FaceBook has been slowly updating the Mini-feed displayed on a user’s profile page to look more and more like a FriendFeed-esq lifestreaming application, by allowing you to include actions from other sites, and now allowing comments on the items.

Triston McIntyre has a good post on the details and possible implications of these changes on Profy, especially as to why FriendFeed probably doesn’t have to worry too much about this:

In execution, I seriously doubt Friendfeed has anything to worry about. Though Facebook does have a friends feed on each user’s homepage, and individual mini-feeds on every user’s profile, Facebook’s feeds are structured very differently than FriendFeed. Where on FriendFeed, the feed is pretty much the focus, mini-feeds on Facebook are largely overlooked, except perhaps by those jealous lovers and "interested" others (oh, come on, everyone has them.right?).

Facebook is essentially Social 101 for those looking to get connected to friends. Platforms like FriendFeed and Twitter, at least at this point in time, are just a higher level of social media. Adoption of both platforms is increasing, but I don’t think that FriendFeed needs to worry about losing its user base to Facebook-happy comment heads. Sleep easy, FriendFeed, and enjoy the flattery by imitation.

However, Google Operating System has a post today outlining the features in the new beta of the iGoogle homepage.  The new iGoogle will have a lot more ’social’ features in in, including a gtalk chat & gmail directly on the page, but the thing that I noticed was the ‘Updates’ box on the right.  This seems to be a feed of all the things you’re doing on Google’s products.  The box there has a number of items on it: shared items from Google Reader, photos from Picassa, shared themes for iGoogle, shared gadgets and status from Gtalk.  There’s also the ability to add free text (and presumably links) in a box above the list.  There doesn’t seem to be any non-google content in there, but I can’t believe that it would be possible to do that.  If it’s not a feature now, you know it will be very soon.

So FriendFeed may have some more competition in the not too distant future.

I just received an SMS from the Jaiku bot saying that their SMS service was back up & operational.  I’ve sent a post via the SMS bot and it is working, so it would seem that maybe Google hasn’t completely abandoned the service after all.  This would be good. I liked Jaiku when it was first launched, it had a few features that I feel Twitter lacks (channels for one, plus native image posting) without over-complicating the service.

I’ve always thought that with GMail, GTalk, Grand Central & Jaiku, Google had the building blocks for a really comprehensive communications platform.  Add into that mix Google Apps & Google Docs and you’ve got a solid business system to work from.

Imagine if Google rolled GTalk, Jaiku and Grand Central into a single app/service.  It would suddenly become a serious competitor to Skype if they could get the sound quality and pricing right.  Skype was supposed to be the communications platform of the future (if you believed the hype), but due to a number of factors, including the acquisition by eBay and the fact they use a proprietary VOIP protocol, it hasn’t happened.  GTalk runs on an open VOIP protocol, so you can talk to non-GTalk VOIP clients. If done right that could be one killer app.

You may think you’re a big user of FriendFeed, you may think you have heaps of followers and everything you submit gets liked & commented on.  Sorry, that’s nothing.  Google has spoken and the most important FriendFeed members are…

Deepak & Kevin, congratulations.  Google says you’re more relevant than the About page, the FAQ or the public feed.  That’s pretty impressive!

Additionally, if you go the ‘More results’ page you’ll note that the order goes like this:

1. Homepage
2. About
3. Public Feed
4. Scoble
5. API
6. Bookmarklet
7. Blog
8. Louis Gray
9. Changelog
10. Steve Rubel

Hands up anyone who’s surprised to see Robert at number 4?  Anyone, anyone?

Google really is busy here in Australia.  First they announce Transit for Perth (and other states to come soon), and now I hear they’re building their new headquarters next door to my office.  They’re currently across Darling Harbour from us over in Darling Park here, but they’re moving here. It looks like a big block of concrete there, but it’s actually a construction site now.  Pyrmont is turning into a media hub, with Channel 7 next door too, and a whole bunch of other small media agencies near by.  Channel 10 is just up the road too.

The new Google building is been billed as a new ‘green’ style of building, apparently “Workplace6, a joint venture between site owners GPT and builder Citta Property Group, will generate one-quarter of its own power supply, take in harbour water to release heat and recycle sewage to flush toilets and irrigate nearby parks”.  Makes sense, sounds like Google is expanding its solar power scheme. Wonder if we’ll get a monitoring page like that for Sydney.

 This Lifehacker article has an image of what it’s going to look like.

Sydney’s Googlers will move into the new building in 2009. The press release was long on “dull but worthy” details such as “Workplace6 is NSW’s first 6 Star Green Star building, going above and beyond green office standards for Australia.”
We can only assume from the brevity of the press release that Google Australia has conceded that Google Zurich - which features a fireman’s pole or a slide to get you down to the  ground floor in a quick and  fun fashion - reigns supreme as the “cool” Google office. Aww.

Google Transit will provide directions for travelling to and from locations using local public transport.

Its Australian launch, in Perth using data from the Western Australian transport authority’s online service Transperth, will be the first in the southern hemisphere.  Mr Noble said the company would seek to work with authorities in other states to launch Google Transit across Australian cities.

Google to launch transport tool in Australia: News.com.au

Nice, I wondered when they’d roll this out to us.  Google has a history of not abandoning us here in Aus like some other IT companies do.

I hadn’t noticed this before, but Google has added a site search box underneath the site links in their results.  

Not sure what criteria they’re using to generate this, because it doesn’t work for every site.  The SMH gets it, but Drive doesn’t.  It seems to be based on sites that are listed on Google News and their size.  That’s a total guess just based on the couple of dozen of searches I’ve checked out.

Not sure how I missed this seeing as it was posted on the official blog site.  The official word on what sites it will show up for is:

This feature will now occur when we detect a high probability that a user wants more refined search results within a specific site. Like the rest of our snippets, the sites that display the site search box are chosen algorithmically based on metrics that measure how useful the search box is to users

Not sure what that means in real terms, but as I said, I’ve only seen it show up for sites that exist in Google News.  That may simply be coincidental though, as people are often searching those sites too.

Update: Strike my theory. The search box shows up for gimp.org & ubuntu.org & they’re not in Google News.  I guess it’s just down to the pigeons then.