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Rumor has it that Google is planning on unifying all of its chat services into one, single and efficient chat service. The new service was reported to be called “Babble”, however now it appears that the spelling has been modified to “Babel”. Some new screenshots released by TechRadar shows what may in fact be the chat service in action, but of course, the source of the screenshots is unconfirmed, so lets take this news with a grain of salt. In one of the screenshots, the user is hovering over the feedback button and the message, “What do you think about Babel in Gmail?” message pops up. In another screenshot, it shows that you have to sign into your Google+ account in order to share photos through Google Talk, and you are able to initiate a quick Hangout through the G-Talk chat box. There are also hundreds of emoticons you can choose to express your feelings, or represent your zodiac sign. The major reason why we’re skeptical about these screenshots is because...

Yahoo Inc is shutting down seven products, including its mobile app for Blackberry smartphones, as new Chief Executive Marissa Mayer takes a page from Google Inc’s Playbook by eliminating unsuccessful products en masse. The product shutdowns, which Yahoo announced on its official company blog on Friday, are part of what the company said are regular efforts to evaluate and review its product lineup. “The most critical question we ask is whether the experience is truly a daily habit that still resonates for all of you today,” wrote Jay Rossiter, Yahoo’s executive vice president of Platforms.

Facebook’s new Home Android launcher has passed the 500,000 download mark on the Google Play store after a little over a week in the wild, though it continues to accumulate mostly negative reviews and has sunk to an average rating of 2.2. The milestone was noted by Benedict Evans on Twitter .

Wednesday, Minister of Information Labaran Maku declared that the number of Internet users in Nigeria has risen from 200,000 in the year 2000 to more than 48 million by the end of 2012. Maku said this while addressing State House Correspondents on the outcome of the Federal Executive Council meeting, presided over by President Goodluck Jonathan, at the State House, Abuja. The minister added that more than one million hits were recorded monthly by the Ministry of Information on social media reporting in the country.

1. Have you noticed a pattern to what makes a video/channel popular? Popular videos tend to have a lot of personality and something unique about them. The YouTube community is very active and will rate, comment on and share interesting videos. People often create video responses to other popular videos – these tributes can get as many views as the original hit.

More than 100 young Nigerians are teaming up with Google to add restaurants, markets, hospitals and other prominent locations in the Nigerian capital to Google Maps.  Youth leaders say by mapping their city, they could boost the local economy by attracting tourists and investors. They also see maps as a tool to improve security and reduce poverty. In a training room in Abuja, there are almost as many laptops and smart phones as there are 20-something “citizen cartographers.”  At the front of the room, young men who volunteer for Internet search engine Google wear green and blue tee shirts that say, “map your world,” while the Google Abuja Map-up project director, Oludotun Babayemi, explains how to do it.

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt was on stage today at AllThingsD’s Dive Into Mobile event in NYC , talking about his book and his vision for Google. When asked about how he and Google feel about projects that take Android as their base and then build something different with them, like Amazon’s KindleOS or Facebook Home. Schmidt’s response was extremely positive.

For years now, Google has offered its Google Maps Engine to enterprises that want to visualize their custom geospacial data. Starting today, anybody will be able to use a subset of this functionality, thanks to the launch of Google Maps Engine Lite  (beta). This new tool, Google says, will allow any mapping enthusiast to “create and share robust custom maps using this powerful, easy-to-use tool.” Maps Engine Lite allows users to upload small spreadsheets with locations and visualize them on a map. They can also compare up to three different data sets for, the company stresses, non-businesses purposes.

Team Life Saver chosen to represent the country at Worldwide finals in July Team Life Saver has emerged the winning team of the 2013 Microsoft Imagine Cup competition organized in partnership with Nokia, a student competition which centers on the use of imagination, creativity and technology to help solve some of the world’s toughest problems.  Members of the team interestingly, cut across two of Nigeria’s foremost tertiary institutions, Obafemi Awolowo University and Ladoke Akintola University of Technology.