Posts Tagged
Google
Google’s geeky. Its homepage has always been spartan, and even the shade of blue used on its links are tested for performance. Its HQ is known for group bikes, indoor slides, yards mowed by goats and filled with inflatable deserts, the representatives of the web giant’s robot-themed mobile OS.
But Google’s also successful, wildly so. It’s a rare day when any internet connect human doesn’t touch at least one Google products. Not because we’re forced to, but because we want to. Google Search just works, and its popularity got us to try the rest of their apps. And you know what? Google Maps, Gmail, Docs, Chrome and more all work so good, most of us choose them because they work great. They may be spartan, but they sure do the job.
That’s not enough. The new Google, one increasingly infused with Google+ DNA since its launch 2 years ago, is focusing harder than ever on design. And features. And glasses, and driverless cars, and beating Dropbox, and more. It’s a busy — and shiny — new search giant, and that’s on showcase more than ever at this year’s Google I/O developer conference.
Google has tried so hard to get into the social networking game, but its first attempts were little more than failures. Let us count the ways:
- Google Wave, which promised to reinvent how we collaborate. Dead.
- Google Buzz, a social network inside Gmail. Dead.
- Orkut, an outright social network. Practically unknown outside of Brazil.
So then, Google practically had to redesign their entire company around their final social offering: Google+. It launched with fanfare, and even had some nice features, but ultimately wasn’t enough different to drag most of us away from Twitter and Facebook. Just about the only standout feature was Hangouts, group video chats inside Google+.
But Google has forged it deeply into Google search, making a Google+ profile rather necessary if you want your site’s search results to show off your author info. Plus, if you buy into Google’s other products like the brand-new Glass, you’ll get the best built-in sharing experience with Google+.
So, are you still using Google+? Or has your account languished without any recent updates?
Of course, if you do use Google+, be sure to follow us on Google+!
There has been much said about Google’s decision to shut down Google Reader, and while for many people it is just another closure of a little used service, for lots of others it means losing a valuable source of news.
If you had come to rely on Google’s news reader to keep up to date with the latest news and posts from your favorite websites – including Web.AppStorm! – you could turn to Twitter to plug the gap. Here we’ll take a look at Twitter lists and show how they can be used as a viable alternative to RSS feeds.
There comes a time when we all must shuffle off this mortal coil. The people you leave behind will have a great deal to cope with, including dealing with vast amounts of paper work. But what about your digital footprint? Unless you have revealed your Google password to people close to you, no one will ever be able to access all of the data you have stored online.
The launch of Google’s Inactive Account Manager changes all that. It’s a little morbid to think about, but it enables you to decide what happen to your Google data when you’re no longer around to access. We thought we’d take a look.
Imagine that you were kidnapped by persons unknown. Imagine you were dropped off somewhere completely alien to you – you could be anywhere in the world. You don’t know who captured you, and you don’t know where you are, but you know you’re being followed. This is the basic premise for Pursued, an ambitious online game that makes use of Google Maps as a game world rather than a tool for working out directions.
We’re big fans of conundrums here at Web.AppStorm, so we thought we’d take a look at this intriguing puzzler.
Search = Google.com
For most of the world’s internet users, that’s just about it. There’s Google, and nothing else. People even enter Google into the Google search bar in browsers to bring up the Google.com homepage. It’s a mess.
But then, it’s not surprising that Google is so popular, simply because it works great for search. If you need to find something online, you’re almost guaranteed to find it with Google. And when it just works, and is blazing fast, why fix it? There are alternatives, most notably Microsoft’s Bing, which now powers Yahoo! Search as well. There’s also the underdog DuckDuckGo, which has somewhat of a geek following, but doesn’t seem to be that widely used.
I personally still use Google search, after periods of using both Bing, its predecessor, Live Search, and DuckDuckGo. I always end up coming back to Google. That apparently makes me like most of our search visitors, of which 96% use Google to find our articles.
How about you, our faithful readers? What search engine do you use by default? We’d love to hear your thoughts on why you use – or don’t use – Google.
Yesterday, Google unveiled the latest addition to its Chromebook family: the Chromebook Pixel. Grabbing headlines with a starting sticker price of $1299, the device features a MacBook Pro-like high-resolution display and a price tag to match.
In this article, we’re going take a look at the Chromebook Pixel, how it stacks up to similar devices, and question why exactly the crew in Mountain View even bothered sending it to retail.
The internet continues to amaze me all the time, and that is one of the reasons why I love it so much. What really gets me passionate about consistently using the web is the ability to do things in a virtual world that before wasn’t possible. Take for example the topic of collaboration. In years past, you wouldn’t dream of being able to have a company or business where the people who work at it are all in different states or countries.
A perfect example of this is Web.Appstorm, where although I have been writing for them for almost a year now, I have never met my editor or the other writers face to face. Yet, we are able to work together and produce quality content for all of you to read.
So where am I going with this? Well, the internet has given us the opportunity to have no boundaries when it comes to getting work done together. One web app to help with this, called Dispatch, has given us the ability to collaborate on documents and other things regardless of whether we work in the same building or miles a part, and all we need is an internet connection.
In the middle of last month, Google and Samsung announced the Chromebook “for everyone”, a $249 device running Google’s Chrome OS. The Chromebook is nothing new, and it’s a project that I’ve always been fond of in concept.
The new Chromebook has already launched online and in retail stores, and is quite possibly set to see some success as the holiday season nears. Let’s take a look at the state of the Chromebook as we reach the end of the year. (more…)
Blogger is one of the original hosted blogging platforms, from the guys that went on to start Twitter after Google bought it out. Blogger is where many of us cut our blogging teeth, and was the first place many people moved after leaving their old Geocities sites behind. Today, though, Blogger’s popularity has been eclipsed by WordPress.com, Tumblr, and social networking in general which has kept many from focusing on writing a full blog.
Blogger seemed to stagnate for years, but in the past year, Google has done a lot to make it a much more modern blogging service. Let’s take a look at the new Blogger and its improved default themes, then check out 8 of the best new Blogger themes from our parent company Envato’s ThemeForest. (more…)
