Google Wants To Mix Your Business With Social Network [Orkut Badge]

A lot of businesses do use Orkut/Facebook to share information about their business/product and Google is now urging businesses to create profile on Google Places and grab a badge that they can embed on Orkut.

“If you own a business and have an Orkut profile but you haven’t received this badge yet, simply add your listing to Google Maps. Keep in mind that your business doesn’t need its own website to be listed on Google!

Google Places allows business owners to manage information about their listings if they’re already on Google Maps, or to add them to the map if they’re not yet listed.
Once they’ve verified that the basic information about their business is correct and up-to-date, and added details like hours of business and photos, business owners can count on their listings being shown to Google users to grow their customer base. Their listing will appear among search results across Google, including Google Maps, even if they don’t have a website. And of course, this is all completely free.” [blog]

Once you create your business listing in Google Maps, your Orkut profile will earn a badge for your business (read: Google Brings Badges to Orkut–Too late in the Game?).

This is an interesting service where Google incentivizes small business owners to add their business data on Google places and is automatically integrated with Orkut, giving it the necessary ‘social’ push (though relevance of Orkut itself is a big question).

Do you think a Facebook app (that pushes Google Places data to Facebook) makes more sense for Google?

View the original article here

OS X Freeware of the Day: Quinn Network Tetris Game

Today's OS X freeware of the day harkens back to the days of Nintendo and the original Gameboy system, in front of which many of us spent hours upon hours destroying lines of blocks in a game called Tetrist. Since that time, many versions of Tetrist for many different computer and gaming systems have come and gone. Now, we look at a free version of Tetris for Mac OS X users, namely: Quinn.

Quinn is a completely free OS X version of Tetrist that includes multiplayer and network playing options. Although it is not yet Intel-native, the game does not present much of a demand for most users' systems. Read on for some screen shots and additional info about the game.

The Quinn download package (3.2 Megs) includes not only the Quinn game but a game server for hosting network games. When you host a game, you can publish your server to the Quinn site and others will be able to see and join you.

The gameplay of Quinn is precisely like the Tetris we all know and love, though there's no music and the settings are pretty basic. There are two different keyboard layout options, one especially for Powerbook/Macbook users.

Another neat trick that Quinn does is allows you to report your high scores to a central server, where it keeps track of all-time great scores. If you are a power Tetris player, this could be very cool for you to participate in.

In summary, Quinn brings back classic Tetris to the OS X gamer, and for FREE! It has some cool modern options and will keep you entertained for hours.

Links:
-Download Quinn for OS X 10.4.2 or later (earlier versions, see site below for links) (3.2 MB)
-Quinn home page.