A month after it launched a customized Web portal for iPhone users, Google is introducing a new version that further integrates the company’s offerings into Apple’s popular phone. It will be on display at this week’s Macworld Expo in San Francisco, and available to anyone who uses the iPhone.

The services are accessed simply by directing the iPhone’s Safari Web browser to Google’s home page. Previously, iPhone users had access to special versions of google Search, Gmail, Calendar, Reader and other services working from a unified interface on iPhone’s Safari.

On Monday, Google announced that it has further streamlined the interface, tweaking it both for speed and usability. Users can also customize Google applications on tabs in the Google.com menu bar; you can select what Google app you’d like to use by bringing it to the front menu. The tab customization includes Gmail, Calendar, Reader, Docs and Picasa accounts.

Gmail is now faster, and features “auto-complete” that will automatically fill in the contacts field of e-mails. The calendar now features a Month view. Google users can also access “iGoogle” gadgets — mini-applications that show you weather, stock info, news feeds and other content.

Posted by Caroline McCarthy

Photobucket, the massive image-sharing site that was acquired by News Corp. last year, announced Tuesday the debut of its mobile Web site.

On the new site, now live at m.photobucket.com, members of the photo-sharing site can browse their own photos as well as public images, upload photos to the site from their mobile devices, and access a limited home page. In the future, the company has said, Photobucket Mobile will expand to allow video functionality as well as options to embed photos in social-networking profiles.

A statement from Photobucket cited that demand for mobile photo-sharing access is high. According to an internal survey by Fox Interactive Media, the News Corp. division that runs Photobucket, 80 percent of users who responded to the survey own camera phones, 36 percent use the camera every day, and 52 percent access the mobile Web on their handsets.

Not to mention the fact that some other popular image-sharing sites, like the Yahoo-owned Flickr, already run mobile Web sites, as do social-networking sites like Facebook that have photo-sharing features; Photobucket needed to catch up with the competition.

And if cell phones are too small for your taste, Photobucket has a deal with TiVo so that you can access your online albums on your nice big HDTV.

http://www.news.com/8301-13577_3-9850481-36.html

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American Uranium Corporation (OTCBB: AUUM)

American Uranium Corporation closed at $1.01 Friday, trading 3,500 shares.

Company News- January 14, 2008: American Uranium Amends Pinetree-Reno Creek JV Agreement

American Uranium Corporation (”American” or “the Company”) (OTCBB:AUUM) announced earlier today an amendment securing full 60% rights to its cornerstone Reno Creek property. The Pinetree-Reno Creek JV property holds known historical resources totaling approximately 14M lbs U3O8 and has been demonstrated to be amenable to ISR mining.

AUUM CEO Dr. Bob Rich said, “I’m delighted with this improvement in the JV agreement with Strathmore, and am anxiously anticipating the start of permitting and other development activities at the Reno Creek deposit in early 2008. The removal of this provision is consistent with our strategy of moving this asset into production as soon as possible.”

As part of the amendment, American Uranium Corporation agreed to increase its exploration and development expenditures from US $5 million to US $12.375 million to earn an initial 22.5% interest in the project. Strathmore agreed to rescind its 11% buyback provision under the terms specified by the original agreement. All other terms as per the original agreement remain unchanged.

About American Uranium Corporation

According to a report by Experian, the social networking phenomenon is set to continue booming. Newspapers better catch up with the Web 2.0 bandwagon, and develop more than simple user profiles.

Companies, including newspapers, will increasingly seek to tap this trend by developing services for niche audiences that will attract advertisers.

“Experian’s Tony Mooney said companies need to think beyond gimmicks such as setting up a Facebook profile, and need to understand the web 2.0 environment,” reported the Guardian.

“Just look at some of the marketing gaffes from last year when social network members spotted a hackneyed marketing campaign and tore it to shreds,” said Mooney.

But the report also predicts that leading social networking sites such as Facebook, Bebo and MySpace will significantly improve their organization and targeting methods, and be more attractive to advertisers.

New media proponent Jeff Jarvis has argued for the benefits of social networking for news organizations and users, and a recent study found that 43% of US journalists believe new media has affected news coverage - for good and bad.

Stay tuned for an upcoming interview with the CEO of Skyrock’s SkyBlogs, Europe’s most popular blog platform, which spun out of a traditional media company.

Source: Guardian

One Hundred Percent but Unconfirmed….hmmm

Facebook is “one hundred percent” buying Plaxo, we’ve just heard from a source.

Wow, starting your story with that sentence certainly grabs your attention, doesn’t it? VentureBeat’s managed to make a statement of “fact” without actually saying that it has confirmed the story. Nice!

Well, assuming it’s “one hunded percent” then I guess we can soon expect our Plaxo accounts to start sniffing around our business contacts and phoning home to the Facebook mothership. You see, part of the reason why Facebook would be interested in coughing-up as much as $200M for Plaxo is that the service has done a great job of convincing us to install its plugins and share our contact info.

That’s the type of info that would be very valuable to Facebook…

Mountain View, Calif.-based Plaxo could help Facebook gather data through its large user base, and through its plugins for email programs Microsoft Outlook, Mac Mail, and Thunderbird as well as a plugin for instant message service AIM, among others. Plaxo has developed technology to sync contacts through its home web site and its plugins, to create a sort of universal address book. It has also developed native mobile syncing technology for Windows Mobile and other mobile operating systems. Syncing between all of these different services is a very hard problem — that Plaxo has solved.

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