Google hyper indexing new Friendfeed Rooms

Almost overnight, Friendfeed is becoming a rather 'large house' with a lot of rooms!

Google has indexed over 100 rooms.

The 'room' feature (somewhat reminiscent of the IRC and chat room days), was just introduced by Friendfeed in the past few days.

Some of the public rooms include numerous individuals, topics, special interests, search (sem), blogging, FAQ's, advice, tips, weather and more.

Anyone can create their own room (and decorate it accordingly :)

Update: Google Blogoscoped has posted a Friendfeed room listing with over 500 entries here.

Weekend Pick - Microsoft's Pro Photo Gallery

While Yahoo's Flickr still leads the online photo community field in a variety of ways, there are numerous other places to view some absolutely GREAT photography.

Google's PicasaWeb is coming along nicely (and is free) and there are many other web spaces where 'just regular people' as well as professional photographers are uploading some pretty incredible stuff.

Microsoft, as of late, has been making some photography news as well.

The introduction of Pro Photo Tools 1.0, a simple yet handy tool to adjust the embedded characteristics of your shots. The HD Photo initiative, and more.

If you're anything like me, you may just want to look at some awesome photos once in a while.

Here's one place you may have missed.

The Microsoft Pro Photo Gallery Archive.

Be sure and check it out ... and ...

... enjoy the weekend!
Charlie

Flock announces significant financing

One of the most enjoyable things about writing about software, web apps, testing betas, etc is you get to see a little of what comes out of it.

It's pretty simple. When you show a new or emerging app to a few people and they like it, there's a decent chance it's going somewhere.

Along with the various versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, regular updates leading up to the recently released Firefox 3.0 RC1, we have been closely watching Flock in the browser space, as well as Apple's Safari for Windows.

Earlier today, Flock announced a significant venture capital infusion.

This group has put together an integrated browser that makes social networking easier (and fun!), and the recent release of 1.2b (Beta) adds even more services. Unique features like the people bar add a new kind of visibility while your spending time on your favorite conversational site or so-called Social Network.

As of now, no Friendfeed ... yet (bummer).

I suppose tomorrow we'll learn whether or not Twitter really got the big bucks too :)

Staff Edit May 22 PM

Generations X, Y and Internet Reality

In the past few weeks, more than a few blogs have been commenting on the effects of various generations on the state (and the future) of the Internet.

Let's assume (.... there's been about 12 definitions that I can count so far) that Generation X is the so-called baby-boom generation and Generation Y are their children who are now in college or entering the workforce.

Let's take it one step further and assume that a majority of these people are capitalists (IE: They like to make money?).

The key to all of this is extremely simple. Generation X and Y are the two largest spending audiences. Why? There's more of them than any other demographic group. Period.

Yes, the people that can 'recover the economy' if they want to (and/or have the resources). They are your friends if you're trying to monetize ANYTHING.

There are LOTS of the Generation X gang still out there, and without them, there may have never been an Internet as we know it.

Many are still running most of the companies that Generation Y works for?!

They started it all, and most still have a passion for the technology, although many have 'retired' to the venture capital space, they're still very much right here. They may just be holding the funds that Generation Y needs?

So who do you look to for your profit?

BOTH.

The U.S. market of Generation X and Y's are sitting on YOUR next sale (or page view). Beyond that, it's strictly a few distinct and rapidly-growing international markets.

Food for thought?

TechMeMe adds search !

One of the most popular tech news aggregators, a literal default for many seeking breaking news in the tech industry, TechMeMe announced a short time ago that they have added a 'search' feature.

Crediting Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land for mentioning it (some time ago :), founder Gabe Rivera made the announcement on the TechMeMe site itself.

TechMeMe has been good to this blog. Numerous mentions under TechMeMe discussions as well as several lead headlines drove significant traffic and lent credibility to what we do here.

While many of us are running around trying to figure out what the next big thing is, TechMeMe continues to hold it's place as many people's 'technology home plate', for a variety of reasons, as Gabe (and company) continually tune the memeorandum bot and the results that appear.

TechMeMe is part of a family of aggregators which include memeorandum.com (politics), ballbug.com (baseball) and wesmirch.com (celebrity news and gossip).

He Can if he wants - Icahn - MicroHoo - enough?

It was 'rush to press' over the past hour or so as both Microsoft and Yahoo! released somewhat anticipated weekend press releases in response to the hovering bid for Yahoo! by Carl Icahn.

There was absolutely nothing definitive in either press release.

These press releases aren't really meant for you, me, or even direct investors.

They're aimed squarely at Wall Street before the opening bell and the hundreds, possibly thousands of publications worldwide prepping their morning pages and newscasts.

Carefully worded proclamations by the legal departments that translated say "We're pretty much still open to what ever happens" in this case.

The analysts will spin this story 50 different ways in just a few short hours. Mutual fund managers and pundits will proclaim "This is what will probably happen". My Google Feed Reader will quadruple in size. I'll share 'a few' of the more likely scenarios.

There will be headlines as Icahn is busy on numerous fronts including the Blockbuster bid for Circuit City.

Nothing is being produced, created, or contributed to the GDP by these deals ... but hey, that would spoil all the fun?


Update 1 : Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) was up 1.52 per cent to 28.89 in pre-market trading with 'just a few headlines (over 3000 and counting):




Update 2: Kara Swisher has a much better headline than us (and a good 'take') here