Archives: Google
Google gets going with Disco and Pool party!
It has been more than 3 months, since Disco, the group messaging app was made by the Slide team within Google. It is , although, quite surprising how google still has not talked about it. In the hoopla of Google Plus, Disco is not getting its share of limelight! Nonetheless, work still continues Now we have version 3 of the app! And it is just getting better!
Disco was updated to version 2.0 about a month ago, with Push Notifications. And now it brings a range of alot of new features. The major one is photo sharing, This feature is now a must-have for all group messaging apps. You can also chat 1-to-1, now. But the most important additions being done are that Slide/Google is trying hard to differentiate Disco from the rest of the apps. Google has made an amalgamation of Twitter and Yelp!
And this gives it altogether, interesting features . Using the new “Star” commands, you can choose to follow any Twitter feed within a Disco group and see all the updates from that account within the app. You can also call up Yelp recommendations and reviews right from within the app with the new feature . And then, you can also create a poll for everyone in the group using the Star options.
Disco also has this nice little bonus for it users and non users. If your friends are not yet using Disco, you can still network with them via SMS within the app. And the app will allow you to do this with up to five friends and this will be absolutely free of charge to you.
The team has also been working on other apps. Pool party, is one such app. It is a group picture sharing app. It is good and if the two apps, were combined by the team it could become quite an exquisite app.
Lets see how these apps do, with competition coming from Google plus. It really does seem Google would hit the jackpot, this time! You can download the app here!
Google Hires Sanaz Ahari to lead display advertising
The latest buzzing news from Google says that it has hired Sanaz Ahari. Sanaz at an age of 23 became lead product manager at Microsoft. With this feat she became the youngest product manager in the history of Microsoft. At Microsoft she was leading a team of about 20 engineers. Leading a team of engineers at such a young age is definitely a grand achievement. She was associated with Microsoft for seven and half years after which she left the job. Her last job was at the post Principal Group Program Manager for Bing. Se is now 29 and she has now joined Google.
She is part of the team of Neal Mohan who is Vice President of Display Advertising. Neal is responsible for managing Google’s portfolios of AdSense for Content and DoubleClick platform products. She has been appointed to lead the display advertising products in regions namely: Seattleand Pacific Northwest. While Sanaz was at Bing, she was among those very few senior people who were given the responsibility for search quality and the relevance of the search. While Bing was in the initial stage i.e. it was being developed and was being geared to be launched Sanaz was a part of the senior product team at Bing. She has handled high posts at a very young age. She joined Microsoft directly after college and did a great job there. Now she has joined Google and she has confirmed the news that Google has hired the product veteran Sanaz Ahari.
How to get Google+ Profile Nickname?
Google has recently launched its social networking website, Google+. This has been launched on a trial basis. Only a few who have been lucky have received the invites for joining Google+. Anyone who starts using a social network wants a username or profile name. Like many other apps this application was also missing on the new Google venture. When you wish to share your profile with someone then doing it with your ID can be very cumbersome. A short n easy to remember nick name is the solution to this problem. Finally a solution to this problem has been found. Though the solution is not official but it is a very useful one. Like many other third part apps this is also an application by a third party. There are a few simple steps to get your Google+ nickname and they are as follows:
- Go to the website http://gplus.to/
- In the space provided write your desired nickname/username and your Google+ profile ID. For example: in https://plus.google.com/12345678900987654321, the digits represent your Google+ profile ID.
- Then click on ADD button
The website will provide you a link like gplus.to/username. Using this you can easily share your profile with friends and family. Since, this is not a service by Google so you will not be provided with a official link from the website like https://plus.google.com/username. You will definitely find it easy to remember this short URL than long numbers. This will surely making sharing of your profile very simple for you and for those with whom you share. However, Google engineers warn people against the use of this service as it is not a service by Google. They say that they are not sure if service provider is good and if they want then they can redirect the URL of ones profile to some objectionable website.
Convert your Google+ into Facebook
Those of you who were lucky to receive an invite for Google+ must be wondering how to customize it. Well, the answer to this is an add-on known as Stylish which you can use to customize your Google+ to look like even Facebook!
Currently, the add-on will work only on Firefox browser or Chrome browser. One does feel sorry for Opera and Internet Explorer for this. Just five minutes of your time spent on this cool add-on will transform your Google+ page to a Facebook page. Of course it won’t be exactly similar to your Facebook page but the similarities between the two will be eye catching.
It is just a two step procedure which is as follows:
Step #1 First you need to open the Google’s Extension Marketplace or Mozilla’s add-on site depending upon the browser you are using. The Firefox version will require you to restart your browser. Now you must browse for the Stylish extension on the website. You can find it here.
Step #2 The next step is to click open the extensions page and install it by clicking on its icon.
Now all you have to do is to open your Google+ page and look at the changes. What the extension does is that it removes the dark theme of the original page and replaces it with the serene blue theme of Facebook. It retains the Google+ identity though. After the failure of Google Wave and Ping, this is one more experiment by Google in the social networking market. The services offered by this product of Google have sticked to the headlines lately and also the interest in the service has been consistent. It is still a few months for the service to become public and hopefully Google will be able to convert the interests of people into a significant market share. Google + will also be available on the mobile phones with an iOS app and an Android app ready on the shelf.
Send Invites anywhere with Google+
If you are looking for a new social networking service, then Google has it right here. Google+ is the latest attempt by Google to bring new social network into real though it is only confined to sending invites. It is new smart way to send as many invites to the addresses you want. Presently the number of invites sent was beyond the expectations of the developer, as a result of which Google has to disable the new invites momentarily but we found the loophole for that! Thanks to the hidden feature in +Circle service.
With the help of this feature, one can send invites to the selected list of email addresses provided the addresses are of Gmail account only. It goes as- just create a new circle “invite” and add addresses to it and then create a post and send. Make sure that you only assign the post to invite the email addresses mentioned in the invite not to public. If you wish to send new invites, better do it fast before Google gets to fix it.
Other than this escape, Google+ was discovered with a bug that enabled the private posts to be televised generally with the use of “reshare” feature, identical to one of Twitter’s function. Google came up with a solution of this bug and cleared that it won’t be a problem once the Google+ is out for wide use. Google+ is the latest try by the company in social networking services after the Buzz and Wave which were an ultimate failure.
Google+ is a combination of company’s marketing gambit and collective ideas for other social networks with the touch of Google in it. As the social networks are the cynosure for media presently, Google is surely trying out in right field with Google+.
Google Introduces its Social Network Named Google+
Google announced its social network today named Google+ which will revolutionize our world of keeping in touch with our people online. This new service focuses primarily on data sharing and keeping privacy.
Google+ is organized into following five different features: +Circles, +Sparks, +Hangouts, +Mobile and +Huddle, each one of which targets of specific social networking requirements. Although Google has used innovative ideas but it would not be wrong to say that it has taken some good ideas from other social networks and used the in their own way. A blog-post on company’s site says clearly, Google aims at getting more users involved in their ecosystem. The company likes to bring richness as well as nuance of real-life sharing to the software. Company also added that it would be happy to add users, their relationships and interests to make Google better. And so comes the Google+ project.
Here’s a quick overview of all five features of Google+
+Circles is a feature through which users can select what data they want to share with whom by grouping the people in different circles and then assign different data to different circles. This way user can share more information with its family and lesser with formal network people.
+Sparks allows users to chat with like-minded people regarding things they care about. These are similar to simplified message board threads enabling you to chat over a topic with like minded people. Google’s prominent image on the web will give users to access a lot of content and it will invite them into conversations as per their interests.
+Hangouts allows users to start multi-people video chats. This is done as follows: while you are chatting with one of your friend a notification will be sent to all your friends of hat circle thus enabling them to join the video chat.
+Mobile is a feature through which users can share content much in the way they do on facebook. This service’s mobile App allows sharing of pictures and videos using phone’s GPS technology.
+Huddle is a group messaging service which will allow users to group text chats with their friends on the go which may become a replacement to sms.
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