Google‘s rich history of acquisitions is put together in a very good format here by the guys at Scores.org. Where this infographic is handy is that they quickly identify whether a purchase was a way to enhance existing Google revenue streams, or to get rid of competitors. What I want to know is how many of these acquisitions have been enhanced since falling inside Google’s empire, and how many have died since…

Source: Scores.org

Zenoss recently released its annual Open Source Management Survey, and the results are quite surprising. It turns out that over time OSS is slowly being adopted in the enterprise. While the line “98% of Enterprises use Open Source” sounds impressive, you have to take into account that it doesnt mention where these OSS deployments are used. My bet is that most of these deployments are on a few select servers – desktop users in the enterprise tend to still stick to Windows.

One shift is perhaps the use OSS mobile devices – Android to be specific – and enterprises are scrambling to be ready for the onslought of these gadgets, be it mobile phones or future slates.

So you want to know where that son of a deposed Nigerian king is really emailling you from? Google made this handy little tool to track where the most Spam is sent from everyday. This is actually tracking in real time as well…

This Postini tool works by scanning identified malicious IPs accross the world - Postini is Google’s messaging encryption and security suite for Google Apps. It seems SA is very busy spamming as well – hey guys, we have too little bandwidth already, cut us some slack, OK?

Via: MBA Online

As we wait in anticipation for Sunday’s final match, Google examines the most prominent search trends over the last 30 days.

The vuvuzela has certainly been one of the biggest talking points of the 2010 FIFA World Cup™, and has since crossed beyond our borders into other countries. Even celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio have been spotted with their lips around this plastic phenomenon. Google Zeitgeist – which provides insight into global, national, past and present search trends – has revealed that the United Kingdom is the number one country searching for places to buy the vuvuzela, followed by the United States and the United Arab Emirates.

Top 10 countries interested in buying vuvuzelas:

Meanwhile, Uruguayans have been the most interested in Zakumi (the Official 2010 FIFA World Cup Mascot™), with the majority of searches taking place just before Bafana Bafana’s 3-0 clash against Uruguay. Besides South Africa, it seems that Peru, Argentina and Venezuela have also taken quite a liking to this cuddly, green haired leopard, who celebrated his 16^th birthday during the World Cup.

When French coach, Raymond Domenech, snubbed a handshake from South African coach, Carlos Alberto Parreira, searches combining their names rose; particularly in France on the day of the momentous match in Bloemfontein. Luis Suarez’s infamous hand ball against Ghana during the quarter finals also sparked a series of searches, with the United States being the most eager to research the controversial play that inevitably dashed Africa’s hopes in the tournament.

Interestingly, Bangladesh leads the pack in trying to find out more about ‘Waka Waka’ (the official 2010 FIFA World Cup™ anthem), with Paraguay and Mauritius coming in second and third respectively. K’naan’s ‘Wavin’ Flag’, although slightly less popular, appears to have resonated with citizens in Hungry, Argentina and India.

Highest regional interest for Shakira’s ‘Waka Waka’ song in the last 30 days:

Anyone can use Insights for search to come up with their own rankings by visiting http://google.com/insights/search/ and Trends http://www.google.com/trends

Zeitgeist Explained

Google reveals the internet “Zeitgeist” (German for “the spirit of the times”) through an exploration of the billions of search queries we receive each year. We also have several tools that give insight into global, regional, past and present search trends. Google Zeitgeist tools can never be used to identify individual users because we rely on anonymized, aggregated counts of how often certain search queries occur over time. These tools are available year-round for you to play with, explore, and learn from.  You can create your own lists and rankings on www.google.com/zeitgeist

The Distimo report is a monthly report that shows current trends in the mobile application development marketplace. It takes into account all the handset manufacturers’ different stores through which they distribute applications on their devices. Here are some of the interesting developments:

- Mobile apps are cheap, or free. More than half of apps are below $2. So developers who charge high prices, remember, the large group of users out there should make you worry less about profit per sale.

- The iPad’s current application seems to cost a bit more than the iPhone. This can be attributed to increased development costs, but I have to commend developers who write universal apps. Universal apps you purchase once, and they run on both the iPhone and the iPad. Dont make me pay twice for two devices.

- The Android market is made up of more than 57% free apps. Why? Is it because Android users are less likely to buy apps than on other platforms? Or is it because the free apps are good enough?

- Games are still by far the most popular apps. Out of the top 10 paid for apps on the iPhone, 8 was games.

- Amazon’s Kindle app seems to be under fire. Apple’s iBooks app is the number one app on the Appstore. But its still great that Amazon is making their platform available to other platforms as well. After using the iPad, I have to say my Kindle has become neglected. And with good reason.

What is interesting is seeing how the appstore ecosystem is changing. iPhone still seems to be the one that has the monetary edge, but that might change soon enough. With the number of Android handsets being released, there is plenty of oppurtunities for developers. The number of free apps on Android might sound great, but this does not take into account the quality of these apps. Whereas the iPhone Appstore is verified by Apple on a app for app basis, Google’s marketplace has no such process.

The disadvatange to this is of course that low-quality or poorly designed apps get in there as well. While people criticize Apple’s quality control, there are just as many postive aspects as well.I really reckon Google can do with a similiar process – not to replace the current marketplace, but a “Google Verified” section for apps that Google does approve of. That way you have the best of both worlds.

That way you cater for both developers who want to quickly and easily want to get into the marketplace, but end users who want high quality apps can find them as well. Tools like AppBrain does address this somewhat, but what I am talking about is a official source of apps. Maybe Google should have a chat with AppBrain?

You can download the full Distimo report here.

Finally, it is here:

And it works great! I tested this on my iPhone – easy enough to do. Go to an area where StreetView has taken pictures – in this example, Greenpoint. Click on one of the pins that drop on the screen, and you will see a small orange icon on the left of the description, and there you go. As you can see here I am looking at Main Road, and there on the right is the stadium.

In similiar fashion to overseas, all cars registrations and people are blurred out.

Thanks to Google!

According to an article published by The Wall Street Journal this week, a Google representative speaking at a publishing-industry event in New York has confirmed that the company plans to begin selling digital books in late June or July.

The new service, announced last year at the Frankfurt Book Fair, will be called Google Editions, and will be entirely web-based – in other words, users will be able to download and read books using only their web browser. No details have been provided yet on how this interface will compare to other available e-readers.

Users will be able to buy books in two ways:
1.    Through Google’s book search service
2.    Directly from the websites of book retailers

According to The Wall Street Journal, no decision has yet been reached on whether publishers will set the retail price for digital books or whether prices will be determined by Google.

Well this is interesting – Google bought the guys responsible for BumpTop, the very slick 3 dimensional desktop application. I have always been a fan of the idea of Bumptop, but I hated running another layer over my background. The few times that I did test it I was always impressed, and it ran well, especially its recent Mac OSX version. It was however limited in its free form, and hopefully Google fixes this. Just like Picasa was little known before Google bought it, maybe they will set Bumptop free for all OS’s, with quick links to all Google services. I can imagine that being very handy.

Please Google, dont keep Bumptop only for your upcoming ChromeOS (or Android).

Set it free.

With the FIFA World Cup™ fast approaching, football fever is taking over. People around the world are using the internet not only to learn about the tournament but also to decide on which tourist sites they will be visiting.

It’s no secret that the tourism sector will be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the tournament, with international visitors to South Africa indulging in the country’s natural beauty and appreciating its historical sites.  Last year the South African public voted on the country’s most popular tourist sites for Google’s Street View Trikes campaign that ran in conjunction with SA Tourism – as reported on our Africa Blog.

This month’s Google Zeitgeist shows the countries that are demonstrating the most interest in visiting these South African sites, and then reveals that three of the top five coincide with those countries buying the most tickets for the World Cup.

We’ve included these rankings below, which show the country’s top tourist sites, source markets and top ticket buying countries:

Most globally popular (or searched for?) tourist sites in South Africa in 2010

1. Kruger National Park
2. The Garden Route
3. Wild Coast
4. Robben Island
5. Cape Peninsula
6. Blyde River Canyon
7. Cape Winelands
8. Durban Beachfront
9. Mandela House
10. Apartheid Museum

Top countries searching for ‘South Africa tourism’ in the past year

1. India
2. United Kingdom
3. United States
4. Germany
5. Zimbabwe

Now compare that Top World Cup™ ticket buying countries (according to the Local Organising Committee)

1. United States
2. United Kingdom
3. Germany
4. Australia
5. Brazil