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Many of us know and love Google Trends as the great tool for collecting information on keywords being used in Google searches throughout the world. But very few people know that the service is sometimes also available to other Google services besides search.

One of the services to receive the Google Trends treatment in the past was Google Reader, which currently allows you to see information on RSS feeds.

And now Google as added the service to Google Checkout, allowing a peak into what people are buying and selling online.

I find the tool to be just as interesting and useful as its counterparts, and I look forward to seeing the Google Trends service adapted into other Google services as well.

The other day on the Gmail and Google blog it was announced that the planned Gmail chat and AIM integration we have all been waiting for is finally here.

We can now finally talk to both our Gtalk friends and AIM friends by signing on to both networks right from one site and one browser window.

Enabling the ability to chat with friends across both networks simultaneously AND having access to Gmail will be very beneficial for people who can’t access the AIM client for whatever reason.

And, even though web-based integration between different IM networks has been done by services such as Meebo.com, none give you access to your Gmail as well.

For more information on how it all works check out the post at the Gmail blog located here.

It seems as if Google Talk will finally be integrated with AOL’s AIM client.

This upgrade to Google Talk and AIM couldn’t have happened any later!

It has been two years since Google bought 5% of AOL and announced, amongst other things, that the integration of the two clients would occur as long as certain conditions were met.

As to how the integration will work or what all the conditions may be, that is still largely unknown, but it is safe to bet it has something to do with Google serving ads through AIM.

Given that Google has been strategically partnering with and acquiring many companies that it now uses to serve ads through. It seems like the most logical step for Google is to now desire to serve ads through AIM, the most popular instant messaging on the web.

If my predictions become a reality, Google will take on step forward to becoming the one stop shop for anyone looking to buy ads in RSS feeds, search engines, in many popular web destinations, and a many other, now unforeseen, locations- basically almost the whole internet.

I was just reading this line from CNET’s article a few weeks ago about Google’s Marissa Mayer talking about iPhones and Google applications. To date I hadn’t read anything about these kind of numbers (football season might be taking away from all that new media reading), so they struck me as very interesting:

Usage of Google mobile apps rose 10 percent each week for the first three weeks in June and saw a 40 percent to 50 percent spike almost overnight after the iPhone was launched…

Now despite all the hype and rumors, I know many are asking why Google would even make a phone. My first thought upon reading this quote was how Google doesn’t even appear to need its own phone. As the search king and an online product developer and monster of search advertising with a huge brand name, can’t they just let folks like iPhone and Nokia make the toys and stick with making money from the fact that everyone will continue to use their stuff on these new devices? Seems like that would be the easy answer, especially given numbers like this.

However, the thing to probably consider that while this quote might be a great thing for Google and a boost to their business, there is always more to be had. So while making more money and serving more ads because people are more apt to surf the web on their new iPhones is cool, wouldn’t it be slightly cooler to own the platform on everyone’s phone, bundle ads with almost everything in exchange for cheaper/free services and have Google drive the mobile web? Probably. With mobile advertising reportedly on the cusp of finally hitting big (thanks in part, yes, to things like the iPhone), wouldn’t it be nice for Google to control the whole thing? Probably.

Will it work? Who knows. How much will people believe that someone like Google is able to make a phone that they like? Will being known as the advertising giant and search giant help or hurt? What sorts of bundles will come with the phone that make it worth while? Will there be price breaks? So many questions.

From Mashable, among others, we find that Facebook will soon be listing profiles in search engined like Google, MSN and Yahoo. So if you have a Facebook profile and you have not set it to private, I can “Google” you and find your Facebook page.

To be more accurate, the full profiles will not return in search results, just something that looks like this (from the Facebook blog) :

So your full listing will not appear, but people will certainly be able to get to it provided that they login (or join).

What does this mean? Well, ultimately it will certainly mean more page views and traffic for Facebook, along with more users signing up for their service. Imagine if you’re looking for your old high school friend. Well, you probably do what many people do and just “Google” that friend and voila! - you spot their picture and profile on Facebook. But then how to get in touch with that person? Join Facebook, of course. Considering the number of name searches that probably take place on Google on a daily basis, this should turn out pretty well for Facebook. To be accurate, other social networks, including LinkedIn, have a similar functionality. If you Google your friend who has a LinkedIn profile, it will likely return fairly high in the search results. The page is a shortened version with only some information but also a neat invitation to join LinkedIn so you can see everything about that person.

For Google, it’s more information to index, which is good for them in their quest to index, well, everything. Knowing that you can find friends and old co-workers and the like using Google only makes it a more attractive search engine for users, which of course makes it more profitable for Google.

For the average user, it will open up their profile to more people. That’s either good or bad, depending on your preference and feelings about privacy. Other than name, I don’t believe there is any more information that Facebook will pull from your profile for now. It’s in Facebook’s best interest to get your profile showing up in search more, but from your standpoint you might not want that. Perhaps down the line there will be more opportunities to pull some other information that could help locate someone. For instance, if I don’t remember that person’s last name but I know our High School name then could I find his Facebook profile using Yahoo?

Of course, any Facebook user can control what information is out there in these searches. You can now uncheck a box on your settings page that removes your profile from search engine results. You have about a month to do that, so if you’re worried about privacy you have some time.

Another thing to consider in this development (and in others from similar sites) is how you manage your online reputation, a point brought up here. As more information about you is available to others in search engines, you need to be conscious of what is out there and what people can find. You wouldn’t want your prospective employer (or your current employer for that matter), for example, finding your profile if it had some compromising photos or rants.

That time is once again among us. The time when parents rejoice and children cringe: Back to School!

I’ve compiled a list of Web 2.0 websites sure to help you with any school related matters! So whether you’re going to college for your first year or returning yet again, this list is sure to help you out!

Facebook.com – If you have not yet created a Facebook account, there is no better time than now. Use Facebook to meet new people, learn about new activities (whatever they may be), and stay in contact with other students and friends.

RateMyProfessors.com – This one can help you GREATLY! With RMP you can find information about teachers or even add your own. Use this before you start to make your schedule to learn more about particular teachers.

Ebay.com & Craigslist.org – Use both websites to get good deals on text books and school supplies! But why these two when there are many others dedicated to solely school matters? Well with Ebay and Craiglist you can buy almost ANYTHING else too!

Yelp.com – If you’re going to school in a new location, you will need to know all the not-so-hot and HOT spots. Yelp is a review site where all reviews are user submitted, so you can learn about places before you check them out- right from other students.

Stu.dicio.us – There is nothing worse than losing notes or just leaving them somewhere. With Stu.dicio.us you can take/save/share notes, todos lists, documents, and even connect with Facebook friends, and have everything available from any computer with Internet access.

Citationmachine.net – MLA, APA- WHAT? Still having trouble writing citations? Use this website to correctly structure your citations for your papers by simply filling out a form.

Books.Google.com – Need to check out a book, but have no time to get to a real library (who still goes to those places anyway?), just try doing a search in this Google tool. You will find hundreds of books completely digitized by Google. Though, they do not have as big a selection as some libraries, it is still a good start.

All of the mentioned sites have helped me in school, but I am sure there are many other great ones out there. So if you have any not on the list, just add them to the comments section.

Good luck!

In case you missed it, Google officially ended its DTO/DTR (download to own, download to rent) video service last week. Google let folks who had previously purchased a video know (like me!) that:

…we will no longer offer the ability to buy or rent videos for download from Google Video, ending the DTO/DTR (download-to-own/rent) program. This change will be effective August 15, 2007…After August 15, 2007, you will no longer be able to view your purchased or rented videos.

To fully account for the video purchases you made before July 18, 2007, we are providing you with a Google Checkout bonus for $2.00. Your bonus expires in 60 days.

As you may have guessed, many people weren’t too happy with the way this originally went down. People who had purchased videos now had about a week to watch them before their purchases were rendered useless. The consolation? A $2.00 Google Checkout bonus.

Not too long after this announcement - about a few thousand letters and blog postings later - Google admitted that they made a mistake. On their official blog they wrote:

When your friends and well-intentioned acquaintances tell you that you’ve made a mistake, it’s good to listen…we thought offering the refund in the form of Google Checkout credits would entail fewer steps and offer a better user experience. We should have anticipated that some users would see a Checkout credit as nothing more than an extra step of a different (and annoyingly self-serving) kind. Our bad.

Among the changes they are making, Google will now offer a full refund to anyone who purchased a video, will allow users to continue to watch their videos for another 6 months and will also allow you to keep the $2.00 Google Checkout credit you’ve received.

This will no doubt make people much happier, and I believe, as I’m sure many others do, that it’s always good to see a company admitting they made a mistake and fixing it.

One thing that this does entire story does make you think about (which I thought PC Mag’s article captured quite well) is how this kind of thing really could happen. Google is a giant and therefore decided that based on the negative feedback it was getting they would remedy the situation - so more time to see your movies, a full refund and an additional credit for you. But what if this wasn’t Google? What if a video company or picture uploading site or blogging service that you had invested your time, uploads, content or writing to just went under? If they didn’t have the power of Google to give more back, where would you be?

All that said, I firmly believe that this is the nature of the evolving digital marketplace. It’s happened with other industries, that’s just the way it goes. In order to make things happen you have to try new things out. Way back when Google decided to roll out its own video service along with this DTR/DTO functionality, nobody had a clue on how to monetize video online. Surprise surprise, no one has really figured it out now either. So while there might be some repercussions that come along with this type of experimentation, there are still benefits that come from it. Now in this particular example the negatives are exacerbated because of the fact that users’ money is involved, but think of all of the benefits that come from companies like Google experimenting (and often failing) in the online sphere and developing (mostly) free products for folks to use. I think dealing with some failure is a byproduct that, in the end, most people are ok dealing with. The above blog entry from Google actually ends with a similar thought.

We make mistakes; we do our best not to repeat them — and we really do try to fix the ones we make. That said, the very least that our users should expect from us is that our mistakes be new and innovative, too.

Sure, there is a certain degree of spin on everything. But putting it all into perspective, I think these are things that we as users of the magical interwebonlineportalspace should not only expect, but embrace.

Now for some changes to the Google Video service as a whole…

But not just Gmail! Picasa Web Albums and all of Google’s services are getting get a lot better!

Why? Well today Google announced on its blog that it will begin offering fee-based “additional storage plans” for all of its services- first starting with Gmail and Picasa Web Albums and later adding the plans to other services, such as Google Docs & Spreadsheets, in the near future.

Truthfully this is a wish come true for me. Like many, I use Gmail as not only my e-mail, but as my online storage solution (Thanks GMail Drive). And even though I have yet to reach the current maximum storage of 2.82 GB provided by Google. I knew the sad day would someday come when I would reach the end and be forced to start using something else.

So, what’s more storage costing us?

The plans may be somewhat more expensive than some online storage solution services, but it’s a price I’m willing to pay to add more storage to what IS the best e-mail service around.

A Google lawyer announced on Friday that they will apply video fingerprinting technology to YouTube by September.

This comes as great news to countless of video content producers, that are now seeing their copyright videos on YouTube without their permission.

The video screening technology will consist of a computer system which will automatically scan all videos uploaded to YouTube and compare them to a collection of digital fingerprints built by Google. According, to Google the process will only take a few minutes to scan and determine its acceptance onto YouTube.

This is definitely a large step forward for YouTube and one that will hopefully help to spend less time in the courtroom and more time revolutionizing the Internet.

Google made a splash not too long ago with its purchase of FeedBurner. For those who don’t know, FeedBurner is an online tool that helps people who create feeds (bloggers, podcasters) manage, disseminate and track their feeds. If you have a blog, for example, FeedBurner, helps you see traffic and subscribers for it, make it compatible with various aggregators, optimizes and submits it to major search engines and all sorts of other cool stuff.

The acquisition, of course, is old news (well, June 1st). Today, Feedburner announced that their PRO level accounts are now free. Before now, users could have access to detailed statistic reports (Stats Pro) as well as the “MyBrand” service that allows feed creators to have a customizable address for their feeds (i.e. feeds.overoll.com/myfeed rather than feeds.feedburner.com/myfeed). Read HERE for a view on why the MyBrand feature is rather important. If you’ve been paying the $3-$14 per month until now, you won’t be billed for June so take yourself out for lunch or something…If you haven’t wanted to pony up, you can now activate the new features.

Google, of course, will be looking for more people to sign up and use FeedBurner to help distribute their feeds. In Google’s blog post on this, they remind us that “FeedBurner offers a feed advertising platform for advertisers to reach engaged feed readers through targeted in-feed ads and innovative techniques like RSS feed-driven ads.” Yes, FeedBurner already has a huge advertiser network, doing what you would expect Google to do anyway with AdSense - advertisers can sign up to insert ads into relevant feeds. However you can now look forward to podcasts and RSS feeds showing up as inventory in your Google AdWords content network, and you can tracking it with new features in your Google Analytics account.

For point of reference, FeedBurner has over 430,000 feeds reaching 67 million subscribers per day…that’s a lot of people getting highly targeted content (see HERE). While I’d love to see the breakdown of how those subscribers are broken down, it’s still a nice audience Google can now offer its advertisers.