I feel uncomfortably like a prophet. In January, and again last week, I wrote about the prospect of UAVs used as weapons by terrorists; yesterday a man was arrested who “planned to attack the Pentagon using ‘small drone airplanes’ filled with explosives and guided by GPS.” In August I wrote about omnipresent mobile phones turning the world into a panopticon; today’s NYT has an article about… → Read More
Yesterday Erick and I had an interesting discussion about Facebook vs. Google+ and I came down on the side of G+. Why? Because tools are important, toys aren’t. Granted Facebook’s 500 million visitors a day proves me wrong in numeric terms, but in general usability and quality, I’m coming reluctantly down on the side of Google Plus.
As you well know, Facebook won the Internet with its app… → Read More
In the roughly 90 days that Google+ has been available, Google says that they’ve made 91 different improvements to the service. Today brings nine more — a few of which are big.
First and foremost, Google+ finally has search. Yes, I know it’s hard to believe that a service built by Google launched without it, but it did. Now Google+ allows you to search for people and posts simply by using the… → Read More
When Google+ launched a few months ago, I got in relatively quickly and liked what I saw. I believed the social network would make a great challenger to the likes of Facebook and Twitter, mainly because of Google’s enormous existing audience (I still do, provided the company plays its cards right).
It’s now been a while since I’ve last visited or posted anything on Google+, but I figured that… → Read More
Developers anxiously awaiting the Google+ API (application programming interface) will have to wait a little while longer, we’re told. Although Google is hard at work on building the tools which would enable developers to build third-party applications for the new social networking service from the search giant, the API’s launch is still “months” away, putting its launch closer to year-end. → Read More
Austrian blogger and developer Florian Rohrweck recently discovered a lot of Google+’s upcoming features just by digging around in the source code for the new social networking service. He was one of the first (but not the only one), to reveal Google+ Games before its launch, for example, as well as still unreleased features like “Shared Circles” and social search, among other things.
Now… → Read More
William Shatner, rejoice! Earlier today, Wen-Ai Yu from the Google+ team announced with a post on Google+ and an accompanying YouTube video that the social network now boasts ‘verification badges’ for celebrities, public figures, but also people who have been added to an (undefined) ‘large’ number of Circles, with the promise to expand the verified profile system in the near future.
This is in… → Read More
A few days ago, traffic analysis firm Experian Hitwise shared the results of a study of over 10 million online users, and concluded from its findings that Google’s new social network, Google+, was headed into mainstream territory.
While not entirely disputing that data, social media monitoring firm SocMetrics, comes to a slightly different conclusion today by examining one particular vertical… → Read More
Security researchers at Trend Micro have discovered a new mobile malware application on Android that disguises itself as a Google+ app. The app has the capability to record phone calls, as well as gather the GPS location of the handset, the text messages and the call logs, all of which are sent off to remote servers.
The app installs itself on Android devices under the guise of being a Google+… → Read More
The developer who previously brought us the Facebook Friend Exporter, Mohamed Mansour, has created a new, experimental Google Chrome extension which adds text-based document collaboration capabilities to Google+ Hangouts. For those of you not yet versed in all the G+ terminology, Hangouts are the multi-person video chat feature in Google’s social networking service, supporting up to 10 people at a… → Read More
Google just made it easier for you to invite friends to its new social network, Google+, by providing a short link you can post on the web or share with others over instant messaging. In order to get the link, says Google product manager Shimrit Ben-Yair, you simply click the “invite friends” button on the right-hand side of the stream – the same place invites were found before.
This news… → Read More
And so it begins. Carnegie Mellon researchers recently combined Facebook profile pictures and PittPatt‘s facial recognition software to identify supposedly-anonymous pictures from a dating site. Now they’re planning to demo a smartphone app that identifies faces by tapping into cloud-based image databases and recognition software. What’s next?
That’s a question I’ve been thinking about for a… → Read More
Google Plus is terrific. I don’t think it will ever be more than the Pepsi to Facebook’s Coke, alas, but it’s much slicker and better designed. It’s too bad that the service has sacrificed a pile of goodwill over the last week by repeatedly publicly shooting themselves in the foot.
First there was the brands mistake. Now it’s gotten much worse: it seems they’re deleting profiles wholesale… → Read More
It was a first. Yesterday, we were fortunate to welcome Google’s two principle architects of Google+, Vic Gundotra (VP Social) and Bradley Horowitz (VP Product), to the TechcrunchTV studio in San Francisco for an extended interview about what they call their “project”.
So what is Google+? As Gundotra told me yesterday, it is an attempt to “understand people” and to make human… → Read More
One thing is for sure about Google+. Our readers sure do have a lot of questions about it. Yesterday, we invited you to submit questions for our TCTV interview with the two Googlers in charge of the Google+ project. We got such an overwhelming response so we decided to webcast the interview live. It will start right here in the Ustream player above, today (Thursday) at 5:45pm PT, 8:45pm… → Read More
Google+ is bringing people together. The video chat service is just so easy to set up with a click-and-go sort of system. It’s so easy that, as a Lifehacker user pointed out, the Hangouts are perfect for an impromptu video surveillance system.
You will need two Google+ accounts to make this work — one for the camera side and another to view the stream. But that shouldn’t be that big of an… → Read More
Now is your chance to get your question asked directly to the two Googlers who run the Google+ project. Product VP Bradley Horowitz and Senior VP of Social Vic Gundotra will be in our TCTV studios for an interview tomorrow on Andrew Keen’s show “Keen On“. Add your questions in the comments below or on Google+. We’ll pick the best ones and use them in the interview.
The Google Social team has… → Read More
Actor and musician William Shatner has apparently had his Google+ account beamed up for “violating standards”, according to a tweet posted earlier this morning. He who loves TechCrunch tweeted the following message to his followers:
“My Google+ account was flagged for violating standards. Saying hello to everyone apparently is against the rules maybe I should say goodbye?”
Google+ is of… → Read More
There’s no shortage of Google+ in the air these days. Overeager pundits and soothsayers are hoping to be among the most visible voices on the net saying which service or company it’s going to topple, why it’s going to fail or succeed, and why it should or shouldn’t be more like this or that.
It all seems awfully premature, considering Google+ is just getting started, and I don’t mean in user… → Read More
Shortly after Google+ was unveiled, Engadget got a tip from someone who dug deep into its source code and found verbal references to something called Google Games. A tipster of ours has now dug a little deeper and managed to find more of them.
In the Google+ source code, Yvo Schaap – who also found the embeddable +1 button before it was released – actually discovered a link to the Google Games… → Read More
It has been over three months since we first broke the news on the existence of Disco, the group messaging app made by the Slide team within Google. Google still refuses to talk about it. But work continues nonetheless. Today brings version 3 of the app — and the app is starting to get really good.
Just a little over a month after Disco was updated to version 2.0 with Push Notifications… → Read More
So you still haven’t gotten into the Google+ field trial, not even after Google allowed early users who did send invites for a while, and not even while there are loopholes abound?
Desperate times call for desperate measures: break out your wallet and head on over to eBay, where Google+ invites are being sold for up to $75.
What do you mean you’re not insane? → Read More
Last night, I wrote up my initial thoughts on Google+ after using it for a day. Overall, I find it pretty compelling so far. While there is a bit of a learning curve, after about 15 minutes, I found myself at home using the service. And little things (namely notifications) kept bringing me back. But let’s be realistic, it has only been a day. The new car smell has yet to wear off. And I have also… → Read More
That didn’t take long. Tons of people haven’t even gained access to the Google+ field trial yet, but that hasn’t stopped Chinese authorities from blocking Google’s brand new social networking project, reports Ren Media.
Indeed, Just Ping and the Greatfirewallofchina.org website both confirm that plus.google.com is not accessible from mainland China. → Read More
There’s no question about it: Google+ genuinely looks good. But, as thousands of people have already noted and joked about, it also really does look a lot like Facebook.
UX designer and consultant UXboy agrees, and put the two interfaces side by side to showcase just how much the entry pages of both services look alike. → Read More
I’ve also been playing around with Google+ (and the neat mobile Web app) this morning and so far, I think it has some potential (not everyone agrees).
But people like me tend to use more than one social networking service, so I was happy to see someone has already built a Chrome extension that lets Google+ users push posts to Facebook and Twitter. It’s a little buggy from time to time, but… → Read More
Last night, you may have heard talk of a mysterious black bar appearing on the top of Google.com. Or you may have even seen it yourself. No, you weren’t hallucinating. It was a sign of something about to show itself. Something big. Google+.
What is Google+? It’s the super top-secret social project that Google has been working on for the past year. You know, the one being led by General Patton… → Read More
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