Anyone who’s ever played phone tag knows just how tough it can be to schedule a meeting with someone. Jiffle aims to remove the fuss involved with coordinating availability by enabling users to create appointments on other people’s calendars. The program is already fully integrated with Outlook, and beginning next week it will be compatible with Google Calendar as well.

Upon opening a Jiffle calendar, users are presented with a schedule of their associate’s availability. With a few clicks, a new appointment can be created in a manner that will come naturally to anyone who’s used a standard calendar application.

Jiffle believes that its application could be a boon to participants in Google’s Adwords program. After clicking on an appealing ad, consumers will no longer have to call customer support or sales representatives to schedule appointments - they can simply add themselves into an available time slot. Jiffle also thinks that Cisco’s WebEx could be used in conjunction with the service to further expedite meetings.

There are some strong competitors to Jiffle, including TimeBridge, which already supports Google Calendar. TimeBridge also helps facilitate group meetings through use of a point system, which allows users to vote on their preferred times. We expect to see other major developments in this space very soon.

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Google’s data infrastructure is massive and spread across the world. All that Web crawling, indexing, and searching takes enormous amounts of computing power, not to mention everyone pounding away at Gmail, Google Apps, Blogger, Google Reader, and every other project dreamed up at the Googleplex. But where are all of these data centers and how many are there? Google doesn’t really say. But that doesn’t keep people from trying to figure it out. Royal Pingdom has out together this map of all known Google data centers, including spaces it leases and that are under construction. The maps are based on this list compiled by Data Center Knowledge. (And, no, Royal Pingdom didn’t put these on Google Maps).

There are 36 data centers in all—19 in the U.S., 12 in Europe, 3 in Asia, and one each in Russia and South America. Future data center sites may include Taiwan, Malaysia, Lithuania, and Blythewood, South Carolina, where Google has reportedly bought 466 acres of land.

Anyone know how many data centers Microsoft keeps, or Yahoo, or IBM, for that matter?

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Last night, Microsoft pushed out a ton of new features to Windows Live Maps, including a face-lift to some of its 3-D cities (Las Vegas, Dallas, Denver and Phoenix), the ability to export your collections to GPS devices and GeoRSS feeds (which means I can make custom maps for my Dash GPS), support for 3D-map video tours, better directions and traffic information, and also one-click directions that change the route on a map based on what direction you are coming from.

But there was one feature that really caught my eye. You can now import KML files into Live Maps. KML stands for Keyhole Markup Language, and it was invented by Keyhole, the acquired startup behind Google Earth that is now part of Google. KML has become a standard for describing maps hosted on the Web.

What this means, though, is that Live Maps can now drink Google’s milkshake. Because all the customized maps that people have made and share on Google Maps can be grabbed as a KML file. So now Microsoft can benefit from all that work done by Google Map users by simply slurping all of those maps into Live Maps.

For instance, here is a Google map created by a user named Matthew B. titled PA & NJ Winter Camping that shows camping sites in those states:

Now, here is the same map sucked into Windows Live Maps. It is the exact same information with the same pushpins and descriptions layered into Live Maps:.

Of course, this is a two-way street, since any customized map on Live Maps or in Microsoft’s Virtual Earth can now also be exported as a KML file. Google can take out its straw and slurp right back from the Live Maps glass. The difference is that Google’s glass is a lot more full and is more yummy because so many more people have created customized Google Maps than customized Live Maps.

So right about now, Microsoft is wielding an old wooden bowling pin, wiping its chin, and ranting, “I drink it up!”

(Milkshake photo by Dion Gillard).

And here is a picture of an enhanced 3D Las Vegas:

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Filed under: Google, Googleholic

Welcome to Googleholic - your bi-weekly fix of everything Google! In this edition:

• Google Maps tracks Olympic torch around world
• Google hiring: “Gmail doesn’t yet build itself”

Continue reading Googleholic for April 11, 2008

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TechCrunch reader Nicolas Hoizey noticed a blog post on the official Google Docs Blog today written by Andrew Cheng, a Google Marketing Manager. Hoizey sent us the NetNewsWire screen shot above (click for large view).

The post, based on the screen shot, appears to be a simple to do list. But the post was removed from the blog and the feed, and that means it’s time for conspiracy theories to blossom.

It is certainly reasonable to assume Google would consider launching a simple to-do list product to complement its office suite, and would post about the new product on the official blog. One reason to remove the post - they may have simply posted too early and pulled it down because the product wasn’t ready to launch.

But the post itself is literally nothing more than a list of things to do over the weekend. No additional features or functionality, or any description of the product, is mentioned in the post.

So maybe Google is doing it, maybe they aren’t. Or maybe Hoizey just had a little fun with photoshop this evening and sent over the results of his work. Can anyone out there confirm that this post was published?

We wrote a post comparing various to do list applications back in 2006, and added to it in 2007. But really, how much can really be done to create an even better way of creating a list, organizing it, and removing finished items? Perhaps this is yet another niche market that Google intends to dominate, and I’m not sure anyone will really care.

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Google has hired boutique investment bank Qatalyst Group to provide advice on the ongoing battle between Microsoft and Yahoo.

Qatalyst Group is headed by colorful Silicon Valley investment banker Frank Quattrone, who as we noted in March has returned to the Valley after spending years in the wilderness fighting obstruction of justice charges.

Quattrone was head technology banker for Credit Suisse, and Morgan Stanley before that, during the first internet boom and had a hand in practically every major Internet IPO during the 1990s, from Amazon to Netscape. Notably Quattrone was one of the first investment bankers to show an interest in Google.

Amid daily reports of Microsoft’s attempted takeover of Yahoo, it comes as little surprise that Google has turned to an outside advisor for guidance. That it is Quattrone’s Qatalyst Group shows that Quattrone may climb back to his prime spot in Silicon Valley faster than his detractors would have expected..

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Interesting news coming out of Washington D.C. today around the addition of Google advertisements on Yahoo search result pages. House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) (pictured) and Judiciary Ranking Member Lamar Smith (R-TX) made a joint statement saying that the deal “further underscore[s] the need for a hearing on the state of competition on the Internet and online advertising.”

In February, the House Judiciary Committee announced plans to hold a hearing on the State of Competition on the Internet. Yesterday’s announcement of a two-week trial venture between Yahoo! and Google, as well as reports of a possible Yahoo!/AOL merger, further underscore the need for a hearing on the state of competition on the Internet and online advertising. The Judiciary Committee’s Task Force on Competition Policy and Antitrust Laws will continue to explore these issues.

Microsoft must be happy to see this, which underscores the fact that the government won’t sit on the sidelines as the Internet giants sort out who gets Yahoo’s search assets. It’s time for everyone to open their checkbooks and call their lobbyists. Congress wants a piece of Yahoo, too.

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Microsoft has responded to news earlier today that Yahoo was testing Google Adsense ads on their search results.

From Brad Smith, Microsoft’s General Counsel:

“Any definitive agreement between Yahoo! and Google would consolidate over 90% of the search advertising market in Google’s hands. This would make the market far less competitive, in sharp contrast to our own proposal to acquire Yahoo! We will assess closely all of our options. Our proposal remains the only alternative put forward that offers Yahoo! shareholders full and fair value for their shares, gives every shareholder a vote on the future of the company, and enhances choice for content creators, advertisers, and consumers.”

The 90% market share in the first line is where the deal may well come unstuck (presuming its expanded). Will Government regulators sit back and allow Google to take a 90% market share through a deal with Yahoo?

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In what can only be interpreted as a move in its extended chess match with Microsoft, Yahoo has decided to run a two-week-long trial of Google’s AdSense for Search.

The limited test will see Google placing ads alongside no more than 3% of Yahoo’s search result pages in the US. While Yahoo claims to be simply “exploring strategic alternatives to maximize stockholder value”, the company is obviously trying to convince shareholders that a merger with Microsoft would be sub-optimal by showing how well an alternative partnership with Google monetizes.

Yahoo is eager to point out that the trial will not necessarily blossom into a long-term relationship with Google. And so the pushing continues…

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Google is obviously making big moves into the enterprise. In February, it relaunched JotSpot as Google Sites under the enterprise group, and next week it is expected to announce deeper integration of Google Apps with Salesforce.com, which should help it introduce Google Apps to more business customers. But today, it is taking a page from Salesforce.com by launching its own marketplace for third-party applications and consulting services that enhance Google’s enterprise offerings (mainly Google Apps and enterprise search). Salesforce, of course, has its AppExchange where smaller companies can sell on-demand software to Salesforce customers (and have Salesforce host the apps).

Google is calling its exchange the Google Solutions Marketplace. It replaces a simpler Enterprise Solutions Gallery that Google had before. While Google won’t be hosting the apps (it is just a free listings service), companies can create their own product profiles. Customers can search for Google-related enterprise apps all in one place and rate them. Google needs to create momentum around its enterprise products so that smaller companies will want to develop add-ons and create businesses around them. Right now the offerings seem pretty thin. There are a bunch of syncing tools, identity management offerings, add-on gadgets, and integration with other enterprise apps. But what is lacking is an economic model that would really motivate developers to build on top of Google’s Enterprise apps. The free exposure, though, is a start.

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