TechnoCloud

Interesting to see that Google is moving into StumbleUpon’s serendipitous discovery territory with the addition of a recommendations button to its toolbar.

In a twist from StumbleUpon’s social discovery approach (people like you, like this), Google’s dice icon will take you to its recommendations based on your own search history.

Another step in Google’s personalisation of the web, following the likes of custom search and the personalised start page.

As a fan of StumbleUpon I hope that their critical mass in terms of community and more social method of discovery will help them survive the competition from Google and many others.

How long though until Google incorporates social search into the service - after all aren’t inbound links just that?

Now I’ve seen it all, with MSNBC’s NewsBreaker, news for the addicted gamer (or easily bored).

They have taken the classic brickbreaker game and added a news twist. During the game, news stories are released by knocking out certain bricks, with the headlines drifting down, before aligning themselves in a right-hand column. Click on a headline and the game pauses.

You can picture hardened news professionals (plus quite a few of the rest of us) raising their eyes to the sky at the mere thought of this, but no doubt some will enjoy this way of consuming the news.

If you could add your own feeds and escape the drudgery of ploughing through your news feed backlog while knocking bricks from the sky there may be something in this after all, particularly if you could tie it into a more entertaining game. Football news while playing FIFA on PS3?

OK - so I should have said one widget API to rule them all. Netvibes have released the Universal Widget API, which, according to the details here, is an API that allows you to write one widget and run it on most platforms (I suspect that the marketing department vetoed the suggestion that it be called the Near-Universal Widget API.)

Here’s a chart based on threads on LinkedIn and VentureBeat that shows the hottest startups of Silicon Valley.  The usual suspects are represented and a few besides.  Worth a look.

Not so long ago, as I posted here, Steve Jobs was setting out a vision for a DRM-free future.  Today, the future has arrrived a little more quickly than some might have thought: Apple have announced that the entire EMI Music catalog will be available DRM-free worldwide starting in May.  The DRM-free tracks will be a little more expensive, and better quality (256kbs as opposed to 128kbs.) Click here for more information about this ground breaking move.