This week has been pretty exciting for both Facebook and Google. Facebook announced a slew of features that seem on the surface to copy Google+. For Google+ users, a lot of improvements, updates and features were implemented, and they're seeing a lot more overall integration with their Google account.
This week seems to have gone by in a flash. Maybe it was the three day weekend, but I don't think it accounts for the flurry of activity I've been seeing on Google+. Updates, debates, and new initiatives are unfolding every day, and the best part is that most of them are coming from outside of Google. People love Google+ so much that they want to evangelize to others about it. What more could Google+ ask for?
You wouldn't think that something so simple as a "suggested users" list would create so much controversy, but Google+ seemed to have accidentally ignited a firestorm when they introduced a new feature over the weekend: the "Suggested People to Follow" list now appears when a new user joins Google+.
A cup of coffee shared with a friend is happiness tasted and time well spent. Android App : Vignette
Ok, serious question here: is +Zach Katz even old enough to be on Google+? This rap tells you all you need to know about Google+, and also tells us that...well, not a lot of people actually know what Google+ is.
This week, we saw the implementation of collapsed comments, Google+ games were rolled out to everyone, and yesterday, there were several more announcements of enhanced features and tweaks.
An interesting take on Google+. Follow along as PC World editor Tony Bradley uses Google+ for 30 days, and read about his (mis)adventures. I really, really wish that the PC World's articles were less cluttered, though. It was really difficult to find the first post.
This infographic from SingleGrain aptly and succinctly describes the primary differences between Facebook and Google+. Which social network will reign supreme?
Circles. They are both the best thing and worst thing about Google+. They're great because they allow you to fine-tune who you're following and who you want to keep in touch with, making it easy to keep your family and friends separate from each other. On the other hand, they can be a pain to maintain, and you can easily become overwhelmed from the "noise" of popular posts, which make it hard to concentrate on some of the people you want to focus on. But if you invest a little bit of time in ...
You've been on Google+ for a few weeks now. You're loving it. You're exchanging thoughtful posts, pictures with your friends, meeting new people and following lots of interesting, intelligent people. There's just one problem.
If you've gained entry into Google+, one of the first things you should do is adjust your Google account settings. Your settings will now look quite different, and you can adjust your notifications, password retrieval methods, and more. There are many settings that you may not have been aware of before.
This is a caterpillar on my sidewalk that I took a photo of on my Android phone.
Enable multi-accounts in your Google profiles Change the number in your Google+ URL
Confirmed! Those of you who have been waiting (or dreading) the announcement of social games in Google+ can now look forward to them showing up in your stream. The anticipated games have yet to show up, but Google has confirmed that APIs will be made available for third party developers to access Google+, much like Facebook allows them.
The group social networking application Fridge has been purchased by Google, and two of its team members will be moving to Mountain View to work on the Google+ team. Fridge, in addition to being a group social sharing site, has photo and event sharing features. The event and calendar-sharing are popular requested features for Google+ users.
It's great to see proof that Google+ is listening to feedback from their users. As a result of the discussion surrounding gender and privacy, Google+ Profiles Product Manager +Frances Haugen announced that Google+ will allow users to hide their genders on their profile.
One of my biggest frustrations with Google+ right now is the inability to search my stream, as well as the lack of any bookmarking features. To find posts I want to refer to, I either have to type in the name of the person who posted the status, or I have to keep hitting the "More" button to find what I need. Both ways are inefficient.
Everybody has them. You can say you don't, but it's probably a lie. There's at least one person on your mobile phone that you never, ever want to pick up the phone for. When they call, you cringe and immediately hit the silent button. They're annoying. Overbearing. You hate them, but yet you love them enough to not delete them entirely from your contact list. Maybe if they called just once a week, but once a day is just too much for you to handle. What do you do?
I just found this via +Adele Shakal. Now this is how you use Google Docs. This document is an epic collaborative project that assembles all the available tips and tricks for Google+. I think I'm in love with everyone who wrote this manual. It's elegant, clear and well, not concise, but a great introduction to Google+.
Are you finding that you're spending all of your time inside Google+ and neglecting your Facebook Wall? You can import that wall to your Google+ stream and keep track of conversations on both places in the only place you care about, Google+. This is a browser extension that works with Firefox and Chrome. They're working on making it work for IE.
Things have only gotten more exciting for +Bradley Horowitz, VP of Product Management for Google. After launching Google's highly buzzed social networking sites, he took his girlfriend +Irene Au, a designer for Google, to Paris. While there, he proposed to her, and she said yes!
On the same day that Google launched their new social network, Google +, a team of Google engineers calling themselves the Data Liberation Front announced their first service on Tuesday—Google Takeout, a product that allows users to easily move their data in and out of Google products, including Buzz, Contacts and Circles, Picasa Web Albums, Profile and Stream (the equivalent of Facebook’s newsfeed).
Garden Apps have just unveiled their new Sprinkler Time mobile app, which shows users the correct number of minutes to set their sprinkler times for maintaining healthy gardens all year round.
You're in a new city and you want to explore—what mobile app is best? If you want to know what club is hopping that night, use SceneTap. If you want to know if any friends are at a nearby get-together, use Foursquare. If you want to know what restaurant is best, try Yelp. But if you're looking to get a real feel for the city, skip the more touristy destinations and take to the streets—discover where some great graffiti is located or where the best view of the city is with the Trover iPhone ap...
Speech recognition software made it easy to search Google on your smartphone, and Google Goggles made it easy to find answers from camera snapshots on your device. But now Google's bringing similar technology straight to your desktop, and with faster results—faster than Google Instant.
Perhaps Amazon will dissuade you from switching to iOS.
Want to see which country or city uses Google the most? Try Google's new eye-stimulating tool, Search Globe.
Outstanding advancements in medicine and super creepy Androids aren't the only jaw-dropping inventions out there. Every once in a while, an incredibly random—and at first glance, seemingly useless—device comes along and strikes a chord of strangely deep satisfaction. Behold, the SWITL, a mysterious goo-scraper robot hand created by factory equipment manufacturer Furukawa Kikou: From what I can glean from a very rough Google translation, it sounds like the SWITL was developed for food producti...
Some great work coming from Qualcomm's AR Developer Challenge 2010!!! I hope they make these available on iPhone and Android devices soon.
Has anyone played Words With Friends? I'm curious to see how it compares to Scrabble.
Here are the instruction on how to download and get started:
If you're flying AirTran Airways, Delta, or Virgin America over the holidays, Google has teamed up with the aforementioned airlines to offer free in-flight wi-fi from November 20 to January 2, 2011 on all domestic flights. Why? Out of good will and holiday cheer, of course (plus promotion for the Google Chrome web browser).
Twitter did it, facebook did it.....
Layar is cutting edge AR technology for the mobile phone. Currently for the Android devices and the iPhone 3GS.
Wow, what can't Google do? Check out the winter Olympics, ride the Trans-Siberian railway, explore the world's largest airplane graveyard, and now, locate Chilean earthquake victims.
Google Street View has civilization well covered, but what about the great outdoors? Street View now travels via snowmobile in the unpaved Canadian wilderness, just in time for the winter games.
Everyone has that internal checklist on the way out the door. Keys? ID? Phone? Check, check, check. But it still feels like you're missing something as you head off to work. It's not until your ringtone starts blasting at full volume in an important meeting that you realize what you forgot to do: put your phone on vibrate.
Picture in Picture mode is one of Android's best multitasking tools. Ever since its introduction in Android 8.0 Oreo, you've been able to watch videos in a floating window while you use other apps. In Android 11, this feature is getting its first real upgrade.
Apple's 9.3.2 update for iOS has been completely destroying some users' iPad Pros, and there's only one way to fix it.
In the wake of a horrific attack on its Paris headquarters, satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo has responded by upping its print run from a typical 60,000 to upwards of 3 million. This commemorative issue, Tout est pardonné ("All is forgiven"), has been met by such demand that the publisher is turning to alternative forms of media to reach as many viewers as possible.
