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Google dominates Android apps race in India

vrreddy — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 06:58:07 +0000

Android usage in India is growing compared to iOS with the fact that iOS devices expensive in India compared to US. With the launch of cheap smartphones equipped with Android will increase the number of smartphone users in India to a whole new level.

Nielsen Informate Panel did a study of android app users in India and updated the results in a blogpost. According to the report Indian users spend 40 percent of active time on data centric apps on their smartphones. 25 percent of the total time they spend on Android apps developed by Google itself and 75 percent time they spend on other apps.

Although Google apps dominate the user time on android smartphone, the most popular app on android doesn’t belong to Google. The top spot is taken by Facebook in social networking category. Google apps dominate in five out of seven app categories and Nimbuzz app tops the chat category. In Google Apps Android Market, YouTube, Gmail lead app usage followed by Gtalk, Google Maps and Search. The study states that Google apps have fairly uniform usage across age groups.

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Google Music Manager now allows music downloads

vrreddy — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 06:26:35 +0000

Google announced an improved Music Manager with new features that allows users to download their purchased music as well as uploaded music. Your music is still accessible from the cloud and you can stream it to your Android devices when you want.

Google Music previously allowed full plays of the purchased music to be shared with Google+ circles, now it integrated YouTube also, with the new option users can now share YouTube videos of the music they purchased with their Google+ friends, if that music video is available on YouTube.

To download just click the triangle next to a song or more and select “Download Selected Songs”. The downloaded songs are 320kbps mp3s.

Download Music

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YouTube adds Disney Movies to Rentals

vrreddy — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 10:20:10 +0000

YouTube announced a deal with Disney that will add hundreds of Disney titles including classics, Disney Pixar Movies and Dream Works Studios Movies to its rental program in US. The announcement also highlights that in the coming weeks more Disney Classics and new releases will be added to the rental program. YouTube already had a deal with other Hollywood studios Universal, Sony Pictures and Warner Bros.

Fans of animated movies? We’ve got the beloved animated classic, Alice in Wonderland and the newly envisioned Winnie the Pooh. Love Disney·Pixar? We have hits like Cars and Cars 2 all in one place. Up for a little bit of adventure? We’ll take you from the darkest depths of the oceans with all four of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, including the most recent blockbuster in the franchise Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.

Enjoy this holiday season with your Family by watching your favorite Disney Movies.

Via YouTube

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Google to shut Knol, Wave, Gears, Friend connect

vrreddy — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 09:55:32 +0000

Google announced Knol, back in 2007 with the aim to create an authoritative knowledge base written by experts. The effort didn’t take off really except the initial hype. Everyone including Google seems forgotten about Knol till now, Google announced now that it is retiring the service with effect from April 30 2012, everything from the site will be removed but not from the servers. Users have the opportunity to download the articles till October 1st 2012 or can migrate their content to Annotum.org, which is powered by WordPress built in collaboration with Solvitor LLC and Crowd Favorite. Knol users can migrate their content to Annotum using Export option in Knol account, and users can set redirects from Knol to Annotum.

Along with Knol Google is retiring several other projects as well including Google Friend Connect, Wave, Google Search timeline, Google Gears, Renewable energy cheaper than Coal and Google Bookmark lists.

Google Friend Connect allowed users to add social features to their sites by embedding a few snippets of code. This also didn’t take off and with the recent launch of Google+ this feature is redundant. Google is retiring this service effective from march 1st 2012 for all non-blogger sites and suggests users to use Google plus.

Google Bookmarks lists is an experimental feature for sharing bookmarks and collaborating with friends, this is retiring from December 19, 2011. Only lists feature is being retired and bookmarks stay alive.

Google gears allowed web applications to be used offline, Gears for Gmail is quite popular, even WordPress has a gears plugin. In March Google Gears browser extension was ceased and starting from December 1st 2011 Gears based Gmail and Calendar will stop working and Gears won’t be available for download. To supplement this Google is using offline capabilities of HTML5.

Google Wave another over hyped product from Google is retiring, Infact the development of Google Wave ceased a year back. From January 31, 2012 onwards Wave becomes read only and users can’t create new ones. April 30, 2012 they will completely turn it off.

All of these services which are announced to shut are not popular with users, while some users might like some of these products but most failed to get user attention. That may be one of the reason to shut down all these products, in that way Google can focus on their main business, that is search and other initiatives like Google plus.

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Google Music launches with social sharing

vrreddy — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 12:48:47 +0000

Much awaited Google Music launched with content partnerships with big labels as well as Indie artists. Google music for android comes with a cloud locker, streaming service and download store. It allows users to buy millions of tracks from the Google marketplace and fully integrated to android market. Google Music currently has around 13 million tracks and 8 million tracks are available from today and the rest of them will come soon.

Google Music is currently available only in the US, and is integrated into the android market. Users can upload 20,000 songs to the cloud locker for free, these can be streamed via the cloud or has the option for offline listening. Songs are currently sold at $0.99 and $1.29, each song can be previewed for 90 seconds, and the songs are 320kbps MP3s. Users can purchase individual songs or entire albums right from the computer or from android device and they will be synced to Google music library and can be accessed from anywhere. T-mobile customers has the option to pay their purchases through their monthly phone bills.

Google Music will have artists hubs, artists can sell their music through Google build artist pages and can sell content directly to fans. There’s a one time $25 registration fees. Artists can put their own pricing for the tracks they want to sell. The artist will control the final pricing of the song, and the split is 70 / 30 between artist and Google. The songs can be sold directly against their YouTube channels.

Google Music users can share their purchases on Google+ allowing their followers and friends to listen full song once.

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Google+ Notifications Extension for Google Chrome

vrreddy — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 09:34:00 +0000

Google released official Google+ extensions for Google Chrome. These extensions will help you to see all Google+ notifications right from the browser and a Google+ button to share web pages.

Google+ notification extension shows if you have any new notifications in Google+, the extension button will turn red and shows the count of notifications you have. Once you click the button a dropdown window will appear and shows the notifications similar to what you see with Google bar when using any of the Google services. Clicking on these notifications will show you a quick view of the activity without leaving the browser tab you are on.

Google+ button extension adds Google+ button to your browser, using this you can +1 any page and share it with others.

Google+ Notifications extension, Google+ button

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Google tweaked search algorithm to give fresh and more recent results

vrreddy — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 06:21:04 +0000

Today Google announced that its search algorithm underwent an upgrade which affects 35% of the searches. The algorithm is tweaked to give more recent information where it matters. For example searches like sports events, elections and product reviews demand more fresh results than the other searches, this change will affect these kind of searches.

Explaining the change in the algorithm Google engineer writes “If I search for [olympics], I probably want information about next summer’s upcoming Olympics, not the 1900 Summer Olympics (the only time my favorite sport, cricket, was played). Google Search uses a freshness algorithm, designed to give you the most up-to-date results, so even when I just type [olympics] without specifying 2012, I still find what I’m looking for.

Today announced changes are built on Google’s “Caffeine web indexing system”, which allows Google to crawl and index the web for fresh content on a large-scale.

Recent events or hot topics: For recent events like sports events searchers expect more recent information, in this regard the results might be only minutes old. See the example image below for search query “occupy Oakland protest” showing the latest information.

Regularly recurring events: Some events like elections takes place at regular intervals, and when you search for presidential election you want information that is fresh, not years old. These type of searches show latest information to the searchers.

Frequent updates: In the case of product reviews you might want the latest reviews about a camera, in this case the more relevant and fresh product reviews will come up first due to the recent changes in Google’s algorithm.

Google says “Different searches have different freshness needs. This algorithmic improvement is designed to better understand how to differentiate between these kinds of searches and the level of freshness you need, and make sure you get the most up to the minute answers”, in a blog post on official Google blog.

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Google is offering free website for Indian SMBs

vrreddy — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 11:03:43 +0000

Google India today announced a unique program called “India Get Your Business Online” for small medium businesses (SMBs) in India. The program offers free websites, domain & hosting services to small medium businesses in India. According to Google there are 8 million small medium businesses in India but only 5% of them have the online presence. This program will bridge that gap and brings the local businesses to online.

The program is designed with local partners and provides tools and resources to establish a website. Hosting is provided by HostGator, the web hosting is free for one year. Google aims to get 500,000 businesses online in the next three years through this program. Businesses will also get a .IN domain name free for the first year. Indian small business owners can logon to www.indiagetonline.in to signup for the free website program.

This is what Indian businesses will get from this offer

Free: It’s free to set up your website. The domain is free for 1 year, and it’s free to maintain your website for 12 months.
Quick: The website tool takes 15 minutes from sitting down to being found online
Easy: You don’t need to be a tech whiz to get started. All you need to start is your address, phone number, TAN/CIN or PAN to verify you as a business
The website is simple because customers are looking for simple information online
Gives you your own .in domain
Other features include photos/logos, integration with social media platforms
You get a Google Apps account – free personalised email ids
If you want to make your website work harder, you’ll have access to steady stream of free tips and tools from the Getting Indian Business Online team and a free coupon of worth Rs. 2500 INR advertising trial from Google AdWords to help promote your site.
After the first year, SMBs can choose to pay a monthly pay-as-you-go to maintain their website using hostgator.
At the end of the first year, they’ll have to pay a nominal charge if they wish to renew their domain name. They can cancel their website at any time.

This program is supported by Federation of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), popularly known as FISME.

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Google unveils new look for Gmail

vrreddy — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 07:14:24 +0000

Google has today rolled out a new design for its popular email service Gmail. The mew features in the redesign include a simplified and clean look, improved search functionality, improved threaded conversations and HD themes.

There is s new settings menu using that one can change the display density, themes etc. Display density will allow you to set how compact or spaced out the visual elements in the Gmail. There are three options to for display density, Comfortable, Cozy and Compact. With the new look there are several new themes with better graphics. The new themes come with HD pictures, the imagery is provided by iStockPhoto.

The email conversations now look like chat conversations with profile pictures left to the mail wherever they are available. This feature is a welcome addition and very useful when several people are in the conversation.

A revised navigation option allows you to customize the left sidebar, you can arrange the elements the way you like.

The search also got improvements, click on the search box an advanced search box will drop down which allows you to search using fields like From, To, subject, attachments and time. You can also restrict the search to labels.

The new look is not completely rolled out to all users, in the next few days you can see “Switch to the new look” on the bottom right of the Gmail screen.

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Now users can decide who can send Google+ notifications to them

vrreddy — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 06:27:24 +0000

Google has announced a new setting “Who can notify you” in Google+, it is being rolled out based on user feedback according to Google+ engineer. This is a welcome addition to the Google+ as users are asking for better privacy controls in Google+.

The new setting is set to ‘Extended circles’ by default but users can change the setting based on their preference for notifications via Google+ settings.

According to Google Engineer Kathleen Ko the new setting controls will affect notifications if users do any of the following.

Share with you individually
Select ‘Notify about this post’ (when sharing to a circle you’re in)
Mention your name
Invite you to a hangout
Invite you to play or send you messages from a game

But these controls won’t prevent notifications to you when someone adds comments in one of your post or when someone adds you to their circles.

The new feature is not rolled out to all users now, it will be rolled out soon to all users.

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