A new Google bar that will enable you to navigate quickly between our services, as well as share the right stuff with the right people easily on Google+.
Instead of the horizontal black bar at the top of the page, you’ll now find links to your services in a new drop-down Google menu nested under the Google logo.
The changes, officially announced in a blog post Tuesday, allow Gmail users much more control over the look of the service. You can drag sidebars around to your preferred size and width, choose from a wider selection of high-resolution background pictures, and decide whether you want lots of email on your screen or more white space between mails. (Your choice of email density is between “Comfortable,” “Cozy” and “Compact.”)
Heavy Gmail users will also be pleased to learn that there’s a new search function — that is, you can now access Advanced Search by clicking on the search bar. Conversations have been condensed, and profile pictures added.
Google would consider a bid for rival Yahoo, according to reports published Saturday by the Wall Street Journal . “Google has discussed with at least two private equity investment opportunity that they help him finance a agreement to buy the business heart of Yahoo! ” , the newspaper said on its website, citing “a person familiar with the situation” . Google has had discussions “preliminary” on the subject and could “end up abandoning the idea of a bid for Yahoo! ” , the newspaper said.
Yahoo! has no CEO since the departure in early September of Carol Bartz , abruptly terminated by the board of the group was particularly critical of not having made progress enough sales and advertising market share. Yahoo! is currently the subject of a bid by the Chinese internet group Alibaba, which is the largest shareholder.
It was urged Thursday to vote on its offer, saying that the wait was detrimental to both companies.
On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal had reported that nine private equity investment at least studying the possibilities of redemption Yahoo!. The newspaper said the U.S. computer giant Microsoft, which had tried unsuccessfully in 2008 to buy his compatriot, Microsoft has partnered with private equity Silver Lake Partners and a Canadian pension fund to prepare a new offer
Popular internet search engine Google and websites like YouTube could be shut down in Pakistan if they did not cooperate with authorities investigating crimes and incidents of terrorism, Interior Minister Rehman Malik has warned.
Malik made the remarks at the headquarters of the Federal Investigation Agency here while interacting with reporters.
He urged the websites to extend help to authorities to exterminate terrorism from the country.
The government would be compelled to block certain websites including YouTube and search engine Google if they did not extend cooperation to authorities, Malik said.
The Taliban and other terrorist organisations were sharing intelligence through the internet and it is imperative to curb these activities, he said.
Malik did not give details of the crimes and incidents of terrorism that the websites could provide information about.
TV news channels also quoted Malik as saying that he had issued an order for a case to be registered against the administrator of Google Pakistan.
The minister has faced criticism and ridicule from civil society and rights groups for several of his recent comments.
Malik had recently claimed that jealous girlfriends and wives, and not political groups or criminals, were responsible for a majority of target killings in the southern port city of Karachi.
Since its launch in November 2007, Android has not only dramatically increased consumer choice but also improved the entire mobile experience for users. Today, more than 150 million Android devices have been activated worldwide—with over 550,000 devices now lit up every day—through a network of about 39 manufacturers and 231 carriers in 123 countries. Given Android’s phenomenal success, google today announce that we have agreed to acquire Motorola.
Motorola has a history of over 80 years of innovation in communications technology and products, and in the development of intellectual property, which have helped drive the remarkable revolution in mobile computing we are all enjoying today. Its many industry milestones include the introduction of the world’s first portable cell phone nearly 30 years ago, and the StarTAC—the smallest and lightest phone on earth at time of launch. In 2007, Motorola was a founding member of the Open Handset Alliance that worked to make Android the first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices. I have loved my Motorola phones from the StarTAC era up to the current DROIDs.
In 2008, Motorola bet big on Android as the sole operating system across all of its smartphone devices. It was a smart bet and we’re thrilled at the success they’ve achieved so far. We believe that their mobile business is on an upward trajectory and poised for explosive growth.
Motorola is also a market leader in the home devices and video solutions business. With the transition to Internet Protocol, we are excited to work together with Motorola and the industry to support our partners and cooperate with them to accelerate innovation in this space.
Motorola’s total commitment to Android in mobile devices is one of many reasons that there is a natural fit between our two companies. Together, we will create amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystem for the benefit of consumers, partners and developers everywhere.
This acquisition will not change our commitment to run Android as an open platform. Motorola will remain a licensee of Android and Android will remain open. We will run Motorola as a separate business. Many hardware partners have contributed to Android’s success and we look forward to continuing to work with all of them to deliver outstanding user experiences.
We recently explained how companies including Microsoft and Apple are banding together in anti-competitive patent attacks on Android. The U.S. Department of Justice had to intervene in the results of one recent patent auction to “protect competition and innovation in the open source software community” and it is currently looking into the results of the Nortel auction. Our acquisition of Motorola will increase competition by strengthening Google’s patent portfolio, which will enable us to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies.
The combination of Google and Motorola will not only supercharge Android, but will also enhance competition and offer consumers accelerating innovation, greater choice, and wonderful user experiences. I am confident that these great experiences will create huge value for shareholders.
Google+, the social network that was first unveiled just over one month ago, is getting its first upgrade: games, much like another social networking giant we all know. Could this be the first phase of making Google+ a social entertainment hub?
Rumors that social gaming would soon be making its way into the social network emerged early last month, when references to “Google+ Games” were found in the website’s source code. Over 1 month later, Google has finally disclosed it.
Google+ Games will work in an unobtrusive way, by simply adding a new “Games” button at the top of the screen, next to the “Circles” icon and the search bar. Clicking on that link will lead to a dashboard with all the games currently available, as well as other statistics. Since this feature hasn’t yet been rolled out to us, Google has described at length on its official blog:
You can see the latest game updates from your circles, browse the invites you’ve received and check out games that people you know have played recently. The Games page is also where your game accomplishments will appear. So you can comfortably share your latest high score—your circles will only see the updates when they’re interested in playing games too.
Unlike Facebook, where all played games are automatically displayed on user’s streams unless they’re manually hidden, Google+ is making sure that users who enjoy a distraction-free environment can easily ignore them: outside the previously mentioned “Games” tab, there won’t be a single reference to Games. Essentially, if you don’t enjoy this feature you can simply ignore it for good.
In order to populate its “game center”, Google has partnered up with Zynga, which has authored several other popular Facebook games, to develop an initial set of games for Google+. For now, Google has decided to work with a narrow range of partners than open its platform up to everyone, which contrasts with the way the company has treated developers in the past, yet, according to Google, this move will make sure that all games available are high-quality, as Google explained on its newly-launched Google+ development blog:
We will continue to add new partners and new features in small steps, starting with today’s release of the games APIs to a small number of developers.
Hopefully, this new feature will help maintain interest in the platform without alienating much of its current user base. We’re quite certain you won’t be disappointed by the current offering of games as you can see from the screen cap below:
Via Googl+Blog
A study has found that those with Internet Explorer 6 installed on their computer typically have an IQ barely higher than 80 which by some rankings makes them almost retarded.
This compares to those who used Firefox or Google’s Chrome who came in at around 110.
Users of Opera or Camino were top with an IQ of around 120.
A ranking of a mere 80 might explain why millions of people around the world continue to use Internet Explorer even though it is an inferior web browser.
A comprehensive study of web users has determined that the dumber you are, the more likely you are to use Microsoft Internet Explorer.
“After measuring the IQs of exactly 101,326 users and correlating their scores with the browser they had used to access the test, there was a clear indication that the subjects using any version of Internet Explorer ranked significantly lower on an average than others, concludes the study, conducted by the Vancouver, Canada, psychometric-assessment firm, AptiQuant”.
The study, “Intelligence Quotient (IQ) and Browser Usage: Measuring the Effects of Cognitive Ability on the Choice of Web Browser” – had a loftier goal than merely insulting IE users and putting a smile on the face of Opera’s development team: to gauge the correlation between the resistance to changing or upgrading software, and users’ IQs.
In addition, the results were compared to another unreleased study of a similar nature undertaken in year 2006. The comparison clearly suggests that more people on the higher side of IQ scale have moved away from Internet Explorer in the last 5 years.
Keeping aside the facts, I personally agree with their results to an extent because only a dumb person can use IE 6 now a days. However they are, comprised only of people who feel compelled to take IQ tests. But if you ever want to argue that Internet Explorer 6 users are too stupid to upgrade, at least now you’ve got some empirical evidence.
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Google announced they have now speed up the Google +1 button for websites. The button is now automatically up to 3 times faster and best of all, webmasters do not need to update their code for the speed changes to take affect. The change is automatic. Google said, “no action is required on your part, so just sit back, relax, and watch as the button loads more quickly than before.”
Is 3X faster not enough? Google has also released a new asynchronous snippet that is even faster. This feature allows your web site to continue loading while your browser downloads the +1 JavaScript.
To get the new asynchronous snippet, just go to this page. The asynchronous option should be the default, but you can check for sure by selecting “advanced options.”
In the world of URLs, bigger is not always better. In 2009, we helped shrink up long, unwieldy URLs by launching our public URL shortener, goo.gl. Today, we’re announcing a new URL shortcut that will link only to official Google products and services: g.co.
The shorter a URL, the easier it is to share and remember. The downside is, you often can’t tell what website you’re going to be redirected to. We’ll use g.co to send you only to webpages that are owned by Google, and only we can create g.co shortcuts. That means you can visit a g.co shortcut confident you will always end up at a page for a Google product or service.
There’s no need to fret about the fate of goo.gl; we like it as much as you do, and nothing is changing on that front. It will continue to be our public URL shortener that anybody can use to shorten URLs across the web.
We’d like to thank our friends at .CO Internet SAS who operate .co domain names for facilitating the acquisition of g.co, and keep your eyes open as we start rolling out g.co as our official URL shortcut for Google websites.
Via:Google Blog
Video-chatting is not a new way of social activity, but both Google and Facebook have put a new twist on this old and familiar concept. We put Facebook powered by Skype and Google+ Hangouts in a head-to-head comparison.
While other video chat tools may have been built on top of Facebook’s application platform, this now comes out of the box for Facebook users, old and new. The result is that Facebook’s added yet another way for its 750 million users to communicate with one another.
But moving beyond the hype, the big thing you’re probably wondering is how this new service stacks up to the groovy video chat tools found in Google+, the social network Google recently launched as a Field-Trial. One of its crowning features, besides providing an alternative to Facebook, is that you can video chat with your friends in multiple ways. How do the two compare? The short of it is that Facebook is simpler to use. The longer answer is that you might be happier with Google in day-to-day use.
Facebook has added a video call item to every user profile to let you start a chat from that page. Users can launch video calling by visiting facebook.com/videocalling.( A step By Step guide on how to make video call on facebook is available Here). It is also accessible by opening a chat window with a friend, and clicking the camera icon at the top of the window, or by visiting a friend’s profile page, and clicking the new “call” button, which is located in the top right, between the “message” and “poke” buttons.
Once launched, you will have to download an application to run video chat. From our tests, the app downloaded quickly, and we were able to launch our first chat in a little less than one minute. Our test subject, who admitted to being less than knowledge with technology, said he found the download and start-up process easy and straightforward.
We experienced a few problems in the initial tests, however; specifically the person we called not being able to see us on webcam, with an error message saying that our camera wasn’t installed. After another couple of tries, the problem apparently fixed itself, and we were off and chatting. The quality of the video call was not very good, quite lower than the video call feature in GTalk.
Facebook also includes a number of other key features aside from the standard video calling, If the friend you try to call isn’t available, you can leave a video message for them when they return, a very important feature. A notification window will also tell you when you’ve missed a call.
Pretty much the same deal as on Facebook with regards to the plug-in aspect. The big difference is in where Google surfaces the video chat option. Unlike Facebook’s one-on-one video calling feature, Hangouts in Google+ allows for group video chats. So the two features are actually entirely different creatures. Another necessary fact that must be pointed out is that Google+ has only been live for one week, and is still in invite-only testing mode.
Because Hangouts are meant for groups of up to 10 people, launching a video chatroom which is what a Hangout is and it’s much more casual and passive than Facebook video chat, which is more like a regular telephone call between two people who have a particular reason for communicating.
To start a Hangout, you simply click the green “Start a Hangout” button that appears on the right side of the Google+ homescreen. Like Facebook Skype, Hangouts launches in a separate window from the rest of the browser. It also requires a plug-in download, which is the same as the plug-in needed for GTalk video calls, so if you’ve already done that, you don’t need any other additional software.
Once in a Hangout, users appear in a row at the bottom of the window. Whoever is talking at a particular moment is automatically placed in the large center display. In addition to standard video chatting (with multiple people), Hangout members can also play YouTube videos on-screen and watch them together, an impressively cool feature. Text chatting is also an option, and those in the chat can invite more users directly from the Hangout window.
For all around ease of use, Facebook gets a definite edge when it comes to simplicity and Socialization. It’s obvious where to access the feature from user chats and user profiles alike, and you can get a video chat up and running with someone else in less than a minute.
If you want more bells and whistles, then Google’s video chat efforts in Google+ beat Facebook’s handily. Google’s offering users a system that is completely familiar if you’re used other Google products like Gmail and iGoogle, and a much more advanced group chat option with the hangouts feature.
So to answer the original question of which one to use, the answer depends on who you want to talk to. Ultimately video chatting is all about getting in touch with someone else in a way that’s technologically convenient for both of you. Right now the simple truth is that Facebook’s made that easier. It has more than 750 million users, any of whom with a Web cam can now talk to one another across the digital globe.
Google announced Google+ project which aims to fix relationship with friends and relatives online through real-life sharing. With Google+ you can group your friends, relatives into different categories and selectively connect and share info with each group.
Google says people use real-life circles to express themselves and share precisely with the right folks. Using Google+ is easy : create a circle, add your friends/relatives and share the information.
At present Google+ is available on Android market and the mobile web and soon will be available on App Store. Google+ is still on Field trial and you can join it by invitation only.
To get Google+ invitation officially from Google visit this page,fill & submit your first name and email and Google will invite you to join their Google+ project.
Google introduced a social network known as Google+ today, which aims to change the way we stay in touch with people online. The service emphasizes on how data is shared, and with whom, as well as privacy.
Google has finally unveiled Google+, the company’s top secret social layer that turns all of the search engine into one giant social network.
Google+, which begins rolling out a very limited field test on Tuesday, is the culmination of a year-long project led by Vic Gundotra, Google’s senior vice president of social. The project, which has been delayed several times, constitutes Google’s answer to Facebook.
The search giant’s new social project will be omnipresent on its products, thanks to a complete redesign of the navigation bar. The familiar gray strip at the top of every Google page will turn black, and come with several new options for accessing your Google+ profile, viewing notifications and instantly sharing content. The notification system is similar to how Facebook handles notifications, complete with a red number that increases with each additional notice.
Source:Redmondpie+Mashable
