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Yesterday in Los Angeles, Google finally opened its Music service to the public in an official press event. The service, which has been in beta for a few months now, officially allows users to store up to 20,000 songs for free.
Google Plus Opens Up, Facebook Tells You What’s Important
by Jonathan Strickland | September 21, 2011
Today is a day that will live in online social network myths and legends — the day when Google Plus drops the invitation-only requirement and allows anyone to join. It’s also a day that sees Facebook making more changes to the way your news feed displays on your page. Since there’s a long history of Facebook users reacting negatively to changes, this might mean Google Plus will get a boost right out of the gate. But is that boost going to have any staying power at all?
Is Google stacking the Android deck with Motorola?
by Jonathan Strickland | August 15, 2011
The news broke early this morning — Google is acquiring Motorola Mobility for around $12.5 billion. Motorola Mobility makes Android devices such as smartphones like the Droid and the Atrix as well as the Xoom tablet computer. According to Market Watch, Google CEO and co-founder Larry Page said, “Together, we will create amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystem for the benefit of consumers, partners and developers.”
Over the weekend, hundreds of people on Google+ discovered that their accounts were no longer accessible. Google had disabled the accounts over violations of the terms of service. It’s not that most of the users were rude, posting inappropriate material or violating copyrights. It’s because they hadn’t filled out a Google profile with their real names (or at the very least the name they actually go by on a day-to-day basis). Since the initial reaction to Google’s decision to suspend Google profile accounts that violated this rule, the company has produced this document in an effort to clear up the issue.
Google+ is still very young. The team behind the new social network continues to implement changes and tweak the design based on user feedback. So far, I’ve seen requests from users to implement features such as collapsible comments and circles within circles to make it easier to navigate the Google+ stream (a Google+ stream is like the Facebook wall — it’s where all the updates from your friends pop up). After last night, I hope another request is on their radar — how to handle comments to photos.
Awesome is one of those words that gets watered down through overuse. Literally, it means something that inspires a feeling of awe. That is, it’s something that fills you with reverence, fear or some other overwhelming emotion. Colloquially, we use it to describe anything that’s impressive or good. Once in a while, we use it for something that is just okay. So where does Facebook’s announcement fall in the spectrum?
Thanks to my buddy and tech guru extraordinaire Randall Bennett, I received an invite to Google+ yesterday. It hasn’t been 24 hours since I first logged into the service but I thought I’d share some of my thoughts so far. It’s clear that Google has created an interesting suite of tools and is trying to take advantage of how people rely on their social networks to discover new content. These days, you may rely on your social networks to find the latest news or funny cat videos rather than using search. Google+ clearly is an attempt to move with the times.
Welcome to the first of what I hope will be many news roundups of what’s going on in the tech world today. Below are some of the interesting stories developing in technology, accompanied by a little unbiased, objective and mature commentary from yours truly. Let’s get to it!
News broke today that Groupon has filed for an initial public offering (IPO). The paperwork indicates that Groupon is looking for up to $750 million in this IPO. The filing reveals other interesting information: Groupon employs 7,000 people. It claims 83 million subscribers. In the first quarter of 2011, Groupon earned over $640 million in revenue. Earlier this year, Bloomberg reported that Groupon was discussing a valuation of the company with several banks — a valuation that may have been as high as $25 billion.
Have you ever used Google to search for your own name? If you haven’t, I suggest you give it a try: The results may surprise you. Google probably knows more about you than you’d assume. And, although Google receives a hefty share of criticism for its policies regarding private information, it’s far from the only [...]
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