Google has introduced the Google+ Project which is it’s latest offering in social networking.
In the past they have made various attempts to enter this area with products such as Google Wave, and Google Buzz which both failed to attract the necessary worldwide enthusiasm to compete against the likes of Facebook and Twitter but will Google+ be more successful this time ?
The chances of success appear to be greatly improved and the project combines some of the best features available from Facebook and Twitter in an easy to use format.
In brief, the currently available features include:
Circles – allow you to create named groups of people. This feature allows you to share different information with different groups of people. Initially, 4 groups are provided Friends, Family, Acquaintances and Following although you can create additional groups as required.
Stream – similar to the Facebook news feed. You can also filter the stream so that you only see the posts associated with a particular circle.
Sparks – a feed of content gathered from across the internet on any topic you define.
Hangouts – enables you to create a video chat with up to 9 others at the same time.
Huddle – a group messaging feature but only available in the mobile version.
To get a better idea, watch one of the many videos made by google
This allows Gmail to display popup notifications on your desktop when new chat and email messages arrive.
To enable this feature simply click the Settings option in the top right-hand corner of Gmail and select your required options (Chat and/or Mail notifications) in the Desktop Notifications section.
The feature uses HTML5 to display a pop-up message whenever a new email or chat message arrives. Currently, it only works in the Google Chrome browser although this may change at some point in the future.
Unread Message Icon
This feature has recently been enabled in Gmail. It displays the number of unread messages in the icon of the browser tab being used for Gmail.
It also works if your tab is pinned
To enable this feature, go to the Labs tab in Settings, enable the option and Save Changes. It currently work in Chrome (version 6 and higher) and Firefox (version 2 and higher).
The Google URL Shortener is a service that takes long URLs and squeezes them into fewer characters to make a link that is easier to share, tweet, or email to friends.
The service was launched back in September of 2010 ( see http://goo.gl/ ) and now has an accompanying API which will allow developers to access programmatically the functionality provided by the web interface.
Available from the Google Code Labs, the Google URL Shortener API allows you to develop applications that interface with this service. You can use simple HTTP methods to create, inspect, and manage short URLs from your desktop, mobile, or web application.
Body Browser is an application from Google Labs that allows you to interactively explore a 3D model of the human body in a web browser.
Google Body is a detailed 3D model of the human body. You can peel back anatomical layers, zoom in, click to identify anatomy, or search for muscles, organs, bones and more. You can also share the exact scene you are viewing by copying and pasting the URL.
The tool can be used to identify various parts of the body. You can explore and study bones, tissues and ligaments, along with various organs and muscles and rotate and zoom into the 3D model of the body.
No plugins are required (Flash, Java etc. not required) but you will need a WebGL supported web browser. Browsers which are enabled (or can be enabled) include Mozilla Firefox 4 (Beta) and Goggle Chrome (Canary Build)
Google provides the ability to create business presentations using a recent addition to its office software suite.
In addition to Documents and Spreadsheets there is now an option to create a Presentation.
The functionality provided is sufficient to create reasonable presentation material but without all the bells and whistles offered by the current version of Microsoft Powerpoint.
As with the other document types within the suite, multiple users can access and contribute to the creation of the presentation. When complete, the presentation can be published and made accessible to anyone with a web browser.
You can watch the following video which describes ideas behind the Google Documents concept
Talking about Gigapixel Images, it looks like there is a new feature in Google Earth that incorporates photos into the Earth Environment.
You can try it for yourself by switching on the “Gigapxl Photos” layer beneath the “Featured Content” layer. This will show placemarks for the available locations with gigapixel images.
There’s a sample video showing the feature in action
and an accompanying article on the Google Earth Blog here
The latest version of Google Earth provides an option that allows you to flip around and see the sky from that location.
But it’s a bit more than blue sky and clouds. The Sky option enables budding astronomers to browse Space and provides the ability to search through and view over 1,000,000 stars and 200,000,000 galaxies.
Other options allow you to browse and learn more about pre-selected interesting features.
Here’s NGC 5128
You may need to update to the latest version. Google Earth is available from
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