Google has a very mixed history with attempting to make its services more social, but if the company was to integrate directly into its popular Gmail service, would that help things along?

Google may be the master of Web searches, and popular with the e-mail crowd, but one thing it has never mastered is social media.  How many of you are even familiar with its full-fledged social network, Orkut?   It’s been around since 2004, but over 80 percent of its traffic come from Brazil and India, it has failed miserably just about everywhere else.  What about Latitude?  It’s still around, and you can see which friends and family are near you, but it is like the forgotten child of the Google family of services.

Even with its failures to get anything serious going with social media, that doesn’t mean that Google won’t keep trying, and according to The Wall Street Journal, the company is about to try it again, but this time it will be part of Gmail.  Following in the footsteps of Facebook and Twitter, the new feature is said to be a status update system that will allow you to update your status for selected friends to see, and they will be able to do likewise.  You will also be able to view a timeline of their status updates, ala Twitter.

The question is if people will use it, but it probably has a higher probability of use due to the fact people leave their Gmail accounts open all day long in a browser tab.  You won’t have to go to a special page to interact with it, and that could be a key to getting more people to use it.  Will it draw in new users?  Unlikely, because if all they are looking for is that kind of interactivity, then they will go to a site that specializes in it.

It might be a fun distraction, but I doubt you will ever see this supplanting Facebook and Twitter as the kings of status updates.

Lets face it, a lot of people watch the Super Bowl just for the ads, so don’t you wish you could cut the game out of the equation?  Well, thanks to the Internet, that wish is a reality.

Every year there is at least one ad during the Super Bowl you wish you could watch again, and thanks to the wonders of the Internet, that has been a possibility for some years now.  As Super Bowl XLIV happens today in Miami, you’ll even be able to see the ads online as they air, or shortly thereafter.

We’ve gathered up a short list of seven sites that will fulfill all your Super Bowl ad needs.

CBS Sports: It only makes sense that the network airing the game would also allow you to watch the ads online.  You can sort the ads by quarter in which they aired or by advertiser name.

FanHouse: The ads will be shown live, and while you wait you can revisit the ads from Super Bowl 43.

Hulu: Watch the best ads from 2009.

NFL.com: See all the ads from 2009.  No word if the site will post the ones from 2010, but it is probably a safe bet it will.

SuperBowl-Ads.com: Revisit archives of the past 12 years of Super Bowl ads.

SuperBowl-Commercials.org: This site brings you all the latest ads and news surrounding them, as well as archives of ads from Super Bowls of the past.

YouTube Ad Blitz: YouTube will be posting the commercials as they air, and after the last one has played, you’ll be able to vote for your favorite.  The winner will be features on the YouTube main page as the champion.

We’re probably going with YouTube as it appears it will be the quickest.

If there was ever any doubt that Twitter is beginning to play an important part in all of our lives, it was pretty much dispelled this week when the National Football League (NFL) unveiled its official Twitter hashtag for the Super Bowl.

Twitter has become the hub for conversation of current events, and the best way to track those conversations is via the use of hashtags.  You simply add something like “#topic” to your post (minus the quote marks), and then people can track that conversation via the search feature, or by clicking on the word to see a page of results about it.

One of the problems with hashtags has been the Twitter community coming up with a uniform tag for any given event.  You’ll see multiple tags going for an event like the Apple iPad launch, so some of the conversation may get lost.  With Super Bowl XLIV being this Sunday, the NFL decided that it would remove some of that confusion for you by launching the site Tag The Super Bowl where it unveiled the “official” hashtag of the game, #SB44.  (thankfully they didn’t go with #SBXLIV)

Tweets and images on Flickr that are tagged with #SB44 will appear on the tag page, so you’ll get some “official” NFL glory for your efforts.

While it seems a little silly at first, it makes some sense instead of everyone trying to get their own hashtag to be the one everyone adopts.

In a not totally surprising move, rumors are circulating today that Facebook may be working on adding e-mail to its repertoire of services that keep us on the site for hours on end.

TechCrunch is reporting today that it has spoken with “a source with knowledge of the product” that Facebook is working on adding old fashioned e-mail to it its messaging system.  Codenamed “Project Titan”, the new e-mail service would take your vanity Facebook URL and turn it into an e-mail address such as “vanityurl@facebook.com”.

Unlike the e-mail implementation that MySpace put into place, the Facebook system is said to have full POP and IMAP functionality meaning you could use it with third-party e-mail clients such as Outlook, Thunderbird or over your cell phones.

Michael Arrington goes on to say that internally at Facebook they are referring to this as “a Gmail killer”, but I have to agree with Mr. Arrington that those are some pretty high hopes.

Personally, I use Facebook, but I don’t get the fervor with which people flock to it.  It’s a nice distraction from time to time, but I don’t feel a need to check it multiple times a day like most people.  And the idea of my e-mail address being “@facebook.com” holds very little appeal to me.  I already have multiple e-mail addresses I check every day, I really don’t need another.

Satellite radio company Sirius XM has had an application out for the iPhone and iPod Touch for some time now that allows you to listen to its stations over those devices, but the BlackBerry phones have received no love. Until today, that is.

Sirius XM announced today that owners of BlackBerry models Storm 9530, Storm2 9550, Bold 9000, Bold 9700, Tour 9630, Curve 9800, Curve 8520 and Curve 8530 can now enjoy streaming music from their service thanks to a new app. If you do not currently have a Sirius XM account you can get a free 7-day trial, but if you already have an account, you’re good to go.

You will need to go to the Sirius XM On Your BlackBerry page, select your model, enter your email address and a link will be emailed to you so that you can download the app.  No word as of yet if this will end up in the BlackBerry App World store for easier download, but we imagine it will at some point.

We’ve already downloaded this to a BlackBerry Tour (mine) and got it up and running.  The app seems pretty responsive, and allows you to easily mark the various channels as “Favorites” for quicker access.  So far I have only heard it through the built-in speaker, which of course sounded a bit tinny, but it was passable.  In my car I tend to stream musical content from my BlackBerry through a cassette adapter, which always sounds fine, so I am sure this will also.

The channel list includes 120 channels, so it isn’t the complete line-up, but there is a good mix of stuff in there.  Not sure why the Bollywood channel is missing, but oh well.

If you already have a Sirius XM account, especially one with online streaming, there is no reason not to get this.  If you do not yet have streaming, it will be an additional $3 a month.  A streaming only plan will run you $13 a month.

Twitter has been undergoing an attack on passwords, and while we think some of their logic is flawed to the cause of it, they still make a good point.

Over the past few days there has been an increase in password problems at Twitter. As the popular microblogging service tried to track down the problem, they feel they tracked it down to a problem with fake Torrent sites: sites that trade in pirated movies, music, TV shows and more. Their conclusion was you created an account on those sites, used the password you use on other services, and the site owners then went around attacking you on other sites with your passwords.

While there are some flaws in this theory, namely people who have never used a Torrent site were also attacked, their reasoning is sound on using different passwords.  If you always register at sites with the same email address and password, then it is easy for someone to take your information from one site and apply it to another.

Using different email addresses for each site would be a pain, but you need to at least change your password for each site to keep your security levels up.

It’s 2010, folks, shouldn’t we be passed people still coming up with lame passwords?

It would seem that the little known experiment being conducted by Walmart and Best Buy to accept trade-in games has come to an end.

Industry Gamers is reporting that the e-Play kiosks that were placed at Walmart and Best Buy locations to accept used video game trade-ins has come to an abrupt end.  Seen as a chance to steal away some of the glory from GameStops, it appears to have had about as much impact as a feather on an elephant.

All of the current kiosks have been shut down and will be removed over the coming weeks.

It seems the problem was more with the third-part e-Play than the actual stores, and the retailers could try it again under a different system, but it seems unlikely that they will waste the effort.

GameStop has been the undisputed king of game trade-ins for some time, and it is seeming less and less likely that any one will be able to unseat them.  Personally, since we have no GameStop in my town, I’ve been using Amazon’s trade-in service to great success.  Hopefully that won’t go anywhere any time soon, but as for any other physical chain giving them a challenge, it just seems unlikely at this point.

It seems that people just can’t get enough of Facebook and is logging into the site at the rate of 175 million per day.

In an interview with TechCrunch, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said that the site is now seeing 175 million users log in per day, and this is only counting people that visit the main site, not those also using the Facebook Connect log in service.  With 350 million registered accounts, the site is expected to have nearly half of all Internet users in the world logging into its site at least one a month some time this summer.

While the interview is full of interesting tidbits about the financial status of Facebook, it’s the numbers that matter, and its current growth rate is just astronomical as it has doubled in size from a year ago.  Unless there is some radical shift in the social media scene, it seems that no one will be able to catch up to Facebook at this point, and if it does choose to begin entering into other markets such as has been rumored, those sites that stand in its way could be in for a serious fight.  Twitter has withstood the status update attack, but could Foursquare stand up to a location check-in attack?

Only time will tell for sure, but it appears Facebook is going to be with us for quite some time to come.