The event is scheduled to start at 9:30am PT/12:30pm ET. You can find our live blog below.

Live Blog

9:15 AM: The live video stream on YouTube is now available here.

9:21 AM: We are seeing some reports that you can already try Google's instant search by going to this URL: http://www.google.com/webhp?sclient=psy

9:32 AM: Still waiting for the event to start. Until then, you can read the FAQ for Instant Search here. According to Google, Instant search can "save 2-5 seconds per search."

9:35 AM: Here we go. Google PR spokesperson Gabriel Stricker on stage, taking care of housekeeping items (WiFi, etc.).

9:37 AM: Why are we here? "State of the Union." Give everybody a sense of "where we are and where we are going."

9:38 AM: "Today, we are going to talk a lot about speed."

9:38 AM: "What we do is part art and part science."

9:39 AM: Marissa Mayer takes over.

Google now has over 1 billion users on its sites every week. Rolled out hundreds of search enhancements in 2010. "This stands to be the best year ever for Google Search."

9:40 AM: Recap of new search features released so far this year: real-time, Caffeine, timeline views, better spelling correction, integration of Google Squared results.

9:42 AM: Also: stars in search. "Users really want to bookmark results."

9:43 AM: "We also had some fun." Recaps Google TV commercials. Plays video of Super Bowl commercial.

9:45 AM: Yesterday's doodles: "We also had some fun with our logos." "We want search to be fun, fast and interactive."

9:45 AM: Today's announcement: a fundamental shift in search.

"How did we get here?" "Many years ago, if you wanted to get all the trivia about a painting in the MOMA, you would've had to spent a day in the library." By 1950, the telephone allowed you to call the librarian. 1995: CD-ROM-based encyclopedia. "But that was static information."

9:47 AM: Today: real-time information. See if a painting is on tour, for example.

Where is time spent on search today? "We have made our algorithms very efficient." Helping people to understand network time and rendering time in the browser."

A search takes 24 seconds. Entering a query nine seconds. Selecting result 15 second.

9:50 AM: To speed things up, we have to bring the time spent entering a query down.

Google Instant

9:51 AM: Google Instant streams results as you type (pretty much what we expected).

Demo of Google Instant (you can try it here).

9:52 AM: Mayer shows that it only takes her six keystrokes to find information about a specific painting at the MOMA.

Switching between search predictions can be done with up and down arrows.

9:54 AM: "It's not search 'as you type,' but 'search before you type.'" "We can predict what you are likely to type and give you those results in real time."

9:55 AM: Google used this idea of "search before you type" as an April Fool's joke 10 years ago.

Will be available later today. Available on Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari and IE8. Will be part of the core Google search experience on Google.com in the U.S. starting this week. International sites - Germany, Italy, etc. - later this month.

9:57 AM: With this, Google will save its users 11 hours each second.

9:58 AM: Johanna Wright (director of product management on search) and Othar Hansson on stage.

The gears that make Instant Search work: instant results, predictions, scroll to search.

10:00 AM: Very staged, stiff presentation. Team shows how weather for San Francisco comes up in Instant Search with just one keystroke.

Second example: auto-completes "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" - black text in search box shows what the user typed - grey text is the predicted search.

"It's not quite psychic, but it's very clever."

10:03 AM: Third example: "Yosemite" - use arrow keys to switch between predictions ("scroll to search").

10:04 AM: The real power in this is when all of these gears work together ("feedback").

More examples ("Addams family").

10:06 AM: "What the heck is the search button still there for?"

Same results as you are used to. "If you know how to use Google Search today, you know how to use Google Instant."

10:08 AM: Yet another example.

10:10 AM: A sneak peek of what's coming soon: instant search for mobile. Coming later this Fall (we can see how this would be even more useful on mobile.

Video of user testimonials from usability lab. Girl: "It was pretty fabulous." Old guy: "I appreciate that you made it easier for us old guys to use the computer."

The Engineering Behind Instant Search

10:14 AM: How can we make this vision a reality? How can we create a user interface that's easy to use? How can we make it useful on your computer? How can we make it work without melting our data centers?

Google tried this a long time ago. Unless the prediction works well, it's not effective to even try instant search - too costly to implement and not useful for users.

10:16 AM: Now: With predictions, this can be done. Google tested this internally and then did live experiments with millions of users. "People learn how to use this very quickly."

Video of eyetracking study. Shows the power of the predictive text and how fast users learn to use the new system.

10:20 AM: Results pages are now in AJAX. Explain the HTTP flow behind Instant Search. "We had to optimized a lot of JavaScript and work around browser performance issues."

10:22 AM: "How do we do this without melting down our data centers."

If Google Instant did a new search for every letter you typed, this couldn't work. Google can't handle 20 times amount the search traffic.

How does Google scale this? Optimizations: prioritizes searches that are the most likely. Checks if users is doing searches on another server. Results cached.

10:26 AM: "We work on search because we are engineers. The scale of the problem makes it interesting. But most importantly, we work on search because we believe it matters to people. Helps them make better decisions."

Last year alone, Google quietly release over 500 changes to search. "But occasionally, we launch changes that fundamentally change how you use search."

"It doesn't just make search faster, but also more fun, fluid and interactive."

10:28 AM: Google Instant was a massive change that touched almost every part of how Google serves up results.

10:28 AM: Mayer back on stage: Search at the speed of thought.

What makes search better: fun, comprehensiveness and understanding (understanding users' intent and the Web at large).

Mayer: "Google Instant Search is a quantum leap for search."

10:30 AM: Over the year, Google Instant will save 350 million hours of Google's users time.

In closing: a Bob Dylan-inspired ad for Google Instant.

Q&A

10:32 AM: Q: Robert Scoble: When will this be in browsers? A: "This is something we are working on. We expect within the next few months."

10:34 AM: Q: Effect on AdWords. A: No effect on this. Clicks are what matters anyway.

10:35 AM: Q: About 20% of queries are currently unique. How will this affect this metric? A: We don't know yet.

10:36 AM: Q: How will this fit in with user's search history. How will these results be tied in there? A: In Web history, queries where you did a click will show, as well as results where you paused for more than three seconds.

10:36 AM: Q (from Irena Slutsky): There seems to be a block list (including for Irena's last name). A: We filter for violence, hate and pornography. As a result, if you are typing something that's not appropriate, we won't show those results until you hit enter.

10:38 AM: Q: How much personal information is needed to make this work and fast? How much more pressure does this put on Google's data centers? A: Personal information: unchanged. For data centers: cost of search has been growing anyway and this is in line with Google's predictions.

10:40 AM: Q for Sergey Brin: Rate of innovation in user interface. Where will this take us? A: This is a new dawn for computing. Things were rather static on the desktop. Over the past several years on the Web (based on the capabilities of browsers, etc.) there is a lot of exciting work going on. This is just a piece of a really changing landscape of computing. The things that will come out from Google and others over the next 10 years will really change how you interact with computing devices.

10:42 AM: Q (Ben Parr of Mashable): Impact on SEO. A: Ranking stays the same. Behavior and the kind of searches we see may change, however. That's a longer term effect and we will understand it better over time.

10:43 AM: Q: Will this be made available around the world, including China? A: Google plans to roll this out everywhere, including the Hong Kong site.

10:44 AM: Q: Do users want faster search? A: yes.

10:45 AM: Q for Sergey: Are you concerned about the fact that we are giving up some privacy to get these better search results: A: Users place a lot of trust with us. We have to be great stewards of your information. Google Instant isn't any different in that respect.

10:46 AM: Q: How will behavior and search change over time? A: As you use it more, you may do more searches in neighboring topics. Easier to explore a topic.

10:47 AM: Q: How many users didn't want this during testing? How does this relate to Caffeine? A: Some users turned it off (there is a switch that allows you to turn it off). Very small percentage. They mostly turned it off because they were on slow connections. About Caffeine: not directly related, but the faster and real-time index made this a bit harder.

10:49 AM: Q: Is this the death of SEO? A: We're sure the SEOs are smart and can catch up with us.

10:50 AM: Q (for Sergey Brin): Did you ever think this would be possible? A: Yes - but it's really thanks to the advance of computing power that this is now possible.

10:51 AM: Q: Lots of people consume the content that a very small percentage of users create. How can you change that? How can you get more people to contribute? A (Brin): To do a great job at search, we need lots of content. We use AdSense to help people make money from their content. Authoring tools like Blogger, Docs etc. We don't expect people to create all their content on Google.

10:53 AM: Q: Plans to make this even faster or are the technical limits at present? A: "Today we will enjoy the speed of this and tomorrow we will work on making this even faster."

10:54 AM: Q (Irena Slutsky from AdAge): How does this affect smaller brands. Does the lower half of the page and page two still matter? A: The user intent doesn't change. If you use page two less, that means you are getting to what you want faster. This is a user-focused launch. We are focused on our users and believe that this is also good for our advertisers.

10:56 AM: Q: If people conduct more searches now, how will users' interaction with ads change? How often do they stop and click now? A: We focus on the user experience. The other effects will follow.

10:57 AM: Q: What about mobile? When will Google release this in Japan and China? A: For both questions:coming in the next few months.

10:59 AM: Q: Can you change the number of suggestions made in the auto-complete? A: No - but we always test different UIs.

11:00 AM: Q (Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land): Changes seem to put even more focus on the top result. How do you improve those results? A: Ranking is a problem we obviously work on all the time. This stuff is tough and search quality is not always perfect.

And that wraps it up for today. Thanks for reading everybody!

What's the solution? Stay up all night? A new startup launching this week called Live Matrix has a better idea. Live Matrix is your program guide to the real-time Web, allowing you to search, save and create reminders for all the live Web events you want to be a part of.

When people think of the real-time Web, they often think only of the "breaking news" aspect. The blog post that just went live with the details of the next-gen iPhone found in a bar. The tweets from ground zero of some big natural disaster. The new Web service that just opened its doors to the public.

However, a lot of the real-time Web is planned in advance. It's the product launch you've been waiting for, the daily video podcast you like to watch recorded live, the Second Life meetup that you've known about for a week.

Live Matrix wants to help you better manage these types of scheduled events. It's the "TV Guide" for the Web. And unlike a lot of startups launching these days, it doesn't have us saying, "Hmm, that's interesting," - it has us saying, "Wow! I needed that!"

The service was co-founded by Sanjay Reddy, whose experience has spanned across industries from banking to animation - in addition to an SVP position at Gemstar-TV Guide, makers program guide technology and publishers of the well-known printed mag, "TV Guide" - and Nova Spivack, a longtime Web entrepreneur who gave us Dice and the brilliant, but ultimately overly complex Twine.com, a semantic Web application that was eventually acquired by another semantic-focused startup, Evri.

But where Twine was confusing and poorly organized, Live Matrix is simple and straightforward. Perhaps that's due the company's decision to use an outside design firm. Whatever the reason, it works.

Live Matrix Features

In fact, there's isn't even a need to explain how to use it. You've used search engines and program guides before; you'll figure it out.

But we will mention the service's many standout features:

In the works is an alerting feature that would let you track events based on keyword or interest (e.g. "shoes," "Apple," etc.) and more advanced analytics.

Live Matrix is in closed private beta right now, but you can sign up to join via the website.

Shopping sites like Walmart.com, Target and BestBuy both saw a substantial monthly decline of around 35% compared to December. Amazon, however, only lost 5%, which suggests that the world's most popular online shopping destination relies less on seasonal traffic than most of its competitors.

Tax and Travel Up

With the tax season in the U.S. in full swing, it doesn't come as a surprise that services like HRBlock.com, Intuit.com and Taxactonline.com saw solid growth since December. In total, Compete notes that sites in its "Financial Services: Accountancy and Tax Service" category were up 292% compared to December 2009. Maybe even more importantly, these numbers are also up 11.5% compared to January 2009, which is a strong indicator that more and more people now prepare and file their taxes online. Last week, we talked to representatives from Intuit's Turbotax division, who also noted that the company's online services now post some of Intuit's largest growth rates.

As travelers start to plan their 2010 vacations, sites like HotWire.com (up 32% month-over-month) and TripAdvisor.com (up 24%) also posted solid gains.

Other Notable Numbers: New York Times, CNet, Twitter and Bing

Among news sites in Competes top 50, the New York Times (#50) booked a solid 10% gain since December, while CNN (#32) saw a 1.6% gain. The number of unique visitors to CNet, however, dropped by almost 13% compared to December, and is down 24% year-over-year.

Twitter, which registered a solid 294% year-over-year growth, only saw a 3.35% growth since December.

Bing, Microsoft's new search engine, is now the eleventh most-visited site. It's worth noting that the combination of Live.com and Bing.com attracted around 133 million unique visitors in January 2010, which is on par with Facebook's and Yahoo's numbers.

10:00 a.m. As usual, the event is running a bit late.

10:06 a.m. Getting started. VP of Product Development takes the stage to talk about the Open Handset Alliance.

"We will unveil the next generation of the evolution of Android today."

Recapping the history of Android hardware (G1, myTouch, Droid)

10:10 a.m. "A year ago we had 1 device, now we have 20 devices on 59 carriers."

Google wants to prevent fragmentation - talking about compatibility test suite.

"Android today is about getting more users onto the mobile web." Android users search the web over 30-times more on Android than on feature phones.

From the beginning, Android was always about being developer friendly.

Talking about being able to multi-task (a subtle swipe at the iPhone?)

The Next Step in the Android Evolution

10:15 a.m. "We are only in the early stages of the evolution of Android."

Volume and variety of Android devices has exceeded Google's expectations. "But we want to do more."

Wants to work closer with hardware partners to showcase the software.

Announcing the Nexus One

"Where Web Meets Phone"

10:18 a.m. Google calls this a new category of phones: "super-phones"

On stage now: Peter Chou, CEO of HTC.

Talking up the Nexus One: "The Nexus One is one of the best designs from HTC." Outstanding display, fast processor.

"It pushes the limits of what is possible on a mobile phone today."

Chou leaves the stage after posing with the phone...

10:22 a.m. In depth look at Nexus One

Erik Tseng takes the stage to demo the phone.

Hardware: 3.7 inch AMOLED display - WVGA. "Deep contrast and brilliant colours."

1 GHz processor - fast processor = less slowdowns.

Trackball works as notifications tool. Will pulse when you get new messages.

130 grams - 11.5 mm thick

Sensors: light sensor, proximity sensor.

5 megapixel camera

New for Android: active noise cancellation - using two microphones.

10:29 a.m. Google will offer custom engraving (just like the iPhone...)

"With this hardware, we think we have half of the story. It's the combination of hardware and software that makes this such a great phone."

No surprise: Nexus One will come with Android 2.1

10:31 a.m. New features in 2.1: Customization

More homescreen panels - more widgets

Example: weather widget: knows where you are from GPS

Google expects to see more widgets from 3rd-party developers

Showing live wallpapers.

10:35 a.m.3D capabilities of the Nexus One and Android 2.1

App launcher: new twist - 3D scroll-wheel - icons sit on a 3D wheel instead of a flat page

New photo gallery - written with CoolIris

Everything scrolls smoothly - quite impressive. Looks just like CoolIris on the desktop.

Features background sync with Picasa Web Albums

10:39 a.m. Voice Commands

In 2.0: Voice queries ("directions to nearest Ikea")

In 2.1: Every text field is now voice-enabled.

Voice recognition learns every time you speak a query.

10:42 a.m. Sneak peek at Google Earth for Android

Also voice-enabled.

Clearly making good use of the fast processor. Everything scrolls very smoothly.

Buying the Phone: Google Hosted Web Store

10:45 a.m. How to buy the phone?

Google will sell the phone in its own web store.

Keeping it simple: buy phone without service ($529) - or with service from partners (T-Mobile $179).

For now, T-Mobile only. But: "Expect to add more carriers and hardware in the future."

Verizon Wireless and Vodofone will join the program.

Web Store

10:49 a.m. Demoing the Store

Purchasing all done in the store - no need to go to the physical store.

10:54 a.m. Recap

First phone of a series of phone - more operators, devices and countries coming in the future.

Showing demo video right now.

Q&A

11:00 a.m. Question: Why only such a small amount of space for app storage?

Answer: Soon, you will be able to store apps on SD cards

Question: Will it ship today?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Is this an iPhone killer?

Answer: Choice is a good thing.

Question: Whose inventory will the phone come from? What will you do to make the App Store more well-known?

Answer: Unlocked phone comes from Google. Regarding the Android Market: Marketing for Nexus One and new Web Store will be essentially online. Focused on making the store better.

Question: Why was it necessary for Google to design the phone? Why not just have an HTC phone that runs Android?

Answer: Google didn't design the phone - HTC did. Google is just the retailer and worked mostly on the software.

Question: What would convinces somebody to buy a $530 phone?

Answer: That's choice at work. "This is the early stages of a longer journey."

Question: Google isn't known for being a retailer.

Answer: "We shouldn't focus on retailing." Google wants to offer a complete solution and give consumers choice. Retail part is very important but just another channel - not a channel that will replace other channels.

Question: What's the revenue opportunity for Google?

Answer: These super-phones are great for accessing the Internet and that's where our business is. Hardware sales are not the big deal - just wants to get more people on the mobile web. "If you want the best possible Google experience you come to the store and get the device."

Question: Will it support tethering?

Answer: In future versions. Not a strategic issue but just something Google needs to implement.

Question: Is the physical keyboard dead? Will Google start to sell more products online?

Answer (from HTC): We offer lots of different phones and people can choose what best fits for them. This design is focused on the form-factor and screen. HTC offers other devices for "keyboard-lovers". From Google: The new voice input works very well and Google will soon offer other devices as well.

Question: Will other counties support multi-touch on the Nexus One?

Answer: It's a software thing. "We'll consider it."

Question: When will Google Voice launch publicly? What about the other phones that are coming soon? Will something awesomer come next month?

Answer: Other manufacturers will add more devices. "If you need a great phone today - the Nexus is a great phone." (Nothing about Google Voice in the answer.)

Question: Google wants to do revolutionary stuff? What's revolutionary about this phone? Why does Google get behind this phone if it's pretty average? Why not revolutionize the pricing structure with an ad-supported phone?

Answer: This is a baby step. Let's get the store going and then we can see what comes up in the future.

Question: Will people be able to check out the phone in retail store?

Answer: We want this to remain pure and simple. Marketing this online-only and selling online-only.

Question: What's the difference between a super-phone and a regular smartphone?

Answer: The big differentiator is the openness of the app store. This is as powerful as your laptop was a year ago.

Question: Question for Motorola: Will the Nexus One cannibalize sales of the Droid?

Answer: We try to deliver the best products we can. Will upgrade software on the Droid.

Question: Why does Google feel the need to change the way phones are bought? What's broken about the current system?

Answer: We are trying to optimize efficiencies. Just like web store revolutionized the way you buy a camera, Google wants to do the same thing for phones. After there are enough phones out there, you can experience it through using somebody else's. Marketing just increases prices.

Sidenote about partners: We would love to sell for Verizon and Vodafone right now - just have to integrate the IT.

Question: What can users expect in terms of software upgrades? Users never really know what phone will get the upgrade.

Answer: HTC wants to upgrade all of its phones (nothing specific). Google argues that some phones simply don't have the hardware capabilities for the upgrade. The intention is to make sure everybody gets some kind of future-proof hardware that can get upgrades for a certain amount of time. From Motorola: Intention to upgrade the device to the best software that the hardware can run. Not every device supports the 3D capabilities of Android 2.1, for example. Backward compatibility slows down innovation.

Question: Will Verizon get unlocked phones?

Answer: Unlocked phones are a problem with CDMA phones. Will only be sold with Verizon plan.

Question: Will you port Google Voice to the iPhone or will you suppress this to give Android an advantage?

Answer: Google Voice team isn't opposed to having its app run on other platforms.

Question: Didn't Google say it won't do a phone?

Answer: We don't do hardware.

11:43 a.m.: And that wraps up today's live blog. Thanks for reading!

Pricing

Personal accounts with one channel cost $10 per month (up to 10 concurrent viewers) and the company also offers accounts for small businesses at $100 per month (with 10 channels) and an account geared towards larger enterprises at $1,000 per month (which allows for 100 channels with 1000 concurrent streams). Not-for-profits, as well as education and religious organizations can also get access to this account for $1,000 per month.

Compatibility

Because of the company's reliance on its proprietary P2P architecture, however, users will have to install a plugin when they want to watch your streams. Currently, Dyyno doesn't offer a plugin for Macs, so this might be a deal breaker for quite a few potential users for now, though the company expects to ship its Mac plugin soon. While Dyyno works well in Firefox and Internet Explorer, we should also point out that Google's Chrome also isn't supported yet.

Easy to Use, Excellent Video Quality

When it works, however, Dyyno works extremely well and just as advertised. To share any part of your screen, you just drag and drop the Dyyno logo from the desktop client to any window and the sharing session will start. If you want to switch to another application, just drag the logo over to the next application. The video quality was generally excellent and you can also manually set the output resolution (up to 1024x768) and frame rate (up to 20 frames per second). In addition, you can also broadcast sounds from your computer as well.

WebEx

Because Dyyno can easily stream video from any application, including webcams, video players, and games, it makes for a very flexible platform. In addition, Dyyno also offers a solution for Cisco's popular WebEx online meeting solution. This brings all of Dyyno's capabilities to WebEx and makes it easy to integrate Dyyno into a platform that a lot of companies have already invested in.

A Few Missing Features

We did miss a few features, though. It would be nice, for example, if channels featured a chat room, something we have come to expect from similar solutions. It is also currently not possible to embed a video stream on another site. The company tells us that these features are forthcoming, but for the time being, they are sorely missed.

Overall, though, assuming you are on a Windows PC, Dyyno offers a high-quality solution for anybody who needs to stream video from a desktop directly to the web.

Windows Live users will also soon be able to aggregate updates from MySpace, though according to Microsoft, this integration is still a few months off.

Just like before, your friends will be able to see your updates from these services on their Windows Live home pages, though your friends can also opt-out of your updates, or updates from select services. If you are a prolific digger, for example, your friends can choose not to see an update for every single story you dugg.

If you have a Windows Live account, this link will take you to a page with all the new web activities you can now import. As usual, Microsoft is rolling these updates out slowly, so your account may not feature these new services just yet.

Functionally, the biggest update to Windows Live is that users can now easily invite friends on other social networks into their Windows Live network (and vice versa).

Web IM for Hotmail

In addition, Microsoft also released Web IM for Hotmail today in a number of countries, including the U.S., Canada, Germany, and Brazil.

Looks Like This Strategy is Working for Windows Live

In many ways, this update makes Windows Live into even more of a mainstream version of the current non-beta, non-real-time version of FriendFeed. You can easily aggregate most of your online activity and your friends can easily follow all of your updates on their Windows Live accounts.

According to both Compete and Quantcast, Windows Live has seen its traffic grow rapidly since it updated its services last November, and the addition of these new web activities will surely not hurt the site's traffic.

Using the Wall

To get started, simply browse to the desired place and click the new Wall tab. Then click on the embedded Brightkite Wall to go full screen. Organizers can even customize the Wall beforehand, if desired. The message and location name can be modified, the shortcode can be selected for use within the U.S. or outside the U.S., and checkins can be turned on or off.

Of course, Brightkite has a much smaller user base than Twitter, which could have made this new feature a non-starter. However, Brightkite has that problem covered. With the Brightkite Wall, anyone can participate by texting a pre-defined shortcode provided for you by the service.

Better Than Live Blogging?

Brightkite's Wall may soon beat Twitter to become the microblogging platform of choice for live events because it offers a much richer stream of information. Instead of just displaying 140-character notes, Brightkite's Wall also displays photos. Combined with notes and checkins, this makes the Wall a much more engaging experience.

For those virtually attending the event, watching the Brightkite Wall could end up being even better than refreshing a blogger's post featuring their "live" coverage of the event. A live blog only gives you one point of view and set of images. Even if it's a group effort, it's not the same as being immediately tapped into the thoughts and reactions of all the event's attendees as you are with Brightkite.

Potential Problems

Our only concern for this new feature is that it doesn't appear to be any sort of administrative control over who can configure what. If some rogue conference attendee wanted to, he or she could highjack the Wall by customizing their own personalized greeting for all to see. That could lead to problems, especially if the message was profane or offensive.

Another concern is that there doesn't seem to be any sort of archiving system in place, so while the Wall may be a great real-time view into the thoughts and activities that are taking place at a particular point in time, going back to view older images and notes could be a challenge if the same locale (address) is used over and over again for subsequent events.

The Wall feature is still in beta, though, so as people begin to use it and submit feedback, it may be updated to even better reflect people's needs than it does now.

With the new iPhone app, available in both a free version and a paid version which allows for more control over what you watch (OrbLive free just streams random files), you can now stream your media over 3G in addition to Wi-Fi and EDGE. Given Apple's approval of this application, they've set a precedent for approving apps that stream live video over 3G. They could now no longer block approval to apps like Slingbox, for example, as doing so would be illegal and anti-competitive. If they approved the OrbLive app knowingly, then we can expect a slew of 3G-enabled live TV and streaming media applications in the near future.

Of course, the new OrbLive app may have been admitted into the App Store by mistake, so before shelling out the $9.99 to purchase it, you may want to wait and see if the app is yanked in the next few days. We hope that's not the case, because live TV on the iPhone over 3G would be truly incredible. But this is Apple, so you never really know. 

Here at ReadWriteWeb, we've remained proponents of live streaming video, claiming more than once that it is "going to be huge." If that's the case, why is Yahoo! pulling the plug on Y! Live so quickly?

One answer might be the competition. Yahoo! has seen little traction from its user base for the service during a period when services like UStream and Mogulus seem to be growing exponentially. Midway through Yahoo!'s Y! Live experiment, for example, UStream - one of the leaders in the space - boasted nearly 10 million unique viewers per month for its live video streams.

And then there's the slumbering giant that is the promise of YouTube's live streaming.

Long story short, Y! Live never really gained enough of a following to warrant the Brickhouse team continuing to spend development resources on it, according to today's announcement:

Our mission here on the Brickhouse team is to quickly develop product ideas that can add value to Yahoo! as a whole. To do this effectively we constantly evaluate our early-stage products and sometimes have to make the hard decision to move on, in order to continue exploring new territory and developing new products.

So where will the Brickhouse team be focusing their efforts now? It's a safe bet that current Brickhouse darling fire eagle - a service that helps users share their location information with others - will be garnering more attention, especially with the ever growing popularity of geo-aware devices and software entering the market, these days.

And there's always the chance that another Yahoo! experiment will get the green light. What might that be? We'll just have to stay tuned to Yahoo! Next* to see.

The main feature of this new search interface - the ability to reorder search results at will - is decisively different from the rumors about a digg-style Google interface that tend to reappear regularly. In U Rank, your changes only appear to your friends and don't influence the overall search index.

The emphasis of U Rank is on collaboration and sharing. U Rank keeps a history of all your searches, but these are not shared by default. U Rank also allows you to create lists of search results by allowing you to copy a given search result to another search. You could, for example, create a list of personalized search results for a search term like "Best Digital Camera."

Definitely Still a Prototype

U Rank is clearly still a prototype. Search results take a long time to load, and some very basic user interface issues clearly still need to be worked out. There is, for example, no way to move a search result from the second search page to the first, and the interface for dragging and dropping items sometimes doesn't work well. To be really useful, it would also be helpful if you could organize your friends into groups, so that you can share your searches on lists more selectively.

However, this is also a very interesting experiment that takes search into a different direction by putting a lot of emphasis on social interaction. If your searches tend to be very broad, you would probably have to have a lot of friends to ever encounter an annotated or reordered result, but we can see how this new interface could be very useful if you are working in a team that is focused on a very specific topic.

In addition to the video feeds, there's also a live feed from FOX News Talk Radio. Another nice feature is the breaking news alerts. When the app is minimized, a small window will pop up from time to time when there's breaking news. The pop-up window will show the headline and the video. If you want to tune in, just click on it. If you ignore it, it will disappear in a moment or two. If that feature annoys you or you just need a break from distractions, you can easily turn it off from the Alert Settings in the app.

The last notable feature of the AIR app is the sharing feature. If you catch a video that you want to share with your friends, you can simply click the "Share" button to send them the video via email. Your friend receives a link to the video stream. The link delivers them to a page on the FOX News web site where they can watch the stream live.

If you want to check out this app yourself, you can download it from here. You will need to have Adobe AIR installed in order to install it.

The site now features tips and trick by members of the community, as well as Microsoft staff. Users can rate the contributions by other members on a five-point scale. In order to prevent abuse, content needs to be voted on by at least three community members before it is featured on the main community page, which Microsoft has dubbed the "Clubhouse," and which is only accessible by using a Windows Live ID. This content is also featured on the homepages for the individual applications that make up the Windows Live brand, though interestingly, some applications like Live Calendar and OneCare are not featured on the site.

Especially good content will also be pushed to the Windowslive.com front page by the editors. Microsoft assured us that it would allow negative posts to be featured on the site as well and that it would not censor any valid opinions - assuming that the users abide by all the terms of service for WindowsLive.com.

The Clubhouse

As of now, the central hub for creating and sharing most of the content for Windowslive.com is Live Spaces. In order for post from there to appear in the clubhouse, a user has to tag them with 'Clubhouse' and the name of at least one Live application. Indeed, it seems tags are the main glue that hold the Clubhouse together, as Microsoft also uses them to determine a list of possibly related posts. For now, the Clubhouse is only open to a select few member of the Windows community, but Microsoft will open it up for everybody in the coming weeks.

In the next iteration, Microsoft will also allow importing items from other platforms like WordPress and Blogger, Marty Collins told us.

In terms of the overall design, the Clubhouse is quite well done. One nice feature are the user profiles, which are pulled from Live Spaces. These profiles also lists a user's other posts and their ratings. In the Clubhouse, users can see all the latest posts tagged with 'clubhouse,' as well as the most highly rated posts.

It is interesting to see that Microsoft is willing to experiment in this area. On WindowsLive, it allows Microsoft generated content to stand next to user generated content, which could potentially open Microsoft up for some embarrassments. At the same time though, if Microsoft holds true to its promise of not censoring legitimate content, then this represents an important step forward in how Microsoft interacts with its customers.

PayPerLive could easily become the de-facto standard for bands who want to broadcasts concerts live as a pay-per-view event. The success of this service, however, will depend greatly on the quality of the video, but also the audio stream. If our experience with watching Leo Laporte's steams on TWIT is any indication, though, Stickam should do just fine.

Still, paying users tend to be a lot more fickle than those using a free service (and those can be quite fickle already), so part of Stickam's challenge will be to provide a stable, high-quality service that doesn't go down or stutter in the middle of a concert or consultation session.

The Live brand confusion is something that Richard MacManus first wrote about on his ZDNet blog in 2006. Why then, hasn't this been fixed yet? It has gotten better -- MSN Hotmail vs. Windows Live Mail vs. Windows Live Hotmail seems have settled on the latter name, for example -- but there is still a lot of overlap in the Windows Live family that makes it confusing for consumers.

When we were briefed a couple of weeks ago about the launch of Microsoft Live Mesh, we asked how the company planned to reconciled yet another file backup service with SkyDrive, Live Drive, FolderShare, SharedView, and Spaces, each of which have some amount of overlap at the service level with Mesh. The answer we got was itself confusing and muddled and basically boiled down to, those services can use the Mesh as their back end platform. The impression that we got, though, was that even people at Microsoft tend to be a bit confused about how the whole Live universe fits together.

The design differences across the Live Search sites highlighted today on the LiveSide blog may be minor, but taken as a whole they're a good metaphor for the branding confusion that Microsoft has created across its collection of online sites and services. If designers in the search division can't get together and decide on a unified design for a single family of Live products, it's no wonder the Live brand on the whole has become so sprawling and muddled.

The high hopes vendors like Kyte have had for User Generated video are crashing on the rocks of underwhelming consumer response and the market is shifting to a more traditional commercial media model. Will consumers come around in the future? Kyte says yes, I'm not so sure.

Simply put, large numbers of non-professional users have not started producing video content outside of YouTube and other vendors are now shifting towards publishers looking to make money. For the immediate time at least, user generated video will probably remain centralized by in-house services from major social networks (YouTube, MySpace, Facebook) because that's where the audiences and ease of use are. The forthcoming YouTube Live will continue this trend.

More high-end feature sets and publishing experiences will be in demand almost exclusively by big media companies and a small group of aspiring professional video broadcasters. One of the premium features Kyte is announcing today is premium Facebook applications, something also offered by competitor SplashCast. Kyte has worked out an interesting solution to updating Facebook app splash pages, but that's just one of many problems publishers face on Facebook. Meanwhile it's advertising that is going to make big media partnerships pay off for companies like Kyte and the places where the viewers are, MySpace and to some degree Facebook, still drastically limit the visibility of 3rd party delivered ads.

It's a tough place for small video services to be in, but there's enough money flying around that someone will have to figure it out someday. Everyone else will then follow but white label video publishing ala Kyte Premium will become commoditized once that happens.

Today's funding announcement includes new investments from Disney's Venture Arm SteamBoatVC and Nordic telecom giant TeliaSonera. These two put in a relatively modest $6 million more on top of previous money from other investors. The total Kyte funding now stands at $23.5 million. The company's planned expansion internationally will probably burn through that pretty quickly, making a rapid solution to the advertising question an imperative. User generated content is not nearly as easy to monetize as big brand content, something Kyte confirmed to me today was their experience as well.

Kyte's New Technology

The new Kyte video player is substantially less ugly than the old one and publishers now have the option to publish through premium branded players and stand-alone Facebook video applications. Kyte is also rolling out e-commerce capabilities in the premium players.

Video industry watchers will also want to know about live streaming. Kyte now says it will include live broadcast streaming from both mobile phones and webcams by the end of this month. The functionality is in private beta now but will be limited to the same Nokia phones that Qik is available on now.

Kyte offers good technology, but users interested in it shouldn't expect to receive substantial support and innovation in your favor. User generated video is just not taking of for small players the way it was expected to. Today's announcement extends the trend we discussed earlier this week, video is becoming more international and more commercial than was believed to be the case initially.