IT Buoy

Word broke today that Google will announce something of a Twitter-killer tomorrow. But unless the thing plays well with Facebook and Twitter, we don’t give it much of a chance. Truth is, Google hasn’t ever been very good at launching new consumer products. Gmail is big, but it’s no Yahoo Mail. They love Orkut in Brazil, but Orkut’s user base is dwarfed by Facebook’s 400 million monthly active users. Google Wave? Hah! But here’s the thing: Google does have a backup plan for this.

Tonight at its headquarters in Mountain View, CA, Google is holding a Campfire One event to announce some of its new developer-focused releases. Google holds these campfire events a couple times a year — the last one was in April — to announce new product launches that cater to the development community. I’ll be live blogging tonight’s event below. Update : You can see an overview of the evening’s announcements here . David Glazer, Google Director of Engineering has taken the stage. He’s outlining some of the Google applications that have been built using Google Web Toolkit. Since the last campfire event, Google has released Wave, a revamp of AdWords, and a redo of the Orkut UI. They’ve also built a number of new internal Google apps

How do you say “What are you doing?” in Spanish, French, Italian, or German? That’s what Twitter wants to know, as it’s asking users to volunteer for a new project to translate the site into multiple languages (it’s currently available in only English and Japanese). The project sounds quite similar to what Facebook has done to translate its site into more than 70 languages. Facebook, however, is a far more complex site requiring many more translations than the Twitter project will likely entail. Here’s how Twitter describes the translation project: “We are inviting a small group of people to become volunteer translators at first. As more folks volunteer, the translation suggestions should accumulate faster and we’ll have enough material to respond by making Twitter available not only in English and Japanese but also French, Italian, German, and Spanish. We will distribute the translations to Twitter platform developers making it easier for them to offer multiple language support as well.” Clearly, translations are a huge opportunity for Twitter to expand its reach. Facebook has grown quickly around the world on the heels of its Translation project, and is even starting to make inroads in regions dominated by other social networks, like in Brazil, where Orkut remains top dog.

Why is Bing called Bing, and Ning called Ning? SMH explains how seven popular tech companies got their names. Bing. Microsoft was looking for something short, easy and global; and a name that would eventually convert to a verb, like “google.” Vimeo. The videosharing’s site’s name is an anagram of “movie” and also “me” squished into “video.” Goop. Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle website is named after her nickname “Goop,” which is a take on her initials GP. Flickr. The site’s founders wanted to name it “Flicker,” like flicker of a candle or a screen

Can you imagine what it must be like to be Lucas Van Praag, the spokesman for Goldman Sachs? Every day he has to wake up to discover his firm has been dragged through the mud in the pages of Rolling Stone, on True Slant, here at Clusterstock, or and accused of being involved in some kind of enigmatic market manipulation by Tyler Durden at ZeroHedge. Usually it should be easy to be a spokesman for a highly profitable public company reporting best-of-breed quarterly earnings. But at Goldman this is just another day to fend off accusations of being a vampire squid. Well, now you don’t have to imagine.