Gearfuse

We’ve yet to see this live ourselves, but people across Twitter and the blogosphere are commenting about a button-less Google search home page which has been popping up sporadically across the web, notably for Windows users using Firefox.

Apparently, instead of the usual “Google Search” and “I’m Feeling Lucky” buttons, there simply reads a message: “Press enter to search.” According to some of these users, the buttons fade-in when you mouse over the area. Anyone experiencing this live?

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According to sources Google Wave will almost certainly have an application marketplace, where users will be able to purchase third-party applications for the new communication tool.

Google Senior Staff Engineer and Wave co-developer Lars Rasmussen has said that he would be very surprised if the applications model was not followed by Google. Google might be making the jump into the application marketplace model sooner than later.

“So we haven’t 100 per cent locked this in, but all the developers are asking [about paid-for apps],” said Rasmussen.

“…developers have asked us a lot for a market place where we’ll help them sell their extensions to our users including a revenue share so we’ll also make some money from it.

“I’ll be very surprised if we don’t go down that route.”

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Hello, fellow GEARheads. We’ve managed to get our hands on several invites for the sacred Google Wave preview. If you need an invite drop us a line and leave a comment including your e-mail address or follow us on Twitter and let us know! We’ll get one out to as many of you as possible.

Just a small disclaimer. The invites are not sent out immediately, Google might take their sweet time to send you the joyous e-mail. Want an invite? Let us know, we’ll add you to our nomination list!

Update: We’re fresh out of invites for now, but we’ll try and beg some more off of Google!

Although it doesn’t do much good to type in your search query, click search and wind up with someone else’s search results, Mystery Google is actually pretty entertaining. Type in a search and press enter. You aren’t whizzed off to your own search results, but the results of the person who searched before you.

For example, I typed in a search of “gearfuse” and was brought to the search result page for “kittens.” Oddly enough, kittens would have been my second choice.

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You’ve seen people practically offering their lives for invites, you’ve seen it trending on Twitter, but what is it? I know there are a lot of you out there who are still kinda unsure what Google Wave actually is and why it’s such a big deal.

The video above does a great job explaining what Google Wave actually is and why you should care.

It was only last week when Google confused the world by unveiling one of their patented “Google doodle” logos which featured a UFO abducting the first letter “o” of their name. After much speculation and a cryptic Twitter message or two it seemed to have been in honor of the internet meme inspiring Zero Wing.

To add to the mystery, Google has launched a new cryptic logo today. As you can see, the letter L seems to be missing from the word. Was it abducted? Google also tweeted what appears to be coordinates “51.327629, -0.5616088,” which lands right on Woodham Road in Woking, Surrey, UK.

Possible solution? As it turns out, Horsell Common, Surrey, UK, was the first UFO landing location mentioned in H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds. September 21 happens to be H.G. Wells’s birthday. Could this be the answer to Google’s puzzle? Google just keeps getting more and more cryptic.

In honor of an event that will only happen once this century, Google has ceremoniously altered their logo in honor of 9/9/09 at 9:09 AM, the only time in 100 years where the time and the date will feature the exact same amount of 9s in the same placement.

Google didn’t take the ornate path this time, opting for a simple boxed digit design added to the bottom of their everyday logo. But at least this is one mystery that is solved without days of speculation, much like when Google added a UFO to their logo only days ago, launching speculation for Google’s reasoning.

In honor of Comic-Con and the introduction of comic-theme designs to your personalized iGoogle pages, Google has an awesome new logo design today. Perhaps the coolest Google design yet? Perhaps the geekiest?

I duuuuuunnno. There’s been some fiercest competition.

Feeling a little insecure without the friendly Gmail beta logo to keep you warm (if you haven’t heard or noticed, it’s gone, baby, gone)? No worries. Google Labs has already got you covered. Featured under their lab tools is a new widget called “Back to Beta,” which adds the “beta” signifier back to the logo, making you feel all snugly warm and clean again.

Change is confusing. Luckily, it’s avoidable.

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Google. Oprah. The two should really sit down for a cup of coffee sometime and talk billions. They actually have a lot in common, believe it or not. Oprah is more accustomed to giving out things like books and cars, but today, Google one upped the queen of daytime TV and gave out free Android-based G2 phones (aka HTC Magic). The recipients? Attendees of Google’s I/O developer conference. Rumor has it that the phone even comes with a SIM card with 30 days of talk and 3G access. Hey, it pays to be a fan of Google sometimes.

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