Hangouts: Conversations that last, with the people you love
Hangouts brings one-on-one and group conversations to life with photos, emoji, and video calls for free. Connect with friends across laptops, Android and App...
By: Google
Read more here:
Hangouts: Conversations that last, with the people you love - Video
CNET News - Google+ gets whole new look
http://cnet.co/YMCWVS Google #39;s social-networking service, Google+, is getting a complete redesign with 41 new features. Highlights include a revamped news st...
By: CNETTV
Read more here:
CNET News - Google+ gets whole new look - Video
Google is digging deeper into its technology toolkit to turn its social networking service into a more formidable threat to Facebook, sprucing up its photo features at a time when sharing snapshots online and on mobile gadgets is growing more popular.
Many of the 41 new features being added to Google Plus beginning Wednesday will draw upon the computing power, machine learning, algorithms, semantics analysis and other innovations that established Google's search engine as the most influential force on the internet.
'All of these features collectively put more of 'the Google' into Google Plus,' said Vic Gundotra, Google's senior vice president of engineering, in an interview. 'This will give people a powerful reason to come to Google Plus.'
But the most compelling new attraction may be a new photo-management tool that promises to test how much control people want to cede to computers. It will also further blur the lines between a real moment in time and augmented reality.
Google promises the feature will pick out the best shots from a wide assortment of photos.
The automatic photo selection is done by calling upon Google's knowledge of the elements that make up a visually pleasing picture, coupled with facial recognition technology and a vast database that helps tie together the relationships of people appearing in a photo.
Google says its computers will recognise the best photos featuring family members or close friends of a person who uploads a bunch of pictures to Plus.
'You have amazing images of the most precious image of your life,' Gundotra told a software developers conference Wednesday as he discussed the additions to Google Plus. 'But if we are honest with each other photos are very labour intensive.'
In an effort to get more photos onto the Plus network, Google is offering to back up all pictures taken on a mobile device, as soon as they're snapped. To accommodate the increased volume, Google Plus will now provide each account holder with up to 15 gigabytes of storage for full-resolution photos.
Another new photo feature promises to stitch together a sequence of photos taken of the same group of people or a panoramic scene. This stitching system can be used to create a single photo that pulls the best shots of everyone featured in a series of pictures. It will also produce an animated clip featuring the motions of people captured in a succession of photos taken against the same background.
More here:
Google boosts photos to rival Facebook
Jive Software has released an add-on to its enterprise social networking (ESN) software that automates and simplifies the process of integrating Jives suite with third-party systems.
The add-on is based on technology Jive acquired when it bought a company called StreamOnce. At launch, the StreamOnce add-on links Jives ESN suite with the Gmail and Microsoft Exchange email servers and with the DropBox cloud storage app.
Later on, it will integrate Jives product with ERP (enterprise resource planning) and CRM (customer relationship management) software from vendors including Oracle, NetSuite, Salesforce.com, SAP and SugarCRM. The StreamOnce add-on is available now. Jive officials declined to say how much it costs.
Prior to acquiring StreamOnce, Jive had made custom integrations between its software and several third-party products, including Microsofts SharePoint collaboration server, Microsofts Outlook email client, the Box cloud storage and file sharing app and Salesforce.coms Chatter ESN product. Jive also provides a set of APIs (application programming interfaces) that external developers can use to create bridges between their applications and Jives software.
However, the acquisition of StreamOnce was prompted by Jives belief that its crucial at this point for ESN software, such as its own, to be easily and deeply integrated with customers business applications. That way, people can use Jive as their primary collaboration hub which is connected with their work applications.
Above all, a product like Jives cant exist as a stand-alone tool, said Tim Zonca, the companys senior director of product marketing. Social software isnt a destination, he said. People shouldnt have to be tab-hopping among applications. We want to provide a cohesive experience.
ESN suites like Jives offer users a set of social media tools adapted for workplace collaboration, including employee profiles, activity streams, wikis, discussion groups, microblogging, tagging, comments and document sharing. However, recent studies from several IT research firms have found that often these tools dont generate the necessary engagement level among end users. When this happens, these products fail at their core and basic mission of improving and increasing communication and collaboration among employees.
For example, in an ominous prediction, Gartner recently said that through 2015, a staggering 80 percent of social business efforts will fail to achieve their intended benefits, due to what the company called inadequate leadership and an overemphasis on technology.
Unsurprisingly, ESN vendors are heeding the warnings and boosting their efforts to make their products easier to integrate with third-party business applications. Their goal is to make it easy for end users to tap the social collaboration capabilities that their ESN tools provide within the context of the software they use most frequently at work.
Despite the challenges and growing pains, ESN software is hot. In June of last year, IDC forecast that between 2011 and 2016 the compound annual growth rate for enterprise social software will hit 42.4 percent, taking spending from $767.4 million in 2011 to almost $4.5 billion in 2016.
Follow this link:
Jive Software adds integration tool for its enterprise social platform
While Google promotes its Glass head-mounted display as a new way for people to receive and document information on the fly, several social networking companies including Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr now want a piece of the action, by offering social applications on the device.
Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr have launched apps designed for Glass, Google announced Thursday at its I/O conference in San Francisco, during a session aimed at developers. With the Twitter Glass app, for instance, users can post photos to the site, and also see mentions, direct messages and tweets from people for whom the user has turned on notifications, Twitter said in a blog post.
CNN and Evernote were also on the list of custom Glass apps. And Tumblr and Path are showing off experimental apps at their booths this week at Google I/O. The apps, which can be turned on through Google's MyGlass management app, are designed to help keep Glass wearers connected to their network of friends on those sites.
With Tumblr's app, for instance, a Glass display can be used to scroll through a stream of activity on a user's Tumblr dashboard, which includes posts from friends, "likes," reblogs and new friend notifications.
The Tumblr app is in a very early stage, but after being announced as a Glass partner app on Thursday, "we expect it to start blowing up now," said engineer Nick Thuesen.
There currently isn't any discussion to incorporate ads into the app experience, Thuesen said. The social networking and blogging site rolled out sponsored posts roughly a year ago; ads came to mobile devices just last month.
Meanwhile, Path, which is designed to be a more private social network by limiting each user's network to 150 friends, is exhibiting a similar Glass app at I/O. In its current form, that application delivers photo updates from friends and also place-based moments or check-ins, said Path engineer Nathan Folkman. Users can also tap their Glass device to leave "emotions" on posts such as love, smile, laugh, surprise and frown.
More functionalities will be built into future versions of the app, which is currently in beta, Folkman said. "This project is at 20 percent right now," said Folkman, who built the Path Glass app.
The two-and-a-half-year-old Path site is growing fastlast month it announced it had reached more than 10 million users.
Besides Tumblr and Path, a separate group of developers are also showing off a social startup service for Glass at I/O called Ice Breaker. The app, which can be downloaded from the Ice Breakersite, is designed to help Glass wearers meet each other by alerting them when another Glass device is detected nearby.
More here:
Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr try out social networking apps for Glass