Latest action at Google, Skype, MySpace and more…

(Correction — See below: Kleiner Perkins is not opening an office in Boston, merely having someone work part-time from their home there, according to VentureWire)

Here’s a mid-week roundup of Silicon Valley stuff. Let’s get the Google stuff done first:

Get the time on Google — Now you can just type in “Time in Shanghai” into Google and it gives you the local time there. No more time-zone befuddlement when connecting with someone across the globe. (Via Google Blogoscoped)

Google Earth exposes Israel — Lots being written about the latest version of Google Earth, which is offering higher resolution images of places around the globe — and to the chagrin of Israel, of sensitive air force bases too.

Google not all monkeying around — Google’s Marissa Mayer shows what it takes to be a leading executive at the Mountain View company: Go to bed at 3am, and sleep five hours (scroll down).

eBay releases SkypeMe, and Skype cozies with PayPal — A nice little threesome has developed over at eBay. Now that the auction giant owns Skype, it is adding a little blue “SkypeMe” button to certain items on its site that allows for instant — and free — voice or IM communication between buyers and sellers. You ask, so this why eBay bought Skype for $2.6 billion? Investors seem puzzled too: EBay’s stock has bled a quarter of its value since the Skype acquisition. We still don’t get it either. Wouldn’t Skype, under its old model of wanting to maximize distribution, have let eBay users have done that for free? Here is the Mercury News story by Elise Ackerman.

Moreover, you’ll soon be able to send money through Skype via an integrated Paypal feature (in the new Skype Version 2.5.) See nice little graphic of this at the Random Good Stuff blog.

MySpace matures into full-fledged portal, continued… — News Corp said Tuesday its MySpace.com Web site will solicit bids from Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo to provide the popular social networking company with search-based advertising. And check this out: Myspace is now sixth in overall market share for search — without even trying. Watch out, GYM

Breakthrough on cleaning water? — Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Labs, on the eastern fringe of Silicon Valley, say they’ve found a way to use carbon nano-tube technology to reduce the cost of desalination of ocean water by 75 percent compared to reverse osmosis methods used today. Could help with predicted clean water shortages, and also help reduce global warming, according to the Technology Review piece.

Online marketing space getting crowded — Blackfoot, a San Francisco online marketing start-up, has raised $2.5 million in a first round of funding led by Canaan Partners and Draper Richard. Meanwhile, consolidation continues elsewhere: Mountain View online marketing start-up Netblue (backed by Oak Investment) has merged with Vendare, of southern California. Netblue’s Art Shaw, former chief executive at MyCFO, will lead the merged company.

Kleiner, the venture capital salmon, opens in Boston — Most Silicon Valley firms are going west to open offices in places like India or China. Kleiner Perkins, a big fish venture capital firm in Silicon Valley, has hired someone who will work part-time from his home in Boston is swimming against the flow, opening an office in Boston. Dr. Thomas Monath, a vaccine expert the firm has hired as partner. He will also have an office in Menlo Park.. (See press release on this page). First reported Monday by Mass High Tech (which we now find is incorrect, because Kleiner says it is not opening a Boston office, and has no plans to).

Flock was cool, continues to get better — We’ve enjoyed the dragging feature of the Flock browser, where you can select stuff from web sites you visit and drag it over to your blog. Now, in Flock’s first public testing version, photos from certain accounts, including Photobucket and Flicker, can be dragged into your browser or blog (via Mike of Techcrunch). Pulling RSS feeds from interesting sites you visit is a matter of clicking on a button that Flock shows you in the address bar — presto, the feed is showing in your browser. And Mike adds Flock has just raised up to $10 million in a new round from Shasta Ventures.

Hummer Winblad invest in two new companies — Krillion of Palo Alto has raised $3.05 million in a first round of funding, according to PE Week. Venture capital firm Hummer Winblad led the deal, with Ann Winblad taking a board seat. The company still in stealth mode. Meanwhile, PostApp, a Berkeley site that wants to be a marketplace for Web widgets, has raised $1.5 million in a first round of funding from Hummer, PE Week says.