New Look of Gmail Login Page

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Google+ Games confirmed; Will appear in new “Games Stream”

We know that Google has a lot planned for Google+, adding brand pages and support for new features in the browser and via its mobile apps in the near future. There was talk of games coming to the platform but today the new feature has been confirmed via a Google+ help page.

Slashgear reports that in a section entitled “Content that appears in the stream”, Google explains the different ways that content can be displayed and accessed, making note to a previously unannounced “Games Stream” that will post updates from games connected to the service.

Currently, the Games Stream help page delivers a “404 – Not Found” error, suggesting Google is currently putting the finishing touches to its platform and its help section before it rolls out the feature to users.

Deep within Google+’s source code were a few hints of services we may have seen in the future, one of which was a gaming feature of sorts with a line of code that reads: “have sent you Game invites and more from Google Plus Games.”

TechCrunch’s Google+ tipster had previously found numerous API endpoints for the Games service and even a logo:

Aside from the logo, Schaap also found references to API endpoints such as “/_/games/getGameFriends”, “/_/games/getActivities” and, perhaps more interestingly, “/_/games/postToStream”, pointing to a characteristically social gaming service.

This will come as no surprise to many, considering that Google was actively acquiring game developers like Slide and SocialDeck last year and has been recruiting for positionsfor its gaming team.

Google+ Games could be the search giant’s take on Facebook Games and Apple’s Game Center, two of the biggest social gaming portals.

The interesting thing to note is that Google has taken feedback from Facebook users and used it to its advantage, separating notifications for games so that it does not pollute the stream, Many users of the world’s most popular social network have often complained about the lack of filters on games on their Home Feed.

We have contacted Google for more information on this feature and will update the article should we receive a response.

Source: The Next Web

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Should teens be allowed to join Google+?

I am SICK of hearing the words “Google” and “Plus” together. SICK.

Google’s a hugely inspirational company and I’m super-hyped that FINALLY they’ve been able to pull off what they have been working to achieve for what seems like forever. Sure, they’ve failed many a time with creating something social, but apparently, Google+ just kicks ass.

Why do I say apparently? Because I’ve not been able to use Google+, and probably won’t get to for the next 4 years. Google have made, in my opinion, a huge mistake by adding a restriction of an 18+ age requirement – the age at which you are able to “form a binding contract with Google.”

Shutting off teens (some of the most avid internet users) from their social network will mean they’ll never achieve numbers like Facebook, or Twitter. Google is a clever company, and I’m sure they’ll eventually see sense. What I want to know is what drove them to put such limitation on the network in the first place?

If you’re over the age of ten and capable of using the Internet, then you’re most likely fully competent of safe guarding your online privacy, and information. I don’t know about you, but my parents have shown and warned me of several Internet dangers since I was young, so I know that I’m not going to be giving out my home address or the like. Therefore the age restriction should really be something like 13+ at the most.

Facebook is the largest social network, so I’d assume Google looked into the workings of the company during the process of creating Google+. Many people are claiming that Facebook are now on death row (right behind MySpace), but let’s just step back and consider a few facts. What limitations have Facebook put on themselves regarding age? 13+. This isn’t an issue, this is about the age where we stop seeing our friends daily, and need some kind of platform to keep up with everything. Where as Google has wrongly assumed that teenagers aren’t interested in their platform. Teens do like sharing information together, teens do want to know what’s going on, teens do want to be involved.

I’m also surprised that I haven’t heard more complaints on the subject, sure I’ve seen some angry forum threads, but no big discussions, or articles.

So, do you think an 18+ age restriction can severely damage the long-term success of Google+?

Source: The Next Web

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Google+: One Hell Of A Trojan Horse

There’s no shortage of Google+ in the air these days. Overeager pundits and soothsayers are hoping to be among the most visible voices on the net saying which service or company it’s going to topple, why it’s going to fail or succeed, and why it should or shouldn’t be more like this or that.

It all seems awfully premature, considering Google+ is just getting started, and I don’t mean in user numbers. We’re all familiar enough with Google products to know that practically everything they’ve ever done was launched early and incomplete, whether it went on to succeed (Gmail, Android) or not (Orkut, Wave). Most if not all of the big talk surrounding the network right now will have to be adjusted in a month, six months, and a year from now. It’s fun to speculate, but Google is always playing the long game. Google+ isn’t just half-baked; they haven’t even put it in the oven yet. Let’s not judge the cookie by the dough.

Is it an alternative to Facebook? Yes. To Twitter? Yes. To Yammer, to productivity suites, to Skype, to Office, to Microsoft, to Apple? If it isn’t now, you better believe it will be. Google is like a kind of Troll-Borg. You think they put out something that stands on its own, a “Facebook killer” or an “iPhone killer” — but it’s only later that you realize that the separation from the mothership was just an illusion, and the entire bulk of Google was right there the whole time. But it’s too late — you’ve been assimilated. Problem?

I wrote a long time ago about how all these little projects of theirs would be connected and unified, the way the Romans unified their empire by joining all the little roads to their big roads. I thought it was going to happen with Chrome OS, but a tumultuous mobile market meant a late start there; Google+ is more of a clear step in that direction now.

The thing is, as I wrote then, you can’t take the measure of Rome by looking at just one of their roads. And you can’t take the measure of Google+ right now, because it’s just the first mile. The best way to debut the connecting tissue of their web empire wasn’t to make an OS — the market wasn’t ready for that. So after an OS, what is the most popular and accessible platform? Mobile (check) then Facebook, around which there’s growing enmity, distrust, and boredom. Iron: hot. Pile all the Google services into that big wooden horse and say “here’s a nice, secure alternative for sharing things with your friends.” Don’t mention the fact that lurking inside it (waiting for a reveal a few months down the line) are a hundred ways of sucking users away from their existing services — in ways that neither Facebook, Microsoft, nor Apple can. Is it about social? Yeah, because that was the face Google needed to wear this week. Beware of geeks bearing gifts.

I suppose I’ve done what I cautioned everyone else not to do: speculate on a product that’s barely even there. 10 million users is great, but the meteoric rise and fall of countless web services can bear witness to the fact that the first month is probably the least important in a service’s lifetime. Around Thanksgiving we might be talking about how silly we all sounded talking up the ghost town that is Google+. Or maybe some of us will be calling an emergency meeting in the board room because Google just ate our business model alive.

Whatever the case, I feel confident in saying that Google’s long haul plan for + is subtle, sinister, and far-reaching. Not evil, exactly, but cunning and ruthless. Sure, right now it seems like it’s aimed at Facebook and to a lesser extent Twitter, but when the stakes are this high, you better believe they’ve got guns pointed at everyone in the room. Comparing features with its immediate competitors misses the point, and at any rate the landscape shifts so frequently that such comparisons are fleeting to begin with. Think big, and think sneaky. Eric Schmidt seems like a nice guy, but I sure would rather have Zuckerberg or Ballmer for an enemy. I guess we can continue to talk about it, but personally, I’m getting some popcorn first.

Source: TechCrunch

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Google+ Ad On Facebook Is Banned

What happens on Google+, stays on Google+. At least that’s the way Facebook would like to see things. Web developer Michael Lee Johnson found that out the hard way. He was trolling for Google+ friends on Facebook by running a Facebook ad asking people to add him to their Circles on Google+. Facebook, apparently, did not like him using its site to build his own social network somewhere else. So it pulled his ads.

He writes on Google+:

I recently ran a Google+ advertisement on Facebook that got all of my campaigns suspended. – Great.

Yeah, Facebook frowns on people promoting competing products with Facebook ads. It’s even in its Terms of Service. But seriously, where else is he going to find friends for Google+?

Source: Tech Crunch

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Google+ suffers its first major bug: Multiple email notifications

If you have been using Google+ this afternoon/evening (depending on where you are), you may have experienced what looks to be one of the first major Google+ bugs; multiple email notifications.

Many users have taken to Twitter to voice their displeasure at receiving the notifications, especially those that have switched off email correspondance in their Google+ settings. Whilst many have been receiving a handful of emails, many have received over 50 messages alerting them that a friend had added them to a Circle:

Twitter user @aeazel reports the following:

Google+, I just turned off notifications today. Why did I receive 30 emails about the same person adding me to a circle?

Gmail accounts are starting to resemble something similar to this (thanks @dustinbrewer):

The cause it not yet known but we have contacted Google to find out the cause. In the meantime, Twitter user Daniel Obenshain has said that turning off notifications and re-enabling them again will fix the issue.

We will update the article as soon as we receive a response.

UPDATE: Google+ chief, Vic Gundotra has just posted an apology for the bug, which he says lasted for 80 minutes.

Please accept our apologies for the spam we caused this afternoon.

For about 80 minutes we ran out of disk space on the service that keeps track of notifications. Hence our system continued to try sending notifications. Over, and over again. Yikes.

We didn’t expect to hit these high thresholds so quickly, but we should have.

Thank you for helping us during this field trial, and once again, we are very sorry for the spam.

Source: The Next Web

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Get Google+ Invitation

We all know joining or creating a Google+ account is now disabled due to huge response. But don't e upset, here is a solution for your problem. Get Google Plus Invitation. Just submit your Gmail Id and get Invitation. I will add your email id as friend circle on Google+. And according to trick, you should able to open Google+ account with that gmail address.

You can Click in the Upper Right Corner of this Blog or

Click here

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Google is quietly testing Google+ for Domains

Google appears to be quietly testing Google+ for Google Apps users internally, a reader of Google Operating System has found.

The user was logged in under their personal Gmail account, and left the Plus tab open when they signed out. On signing back in using a Google Apps account, they found that their organization name was being used in lieu of a circle when they tried to share something.

It makes sense, as Google+ execs have said that Apps users will be getting access soon, but given their track record with bringing Buzz to Apps some weren’t convinced. This evidence indicates that Google+ for Google Apps users is closer than widely expected.

Source: The Next Web

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How to turn Google+ into an online photography portfolio

If you’re a professional photographer, artist or illustrator, you no doubt have an online portfolio that showcases the best of your work. But what if you’re just getting started, and don’t necessarily want to spring for a domain name or a website of your own?

There are a lot of ways to easily create an online portfolio – from using a free photography service like 500px or Flickr, to a free blogging platform like WordPress or Tumblr. Google’s latest venture also has all the ingredients to create an online portfolio for the budding photographer or artist – pretty much all you have to do is upload your photos.

Putting together your About page

On your About page, you have a space that is dedicated to showcasing five images of your choice.

Go to your About page, as it is viewed on your profile, and hit the Edit Profile button.

You will then be able to add the five images of your choice to the top of your profile.

As you begin to add images they will show up in your profile straight away, while also being added to an album called Scrapbook. Unfortunately there is no way to edit the visibility of this album. Ideally, it would be great to at least be able to rename the album to Showcase, or something similar.

If you want to update the images shown in your profile, you will have to physically delete from the bar, when editing your profile.

To avoid any confusion or duplicate images, it’s probably best to choose which photos you want to appear on your About page and upload them from your computer. You can also add photos from your existing albums, but be sure not to select an image already uploaded to your Scrapbook , otherwise you will wind up with two identical images in the album.

You can also use the Scrapbook images on your profile as creatively as has been done onFacebook, by splitting a photo into a mosaic of five images, which when aligned will display the entire image.

The next step is to add your contact information, accolades, and other online profiles that may be of interest to prospective clients. You can also to choose to remove the Videos, Buzz and +1′s tabs, if you want to de-clutter your profile as much as possible, and keep the focus on your art.  When editing your profile, go to each tab and make sure “Show this tab on my profile” is unchecked.

What do you do with your Posts?

Google+ posts are so flexible, they can become whatever you want them to be. A lot of photographers or artists have a blog on their portfolio and your posts can easily be used in exactly the same way. Here you can share your thoughts and advice on photography, links to interesting articles you’ve read, photos you’ve taken on the go, or photos that you admire, and more.

Upload your images

Now for the most important part – your images. You can upload images from Google+, by going to your Photos tab in your profile and clicking the “Upload New Photos” button.

From there you can drag and drop photos, choose an album name, and upload them to your profile. You can also use this method to add more images to an existing album.

Why you should upload your photos using Google+ rather than Picasa

Android users get a few perks if they use the mobile app’s Instant Upload feature. Google+ Android users get unlimited photo uploads, but photos larger than 2,048 x 2,048 pixels are automatically resized. They also get unlimited video uploads, as long as the video does not exceed 15 minutes in length.

Of course you might want to think twice before enabling Instant Upload because that means every single photo and video you take are uploaded to Google+, which could be a strain on your data plan. If you do want to use the feature, all material you upload is automatically set to private, allowing you to choose what you want to share with your followers.

Even if you don’t have an Android phone, you can take advantage of unlimited storage but with further restrictions - photos up to 800 x 800 pixels and videos up to 15 minuteswon’t count towards your free storage.

Outside of Instant Upload and Google+ uploads, Picasa limits you to 1GB worth of free storage, so if you have a pretty large portfolio, or want to showcase as much of your work as possible, we’d recommend always uploading your images from Google+.

How are your photos going to look?

Google+ has put together a really aesthetically pleasing layout for your albums. Opening up any given album displays an asymmetrical grid of the photos. Hovering over a photo in the grid will enlarge it slightly.

Google+ also has a pretty slick slideshow feature, where you can scroll through photos and see comments that have been made.

What’s missing?

Obviously there are certain features that are missing since Google+ wasn’t built with a portfolio in mind. For one, there is  no way to track visitor stats – for the time being. It’s always possible that Google may continue to fold other products into the Google+ service, and so Google Analytics might eventually be available for your profile.

As a photographer you probably want to stand out from the crowd. Using Google+ won’t necessarily do that because your portfolio won’t look any different from anyone else using the service. Will Google be rolling out themes, and will we will be able to design our own themes? Only time will tell.

Conclusion

Google+ can easily be transformed into whatever you want it to be. There are several advantages to putting together a portfolio using the service. It’s easy, it’s free, and best of all, it’s completely plugged in to Google’s search engine, making it easy for people to find your page.

Add to that the fact that you already have an audience right there in the Google+ community, and your portfolio is optimized for mobile devices without having to lift a finger, there is certainly something to be said for using the service, either alone, or alongside your existing portfolio.

If you’re not on Google+ yet, but know someone who is, ask them to try out this methodto get you on to the network. It works intermittently, so you might not get an invite straight away.

Have you come up with any interesting ways you can use Google+ as more than just a social network? Let us know in the comments.

Source: The Next Web

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Celebrities take to Google+. Have you found any?

Google’s decision to limit access to its new social network Google+ seems to be paying dividends for the search giant, with thousands of users all clambering for that all important invite.

Whilst Google shut the door on the official invite process for the time being, Google users have been able to join the social network by way of another route which involves sharing posts from within the network to people without an invite via email. This led not only to thousands of new Google users in the past couple of days but celebrities have wanted a piece of the action and have tapped their contacts to gain a place in users’ Circles.

This morning, we took to The Next Web’s Google+ profile and asked the question:

How long before the first celebrity joins the party? Who do you think will be the first one? Ashton Kutcher?

The post was made in jest but little did we know that Ashton was already a member of Google+, as were a number of other celebrities.

We have compiled a small list of the celebrities that we have found the service, including some that list other celebrities within their Circles, and we would like your help to add many more (thanks to Phandroid for their assistance):

Ashton Kutcher

Mr Kutcher seems to have joined up using a Gmail account associated with his media company Katalyst Media. Users reported in the comments of our celebrity spotting post that Ashton Kutcher tapped up a certain Robert Scoble for his invite.

Kutcher lists a couple of Google employees in his Circles, suggesting that the profile is the real deal.

Soulja Boy

Music artist famed for being the youngest recording artist ever to write and produce a Number 1 hit. Echoing Kutcher’s profile, Google employees are listed in Soulja Boy’s Circles, suggesting that he was able to gain an invite directly from Google itself.

Taylor Swift

Although Ms Swift’s account appears to be genuine, it looks to be under the control of the singer’s PR team. Posting updates in the third-person, her team are looking to engage new audiences by being one of the first music acts to use the service.

Mark Cuban

Cuban is an entrepreneur (both on and off the Internet) and the owner of the National Basketball Association’s Dallas Mavericks, film and TV studios. He lists Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Google VP Marissa Meyer and Internet celebrity Kevin Rose amongst his friends.

Mark Zuckerberg

We had been tipped to the existence of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s profile days previous but at the time could not vouch for the authenticity of the profile. However, over the past few days Zuckerberg’s profile has shown a large number of Facebook employees being added, which could add more credibility to Zuckerberg checking out his competition.


Who have you found?


Have you found any high-profile Google+ users that deserve a mention? Drop us a line in the comments and we will add them to the post.


If you haven’t grabbed an invite yet, you can attempt to secure one by visiting the following page. Signups have been limited for the moment but Google is constantly opening its doors to allow more registrations. If you finally get your invite and can sign up, why not add The Next Web to your Circles?

Source: The Next Web

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How you can get an invite to Google+ now

To get an invite to Google+ now simply ask a current Google+ user to share a post with you (the non Google+ user).

When you click on the “Learn more about Google+” button in the email you receive, you should be taken to a page to sign-up for Google+.

We’ve just tried it and it indeed works.

It’s worth noting that invites are rate limited by hour. So if they can’t click through that first time, they can try again later with same link later.

Update:

There is in fact now no need to do the post trick mentioned below. Google+ users can now just share invites. If you’re already a logged in user, just refresh and you should see an invite option to the right of your stream.

Recent Update:

Invitations are once again closed, and neither this workaround nor the invitation tools will work until they are once again opened up.

Source: The Next Web

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How to bring your Facebook friends over to Google+

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How to bring your Facebook friends over to Google+

Google+ doesn’t have an inbuilt way to transfer your Facebook friends over to the new social app, but since Facebook is clearly dead and everyone is on Google+ nowadays it’s best to get your contacts moved over before Facebook’s servers are switched off for good.

That might be far from the truth — though in the five minutes that were between myself getting invited through the backdoor and Google opening invites up to all existing users, the place went from ghost town to 90s rave — but it’d still be handy to have the option.

Mohamed Mansour on Google+ shares the easiest existing method of bringing users over from one service to the other, with the Facebook Friend Exporter extension for Chrome.

The tool adds an “Export friends” button to the Facebook toolbar. Please be aware that actually exporting your friends could lead to jail time for human trafficking.

Depending on how many friends you have, it could take a while, but the app keeps you up-to-date on the process.

What this process does is add your Facebook friends to Google Contacts. It does not actually add them to any of your Google+ circles. However, this is far and away the easiest way to go about inviting and adding friends on Google+, as it uses your Google Contacts to suggest people to invite using an easy drag and drop process. Any other method that’s available at the time of this writing is much more tedious.

Update: after opening up invites for several hours, Google+ invitations are now closed.

Source: The Next Web

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