Google+ on the App Store

So Google+ is on iTunes. It is available for iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4. It requires iOS 4.0 or later.
Click here to download it from the App Store.

 

 

Free Google plus invites!

I managed to register on Google+ with a different e-mail account, and now I can send invites to anybody! So if you want an invite do any two or more of these: follow this blog, follow our Twitter page, like us on Facebook or +1 this. Then just post your e-mail below! I will send you an invite ASAP. My (not real) profile can be found here. This is where I will be sending the invites from. I would also be happy if someone wanted to test some stuff with me! :)

See your Facebook Stream Inside Google+

Google+Facebook allows you to see your Facebook stream inside Google+.
Simply Connect to Facebook, and get all the updates on your Google+ Facebook tab.

Click here for Google+Facebook

Google+ vs Facebook & Skype - Funny Picture

The Difference between Google, Microsoft and Apple

Facebook +1'd This

I can explain everything - comic

The Real Evolution

Google Squash

Surplus - chrome extension

Google Plus Integration for Chrome.

Features:
* Post or respond from within the popup
* Desktop Notifications
* Notification sounds
* Switch between multiple Google accounts

Click here to get Surplus from the Chrome Web Store

Replies and more for Google+ - chrome extension

Adds extra functionality to Google Plus. Currently just a reply button for each comment and a "Reply to Author" for each post. 

It'll ask you for access to a few Google sites (this is required because this modifies content on any page that contains Google+ elements). Make sure you refresh any Google+ windows that you had open before installing.

Recent changes:
  - 1.8: Add de translation
  - 1.7: Add zh_CN and zh_TW translations
  - 1.6: Workaround for the notifications menu sized wrong when scrolled down the page
  - 1.5: Reduce CPU usage on Google+ pages
  - 1.4: Translations for Pусский and Nederlands users
  - 1.3: Fix for non-english users
  - Some bugfixes that make buttons more reliable
  - Added a settings page to toggle each feature on and off
  - Added favicon notification
  - Added ctrl+enter shortcut to submit a post (was slightly busted in 1.1)
  - Added code to make the header back sticky (floats down the page as you scroll)

Click here to get Replies and more for Google+ from the Chrome Web Store

GTools+ - Chrome Extension

This extension adds functionality to Google services. Here is the list of features that allows the extension:

- Stick the Google+ bar always on top when you scrolling
- Prevent open in new tab or window when you click on link inside the Google+ bar
- Change the position of the chat for put in the Google+ Bar
- Change the color of the notification bubble in the Google+ bar
- Right click on the extension icon for go to the options page fastest

vesion 0.1.5.0
- Google Chat is changed for a button in the Google Bar, before the name
- Icon is added for go to option more fastest, right-click for see options link.
- New icon for the extension

version 0.1.4.0
- You can change the Google Chat position to the right column

version 0.1.3.0
- Change the color of the notification bubble. May people don't like the red and other dont want to see, If you want remove, set the notification color to gray or black.

version 0.1.2.0
- Remove the opening in a new page when you click in the new Google+ bar (work on Google+)
- Also stick the Google bar at the top of the page. This feature is very useful especially when you scroll the page on Google+

Click here to get GTools+ from the Chrome Web Store

Hide Google+ Notification - Chrome Extension

Simple extension to hide the little red Google Plus notification from the global google header toolbar. 


Click here to get Hide Google+ Notification from the Chrome Web Store

Facebook skins for Google+ Chrome extension

This makes Google+ look like Facebook, you can also share posts from Google+ to Facebook and Twitter.

Click here to get Facebook skins for Google+ from the Chrome Web Store

Google CSS Tricks Chrome Extension

This extension "slightly changes the interface of Google to maximizes space & provide the most appropriate usability."

Click here to get Google CSS tricks from the Chrome Web Store

Color Plus - replace any Google Plus bar with a more colorful alternative

Color Plus is a Chrome extension that lets you change the color of the Google Plus bar because the gray is utterly boring. The default color is green, but you can find more alternative styles here:
http://www.rioleo.org/google-plus-bar-color-changer-extension.php

Click here to get Color Plus from the Chrome Web Store

Facebook like for Google+

I don't really know what this is, i didn't have a proper look at it. The description was in chinese, so I translated it and this is what I've got:
"Facebook more praise by praise? Painless transfer of Google plus, the future of this product will continue to introduce more painless transfer function. Also welcome suggestions for google plus more fun."

So, check it out if you want, and if you know any more about it, please comment below!

Click here to get Facebook Like for Google plus from the Chrome Web Store

Notification Count for Google+ Chrome Extension

If you want to be aware of who are talking to you or mentioning you in their conversation on Google Plus, but don't wish to have a web page consistently opened for Google Plus or Gmail, then you should try this.

Existing Features:

+ Checks for any unread notifications of your Google Plus every minute, and displays unread notification count on your browser extension toolbar. 

+ Click to open a tab to read all notifications. 

Click here to get Notification Count For Google Plus from the Chrome Web Store

Google+ Lite Chrome Web Store

I searched Google+ on the Chrome Web Store, and this is something I've found. Apparently, it's a lite version of Google+.
What it really does, is it loads a mobile version of Google+, you still can't register, so it's quite pointless. It asks you to log-in with your Google account, I assume it's safe because it's part of google.com.

Click here to get Google Plus Lite from the Chrome Web Store
This is what it brings up if you sign in:

Click image to enlarge

Google+ Photo Zoom Extension For Chrome

One interesting application is the Google+ Photo Zoom extension for the Chrome browser. It basically enables larger image previews on Google+ streams.

Images are posted in fixed size to Google+ streams. Users need to click on the images to open the photo browser to see a larger version of the image in the browser.

That’s not super handy if you like to view images in their original resolution and not as detail reduced thumbnails.

Photo Zoom enables zooming on mouse over. All you need to do is move your mouse cursor over an image in a stream to get a larger version of it in an overlay.

The overlay image is aligned to the right side of the Chrome browser. Its actual size depends on the browser window. Images that are large enough will for instance grow larger dynamically when you move the mouse cursor from the posted image’s right side to the left.

The example screenshot above is a rather bad example because of identical sizes. It demonstrates the functionality nicely on the other hand. Just hover your mouse over the left image to see a larger version of the image popup (if available).

Photo Zoom comes with four options. One to enable or disable the functionality, and three that define the type of pictures that the extension will work with. Available are profile icons, pictures from Picasa and external pictures.

Click here to download +Photo Zoom from the Chrome Web Store


Click here for the original article at ghacks.net

Google Blogs and Google Photos instead of Blogger and Picasa - more info

Say goodbye to the Picasa and Blogger names: Google intends to retire several non-Google name brands and rename them as Google products.

The move is part of a larger effort to unify its brand for the public launch of Google+, the search giant’s social initiative.

Blogger and Picasa aren’t going away, of course — they’re two of Google’s most popular products. Instead, according to two sources familiar with the matter, Google intends to rename Picasa “Google Photos” and Blogger will become “Google Blogs.” Several other Google brands are likely to be affected, though our sources made it clear that YouTube would not be rebranded. The technology giant shut down Google Video, its failed web video service, in May.

The move isn’t without precedent; Google acquired JotSpot in 2006 and rebranded it as Google Sites in 2008. In 2007, Google acquired VOIP platform GrandCentral and relaunched it as Google Voice in 2009.


Picasa and Blogger were also Google acquisitions, although both companies have been part of the Google empire for far longer. Picasa was acquired in 2004 and Blogger (co-founded by Evan Williams of Twitter) was acquired in 2003 and is one of the top 10 most visited websites in the world. Although the rebranding could upset some existing customers, it also gives Google the ability to completely integrate both services into Google+.

Rebranding Coming in Next Six Weeks

The transition from Picasa and Blogger to Google Photos and Google Blogs will occur “in a month to a month and a half,” we’ve been told. The date aligns with the likely public launch of Google+. Expect the public debut of Google+ on or before July 31. The date is important because it’s the day all private Google Profiles will be deleted.

We believe Google doesn’t want to have private profiles after the public Google+ launch. Instead, the company is likely to encourage users who want more privacy to use Circles to curate their friend groups.

The brand unification effort will be the largest in company history — it’s never renamed a property as large as Blogger. The popular blog creation service has been receiving a lot of extra love recently. In March, Google announced that Blogger would receive a major overhaul. We doubt many people expected that the overhaul would include a rebranding, though.

Google+ makes perfect sense for Blogger and Picasa — they are both social products that improve as more people use them. It’s important to note that Google+ already has a photos feature, a product that we believe utilizes Picasa technology. It’s also important to note that Google+’s photo feature has no Picasa branding of any kind.

Google declined to comment on this story.


Click here for the original article at mashable.com

Google To Retire Private Google+ Profiles On July 31

As Google expands its Google+ social network to more people, the final outlines of the program begin to take shape. Here’s one important detail, disclosed on the Google Plus help page: there will be no private Google+ profiles. If you choose to keep your profile private, Google will simply delete it after July 31, 2011.

From the Google+ help section:

“The purpose of Google Profiles is to enable you to manage your online identity. Today, nearly all Google Profiles are public. We believe that using Google Profiles to help people find and connect with you online is how the product is best used. Private profiles don’t allow this, so we have decided to require all profiles to be public.

Keep in mind that your full name and gender are the only required information that will be displayed on your profile; you’ll be able to edit or remove any other information that you don’t want to share.

If you currently have a private profile but you do not wish to make your profile public, you can delete your profile. Or, you can simply do nothing. All private profiles will be deleted after July 31, 2011.”

This makes for a crucial difference between Google+ and Facebook; on Facebook, you can have a completely private profile, which won’t even come up in Google’s search results or even Facebook search results (for people who aren’t your friends). On the other hand, to use Google+, you will at least need to make your full name and gender public, meaning people will be able to find you via Google+.


Click here for the original article at mashable.com

Google+ Nick

Q: I want to share my Google+ profile with friends and clients by including a link in my email signature, but the current extension is a long string of random numbers. Is there any way to shorten this URL or personalize it?

A: The long string of numbers at the end of my profile make it difficult to share it with anybody.
Google has said that it will allow vanity URLs for Google+, the new social sharing service it launched last week, at some point, according to the Next Web. But until it does there's an easy work-around. Google Plus Nick, a Web-based app, can turn your Google+ URL into a gplus.to/user address. Just visit the app, enter the long string of numbers that Google has assigned to you and decide on a username.
Click here for Google+ Nick


Click here for the original article at theatlantic.com

Facebook Announces Skype Video Calling

With Google Plus ascendant, Facebook's been feeling some pressure from a competitor for what may be the first time in recent memory. Google's new social network, with its Hangout video chatrooms, friend circles, and familiar online features, poses a definite threat to the established social giant--and now, Facebook has answered right back with an announcement of its own. As social network wizard and noted Geekologist Matt Marquez predicted last week, Facebook unveiled video chat via Skype today at a press conference in Palo Alto. Here's how it works.

Skype through Facebook will provide the same video-chat functionality as the familiar program without requiring an external download. All you'll need to utilize Skype is a plug-in, which you'll be prompted to download whenever someone tries to video chat with you. Facebook's video chat system supports one-on-one conversations only, but Zuckerberg told us that we shouldn't rule out group video chats just yet--especially since he's planning to implement group Facebook chats (in the traditional text-based format) sometime in the near future. There's also a redesign apparently on the horizon, but Zuckerberg didn't give a timeframe or share any further details on that subject.

The Skype/Facebook alliance is certainly a strong one--both programs see near-universal use in their respective fields--but Google Plus has the Hangout feature to hold over Facebook, even after this announcement. ("You know what's cooler than a one-to-one video chat? A billion-to-one video chat.") I'm not ready to take either side just yet, but for now, this has a certain ring of too-little-too-late. That's not to say that Facebook's down and out--not by a long shot. As the entrenched champion of social networks, it's still got the connections, relationships, and organizational tools that keep our social lives running at full tilt. Can Google Plus replace the world's most irreplaceable website? It may be too early to tell. We do know that Mr. Zuckerberg himself is deep behind enemy lines over on Google Plus, which may suggest further escalation in the months to come.

Click here for the original article at ology.com

Google+ Android Application

I had a look on the Android Market for the Google+ app, and here is some stuff about it.

Description:

Real-life sharing rethought for mobile.
Google+ (Google Plus) is still in active development and not yet available to everyone. You need an invitation to sign in.
Google+ for mobile makes sharing the right things with the right people a lot simpler. Huddle lets you send super-fast messages to the people you care about most. With your permission, Instant Upload automatically puts the photos and videos you take into a private album in the cloud, so you can share them anytime, from anywhere. And no matter where you are, the stream lets you stay in the loop about what your friends are sharing and where they’re checking in.
Features:
* Circles let you share the right things with just the right people.
* Stream is where you can get updates from your circles or see what people are saying about things nearby.
* Instant Upload automatically uploads videos and photos to your own private album in the cloud, to make sharing a snap.
* Huddle is super-fast group messaging for everyone in your circles.

Screenshots:    (Click image to enlarge)

 

 

 




Video:

User reviews:  (up to 2011 July the 6th)

Click here for the Google+ Android App page.

Google+ Chrome Application

This application just simply takes you to the Google+ page (https://plus.google.com). It's not very useful, but it can work as a bookmark. If you open a new tab, it appears under your apps.

Click here for the application.

                                    Click to enlarge.

Inside the Google+ iPhone app

Everyone with an iPhone is desperate to get their hands on the Google+ iPhone App.
There’s the Google+ iPhone WEB APP – which you can access just by visiting plus.google.com in your Safari browser and logging in.
Here is some useful stuff about it. This may tell us a bit about what’s in store when the full Google+ iPhone App finally arrives.

Google+ iPhone Web App features:


Home Screen
When you log in to the app you see the home screen – nice and clean – access to your stream, photos, circle and profile – nothing surprising here!




Profile
This is the part  is the biggest Facebook clone! The profile screen – with its buttons for About, Posts and Photos is VERY similar to the Wall, Info, Photos layout in the Facebook iPhone App.

Notice any similarities?!

Stream
Hit stream and the default view is updates from people in your circles. Hit “comments” next to a status update and you can view all comments and add your own:

At the top there are little navigation arrows to right and left for “Incoming” and “Nearby”.
Incoming is just a list of message updates – nothing too clever about this
However Nearby makes nice use of iPhone geolocation and provides you with updates from people closest to you:

Status Updates
Hit the pencil icon to post a status update – choose which circles to share it with – and you can also include your location (or choose not to by deleting it)

Check-Ins
Facebook has Places so Google really couldn’t leave a check-in feature off their Google+ App! Hit the Tick button (sorry – check button) on your stream and then pick from a list of local places. This just uses places that are already defined on Google Maps.

Photos
This is fairly basic on the web-app unfortunately. You can view your own photos. profile pictures and photo’s from people in your circles – but as yet no opportunity to upload photos direct from your iPhone – although this feature will obviously be in the full app (as well as video uploads you would imagine)

Circles
Check out your circles and who’s in them, and click on their details to see their profiles. No opportunity to add or remove people from circles here – but again – the full App will surely have this functionality

So that’s about it for the Google+ iPhone Web App. Its not fully functional by any means, but it’s really clean and simple.


Click here for the original article at siliconbeachtraining.co.uk

Google+ Tips & Tricks

Here are the most useful shortcuts and tricks for Google+ that we have come across. Please share your best tips if you can’t find them in the list in our comments section.

1/ Remember to make some of your posts “public” not just “limited” (limited means shared with your selected circles). Otherwise the public view of your profile will show no posts!

remember add "public" (green) button to share with everyone

2/ To see how the public (and people who are not following you) will see your profile click “view profile as” and select “anyone on the web”. You can also see what your profile looks like to particular people or circles of people.

view your public profile

3/ If you want to send a message for the attention of one person in particular type +name or @name and they should appear in a list for you to select.

send to an individual person only

4/ There is an option to disable sharing. But remember if you want to keep a secret don’t put it online! Everything – even if you disable sharing – is sharable by screen grab! To disable share click on the little arrow top right of your post and select “disable reshare.”

you can disable reshare but remember you secrets are only a screen grab away from being public!

5/ Your contacts cannot see the names of the circles you put them in.

6/ However people can see with whom a limited post is shared! Click on the word limited on someone’s post and you can see who they shared the post with.

7/ Your time-line is affected by how many comments a post has and how many +1’s it has.

8/ Click on Notifications in the left sidebar and you’ll see a chronological listing of all your Google+ notifications. Clicking the “More” link at the upper right of that stream gives you some useful filtering options:

more button in notifications view

• Added to Circles – See everyone who has added you,
• Posts by You – Not all the posts you’ve written (those are in your Profile), but those you’ve written that have been shared by others.
• Posts by Others – Posts written by others that you’ve commented on.
• Mentions – Posts in which you’ve been tagged. When someone in your circles types a “+” and your name, you are tagged
• Photo tags – Posts with photos in which you’ve been tagged.

9/ If you click on Incoming (found in the left hand menu from the home screen) You can see all the posts from people who are following you even if you are not following them! If they seem interesting enough you can add them to your circles

10/ If you click on one of your photographs you can access some Picasa-lite image editing tools. When the Google+ iPhone app launches you’ll also be able to upload photos straight from your phone (Android users can already get the native app). In the meantime the Google+ iPhone web app is a sleek way to use Google+ on the move – but this doesn’t allow photo uploads.

11/ If you have commented on a post you will get updates every time someone else comments. If you are getting too many updates you can mute the post to stop this. Click on the word “post” in your notifications.

click on the word post

click mute this post

12/ Keyboard shortcuts
J – Lets you skip to the next post in your stream without scrolling
K – lets you jump upwards post by post
If you click on a post and hit return your comment box will open ready for your comment.
If you hit tab and return you will send your comment
13/ Type Tips
_ italic text _     will look like     italic text
* bold text *    will look like    bold text
- strikethrough text -    will look like  strikethrough text




Click here for the original article at siliconbeachtraining.co.uk