While the world deals with turmoil in the global markets, Google, with a host of partners, is proving that free enterprise is alive and well, and that it is continuing to push new boundaries in the search for technology, sustainability and innovation. Since last September, Google partnered with several other groups to offer prizes and bonuses up to $30 million to teams that land a rover and maneuver it on the moon before 2012. The grand prize is $20 million, with $5 million as a second prize and bonuses going towards certain achievements.The contest has already attracted several very high profile teams. One, called Next Giant Leap, is composed of former members of NASA & MIT (including an astronaut and professor, Jeffrey Hoffman) as well as companies such as Aurora Flight Sciences and MicroSat Systems, both already heavily involved in space based technology. They’re considered heavyweights in this competition, but they’re far from alone in the talented teams that have applied to Google’s competition. Teams such as SELENE, composed of young enterprising Chinese, and Euroluna, who have large amounts of talented engineers and technicians on board ensure that the teams will be forced to produce superior products so that they can succeed in their given task.

Moon travel is something we should all be interested in, and not just for the novelty. The surface of the moon is covered in silicone, which is the key component in the manufacturing of solar panels. Large solar panels in space could potentially provide most of the Earth’s power consumption, making it especially attractive. In addition, the mineral composition of the moon is largely unexplored, meaning there could be significant stores of rare minerals which would be exceedingly useful on Earth.

There is a potential stumbling block - the moon’s possession is not exactly a solid thing. Governments and international regulatory bodies have not agreed on how property on the Earth’s neighbour should be handled. There are debates over whether it should be considered ‘common property’ or states and individuals should be allowed to own pieces of the moon. Alreadt India, Japan, and China are circling the moon with satellites, and NASA is set to join them next year. With Google’s Lunar X project, it remains to be seen what will be decided on the issue. We can all hope, however, that the moon is opened up to a productive use. Time will tell, but one thing is forsure - the future holds exciting prospects for our planet’s little sister.

To read more about the Google Lunar X Project visit Google’s website on the project.

The Great Photographers Of Life Magazine

(click to view youtube video)

For millions of students and researchers, it could be a boon. For commercial enterprises, it could significantly up the ability to obtain quality photographs for use in business. Google has announced a partnership with TimeWarner to put up millions of unused photographs and etchings on their website and make it totally searchable to the public.As a researcher, using such high profile, professional photographs can be a great help both for one’s own information and for presentation. Life Magazine was founded in 1936 as a photo exposition magazine, and ran until 2000 when it was retired when it was retired. .

However, photographs in its archives actually stretch back far further than that, meaning that the 10 million photographs eventually added will put significant historical content onto the web in an easy search format.As far as benefits for TimeWarner, the company which owns the rights to these photographs, they will be available to purchase for business purposes, as well in the format of framed photos. For businesses, this could be of very real commercial benefit. The photos are of high quality and resolution, bringing certain possible advertising resources into availability which were not there before, to both small businesses and larger enterprises.Google is bound to increase its traffic once again with this addition, though until it’s very widely publicized the results might be negligible. Regardless of whether they do or not, they’ve added a very useful tool to their website. They appear to be going in the direction of archiving a whole host of old materials – recently, they announced they would induct millions of old newspapers.

I can see this complementing and competing with the Wikimedia Commons. Both are large collections of photographs.The difference is that the Wikimedia Commons can be added to by anybody and feature a wide dearth of content, quality and sources, while the new Life page on Google has a single source, and generally a uniform quality. Wikimedia Commons also has tools in which someone can cite academically a photograph. It remains to be seen whether Google & TimeWarner will also adopt something like this and also whether this will have a significant effect on Google’s reputation.

Read More on LIFE Magazine Photo Archives Arrive in Google Image Search

Now ads may soon be found in your video games as well. Google has been quietly testing AdSense for Games Products for months and has developed a new technology that will allow beta publishers to Display video, Image or Text ads, as well as customize their placement via the flash SDK into games with the option to show ads before the game, after the game or between levels as well as the ad could be exposed during loading.  If the new technology is proven successful within online gaming, Google is certain to move the service to mobile games and eventually Console. Google has had Playfish, Zynga, Demand Media, Mochi Media, and Konami as active participating publishers from the start, since then they have signed up Beta Publishers such as: Sprint, Sony Pictures and Online Insurance Firm Esurance.

Although “AdSense for Games”could be considered a excellent way to advertise and bring in revenue, online users may be turned off to the idea completely. We already have pop-ups and ads in our web browsers, Now they are going to put ads into Video games with messages like “And now, a word from our sponsors.” Its doubtful that gamers will stand for ads in games which take up their gaming time. Integrating ads such as billboards in the backgrounds of games add to the realism of games, but adding a 30 second time slot for an ad to play is definitely a turn off.In-Game Advertising is nothing new, but with a Google spin on the scenario it could either prove to be a big hit or a big miss.

Google is well aware that there are going to be serveral significant competitors  such as Double Fusion, IGA, And Microsoft’s Massive, but still thinks that it can set itself apart from the others. AdSense For Games has the potential to increase brand awareness as well as serve as a direct-response tool.  Google’s Bernie Stolar, A Video Game Veteran, believes that this is an area that will have tremendous growth over the next number of years involving several different media. Even thought it may not be a home-run in the immediate future, Google is trying to build the foundational building blocks for many environments that could be very attractive to marketers and ad agencies.

For those who are interested in becoming a AdSense for Games Beta Publisher, there is an application with a list of requirements available at: http://adsense.blogspot.com

After living on Firefox for the last several years Google hit’s a Home Run with their release of Google Chrome, a free, open source web browser with some serious improvements over IE and Firefox.  The first thing you notice is the clean lines and expanded viewing area with tabs at the top from the moment you open it .  So the first things we noticed were the larger viewing area, and the tabs leaving us to believe that the team’s primary goals were in line with what users are looking for.

 Install Multiple Browsers

 We are asked at least once a day about installing multiple browsers on one computer, and the answer is not only yes you can, but you should have at least one or two other than Internet Explorer so that you have choices if you can not load a site in IE or it has errors.  So with that in mind we at Zenn Media have compiled a list of browser for you to download and check out.

1.Google Chrome

2.Mozilla Firefox

3.Opera

4.Safari 

We also found this review with a screen cast you may be interested in - Google Chrome a Killer Browser Already (screencast)

Google values a being major presence in Czechoslovakia so much they are rumored to be looking at purchasing the countries largest search engine Seznam for a BILLION dollars. As google looks at it global ability to dominate the search industries they are strategically choosing to purchase establish companies rather than building from the ground up. So this brings me to today’s big idea, find a under serviced country and start building and marketing a national search engine for that country, looks to us like you have a pretty good chance of being purchased… The most interesting part of this particular deal is the time it will take to generate any kind of income at all from the deal, showing Google is careful to ensure their dominance and survival as the biggest and best.

Read more on this subject at:

Google Won’t Let Search Startups Grow Too Large

Czech search engine Seznam on the block for $1 billion or more?

It seems that what was billed as the biggest thing in search since the famous launch of Google is not much more than the Paris Hilton of search, lot’s of publicity, not a lot of relevant content. We have had a few weeks to compare Cuil’s search results with that of Google, and the difference is staggering! Google beat the heck out of Cuil in every head to head challenge, especially in local search results. So bigger is not better, and on that note there is very little reason to suggest that Cuil is indexing more sites than Google as Google has stopped announcing it’s total number of sites they index a few years ago. For more on this subject read How to Create a Viable Search Competitor.

FunnyOrDie.com hit a grad slam with their timely production of a comedic rebuttal from Paris Hilton of all people. I swore I would never support Paris’s pathetic career in anyway, and I am now eating those words as she truly made me laugh with the video response written and produced by the comic genius of Adam McKay. The reason we bring up the subject is to highlight how the internet oftens drives the content of traditional media thesedays, making the internet the most powerful communication tool in history. Now if only some of the more important world news made it to the traditional media outlets. Be sure to watch the above full video from FunnyOrDie.com as it is not being shown in it’s entirety on T.V.

here are a few funny links to browse:

Another Reason to Be Like Paris Hilton:

Will Ferrell and the End of Media as We Know It

Google Maps Street View can change the world for people who are challenged with finding locations and address they have not been to before. Basically Google has loaded up several vans with tonnes of camera’s and have set them off to map and photograph the world from the street view level so they can add the data to their Google Maps application allowing users to print a picture of the front of the building they are going to with a detailed map and directions all from Google Maps. The result is spectacular and fun to play with.A few internet geeks have compiled some great candid camera shots accidentally taken by the Google vans while mapping. here are a few that will make you chuckle:1. Top 15 Google Street View Sightings

2. GStreetSightings.com

3. StreetViewGallery

4. Valleywag strangest Google street view sights

OK so Cuil is pretty cool with it’s columns of search results with thumbs inserted into their regular search results. How ever in our research on it’s content and ability to serve relevant results for global and local searches, it did not do well. Though it may have a whopping 1.2 billion websites in it’s system, it how it chooses to deliver them for searches that make it not as good as good ‘ol Google.

Cuil is Greek for Knowledge, a well picked name for the new kid on the block, though they do not quite live up their press release. We look forward to seeing what new developments they will bring to everyday searching on the internet, helping raise the bar for the industry and injecting new ideas into the oldest game on the internet.

According to the Webmaster Page on the Cuil site you need to email them in order to request inclusion in their search engine. We will be sure to post some updates on this article as time goes on, so check back often.

Google’s philanthropy organization Google.org is investing in an electric car company Aptera Motors. The significance of this will remain to be seen, but for now it’s nice to see a light on in the electric car office. The Aptera is about $30,000 in the US and will be available by 2009 the company says, but how easy will it be to by one? The kewl thing about the whole approach Google.org is taking is these cars which can be charged in a few hours by solar panels, could be used to store electricity that is then sold back to the power company. So let’s get that straight, right now we are all going broke trying to maintain our consumerism, but we could have technology that sees me making money with out even driving my car? And we choose to spend all our money on band aid solutions when we should be looking to change the game completely? Well we are keeping an eye on Aptera and Google.org to see what they think of next.

Though I am a self professed gear head, and I love to put the pedal down, but the current gas prices have me competing with myself to see how good I can drive to get the most distance out of my tank. Not that it’s entirely a bad thing, but I want to go back to being able to enjoy driving, and not wondering what harm I am actually causing. There is little question about how to solve this “Energy Crisis” and I will remember 2008 as the year I changed my views on being active in providing as much help to the solution as I can.