mdoeff.com » Google

Week of 11/21/11 – Tech News Roundup

mdoeff — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 07:47:17 +0000

It was a light news week because of the Thanksgiving holiday.

Google releases the Google Search app for the iPad. Reviews were positive:

Why Google’s Search App Is Its Best iOS App By Far (ReadWriteWeb)
Google’s iPad App: Almost Chrome and Trouble for Apple (TIME TechLand)
Google just used it’s Search app to sneak most of Chrome OS on to the iPad (The Next Web)

The Facebook Phone: It’s finally real and it’s name is Buffy (All Things D)
Ex-Googlers launch recommendation engine Stamped, with help from Google Ventures (VentureBeat)
In some virtual worlds, the thrill is gone (BusinessWeek)
Black Friday E-Commerce Spending Up 26 Percent To A Record $816M; Amazon Most Visited Retailer (TechCrunch)
eBay buys Hunch (All Things D)
Steve Jobs and NeXT: Rare PBS Documentary circa 1986 (brain pickings)
Groupon Shares Plunge Below IPO Price 3 Weeks After Offering (BusinessWeek)

Here’s the video for the new Google Search iPad app:

Week of 11/14/11 – Tech News Roundup

mdoeff — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 22:05:35 +0000

Apple and Google made major music announcements this week. Apple finally rolled out iTunes Match and Google made Google Music available to everyone and opened up a Music Store. Amazon started shipping the Kindle Fire.

Google Music

Google Music is open for business (The Official Google Blog)
How To Properly Set Up Google Music (Lifehacker)
Don’t be too disappointed by Google Music’s lackluster debut (TechCrunch)
Google Music Q&A on Quora

The introductory video from Google:

iTunes Match

iTunes Match: Thousands of songs with a couple of hitches (NPR – All Songs Considered Blog)
iTunes Match: What you need to know (Macworld)
Secrets & Features of iTunes Match (iLounge)
Check your music’s iCloud status (Macworld)
How to use iTunes Match with very large libraries (> 25,000 songs) (MacRumors)
iTunes Match Q&A on Quora

iDownloadBlog.com created this iTunes Match Ultimate Walkthrough.

Kindle Fire

Amazon shipped the Kindle Fire earlier this week. Kevin Tofel from GigaOm has a good write-up on the mixed reviews for this product.

Positive reviews:

Kindle Fire review: Yes, it’s that good (MSNBC)
Kindle Fire is no iPad killer but it’s a killer device (Any Ihnatko, Chicago Sun-Times)
Amazon Kindle Fire Review (Engadget)

Negative reviews:

Is this really the tablet everyone’s talking about? (WIRED)
A human review of the Kindle Fire (Marco.org)

Other news this week

Google’s Lab of Wildest Dreams (a.k.a. Google X) (New York Times)
Google+ Pages can now be managed with 3rd party apps (Mashable)
Netflix to resurrect Arrested Development in 2013 (The Next Web)
Skype desktop app now makes Facebook video calls (CNET)
Facebook employees go nuts as Zuckerberg tells them the IPO is coming (Business Insider)
No one’s noticing Twitter’s ad experiment, which is a good thing (Atlantic Wire)
Amazon KindlePhone for 2012? (All Things D)
How Facebook is ruining sharing (Molly Wood/CNET) and Robert Scoble’s rebuttal: The Facebook Freaky Line

Week of 11/7/11 – Tech News Roundup

mdoeff — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 07:08:15 +0000

Google launched Google+ Pages to allow companies and brands to connect with their customers. Danny Sullivan (SearchEngineLand) wrote a thorough overview. You can create a new Google+ page here.

This is the introductory video from Google:

Many people were excited about this announcement, but there were some critics. Some common complaints were:

It’s too easy to claim a brand that isn’t yours (ITWorld)
It’s not designed for large companies who have multiple people managing the account (Robert Scoble)
No vanity URL’s

My take? Hopefully the Google+ team is listening closely and will address these issues in the near future.

If you’re looking for companies & brands to circle on Google+, just type in “+” followed by the brand name in the Google+ search box. Here are some brands that I’ve circled:
Google+, This Week In Tech (TWiT), TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, Mashable, NPR, NPR Fresh Air, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, WIRED, San Francisco Giants. If you’re a business looking to get started with Google Pages, Google has set up a page called Google+ Your Business with tips for setting up a Google+ Page.

Other Tech News This Week

Zynga is planning an IPO after Thanksgiving (Bloomberg)
Yelp is rumored to be planning an IPO in early 2012 (WSJ)
Salesforce launches a new collaboration platform called Do.com. Currently invitation-only (ReadWriteWeb)
Amazon announced more apps for the Kindle Fire (VentureBeat)
Is Google launching Google Music next week? (The Verge)
Bank Simple rebrands as Simple, opens beta (VentureBeat)
Apple release iOS 5.0.1 to fix issues with battery life but the issue still persists (All Things D)
FireFox 8 is released
Charlie Rose interviews Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg

Week of 10/17/11 – Roundup

mdoeff — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 06:04:40 +0000

Steve Jobs

A couple of weeks after his death, Steve Jobs continues to be a huge topic. On Wednesday, Apple celebrated the life of Steve Jobs at the Apple campus in Cupertino. Apple has posted a video recording of the celebration on the Apple.com web site.

The biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson was released on October 24th.

Sixty Minutes devoted an entire show to the Steve Jobs Biography
Reviews: New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, The Telegraph, Associated Press, George Stephanopoulos / ABC News
An unabridged version of the biography is available on Audible

More 60 Minutes videos: Part 2, The Steve Jobs Family Photo Album, What Did Steve Jobs Say About His Rivals?

Lots of speculation out there about the final project(s) that Steve Jobs was working on.

Apple Television? (MG Siegler / TechCrunch)
Text books? (NY Time Bits blog)
iPhone 5? (CNET News)
All of the above?

Tech News

Other tech news this week:

Apple sold over 4 million phones last weekend
Apple reported their 4th quarter earnings. For the first time in a long time, they fell short of analysts’ estimates because they didn’t release a new iPhone in June. But Apple predicts a blow-out 4th quarter and MG Siegler says you’re an idiot if you were one of the many people who sold Apple stock.
Google announced Android 4.0 a.k.a. Ice Cream Sandwich
Google announced that a Google Music Store is coming soon (All Things D)
The AsiaD conference was held in Hong Kong. Videos: Jerry Yang talks about what’s next for Yahoo, Bradley Horowitz talks about Google+
The Web 2.0 Summit was held in San Francisco. Videos: Sean Parker, Sergey Brin (Google), Marc Benioff (Salesforce), Kevin Rose (Milk), Dennis Crowley (FourSquare). More videos here.
GroupOn sets Nov. 4th IPO Date (WSJ)

Sergey Brin at Web 2.0 Summit

Apps

Instapaper 4.0 (iTunes)
Hipster – send digital postcards from your phone (iTunes)
500 px for iPad – photo sharing (iTunes)

Music

Peter Gabriel – New Blood
M83 – Hurry Up We’re Dreaming (Spotify)
Pallers – The Sea of Memories (Spotify)
Radical Face – The Family Tree: The Roots (Spotify)
Real Estate – Days (Spotify)
Coldplay releases Mylo Xyloto on October 24th (Amazon)

Radical Face – Mountains (video by YouTube user celmannn)

Sports

Albert Pujols hit 3 home runs in Game 3 of the World Series. Reggie Jackson and Babe Ruth (twice!) are the only other players to accomplish that.
The Raiders trade for Carson Palmer to replace the injured Jason Campbell

Gmail IMAP for the iPhone (video)

mdoeff — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 03:46:00 +0000

Google Trends

mdoeff — Wed, 10 May 2006 16:54:00 +0000

The new Google Trends tool is pretty cool. You can use it to compare the relative popularity of competing services, products, teams, etc. Similar to Google Finance, the graphs include related news stories as reference points. Here are some examples:

Yankees versus Red Sox

Pepsi versus Coke

iTunes versus Napster

Yahoo versus Google

XM versus Sirius

Flickr vs Shutterfly vs Ofoto vs Snapfish

Trying out the new Google Page Creator

mdoeff — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 22:56:00 +0000

I tested out the new Google Page Creator and, I have to say, I’m pretty impressed with the WYSIWYG tool, but I’m not really sure where they are going with this. I was able to build this page in about 20 minutes. I just worry that this is going to be Google’s version of Geocities. This one-line review spotted on Flickr pretty much sums it up: “No RSS? What is this for, cat photos?”.