The new SmartSpace from GoDaddy can help even an internet dummy to create a site at ease which has photo galleries, email addresses, chat rooms and a blog. That’s what SmartSpace claims in its caption, “Be live on the web immediately with an instantly connected domain!”

SmartSpace offers a free blog tool, a free photo site and free social space once you order a domain name with SmartSpace at Godaddy. Social space is an application by Smart Space which can be used to collect and display dynamic information from Flicker, YouTube, Google News and Facebook profiles.

The tool has a clean and simple interface as it caters to users who are not technically sound. The tool guides the user step by step based on the features requested. The only requirement needed from the user would be to choose the layouts, color preferences and customize it. That’s not a big requirement and hey it’s your website and you need to decide them.

The SmartSpace feature can be accessed by logging in using your regular username and password. With many new domain sellers and hosting providers arraying into the market, hosting providers have to provide additional features with little or no cost to hold on to their existing customers.

Scrabulous would no longer be accessible to users except in India. The restriction is due to the case being held in the Indian High Court.

Most of the Facebook users are aware that Scrabulous cannot be accessed in Facebook. The popular game developed by Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla of Calcutta is a game similar to Scrabble. Interestingly, Scrabble owns the rights outside North America and Hasbro another company owns the right to Scrabble in the U.S. and Canada.
 
Following the complaints and court proceedings, Facebook has replaced Scrabulous with a similar game called Wordscraper. Wordscraper is no different than Scrabulous except that it uses circles instead of boxes.

The most famous application on Facebook is disappearing in many countries. A search for Scrabulous results in a message stating that “We’re sorry, but this application is not available to you. Please visit the Application Directory to find other applications.

Scrabulous, developed by the Agarwalla brothers had good popularity among the gaming community. However, it has created issues with Mattel who own the rights for Scrabble a similar game outside North America.

The Agarwalla developers commented in Facebook stating:

 “Sometime on 22nd August, Facebook took the unfortunate decision to restrict most users from accessing Scrabulous. This was in response to Mattel sending them a “take down notice” on 14th August.

Mattel itself had approached the Indian Courts in February 2008, seeking an order for taking down Scrabulous from Facebook and other servers. The Hon’ble High Court has reserved judgment in this matter after hearing both parties. It surprises us that Mattel chose to direct Facebook to take down Scrabulous without waiting for the Hon’ble High Court’s decision. Mattel’s action speaks volumes about their business practices and respect for the judiciary.

It is even more astonishing that Facebook, which claims to be a fair and neutral party, took this step even though they were fully aware of the circumstances under which the Mattel letter was sent to them.

We now await the decision of the Hon’ble High Court and shall accordingly decide our future course of action with regard to Scrabulous.

We wish to thank our fans for their continued support and hope to give them the best results sooner than later.”

It looks like Facebook is removing the game one country after another.

Facebook has announced that it would launch the new profile design to Facebook users by July 14th. The new design would be a beta launch and users would be able to view the entire site including the home page news feeds, application invites and notifications.

Facebook has requested its developer community to involve in the new profile design and to submit screen shots of the new profile boxes, tabs and publisher add-ons developed.

Some of the changes the new profile design would include are below:

• Wall: This is a new tab exclusively for wall posts and is simple to use.
• Feed: The Wall tab has been changed to include Mini-Feed stories as well as wall posts.
• Info: This tab was previously called ‘About” tab which can be used for static content like your personal information or the “About Me” section.

Facebook withdrew its support for Google Friend Connect due to privacy concerns on developer access to Facebook member information.

Facebook engineer Charlie Cheever informed that Google has been redistributing Facebook user information to developers without the knowledge of its users. This is a disrespect to the privacy standards for users and is a violation of Facebook terms and service.

Google had announced recently that it has places to make its various applications available to third-party websites using Google Friend connect. This feature would help webmasters add Google’s social features to their website easily.

Responding to Facebook intention to withdraw, Google informed that they were disappointed that Facebook has withdrawn from Google Friend Connect. However, Google denied any privacy violation issues.

It should also be noted that Facebook and MySpace have come up with similar services. The Facebook Connect by Facebook and Data Availability by MySpace

The financial status of Sunnyvale-based company Yahoo Inc went down further in the end of 2007 and as a result, the company has planed to lay off 1,000 of its employees.

However, Yahoo has not informed which areas of expertise would be reduced. It should be noted that Yahoo chucked out 650 employees way back in 2000 during the dot-com break down.
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