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There's been plenty of talk about data portability over the past few weeks, what with Facebook taking issue with a Plaxo script that imported user data from one social network to the other. But the news has mostly dealt with tiffing and squabbling--until now.

A group called the DataPortability Workgroup announced Tuesday that representatives from Facebook, Google, and Plaxo have signed on as members. The group, spearheaded by Chris Saad of start-up Faraday Media, is a sort of alliance of Web thinkers devoted to "(putting) all existing technologies and initiatives in context to create a reference design for … Read more

Google just keeps getting more popular for search.

The latest figures from Hitwise, which monitors search market share, show Google with a record 66 percent share of Web searches in the United States for the month of December 2007.

Google had just over 63 percent for the same period a year ago, according to figures released Tuesday. Meanwhile, Yahoo's share dropped from 21.6 percent to 20.9 percent, Microsoft's dropped from 9.8 percent to just over 7 percent and Ask rose from 3.7 percent to just over 4 percent.

Hitwise also found that people are … Read more

Panasonic announced a partnership Monday by which customers will be able to use forthcoming 802.11-equipped Lumix digital cameras to wirelessly upload photos to Google's Picasa photo-sharing site.

Panasonic announced the partnership at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Buying the camera comes with a 12-month subscription to use any of T-Mobile's 8,500 wireless hot spots for free, similar to an earlier deal that Nikon announced with the telecommunications company.

Panasonic didn't share further details about the Wi-Fi-enabled camera.

Today, Wikia is planning to launch Wikia Search, a very early-stage version of its open search engine. Wikia (and Wikipedia) co-founder Jimmy Wales believes that it's necessary for the public to take control of search, which he sees as a shared need and thus a shared resource.

The site that's launching today is for users who want to "help us build a search engine," Wales said. So don't expect a Wikia-powered Google killer on Day One. "We want to be sure people aren't expecting a Google-quality experience on Monday."

Here's what … Read more

The Google Docs team, has posted on their blog about the availability of a few new features for Google Presentations to start off the new year. The most significant of the new features is the ability to embed slide shows in web pages. It's not a surprise that Google decided to go this route, given the huge success of embeddable video with YouTube and other embeddable content around the web.

As you can see in my slide show that I have included at the end of this post, it works in a similar way and looks very much like YouTube's embeddable player. Overall, sharing and embedding your slide shows is a fairly painless process. As I said in my original article about Google Presentations, their strong point is collaboration and sharing. This latest feature has continued that trend.

While this is all great, my big problem with Google Presentations is still the lack of a professional look to the slide shows. The feature set just is not quite there yet. I am sure that Google is hard at work, implementing features like transitions, animations, etc., so I can't penalize them too much for that yet, being such a young product. However, if they want to capture any significant portion of the market share, Google Presentations needs the more advanced features.

Other features included in this release are importing slides from other presentations, drag and drop image insertion, and an improved UI. Check out my embedded slide show after the jump.… Read more

A small New York-based social media start-up called FindMeOn intends to send Google a letter asking that it change the name of its OpenSocial initiative, CNET News.com has learned. FindMeOn founded a project called OpenSN (Open Social Networking) in 2006, and according to founder and CEO Jonathan Vanasco, the similarity of its name to Google's newer project is getting in the way of business.

The company also has tentative plans for legal action.

FindMeOn, which develops technology to aggregate profile data from various social-networking sites, created OpenSN as a way to convert a profile from one social network … Read more

Like many companies, Netconcepts recently celebrated the holidays with a little staff get together and mystery gift exchange. There were the usual, but always popular gifts of coffee, tea, chocolates, and wine, as well as a very popular Atari console ... and as we did the "you can open one or steal one" gift rule, it certainly was the most fought over gift.

Unfortunately due to timing, Stephan wasn't able to make it as he was out visiting our friends in Seattle and participating in a great SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday otherwise he might have been torn between the Atari and the unique gift that follows and shows that even search geeks have a sense of humor (twisted as it may be).

Every search marketer has their bag of tricks and tools, but why settle for a bag when you can have a kit ... or more accurately, a box with built in carrying handle? And at $15 or less, the cost limit for our gift exchange, within range of even the budding search marketer.

What comes in a Search Marketer's Kit? I thought you'd never ask. Luckily, each item in the kit comes with its own identification tag.… Read more

Meraki, a start-up that hopes to bring cheap Wi-Fi to the emerging world, has raised $20 million in a second round of funding.

The company, which grew out of a Ph.D. thesis at MIT, has created inexpensive routers and a back-end networking service that balances available bandwidth between the routers and users. The end result is that the available bandwidth is used more efficiently, according to Sanjit Biswas, Meraki's CEO and co-founder.

"There are a small number of Internet connections, but they are repeated by a large number of radios" in networks based on the company'… Read more

Google's Android project has stolen most of the thunder, but another Linux-based mobile phone effort is still making a go of it, and on Wednesday, OpenMoko announced it's gained a measure of independence.

OpenMoko now is a separate operation of its parent company, Taiwan-based First International Computer. In addition, the company announced two new employees: Steven Mosher, vice president of worldwide marketing and formerly of Creative Labs; and Wolfgang Spraul, vice president of engineering and formerly of DataViz. In November, the company hired Carsten "The Rasterman" Haitzler to be lead graphics architect. Haitzler is creator of … Read more