Starting today, you can preview the contents of a Google document, spreadsheet, or presentation right in your Gmail inbox — just like you’ve already been able to do with YouTube videos, Yelp reviews, and Picasa and Flickr albums. Gmail will automatically detect when you receive a document link and display the name and type of doc below the email.

via Official Gmail Blog: New in Labs: Google Docs previews.

Google Editions is planned for a 2010 availability and will initially offer 400,000 to 600,000 ebooks. Users will be able to buy e-books directly from Google or through its content partners. Now, here’s the interesting part. Once a user bought an e-book either from Google or from its partners, Google will store the books on its server where users can access it anytime.

via Google Officially Joins the Flourishing e-Book Era | Search Engine Journal.

It started out as a software company with a funny little name. Then it conquered the world of search. And now it’s out to conquer the rest of the world.

Who isn’t Google taking on these days?

The company has taken on Microsoft’s once-dominating Office suite, putting comparable software online — at no cost. It’s locking horns with Apple in a battle for the mobile application market. And now, amazingly, it’s challenging Amazon by offering an electronic book service.

If there’s a market out there, you can bet Google is either in it or planning to be.

via Google on an Endless Search for New Worlds to Conquer – Buying Home Computer | Business Solution | Networking Home Computers – FOXNews.com.

The Google Translate button just got better… Remember that this doesn’t allow you to translate to your liking but this generally works and gets better year after year.

Official Google Blog: Translate your website with Google: Expand your audience globally.

Google now allows you to jump to certain parts of a page within the snippets of the search result. This is pretty cool.

Official Google Blog: Jump to the information you want right from the search snippets.

Truth in advertising is coming to the Web, people!  Be prepared to be surprised that a lot of  bloggers (and other sites!) are paid by big companies to promote their products. I have been saying for years, that a lot of these supposedly unbiased websites with product reviews are a lot of bunk and were paid to write it… trust me I know… remember that I also do online marketing! And being that I had a business and sales background before this, I knew where to draw the line for clients… many don’t however… time will tell… this may just be the start of something good on the web… looks the wild, wild west of the internet era is drawing to a close with this.

FTC to Regulate Blogging – Science News | Science & Technology | Technology News – FOXNews.com.

I recommend using this as it will save you a LOT of time for finding exactly what you are wanting and fast.  Many times I am needing to find the latest information so I have honed it down to either the last year or month and can find the info in seconds with this tool.  These improvements to the Google Search Options will continue.  I love ’em!

Today, we’re announcing nine new Search Options tools: past hour, specific date range, more shopping sites, fewer shopping sites, visited pages, not yet visited, books, blogs and news. These features have been rolling out gradually and will be available globally in English by the end of the day. You can try them yourself by searching Google and clicking “Show options” in the blue bar just under the logo.

via Official Google Blog: Refine your search results with new Search Options.

Google Starts Selling Promoted Videos on AdWords

via Google Starts Selling Promoted Videos on AdWords | Search Engine Journal.

Anybody wanting an amazing Google Voice phone number that emails your voice mail to you as transcriptions for FREE, let me know… I’ll hook you up.

Google Voice Blog: Invite a friend to Google Voice.

WordPress 2.9 is coming… Does anybody else think WordPress is marching along just a LITTLE too fast? I keep up with the blogging software constantly, and I feel it is.  At least updates are like 1000 times easier since 2.6 or so. I’ll probably install 2.9 on a dev wordpress site to test and play around… to the future of WordPress!

WordPress › Blog » Getting involved with the 2.9 beta testing.