on airtime and revenue produced through the acquisition.

Around February 2007, Google had told the Steelbergs that the arrangement for radio ads has not been working out.  Both brothers quit the company shortly after.  Shortly after that Google had to negotiate advertising airtime with Clear Channel.  The whole process took one year and the final agreement was that Google would have to pay Clear Channel for a certain amount of spots every quarter regardless of whether they actually sold or not.

Google decided to end the radio ad program in January but kept it confidential until now.  Susan Wojcicki, sister-in-law of Sergey Brin and VP of Google’s ad products played a vital role in the project.  Google’s first office ever was in Susan’s garage.

[via WSJ]

SBG Labs is a Sunnyvale, California based optical company that is working on a new technology that delivers digital imagery directly to eyeglasses or contact lenses.  The technology is called heads-up displays since users can look directly through them and still see the real world.  While looking straight ahead, the lens can pull up a digital image of a map, overlay images, or other virtual information.

The eyeglasses made with the DigiLens contains a tiny projector inside the frame and is just slightly larger than ordinary glasses.  As long as the glasses are attractive to wear and are lightweight, it might appeal to consumers according to UNC-Chapel Hill professor Henry Fuchs.

“People who work on head-mounted displays are hungering for something that people would be willing to wear for more than an hour,” stated Fuchs in an interview with The New York Times, “something that would go in one’s eyeglasses and not be too much clunkier than regular eyeglasses.”

Desney S. Tan at Microsoft Research and University of Washington associate professor Babak A. Parviz are working on a similar project that focuses on creating a contact lens with miniaturized electronics along with optoelectronics built in to the lens.  The price of the DigiLens is still not yet known.  The technology is currently in the testing phase.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) represents the interests of the recording industry as a whole worldwide and recently took the founders of The Pirate Bay to court.  Unfortunately for the founders, they ended up being charged $3.5 million in fines even though they said they would not cough up a single cent.  To get back at the IFPI, they have devised a scheme called the Distributed Denial of Dollars (DDo$) attack.

Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, a founder of the The Pirate Bay (known by his alias anakata) came up with the idea.  The idea encourages people to use the Internet to pay a tiny Internet gift of $0.13 and send it to the Danowsky law firm.  This law firm represented the IFPI in the court case.  The law firm only allows 1,000 money transfers and if enough people send them a donation, it will cost the law firm more to handle and process those payments.

Clever move, Svartholm.  If the plan goes through and Danowsky decides to sue Svartholm for the attack, it would suck if he had to face the same judge again.

[via BlogPirate.org]