Google have just launched their realtime search facility, now, instead of it being an option on the left hand side of your screen it now has its own homepage you can check it out here

This demonstrates Googles commitment to delivering real-time, up to the minute relevant information, you can also localize the results or get nearby information.

Google have made a video to explain more you can check it out for yourselves!

Facebook have decided to change the width of their business page fbml 'landing' pages and are also finally going to be removing the boxes tab (this has been talked about for ages!) The new width of the page is going to be 520 pixels wide, and you will have until 23rd August to get yours sorted. As this is a lot slimmer than the previous version most landing pages will have to be redesigned to take this into consideration.

You can see how our new page will look after the changes have been made, the right handside will be missing!

make sure you go and change yours now to save embarrassment later!

Another couple of new things that we though we would bring your attention to, the first is

Parature for FaceBook

As Facebook has become the 'goto' place for conversation between brands and their consumers, it is now starting to turn into the place where a community and collaboration can also be created. 

Parature enables you to monitor your Facebook wall easily to manage the marketing messages and general customer service, but what Parature also offers, which is really neat, is the ability to allow your fans to search your knowledgebase, submit customer service tickets and talk to customer service agents all from within Facebook - so turning it into a customer service portal.

This is a great application for supplying your clients with that 'multi-channel' experience that many users are now demanding. For more information you can hop over to the Parature for Facebook website or their fan page

the second tool is a newly launched service called Booshaka, this is the place to go to see what is trending on Facebook right now!! You can search by category type, or by keyword. This is invaluable if you are a marketer, you can watch out for what is important to people today. You can filter by whats trending now, what got the most 'buzz' or most recent and the tool obviously gives you the option to share that information. like or discuss it.  Great new tool to help filter out whats important!

Have you noticed the new improved Google Images, we think it looks great and from a useability point of view makes it much easier to scan through the images. You can continuously scan up to 1000 images which makes it much quicker to look through and find the image of choice.

Also when hovering over the images each image enlarges subtly which reduces the need to click through for a bigger picture and you still get the option to click on the similar images link to find further images. You can still search using the normal functions, large images, by colour or type (drawing or photo) but overall the experience is greatly enhanced.

Oh and they've also now added image search ads... well they've got to make some money somewhere haven't they!!