Awaz Apni

With the new Google+ project taking the Internet by storm over the past few days, it was only a matter of time before experts in the field gave their own opinion. In this article we will be studying each review to see if Google’s new effort is a hit or miss. Invites were being sent via email yesterday, but went down again in no time. After Google Plus was unveiled on June 28th it did not take long for some of the big players to get their invitations first. One of those was  Read Write Web , who decided to spend some time with the new service on that very first evening. Marshall Kirkpatrick points out that Google has been “super ambitious” this time round, and it shows in how well the whole thing has been put together. He said that he had no clue as to how well the new service will do, but being compelled to use it throughout the night is certainly a good sign. There seems to be so many differences between Google Plus and Facebook, but the main one is when it com...

Yesterday there was a new service launched called Google+, which was a social network project by invitation only at this time. We discussed all about how the new service works and how it differs from their past attempts, but this really looks to be the real deal this time. For those who were lucky enough to receive a Google Plus invitation would have also found that they could download an Android app as well. There is not yet one for the iPhone, but  Engadget  expects it to be imminent. For now iPhone users will have to gain access to the latest Facebook rival on Safari mobile. Being able to access Google+ on a mobile device will be a big part of Google’s plan, as they know that more and more people are joining Android – 500,000 new activation a day to be precise. Google has tried so many times to offer an alternative to Facebook, but as yet have not been able to succeed. However, we really do think that this time is different, but being the new social network servic...

Around 16 months ago we saw Google launch a new messaging and social networking tool called “Buzz”, which met criticism from the outset. While the service let users share status messages, videos, photos, links and more with friends and family in a conversational way, it never led to much. Today we’re hearing about a new service called the Google+ project, which should not be confused with Google Plus One buttons you’ve seen on websites, and now live on Google.com. Today’s launch is much bigger than “Buzz” and from first impressions not only has the chance of taking a large part of Facebook’s market share, it has come at a time when Facebook has been in the news for losing thousands of users per month. Reuters were shown how Google has learnt the “art of subterfuge” thanks to the way they got invited to a special event, which was meant to be about some secret YouTube news. After hints of a YouTube PR guy being there, which turned out to be false information left to confuse the press, an...

We had assumed that iOS 5 would have turn-by-turn directions implementation by using someone like Poly9 or Placebase. However, that does not seem to be the case and is said to be sticking with Google for now. This does mean that the search engine giant will still be supplying the maps for the iPhone for another year at least. It is no secret that Apple is a little behind when it comes to offering turn-by-turn directions compared to the likes of Android and Nokia. We all know that Apple is a little slow when it comes to offering support of certain features – the camera being the perfect example of that. However, we now know that they are working hard to improve this, and a rumored 8-megapixel camera on the next iPhone is proof of that. An article on  9to5 Google  suggests that Apple is now in the process in improving their mapping system used on the current iOS, but it will not be Apple based. However, after the purchase of both the companies mentioned above, we know ...

We are sure you have tried to send an URL for a map location in Google maps to a friend, or even tweet it, only to have to shorten the URL because its 8-million characters in length. Using this new Google Maps feature, a built-in URL shortener, you no longer have to worry about that. It's a Google Maps Labs feature, so to enable it, you need to go to the Labs settings (upper RH corner of a Maps screen; the beaker) and enable "Short URL." You may need to log off / log back on to see the feature work. Once enabled, URLs will be shortened using their goo.gl URL shortening service. However, they remove the embedding option (as you can see above) normally available when you click the Link button. Also, to be clear, one might assume the Send button would similarly use the shortened URL, but it does not. Try it yourself, and let us know what you think.

We are sure you have tried to send an URL for a map location in Google maps to a friend, or even tweet it, only to have to shorten the URL because its 8-million characters in length. Using this new Google Maps feature, a built-in URL shortener, you no longer have to worry about that. It's a Google Maps Labs feature, so to enable it, you need to go to the Labs settings (upper RH corner of a Maps screen; the beaker) and enable "Short URL." You may need to log off / log back on to see the feature work. Once enabled, URLs will be shortened using their goo.gl URL shortening service. However, they remove the embedding option (as you can see above) normally available when you click the Link button. Also, to be clear, one might assume the Send button would similarly use the shortened URL, but it does not. Try it yourself, and let us know what you think.

TechCrunch is reporting that multiple sources have told them that Google has invested between $100 and $200 million of its own funds (meaning, not VC division Google Ventures) in Zynga. Those who haven't been enmeshed in the social gaming phenomenon that is Mafia Wars or Farmville may not have heard of them, but you others probably have. That investment, the sources said, was in preparation for a new Google Games service to launch later this year. As Google wants to be all things Web for all people, it's an obvious move to delve into social gaming. The best clue supplied to the Google Games service is perhaps this job listing . It's for a Product Manager Leader, Games, and is described as follows: The Product Management Leader, Games will be a flexible, results-oriented, and experienced senior leader who will be responsible for developing Google's games commerce product strategy and partnering to build and manage the business with a cross-functional team. You will h...

TechCrunch is reporting that multiple sources have told them that Google has invested between $100 and $200 million of its own funds (meaning, not VC division Google Ventures) in Zynga. Those who haven't been enmeshed in the social gaming phenomenon that is Mafia Wars or Farmville may not have heard of them, but you others probably have. That investment, the sources said, was in preparation for a new Google Games service to launch later this year. As Google wants to be all things Web for all people, it's an obvious move to delve into social gaming. The best clue supplied to the Google Games service is perhaps this job listing . It's for a Product Manager Leader, Games, and is described as follows: The Product Management Leader, Games will be a flexible, results-oriented, and experienced senior leader who will be responsible for developing Google's games commerce product strategy and partnering to build and manage the business with a cross-functional team. You will h...

Looking for an open parking spot? There's an Android app for that. No, there's no iPhone app, only an Android one; sorry, for once Android has a leg up on the iPhone. Indeed, it's called Open Spot , and it could prove really useful to folks in parking spot limited locales. It's a Google Labs app, which means it's experimental, so keep that in mind. Users of the app let folks know when they are leaving a spot. Google marks the open spots on the map with red pins for newly opened spots, orange pin for spots that have been open for more than five minutes and yellow pins after ten minutes. After 20 minutes, the spot is removed from the map. Those living in San Francisco might think 20 minutes is a little generous, and Google acknowledges it on their Open Spot FAQ page . For those who are competitive, or just like a pat on the back for their good deed, you can earn “karma points” for broadcasting your open spots. Your karma points are displayed in the app (as show...

Looking for an open parking spot? There's an Android app for that. No, there's no iPhone app, only an Android one; sorry, for once Android has a leg up on the iPhone. Indeed, it's called Open Spot , and it could prove really useful to folks in parking spot limited locales. It's a Google Labs app, which means it's experimental, so keep that in mind. Users of the app let folks know when they are leaving a spot. Google marks the open spots on the map with red pins for newly opened spots, orange pin for spots that have been open for more than five minutes and yellow pins after ten minutes. After 20 minutes, the spot is removed from the map. Those living in San Francisco might think 20 minutes is a little generous, and Google acknowledges it on their Open Spot FAQ page . For those who are competitive, or just like a pat on the back for their good deed, you can earn “karma points” for broadcasting your open spots. Your karma points are displayed in the app (as show...

Google announced on Friday that it has seen its Internet Content Provider (ICP license renewed by Beijing. In late June, the company made changes to its Chinese search page, no longer automatically redirecting users to Hong Kong (and uncensored search results) in a move to appease Chinese authorities. Google had added the redirection feature to its Chinese site in March , after saying it no longer wanted to censor results in China. The change, however, really stemmed from a hacking incident against the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. On Friday, Google told Reuters that "China has renewed our license. We are very pleased that the government has renewed our ICP license and we look forward to continuing to provide web search and local products to our users in China." China, of course, is the largest market in the world. However, in that region, Google doesn't own the search market. Rather, its the Chinese search engine Baidu that is the China search m...

Google announced on Friday that it has seen its Internet Content Provider (ICP license renewed by Beijing. In late June, the company made changes to its Chinese search page, no longer automatically redirecting users to Hong Kong (and uncensored search results) in a move to appease Chinese authorities. Google had added the redirection feature to its Chinese site in March , after saying it no longer wanted to censor results in China. The change, however, really stemmed from a hacking incident against the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. On Friday, Google told Reuters that "China has renewed our license. We are very pleased that the government has renewed our ICP license and we look forward to continuing to provide web search and local products to our users in China." China, of course, is the largest market in the world. However, in that region, Google doesn't own the search market. Rather, its the Chinese search engine Baidu that is the China search m...

comScore has released its latest report on smartphone market share for the three months of March through May. Unsurprisingly, the trend continues from previous months: Android is rapidly climbing among smartphone platforms. It should be noted, however, that these numbers obviously don't include the iPhone 4, which did not launch until late June. Android continued to climb, and while it still "only" has 13 percent of smartphone market share, what's more important is that rise is from 9 percent in the last report. That rise, therefore, comes to 44.4 percent over a three month period. Meanwhile, during that time, all the other smartphone platforms took dives. RIM still has a 41.7 percent share of U.S. smartphone subscribers (a drop of 0.4 percent), while Apple had a 24.4 percent share (a drop of 1 percent). Microsoft saw a drop of 1.9 percent to 13.2, while Palm dropped rounded out the top five out with a 4.8 percent share, a drop of 0.6 percent. In terms of manufact...

comScore has released its latest report on smartphone market share for the three months of March through May. Unsurprisingly, the trend continues from previous months: Android is rapidly climbing among smartphone platforms. It should be noted, however, that these numbers obviously don't include the iPhone 4, which did not launch until late June. Android continued to climb, and while it still "only" has 13 percent of smartphone market share, what's more important is that rise is from 9 percent in the last report. That rise, therefore, comes to 44.4 percent over a three month period. Meanwhile, during that time, all the other smartphone platforms took dives. RIM still has a 41.7 percent share of U.S. smartphone subscribers (a drop of 0.4 percent), while Apple had a 24.4 percent share (a drop of 1 percent). Microsoft saw a drop of 1.9 percent to 13.2, while Palm dropped rounded out the top five out with a 4.8 percent share, a drop of 0.6 percent. In terms of manufact...

Particularly on iOS, where they have seen themselves frozen out of the App Store at times (Google Voice comes to mind), Google has pushed the idea of web apps. They can be modified without an app store or market, and the results made public with a flick of a switch. On Wednesday, a switch was flicked with regards to the mobile YouTube site ( http://m.youtube.com/ ) and a new mobile YouTube site hit the Internet. As you can expect, the new site is HTML5, and thus can be viewed on an iOS device, as well as on browsers on newer platforms such as Android. YouTube product manager Andrey Doronichev during a briefing Wednesday morning at YouTube's headquarters, emphasized that the idea was to bring the desktop experience, as much as possible, to mobile browsers. Additionally, the video quality of the new mobile site, as demonstrated, was far better than the iPhone app. As Doronichev explained that the native iOS app is built by Apple, with YouTube not having anything to do with its ...

AppBrain, which we've written about before, is a great place to search online for Android apps, and then select them to install to your device. In the past, however, you'd have to install the AppBrain App Market application , then "sync" your device with it. You would then see a list of apps to install manually. With the release of their Fast Web Installer, however, the apps are now pushed to your device. This is something that's expected to come later from Google. It was shown at Google I/O; it's the ability to select an app from the Android Market and have it sent to your device OTA. However, we now don't have to wait for the feature to come in the next Android release (or whenever). This only works with free apps, but it is really cool, once you download the app and enable its functionality. How do you get it set up? First, of course, you'll need an AppBrain account. Next, install the "AppBrain App Market" app on your phone. Once th...

Particularly on iOS, where they have seen themselves frozen out of the App Store at times (Google Voice comes to mind), Google has pushed the idea of web apps. They can be modified without an app store or market, and the results made public with a flick of a switch. On Wednesday, a switch was flicked with regards to the mobile YouTube site ( http://m.youtube.com/ ) and a new mobile YouTube site hit the Internet. As you can expect, the new site is HTML5, and thus can be viewed on an iOS device, as well as on browsers on newer platforms such as Android. YouTube product manager Andrey Doronichev during a briefing Wednesday morning at YouTube's headquarters, emphasized that the idea was to bring the desktop experience, as much as possible, to mobile browsers. Additionally, the video quality of the new mobile site, as demonstrated, was far better than the iPhone app. As Doronichev explained that the native iOS app is built by Apple, with YouTube not having anything to do with its ...

Google Inc is planning to launch an online music downloading service tied to its search engine, the Wall Street Journal reported, a move that would pit it against Apple Inc and its popular iTunes site. Google's plans are still vague, but it has been "stepping up conversations" about offering music services online as well as over mobile phones that use its Android operating system, the Journal said, citing people familiar with the company's talks with the music industry. It was unclear whether Google had signed deals with record labels, the report said, adding that the launch of a music downloading store was still months away. Google and Apple have become competitors since the launch of Google's Android operating system, a rival to Apple's iPhone. Google was not available for comment.

The Google Pack is Google acknowledgment to accouterment home computer users with a accumulating of advantageous computer programs for new computers. Google Pack was aboriginal alien in 2006. Within Google Pack there are 2 capital aegis software programs - a free anti spy ware and a free virus removal . At the alpha of 2007 both these programs were adapted with some important change. During 2006 the free anti spy ware band-aid was alleged "Ad-Aware" and was provided by a aggregation alleged Lavasoft. The artefact was adequate. It performed ok from a spyware apprehension and removal angle but was not an absorbing product. It has, and still is, broadly accessible from accepted download sites like CNet's Download.com. At the alpha of 2007 the free anti spy ware was accustomed a austere upgrade. Google replaced Ad-Aware with a appropriate Starter's copy of PC Tool's Spyware Doctor. The abounding adaptation of Spyware Doctor Consistently performs acutely ab...