Facebook offering cash prize for new applications

In its effort to pull in more web traffic, the popular networking site Facebook announces a cash reward of up to $250,000 to develop new applications. The incentive can go to any firm or individual who will create innovative software programs for Facebook.

So here is an opportunity for all those developers, programmers including software firms who want to prove their innovative talents, and grow with one of the world’s leading networking enterprises.

Google, TransMedia set to release online presentation tools

Google and TransMedia all set to launch their online presentation applications- Google Docs and Glide Presenter 2.0. Both the presentations tools come with great features and facilities that can challenge even the reigning champion in presentation software-Microsoft PowerPoint.

The new Google’s presentation tool has been designed to help groups collaborate. It has been integrated with Gmail and Google Calendar, and includes a group of chat function. Any Google Group member can follow the presenter or to become the presenter with a single click.

Though not visually as pleasing as Google, TransMedia’s Glide Presenter 2.0 has certain edges. It has been designed to work both on the Web and on mobile phones, including Apple’s iPhone. Glide Presenter allows you to play video and music files in its presentation, and also allows to create own themes.

Indian Outsourcing Updates

Despite the threat from superior neighbors like China, big time outsourcing hub India continues to accelerate in what it does best- delivers higher returns through better value. Infact India’s Outsourcing Industry has evolved from one of cost saving to that of higher productivity and efficiency. Further with improvements in computer and telecom technology it becomes better and easier to deliver data security and output in quick turnaround situations.

India’s foray into the next level of outsourcing from BPO to KPO (Knowledge Process Outsourcing) is seen as a major leap that pulls another estimated two and a half lakh professionals with almost 70 % of the market. According to reports the potential market of KPO is estimated to around $17 billion and of which $12 billion in India alone by 1210-11

Now read wire services stories in Google News pages

In its effort to better ties with wire services, web giant Google announces to host full news articles from wire services on Google News pages, web magazine PC World reported.

Google News has always been a lucrative platform for publishers who make money from online advertising. But for the wire services it’s a tougher sell. Wire Services generally make money by licensing their content to newspapers and magazines, and not by pulling readers to their own websites. For this Google has entered into concrete licensing agreements with some leading wire services in the world, so that, people will be able to read the original articles from these news sources in Google News pages.

Earlier, wire services’ Web sites typically feature either a small portion or none of their stories; the only way to read their articles was to go to the sites of their syndication clients, such as newspapers and magazines.

Now with the new agreement program, Google will identify the original source of a story that may appear in tens or hundreds of news outlet Web sites. If the source story is from one of the wire services that Google has licensing agreements with, Google will display the story on a page that it hosts.

Apart from the wire services this new Google approach will benefits all types of news outlets also. Say, if a newspaper story gets syndicated, Google News will know that it originally came from that particular newspaper. While news outlets that have their own public Web sites, the new feature will simply let users click over to their sites, which is the traditional Google News model.