Google Plus App Redesigned for the iPhone

Google announced their redesigned app for the iPhone on Wednesday via their official blog. Version 2.0.0.5888 of the Google+ brings a new stream and navigation experience, plus various bugfixes and performance improvements.

Full-bleed photos and videos are cool. But you know what’s really cool? Content so immersive it remakes your mobile device into a rich carousel of beloved memories and breaking news. That’s the Google+ experience we aspire to, and today’s release helps us get closer:

Whether you post photos or articles or text, we’re making ‘em look goooodWe’re adding crisper fonts, larger profile pics and a friendlier homescreenWe’re making the stream easier to scan, and easier on the eyes with overlays, gradients and other visual elements.

It might seem odd that Google updated the iOS app before the Android app, but the iOS version was so poorly received that Google had to do something to improve it. An Android update will be available in a few weeks with "a few extra surprises."

If you do not already have the Google+ app you can download it from the App Store for free. It's compatible with the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, and requires iOS 4.3 or later.

Now reply to Google plus comments from your Gmail

Gmail and Google plus just got a little closer, with the search giant announcing that you can now use Gmail to respond to Google plus notifications.

The changes mean that Google social’s networking site which has already been integrated into search results,  will also become an important part of Gmail.

So what will it mean for users? Well they can reply to Google plus notifications instantly from their Gmail inbox without having to click on the Plus icon on the Google bar.

Users can do the following:

• You can view, comment on, and +1 posts from inside your inbox

• Your comments appear in the Google+ stream in real-time, and

• Responses from others instantly appear in Gmail, as part of the notification message 

Google hasn’t forgotten it’s mobile and Android users either. You can now directly tap on the notification email on your mobile, click reply and it will be posted automatically to your Google plus account.

However users can limit what emails their receive from plus by changing their settings.

Google will be rolling out all these changes for all users from next week, according to the blogpost.

Gmail has undergone quite a few changes over the recent past. Most recently, Google added automatic translation to Gmail, and gave users the option of broadcasting their chats on Google Hangouts Live on the social networking site.

Google Plus Opens Up Hangouts On Air Live Streaming For All

So here’s yet another feature coming from Google that is bringing video power to virtually everyone.  Hangouts On Air, which is available to only some users of Google+, will soon be available to everyone around the world who uses the social network.  It allows others to watch your hangout live streaming session through Google+, YouTube, or your own website at the click of a button.  The possibilities of this feature could be a revolution in online video: meetings, conventions, events can all be broadcast from several unique perspectives.

Hangouts On Air: Google Lets You Do It Live

Now, you can press a button that reads, “Enable Hangouts On Air,” and suddenly, strangers could be watching you and your buddies.  You can even see the number of people watching your hangout.  It’ll be live, candid, and even better, it can be recorded and posted for those who missed it.

Here’s the video explaining it all:

The new feature will roll out over the next few weeks, but Google’s blog displays several hangouts you can already go check out.  There’s one from Conan O’Brien, The Nerdist, and several TV broadcasters like CBS and CNBC.  And maybe everyday people like you are more your style: this page shows the hangouts going on right now.

This does seem like a pretty great thing.  It looks like it can be used for virtually anything, and concerts seem to be a pretty popular thing.  I wonder what the possibilities of people hanging out at a ballgame might bring…will that even be allowed?

The video above shows a bunch of chefs getting together.  It could be a fun, entertaining, and enlightening feature, although I’m sure someone out there will use it for evil, just like everything.  What Google is doing here gives them distinction from Facebook and Twitter: they really want video to be their social calling card.  They want to make it more about watching rather than reading.  And with live video, you get all the unpolished, uncensored glory.

Here’s another video advertising Hangouts On Air:

How do you think this new feature will be used?  Will this be like satellite TV broadcasting millions of live streams where people find their favorite “channel” and follow it like regular TV, or do you think businesses will get involved with this and make meetings easier, or even create live “advertising” for their products?  Seems to me like all the possibilities are true if it catches on.

Google Penguin Update: Impact of Anchor Text Diversity & Link Relevancy

The Google Penguin Update, much like Panda last year, has angered SEOs and webmasters, most of whom say they have played by Google’s rules. Anchor text diversity and link relevancy may be two key factors of Penguin, according to more early analysis

60% 'Money Keyword' Anchor Text

As discussed in “Google Penguin Update: 5 Types of Link Issues Harming Some Affected Websites”, spammy link signals (paid text links using exact match anchor text, comment spam, guest posts on questionable sites, article marketing sites, and links from dangerous sites) were among the issues for some sites affected by the algorithmic change.

Google was also hitting websites for aggressive anchor text for keywords in backlinks even before Penguin. Post-Penguin, anchor text diversity becomes more critical.

Microsite Masters examined historical data for thousands of websites to investigate whether sites that saw their rankings drop after Penguin were also guilty of having an unbalanced percentage of anchor text for “optimization” or “money” keywords (i.e., whatever term you’re trying to rank No. 1 for) as opposed to more natural-looking mix of linking anchor text (e.g., Your Website’s Title, example.com, www.example.com, “click here”, “here”, “blog post”, etc.).

The results are quite interesting. Websites that saw their search rankings tumble had a money keyword for anchor text in 65 percent or more of their inbound links, according to Microsite Masters (not that this percentage was a guarantee of being hit by Penguin):

As for sites that weren’t penalized, they had a much more natural looking backlink profile. Sites that had money keyword anchor text less than 50 percent of the time were “all but guaranteed” not to be affected by Penguin.

So essentially, what Google Penguin did was try to correct its rankings by discounting patterns it considers to be link spam. Granted, that potentially also opens the door to negative SEO attacks allowing competitors to harm sites by pointing a bunch of bad links at a competitor with weaker link profile, but that’s a subject of another discussion.

Links from Similar Niche Sites

Another finding was that Penguin also hit sites with few incoming links from domains and websites in the same niche, according to Microsite Masters. With Google, link quality and relevance are key, so by being able to attract quality links from authoritative domains in the same niche would be a clear sign that your site or page is relevant.

Basically, Google is looking for signals that can’t be manipulated as easily as anchor text. Getting a link from an authoritative or relevant site in the same niche is much harder to manipulate.

Open Site Explorer and ahrefs are a couple of tools you can use to get a view of your link profile and anchor text diversity.

Link Pruning

If Penguin has caught you for having “unnatural” or spammy links, “link pruning” is one way to go, according to veteran SEO Bruce Clay, who was interviewed by Search Engine Watch contributor Eric Enge. He advises you to consider evaluating your link profile at least once a month, looking for low quality links to remove.

Getting a link to your site removed is about twice as hard as successfully requesting a website link to you, Clay noted. In one case, a website actually tried to extort him to remove the bad links, demanding $10 per link.

If that were to happen, or you're unable to add enough good links to counter the bad, or you’re otherwise unable to get a spammy link removed, Clay advised that one thing you can do is send Google a list of links you’ve tried to get removed and ask them to discount them, to show you're making the effort.

Duplicate Content & Site Clean Up

While it’s easy to focus just on cleaning up your links in the hopes of a Penguin recovery, it could be something else dragging down your rankings. Perhaps a site Google views unfavorably has scraped your content, and is now either linking to you with some sort of “credit” or it failed to remove an internal link to your site from within the copy text, and now that link from a bad neighborhood is pointing at your website.

Is your content being duplicated on other websites? Not sure, try Copyscape.

If, after using the tool, you find that other sites have stolen your content, Google has this page to submit a DMCA report and request the removal of content. If Google removes that site, that’s one less bad backlink you have to worry about.

And while you’re at it, do a full spring cleaning or SEO audit to ensure there’s nothing you’re doing to harm yourself. Do an honest evaluation of your own website, or find an SEO pro who can do it for you.

For those websites that have impacted but haven’t done anything wrong, it may just be the case that you don’t have enough quality backlinks or your domain may not have authority. If you’ve been standing still, it’s doubtful your competitors have. It’s up to you to win back the rankings by optimizing for users, building a brand, and creating great content, because as we've learned multiple times now, Google won’t give anything to you.

Via : searchenginewatch.com

Does your Android need security software?

Whether or not Android devices should have antimalware software is a hotly debated topic among security professionals.

Some believe it's not necessary — the incidences of reported issues of smartphone or tablet attacks are relatively low — while others say problems are on the rise and it's simply not worth the risk.

The short answer is you don't "need" special security software on your Android phone in order to use it. But be aware there are some associated risks if you choose not to install any security software.

What are these risks, you ask?

Because the Android platform is based on the "open-source" Linux operating system, the Google Play store (formerly Android Market) doesn't have as rigorous a vetting process like you'd find with, say, Apple's "walled garden" approach at the App Store.

As a result, there have been a few instances of Android applications ("apps") that contain Trojan spyware or viruses. Some have infected the user's smartphone, impacting its performance, while others have secretly uploaded information from the smartphone without the user's consent.

In Google's defense, these rogue apps have been identified and removed and the developers banned from the store. What's more, Google has vowed to be more vigilant in protecting its growing user-base.

Even with Android security software — and there are a few options available these days that protect users from suspicious websites, texts and emails — you need to be aware what you're "okaying" during the installation process. There's no reason why a weather app needs access to your contacts.

Because mobile devices, such as smartphones, are becoming a critical tool for work and play, they're increasingly becoming a target by malicious types out to infect your device with dangerous email attachments, pray on gullible types with "phishing" and "smishing" attempts, or steal your personal identity for financial gain.

If you choose to go with a security suite for Android, some software can also help locate or wipe a missing smartphone and back-up your info to the cloud.

#Supermoon

Super moon

Google Play adds Shared Song Playlist

Google has just added another new feature to its Play Store that will effectively allow users to trace all previously-shared songs through a playlist that apparently gets compiled automatically. When a user’s friend on Google+ shares and music through the social network, the new feature called the “Shared with me” automated playlist keeps record of the list of songs and lines them up for your listening pleasure. The feature will show the necessary details you need to know about the song including track name, artist, duration and the all-important pricing.

If you feel the need to know who shared the melody in the first place, it will also pull up a preview of the original posting on Google+. According to Google, the purpose of this so-called self-maintaining playlist is to bolster efforts to make tracking down previously shared music more convenient when using Google’s social networking platform. On a personal note, I have heard the phrase, “Did you see that song I posted up on my wall yesterday?” too many times to not think that this feature is virtually a godsend. If you have already been able to make use of the feature, do let us know what you think about it.

Google Brings More Real-Time Coverage, Google+ Comments To Google News

Google News announced they have added three large changes to Google News. They include larger images on the main page; a realtime coverage page to surface the latest articles and commentary; and relevant Google+ posts for a new social perspective.

To me, it pretty much looks like Google is looking for ways to inject Google+ all over Google News. But let’s explore the new changes that are rolling out to the U.S. edition of Google News over the next week.

Notice the larger image on the story plus the Google+ comment from U.S. Department of State Google+ account:

Google News has a new “realtime coverage” button next to stories and when you click on it you are taken to that coverage, accompanied by Google+ discussion on the right hand side:

The main feature here, though, is obviously the addition of more content from Google+ on Google News. Given the almost visceral reaction many Google users have to Google+, the company has wisely decided to allow its users to opt out of this feature. If you don’t want to see these discussion from Google+, Google says, “you can either log out of Google or turn off the display of Google+ posts via the Google News settings page.”

Google Docs Adds More than 450 Fonts, 60 New Templates

Google Docs (now with Google Drive!) was always convenient, but it was also kind of bland. Not that we expect creating cloud-based documents to be as fun as kite-surfing or anything; still, a few more aesthetic choices would be nice.

Well, typography nerds, your prayers have been answered. Today on the always riveting Google Docs blog, Google announced that it is adding more than 450 new fonts. That’s right, you can choose from such fine typefaces as Nova Slim, Happy Monkey and the strangely ominous Nothing You Could Do.

All you have to do is go to the “Fonts” menu, scroll to the bottom and click “Add Fonts.” Then simply pick out each one you want to add to your main font menu. Why doesn’t Google Docs automatically give you all 450-plus fonts instead of making you pick out each one individually?

Because most of them are simply terrible. I wouldn’t wish Luckiest Guy or Rock Salt on my worst enemy. Still, if you take the time to sift, you can actually find some good fonts worth using. There are also 60 new templates so you can quickly whip up documents such as resumes, newsletters and invoices.

Microsoft Office may be uninspired, but it does have more features than Google Docs. If Google can catch up on features while offering the benefits of the cloud, you could see more people defecting from Office permanently.

Google Offers Big-Data Analytics

Google is selling some of its analytic guts as an online service, in an effort to compete with the likes of Amazon Web Services in the market for enterprise cloud computing.

In November, Google offered a limited number of developers access to some of its most powerful data analysis software, part of what Google uses to index the Internet, in a product called BigQuery. On Tuesday, Google announced that it was selling that software, which can scan terabytes of information in seconds, as a service to corporate customers.

“When you have really large data sets, we have the capability to analyze them,” said Ju-kay Kwek, product manager for Google’s cloud data effort. “A query with five terabytes of data involved could be returned in 15 seconds.” That is, he said, about 10 times faster than the speed of many corporate data systems. He noted that in companies today, “it’s not uncommon to have problems that take half a day to analyze.”

Google’s aim may be to sell data storage in the cloud, as much as it is to sell analytic software. A company using BigQuery has to have data stored in the cloud data system, which costs 12 cents a gigabyte a month, for up to two terabytes, or 2,000 gigabytes. Above that, prices are negotiated with Google. BigQuery analysis costs 3.5 cents a gigabyte of data processed.

On Amazon, considered the leader in online data storage and computing, storage costs up to 12.5 cents for a gigabyte, with prices dropping for larger volumes or limited service guarantees. Other companies active in the fast-growing business include Microsoft, Rackspace and I.B.M. Hewlett-Packard has said it will soon offer a full cloud-computing service for businesses.

Amazon, whose Web services initially required lots of technical skill, has in recent months started offering easier-to-use databases and storage appliances that appeal to a broader audience. It has not yet opened up its own analytic tools for public use, but that is expected.

To date, external developers using BigQuery have done fast analysis for things like targeting Web ads, real-time management of rental properties being offered online, and techniques for selling products to online gamers.

Mr. Kwek said Google hoped that developers would make easy-to-use tools that encourage widespread use of the product, even by ordinary executives. Many people running Web businesses already use Google Analytics, which offers statistical information about the performance of Web sites.

“It’s still early days in cloud computing,” he said. “We have huge respect for A.W.S., but we’re different in terms of philosophy.” Where Amazon catered to technically able people, largely at start-ups, Google wants to attract lots of less-proficient executives.

It is unclear, however, how central the enterprise market is to Google, where over 95 percent of revenue still comes from ads aimed almost exclusively at consumers. Google Apps, a spreadsheet and document creation and collaboration service, has attracted a few million customers. Many other potentially valuable Google resources, like the free video chat feature of the Google Plus social network, have not been offered in business versions. Mr. Kwek said one reason for that is that Google wants to be sure of the reliability of the product before it offers it as a retail service to business.

Google+ Announces SMS Feature In 41 Countries

Google Plus, Google’s social networking site has announces its new SMS notification feature across 41 countries which allows people to share updates using their mobile even when they are offline. Google Plus users can update their status on the go by just sending an SMS to 9222222222 with the update in message box. To activate this Google Plus users will have to link their mobile number to their Google Plus account from Google+ SMS features

How To Use

One of the key features of Google Plus is the ability to share status updates to select circles and Google+ SMS feature also incorporates it. If one does not specify the circle the message needs to be shared with, it shares the update with everyone in your circle. However, it offers following modifiers:

• @[circle name] – To share your update with selected circles.
• @extended – To share your post with your extended circles.
• @public – To make your update visible to everyone (including search engines).
• @[email address] – To share your update with a particular person.

Although India’s Smartphone market space is growing at 10-15% a year, it’s still minuscule when compared to the feature phone market share which makes SMS a convenient form of communication between mobile users. Indian telecom operators also offer low priced SMS plans where operators like Loop Mobile offers 3,000 free SMS for just Rs 44 with a validity period of a month. Online SMS-chain portals like Way2Sms.com and 160by2.com (acquired by Way2Sms) together have more than 35 million users. However, users cannot update their status message via these service as they make use of keyword while delivering the message.

Twitter, another popular social networking site, also offers similar feature where users can update their status message using a short code but is available on limited telecom operators such as Tata DoCoMo, Reliance, Bharti Airtel, etc. Twitter  also provides a free-of-charge news alert service where users can choose which of the accounts they follow and has the ability to push SMS updates to their phones. This service again is available on limited telecom operators such as Airtel, Videocon, Tata DoCoMo and Reliance.

Who Wants SMS Anyway?

A couple of years ago, Alison Rosenthal, Director (Business Development) at Facebook had mentioned that the response to the 92FACEBOOK long code service that they had launched has been disappointing. With current TRAI regulations  where consumers are allowed to send up to 200 SMSes per day from a SIM might also turn out to be spoil sport for such features.

Google also recently expanded their SMS Chat service in India where it allows users to have one-to-one communication that allows Gmail and Google Apps users to send text messages through the Google Talk widget present in dashboard.