Google’s Chrome browser has a brand new beta version that is faster than its “stable” version. Starting today, Google will be developing its browser along three parallel tracks: 1) a stable version for mainstream users, 2) a developer track for the programming crowd, and 3) the new beta track for more adventurous consumer (like me!).

The new Google Chrome beta, can be downloaded here. If you have a Windows machine, the beta version should be 25 percent faster than the current stable version of Chrome. It also includes extra features such as form autofill, zooming, autoscroll, and tab-dragging.

Now it seems like the browser wars are beginning to heat up again. Is the new Safari faster than Chrome, or just Chrome’s “stable” version? How about Firefox? As long as they all get faster, I don’t think the users really care…

There are a number of ways you can bundle all your online profiles (i.e. your social networking profiles) and share all of them using only one URL, so the concept of the service that we are going to talk about isn’t new for many. However that being said, it’s lightweight, ridiculously easy and quick to set up, so you might want to take a look all the same.

UnHub was built last month inspired by what sweets brand Skittles was bravely experimenting with using social media on its main website.

How UnHub Works?

Basically what UnHub does is create a persistent iframe bar with tabs for all your online profile (e.g. personal blog, Twitter stream, LinkedIn, Flickr comments etc.) linked to a dedicated URL you can easily share with your online contacts. For example, lets check out Obama’s UnHub Account: www.UnHub.com/BarackObama. This can also benefit the online businesses: Check out this particular example of Josie’s Restaurant. UnHub profiles also come with very basic analytics so that you can keep track of what is the most popular tabs for your online presence etc.

The UnHub URL is short and very customizable, so I believe a lot of people would find it useful to add UnHub in their e-mail signature instead of listing a whole bunch of social networking pages. This list includes the most familiar services (Amazon, YouTube, Twitter through TweeTree, LinkedIn, Digg, MySpace, Facebook, and so on) and will likely be extended in the future. Soon, you’ll also be able to use your own domain with Unhub which will definitely make it even more interesting, and you’ll also get to customize the colors and general look of your UnHub presence.

Watch a full length demo of UnHub below:

UnHub Demo from Vinicius Vacanti on Vimeo.

Michael Arrington of Techcrunch recently discovered that twitter has already trying out text advertising within their pages.

The advertisements currently only link internally to Twitter Search pages or the Twitter Widget. But it isn’t much of a stretch to assume they’re actually testing the units for possible third party advertisements in the near future. Twitter Japan, which launched a year ago, has included display ads from the very beginning.

Twitter’s CEO Evan Williams said earlier that he thought Twitter’s strongest revenue potential would come from charging for commercial use by brands. But it’s clear that the company is trying to experiment with a number of different potential streams. Michael Arrington thinks that Twitter search has tremendous revenue opportunity and so do we.

A new startup BestInClass is trying to solve a big problem that many people face when trying to pick out a digital camera that best suits their needs, preferences & most importantly their budget. Majority of the consumers spend hours on the internet looking for editorial and user reviews to figure out which digital camera is the best to buy. The site has recently launched a digital camera recommendation service that helps consumers sort through all of this information in one place and answer the question: “what is the best digital camera for me?”.

BestInClass.com uses the recommendations of professionals photographers and hobbyists in the photography industry and then matches their product recommendations to consumer preferences using their own algorithm.The site already has about 750 individual camera selections from different photography experts, with more being added weekly. Basically, BestInClass tries to figure out the photography goals of consumers in order to determine what the right camera is for their everyday needs.

Some of the basic questions that you may need to answer in BestInClass.com are questions about how you intend to use the camera, trying to differentiate between whether the camera is being used for travel or family photos, how much you would like to spend, or if you have specific areas where you want high quality features (color, pixels etc.). The site returns with a list of tailored product recommendations from experts who have already researched the best products for these needs. You can also read why a particular brand or model was recommended for the experts and how it compares to other top picks. You can see a side-by-side comparison of editorial recommendations of a product with actual consumer reviews of the product and can buy the product through Amazon.

BestInClass now only focuses on digital cameras but intends to add more consumer electronics products to the list in the near future, including laptops and flat screen televisions. I believe this is a very good concept for providing tailored content to the consumer, but it certainly not an original idea. But as long as it is strong in the digital camera niche, i think it will keep all the camera lovers happy!

StumbleUpon is planning to launch a shortURL service (a online service that provides short aliases for redirection of long URLs, like TinyURL or Bit.ly) in the next couple of weeks called su.pr.

The founder of StumbleUpon, Garrett Camp recently announced the new service on Twitter without any description of what it might be on March 3. In an email exchange he says it will be a shortURL service to share StumbleUpon links on sites like Twitter and Facebook and that it will be launched in a week or two. The site currently redirects to StumbleUpon’s main domain.

The social news site, Digg is also planning to bring a very similar service which will have more features like – show total traffic to the link, in a Digg “toolbar” wrapper, and users can easily create links by simply adding digg.com/ before any URL (the short URL will then be created and shown.

The benefit to StumbleUpon and Digg to these services is traffic when people click on the short URLs. People add a lot on links on Twitter posts but space constraints (140 characters per post) require short URLs.

Yahoo was planning to bring out a completely new home page to the general public pretty soon, however Yahoo insiders said that the new CEO Carol Bartz wanted to slow things down a bit and conduct more user testing. Testing is currently being conducted in the UK, U.S., India and France to a small group of users.

This live version of the homepage is very close to the mockups Yahoo supplied last September. A few things have been rearranged and fonts have been altered a bit, but the layout is generally the same.

All the action will happen mostly on the left sidebar, where users can access different key applications (including third party apps) and expand them to take up more of the page. In the mockups the only third party application shown was eBay. The live version also contains a BBC and MySpace module.

The live version also has an “add application” button that Yahoo said was to come later. Given that Yahoo has 82 million daily visitors to this particular home page, I am expecting just about everyone out there to be quickly building their own modules for users to add.

Google Noticeboard is a service developed by the geniuses in Google Labs in India, which is geared at developing nations where not everyone has a computer. You can think of this new service as village voicemail on a shared computer.

How does Google Noticeboard

An administrator usually sets up a noticeboard on a shared computer in a village or Internet cafe. Then the applications just acts as public noticeboard, where anyone and everyone can record a voice message. Text can also be added, but it is designed to work in places where literacy rates are very low. People from the village can check for new group messages on any shared village computer with the software installed. It works as a Firefox add-on for Windows only. Google India describes the purpose of the service:

Communities with access to shared computers can use the Noticeboard for exchanging messages related to community announcements, social interactions, local buying and selling, and information that is of wider interest to the community. The Noticeboard may also be used for the community to engage in a dialog with benefactors, public servants, and other service providers who are geographically distant.

Adding communication services such as Noticeboard to shared computers is a step towards bridging the digital divide. The only one issue I see is with this service is that the messages needs to be recorded via a computer microphone. It would be better if people could just call and record the message.

Later today Facebook will be rolling out their updated homepage design to their users which basically brings a brand new look, enhanced user experience with filter system, and most importantly, realtime updates of their feeds. Real-time updates are Facebook’s response to Twitter, which has been very successful by allowing its users to receive immediate updates from their friends and favorite celebrities.

Originally facebook’s original News Feed used to take hours to update. However, with this brand new design this problem has been addressed. The new design also includes an emphasis on sharing media and links with friends. Before now the Facebook homepage offered a “What are you doing now?” message nestled at the top. This has now been replaced with Facebook’s ‘Publisher’ interface, which lets users share status updates, photos and links, as well as content from their favorite Facebook Apps.

Because the real-time stream will only display items for a brief period of time (depending on how many friends you have), Facebook is using a new ‘Highlights’ sidebar to show some of the older stories that it thinks you’ll probably be interested in.

Facebook’s blog post on the update notes that the new homepage will be deployed over the coming days, so it may still be awhile before you can try it out for yourself.

If you have any questions, check out Facebook Help Center, or take the tour. And don’t forget to send your feedback to the facebook team.

MeeHive is a brand new service launched that is looking to give users a custom-tailored online newspaper composed of stories from different sources spanning a vast number of blogs and news sites. The site uses the power of Kosmix, a universal search engine that pulls data from a variety of sources to produce comprehensive topic pages.

After visiting the site, new users are asked to enter some of their desired topics, which range from mainstays like Sports and Technology to more specialized areas, like human brain. Users can also specify certain companies (e.g. Google) or keywords (e.g. Digital Camera) to monitor. From there, MeeHive builds a digital newspaper, using content from a variety of sources including news sites like CNN as well as a wide selection of blogs from around the globe. The Kosmix algorithm works well, pulling in relevant stories without any false matches (at least for common topics) and ensuring that the same story isn’t shown multiple times.

The design of the site is pretty dashing, presenting a large amount of information without becoming overwhelming. Alongside the collection of stories which are broken up by subject, the site also shows the most recent Tweets regarding your favorite topics.

Global mobile payments network Paymo and social networking service hi5 have partnered to let their users in 24 respective countries to use their mobile phones to purchase hi5 Coins, hi5’s virtual currency etc. Countries where Paymo will be made available to hi5 users include the U.S., Canada, France, Hong Kong, Thailand, Russia and Colombia.

The best thing about Paymo’s mobile payment system is that it doesn’t require users to have a credit card or bank account in order to make a transaction. Users can simply enter their cell phone number on the site, reply to a Paymo text message and then all virtual charges on hi5 are automatically charged to the user’s monthly cell phone bill. It’s pretty easy and similar to UK mobile payments service, Zong. Paymo says that over 75 percent of the online community worldwide does not have a credit card but 3 billion consumers own a mobile phone. With that in mind, the company is hoping their system, which avoids credit cards or bank accounts, will take off.

Unlike some of its competitors, such as Zong and Mobillcash, whose systems are limited to certain regional areas, Paymo can be accessed in 45 markets around the globe, enabling mobile payments in Europe, North and South America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Paymo recently expanded service in the U.S. after striking deals with mobile carriers AT&T, T-Mobile and Virgin Mobile to allow users to make online purchases using their phone.

Mobile payment systems are gaining traction from social networks, but the issue of costly fees charged by mobile carriers to the payment systems (which are then passed on to the consumer) remains a serious problem. Paymo says that it typically charges users a transaction fee of 10% of the purchase price. The company adds that different cell phone carriers charge varying fees but most are in a range of 20% to 40% of the purchase price, which is a pretty large amount in transaction fees. As we said in our earlier analysis, this could pose a significant roadblock to these types of services, which channel user payments through mobile carriers. It appears that it would be hard to sustain these fees in the long term when transaction charges could be drastically decreased if payment networks accepted credit card or bank account payments. Still, with such a vast coverage area of the world, Paymo appears to be ahead of some of the more regional services. Paymo says that Facebook, which has a widespread international following, would be the next partner it hopes to land in the social network space.