A Microsoft representative demonstrates Microsoft Windows Phone 7 at the Mobilize conference in San Francisco.

In a latest report, Facebook and Skype are readying an integration that allows Facebook users to make voice and video calls to their contacts via Skype. Allthingsdigital reported that they can even use the service to send SMS messages.

Skype has 124 million active users and a total of 560 million registered users. With this integration, 500 million Facebook users will be able to use video chat and other voice services through Skype. This service is expected to be similar to the Google’s newly debuted Google Voice.

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Skype to use Facebook’s social muscle to rival Google VOIP

It has been twelve years since Larry Page and Sergey Brin registered the domain Google.com, the search synonym of today. In that 12 years, Google has transformed itself into a multi-billion dollar company based in Mountain View, Calif. It’s 12th birthday is being celebrated with a American painter Wayne Thiebaud design – a big, digitized birthday cake logo.

The cake doodle confirms that Google celebrates its birthday on September 27, 2010. Whois lookup however, shows that Google was first registered on 15 sep, 1997.

   Updated Date: 15-sep-2010
   Creation Date: 15-sep-1997
   Expiration Date: 14-sep-2011

On it’s birthday, let’s look at some of the milestones in its history:

• In 2000, Google began selling advertisements associated with search keywords.
• In 2001, Google launched Image Search.
• In 2002, it released Google Labs and Google News.
• In 2003, Google acquired Pyra Labs, owner of Blogger (in February)
• In 2005, Google Maps (in February) and Google Talk (in August). Other features released were- Google Reader, Google Analytics, and Gmail for mobile.
• In 2006, the verb, "to google", was officially added to Webster and Oxford Dictionary (in July), Google buys YouTube for $1.65 billion (in October)
• 2007, Gmail released for public.
• 2008, Android mobile operating system,
• In 2009 and 2010 – Google Voice, Google Buzz were the buzz words.

That was a short and incomplete history of Google. A full and official history can be accessed here.

Happy Birthday Google !

According to the data derived from 2008 personal income-tax returns, Statistics Canada has found that Calgary led other metropolitan areas in median-family income. Calgary was followed by Edmonton and Ottawa-Gatineau.

Calgary families earned $91,570 in 2008, well above the Canadian average of $68,860. Edmonton followed with family income of $88,190, and Ottawa-Gatineau was third with $87,160.

As the data was based on 2008,  when the people were yet to feel the effects of economic crisis. I suspect, the equation might have changed in the past couple of years.

A 19 year-old computer science student at Stanford University, Feross Aboukhadijeh, created the YouTube Instant on Thursday and woke up Friday morning to find:

The Washington Post called to do an interview, Venture Beat put my picture on their front page, and Mashable wrote a front page story …twice. YouTube Instant also made it to the All Things Digital front page and the Hacker News home page three times.

That was not all: a Wikipedia entry in his name and a job offer from YouTube CEO Chad Hurley via Twitter. Hurley later e-mailed him to set up a meeting, which, Aboukhadijeh says was scheduled for Monday.

Feross was impressed by the Google Instant released on the very same day. He says, tt took him about three hours to complete the YouTube version of Instant.

It seems, YouTube is going to test its live video streaming capability on Monday and Tuesday in collaboration with four partner sites, according to several news sources.

USA Today, citing YouTube manager Joshua Siegel, says that YouTube will add live video to the channel pages from Howcast, Rocketboom, Next New Networks, and Young Hollywood.

With live streaming capabilities, techcrunch says, YouTube will directly compete with livestreaming services like Ustream, Justin.tv and Livestream.

Microsoft tried to show it’s confidence on its upcoming Windows Phone 7 operating system by hosting a mock funeral ceremony of it’s rival phones including Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s Blackberry.

In the ceremony, hearses for the iPhone and the BlackBerry were carried along with Microsoft employees dressed up in Windows Phone 7 garb. The Microsoft employees even performed the "Thriller Dance" (see video, below) hoping the Windows Phone 7 to bury the competition.

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Microsoft’s Funeral Ceremony for Windows Phone Rivals

The much hyped Google Instant should be revolutionary technology in search. If it weren’t, Google wouldn’t have used it. Search is the bread-and-butter of Google so it should have considered every alternatives before introducing Google Instant. I am sure Google can’t take risks in its search business like it did with Google Buzz or Google Wave.

But, even after mulling over the facts I mentioned above, it didn’t work for my site lorla.com. When I typed "lorla" Google was confident that I will type more. It never thought there is something like lorla.com.

Then when typed a space to make a complete word "LORLA" then, it realized …. oh yes…. should be lorlas.com. Hey, I typed "lorla" and there was no "s" at the end. Wasn’t that smart?

I can take that, at least lorla.com is in the third and fourth place.

Then I wanted to test "lorla blog". As my site is a blog, it makes a sense that somebody might search it as lorla blog. The first letter ‘b’ and second letter ‘l’ didn’t see any connection with my site. After I typed the third letter… bingo! ‘Lorla.com’ is the first result. The result remained unchanged until I typed a space after the search term "Lorla blog". It is still "lorla blog" but the single space took away my site and displayed totally unrelated results!

The following video shows what I was telling:

I am very much unsure what to make out of the whole thing?

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Google Instant – Where is my site ?

Google Instant was the search technology behind the Google Doodle made of bouncing balls. The predictive search technology is new and innovative in which the search box suggesting is extended beyond the search box.

Google, in its blog post says the "Search as you type," is a "simple and straightforward idea" in which, the results are displayed when people start typing.

Apart from other benefits, Google says that the new technology will save user’s time, that ranges from 2-5 second per search.

Note: I couldn’t test the feature myself as the it is not working here.

Google’s homepage on Tuesday featured a doodle with fast-moving, colored balls that hate the mouse cursor.

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Google’s Bouncing Ball homepage logo hates mouse