At the Campfire One event last night, Google launched the Google Apps Marketplace and demonstrated how external Web applications from other vendors can be integrated into Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and other services that are part of the search giant's Web-based productivity suite.

In the quest for data liberation, Google's hosted Web services have long offered a wide range of APIs for third-party developers. With the launch of the new marketplace, however, Google Apps for domains is opening up even further and enabling external software to expose its own functionality directly through Google's Web-based applications. This will make it possible for third-party software in the cloud to offer broad interoperability with Google Apps and very tight integration.

Facebook is allegedly planning to roll out location sharing capabilities next month, once again playing catch-up to other services that have gained popularity thanks to location data. The rumor comes courtesy of anonymous sources who have been "briefed on the project" speaking to the New York Times, who said that Facebook will announce the feature at Facebook's annual f8 conference in late April.

The company's plans for such a feature have not been entirely secret—Facebook hinted at location features when it updated its privacy policy in November. Like other postings made to Facebook, location information will only be made available to the people you decide to broadcast it to.

"When you share your location with others or add a location to something you post, we treat that like any other content you post," reads the policy. "If we offer a service that supports this type of location sharing we will present you with an opt-in choice of whether you want to participate."

The location features will come in the form of an API for third-party developers and from Facebook, according to the Times' sources.

The feature will undoubtedly be popular among many of Facebook's 400 million users, as it has already proven itself with other services. For example, Twitter added geolocation to its API last year, not to mention that Foursquare, Brightkite, Google Latitude, and Loopt have all built their success solely upon the use of user location data. Needless to say, it's not something that will be new to the Web, though it probably will be new to a sizable chunk of Facebook's audience. Let's just hope the company rolls it out the right way, as implied by its privacy policy, and doesn't end up broadcasting everyone's locations to the world by default.

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The .xxx domain is back on the table. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will reconsider the top-level domain during a meeting in Kenya this week, nearly three years after it was shot down and nine years after it was first introduced as a way to identify pornography sites and hopefully confine them to their own Internet red-light district.

The .xxx domain was first proposed in 2001 and approved in 2005 for exclusive (but voluntary) use by the adult entertainment industry. The idea was to provide a place for porn sites online that would be explicitly obvious from the domain, which would not only help consenting adults find the sites, it would also help parents and corporations better block access to them.

Amazon has pulled the plug on its affiliate program in Colorado thanks to a new state regulation on sales tax collection. The company sent a notice to its Colorado-based affiliates Monday morning to let them know about the decision, urging residents who depend on the affiliate program to contact their lawmakers if they want the program back.

Most states only require retailers to collect sales tax if they have a sufficient enough brick-and-mortar presence thanks to a 1992 Supreme Court decision on Quill Corp. v. North Dakota. Despite this, a handful of states have tried to pass laws in recent years (often dubbed the "Amazon Tax") that would force Amazon to start collecting sales tax if their affiliates—that is, those who use Amazon's affiliate links on their own sites or blogs in order to earn a return on referrals—are based in those states.

Access to the Internet is a fundamental right to nearly four out of five adults across the globe, and those in South Korea, Mexico, and China seem to have the strongest feelings on the topic. This is according to a report (PDF) by the BBC World Service, which polled 27,973 adults on their feelings about, usage of, and concerns about the Internet. Although users are somewhat divided on whether the Internet should be regulated, they are in agreement on its usefulness for learning and information discovery.

Across all 26 countries, 79 percent of Internet and non-Internet users said that they felt that Internet access should be "the fundamental right of all people." When isolated for people who already use the Internet, that number went up to 87 percent. Almost universally (90 percent), respondents said that the Internet was a good place to learn and almost 80 percent said the Internet brought them greater freedom.

"Buying your groceries online? What is this, 1996?" That's what someone said to me recently when they found out I do the majority of my grocery shopping through the Internet—yes, produce and all. Sure, online grocery shopping was one of those things that people envisioned to be common in "The Future™" but many of the original efforts fizzled out during the first bursting of the dot-com bubble. Shopping for groceries and household items via the Internet is making a huge comeback, however, thanks in part to some major players who have taken it outside of the typical niche markets.

Google has acquired a company that allows Microsoft Office users to edit their documents collaboratively on the Web. The acquisition of DocVerse will undoubtedly allow users who are married to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to edit their documents through Google's services, thanks to a "small, nimble team of talented developers who share [Google's] vision."

Both Google and DocVerse made their announcements Friday afternoon, with each noting that transitioning to cloud document storage and collaboration has been somewhat of a challenge for Office users. "Unfortunately, today, individuals are still forced to make a choice between those two worlds," reads the DocVerse blog post. "Google’s acquisition of DocVerse represents a first step to solve these problems."

Google says that current DocVerse users will be able to continue using the service as usual, but that new signups have been closed until the company is "ready to share what's next." This is no doubt a foreshadowing of Google's plan to integrate DocVerse's capabilities into Google Docs, which allows users to collaborate simultaneously on Google-hosted word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation documents.

The move is just another step in Google's strategy to chip away at Microsoft's dominance in the productivity space. Of course, there are other ways for Office users to share documents online—SharePoint is a popular solution among businesses, for example—but the functionality is still quite different from what's offered through Google Docs. The DocVerse acquisition, combined with Google's recently announced file-storage capabilities, will help beef up Google Docs to the point where it will be even harder for small businesses to resist signing up for Google Apps.

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Viacom is unlikely to sue bloggers for posting their own clips of The Daily Show or The Colbert Report, contrary to reports floating around on the Internet. The company clarified its position to Ars on Thursday, noting that it tries to be as permissive as possible when it comes to fair use and that individual bloggers have never been on the studio's radar.

The confusion began when the Hollywood Reporter ran a story on Wednesday titled "Viacom will sue bloggers who post unauthorized 'Daily Show' clips," quoting Viacom spokesperson Tony Fox. "Yes, we intend to do so," Fox was quoted saying. "My feeling is if (websites) are making money on our copyrighted content, then that is a problem."

We reached out to Viacom's VP of PR Jeremy Zweig to confirm whether this position was true. After all, as numerous parties have pointed out, both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report make liberal use of clips from other networks that undoubtedly fall under fair use, and it seemed as if Viacom was willing to go after the little guy in order to ensure that no one got a single penny of revenue except for Viacom. This, however, was not the case.