I'm actually glad to hear this, it was awkward having it still exist with Google+. Don't get me wrong, I was excited about Buzz when it launched, but it just didn't expand beyond a small niche of people. At the very least I'm sure it was confusing for users to know if they should post to Google+ or Buzz or both.
One thing I'm wondering if they'll be bringing over from Buzz to G+ is Google Reader integration; when I shared something on Google Reader it was posted on Buzz as well, and comments where synced between them. It actually gave some value to sharing articles/notes on Google Reader. However, Google has been very conservative to not allow anything to automatically post to G+, likely in hopes to avoid G+ turning into a noisy feed full of auto-posts. Feedly has a integrated G+ nicely into their reader, we'll see if Google Reader gets any love from G+ in the future. In a few weeks we’ll shut down Google Buzz and the Buzz API, and focus instead on Google+. While people obviously won't be able to create new posts after that, they will be able to view their existing content on their Google Profile, and download it using Google Takeout. |
We learned a lot from products like Buzz, and are putting that learning to work every day in our vision for products like Google+. Our users expect great things from us; today’s announcements let us focus even more on giving them something truly awesome. Read more at googleblog.blogspot.com |
This is where i was hoping foursquare was headed, letting you know about things nearby. I'm also one of those guys that never thinks to checkin unless I see others to checkin so I'm hoping the add a feature to notify you when your at a place you've favorited. A step in the right direction. Now, if you follow a list, like the 101 Best Dishes of 2011, foursquare will let you know when you’re next to one. Or you save that yoga studio to your To-Do List (because you really want to try it); we can remind you when you’re close. Or, better yet, if you’re driving home and three of your friends are getting together nearby, we’ll tell you so you can meet up. The app doesn’t even have to be open, it just works. We call it foursquare Radar, because it finds things nearby that you normally wouldn’t know about. |
Growl is going paid-for now in the mac app store, but still staying open source. The decision is getting mixed reviews. Some users are angry, some don't mind paying the small amount for the app they love. Check out a summary below... Mac users have had their own notification platform for more than five years in the form of the open-source software Growl.
Growl 1.3, released Monday, boasts a number of changes, including new features and new rules for development. But its most significant change may be the fact the utility is now available from the Mac App Store—and only the Mac App Store. |
The end-user edition of the software will be sold through the store for $2. |
“The general conclusion we came to is that we need to fund development going forward or that Growl would likely stop being developed altogether.” |
But Growl’s presence in the store isn’t a death knell for the software as an open-source project. “Growl is definitely still open source,” Forsythe told Macworld |
Despite the end product only being available through the Mac App Store, independent users will still be able to download and compile the source code from Growl’s site, as per the terms of Growl’s BSD license. |
“[Rollup] will display messages that came in while you were away,” |
Rollup also paved the way for another feature: a History log |
By visiting Growl’s History pane, one can revisit notifications that happened five minutes or five days ago |
The times they are a changin’ |
utilities that previously came packaged with the Growl distribution will have to be spun off as their own applications or discontinued. The ever popular GrowlMail add-on has been picked up by Growl contributor Rudy Richter |
GrowlTunes add-on, which hooks into iTunes, and the HardwareGrowler, which keeps users updated about hardware status, will follow Growl into the Mac App Store. |
The other 3 main sections of the site (reviews, Q&A, and have/had/want lists) had homepages, so we figured it was time discussions got one as well. The discussions homepage is meant to be a central place for you to see the latest discussions on the site ( latest tab), discover new discussions related to what you like ( recommended tab), and check back in on the discussions your following ( following tab). Recommended is a tab we're really excited about, it's a list of all the discussion related to the products you have on your have/had/want/watch lists. Or you can use the search tab to see if there's already any discussions on what your looking for. See it in action here: gdgt.com/discuss/We'll be switching the Answers homepage to a similar layout soon! Let us know what you think of the new page below!
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Some of the information below comes from friends who work in the webOS Global Business Unit, née Palm. |
When HP announced that they were ceasing production of webOS devices last Thursday, it all seemed rather curt and abrupt: their $1.2 billion Palm acquisition, dismissed with a couple of sentences in a press release? I hear it wasn't how they wanted to handle the situation — rumor has it they weren't even going to announce this for several more weeks, if not months — but their hand was forced when someone leaked the news to Bloomberg. Just about everyone in the company was caught completely off-guard, including higher-ups at the webOS Global Business Unit who were left in the dark |
Jon Rubinstein didn't think the product was ready to ship, but HP didn't want to wait any longer to release it. |
webOS 3.0, the software version that ships on the TouchPad, was being developed literally until the day the tablet was launched. Engineers knew that the software was rough, and fragmentation was already starting to occur. webOS 3.0 isn't simply the same old webOS scaled up: HP essentially forked out a new version of the OS and engineered it specifically for the tablet form factor, with an entirely new software development framework (Enyo). |
This meant that the Pre 2 and Pre 3 were stuck on webOS 2.1 indefinitely, and wouldn't be seeing the benefits |
Speaking of the Pre 3, what exactly happened there? It was announced way back in February, but to this day it has yet to surface in the United States (and now it probably never will). |
Ever felt like Palm's phones looked slightly dated? |
By the time new devices were ready for production, some of their designs were almost half a year old or more. |
Carriers started to doubt their efforts, and by the time the Pre 3 was announced, Sprint had given up on them entirely. |
After the Pre 3, there were no more slider phones in the works; HP planned to supersede the Pre lineup with new slab phones. |
The first unreleased phone, codenamed "Windsor", was targeted for release late last year but was cancelled by higher-ups within the company. |
The second unreleased phone, codenamed "Stingray", was slated for release at the beginning of this summer. It was a thin slab phone with a large glass high-resolution touchscreen, front-facing camera, rear 8MP camera, and no physical keyboard. Employees were excited about this phone as it would answer the cries for a more EVO-like webOS device. |
but too many software deadlines were missed towards the end, when engineers were pre-occupied with readying the TouchPad. By that point, the carriers decided they didn't want it anymore and the product was cancelled. |
A smaller 7-inch tablet codenamed "Opal" was already in the hands of the QA team for debugging, slated for release later this year |
And last but not least, the Foleo was ready for a comeback: HP had webOS running on a netbook form factor internally by late Spring, with a new build of the software codenamed "Dartfish". |
I don't feel bad for the HP executives, who lacked the ambition to properly execute; but I do feel bad for the Palm employees who worked incredibly hard in hopes of seeing webOS succeed. Read more at gdgt.com |
A sad story, but one of the most inspiring in the history of charity: water.
A young girl named Rachel Beckwith heard about charity: water through Eastlake Community Church in Seattle. She was inspired by the message and decided to give up her ninth birthday to raise $300, which could give 15 people access to clean water. She raised $220 by her birthday -- not a small amount of money for a nine-year-old!
On our way back from Central African Republic last week, we heard the tragic news that Rachel was involved in a car accident on Interstate 90 in Seattle. On Saturday night, Rachel’s life support was turned off and she passed away.
Rachel’s family reopened her birthday campaign so that people could honor her with a donation. The response has been nothing short of incredible. Her family, friends and wider community took on the campaign in Rachel’s memory. In turn, local and then national and international media picked up the story.
Rachel’s campaign raised more than 1,000 times her initial $300 goal in a matter of days. Right now, the total is over $600,000, enough to give at least 30,000 people access to clean water. |
Great to hear for a Canadian startup. It'll be interesting to hear if this was a product acquisition or a employee acquisition. They had a neat extension for google reader which would bubble up popular content. I liked it, but Feedly already does this for me now. Activity Streams was neat, but kind of a flop. We'll see what comes of this. Friday, social engagement data startup PostRank announced it had been acquired by Google. |
PostRank launched in 2007 in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The PostRank staff will be moving to the San Francisco Bay Area to join the other Googlers at Google’s main Mountain View campus. |
Looks like Google has taken a cue from Rapportive; a great service I've recommended in the past, which brings in info about who emailed you into the gmail sidebar. Likely spells trouble for them, although, I noticed Rapport works with the 'People Widget' - it shows up right below it, which is good. I did notice that on the same day gmail launched the People Widget, Rapportive sent out an email about new features coming up for Rapportive (smart move guys). Rapportive is still useful because it brings in the user's recent facebook posts and twitter tweets and lists all their other social networks, which People Widget doesn't do.
Where People Widget really shines (which I didn't realize at first) is that if multiple people are in the thread they're all listed, with calendar and docs integration. You can even start a group chat if their all online - how awesome is that! We think it can be helpful to view relevant information in context, which is why over the next two weeks we’re rolling out a new people widget located on the right hand side of your messages. The people widget surfaces content from friends, family and colleagues |
Next to every email message you can now see contextual information about the people in that conversation including recent emails you received from them, relevant Buzz posts, shared documents and calendar events. |
You also have quick access to a variety of ways to communicate with individuals, start a group chat or schedule a meeting with groups of people. |
Interesting to see just how often college admission officers are looking at our facebook, twitter and youtube channels. Really it's an invaluable source for them to get a peak into our lives, it would be hard to believe if they denied they were checking these sources. About a year ago, a link that read "the status update that got a highschool student REJECTED from Harvard!" swept through Facebook. While the link ended up being a hoax—those who clicked on it got nothing but a nasty virus—the response it received highlighted a growing concern about the role of social media in the college admissions process. Are admissions officers really looking at the Facebook profiles of prospective students? And if so, are they making admissions decisions based on these profiles?
Recently, Kaplan decided to find the answers to these questions when they conducted a survey on the topic. Below is an infographic that highlights some of the survey results—which might surprise you.
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I noticed the 'recommend' button isn't on Amplify anymore, has this been replaced by the 'like' button? Do my followers get notified in their amplify stream when I 'like' a post?
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