The Future of Google and Motorola [FUTURE TECH]

So Google finally got its act together and finished “officially” purchasing Motorola. For some reason everyone is making this out to be all about the patents. I will agree a large factor of why the deal got done so fast last August was do to the patents, but these were not as much to protect current technologies and code as it was to protect the future of Google. Specifically, Google+, Chrome OS, and Android.

This comes down to possibly the most important and over looked Android Device released ever, which came out in the spring of 2011 and was largely considered a flop. The Motorola ATRIX 4G.

I know I know a ton of you just went WTF this guy is crazy… But hear me out.

Google has been working on two fronts lately with Chrome OS and Android OS. But the real question is why? Again this comes back to what Google saw in the ATRIX. Its all about THE WEBTOP! In the near future (Q4 2012) the new ATRIX 3 should be launching, and will be the game changer. Everyone loved the idea of having a phone that opperated as both a phone and a desktop/laptop computer, that the ATRIX provided. However it was poorly implemented.

NOW imagine that same system only running, JellyBean as the phone OS and Chrome OS as the webtop OS. Suddenly its as if the seas have parted, the clouds have cleared and the future vision of Google has come clearly into sight.

GOOGLE IS GOING TO TURN YOUR FUTURE ANDROID PHONE INTO A COMBINATION OF A PHONE, A COMPUTER, AND POSSIBLY AN XBOX. OH YA AND OT WILL ALL BE OPERATED THROUGH GOOGLE+ (whether you like it or not).

Now that you can see the future of Google back to why they needed Motorola to do this. Motorola owns the patents on the software used to connect the dual booted OS’s. They call it WEBTOP CONNECTOR and it allows for whatever you were working on in the webtop OS to easily be transfered to the phone OS or the car doc OS and vice versus. This means if you are using your phone as a desktop computer and you take it from the dock the web page, word doc, power point, etc, is transfered into the phone OS instantly and seamlessly so you can take it with you and continue working on it on the fly.

(Hold on a second how many people new the ATRIX could do that?)

This is where the future of mobile computing is going and Google now owns the rights to it.

MICROSOFT, APPLE, ITS YOUR MOVE…GOOD LUCK CATCHING UP TO THIS ONE.
The article below is informative on the smaller issues, but i thought they missed the big point discussed above.

Android Police: Google And Motorola’s Shotgun Wedding Is Final – And It’s Definitely Going To Change Things For Android

http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/05/22/google-and-motorolas-shotgun-wedding-is-final-a-look-back-at-the-deal-and-what-happens-next/

**********UPDATE*******

ITS OFFICIAL GOOGLE CONFIRMS WHAT I HAVE BEEN SAYING SINCE CHROME OS CAME OUT….

CHROME OS AND ANDROID TO CONVERGE INTO ONE SUPER PHONETOP* (WEBTOP PHONE COMBINATION)

Google executive confirms convergence of Chrome OS and Android.

iOS5’s Top Ten “New” Features That My Android Has Had FOREVER. [TECH REVIEW]

So the “NEW” iOS5 is rolling out and the tech blogOsphere is, like normal, kissing Apple’s big white shiny…well…Apple, but the “newest”, “coolest” features of iOS5 are not all that new or cool. Unless of course, you have been living in the dark ages of iOS4. So below is an article written for Gizmodo and I am sure paid for by Apple, about the best 10 new features that the iOS5 offers, and i can tell you this my android phone has been able to do all of these things for at least 9 months. my comments are in [ ] after each listed item. Also if you want a good review of the iPhone 4s look HERE

iOS 5: The Top 10 New Features

The new iOS 5 goes live soon, bringing with it revamped notifications and more than 200 new features for your iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. These are the top ten, and then some more.

Some of these features you already had in your iPhone or iPad. They just came in third-party apps.

If you used apps like the must-have WhatsApp, which allows you to message in an extremely easy way with all kinds of phones for free, you already were enjoying something like iMessage (even while iMessage adds important services, like device-wide conversation synchronization). If you had the awesome Instapaper, you already had some of the features of the new Safari. Or if you had something like Remember the Milk, you already had a great reminders service.

However, there are features that weren’t available before; either because they are completely new or because they are system-wide. And there are real jewels too.

Things that may sound silly, like using the volume + button as a shutter in the Camera app. Or more important stuff, like well thought Notifications and the ability to run your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad without having a PC. Your iDevices are now completely autonomous.

All these features put iOS on par again with some of the features that you could already find in Android, Palm or Windows Phone 7. Some of their implementations, surpass those platforms. But even while none of these new features are extraordinary per se, all of them together are quite impressive.

1. Notifications [This is actually a direct copy off the notification system that has been on android since the beginning, it would not surprise me if this causes law suites.  However if Google really wants to stick to its open source policy, they have to let Apple use it, I guess.]

The first big feature is notifications. At last, Apple will get rid of the annoying popups that break your flow. And with “annoying popups” I really meant “stupid dumb boxes that makes me want to smash my f*cking iPhone against the wall when I’m playing a game or chatting with strangers in the night”.

They have replaced those with a new app called Notification Center. It’s very similar to Mobile Notifier, the iOS notification app—which makes sense, since Apple hired its developer a while back. It not only includes app notification, but mini-widgets that show live information from apps like Weather and apps.

The notifications extend to the lock screen too, so you can see more stuff right away without unlocking your phone. Sliding your finger on it will automatically lead you to the app that generated that notification.

Notifications are clearly and by far the best part of iOS5—particularly coming from the stone age pop-up mess of previous versions. Everyone on staff who’s used iOS5 is in love, and the upgrade is the must have feature.

 

2. iMessage [On Android this is called Google Talk, or if you have set up a Google Voice# you could use that as well. Google Talk is also an open source messaging system which means that you can talk for free to people who have any type of phone with any OS not just Android to Android or like with iOS5 Apple to Apple.]

Another new useful feature, which will hurt Blackberry and the telecommunications companies wanting to sell you stupid SMS and MMS contracts: Apple has implemented a new messaging system called iMessage.

It works between all iOS 5 devices, allowing you to leave conversations on your iPhone and continue them in your iPad (again, I will not be surprised to see this integrated into Lion at a later date). It comes with delivery notification as well. However, unlike WhatsApp, it doesn’t work with other non-iOS devices. Maybe Apple thinks your Android and Blackberry friends are not worth talking to for free.

 

3. New Camera app and photos [The iPhone 4s has a decent 8 mega-pixel camera and the ability to record in 1080 HD, however the new Android phones are looking at 10-14 mega-pixel cameras and Google+ fully integrates Picassa into the phone offering much better photo management than iOS5 or any Apple device will ever be able to offer.]

The new Camera up gets two of the most-requested features in the history of iOS. The first is a shortcut in the lock screen to access the camera right away, so you don’t have to unlock and then click on the Camera icon, which often makes you lose the moment.

The other one, which is something we have whined about endlessly, is using one of the volume button as the shutter button. Just press + and that’s it: CLICK! This is a very welcome addition.

The new app also includes basic photo editing. It includes quick enhance—which basically sharpens your image, making shadows and highlights more detailed, and correct color automagically. It also include red eye reduction and cropping, both welcome additions to those who don’t have the Camera Plus already.

4. Newsstand [Again this is almost a direct copy off another service Google has offered for years. GOOGLE BOOKS.  And Google Books allows you to access your books on any internet connected device either through a built in app or through the web app through most browsers…lets see iOS5 do that]

Apple has built a virtual newsstand right onto iOS 5, very similar to the iBooks app but exclusively for magazines and periodicals. It looks like a cross between iBooks and a folder view, actually.

5. Twitter integration everywhere [I am not quite sure why the chose to integrate twitter into their phones, most likely because Google has Google+ and Microsoft and Facebook have been getting pretty cozy, but this too is nothing new.  Android integrates all social platforms on their devices.  At any point in time you can share from any app or webpage or picture to a wide variety of social platforms right from the in android options.  For Apple to boast this as a new feature makes me wonder if they have ever even used an Android phone.  From a development standpoint this is child’s play.]

iOS 5 will have Twitter integration everywhere. Apps like camera will be able to directly post the image to Twitter. The YouTube App, Safari or even Maps will support direct sharing in Twitter. It also adds a new Twitter address field to your Contacts application.

6. A new Safari [HOORAY, a new version of the same old flash-less crappy web browser that can’t even come close to competing with the Android version.  Not to mention the new Ice Cream Sandwich release is going to have a mobile version of Chrome as the browser. And I would love to hear someone even try and argue that Safari is as good of a browser as Chrome…LMFAO, lets look at one key feature listed below, the ability to reformat a site on the fly, Google calls this re-flow i believe and the very first android phone that is 4 years old now was able to do that, thanks apple for finally joining the party but you are still way behind.]

Safari has been revamped with new features. Reader will allow you to reformat a site on the fly, taking out ads and reformatting text so it looks better on your iPad or iPhone screen.

This feature flows into Reading List, which is a way to save those pages for later offline viewing, keeping them synchronized between all your iOS devices and Lion. Presumably via iCloud.

Apple’s web browser also adds tabs in this version. Your open pages will line up right below your address bar. According to Apple, switching between pages is “lightning fast,” so perhaps they have made some magic with the memory management to reduce the reload of pages in older devices.

7. New Reminders app [Do I need to say anything to this besides Google Calendar…I think not]

The new Reminders app makes it easy to make to-do lists. The interface is very simple and it’s synchronized between iOS 5 devices and your Mac OS X desktop or notebook.

The really cool thing about Reminders is that it’s location aware. Imagine you add that you need to buy milk, but then you forget about it. When you pass by the grocery store, the app will tell you that you need to buy milk.

8. New Mail app [I would love anyone to argue that their is a better web mail service than Gmail.  Please try to in the comments.  I will be able to you one argument for the entire time.  Gmail can do anything you can do, but it can do it better. Beside iOS mail is terrible, this was the first thing I noticed when I switched to an android phone. Yes i was a loyal Apple fan Boy for the first years of smart phone development, but i left and joined the android takeover and hve never looked back. ]

Mail includes a barrage of enhancements

• Rich Text Formatting, which will allow you to annoy the hell out of everyone bolding every sentence in your mails.
• Indentation control, which allows you to control the level of indentation of your quotes from other messages.
• Draggable email addresses, which allows to drag and drop email addresses into to, cc and bcc fields.
• Message flagging to call your attention over a particular mail later.
• Swipe to Inbox, which makes it very easy to access the list of message in portrait mode on the iPad, instead of clicking on a button for a weird pop-up dialog.

9. No PC required [WOW, has android ever required the use of a PC.  Also just and FYI for you Apple users if you want to update to iOS5 you will need to buy lion in order to sync your phone to your iTunes, just a little trick apple uses to squeeze out some extra profits from their loyal fan boys who are to blinded by the whiteness of the apple to realize they are getting ripped off.]

At long last, the most important feature of them all: You will not need iTunes and PC anymore to use your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad. Apple has caught up with Android and Windows Phone 7. The new iOS 5 will allow you to set up your new device easily: Turn your new gadget on and a Welcome screen will appear. All software updates will happen over the air.

All the applications will now be completely autonomous. You will not have to go to iCal or some other desktop app to create a calendar, for example. There is no need for a desktop or laptop anymore, for anything.

10. New Game Center [I love how Apple has been spewing PR to try and say they are going to be the gaming system of the future. That gives me a good laugh every time I read it.  For starters since when has Apple been good at gaming? If any phone OS company can make that claim it should be Microsoft not Apple. But for the purpose of this article can anyone tell me where Apple is better at gaming than anyone?  This seems like a completely worthless #10 to me, its like the author of this article was paid by apple to come up with a list of 10 things and he struggled to get 9 so he just pulled the 10th right out of their ass.]

The have enhanced Game Center too. Unfortunately, they have not renewed its awful casino interface, which looks as dated as always. But they have added much needed concepts from Xbox Live and other gaming systems:

• Achievement points.
• Access friends of friends, so you can compare and play with a wider range of people.
• Photos in your profile, so you can flirt with other nerds pretending to be women online.
• Game discovery, to play with whoever wants to play with you at any given time.
• Game downloads within Game Center.
• Support for turn-based games like Words for Friends and Scrabble.

 • iTunes synchronization over Wi-Fi [Again this is at least 2 year old tech but glad apple thinks its “NEW”.]

• Advanced gestures: It will allow you to pass from app to app on the iPad by using a simple swipe gesture, without having to use the home button. This was a feature has been in testing for a long time and, trust me, once you try it you will not be able to live without it. [This is because of the lack of built in gestures that android has at the bottom of the device.  In order to counter this Apple has you making complex geometric shapes with your finger on the screen. I can see the problems now… I want to go back to my email from this webpage, “is that a star, a polygon, or a triple finger drag,  lol again makes me laugh.] 

iPhone 4s Launches And Its Already A Piece Of Crap [TECH REVIEW] [Updating]

***New Reasons to avoid this phone at the bottom, (only512 mb ram = weak sauce.)

Apple has once again impressed me with a product launch.  Only this time its for all the wrong reasons.  This new iPhone 4s is already outdated and apple did a really good job of trying to make people think this is the new cool phone but face it iPhones Are Not Cool Anymore!!  This phone does nothing special, infact i see only a fair amount of improvement over the old iPhone 3Gs, and almost none over the iPhone 4.  Don’t waste your money on this product its gonna be a big time loser. Lets look at how it compares to the other OS phones.

I still don’t know why apple decided to bring out a phone that has outdated power.  1GHz dual core phones have been topped almost 4 months ago.  In fact there are plans to bring out 1.5GHz quad core phones by this coming spring less than 6 months away. [Quad-Core Processors Are Coming, But Are You Ready To Say Goodbye To Your Laptop]  I can totally understand why Steve Jobs resigned now.  It was only partly because of his ailing health, but mostly because he didn’t want this embarrassing product launch to be attached to his name.  This might go down as one of the biggest product launch flops in history.  Seriously though if Apple doesn’t turn this around soon with a completely out of this world iPhone 5 launch next summer they are going to fall way behind in the smart phone technology race.

One last rip on this new product.  Be honest with yourself now.  Look at the picture below and tell me if you can tell the difference. I mean if they didn’t label it with and “S” after that 4 you would probably never even notice the difference even though it is a full year “supposedly newer” technology.  I bet someone out there will make a killing by engraving an “S” on “old” iPhone 4’s and sell them as if they were new on eBay.

Also here is a comparison to the Samsung Galaxy S II

___________________________________________________________________________________

Confirmed: The iPhone 4S Has Only 512MB of Ram

ORIGINALLY POSTED HERE

We’d previously heard rumors that the iPhone 4S only has 512MB of RAM—now it’s for sure. The folks at iFixit have beenworking all day on a teardown and finally made the declaration themselves.

It’s pretty standard for top-tier smartphones to come with 1 GB of RAM these days—a lot of people were expecting the same of the iPhone 4S. There’s no indication that the phone suffers performance-wise.

iFixit deduced that the iPhone 4S only had 512MB of RAM based on markings on the A5 processor. Anandtech has done some digging of their own based on iFixit’s images and determined that the Samsung part number on the processor indicates that the phone indeed carries 512 MB of RAM. Check out our previous post for a full rundown of what we learned from the iFixit teardown. [iFixit and Anandtech]

Groupon Isn’t Worth What You All Thought It Was. [I TOLD YOU SO]

Funny how back in June i made the statement that Groupon wasn’t worth what it went for in its IPO because the company itself has serious profitability issues. Check here –> Groupon’s Hug IPO May All Have Been For Nothing. or here –> I Stand By My Statement That Groupon Will Be Dead In The Water. [Competition] .  Now almost 4 months later that numbers are making my predictions the TRUTH. Sell Groupon before it is too late.

Groupon’s revenue measure shrinks more than 50 percent

Donald B. Marron is director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center and a visiting professor at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute. He previously served as a member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and as acting director of the Congressional Budget Office.

The company revised its financial results Friday, and the revenue picture looks less explosive. In the latest update of its S-1 registration statement, Groupon reported $393 million in Q2 revenues. That’s a remarkable figure for such a young company but a far cry from the $878 million it previously reported.

About a month ago, I remarked on Groupon’s explosive revenue growth (and its equally impressive cost growth).

Skip to next paragraph

And what happened to the almost $400 million in missing revenue? That money–payments to the merchants who provide goods and services for Groupons–is now subtracted before reporting revenue rather than deducted after as an expense. In short, Groupon went from a gross measure of revenue to anet one.

The bad news for Groupon is that the new presentation makes the company appear less than half as big as it did previously. The good news, I suppose, is that its expenses went down by the same amount.

Groupon’s effort to go public has been one of the bumpier ones in recent memory. Its first filing emphasized a profit measure, essentially profits less marketing expenses, that was widely ridiculed. That got dropped in the second draft. And now a gigantic restatement of revenue in the third draft. Not to mention, the company’s recent difficulties with the SEC’s quiet period requirements.

Looking To Play .AVI Files On Your Android Device Check Out VLC Media Player [ALPHA TECH]

********UPDATE*********

09/23/2013

I found a better way to watch your .avi files on Android.  There is a new “converter app”  that changes the file type to .mp4 so they are compatible with your stock player.  Link here–> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=roman10.media.converter&hl=en  Enjoy.

 

 

So one of the biggest pains about switching from an iPhone to an Android device is that all of your videos recorded on your iPhone are in .AVI format.  This is Apples way of keeping customers using Apple products and making it more difficult to stop using iTunes.  This is because .AVI movies can only be played on QuickTime media player which is the movie player built into iTunes.  So instead of putting the movie files in any number of more open source formats apple tries again to trap its users by only offering them to play/edit movies recorded on their phones in apple software programs.

This simply does not have to be the case anymore.  VLC media player will play any and all types of media formats include .AVI formatted files.  Sorry Apple the open source nature of my Android device again will allow me to get around your controlling ways and play my old iPhone movies on my Android Phone now.

Check out the article below for more info.

ORIGINALLY POSTED HERE

Get your MKV’s, AVI’s and ANIME’s ready! Android developer/modder extraordinaire, CVPCS, was able to compile a working pre-Alpha version of VLC media player for Android. If you’re unfamiliar with VLC, it’s essentially a open-source (we like those words around here) media player for Windows, Mac and everything in between that allows you to play virtually any video format on your desktop. That alone should help you see the value in bringing this amazing tool to Android.

Because of the way VLC is built, it can’t (or wont) support all Android devices. Instead, it separates them according to your processor, into 2 categories: NEON and NO-NEON. How do you find out if your device is NEON? Simply use a file manager app, dig around in your system files and locate the folder /proc/cpuinfo and then take a look inside. You should see something like this:

Processor	: ARMv7 Processor rev 2 (v7l)
processor	: 0
BogoMIPS	: 1597.74

Features	: swp half thumb fastmult vfp edsp thumbee neon vfpv3
CPU implementer	: 0x41
CPU architecture: 7
CPU variant	: 0x1
CPU part	: 0xc09
CPU revision	: 2

Hardware	: mapphone_CDMA
Revision	: 0000
Serial		: 0000000000000000

Take a look at the Features line and look for the word “neon.” If it’s there — then you have yourself a NEON device. If not — then you’ll have to use the NONEON version of VLC. Okay, let’s get to the good stuff. The download. Seeing how this is such an early pre-Alpha build of VLC for Android, CVPCS will not be providing support. If you want to try out VLC for Android still in its early stages:

NEON VLC for Android

NONEON VLC for Android

If you wont a ton more information on VLC for Android, hit up the source link for all the technical details.

[Via CVPCS]

Quad-Core Processors Are Coming, But Are You Ready To Say Goodbye To Your Laptop. [POWER]

NVIDIA has announced a new chip set coming to phones next spring/summer that is a double grouping of chips. First it is going to have a single 1.5 GHz core that will help manage battery usage by running the background applications and managing the syncing of data. The next group is the really exciting part.  It is a 1.5 GHz quad core processor that will give most laptops a run for there money.  This means high tech graphics processing the ability to crunch massive amounts of data, and the ability to completely replace a normal users laptop. We are talking gaming and everything. I can just imagine these phones synced up to a TV or a computer monitor or even used on one of those nifty Atrix Laptop docs, only this time with enough power to run a full Linux OS, Chrome OS, or even Windows 8 maybe…

Are You Waiting for Quad-Core?

by Quentyn Kennemer on September 23rd, 2011 at 10:10 am

ORIGINALLY POSTED HERE

Phones surely have come a long way. We’ve gone from 528MHz processors to 1GHz processors, from single-core to dual-core, and we will soon go from dual-core to quad-core (in tablets, at least). Dual-core devices are still relatively new and we’re already about to see quad-core. Is dual-core enough for your or are you always striving to get as much power as you can get?

Earlier this week, NVIDIA released whitepapers detailing their Kal-El chipset (which is essentially the successor to the dual-core Tegra 2 chipset). Alongside four powerhouse cores, they’ll be bringing a companion core to handle background tasks such as syncing email and playing music in order to preserve battery life. The GPU on that chipset is said to have 12 different cores. With it, “Extreme HD” graphics will be possible.

It wasn’t too long ago I asked if we even needed phones and devices as fast as they were getting. I said I was very satisfied with the 1GHz single-core device I had. Then I upgraded to two different dual-core devices and I almost slapped myself for thinking there was no reason for these extremely powerful chipsets.

Now, I’m waiting to see how big of a jump we’ll take from dual-core to quad-core. We’re supposed to be seeing first chipsets inside tablets later this year or early next year. Are you willing to wait that long?

New posts coming

Sorry nothing new has come out i’m the last 4 days I have been busy. The good news it new posts are coming.  Here is what they’ll be about:

Quad core +1 processors for phones by next year. — we are talking more power than a good laptop but pocket sized.

At least two posts on Obama’s plan to remove tax loopholes, entitlement and increase taxes on the rich. One post supporting this as a good idea one post questioning how effective it will be at fixing our national debt, and possibly one post about how the super rich feel about the tax increase or class warfare in general. 

There will be a review and a link to download the new VLC. media player even though it only in alpha phase it still rocks.

More information on causes for stock market drops and way 12,000 could be a dangerous number for the market to reach.

Finally a special post with highlights from one if the most electrifying football players in the history of college football. As well as a wrap up of the weekends games both pro and college.

As you can see we have great stuff on the way check back by lunch time tomorrow and many will be published by then.

-Thanks to all my readers

-FRED JONES

Google+ Opens Its Doors To The Public & Does Video Hangouts In App [PRESS RELEASE]

This new updated Google+ is even better than it was before.  With the additions listed below as well as being opened up to the public G+ has truly reached new heights and is back on track for being the best social media site. The over the air hangouts are super cool. its kinda like posting a live feed of yourself onto someones new feed. They can log in and you will show up live right there in from of them.

 Google+: 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99… 100.

9/20/2011 09:00:00 AM

For our international readers, this post is also available in Chinese, French, German, Italian,Portuguese, Russian and Spanish (Latin America, Spain). – Ed.

The Google+ project has been in field trial for just under 90 days, and in that time we’ve made 91 different improvements (many of which are posted here). Google+ is still in its infancy, of course, but we’re more excited than ever to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to software. Today we’re releasing nine more features that get us that much closer.

+Hangouts: more places, more people, more to do

Hangouts uses live video to bring people together, face-to-face-to-face. And from day one, the community has shaped and stretched the feature in amazing ways—from cooking classes togame shows to music concerts. We’re determined to keep this momentum going, and to keep providing new ways to communicate in-person, so we hope you enjoy this week’s round of Hangouts improvements.

92. Hangouts on your phone
In life we connect with others in all sorts of places, at all different times. And the connections you make unexpectedly are often the ones you remember the most. We think Hangouts should keep pace with how you socialize in the real-world, so today we’re launching it on the one device that’s always by your side: your mobile phone. To get started, simply find an active hangout in the Stream, and tap “Join”:

Hangouts currently supports Android 2.3+ devices with front-facing cameras (and iOS support is coming soon). The new mobile app is rolling out to Android Market today, so you can start hanging out at any time, from just about anywhere.

93. Hangouts On Air
Google+ users already use Hangouts to create intimate onscreen experiences—with family members, prayer groups, even people with certain medical conditions. But sometimes you want to speak to a large audience, or alternatively, view as a spectator. In these cases a public broadcast is what’s needed, so today we’re introducing Hangouts On Air.

Hangouts On Air: Stream View (left), Full-screen Mode (right)

The setup is simple enough: just start a normal hangout, and you’ll have the option to broadcast and record your session. Once you’re “On Air,” up to nine others can join your hangout (as usual), and anyone can watch your live broadcast:

We’re starting with a limited number of broadcasters, but any member of the Google+ community can tune in. In fact: we’ll be hosting our very first On Air hangout with will.i.am on Wednesday night, September 21. For more information visit will.i.am’s or my profile on Google+.

94, 95, 96, 97. Hangouts with extras
Spending time together goes hand in hand with actually doing things together. Dinner with family can easily turn into movie night at the local theater, for instance. And running into old friends can inspire anything from photo sharing to vacation planning. Hangouts has always included a basic set of in-room actions (like group chat and co-viewing of YouTube videos), but we want to make it easier to do a lot more. That’s why we’re previewing some extras, including:

• Screensharing: for when you want to show off your vacation photos, your high score, your lesson plan or whatever else is on your screen
• Sketchpad: for when you want to draw, doodle, or just scribble together
• Google Docs: for when you want to write, plan or present something with others
• Named Hangouts: for when you want to join or create a public hangout about a certain topic (like fashion or music or sports…)

Hangouts with extras: Screensharing (left), Sketchpad (right)

Hangouts with extras: Docs (left), Named Hangouts (right)

The extras are still under construction, but we wanted to preview these features and get your feedback sooner versus later. So start a hangout, click “Try Hangouts with extras” in the green room, and let us know what you think.

98. Hangouts APIs
If field trial has taught us anything about Hangouts, it’s that the community is overflowing with creative individuals. So in the wake of last week’s Google+ API launch, we’re also releasing a basic set of Hangouts APIs. If you’re a developer who wants to build new kinds of apps and games (and who-knows-what-else), then you can find more details on the Google+ platform blog.

+Search: find the people and posts you care about

99. Search in Google+
You’ve been asking for it, and we’ve been busy building it, so today we’re bringing Google’s search expertise to Google+. Just type what you’re looking for into the Google+ search box, and we’ll return relevant people and posts, as well as popular content from around the web.

If you’re into photography, for example, then you’ll see other enthusiasts and lots of great pictures. If you care more about cooking, then you’ll see other chefs and food from around the globe. In all cases, Google+ search results include items that only you can see, so family updates are just as easy to find as international news.

With more than 1 billion items shared and received every day, we’re excited to see how search will connect people through their posts on Google+.

+Everyone

100. Anyone can sign up for Google+—no invitation required.
For the past 12 weeks we’ve been in field trial, and during that time we’ve listened and learned a great deal. We’re nowhere near done, but with the improvements we’ve made so far we’re ready to move from field trial to beta, and introduce our 100th feature: open signups. This way anyone can visit google.com/+, join the project and connect with the people they care about.

Over the next day we’ll be rolling out all of these features globally. In the meantime, you can check out what’s next in Google+.

Posted by Vic Gundotra, Senior Vice President of Engineering

Facebook’s Newest Problem…Its BORING [REVIEW]

This is not a new problem with Facebook its an old one in my opinion.  All you ever get on Facebook are a bunch of cat pictures and posts about what people are eating.  Not to mention most of the comments posted are as involved as a simple “Cool” or a “See you there”. The original idea was brilliant, I will give that to Mark Zuckerberg, but the delivery of a meaningful product that I get benefit from is gone.  I will admit when Google+ came out I gave it a try because I was sick of the monotony of Facebook. There is a real community on Google+ with involved members sharing pertinent information about the world, technology, opinions, politics, and other actual things that matter to the world.  I am actually glad that most Facebook users have not made the jump to Google+ yet.  When they do finally switch over to Google+, and they will switch over once all of their friends do because Facebook users are followers not LEADERS,  it may be the end of Google+ and time to move onto the social media network.  Google+ is proof that when it comes to social networking it is NOT about the QUANTITY of users, but it IS all about the QUALITY the users bring to the network.  ARTICLE BELOW.

ORIGINALLY POSTED HERE

A new theory about the fate of Facebook is floating around the internet. Mike Elgan says it best: “Don’t look now, but Facebook is quickly becoming the new Yahoo.” And he doesn’t mean that as a compliment.

The backlash comes hot on the heels of Facebook announcing two new features: the Subscribe button and Smartlists. We pointed out at the time that the Subscribe button negates the need for Twitter–or at least Facebook would hope so. It’s not dissimilar to Yahoolaunching its own social network, Mash, at the same time that Facebook was becoming recognized as the world’s primary social network. Yahoo shuttered the service after only a year. Similarly, Facebook’s Smartlists is an obvious repackaging of Google+’s major innovation, Circles. Kind of like that time that Yahoo repacked Yahoo Mail as Ymail in a naked attempt to compete with the new rising star Gmail. All the while, Yahoo survived because of their Herculean traffic numbers and the display ad revenue that came with that.

As Elgan says, Facebook’s ability to make money means that it probably won’t disappear or fail, but like Yahoo, it will continue to become painfully boring:

Yahoo has no vision. It has no purpose. It’s dispensable. Yahoo continues like a zombie, animated by the life it once had.

And that’s what Facebook is becoming. Yes, they’ll continue to have users. And yes, they’ll continue to make money. But Facebook is looking increasingly like a one-trick pony that doesn’t have the vision to reinvent itself for the post-Facebook era.

Some people don’t think this is such a big problem. Farhad Manjoo at Slate lauds Facebook’s new Smartlists and Subscribe button, pointing out that lax patent laws on the web mean that “Facebook is free to grab what it wants with both fists.” Manjoo thinks that Facebook does it well, too. “I hope they keep at it,” he continues. “If there’s a good feature on some other social network, why should I have to leave Facebook to get it?”

The obvious reason is that Facebook doesn’t actually copy others’ products that well–or to take a more objective route, users simply aren’t catching on to the new copycat features. In a trajectory that very much resembles Yahoo Mash, Facebook launched and killed its Groupon and Foursquare copycats within a year. Facebook announced last October that it was going to reinvent email and messaging, but it didn’t quite work out that way. “Facebook hasn’t talked about it very much since,” points out Matt Rosoff at Business Insider. “And we’ve never seen a message from a facebook.com address in any of our other email inboxes.” Rosoff actually made a whole slideshow of examples of Facebook’s failed copycat version. (We recommend viewing it as one page.)

Who knows. With Carol Bartz’s departure and all kinds of chatter about some Silicon Valley savior swooping in to save the company, Yahoo could make an amazing turn around, and give Facebook’s critics food for thought. In the meantime, we’re still using Gmail, reading Twitter and checking in on Foursquare. Meanwhile, Facebook is still fantastic for looking up college friends’ phone numbers. And Yahoo still has a lot of ads.

Is Facebook Turning Us Into Lonely Robots? Or Worse?

This Guy Claims The USA Government Can Control The Weather With The St. Louis Arch. [CONSPIRACY]

People I have met that live in St. Louis tend to just call this the West County Bubble, or some even call it the Ballchesterwood Dome.  However this guy thinks the weather avoids St. Louis because of something that the arch in down town St. Louis does. Check out his comments below.

The St. Louis Arch, a 636 ft. monument on the west bank of the Mississippi River, has stood for nearly forty years. It is a shining monument built to convey St. Louis’s role as the Gateway to the West. Only now has the reason for its construction as well as its true purpose been revealed.  It seems that some of the same scientists responsible for the doomsday weapon research in the deserts of the Southwest U.S. during the forties, were also interested in controlling the weather. They hoped to use weather control as a means to aid in troop movement and logistics for the Allies, as well as use it as a tactical weapon against the enemy. This, they hoped, would bring about a quick end to the war in Europe.

Thus, the design for the arch was conceived. 

[The above storm looks to split around the city of St. Louis. Red strong storms appear above and below the city but right over the city the weather splits and calms down to barely even a yellow color.]

As storms roll across the plains of North America they cut a path of destruction. The midwest has a notorious reputation for severe and dangerous weather. Powerful thunderstorms, tornadoes, and severe ice and snowstorms pummel the area year round. But, for some odd reason, as these storm systems approach the St. Louis metro area; they seem to “split” in half. One half of the storm system will move to the north, while the other half will move the opposite direction; creating an area in the middle without any severe weather. This area in the middle, you guessed it, the St. Louis metro area. These storms then “rejoin” again over Illinois and Indiana, well past St. Louis.

[In This picture the storm is completely destroyed over St. Louis but is reappearing on the east side of town in Illinois]

Does this happen every time, you may ask? The answer, put simply, is no.

Obviously the device cannot be used frequently during business hours as many tourists are inside the arch, but also the ‘Powers that be’ use this device at their own discretion so as not to draw too much attention. 

The government has long since tried to cover up the details on this secret research project. 

But the next time you watch the weather, pay close attention to the strange weather patterns and movement of storm systems in the St. Louis area.

ORIGINALLY POSTED HERE