It looks like Google CEO Larry Page really is putting more wood behind fewer arrows. Google has discontinued Knol, the company’s attempt to recreate Wikipedia in its own ad-supported image, adding to a long list of product funerals the company has held in 2011. According to Information Week, the number tops three dozen if you count not only full-fledged products but features, acquisitions, initiatives, and APIs. READ MORE
After you’ve stuffed yourself with turkey this Thursday, what will you do next? While some may nap or watch football, a huge number of Americans will get started on their holiday shopping, according to prognosticators at PayPal. READ MORE
Earlier this month, Google launched its Gmail app for iOS devices. It wasn’t exactly met with a round of applause. There were few of the powerful features users get with regular Gmail, notifications weren’t working correctly, and the app crashed so often that Google finally pulled it from the Apple Store. READ MORE
Having a Facebook page for your business can help you engage with customers, build your brand and grow your business, but getting fans—and knowing what to do with them once you have them—can be a challenge. READ MORE
If Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are all old hat to you and you’re looking for a different social experience, you might want in on a new Web app now in alpha testing. StormDriver acts as an interactive overlay for the entire Web. With the goal of making the whole Internet “one great social platform,” it lets you see who else is on the same web site as you, where people came from and where they are going. It also analyzes your browsing habits and content tastes and uses this information to provide content recommendations that get more accurate the more you use the system. READ MORE
Google has acquired Apture, a start-up that brings instantaneous search to content on the web. Apture developed Apture Highlights, a browser extension that aims to plug what it calls the “search leak,” which occurs when a user is reading content, wants more information about a keyword or phrase and then opens another browser tab to search for the information on Google, Bing or Yahoo. For content publishers this isn’t ideal—it means the user has disengaged and left the page. Apture Highlights enables you to highlight any word or phrase on a page and instantly bring up in a window search results from more than 60 sources including YouTube, Twitter, Wikipedia, Google and more for extra context around content. READ MORE
This holiday shopping season eBay will be making it extra easy for people to find the items they’re looking for via the latest version of its RedLaser mobile app, which enables users to search for prices on all kinds of items by either scanning a bar code or QR code or typing in the product’s name. Previously the app has shown the price for an item at both online and local brick-and-mortar retailers, but now RedLaser users can also see a selection of local retailers that have the item in stock and that allow for purchasing it through the mobile app. Shoppers can now complete a transaction using PayPal and pick up the purchased item later at the store. READ MORE
First Amazon announced the Kindle Fire, which many seem to think is going to dent Apple’s iPad sales this holiday season. Now some say the digital retail giant plans to build a speech recognition interface to rival Apple’s Siri personal assistant technology. The speculation stems from the recent revelation that Amazon.com has quietly acquired speech-to-text software developer Yap, which was founded in 2006 by Igor Jablakov, who previously worked on speech recognition technologies at IBM. READ MORE
When you think about online collaboration, popular options such as Basecamp, Chatter or Google Docs likely come to mind. But there’s another rising star in the space garnering the attention of investors and customers alike for not only letting people work with others online regardless of physical location, but also offering other interesting features. Irvine, Calif.-based Mavenlink just raised $3.9 million to accelerate the development of its project management platform and says it now has more than 100,000 users and is getting 15,000 new ones a month. READ MORE
If you consider yourself an early adopter of business apps (or if you want to be), you might give BestVendor a look. It just launched in beta as a free social directory that will show you applications and Web tools other businesspeople recommend. READ MORE
