Google has announced its US initiation of Google Voice, with UK users surely not too far behind, depending on its success. Google Voice and the Video Chat platform offer Gmail users the chanced to call landlines, mobiles, send texts, leave and pick up voicemail from several numbers in box… basically everything Skype does. Google is enticing Us users away from Skype by offering free calls within the US and Canada, according to the official Gmail blog http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/, for the rest of the year. read more

Google’s pioneer browser, Chrome has updated it’s screenshot add-on, Awesome Screenshot to include a range of new features enabling users to take their screenshots to the next level. Users will be pleased to embrace a diverse palette of capturing, editing and sharing functions  light years away from the rather rudimentary CTRL+Prnt Scrn function in Windows, or CMD+Shift+4 in Mac OS X, and thereby has earned itself pole position in this week’s Softwareload browser tips. read more

Google has rolled out powerful developer tools for Google Buzz, amongst others the much saught after Google Buzz ‘firehose’. The Firehose offers developers the opportunity to see all public activities grouped into a single area, as frequently requestedby its’ users, enabled according to the Buzz blog by the syndication via PubSubHubbub. read more

With the finalisation of its latest and most advanced search infrastructure roll-out, popularly coined “Caffeine”, Google maintains that it is heralding in a new web search era of 50% fresher results than its former solution and the largest collection of web content ever. After lengthy testing of the latest release (yesterday) in August and November of last year via several data centers, the new system will see the end of the layered approach to content indexing, updating the entire index constantly, meaning that finding links to relevant content soon after it is published happens much sooner than was ever possible before, basically making it search-wise what Pret a Manger is to sandwiches! read more

No surprise that after a public veto of H.264 solutions favoured by Apple and Microsoft, Google has now unveiled its open source and royalty-free video format, designed to partner close commitments with browser giants Mozilla and Opera, as well as promising full YouTube support. read more

And sound waves and even lightning! The thing that was the fastest ever is now… the fastestest ever. The fifth Beta release of Google’s internet browser Chrome is boasting a 3rd of the load time knocked off its predecessor, which itself hasn’t been around that long. read more

Those of you interested in desktop personalisation will be pleased to hear that Google has announced its addition of the BumpTop desktop application to its portfolio. Not only will it soon be possible to make your virtual desktop just as messy as your actual one, but paves the way for fresh, alternative thinking towards PC desktop usage. read more

For those of you who have some experience using Opera features, Firefox’s customised add-on or the like, having your favourite websites in handy panels on your browser’s home screen using Speed Dial is definitely a feature of choice – also available now for Google’s browser, Chrome. read more

Does anybody know who England’s first match is against, and when?! Well it’s against the U.S.A (get the easy ones out of the way first lads!) on Saturday 12th June at 7:30 pm! If you, like me, have too much on your plate to remember the really important things in life, Outlook and Google Calender are here to help with the handy fixtures import option. read more

Google has released a new Beta version of its browser, Chrome for Windows, including a range of bugfixes and the addition of tabbed browsing. Softwareload had a look at whether Chrome is as fast as it claims to be and what potential plus, as well as down sides users might experience. read more