Google on Monday unveiled a new Google Labs experiment that turns public data sets into interactive charts that can be embedded in Web pages.
Google Public Data Explorer relies on the visualization technology that Google obtained when it acquired Trendalyzer in 2007.

The technology is also used to power Google Chart Tools, an umbrella name for the Google Chart API and the Google Visualization API, which can be used to add charts and graphs to Web sites.
“With the Data Explorer, you can mash up data using line graphs, bar graphs, maps and bubble charts,” explains Jurgen Schwarzler, a statistician on Google’s public data team, in a blog post. “The visualizations are dynamic, so you can watch them move over time, change topics, highlight different entries and change the scale. Once you have a chart ready, you can easily share it with friends or even embed it on your own Web site or blog.”

The release of Public Data Explorer builds upon Google’s effort to provide visual support to search queries.

In April last year, Google added charts derived from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and U.S. Census Bureau data to relevant searches.

In November, Google expanded its search visualization support to include 17 more world development indicators from the World Bank.

Monday’s announcement brought with it news that Google has integrated into its search visualization tools public data from five new sources: the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), the California Department of Education, Eurostat, the U.S. Center for Disease Control, and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

After four months of pursuit, Kraft said Tuesday that it was close to a deal for a friendly takeover of Cadbury. Terms were not disclosed, but the U.S. food giant was said to be paying about $19 billion in cash and stock for the British confectioner.

Uniting Kraft, maker of Oreo cookies and Ritz crackers, with the producer of Trident gum and Dairy Milk chocolates, would create a global food giant with more than $50 billion in revenue and a big presence in markets from the United States to India.

Over the last decade, food companies have sought to gain scale by combining with each other, most recently with Mars buying the William Wrigley Jr. Co. in 2008 for $23 billion.

In a statement released before markets opening Tuesday in London, Kraft said that the boards of the two companies were “finalizing the terms of a recommended offer for Cadbury.” It said a further announcement would be made “shortly.”

On Monday, people briefed on the terms of the proposal said that Kraft will pay 840 pence, or $13.80, a Cadbury share, while Cadbury will pay out a special 10 pence a share dividend.

The offer is about a 5 percent premium over Cadbury’s closing share price of 807.5 pence on Monday. The majority of the increase was in the cash component, which was raised from £3 a Cadbury share to £5, a person briefed on the matter said.

Tuesday is the last day Kraft can raise its offer under British takeover rules. People familiar with the matter had cautioned that the talks were still continuing, so a deal might still fall apart.

The deal will draw to a close an often acrimonious hostile takeover battle between the two food companies, one that began with Kraft making public an unsolicited $16.7 billion bid for Cadbury in early September. The Cadbury management quickly derided the offer as too low and dismissed the prospect of being absorbed into what it called a slow-growing food conglomerate.

A takeover of the 186-year-old Cadbury, especially by an American multinational like Kraft, will most likely send shudders throughout Britain.

Politicians and unions have pointed to both a loss of jobs — the Unite labor union has estimated that as many as 30,000 jobs could be lost — and of national pride.

Cadbury has argued repeatedly that it would prefer to remain independent, pointing to faster-than-expected success in its turnaround program. But its executives have acknowledged that Kraft’s bid put the company in play and they would consider any offer made at the right price.

From the beginning, speculation mounted among investors that another bidder could step in, forcing Kraft to raise its original offer. Representatives for Cadbury have held talks with Hershey, the American company whom Cadbury viewed as a preferable merger partner, according to people briefed on the matter.

For Hershey, buying Cadbury would prevent it from being relegated to a mostly U.S. company. Hershey moved closer to making a bid in recent days, lining up more than $10 billion in financing, these people said.

Hershey had been waiting for Kraft to unveil its final offer on Tuesday before it made its final decision on a bid, but analysts have said that Hershey would most likely be unable to top the much larger Kraft in a bidding war. Other potential suitors, including Nestlé of Switzerland and Ferrero of Italy, dropped out.

Despite Kraft’s strong desire to gain control of Cadbury, its chief executive, Irene Rosenfeld, vowed to keep the company disciplined in its bidding and to maintain its investment-grade credit rating. Still, Kraft began raising its original offer earlier this month, increasing the cash portion of its bid after selling its North American frozen pizza business to Nestlé for $3.7 billion. Rosenfeld met with Cadbury shareholders in London last week to solicit their opinions.

Others have sounded notes of caution. Warren E. Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway is Kraft’s largest shareholder, delivered an unusually public admonishment, warning Kraft to avoid overdiluting its shareholders by issuing too many new shares.

William A. Ackman, who runs the hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management and who has been amassing a big position in Kraft, has echoed Buffett’s concerns.

CES 2010 Palm has – finally – opened up its application development program for webOS to one and all. It will also open its app database to anyone who wants to build a store, extend its SDK’s powers with a plug-in kit for C and C++ coders, and prime the development pump with $1m in incentives.

The outing of the developer program was announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada on Thursday, “Today, after a six-month closed private beta with some fantastic application partners, we’re formally opening our developer program,” said Palm’s SVP for marketing Katie Mitic.

Any developer – not just the select beta few – is now free to submit their apps to Palm, which will then distribute it in each of the markets in which the Palm Pr? and Pixi are now available.

According to Mitic, the Palm platform and developer program have “three distinct advantages” over the competition. She didn’t mention that competition specifically, but it’s no mystery that one comes from Cupertino and another from Mountain View. Those advantages, she said, are a fast and simple development cycle; the webOS’s integrated data, content, and services structures; and – in a not-so-subtle dig at Apple – “freedom and choice in how [developers] take their applications to market.”

In Mitic’s opinion, Palm is taking “a completely new approach to application distribution” by opening up its database of application information so that any developer, vendor, service provider, or what-have-you can build their own online store, linked to Palm’s application-delivery service.

In Mitic’s words, “descriptions, ratings, reviews, downloads, stacks, application URLs” will be available to all comers. “We want developers to have as much freedom of choice [as possible] in developing and distributing their applications,” she said.

To provide an example of what can be done with this open strategy, Palm developed a basic-but-functional example of such an online distribution scheme, called Project Appetite, along with publishing code samples and feed information about how to access the database.

Palm clearly believes that an open app-distribution scheme will juice both its developer community and its customer base. “We’re putting our money where our mouth is,” she said, announcing what Palm calls the Hot Apps Program.

Hot Apps will give away a total of $1m to developers of – what else? – the hottest free and paid webOS apps measured by sales from February 1 until May 31. Terms and conditions for the program are – without digging too deeply into the legalese – acceptably generous, and eligible apps can be created either using the webOS SDK or Palm’s web-based development environment, Project Ares, which launched as a beta last month.

Mitic also announced Palm’s new webOS Plug-in Development Kit, which she affectionately called the PDK.” With it, developers can build C and C++ plug-ins for webOS applications. The PDK, Mitic noted, will eventually be integrated into Palm’s core webOS SDK.

According to Mitic, the PDK will be of particular interest to developers of 3D games, and therefore Palm will introduce it at the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco in March. She also noted that a number of
game developers – Laminar Research, GameLoft, EA Mobile, and Glu Mobile – have been in on the PDK development process and that games built by them using the PDK, such as EA Mobile’s Need for Speed and Sims 3, are now available for the Palm Pr? in the US in the Palm App Catalog.

With just 1,000 apps currently available for webOS, Palm obviously has its work cut out for it before it can even begin to create the application ecosystem that currently exists for its current major competitor, Apple’s iPhone. Although they don’t need to match the ludicrous 100,000-app morass of gems and garbage that flood Cupertino’s App Store, they do need to reach a critical mass – and soon.

“Now developers are going to have everything in their hands to control their destiny,” Moitic said. She could also have added: “And Palm’s destiny, as well.”

Google confirmed Saturday that their internal developers are using an unreleased Android based phone, as contradictory rumors about a “Google Phone” flew back and forth across the Internet.
On an official Google blog, vice president of product management Mario Queroz said that Google employees are using “a device that combines innovative hardware from a partner with software that runs on Android,” but that this phone is “exclusively for Google employees,” not for consumers.

Several blogs have pegged the phone as the “HTC Passion,” a slab-style device very similar to the HTC HD2 that some bloggers have said will be coming to T-Mobile USA.

That doesn’t make the Passion any more a “Google phone” than other “With Google” or “Google Experience” Android phones, such as the Motorola Droid or T-Mobile G1.

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reported that an upcoming Android phone from HTC will be called “Nexus One” and that “Google designed virtually the entire software experience behind the phone.”

But that’s also true of the unlocked version of the T-Mobile G1, released last year as the Android Dev Phone 1. This May, our own Mark Hachman (as well as many Android developers) was given a version of the HTC Magic phone that was called the “Google Ion” at the time – also unlocked, also direct from Google.

More intriguingly, the Journal says that Google intends to sell the phone en masse to consumers unlocked, not through a wireless carrier.

While that’s a common business model in most of the world, and the Dev Phone 1 is available unlocked, typically unlocked phones haven’t sold many units here in the US.

TechCrunch says that a new phone “will be called the Google Phone” and will be sold directly by Google, independently of any wireless carrier.

Engadget claims it will run on AT&T, while blogger John Gruber says its 3G radio will only work with T-Mobile, and AT&T customers would be stuck in 2G mode.

I don’t have any exclusive information about new devices. But I’d bet that this phone is just T-Mobile’s new flagship Android phone, the way the Droid was for Verizon. Remember, Google works with preferred hardware partners to showcase new versions of Android. Google was intensely involved in the design of the original G1. Motorola and Verizon got the first shot at Android 2.0; perhaps now it’s time for Google to show love to HTC and T-Mobile again.

As for it being sold unlocked, remember that T-Mobile has their new Even More Plus plans which are designed to be used with unsubsidized, unlocked phones.
More such interesting articles can be found at articlegallery, even on topics like Business Accounting, so get going and start reading.

What is the talk all about?

Facebook is urging its 350 million users to open their kimonos to the entire internet as part of its revamped security settings.

Unveiled on Wednesday, the social network’s new privacy controls are designed are to expose a user’s personal data – including status updates, posted content, and details about friends and family – to everyone on the wild, wild web.

Facebook says the freely-shared data “makes it easier for people to find and learn about you” — but critics claim it’s a actually ploy to drive up Facebook traffic by getting more of its pages cataloged by RSS feeds and search engines.

Starting now, when a current user logs into Facebook, they will be asked to review and update their privacy settings. Users are then prompted to make changes to who (and what) is allowed to ogle various sections of their profile and postings.

While Facebook allows users to retain their old settings quite easily, the recommended options strongly encourage a brave new world of personal data sharing;

It should be noted that users under 18 are restricted to sharing details with Facebook friends no matter which options they select.

Conspiracy or innocent silly buggers? Hard to tell. Facebook, after all, is the king of empty gestures and policy changes to keep critics off its back