Chrome 15

Use your Google+ profile with your Blogger blogs

by A Googler at 5:37 pm

In fewer than 4 months since its launch, more than 40 million people have joined Google+, making it a living, breathing space for social connections and sharing to thrive.

Today we’re excited to announce the first way you will be able to leverage Google+ -- by making it possible to replace your Blogger profile with your Google+ profile.

In addition to giving your readers a more robust and familiar sense of who you are, your social connections will see your posts in their Google search results with an annotation that you've shared the post.

Plus, bloggers who switch will automatically get access to the Google+ integrations we’ll be rolling out in the future.

If you blog under a pseudonym and you don’t want to connect your common name with your blog, this integration may not work for you. That’s why we’ve made it completely optional to switch.

This option is available for all users today in our testing ground, Blogger in Draft, and will be accessible fromwww.blogger.com in the coming weeks.

If you have a Google+ account and would like to replace your Blogger profile with your Google+ profile, log in todraft.blogger.com and click “Get started” on the promotion message, pictured below.

If you don’t have a Google+ account, you can create one here first, and then head back to draft.blogger.com and look for the promotion message.

To learn more, check out our FAQs or visit our Help Forum. Happy blogging!

Posted by Vardhman Jain, Software Engineer

http://buzz.blogger.com/2011/10/use-your-google-profile-with-your.html

Google Buzz Bites the Dust

Goodbye, Google Buzz. The social messaging platform, which was meant to rival Twitter, is beingtossed aside by Google in an effort to slim down.

Google Buzz launched in February 2010 as a way to share status updates, photos, videos, and links with friends through Gmail. The secret sauce was a "page rank" algorithm that determined which status updates should be featured prominently and which ones should be collapsed. Google Buzz also mined users' Gmail contacts and set users up to automatically follow the people they e-mailed most.

Unfortunately for Google, this turned out to be a privacy nightmare. By default, users' follower lists were public, revealing their most frequent e-mail contacts to the world. Google Buzz also lacked a way to block people who didn't have public profiles at first.

Although Google apologized and fixed these problems, the network's reputation was already damaged. The fiasco even brought complaints from the Federal Communications Commission, forcing asettlement in which Google agreed to comprehensive, company-wide privacy measures.

Even if Google Buzz hadn't botched privacy, it still probably would've failed. The service did little to differentiate from Facebook or Twitter, and users quickly lost interest.

When Google+ launched in June, Google Buzz was assumed to be dead. Now it's official. Google+ is off to a much better start, with 40 million members, so it's unlikely that Google will give up on its newest social network so easily.

Read more

Google+ Real Time Search & Hashtags

Google is giving Google+ users two enhanced ways to find information disseminating across the social network, with real-time search and hashtags.

“Now when you search in Google+, you’ll see a message about new posts the instant they’re available,” Vic Gundotra, Google’s SVP of social, explained in a post on Google+ Wednesday. “If you click on this message, or select ‘Most recent,’ then relevant posts will start appearing in real-time.”

Also, should you opt to put a hashtag in any of your Google+ updates, that hashtag will automatically link to search results for the term.

The improvements will come as welcome additions for Google+ power users, journalists and media types interested in keeping up with breaking news on Google+. The search updates may do little to convince more casual social networkers to stick around on the social site or give it second chance.

They have some long-term significance, however. We expect this technology to become the foundation for a revamped real-time search experience on Google.com itself.

You may recall that Google Realtime Search went on hiatus in July — after Google failed to reach an agreement with Twitter for continued access to its firehose of data

Google Introduces Cloud Database

CloudSQL service is free, for now.




Google has launched a new service to make its cloud computing platform more appealing to businesses. The company on Thursday introduced a limited preview of Google Cloud SQL, a scalable, hosted MySQL database environment.

Navneet Joneja, product manager for Google Cloud SQL, says that one of the most frequent requests from Google App Engine users has been for an easy way to develop traditional database-driven applications. Using App Engine, Google's platform-as-a-service offering, in conjunction with Cloud SQL allows developers to avoid the burden of database management, maintenance, and administration.

And at the moment, the price is hard to beat.

"Cloud SQL is available free of charge for now, and we will publish pricing at least 30 days before charging for it," said Joneja in a blog post. Google says it will not charge for the service in 2011.

But the price will go up eventually. Google in May said it planned to increase the price of using its App Engine cloud computing infrastructure later this year and recently shocked developers when the magnitude of the price increase became apparent. The outcrythat followed--partly the result of expectations set by the low price during App Engine's beta period--prompted Google engineering director Peter Magnusson to apologize for not providing developers with the tools to understand how their apps would be affected by the price change.

[ Find out more about Google's plans for App Engine. ReadGoogle Revs App Engine With Business Features. ]

Google has defended the price increase as necessary to make App Engine work as a business.

Read more from Information Week

Chrome extension enables remote computer control

Months of work on "chromoting" have reached fruition with Google's release on Friday of a new Chrome extension to let a person on one computer remotely control another across the network.

The Chrome Remote Desktop beta version, which arrived Friday, is a browser-based equivalent of remote desktop software for conventional operating systems. Such software is handy for IT administrators managing employees' machines, people taking care of their relatives' computers, or individuals getting access to their own machines from afar.

"Chrome Remote Desktop BETA is the first installment on a capability allowing users to remotely access another computer through the Chrome browser or a Chromebook," the release notes said. "Chrome Remote Desktop BETA is fully cross-platform, so you can connect any two computers that have a Chrome browser, including Windows, Linux, Mac, and Chromebooks."

Using the Chrome remote desktop extension requires the person sharing access to a computer give an access code to the person who will tap into it remotely.

(Credit: Google)

It's that latter category that likely was a very important factor in the development of the technology. Google's Chrome OS is geared in part for organizations that want to lower their computer administration costs, and remote management is an important factor when it comes to that goal.

The technology right now is limited so that permission must be granted each time remote administration is activated. "This version enables users to share with or get access to another computer by providing a one-time authentication code. Access is given only to the specific person the user identifies for one time only, and the sharing session is fully secured," the release notes said.

Via Erica Joy

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20117619-264/chrome-extension-enables-remote-computer-control/#ixzz1aEdb8ea3

Google Wallet Review

http://www.google.com/wallet/#utm_source=HA&utm_medium=ha_sem_bk&utm_campaign=en-US&utm_term=%2Bgoogle%20%2Bwallet

New Google airline flights

http://www.google.com/flights/

Introducing the +1 Button

+1 Button in search

Use +1 to give something your public stamp of approval, so friends, contacts, and others can find the best stuff when they search. Get recommendations for the things that interest you, right when you want them, in your search results.

To participate in this experiment:

1. Make sure you're signed into your Google Account (required)
2. Click 'Join this experiment'
3. Search for something you love on Google.com
4. Click the new +1 button, and make your mark on the web

Your +1's are public. They can appear in Google search results, on ads, and sites across the web. You'll always be able to see your own +1's in a new tab on your Google Profile, and if you want, you can share this tab with the world.

Please note, it may take a while before you see the button in search results, and it may occasionally disappear as we make improvements. Your feedback will help us make it better!

Learn more about +1

Say Hello to Google's New Online Magazine

Google’s has quietly launched its own full-length online magazine, a quarterly publication whose aim is to create a “breathing space in a busy world.”

The first edition of Think Quarterly, based out of the UK, is a 68-page dive into the world of data and its impact on business. The first thing most people will notice is that it’s a visually stunning piece of work. It’s a rich Flash app with Google’s quirky sensibilities and the in-depth writing you might find in BusinessWeek or Salon. Google’s quarterly magazine is edited and designed by creative agency The Church of London.

The articles themselves are thought pieces about major business and technology topics from a variety of freelancers and contributors. Google was able to snag Simon Rogers (editor of The Guardian‘s Datablog), Ulrike Reinhard (editor of WE Magazine), and other journalists for the project. Many of Think Quarterly‘s articles feature interviews with Google executives and technology leaders. Some of the people featured include Vodafone UK CEO Guy Laurence, Google Chief Economist Hal Varian and famed psychologist Peter Kruse.

“At Google, we often think that speed is the forgotten ‘killer application’ – the ingredient that can differentiate winners from the rest,” Matt Brittin, Google’s managing director of UK & Ireland operations, said in Think Quarterly‘s introduction. “We know that the faster we deliver results, the more useful people find our service.”

“But in a world of accelerating change, we all need time to reflect. Think Quarterly is a breathing space in a busy world. It’s a place to take time out and consider what’s happening and why it matters.”

It’s unclear whether the new online magazine is another sign that Google is entering the media business or whether it’s just a project to feed the company’s intellectual curiosity. Google doesn’t describe its newest project as a magazine or a publication. Instead, Google calls it a book on its website and a “unique communications tool” on its Twitter account.

Regardless of what you call it, Think Quarterly is an interesting and informative experiment by the search giant.

From Mashable.com

Say Hello to Google's New Online Magazine

Google Science Fair

Google Science Fair

Google Sky

http://www.google.com/sky/

Google Ventures

Google Ventures is Google's venture capital arm, and is the primary source of Google's venture investments.

Google Ventures

Google Offers Advanced Chat for Collaborative Doc Editing

Google unveiled a new shared commenting system in its online word processing service Google Docs on Wednesday, best described as Google Wave for mere mortals.

The new chat system builds on Google Docs feature that allows multiple people to edit a single document, even simultaneously. The new chat replaces the rudimentary one by offering threads that can be closed, the functionality to invite new collaborators simply by putting their e-mail address in a message (e.g. @name@domain.com will you check out this revision?), and getting e-mail notifications when someone replies to a thread or to your comment.

Google Wave launched in beta in September 2009 and offered instantaneous real-time chat and group editing. But it proved too complicated for many and wasn’t widely adopted. Google retired the project and open sourced much of the code in August 2010.

The new feature, dubbed Discussions, is being rolled out over the next couple of days to all personal Gmail users and Google App users who have signed up to get advanced features faster.

Discussions is intended to speed up group editing of a document, which Google says it did while they were testing the feature internally.

Read more

Google's Blogger Is About to Get an Overhaul

Google's Blogger Is About to Get an Overhaul

Google's Street View Website Gets a Big Overhaul

Google has updated the website where it showcases its Street Viewservice, now highlighting places of interest, the locations of Street View vehicles and more.

Probably the most interesting part of the site is the map that shows exactly where one can see Street View imagery. The service has come a long way since its launch in March 2007, when it covered only a handful of major cities. Now it covers most of North America, Australia, New Zealand and Western Europe, with pockets of availability in Japan, Indonesia and Brazil.

The new Street View site also includes a set of instructions for using the service, and explains the technology behind Street View’s 360-degree imagery. You can also see 3D models of the vehicles Google has developed for gathering imagery in places where its regular cars cannot go, such as the Trike, Snowmobile and Trolley.

Read article from Mashable.com
Google's Street View Website Gets a Big Overhaul

Webmasters Tools

AdWords, AdSense, Analytics, Apps, and site verification

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en

Google is hiring!

2010 was a huge year for Google. Many of our big bets—on mobile, display advertising, the cloud and more—really started to pay off. Amazingly, Android now runs on over 100 devices with more than 300,000 activations each day. Chrome has at least 120 million active users and it’s growing quickly. Last year more than 1 million businesses switched to Google Apps and embraced its 100% web approach. And we’ve made search faster than ever, even whenyou’re on the go.

But it wasn’t just a growth year for our products—the company grew as well. In 2010 we added more than 4,500 Googlers, primarily in engineering and sales: second only to 2007 when we added over 6,000 people to Google.

I love Google because of our people. It's inspiring to be part of the team. And that's why I am excited about 2011—because it will be our biggest hiring year in company history. We’re looking for top talent—across the board and around the globe—and we’ll hire as many smart, creative people as we can to tackle some of the toughest challenges in computer science: like building a web-based operating system from scratch, instantly searching an index of more than 100 million gigabytes and even developing cars that drive themselves. There’s something at Google for everyone—from geo, to enterprise, to video—with most of the work done in small teams, effectively working as start-ups. (The average number of software engineers on a project at Google is 3.5.) That’s why the vast majority of our people stay with us, building their careers and taking on new challenges within the company.

I joined Google more than eight years ago—when we had barely 500 employees and still used Outlook for email and AIM for chat—and while there have been many changes, Google is still the same entrepreneurial company it was when I started, encouraging Googlers to take on big ideas and high-risk, high-reward opportunities.

If you think you want to join the team, check out google.com/jobs.