Webware

Here's a topic I never thought I'd write about: Dolly Parton, the famed country singer, has endorsed Internet Explorer 8 and its Web Slices feature on YouTube.

During a minute-long video, Parton says she "wouldn't know a gigabyte from a snake bite. But the folks over at Microsoft sure know their computers." She goes on to say Microsoft checked out her "new" Web site and "turned us on to a little thing they call Web Slices."

According to a Microsoft representative, the software giant showed Parton's Web team "the new features in IE 8 and Silverlight, and they liked it so much, they wanted to implement it on their site."

Parton's site now features a three-tab Web Slice that includes her video diary, news on her career, and the option to buy some of her music. The Microsoft representative said in an e-mail that the software company "wasn't involved in the production or scripting" of Parton's Internet Explorer 8 endorsement.

Web Slices, which is available only in IE 8, enables users to keep up with sites they check often, such as ones for Web mail or weather reports. According to Microsoft, "if a Web Slice is available on a page, a green Web Slices icon will appear in the Command Bar." Users can simply click on that icon to subscribe to that page's Web Slice. Once complete, that Web Slice will be displayed in the user's Favorites Bar to make it easier to keep track of those sites the user often visits.

But the very fact that Parton (a portion of whose site is now available as a Web Slice, by the way), would endorse Internet Explorer 8 is a bit surprising. As she points out in the video, she "didn't even know there [were IE versions] 1 through 7."

Regardless, Parton seems to have found her stride. After all, like the singer says, maybe Internet Explorer 8 really is "just like your own little slice of heaven."

With just two weeks to go before Black Friday, online-coupon site FatWallet announced on Friday that it has launched a Black Friday page where Web users can track all the latest deals for the big shopping day.

Currently, the site lists all the latest Black Friday ads that have surfaced, as well as news and rumors surrounding the day. It also has information on Cyber Monday, the Web's big shopping day, which falls on the Monday after Black Friday.

Of course, FatWallet isn't alone in this space. Several companies, including BlackFriday.Info and DealTaker to name a few, are displaying Black Friday deals. Each site lists many of the same ads. A few of the resources provide updated news. FatWallet happens to be one of them.

If you're interested in finding Black Friday deals, check out our recent roundup of online resources that prepare you for Black Friday.

Google has updated the stable build of its Chrome browser with two fixes. Google Chrome 3.0.195.33 plugs a security hole that could have allowed a malicious Web site to set custom HTTP headers on cross-origin options requests. A second bug fixed in version 3.0.195.33 removes a dependency on a Windows library file that was not actually required by Chrome. Earlier versions of Chrome would fail silently if that DLL file was missing or rights-restricted.

The Google Chrome developer's channel also updated Friday. Kiosk mode has been activated on all platforms, although the status bar-hiding feature that also sets the full-screen mode as the default doesn't work yet for Macs. However, numerous other fixes were implemented for the Mac version. These include a "bookmark all tabs" feature, keyboard hot key fixes, and a fix that stops PDF files from being opened by QuickTime.

The developer's build of Google Chrome is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The changelog for the stable build is available here, and the changelog for the developer's build is here.

The next time you search Google for life expectancies or number of Internet users in the U.S., you'll find the specific figures plus an interactive chart letting you compare the U.S. with other countries.

Since Wednesday, Google has been tapping into data from the World Bank to provide key details and interactive charts on specific topics along with its own search results. The goal is to better help you search for and compare certain types of public data.

The World Bank is providing Google with facts and figures on 17 key indicators, including population growth, fertility rate, gross national product, and energy use.

Enter one of the 17 indicators into a Google search. You can phrase it as the specific indicator, for example, "population world," or type it as a natural question: "What is the population of the world?"

At the top of the search results, you'll find a thumbnail chart along with the latest statistics. (According to the World Bank, 72.4 percent of the U.S. population is on the Internet as of 2008.) Click on the chart or accompanying link, and up pops a larger interactive graph where you can visually compare the U.S. with other countries by clicking on their check boxes.

(Credit: Google)

You can embed the chart's HTML in your own blog or Web page and opt for the data to be updated automatically anytime the World Bank's information changes. Finally, a link for more info brings you directly to the World Bank's Web site where you can dig further into the results of your search.

This latest partnership with World Bank is part of Google's effort to offer data beyond that which it can grab from your average Web page. Back in April, the search giant started integrating stats and charts from the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But the World Bank is the first source to provide global data for Google. The World Bank's figures come from its World Development Indicators (WDI), a collection of data derived from its own research and that of 30 other sources. The global data includes statistics on social, financial, and environmental areas encompassing more than 100 different countries.

Apple quietly launched a new preview service this week that makes it easier for users to view its iTunes music library from the browser.

Dubbed iTunes Preview, the new feature allows visitors to view iTunes content from their browser without being forced to launch iTunes. Previously, when a Web user received an iTunes link, they needed to open iTunes to view its content.

As part of the launch, Apple has updated links in iTunes to redirect to iTunes Preview. When a user copies a link in the software and pastes it into the browser, they will be brought to the song's individual listing on Apple's Web site. The feature is especially handy for those who don't use iTunes, since they can now view an individual song without being forced to download the software.

Aside from individual music listings, iTunes Preview also allows users to sift through artists and albums based on genre. Each individual listing displays all the songs in an album, the album art associated with it, its cost, and other content typically found in the iTunes store. The page also includes a link to the iTunes store in case the viewer wants to buy it. That said, there aren't any song previews in iTunes Preview; users will still need to go to iTunes to hear them.

iTunes Preview in action.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

For now, iTunes Preview features music. There's no telling if Apple will add more content over time. If you want to check it out, copy an iTunes link from within the software and paste it into your browser.

(Via AppleInsider)

Google has a new VOIP client to help improve Google Voice.

(Credit: Gizmo5)

Google confirmed its intention to acquire Gizmo5, an Internet telephony company, with plans to merge the group into the Google Voice team.

The pending acquisition had been reported earlier in the week by Techcrunch but was overshadowed by the announcement of Google's third-largest acquisition to date--the $750 million AdMob deal--on the same day. Late Thursday Google confirmed that it had acquired the company, although financial terms of this deal were not disclosed.

Gizmo5 is a Web-based VoIP client that lets you make phone calls over the Internet, similar to programs like Skype. It's based, however, on an open standard called SIP that fits a little better into Google's worldview, rather than Skype's internally-developed system.

Gizmo5 works on both PCs and mobile phones, and the technology will likely be used in some way to enhance Google Voice. Google Voice isn't a VoIP client; it lets you use a single number to ring multiple phones and get voice mails transcribed into e-mail, but it does that over existing phone networks.

As Google figures out exactly what it wants to do with Gizmo5, it is suspending new sign-ups for the service, but current users will still be able use it.

SAN FRANCISCO--At the NewTeeVee Live conference on Thursday, YouTube director of product management Hunter Walk announced that the video-streaming service is getting a new high-quality streaming option: full HD, or "1080p" resolution. The current "high-quality" option, when available on YouTube videos, is 720p, referring to the number of horizontal scan lines that make up the image.

Walk said the new resolution, as well as a new full-screen player, will roll out to all users within days.

YouTube co-founder Steve Chen announced high-quality YouTube viewing at NewTeeVee 2007. He also said, then, that YouTube stores all video it receives at the resolution it's uploaded at. So when YouTube ads a resolution option, as it did then and is doing now, it simply needs to re-encode videos for the new player, not get new raw content.

Walk said that about half of the 1080p content in the YouTube database has been re-encoded so far.

Only about 10 percent of playbacks on YouTube are now in the high-quality player. Walk said that this is due in large part to the fact that for many viewers, hardware or bandwidth limitations prohibit high-quality viewing. Also, more content is coming in from mobile devices than ever. "We've seen about a 2,000 percent increase in mobile uploads this year," Walk said.

Other changes afoot at YouTube: The team remains interested in a non-Flash video player. "We're interested in broad accessibility," Walk said, reminding the NewTeeVee audience that the company has demonstrated an HTML 5-based YouTube player. "We keep an open mind," he said.

If social gaming is Hollywood, the people aren't as pretty. Well, maybe the avatars are.

Yes, yes, we know that social games are taking over the bloody world: earlier this week, gamemaker Playfish announced its $300 million sale to Electronic Arts, and on Thursday, rival Playdom retorted with the announcement of $43 million in venture funding at a $260 million valuation, and the acquisitions of smaller gaming companies Green Patch (manufacturer of Facebook-based games like Lil Green Patch and Farm Life) and Trippert Labs. Green Patch's games will up Playdom's reach on Facebook by 30 percent, the company said.

Expect to see more of these sales, as smaller developers find they're having trouble treading water in an industry where the big guys--Zynga, Playfish, Playdom--have chomped up most of the market share, and where Facebook, the biggest destination for these games, has shown that it can change the rules at whim. And the big companies, too, want to scramble to get bigger.

Plus, as Playdom co-founder and chairman Rick Thompson explained to CNET News: When gaming companies grow large, they have to deal with a lot of stuff that can get in the way of producing new games and staying on top of consumer trends. That's one reason to keep investing in new talent through acqusitions.

"The hitmakers start spending all their time on operations, and on things that don't improve or enhance the games, and so they become essentially owners and operators," he said. And likewise, "people who can create things shouldn't necessarily be operating a gaming company."

He drew the evolution of a social gaming company parallel to an entertainment studio: "a lot more like Hollywood or the traditional gaming industry" than a Web start-up.

But here's the catch when it comes to acquisitions in this space: Gaming, especially social gaming, is a hit-driven business. If a parent company buys up a hot Facebook game, that game could already be running out of shelf life: which is, indeed, sort of like a Hollywood establishment signing a contract with an actor who's had five hit films in a row, as he could easily be over the hill before long. (Hello, Rob Lowe.)

"I think we're getting pretty good at really looking at their data now, and modeling how these games will evolve over time," Thompson said. "But I think there's essentially a life cycle of growth and then decay. What we really look at in acquisitions is not just daily active users, but bringing on additional team members that can really help create new games in the future."

Mint launched a new tool on Thursday that gives users real-time updates on the latest personal-finance topics hitting Twitter.

Dubbed Money Tweets, the personal-finance service's new feature tracks tweets about everything from investing and saving to the most popular finance-related topics at any given time. It also has a "question of the day" option where Mint poses a question and displays all the tweets that answer it.

Money Tweets in action on Mint.com.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

To ensure Money Tweets doesn't list any tweets that might be offensive or contain links to potentially malicious sites, the tool's Topics section includes tweets from trusted sources, like The Wall Street Journal and Morningstar. It also displays messages from prominent bloggers who write about the respective topics.

Aside from finances, Mint even added a "Tweets about Mint" option. When a user clicks on it, they will see all the tweets that reference Mint. It even displays tweets from users who have bad things to say about Mint. That's commendable.

I had a chance to check out some of the content in Money Tweets. You can check out useful content on several topics. And since many tweets feature links to outside content, you'll probably find yourself visiting several finance sites with a lot of interesting financial content. Overall, I like Money Tweets. It's a nice addition to Mint's current slate of services.

Click here to check it out.