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Google Launches Apps Marketplace, Apps Store for Cloud Apps

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Google has just rolled out a new online service, making it officially known that the company is serious about cloud computing and business applications. The new service – Google Apps Marketplace provides products and services including installable apps that integrate with Google Apps. These installable apps features single sign-on capability and Google’s universal navigation.  Some of these apps even integrate with domain data.

If you an enterprise network administrator utilizing Google’s many cloud server application or Google apps, the marketplace is a useful destination for finding new apps from both Google and third-party application developers. The marketplace shall serve as a one-stop-shop for all your enterprise apps need.

Currently, Google is in a deal with around 50 companies offering online business apps. And right after Google announced the Google Apps Marketplace, those companies started announcing their own applications which debut at the marketplace.

Of course, the number of companies joining this avenue is bound to grow leaps and bound. Give it a couple of days and I’m pretty sure third-party online apps developers will start jumping into the deep pit of Google’s marketing strategy.

In case you’re interested to know, some of the great apps which debut at the Google Marketplace include the following:

BatchBook Social CRM– BatchBook is a lightweight but powerful CRM that allows you to easily organize contacts, monitor social networks and track leads and deals.

Aviary Design Suite – Design tools and templates to create, modify and share images, logos, presentations, audio tracks, podcasts & more. Teams can collaborate on multimedia projects. Works directly in Google Docs!

myERP.com : Manage your business in the cloud – Free online business suite. Streamline your CRM, Sales, Projects, Purchasing, Inventory, A

EchoSign Electronic Signature for Google Apps – EchoSign.com, the web’s leading eSignature service, natively integrates with your Google Apps account, including Google docs, spreadsheets, etc. for instant on-line review, approval, and eSignatures.

Google Apps Marketplace seems to be a solid applications shop. Nothing fancy on the UI aspect. Just your usual plain Google theme.

Google Gives Android Phones a Cool Shopping App

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Recently, Google has quietly released a new shopping app for Android phones. Available for free from the Android market, Google Shopper is a smart shopping app that lets you purchase items online by various means plus do some product searches including reviews and ratings by other consumers.

As a mobile shopping app, Google Shopper lets you scan barcodes, album art, book covers and then use those information to search for the product online. From there you can directly purchase the item using the application.

But aside from purchasing products online, you can also use the app’s search function which is powered by Google Product Search engine. You can search for product reviews, prices, specs and more. You can do these using your Android phone’s screen interface or through voice search.

The app also lets you save your shopping and search history, star your favorites, as well as share your product finds through Gmail, Facebook, Twitter and other mobile services.

I downloaded the app on my Nexus One and I would have to say that it is indeed a pretty sleek-looking app. Banking on Google’s mobile infrastructure and massive product databases which it cull  from various online sources, the app would be a good tool to have if you want to quickly find out about products you encounter everyday. Since it is a mobile app, that goes without saying that you can use this feature even while on the go.

You know the drill, right? Search for Shopper from the Android market and download the app for free.

Introducing Flattr, A Social Micropayment System

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From founding the controversial site which indexes BitTorrent files which cost him several legal cases, here comes one of the founder of the Pirate Bay with his latest projet called Flattr.  Derived from the word play of flatter and flat rate, Flattr is a new “social micropayment” system that will consumers to flatter content creators with a flat rate.

So how does Flattr actually works? The site Neowin.net explains it as:

Dubbed a “social micropayment” system, users can contribute money into their Flattr accounts and then distribute rating clicks across various sites. These ratings, like Digg, will count up how popular a piece of content is and distribute micropayments accordingly. Consumers will simply top their account up with as little as €2 and each rating they give content creators will assign a portion of their Flattr account balance. If a user places €10 into their Flattr account and then rates 10 different pieces of content each content creator will receive €1 from that user at the end of that month.

Confusing? Actually yes. You might as well watch the attached YouTube video to understand the concept of Flattr and learn how it really works.

Flattr is currently in closed beta and will only be launching to the public in the next few weeks. Its success could probably depend on how social networking sites will perceive the new socia micropayment system. Flattr’s creator is currently talking with social networks although his plan is to maintain Flattr’s openness to everyone.

At its initial launch, Flattr will support various  payment systems including PayPal, Payson and text messages as forms of payment. You may sign up to be able to test the system – here.

Mobile Browser Based Content Sites Gain More Grounds than Mobile Apps

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There is an on-going revolution happening in the mobile web industry right now as observed by mobile research firm, Taptu.  According to Taput’s “State of the Mobile Touch Web” report, for the last six months a rise on the mobile touch web has been happening. What’s interesting is that this revolution is not attached to any carrier, handset or platform but rather on the mobile web content itself.

Based on the findings of their report, Taptu said that there are now around 360,000 touch-friendly sites making up what it calls as the mobile touch ecosystem or those contents designed specifically for mobile touchscreen devices.

Taptu also compared these statistics with those of the applications in the iTunes and Android market. And with around 148,000 iPhone apps and 24,000 Android apps it seem that the browser-based web market is growing much faster than the app market and that users prefer to partake of the online industry using their mobile phone’s browser to access mobile browser friendly content sites than the device-centric mobile phone apps.

I don’t know about you, but I found Taptu’s quite surprising since I have this notion that mobile apps are more used than browser-based mobile websites. Actually Taptu has an explanation to this. According to them, businesses are embracing the mobile touch web because these touch-friendly sites do not restrict usage by device types. Meaning, these sites are universally available to anyone with a handset device that has a mobile web browser.

Americans Spent $595 Million On Black Friday Sale

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Screen shot 2009-11-30 at 8.25.47 PMWith the  Black Friday  shopping craze in the U.S. finally over, it’s now time to look into some figures that were derived out of all the online retail e-commerce transactions by online retailers that participated. According to comScore, there was a total of $595 million online sales on November 27, Black Friday.   This makes Black Friday as the second heaviest online spending day for 2009.

This year’s Black Friday online sales represents an 11% increase against last year’s Black Friday sales data. Overall spending now amounts to $10.57 billion – a 3% increase from last year’s data. [Read more…]