Further aligning its interests with Facebook, Yahoo's photo-sharing site Flickr has been integrated into the top social network. As such, users can now simultaneously post their photos to Flickr and Facebook. Aware of users' present sensitivity to privacy and sharing, only photos they set as "public" will appear on their Facebook Wall. As it stands, "For a Web site dedicated to sharing photos with friends, family and the world, Flickr incongruously offers very limited external sharing of its photos," comments ReadWriteWeb. "We hope this is the start of more sharing options to come for the busy photo-sharing …

Moving farther away from its bare beginnings, Google just added a background image to its homepage, which is, for lack of a better description, Bing-like. Rather than chuckle at the likeness, however, a very serious ZDNet asks: "Will Bing-envy be the death of Google?" "To many people, Google is the white page with the funny logo," it writes. "If Google now looks more like Bing, will users cease to differentiate the two as clearly?" Another issue, at least according to ZDNet, is that the "butt-ugly" background image will slow down load times. "Google has repeatedly said that …

Despite its sundry side-interests and pie-in-the-sky pursuits, Google knows that search still pays the bills. With that in mind, the company just launched its new and improved Caffeine Web indexing system, which promises 50% "fresher" search results, and tons more retrieved content. As eWeek explains: "Caffeine analyzes the Web in bits and pieces, processing hundreds of thousands of Web pages in parallel and updating regularly around the world so new pages, or new information on existing pages are added straightaway." "Basically, Google is linking into real-time feeds: those from Twitter (with …

What does The Economist think about "geotagging" services like Foursquare and Gowalla? Hedging its bets, the magazine explains that the services "are ... either about to go supernova, with investors circling like flies, or soon to implode, with I-told-you-so bloggers circling like vultures." One argument is that "the much more massive Twitter, which recently added geotagging, or Facebook, which is thinking about it, will displace them." But The Economist doesn't buy it. "Gowalla and Foursquare are all about the location; because they do just that one thing, they do it well ... A search for tweets within …

Steadily growing its global reach, Google Maps Navigation for Android devices -- a free turn-by-turn navigation system based on Google Maps -- is now available in Canada and most of mainland Europe. According to Mashable, the service was only recently extended to the UK and Ireland. Now, in addition to Canada, newly supported countries include France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Netherlands, Denmark, Austria, Switzerland and Belgium. Still free for owners of Android devices, Google Maps Navigation also supports voice commands and voice search, street view, traffic warnings, as well as step-by-step directions. Regarding Voice Search, Google said: "Our …

AdMob CEO Omar Hamoui isn't happy about the implication that he won't be able to serve ads on Apple's forthcoming iAd mobile ad network. (While yet to be officially confirmed by Apple, it's a fair assumption given that changes to Apple's developer agreement now prohibit developers from using advertising in their applications, which share analytics data with "an advertising service provider owned by or affiliated with a developer or distributor of mobile devices, mobile operating systems or development environments other than Apple.") "Apple proposed new developer terms on Monday that, if enforced as written, would prohibit app developers …

Rod Blagojevich is in trouble again, and this time it's all Twitter's fault. The disgraced former Illinois Governor was ordered to stop posting updates about his corruption trial to his Twitter account. According to the Chicago Tribune, Blago was Tweeting from the courtroom! Judge James Zagel, presiding over the trial, said the ex-Celebrity Apprentice can make statements about his case to the press. Still, "Zagel told Blagojevich that his sound bites, quips and 'repeated public statements' to the cameras could be used against him if he testifies during the trial," according to the Chicago Tribune. The paper …

Sorry bit.ly, but Twitter has confirmed plans to introduce its own URL-shortening service, which, according to Softpedia, "will be used all the time, regardless of whether a link is already shortened with a third-party service." Expected to be rolled out broadly by the end of the summer, Twitter's URL shortener will use the domain t.co. "Since early March, we have been routing links within Direct Messages through our link service to detect, intercept, and prevent the spread of malware, phishing, and other dangers," Twitter's Sean Garrett explained in a blog post. "Links reported to us as malicious …

Twitter now has 190 million users producing 65 million tweets per day, according the company's COO Dick Costolo. Yet, those figures are less than impressive if you consider that, "in aggregate, Twitter users produce less around one-third of a tweet per day," notes The Next Web. The blog also suggests that a small number of Twitter users are generating the vast majority of Tweets. "We're just going to have to assume that the curve of user generated tweets (UGT?) drops off the cliff after a very low percentage of power users," it writes. "Of course, Twitter may be …

Ford plans to be the first carmaker to make Google Maps standard in its Sync-equipped cars, Gizmodo reports. "It works by pulling Google Maps information from Bluetooth phones, with the navigational directions read aloud for safer driving," writes the tech blog. "While you could just use your in-car sat-nav system instead of syncing with Google Maps, it'll come in particularly good use if someone emails or texts an address, and you've pulled up the map already on your phone." "'Send to SYNC' is a new capability added to the Ford Service Delivery Network, the company's cloud-based architecture, which …