Motorola Moto X review: Demolishing the competition despite the odds

Google's Motorola has unveiled Moto X the first smartphone that's been developed with close collaboration with the Internet giant. While it doesn't really boast of high-end specifications, the much-hyped smartphone offers a few of differentiating features. Here's a look at 5 of the major ones.

1. Touch-less control
First seen in Google Glass and then in voice search on Chrome, the feature lets users control the phone with simple voice commands prefixed with "Okay, Google Now." This also lets users access Google Now, Google's voice-based assistant that fetches information and performs tasks like fixing appointments, setting up alarms, and doing currency conversions. The interesting bit is that you don't need to touch the phone or take it out of your pocket. If enabled, it always actively listens to the user and follows commands.



2. Active Display
Motorola has put an AMOLED screen on the Moto X, and these displays can be used to selectively display information without affecting the device's battery life. First seen in some Nokia phones, the display offers notifications for messages, calls and other events and the current time, without having to unlock the phone.

 
3. Quick Capture
The Moto X phone features a shake gesture that directly opens the phone's camera app. You need to shake the phone twice to turn on the camera to capture something spontaneously. You can then simply touch the screen to take a photo, similar to the Windows Phone camera app. One can also touch and hold to take multiple pictures quickly.

4. Authentication through wireless devices
You can also set the phone to authenticate when a trusted Bluetooth device is connected or if the phone is near a paired device such as a computer or a Bluetooth headset. This eliminates the need to unlock the phone every time. For example, if your Bluetooth-enabled laptop or speaker is around, your phone will know it's in a 'trusted' environment, and eliminate the need to manually unlock the phone.

5. Customisability
You can customise the body of the phone and choose from 18 back covers, different colour accents for the ring around the camera lens, accents around the volume and on-off buttons and get a personal message etched at the back of the phone. However, the customisation feature is limited to US carrier AT&T.

One note for our readers outside US, Canada and Latin America - if you are waiting to get your hands on the Moto X, you'll be disappointed as Motorola has decided to sell the phone in only the aforementioned regions.

Key Features of Moto X (16 GB) (Black)

• 10 MP Quick Capture Gesture Primary Camera
• 1.7 GHz Dual Core Krait CPU
• Water-repellent Coating
• 2 Years 50 GB Free Storage Google Drive
• Moto X Respond to Voice
• Miracast Wireless Display
• NFC Support
• Touchless Control: OK Google Now
• 16 GB Internal Memory
• Android v4.4 (KitKat) OS
• 4.7-inch AMOLED Touchscreen with Active Display

Square Cash Goes Head To Head With Venmo And Google Wallet To Allow Anyone To Send Money Via Email

Square today is formally launching Square Cash, a product that allows anyone to send money to a contact via email. Square initially soft-launched the product to a limited number of users earlier this year but is opening the service more broadly to users with a few tweaks to the initial payments system.

As Square’s director of products Brian Grassadonia explains, this launch aligns with the company’s goal of reducing friction around payments and making commerce simpler. Whereas Square’s core products, including its iPad register and swiper, make payments easy for merchants, this makes sending cash to anyone as simple as sending an email.

Here’s how it works. The sender simply emails cash@square.com and CC’s the person they want to send the money to with the amount of money either in the subject or body of the email. If the sender has not already added his or her debit card, then Square will instruct the sender to register a debit card on a web page with just the card number, billing ZIP code and the expiration date. The recipient will immediately get another email from Square telling them that they have received money from the sender with a link to add the recipient’s debit card, billing ZIP and expiration date.

Once they type in their debit card information, this begins the transfer, which takes one to two business days. We’re told that the recipient has up to 14 days to enter the debit card and receive the money, and the recipient will get reminders every other day via email.

Square is also releasing native apps for Android and iOS that incorporate email, as well. When you open the Square Cash app on your phone, you’ll be prompted with a number pad, in which you type in the amount of money you want to send. Once you do this, the app will bring up an email from the dedicated email client on the phone. The email will be pre-filled with the amount the sender entered, and they can type anything in the body of the email, as well as input the email of the person they want to send money to. The user experience from then onwards is similar to how you receive/send payments via a traditional email client on the web. The app, Grassadonia adds, are for users who want to keep Square Cash at top of mind.

"We want this to be an extension of your offline world, so that no matter where you are, you can send money to anyone," Grassadonia says.

As for fees, Square says there aren’t any associated with Square Cash. This actually is a change from the initial version of the service, which charged senders $0.50 per transaction.

There are, of course, a number of competitors in the space. First, Venmo offers a similar peer-to-peer payments system that allows you to pay your contacts and Facebook friends from within apps. Google is also rolling out Gmail integration with Google Wallet that would essentially allow users to perform the same functions as Square Cash.

But Grassadonia says that Square Cash differs from some of the other offerings out there because you don’t have to be an account holder, and the service only requires you to enter your debit card number. In addition, Square Cash is email-client-agnostic so you can send from any email client. As for whether Square will add the ability for integration with Facebook, we’re told that there are no plans for social integrations as the company wants to keep Square Cash lightweight.

It’s not surprising that Square is betting on P2P payments with Square Cash. There are a considerable amount of opportunities to incorporate P2P payments into apps and scale across a number of markets. We heard that Venmo, which was just acquired by PayPal via the payments giant purchase of the Braintree for $800 million, was particularly attractive for eBay and PayPal. And PayPal CEO David Marcus seems to be investing in Venmo to build out the service to a global platform.

Find Who has Access to your Files in Google Drive

Google Drive lets you share files with specific contacts or you can make them public and anyone can then view your files. Sharing also prevents you from clogging someone else’s mailbox. For instance, if you are sending a large file as an email attachment, a better option would be that you upload the file to Google Drive and share the link instead.

Who Can View or Edit your Shared Files?

If you have been using the sharing feature of Google Docs (now Google Drive) for some time, you may have quite a few files in the Drive that are accessible to other users. Would you like to review this list?
Here’s a simple Google script that will scan your Google Drive and prepare a list all files that have been shared from your Google Drive.
To get started, click here to copy the Google Script in your own Google Drive. Then choose Run->Start to execute the Google Script. The script will ask for authorization since it needs to check the sharing permissions of the file in your Google Drive. Say “authorize” and you’ll soon get an email with a list of all the shared files that were found in your Google Drive.
The report, see the above screenshot, will have links to the shared files and also a list of users who can view or edit that particular file. If a file can be viewed by anyone, the user will be mentioned as Public.
The Google Script checks the sharing permissions of every single file in your Google Drive and thus it may take a minute or two to finish if you have too many files in the Drive.

Google Introduces Us To Ice Cream Sandwich

When I said it would be a busy fall, I didn’t expect us to be covering two big announcements in one day, or three/four/five, depending on how you choose to count them. Samsung didn’t just show off new hardware, Google was there to show off the new software behind that hardware. Details of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich have been leaking for some time now but with the SDK published and the event wrapped up we have a better sense of what Google has in mind for the next phase in Android. Let’s get started.

Matias Duarte started off by introducing the audience to Android’s new font, Roboto. Playful though the name is, it is a stylish and elegant font, and while it might not strike the right note for everyone it certainly seems easy to read. It’s featured throughout ICS, including the digital clock on the lock screen which is where we’ll begin. The layout is familiar, and not too divergent in look. In function there’s some new tricks to show off. Swiping the unlock icon to the right takes you to your home screen, though swiping left takes you to the camera app, more on that in a bit. This trick has been seen before, most recently in HTC’s Sense 3.5. New - though perhaps not as revolutionary - is facial recognition based unlock, which Google aptly calls Face Unlock. This was a feature in my Lenovo S10 from several years back, and judging by the demo this implementation may face the same hurdles as that Lenovo, poor lighting leads to poor recognition. This may pan out, though right now it seems like a solution searching for a problem. 

The gold standard for notifications systems has been WebOS since its introduction, with Android following close behind. In its latest incarnation the differences are mainly cosmetic and in the addition of a music notification with playback controls and the ability to swipe away individual notifications. These are features that we’ve seen in skinned and modded versions of Android for some time, but welcome nonetheless. What we haven’t seen is the ability to peek at notifications from the lock screen and then go directly into the app that originated the notification upon unlock. 

 

Having unlocked your phone you are now presented with a home screen that looks like a comfortable marriage between Honeycomb and Gingerbread. Honeycomb’s on screen buttons have evolved and are delightfully animated, and though anchored to the bottom or right hand side of the device, depending on orientation, they rotate appropriately. This area is called the System Bar, and will also be home to the Notification shade on tablet ICS devices. Just above the System Bar is the Favorites tray, an evolution of the docks we’ve seen before. Here you’ll find icons for Phone, People, Messaging, Browser and, of course, App Drawer, though it will be highly customizable, even supporting Folders. When you do decide to open an app, the Favorites tray becomes the Action Bar and provides contextual actions for the app you’re in. It can be at the top or bottom of the screen and can change configuration within the app based on context. In the Gmail demo, for instance, they showed how while in the Inbox the Action Bar had buttons to compose a new message, search your messages or access labels. Upon opening or selecting an e-mail, new buttons populate the Action Bar. Adopting the Action Bar will be a key UI element in ICS apps. 

 

Back to the home screen, Google apps are now resizable and that functionality will be opened up to developers. The familiar home and back buttons are rejoined by the Recent Apps button from Honeycomb. This multitasking implementation looks and works very similarly as in the tablet OS, with the added ability to kill individual tasks with a swipe. This was an oft lamented absence in Honeycomb, as the list of apps could get quite long after several days of use. 

 

Phones are meant as communications devices so Google spent time on the Phone, Messaging and People apps. The People app replaces the Contacts app of old, and is livened up with larger pictures and a lot more data. Opening a contact’s profile reveals the typical list of numbers and e-mails, but it also includes connections through social media, and a swipe to the left reveals an integrated aggregation of that contact’s updates within those networks. They’ve also included a new Favorites tab that introduces a UI concept that we’ll see recurring in Android from now on, and it may look familiar to Windows Phone 7 users. The Favorites tab displays larger high resolution images of your most common contacts in a tightly aligned grid that is described as a ‘magazine style UI’ and bears a striking resemblance to the panels popular in Microsoft’s Metro UI. 

 

The Phone app has been updated with in-line visual voicemail (through Google Voice) amongst your call log, and a Favorite’s tab, as in the People app, that allows you to call common contacts with one touch instead of opening their profile first. Calling one of your contacts yields a new in-call screen that features a large profile image overlaid with call information and call functions. 

 

The Messaging app gets its biggest update from the improved keyboard, which has in-line spell check, improved word suggestion with easier to select options, and a  refined way to add words to the dictionary. The voice recognition functions of Android have been improved and they’ve implemented an ‘open microphone’ experience that allows you to dictate long messages and insert punctuation, regardless of any pauses you might have while composing. The engine even supports emoticons. 

 

Screenshot of the article, within the article... How meta.

The Browser gets a new ‘Save for off-line reading’ function that is aimed at more than just storing articles, but can include things like boarding passes, and train schedules. It also gets a tab management system that mirrors the Recent Apps function. The stock android browser now also includes incognito mode, which no doubt will be used in conjunction with Flash for lots of scientific research. 

 

Every browser iteration from Android features performance improvements and this one is no different. Google notes that the stock Android browser gets much improved rendering speed through an improved and updated version of WebKit, and faster JavaScript performance thanks in part to an update to V8's crankshaft JIT engine. Google claims an improvement of 220% in Android 4.0 over Android 2.3 in V8, and 35% faster SunSpider 0.9.1 performance on the Nexus S alone. We look forward to testing out this improved Android browser and seeing what other improvements are lurking inside very soon. 

Google's Browser Performance Benchmarks (Courtesy Google)

In the emulator the benefits of this new version of WebKit are readily visible, where Android 4.0's browser scores 230 and 3 bonus points, compared with 177 and 1 bonus point in Android 2.3.5. The new browser also thankfully now exposes a desktop user agent switcher, something that has been missing for far too long from the stock Android browser.

 

The Calendar app gets a new layout and features pinch to zoom for easily shifting from a broader to a more granular view of your agenda, and back again. They’ve extended the use of the swipe here to allow you to go back and forth between days/weeks/months. This same motion is found in the new Gmail app for browsing through e-mails quickly. And that Gmail app now gets two-line previews along with the other UI changes. 

The Camera and Gallery apps have seen much work, and zero shutter lag exposure and a facial recognition function that keeps the image focused on identified faces are among the highlights. For Video the ability to zoom and continuously focus the shot while filming is a boon. And a new panorama mode allows users to easily create long shots with just a single motion, on the device and with a simple on-screen guide. Sharing from the redesigned Gallery app is a two tap affair, and the integrated photo editor allows cropping, rotation, red-eye reduction and the application of filters to captured photos. The Gallery itself is graced with that ‘magazine style UI’ and can be used to build Albums but can also sort pictures by location and faces.

NFC features prominently in Google’s plans with Google Wallet, and gains added functionality with Android Beam, which allows sharing of everything from files to links between two NFC enabled ICS devices.

Chrome 15 Released

Six weeks after the release of Chrome 14, Google today released Chrome 15.0.874.102 to the stable channel - current Chrome users should be getting it now or soon, and curious fans of other browsers canpick it up from Google. 

Chrome 15's most obvious new feature is a redesigned New Tab page, pictured above, which lets you toggle between apps and frequently visited sites and also includes a menu in the bottom-right corner for easily bringing up recently visited sites. There are also quite a few bug fixes, which you can check out in detail on the Chrome Releases blog.

Chrome, as usual, is available for Windows XP and newer, OS X 10.5 (Intel only) and newer, and many flavors of Linux.

PayPal On Barriers To Google Wallet: Mass Adoption Of NFC Is Years Away

As you may have read, Google officially launched its mobile payments platform Google Wallet recently, which allows you to pay for products in the real world by tapping your NFC-enabled Android phone against a compatible card reader. Shortly following the initial announcement of the technology in May, payments giant PayPal went on the offensive, filing a lawsuit against Google and two former PayPal executives who now are in charge of mobile payments at Google. Allegations of “misappropriation of trade secrets, and “breach of fiduciary duty” were thrown out against these individuals. Clearly, it’s messy. While the lawsuit itself spoke volumes about PayPal’s view on Google Wallet, the eBay-owned company has not really commented on Google Wallet over the past few months. Until now.

We sat down with PayPal’s director of communications, Anuj Nayar, who candidly gave me the company’s opinions on Google Wallet and NFC technologies. We know that eBay and PayPal have a somewhat interesting view on NFC technology. In a recent earnings call, eBay CEO John jokingly said merchants refer NFC “not for commerce.” But PayPal has dipped its toes in the NFC pool with support for Android, which Nayar explains as ‘keeping an eye’ on the technology.

Nayar says that one advantage he sees with PayPal’s payments platform vs. Google Wallet is that “we’re not asking anyone to do anything different.” He points to the fact that in order to use NFC right now, many consumers would have to change phones to the NFC-enabled Nexus S. “There simply aren’t that many NFC enabled phones out there and we don’t see NFC as something that will happen very quickly,” he explains.

Another challenge to the adoption Google Wallet’s platform and NFC, says Nayar, is trying to get merchants to change their behavior. As my colleague Greg Kumparak wrote in his review of Google Wallet, merchant adoption is still limited.

Nayar says that mass adoption of NFC is still at least three years away but even then, the technology will not replace mobile payments all together. Of course, he explains that PayPal is watching the NFC space closely (by launching their own integrations), but the sense is that the company isn’t heavily investing in the technology because of some of these barriers to adoption.

An area where PayPal is investing in is a comprehensive solution for in-store merchants to integrate PayPal into the checkout experience. Later this year, PayPal will be rolling out a one-stop shop for merchants, both online and local businesses, to manage payments from customers. Details are sparse but PayPal says that new features will include location-based offers, making payments accessible from any device and offering more payments flexibility to customers after they’ve checked out.

And soon, you’ll also be able to use PayPal in physical payments gateways at stores as well (where you would normally complete the credit card swiping process), and will have the ability to access realtime store inventory, receive in-store offers, and real-time location-based advertising from stores. The company is expected to announce a number of in-store partnerships with large retailers in the near future.

Nayar says that PayPal’s solution is more complete for merchants, and is capitalizing on a huge factor in the end-to-end shopping experience—data. He explains that relevant data and personalization will play a big role in the new payments experience, so that PayPal’s 100 million-plus users will be able to see more relevant offers and experiences and merchants will be able to target customers.

PayPal isn’t the first payments company to go on the offensive against NFC. Keith Rabois, COO of mobile payments company Square, said last week at GigaOm’s Mobilize conference that NFC “has no value proposition for consumers and merchants.”

Still it’s hard to ignore the fact that Google, as well as other mobile tech companies like HTC, LG, Motorola, RIM, Samsung and Sony Ericsson, are making major investments in NFC. Even credit card companies are making bets on NFC as well. And MasterCard, who is a partner in Google Wallet, has said that NFC is a “five-to-ten year effort.” As my colleague Sarah Perez points out, the merchant adoption hurdle to NFC is valid, but contactless infrastructure is already in more locations than consumers may realize, even if it’s somewhat underused.

While there’s no crystal ball to tell us whether NFC will be around in a few years or ten years, clearly PayPal isn’t making a huge bet on the technology and is investing in other in-store technologies. However, even if NFC is years away from mass adoption, Google is gambling that being early to the game will help the company dominate the mobile payments market in the future. It will be surely be interesting to see whose foresight pays off in five years.

And in case you were wondering, Nayar says there are no updates to the status of that PayPal v. Google lawsuit.
 source:-http://techcrunch.com/

Many Android apps won't run on BlackBerry PlayBook

Android applications which uses Google Maps, in app billing, SIP VoIP and live Android wallpapers would not be usable on the BlackBerry PlayBook.

Any application which uses Google Maps, in app billing, SIP VoIP (Voice-over Internet Protocol) and live Android wallpapers would not be usable on the BlackBerry PlayBook.

This has been revealed by the Research In Motion engineers at the Droidcon conference in Romania.

According to a blog, "Key features which will be unavailable to Android apps running under the compatibility layer on the PlayBook and future BlackBerry devices include Android's famed battery-sucking Live Wallpaper, SIP and SIP VoIP, anything built using the Native Development Kit, apps containing only App Widgets, and apps containing more than one activity tied to the Launcher."

This is definitely bad news for BlackBerry PlayBook which had promised that the Android apps would work on the device through an Android app player, thus delivering the best of both worlds for the users, QNX platform as well as the Android apps. With this news, the viability of the BlackBerry PlayBook ecosystem has come into question as it's clear if there are no apps on the device users are not likely to buy it either.

Google Maps or in app billing are essential for several apps and their absence will not be welcomed by users or developers. In app billing is absolutely essential for the survival of freemium apps which generate their revenue from in app billing alone.

Monitor Visitor Activity on your Site

Google Analytics, the world’s favorite web analytics tool that lets you track visitors to your website, just got better. It now offers traffic reports in real-time.
Earlier there was a delay of 3-4 hours before Google could update their reports but now the Analytics charts on your screen will update almost instantly (see video) as visitors enter or leave your pages.
Google Analytics offers three key metrics for your site in real-time – where are people coming from (geographic location), how are they finding your site (search queries and referrals) and what are they reading on your site (top pages). You also get to know the number of visitors that are currently on your site.
The real-time reporting feature just got enabled in my Google Analytics dashboard and the traffic reports are now absolutely fascinating to watch. The location real-time report is integrated with Google Earth plug-in as well but for some reason, it didn't work in any of my browsers.
Now if I share a story on Twitter, or if some popular site link to this blog, I can quickly jump to Google Analytics to see the response. This won't have been possible without real-time reports.

Video – Google Analytics in Real-Time

If you don’t the real-time feature in in your Google account yet, just fill in this form to request early access. On a related note, this little announcement could possibly affect the business of several other players whose sole USP was real-time analytics.

You Tap and Spend on Google Wallet

Google's smartphone payment app, Google Wallet, has brought the ease of paying for goods with the tap of a phone to America

This first rollout works great, but only if you can receive the over-the-air update of the app to a Nexus S 4G smartphone from Sprint. Then you need to find a store with a MasterCard PayPass payment terminal, which initiates a funds transfer from your credit or debit card when you tap a phone on it.

The Nexus S has a built-in near-field communication (NFC) chip and is equipped with special security technology, which makes it capable of safely supporting the short-range radio communications necessary to make in-store payments. In the future, NFC's two-way capability will allow Google and other companies to send coupons and special offers to Google Wallet users.

Since Google rolled out the app gradually, I had to wait five days to receive Google Wallet over the air in a 14.3MB update labeled Android 2.3.7 to a Nexus S 4G phone.

Once the app was loaded and initiated with a secure PIN that I created, I set out to find a store near my home in Virginia that accepted Google Wallet payments. Even though Google's website listed dozens of stores in my ZIP code that would accept Google Wallet, I had to go to five stores before finding one with a terminal that would accept it.

But the effort was worth it. When I made my first payment with a touch of the Nexus S to the terminal on the counter at my neighborhood McDonald's on Monday afternoon, the teenager selling me my grilled chicken sandwich and Coke for $6.42 exclaimed: "Wow, that's a cool phone! What phone is that?"

His boss seemed skeptical that I had actually paid, however, until my paper receipt spilled out of the register. She grabbed the receipt, examined it, and gave it to me with a grunt, while the teen smiled broadly and handed me my lunch in a perfectly folded paper bag with the send-off, "Thank-you, Mister!" (By then, it felt like I was in a Mickey Rooney movie.)

I was pretty pumped, too, which seemed silly, given all the amazing early adopter technologies I've seen over the years. Still, I went to the CVS across the street to make sure my first success wasn't a fluke. It wasn't. I easily bought a bag of M&M's for $1.22 with Google Wallet on the Nexus S. The young clerk said, "I've never seen that before, very cool."

In each case, I touched the back of the phone to the terminal near where the PayPass logo was located, and was then prompted with a slightly audible sound to input my four-digit PIN on the Nexus' touchscreen. Once I input the PIN and again touched the phone to the terminal, I got another audible indication that my payment was made. I also received a short text message on my phone saying the payment was complete, although the tiny text was hard to read.

I admit I never really felt like I'd paid, however, until a clerk in each venue carefully looked over the receipt. I also checked the receipts myself.

We in the U.S. must seem like dinosaurs to the South Koreans and Japanese, who for years have used NFC-ready smartphones to pay transit fares and make quick purchases at drugstores and newsstands.

With the introduction of Google Wallet, Google is first-to-market with an NFC payment system in the U.S., and the company seems to understand that it will take a while for the technology to mature.

Google was smart to start small, working with just one phone, (the Nexus S, for now), one carrier, (Sprint, for now) and one credit-card processor (MasterCard). According to Google, MasterCard has "hundreds of thousands" of PayPass terminals that will work with Google Wallet. Other major credit-card processors are also licensing their technology to Google Wallet, but those systems won't arrive till sometime in the future.

Cynics have said that NFC smartphones are no better than NFC-based smartcards, which can be used at the same payment terminals to pay for purchases via credit or debit card accounts. But smartcards are one-way tools -- shoppers can only use them to make payments -- while smartphones will also be able to receive special offers (which will be based on users' shopping histories and current locations). If retailers do start to send coupons and otherwise offer special deals to people who pay with their smartphones, demand for NFC-ready devices could jump.

Avivah Litan, an analyst at Gartner, said on Monday that she has recently helped prepare a new consumer survey that confirms that consumer acceptance and interest in mobile payments is "still very small" in the U.S. That low level of interest means Google will have to make sure the customer experience with Google Wallet is superior if it hopes to see further adoption, she said. That means there should be no problems in getting the Google Wallet update to a phone, and no problems in finding eligible stores or making payments work.

Two other analysts said Google Wallet is still in its infancy and is bound to grow steadily. Competing mobile payment networks are also in the works. One of those is Isis, which is backed by the other three major U.S. wireless carriers, AT&T, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA.

Mark Hung, an analyst at Gartner, said Google Wallet in its current form is probably a beta version, even though Google didn't launch it with the "beta" moniker.

"Google couldn't put 'beta' on Google Wallet because with payments, having that label would scare people away," Hung said. "However, in reality, Google Wallet's maturity at this stage is probably the same as any other Google app that was in beta before, including Gmail, Google+ and more," Hung said.

Google officials wouldn't respond to requests to comment on the success of the Google Wallet launch or how many phones have the app installed. Sprint referred questions to Google, and MasterCard didn't respond to a request to comment.

Finally Google has given Access to Google +

A quick look at Google+

  Google+ makes connecting on the web more like connecting in the real world. Share your thoughts, links and photos with the right circles. Use easy, spontaneous video chat to strike up conversations with as many as nine people at once. Get everyone on the same page with fast, simple group chat. We’re very excited about the new approach to sharing we’ve created through Google+, but this is really just the beginning.

Circles

  You share different things with different people. But sharing the right stuff with the right people shouldn’t be a hassle. Circles make it easy to put your friends from Saturday night in one circle, your parents in another, and your boss in a circle by himself, just like real life.

Hangouts

  Bumping into friends while you’re out is one of the best parts of going out and about. With Hangouts, spontaneity hits the web. Whether you’re home in your pajamas or hitting the streets with your mobile phone, video hangouts let you bring up to 9 people into your world. It’s the next best thing to everyone being there.

Games

  Google+ has a game room. Play poker, build a new civilization, humiliate a pig, or just click wildly at anything that moves. When you do something worth talking about, it’s easy to share it just with the people interested in your gaming updates. Beating a friend’s high score is always a good excuse to say hi.

Search

  What was that restaurant your friend was raving about last week? Who’s got some good tips on ballroom dancing? What’s it like to be at the World Cup? Search brings you updates from your circles, news from around the web and public Google+ posts, giving you instant access to the topics you care about and the people who care about them along with you.

What is Google+ (Google Plus) and do I need it?

What will Google offer?

Indian Politicians and Google

The great Indian political class in the eyes of Google!

How To Use Google Adsense – Complete Guide

Google Adsense is an ad serving program which was launched by Google way back in 2003. Today Google Adsense contributes more than 30% of Google’s turnover. So, Today I will be providing a complete guide on how to use Google adsense. Getting Adsense account is not quite easy because Google wants to maintain its reputation in the market and to maintain that Google keeps a check on users and allows only certain eligible and legitimate users to get the Adsense. Using Adsense is really simple but to do so you need to have an Adsense account and to get that follow the simple steps given below :

1. Go to Google Adsense

2. Now click “Sign Up Now” button to get registered.

3. Now fill out all the credentials asked by Adsense and click “Submit”. 4. Now recheck whether everything is correct or not if it’s not then edit it and make it correct and if all the things are correct then just click “Submit”.

5. Now your Application will be reviewed by Google and they will let you know whether your account is accepted or not through an email. How to use Google Adsense  As I have already mentioned above that using Adsense is really a simple task and I don’t think anyone should get worried about it now. Once they get through that selectively permeable membrane from Google and your Adsense application gets approved then you simply need to click the link in the email and login in using your Google id. When you login for the first time Google will teach you each and everything which you should know about the Adsense program. They will teach you stuff like How to create Ad unit, how to put Adsense for feeds etc. These all things might sound a bit difficult for you in starting but believe me once you gets comfortable with Adsense you will ind it quite easy.

How Adsense works Working of Adsense is really simple, Google Adsense works as a interpreter between the Advertisers and the Publishers. For instance let us say User A signs up on Adwords (Google’s program which allows user to advertise on Google), after User A signs up on Google Adword , User A chose to advertise about his tech site www.example.com on some good sites which covers the same niche which is covered by User A’s site. Now Google Adsense comes into action as it finds a compatible publisher, let us say User 2 , to advertise User A’s ad then Google Adsense uses his site to advertise User A’s site. Now if any of the visitors of User 2 clicks on User A’s ad then User A has to pay a sum of amount of to Adwords, indirectly to User 2. That sum of amount which User A gives is already fixed. Now what Adsense do is that it takes some of the money which User A has given to Adwords, indirectly User 2. That share of money which Google Adsense takes is around 32%. So this way all the three people Google Adsense, User A and User 2 gets satisfied and this way publishers can earn really a good amount of money. How to create new ad unit Creating a new ad unit means creating the code for the ad which you are going to place on your site.For the newbies this thing may seem a bit difficult but it is not at all as difficult as it seems. Actually it is the title which Google uses, makes it sound a bit difficult but once you know what it is all about you will say “ahh! How stupid I was!”. To know how to create a ad unit follow the tutorial given below : 1. Login to Adsense. 2. Now go to “Adsense Setup” tab. 3. Now click “Manage Ads” which is the second sub-tab. 4. Now from there click “Create a new AdSense unit”. 5. Now from the next page chose the page for you want the Adsense code.Let us say you have clicked “Adsense for Content”.This will allow you to add the Adsense ads anywhere on the page.

6. After choosing the correct topic click the type of Ad you want – Link unit or Ad unit. 7. Now fill out all the things according to your need.

8. After filling just click “Continue”. 9. Now add your Ad unit to the specific channel so that you can monitor it easily.If you haven’t created any channel yet ,create it by clicking “Add a new Channel”.

  10. After adding the channel click “Continue” and then click “Submit and Get Code”.  

 11. Now Google will provide you the Adsense code which can be placed anywhere on the page.

 Remember : You cannot modify the code.If you will do so it will lead to the ban on your Adsense account!Also read other Google Adsense Policies so that you can minimize the risk of getting banned!  How to update personal information Updating personal information is the first question which strikes the mind of a first time Google Adsense user.To update any sort of information on Google Adsense you need to simply follow the tutorial below – 1. Login to your Adsense account.

 2. Now click “My Account” tab.

3. Now from there you can easily update any sort of information you want to update – like you can change Payee Name,Address,Password,Language etc. which makes it flexible to use Google Adsense. You can easily read Google Adsense program policies by Clicking here and I think you must read it because it makes you aware of what you can do and what you can’t. I think Google Adsense is the best ad network and you should follow its policies carefully to get maximum benefits from your adsense account.

Tips For Applying Google Adsense Account.

Are you preparing your site to be submitted for a Google Adsense account approval? Then you need to pay some attention to your website before you submitting it. May new webmasters tend to do some mistakes which in turn could make their adsense account application being rejected. Therefore, before you enroll into Google Adsense, make sure you have paid attention to the topics listed below. HAVE GOOD WEBSITE CONTENT
Whenever you are submitting for a Google Adsense account make sure your website have good quality content. Visitors to your website comes to your site because they could find good reading materials. That is what all visitors are looking for in a website. Google Adsense evaluation staff too are looking for this aspect. They are looking at your website content when they are evaluating your site. Get it!
MAKE SURE YOUR WEBSITE IS 15 to 20 PAGES BEFORE SUBMISSION
Before you submit your site, make sure your site have at least 15 to 20 pages. Google never recommended the minimum number of pages required before an account will be approved, however from experience from many new webmasters it is highly recommended that you have at least 15 to 20 pages.
MAKE THE SITE EASY FOR NAVIGATION
Make sure on each page you have at least a link that will bring a visitor to the main site that have a navigation table. You do not want a visitor to get lost within your site. This also will make visitors easy to find the information that your site got to offer.

LAUNCH YOUR WEBSITE TO WORD WIDE WEB
This is another important issue. Make sure your website have been launched to the world first before you submit your Google Adsense application. Many new webmasters have submitted their Google Adsense application before they have made their website live in the internet. Off course your application will be rejected because your site could not be found in the internet.
MAKE SURE YOUR SITE DOES NOT HAVE VIDEO, MP3 DOWNLOAD, NEWS GROUPS AND IMAGE RESULTS
All the above matters will lead to copyright issues and Google have made it clear that they do not want to approve any application with website having these materials.
MAKE SURE THAT YOUR SITE DOES NOT CONTAIN, OR IS NOT ABOUT ANY OF THE TOPICS PROHIBITED BY GOOGLE.
Google has clearly delineated the topics that are prohibited. These are:
· Excessive profanity
· Violence, racial intolerance, or advocacy against any individual, group, or organization
· Hacking/cracking content
· Illicit drugs and drug paraphernalia
· Pornography, adult, or mature content
· Gambling or casino-related content
· Excessive advertising
· Any other content that promotes illegal activity or infringes on the legal rights of others
· Pop-ups, pop-unders, or exit windows that interfere with site navigation, obscure Google ads, change user preferences, or are for downloads. Other types of pop-ups, pop-unders, or exit windows may be allowed, provided that they do not exceed a combined total of 5 per user session
· Excessive, repetitive, or irrelevant keywords in the content or code of web pages
· Deceptive or manipulative content or construction to improve your site’s search engine ranking, e.g., your site’s PageRank
· Incentives (monetary or point-based) to users to click on links or ads while visiting a site containing Ads
· Sales or promotion of certain weapons, such as firearms, ammunition, balisongs (mobile handle butterfly knives,) butterfly knives, and brass knuckles
· Sales or promotion of beer or hard alcohol
· Sales or promotion of tobacco or tobacco-related products
· Sales or promotion of prescription drugs
· Sales or promotion of products that are replicas or imitations of designer goods
DO NOT LABEL YOUR ADSENSE LINK
This is one of Google important requirement. Do not label Google Adsense with your own text. Google will label them when the ads appears and you should let it be as it is. You are not to encourage your visitors to click on the ads by labeling them in what ever ways. Visitor should click the ads on their own volition.

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Create a Mail Merge with Gmail and Google Docs

A mail merge program helps you send personalized email messages to multiple contacts in one go. Each message has the same content but some parts of the message can be customized – like you can greet each recipient by their first name.
Who needs Mail Merge? If you are organizing a party at your home, you can send personalized email invitations to all your friends with the help of mail merge. A person like Steve Jobs - see the following video - can use mail merge to effortlessly invite his inner circle for the launch of a new product.

How to Create Mail Merge with Gmail

Microsoft Outlook with Word has Mail Merge functionality built-in but if you are a Gmail or Google Apps user, you may still use mail merge easily with the help of Google Docs.
And though the Mail Merge program using Google Docs, this is not limited to Gmail users. If you have linked your Hotmail or Yahoo! account with a Google Account, you may use that or any non-Gmail address with Mail Merge as well.

Mail Merge with File Attachments - Step by Step

This new version of Gmail Mail Merge program offers support for rich-text (HTML) email templates, you may add file attachments with the outgoing messages, there’s an option to BCC emails to yourself and better overall usability. Let’s get started:
Step 1: Open this Google spreadsheet and create a copy of the same in your Google Docs account (File –> Make a Copy). If you have trouble accessing the sheet, please try this link.
Step 2: Under the new “Mail Merge” menu, click on “Reset” to clear the canvas and also authorize Google Docs to access your Gmail and Google Contacts.
Step 3: Open Google Contacts and create a new Group with all the contacts who you would like to send a personalized email. Alternatively, you may simply add the recipient’s name and email addresses manually in the Google Sheet.
Step 4: Click Mail Merge –> Import Google Contacts and type the name of the Google Contacts group that you created in Step 3. Google Docs will now automatically import all the relevant Gmail contacts into the spreadsheet.
Step 5: Fill the various fields of the email template (highlighted in white).
5a. You can compose an email template in rich text using the HTML Mail tool and then copy-paste the generated HTML code into the message body field of the Google Sheet.
5b. If you would like to add an attachment to your email messages – say a PDF file or an Office document – just upload that file to Google Docs and copy-paste the ID of the file into the Attachment ID field. You can find the ID of a Google Docs file in its URL.

Step 6: Go to the Mail Merge menu again and click “Start Mail Merge” – the status against the names of your Gmail contacts will change to “OK” for all email messages that were successfully delivered through Google Docs.
That’s it! You’ve just completed your first mail merge through Gmail and Google Docs.
Please note that Gmail has a daily sending limit and any messages that are dispatched using the Gmail Mail Merge program also count in that limit. You can send a maximum of 500 messages in a day and if you exceed that number, Google can temporarily lock your Gmail account.

HOW to Translate Office Documents

There are several easy ways by which you can translate your Microsoft Office documents or PDF files from one language to another.
For instance, you may upload documents to the Google Translation website, select the language translation pair and hit the Translate button. Then there’s the Translator Toolkit, also from the Google stable, where you may not only translate documents but also edit the translated material. Microsoft also offers a free utility that brings translation capabilities right into all your existing Office programs (including Outlook emails).
There’s however a limitation you should be aware of. While the Google Translate website makes it a one-click affair to translate lengthy documents, it doesn’t preserve the formatting of your documents /presentations and turns them into almost plain-text after the translation.
If you want your translated documents to look just like the original as far as formatting is concerned, give DocTranslator a try. The user interface is horrible but the tool is pretty useful. You upload a document, select a target language and within a minute or so, it will translate all the text of that document in the required language while preserving the document formatting.
To give an example, here’s the original document in English and the translated document in Hindi. If you compare the two, only the text has changed while all the styles are preserved. DocTranslater internally uses Google Translate itself and hence supports all language-pairs that are supported by Google Translate.
You may use the tool to translate PDFs, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, video sub-titles, OpenOffice documents and plain text files. Here’s a video demo of the translation tool in action.

Google TV is a Value-for-Money Device

The content on the web is exploding, our Internet speeds are getting better and, fortunately enough, there are a plethora of affordable devices available that can bring most of the online content to our living room TV without even requiring a computer.
This category of devices, also known as digital media players, connect to your TV at one end and the set-top box at the other.
It doesn't matter whether you have a standard TV or an HDTV – they should have the right input ports and then all you need is a wired or wireless Internet connection to enjoy the web from your couch.
Which Media Player should you choose?
When it comes to choosing a media player, your main options are Roku, Boxee, Apple TV, WD TV Live and Logitech Revue powered by Google TV. If you are in the the US, you would probably compare the boxes based on their support for Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, Amazon Movies, etc. but the selection criteria would be very different here as none of streaming services are available in India.
The $99 Apple TV is polished but mostly designed for people who buy content from iTunes. Boxee supports most common video formats and offers a wide variety of content but at $199, Boxee TV is twice as expensive as the other digital media receivers.
The new Roku media player, Roku 2 XS, also offers content from popular sources and the box itself is quite portable but there are some major limitations - Roku does not 'officially' supports YouTube nor can it stream content over the home network out-of-the-box. That means if you have photos and videos stored on your computers, you cannot enjoy them on your TV even if the Roku box and the computers are on the same network.

The $99 Logitech Revue with Google TV

I therefore decide to go with Google TV based Logitech Revue which runs on Google TV. Revue is available on Amazon.com for $99 and the convenient part is that you can get it delivered to any address in India for a $26 shipping fee - I didn't have to pay any import duties either so it was kind of a good deal.
I have been using it for about two weeks now and really like the thing. Here’s a quick video tour /review of the device in action:

Google TV Review - It works outside the US too!

The installation was pretty straight-forward. You connect Google TV to the TV unit with an HDMI cable while the other HDMI cable connects the set-top box to Google TV - the latter step is optional but you would need that in case you like to watch Internet content alongside your regular TV channels.
The integration of Google TV with YouTube is absolutely fantastic. You can switch to the Leanback mode for a full-screen experience. If you are signed in with your Google account, you can also access your YouTube playlist and favorites on TV.
Google TV offers one-click access to video content from popular sources like CNN, The New York Times, CNET, Revision3, al-Jazeera and more. On a side note, I am quite surprised that Leo Laporte’s TWIT.tv is missing in the list though you can always add that channel on your using the Queue feature mentioned below.
The unit ships with Google Chrome browser so you can enjoy virtually all Internet content on your TV just like you do on a computer. I doubt if I would ever use a TV for replying to emails or for creating a presentation but that is quite easy to do with Google TV's browser.
It might feel a bit odd to use a QWERTY keyboard as a remote control for your TV but you don't have to - there are free mobile apps available that will turn you iPhone, iPad or your Android mobile phone into a remote for Google TV. Unfortunately, these apps aren't available in the Indian iTunes store but you can easily bypass that with a second iTunes account.
The other interesting feature in Google TV is Google Queue. This actually a podcast catcher application where you can subscribe to video podcasts and stay updated as new shows become available. The podcasts are however streamed directly from the Internet as Google TV has no storage for downloading podcasts.
The Revue keyboard, like the Chromebook laptops, have a dedicated search button that lets you simultaneously search the web, video channels and Twitter among other places. It is easy to switch between Internet TV and cable TV or you can use the Picture-in-Picture (PIP) button to watch regular TV while also replying to a tweet on Google TV.
Google TV is designed for the American market and thus it would only recognize your set-top box as a “Generic Video Source” meaning you won't be able to search your TV programing schedule from Google TV. Also, I was unable to configure the Revue controller as a remote for the cable set-top-box.
Most online publications slammed Google TV when it launched initially with a $249 price tag but with the recent price drop, Google TV is suddenly a value-for-money device. And with Honeycomb upgrade expected in the coming weeks, which will bring more Android based apps to your living room TV, the scales could further tilt in favor of Google TV.