Meet ‘Disco’, The Group Texting App Built Secretly Inside Google

It seems like Google has made a foray into the group messaging space today with Disco, a new iPhone app and website. Well, they sort of have.

The service utilizes the Disco.com domain that Google bought at Domainfest last year for $255K. The Disco.com site went up today and the beta app hit the App Store yesterday, but no one noticed it — until now. And here’s the thing: it was made by Slide.

We’ve been testing the app here at TC HQ and thus far its pretty fast, perhaps because it’s initial build is more bare-bones than fellow group messaging contenders like Fast Society, Beluga and GroupMe. It’s actually pretty similar to the initial build of GroupMe before it added push notifications.

Again, the app is made by Slide, the storied social apps property which Google acquired in August for $182 million. Slide has made iPhone apps before, but the last one was Super Poke, an app created pre-Google acquisition. But Slide is being run as an autonomous business unit within Google, so this app is unrelated to any Google “Plus One” social projects, we hear.

We’ve reached out to Google for comment on the app and will update when we hear back.

How the app will fare competing in the already saturated group messaging space remains to be seen, and you read MG’s take on it here.

In the meantime here’s two fun facts: that’s Slide founder Max Levchin’s Facebook photo in the app screenshot (he’s the one on the bike) and the sample group on the Disco homepage is named GaGa Fan Club, interesting light of Lady Gaga’s recent Google visit.

h/t TheDomains

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Google Doing Some Profile Unification Leading Up To… Well, Something.

Google is still hard at work on their social strategy. You know it, I know it, we all know it. What it will actually be, remains to be seen. But there are clues related to it that have started to appear.

The first was the redesign of the toolbar. While Google claimed it doesn’t directly point to the social strategy (even though it looks exactly like the verified +1 leaks we’ve seen), it is a first step. The second was the revamping of profile pages. Also nothing particularly social about it, but again, related to the overall strategy. And now we’re seeing something else: a unification of profiles across Google properties. And a big push for all of them to be public.

As The Next Web spotted a couple weeks ago, Google quietly announced that it would be deleting Google Profiles that weren’t public starting in July. Here’s the wording:

The purpose of Google Profiles is to enable you to manage your online identity. Today, nearly all Google Profiles are public. We believe that using Google Profiles to help people find and connect with you online is how the product is best used. Private profiles don’t allow this, so we have decided to require all profiles to be public.

Keep in mind that your full name is the only required information that will be displayed on your profile; you’ll be able to edit or remove any other information that you don’t want to share.

If you currently have a private profile but you do not wish to make your profile public, you can delete your profile. Or, you can simply do nothing. All private profiles will be deleted after July 31, 2011.

And that’s important because other Google properties are also being woven into these profiles. Yesterday, the following note was left in the Google Groups message board:

Google Groups-specific profiles will no longer be supported. Instead, you will be able to use the new Google Groups to (optionally) link your new and improved Google profile with your groups. Starting July 1st 2011, you will not be able to make changes to your Groups profile. Your profile information will be available for export from your profile page until November 1st 2011. This change will not affect the nicknames you might have chosen for yourself to participate in groups. It will only affect the custom profile fields, such as your photo, location, and occupation.

This type of unification will also take place across other Google properties as well, we hear. It’s a part of a broader effort to bring Google’s properties closer together, and allow for more social activities, is our understanding.

But as we laid out a couple weeks ago, don’t look for a massive launch of something being billed as a “Facebook-killer” (not that anyone besides the press would label it as such anyway). Instead, expect smaller social features across Google properties to appear once the unification is more complete. Judging from the timelines of the changes above, this could be late summer or even later.

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HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Google AdWords

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

Google AdWords (those sponsored links that appear alongside search results and web content) can be one of the most cost-effective ways to advertise on the web. Your ads are highly targeted based on keywords, and you don’t pay for anything unless they are clicked.

But often, small businesses set up a campaign and load it with relevant phrases, only to see little traction. Or worse, they get clicks (which cost money) but aren’t converting them into sales.

If you’re struggling to hit pay dirt with Google ads, or you’re interested in signing up but not sure where to start, take some cues from these small business success stories.

Before you get started, “know that AdWords is a real commitment, and is likely to be a time drain,” says Chris Conn, founder of MightyNest.com, purveyors of organic and naturally made home wares and accessories. His company uses AdWords to drive potential customers to the online store. “It will take from other activities, so make sure that fits with your priorities.”

In that regard, start small, says Timothy Thomas, a small business consultant who cultivates successful AdWords campaigns for his clients.

“Focus on one campaign, lock your budget and use the tools provided by AdWords to learn how Google does its magic,” Thomas adds. He recommends that companies continue their standard SEO efforts in order to rank high in organic search for free (more on this in a bit), and then optimize an AdWords campaign accordingly. “Don’t buy ads in areas where you are getting a top-five link already. Think about terms that are unique to your offering and try to make the most of those keywords by standing alone in paid search.”

If you’re trying to get the maximum value out of a small AdWords budget, don’t worry about appearing at the top of every search. “Keep your bids as low as you can and edge them up — you do not need to be the number one paid search term, however being in the top three is valuable,” says Thomas. “Being number one in the wrong search will only cost you money.”

When you settle into an AdWords campaign that works for your budget and time, think about using the platform to glean a bit more insight into what your potential customers want.

Conn uses AdWords as a real-time testing and intelligence tool. “If we want to know what messaging works, we launch a quick AdWords campaign to see how customers respond.” Making fine adjustments based on small messaging changes can really hone your ads and give you the most bang for your pay-per-click buck.

A theme that held true for all the small businesses we spoke with was the importance of traditional SEO as it relates to AdWords campaigns.

“We find that paid search lifts other traffic channels,” says Conn. “When we increase our paid search, our direct traffic and organic traffic also rise.”

And the tides flow in both directions. Jordan Schaffel, co-founder of Say It Visually, a company that produces animated instructional and demo videos, explained that their existing SEO efforts were crucial to the success of their AdWords campaign.

“When we re-did our site recently, we had AdWords in mind, so we did our homework prior to re-launching,” Schaffel says. “Without the foundational efforts, we would’ve struck out, or at the very least, been behind the eight ball on getting clicks through our AdWords campaigns.”

Schaffels’ strategy included titling and tagging all of their videos to tie in closely with the AdWords campaigns. “If you fail to do one or more of the pieces of the SEO puzzle, you’re hurting yourself exponentially.”

One of those puzzle pieces is knowing when not to pay for search terms that you already own for free. “If Google can match your ad to a search, they are happy to sell a click whether it’s a good one or not. The only valid strategy is to narrow Google’s ability to present your ad,” explains Thomas. Make sure your AdWords keywords are embedded in the HTML of your website, and if you’re already dominating a search term organically, don’t buy it from Google. “You only want to pay for eyeballs that you can’t get in front of organically.”

Even if you have a good AdWords campaign that’s producing quality leads, there’s always room for improvement. In some cases, it can be a complicated matter. Thomas says he worked with an engineering company that specializes in LED lighting and testing. Its customers are technically trained engineers, but its ads were being surfaced by consumers looking for Christmas lights, Xbox controllers and LED TVs. In short, the company was spending money on lots of useless impressions and clicks.

“The solution was eliminating ‘broad matching’ criteria,” says Thomas. “We put our keywords into either Phrase Match or Exact Match. Each day we would look at what the company had paid for on the previous day and just started [adding] negative keywords. Words like ‘Christmas,’ ‘automobile,’ ‘rope light,’ ‘Playstation,’ and all the variants for ‘television’ were identified and blocked from matching.”

Thomas adds that “the daily review and elimination of inappropriate search matches is the secret sauce of mastering AdWords. You have to tune AdWords for about 15 minutes every day or it can eat you alive, financially.”

Like any good lead-generation tool, it’s how you turn an interested click into a repeat customer that really counts.

“It is important that you build a relationship with the customers you find through AdWords and that a meaningful amount of those relationships are sustainable in the long run,” says Conn. “If not, AdWords can turn into a treadmill.”

In the case of Thomas’ engineering client, most of the potential customers know what they’re looking for by the time they reach the company’s website. Once they’ve clicked through, “we encourage them to approach us by phone so we can really help them find the service or product they need.”

Schaffel’s company takes it a step further by monitoring real-time analytics. “We use Woopra to track people coming to our site from AdWords (and other links), and we see patterns emerge when people are truly interested in creating explanation videos.” Paying attention to traffic patterns like this can help you fine-tune your campaigns and figure out what customers are expecting when they arrive. A sale may hinge on the context of the ad that sent them there, or the appeal of the site itself.

Do you have your own tips for new AdWords users? Share them in the comments.

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Image courtesy of iStockphoto, kycstudio

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Google Details Chrome’s Background Feature: Run Web Apps Without Seeing Them

Google has been on a mission lately to outline some of the cooler, newer features coming to Chrome on their Chromium Blog. Today brings one of the biggest yet: Background Apps.

This feature has existed on various builds of Chrome/Chromium for some time now. But Google hasn’t been touting it, and it wasn’t really clear how it would be used and/or useful. Well today, it’s very clear. And again, very cool. Essentially, Chrome-based web apps are going to be able to be always open, but hidden in the background.

Why would anyone want to use a web app without seeing it? A couple reasons. First, this allows the browser to notify you in realtime of certain updates, like chat requests or new messages. Second, this may allow the browser to pre-render any page so when you do open it, it will load instantly.

Obviously, the trade-off is the memory hit you take by running an app in the background, but presumably these could be coded to have a minimal impact in terms of memory usage.

Essentially, this gives web apps a “push” notification functionality like Apple uses for the iPhone and iPad. It’s a bit different since that system uses Apple own servers to ping your phone and doesn’t require an app to be open at all, but the effect is the same. A user wouldn’t realize the app is open, but would still get alerts about it.

Of course, there’s a security risk there. But Google addresses that in this way:

To protect our users’ privacy, we’ve made this functionality available only to apps and extensions; regular websites will not be able to open background windows. Developers will also need to declare the “background” capability on their apps.

That’s important beyond the security issue. It could make installing web apps actually useful. Up until now, most of the apps in the Chrome Web Store are similar to the ones that already exist on the web. But with this system, you’d have to “install” an app to get this system working.

Update: And here’s an example app Google has made to show how this will work. This book, when installed, will periodically update in the background.

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Google Donates $2.7 Million To Fund Innovation in Journalism

Google announced Wednesday it has awarded $2.7 million to the International Press Institute to foster innovation in journalism.

The Institute, based in Vienna, will use the grant for its IPI News Innovation Contest, which will fund both non-profit and for-profit projects related to the development of digital news platforms, new business models for journalism and training in digital reporting throughout Africa, Europe and the Middle East.

The $2.7 million makes up a significant chunk of the $5 million Google promised to donate to non-profit organizations working to further development in digital journalism in October 2010.

At the time, Google awarded $2 million to the Knight Foundation in the U.S. and pledged to spend the remaining $3 million in international news efforts. Like the International Press Institute, the Knight Foundation funds open-source projects related to innovation in digital and mobile reporting, new economic models for news and community development.

Applications for the IPI News Innovation Content are due June 1, 2011.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, ProfessorVasilich

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Google Adds Extra Layer of Security to User Accounts

For those worried about the threat of being hacked — and these days, who isn’t? — Google is here to help. The company is rolling out an optional extra layer of security for all Google accounts, mostly to boost the confidence of Gmail and Google Docs users.

The two-step verification process should be familiar to just about anyone who’s signed up for an online banking account. The first step is a regular password; the second step involves a code number sent to your mobile phone. You get the code via text message or an automated call, then enter it on the website. And if that’s too much of a hassle, there’s also an app — called Google Authenticator — for iPhone, Android or BlackBerry that will generate a code for you.

This isn’t a new technology for Google. Two-step verification has been offered to enterprise users since September, when it was implemented in Google Apps. For Google account holders, it’s opt-in. And no, you don’t have to go through the mobile verification part every time you want to check your Gmail. The two steps only kick in when you’re logging into your Google account on a new web browser, through a new application or on a new mobile device.

As Google points out, it is devilishly easy for a hacker to access large chunks of your online life once he knows your password, especially if you don’t change it from site to site. “There are plenty of examples (like the classic ‘Mugged in London‘ scam) that demonstrate why it’s important to take steps to help secure your activities online,” writes Google Security product manager Nishit Shah on the Official Google Blog.

“Your Gmail account, your photos, your private documents—if you reuse the same password on multiple sites and one of those sites gets hacked, or your password is conned out of you directly through a phishing scam, it can be used to access some of your most closely-held information.”

The idea behind two-step verification is that it relies on something you know — your password — as well as something you have — your phone. A hacker or a thief may gain access to one of them, the theory goes, but it’s far more unlikely that they’ll have both.

Which is all well and good, but it also means that there’s a new golden rule for Google account holders: Never, ever store your password anywhere on your mobile device.

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Google Wants to Plan Your Wedding

Google is taking on an unlikely role: wedding planner.

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Google has rolled out a dedicated site where consumers can create a wedding website, edit photos and plan their wedding using wedding-specific templates in Google Sites, Google Docs and Picnik. The company announced the move today on its official Google blog.

Google teamed up with wedding planner Michelle Rago for the templates, and Rago also provides tips to the soon-to-be-betrothed. To spread the word, Google is also hosting a wedding sweepstakes offering a prize of $25,000 and the chance to get Rago to help plan your wedding.

The site is the latest attempt by Google to insinuate itself into consumers’ lifestyles. In 2008, Google launched Google Health, which is designed to let users organize, monitor, track and use health information on the site. But there’s a thin line between providing helpful information and invading privacy: In 2009, Google Health partnered with CVS to provide patients online access to their prescription drug history via their Google Health accounts, raising issues about Google’s access to sensitive personal information.

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You May Kiss The Bride, Thanks To Google Weddings

Google is making a big push into the wedding planning scene today, launching a full fledged planning portal for brides and grooms to be. Google Weddings is a destination that houses wedding-specific templates in Google Sites, Google Docs and Picnik for save-the-dates, wedding websites, planning materials, invitations and more.

Google has also partnered with wedding planner Michelle Rago to provide tips and guidance on which designs to use. This isn’t Google’s first move in the wedding planning world, the search giant also began offering customized wedding templates in Google Docs a year ago that let users access pre-made documents to track your wedding budget, collect addresses for invitations, compare vendors and much more.

I know it’s a little bit odd for Google to get into the wedding planning space but it will no doubt boost the Google Apps products appeal to twenty or thirty something brides. Being that I actually planned parts of my wedding via Google Docs, I think that these templates will be incredibly useful, especially when it comes to sharing documents with others.

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Would Google or Facebook Pay $10 Billion For Twitter?

We’re hearing chatter about a possible sale of Twitter, and extraordinary valuations are part of the conversation, with various executives talking about numbers upwards of $10 billion.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook and Google executives have engaged in “low-level talks” with Twitter. According to the WSJ’s “people familiar with the matter,” those discussions are estimating the value of the microblogging service “in the neighborhood of $8 billion to $10 billion.”

High, indeed, but there’s a high value placed on attention, and Twitter’s getting that: In fact, the company set an all-time record for tweets during a sporting event during the final minutes of last weekend’s Super Bowl, recording an astonishing 4064 tweets in a single second.

The overall record was set last New Year’s Eve in Japan where revelers sent a total of 6,939 tweets per second just after the clock struck midnight. Now that’s engagement.

What do you think, readers? Is Twitter actually worth somewhere between $8 billion and $10 billion? Please let us know in the comments.

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Google Answers Our Prayers With Android Market Webstore

Google has just announced that the Android Market is now accessible via a standard web browser.

Putting the Market online, a la iTunes, answers one of our longest standing complaints against the Android Market and the Android app ecosystem as a whole.

In addition to being able to browse and purchase apps from the Android Market website, users can also install applications directly to their device, no cords required.

Google is also upping its currency offerings and improving currency seller support.

Updates coming…

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Google Unveils Android Market Webstore. It’s Already Live!

Today at their Mountain View headquarters, Google held an event to show off Honeycomb, the latest version of the Android operating system. After some demos of the OS itself, Android engineering director Chris Yerga took the stage to show off a big new feature: the Android Market Webstore. Yep, the Market just hit the web. Finally. And it’s already live. Find it here.

Yerga notes that up until know, the only way to find and install apps was via the Market on your phone. But now users can simply go to their browser. And it’s more seamless than something like the iTunes native app because when you select an app, it can be set up to download automatically to your Android device. “There’s no wires, no syncing with computers. None of that sort of nonsense. Everything is connected,” Yerga says.

There’s also a social element in that users can email links to the Market to one another. And you can easily share links to apps on Twitter.

The new web version of the Market also features better filters for finding apps. And there’s a nice device and app manager.

Update: As numerous people have pointed out in the comments and on Twitter, while the Market itself is live, you cannot sign-in. I just tried as well — no luck. So, it’s more like live-ish.

Update 2: And now the Market appears to be fully live. You can sign-in and see your app downloads, and manage your account.

Related:

Honeycomb Is The First Shot Fired Along Apple’s Bow

Here’s What Pulse Will Look Like On Android Honeycomb

In-App Purchasing Finally Coming To Android; Disney Brings Tap Tap Revenge To Take Advantage

Android Honeycomb Livestream Is Happening Now

Live From Google’s Android Honeycomb Event

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Microsoft releases H.264 plug-in for Google Chrome, vows to support WebM video in IE9

By Darren Murph posted Feb 2nd 2011 2:12PM Hard to believe that the infamous "fragmentation" term is now being bandied about in the web browser world, but sure enough, it's Microsoft using the term today to describe the brave new realm we're living in. If you'll recall, Google defended its decision to not include H.264 support natively in Chrome, but maintained that WebM plug-ins were coming to Safari and Internet Explorer 9. Today, Microsoft's kinda-sorta returning the favor. Following the outfit's release of a Firefox add-on to bring full H.264 support to Windows machines, the outfit is releasing a plug-in for Chrome (only the Windows version for now) that provides support for H.264. Furthermore, it's committed to supporting third-party WebM video plug-ins; to quote, users "will be able to play WebM video in IE9." It's fairly obvious that Microsoft's taking this golden opportunity to push its browser as one that supports everything (rather than just its own preferred format), but regardless of the motives, we're just happy to see differences put aside and compatibility finding priority.

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Latest WikiLeak Reveals Google And The State Department Talked To Unblock Egyptian Videos

In response to the escalating Mubarek protests, the latest release of WikiLeaks have been Egypt or MENA related. One cable from November 2008 is particularly interesting, revealing that the State Department spoke to YouTube in 2007 regarding the takedown of videos posted by Egyptian bloggers. The cable is an action request for the State Department to contact someone named Pablo at Google (their General Counsel perhaps?) in order to have Google reinstate access to an Egyptian blogger who had complained about removed videos and access when he reporting on police abuses.

Apparently this action request has a precedent. According to the cable, YouTube and the State Department talked about the removal of video content that exposed abuses in Egypt before, in December of 2007.

¶3. (SBU) In December 2007, DRL and Embassy Cairo worked to convince Google to restore XXXXXXXXXXXXX’ YouTube access after a similar incident. We believe that a similar Department intervention with Google representatives could help in restoring XXXXXXXXXXXXX’ access again. XXXXXXXXXXXXis an influential blogger and human rights activist, and we want to do everything we can to assist him in exposing police abuse. XXXXXXXXXXXXX’ post of a video showing two policemen sodomizing a bus driver was used as the main evidence to convict the officers in November 2007 (ref C).

The cable does not reveal why the video content was taken down, and it could be anything from a specific request from the Egyptian government to enforcement of YouTube’s Terms of Service, specifically, “Graphic or gratuitous violence is not allowed …” The TOS violation charge is probably applicable to a video of policemen sodomizing a bus driver, someone being shot and a woman being abused, the examples referred to in the leak.

Apparently Google was convinced to restore the content in 2007, which means it probably had to make a TOS exemption in the cases of content that could be used as evidence is human rights abuse cases.

The State Department has contacted American Internet companies about restoring service in times of political turmoil before, most notably in the case of Twitter and the Iran election protests. But at the time Egypt was a major non-NATO ally to the United States, so even the smallest attempts to intercede on behalf of democracy are impressive.

I have contacted Google and YouTube for more information as to what actually happened here and will update this post when I hear back.

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Google Unveils Android Honeycomb [LIVE]

Google has gathered the press at its headquarters to officially unveil Android Honeycomb, the first Android OS designed specifically for tablets.

We’re here live at Google HQ in Mountain View, Calif. for Google’s “A Taste of What’s New From Android” event. The search giant will go in-depth with Android 3.0 and its features, as well as provide demos of the first devices that will carry the operating system. We also expect Google to make some announcements about the future of Android.

What does Google have up its sleeve? Here are my live notes from the company’s press conference:

All times are in Pacific Standard Time

10:02 a.m.: Google’s Andy Rubin is kicking things off. The standard fare: We’re happy with Android’s growth, we love our team, etc.

10:05: Hugo from Google is about to show off some of Honeycomb’s new features. On a separate note, it’s interesting that they use a blue bee to symbolize the tablet OS vs. the cute and iconic Android.

10:06: The screen is redesigned. The top left has the search functions, the top right has application access, and the bottom bar has the traditional Android buttons. Except they are no longer physical buttons. Those are a thing of the past.

10:07: Hugo is flipping through some widgets. There’s a new interface for browsing through videos, photos and books via widgets.

10:08: Advanced notifications. They’re like Growl notifications on the Mac, except on the bottom right of the screen. The settings panel is also there.

10:10: Games work just as you’d expect them to.

10:11: Honeycomb utilizes a pane interface for things like e-mail. If you’ve ever tried Gmail on the iPad, you’ve seen this interface before. Google calls these panes “Application Fragments,” which developers can use to optimize their Android apps for Honeycomb.

10:12: Drag-and-drop interactions are included in Honeycomb, so you can drag-and-delete your e-mails if you so choose.

10:13: Hardware acceleration available for apps. Only takes one line of code to enable.

10:14: New animation framework. Makes transitions smoother (though it’s still nothing compared to the iPad, in our opinion).

10:15: New YouTube app. 3D video wall, utilizes render script and hardware acceleration. The same is true for Google Books.

10:16: Google Maps is now getting demoed. It utilizes 3D rendering. Even the buildings are in 3D (a feature Google’s Marissa Mayer informed us about earlier this year).

10:17: Google Body is the last 3D demo. You can see the human body in 3D.

10:18: Thomas Williamson, a 3D expert and CEO of War Drum Studios, is demoing two of his company’s games and how it performs in 3D.

10:20: Google is showing off the multimedia aspects of Honeycomb. It has a new camera app. It’s the same as the camera app I played with when I first got my hands on the Xoom at CES.

10:22: Video chat is being demoed. A widget called “Contact Shortcut” lets you access your contacts and call them or e-mail them. Video chat via Google Talk just brings your contact up as a full screen video. Seems to run crisply enough.

10:24: CNN is now on stage to demo its new Honeycomb application. Louis Gump, VP of Mobile, is giving the demo.

10:25: The CNN app launches in “the near future.” It utilizes the pane interface. The key news sections are on the left, while the right-hand side has different videos you can watch.

10:26: CNN’s app for Honeycomb has live stream capabilities. You can watch CNN locally or internationally from the app (though I doubt it can replace the cable channel).

10:27: CNN is discussing iReport in Honeycomb. You can not only see recent photos and videos from iReporters, but you can also capture photos or videos from the app and upload them to CNN.

10:30: Changes are coming to Android market.

10:33: First announcement: Android Market Web Store! Finally!

10:34: You can now find and purchase apps via the web. You can check it out at Market.Android.com

10:36: There is a featured application section. Descriptions, developer information, screenshots and more are available.

10:37: Once you buy the app, your phone/tablet automatically gets a notification and starts downloading the app. No wires, all cloud.

10:39: Developers can also upload YouTube videos to promote their apps in the web store. There’s also a “tweet” button on every app page for sending the app to your friends. There is no Facebook integration — no surprise.

10:42: Search is being demoed. There are filters for finding the right apps. You can sort by popularity or rating if you’d like.

10:43: On a side note, Google has now coined “automagically” as a word to describe pushing apps from the desktop to your computer. I guess Google didn’t want Apple to have all the magic.

10:44: New currency support. Developers will be able to set override prices in other currencies.

10:45: Final announcement: In-app purchasing is coming to Android apps. This is something Apple has had for a long time, but now you can buy new levels in your favorite games. It’s a long-overdue feature.

10:46: Disney’s GM of Mobile is on stage. 60 million apps downloaded so far, but more now that it’s making a big push on Android.

10:47: Disney is launching Radio Disney for Android. That’s nice, but even better, it’s bringing Jelly Car, one of the most popular iOS games around, to Android.

10:48: Final game: Tap Tap Revenge 4 is coming to Android. The Tap Tap Revenge franchise has been sold more than 50 million times. The company waited until in-app purchasing was available before launching.

10:52: Google is launching documentation for in-app purchasing today. It’ll go live to users before the end of the quarter.

10:53: Ceelo is video chatting with Hugo. You know, “The Lady Killer.” They had to get a celebrity in there somehow.

10:54: That’s a wrap!

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May 1, 2002: Larry Page And Eric Schmidt Talk About Google, The Future, And Their Dynamic

On May 1, 2002, two men took the stage at a Stanford University event to answer some questions about their startup. The startup? Google. The two men? Eric Schmidt and Larry Page.

That was less than a year after Schmidt officially became CEO of the company, taking over the role from Page. Yesterday, after a decade of success, the two announced they would be switching back. And while some answers are starting to trickle out as to why such a change is taking place now, it’s fascinating to look back in time and see how it all began. Luckily, Stanford captured the talk in 24 short videos clips found here.

One particularly interesting clip is where Schmidt talks about “new leadership and organizational change”. Schmidt talks about the differences between running Novell and Google. “What I found was a company that was working extremely well, but just needed a little bit of list-making and structure. And that’s frankly what I’ve been relegated to,” Schmidt says of Google with a laugh. “Oh no, that’s not true,” Page chimes in. Still laughing, Schmidt says, “It’s okay, your strategy is working pretty good. It’s working well so far.“

Reports today have similar tension being behind the switch. And while they’re clearly at least half-joking here, it’s actually kind of amazing the partnership lasted in the same capacity eight and a half years later.  It’s also funny to hear Schmidt refer to the company as “the Google”.

Another clip has Schmidt talking about how Google won the then all-important partnership with AOL for search. He kicks things off by saying, ”One of the most wonderful things about being a private company is that we don’t have to answer any of those questions.” Remember, that was over two years before Google’s IPO. And that response sounds a bit like something Facebook would say today.

In another clip, Page shows off a picture of a really happy day at Google. Why was everyone so happy? They had just signed the AOL deal. (Hey, like us!)

In this clip, Page talks about innovation at Google. “I guess as Google’s gotten bigger — we’re almost 400 people now — you start to notice that s you get more and more people working on one thing, it’s harder and harder for them to be innovating just because of the communications cost and the inertia and all those kinds of things,” Page says. Again, that was an issue with 400 people — Google now has nearly 25,000 employees. And so perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that this slow down in innovation was one of the reasons cited for yesterday’s change.

Here, Schmidt jokes that “I should say, by the way, that after seeing the way we hire people, I’m amazed that I got through the filter.”

But this video may be the most interesting of all. On the topic of legal issues, Schmidt and Page joke about a couple of different things facing the company, but they’re also clearly serious. Schmidt is concerned about a lawsuit against Google, while Page is concerned about DMCA takedowns (pertaining to Scientology, in this case). Schmidt cares about the business side, Page cares about the information side.

Finally, here Page talks about Google censorship in some countries. While he notes it isn’t a big issue at the time, he worries that it could become a big issue. A report today in the New Yorker by Ken Auletta has one of the main reasons for the CEO shakeup being that Page sided with co-founder Sergey Brin over their pull-out of China, while Schmidt, again from a business perspective, wanted to go the other way.

Each of the short videos is a fascinating look into the early days of the company and the perspective of Page and Schmidt, the once and future CEOs of Google.

View the original article here

Google: Spam Really Has Increased Lately. We’re Fixing That, And Content Farms Are Next

Over the last month, you may have seen some of the reports that Google’s search results are overloaded with spam. This isn’t a new phenomenon (for years now I’ve been tearing my hair out whenever I try to find a manufacturer instruction manual online), but people are noticing that it’s getting worse. Fortunately, Google seems to be listening.

Today Matt Cutts, who heads Google’s search quality team, has written a blog post stating that there has indeed been a “slight uptick of spam in recent months”, and he details what Google is doing to fix it.

First Cutts goes into some of the tweaks Google is making to its algorithms to specifically address the recent increase in spammy results:

To respond to that challenge, we recently launched a redesigned document-level classifier that makes it harder for spammy on-page content to rank highly. The new classifier is better at detecting spam on individual web pages, e.g., repeated spammy words—the sort of phrases you tend to see in junky, automated, self-promoting blog comments. We’ve also radically improved our ability to detect hacked sites, which were a major source of spam in 2010.

But Google isn’t going to stop there. Now, finally, it sounds like they’re going to do more to take on sites that just repurpose content from other sites (hopefully including the countless sites that repost TechCrunch articles verbatim):

And we’re evaluating multiple changes that should help drive spam levels even lower, including one change that primarily affects sites that copy others’ content and sites with low levels of original content.

The most interesting part of the blog post is Cutts’s discussion of so-called “content farms” — those sites that consist primarily of low quality content, typically produced specifically because it will rank well in search results. It’s not clear if this would impact ‘professional’ content farms (like Associated Content and Demand Media) or if it’s going for smaller-time outlets, but it could be a big deal.

As “pure webspam” has decreased over time, attention has shifted instead to “content farms,” which are sites with shallow or low-quality content. In 2010, we launched two major algorithmic changes focused on low-quality sites. Nonetheless, we hear the feedback from the web loud and clear: people are asking for even stronger action on content farms and sites that consist primarily of spammy or low-quality content. We take pride in Google search and strive to make each and every search perfect. The fact is that we’re not perfect, and combined with users’ skyrocketing expectations of Google, these imperfections get magnified in perception. However, we can and should do better.

Cutts does say a few things to defend Google’s search quality. For one, he says that English-language web spam is appearing in results less than half as often as it was five years ago. He also notes that, despite some theories to the contrary, Google will take action against spammy sites that feature Google ads (the theory goes that Google makes money from these ad-loaded content farms, so it isn’t incentivized to remove them).

View the original article here

May 1, 2002: Larry Page And Eric Schmidt Talk About Google, The Future, And Their Dynamic

On May 1, 2002, two men took the stage at a Stanford University event to answer some questions about their startup. The startup? Google. The two men? Eric Schmidt and Larry Page.

That was less than a year after Schmidt officially became CEO of the company, taking over the role from Page. Yesterday, after a decade of success, the two announced they would be switching back. And while some answers are starting to trickle out as to why such a change is taking place now, it’s fascinating to look back in time and see how it all began. Luckily, Stanford captured the talk in 24 short videos clips found here.

One particularly interesting clip is where Schmidt talks about “new leadership and organizational change”. Schmidt talks about the differences between running Novell and Google. “What I found was a company that was working extremely well, but just needed a little bit of list-making and structure. And that’s frankly what I’ve been relegated to,” Schmidt says of Google with a laugh. “Oh no, that’s not true,” Page chimes in. Still laughing, Schmidt says, “It’s okay, your strategy is working pretty good. It’s working well so far.“

Reports today have similar tension being behind the switch. And while they’re clearly at least half-joking here, it’s actually kind of amazing the partnership lasted in the same capacity eight and a half years later.  It’s also funny to hear Schmidt refer to the company as “the Google”.

Another clip has Schmidt talking about how Google won the then all-important partnership with AOL for search. He kicks things off by saying, ”One of the most wonderful things about being a private company is that we don’t have to answer any of those questions.” Remember, that was over two years before Google’s IPO. And that response sounds a bit like something Facebook would say today.

In another clip, Page shows off a picture of a really happy day at Google. Why was everyone so happy? They had just signed the AOL deal. (Hey, like us!)

In this clip, Page talks about innovation at Google. “I guess as Google’s gotten bigger — we’re almost 400 people now — you start to notice that s you get more and more people working on one thing, it’s harder and harder for them to be innovating just because of the communications cost and the inertia and all those kinds of things,” Page says. Again, that was an issue with 400 people — Google now has nearly 25,000 employees. And so perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that this slow down in innovation was one of the reasons cited for yesterday’s change.

Here, Schmidt jokes that “I should say, by the way, that after seeing the way we hire people, I’m amazed that I got through the filter.”

But this video may be the most interesting of all. On the topic of legal issues, Schmidt and Page joke about a couple of different things facing the company, but they’re also clearly serious. Schmidt is concerned about a lawsuit against Google, while Page is concerned about DMCA takedowns (pertaining to Scientology, in this case). Schmidt cares about the business side, Page cares about the information side.

Finally, here Page talks about Google censorship in some countries. While he notes it isn’t a big issue at the time, he worries that it could become a big issue. A report today in the New Yorker by Ken Auletta has one of the main reasons for the CEO shakeup being that Page sided with co-founder Sergey Brin over their pull-out of China, while Schmidt, again from a business perspective, wanted to go the other way.

Each of the short videos is a fascinating look into the early days of the company and the perspective of Page and Schmidt, the once and future CEOs of Google.

View the original article here

Is Google Planning Its Own Android Music Store?

Rumors of an Android-fused Google music service have been building for more than six months; if a new leaked screenshot is to be believed, that rumor just might become reality with the next Android OS release.

The website GizmoFusion has posted the data and synchronization panel from what is purported to be a build of Gingerbread. This is the standard Android settings panel, except alongside the options for syncing contacts, Gmail and Picasa Web Albums is a new designation: Sync Music. Could this be a sign that Google is planning on rolling out its own music service, a la iTunes?

Google has reportedly been working on a cloud-based music service — subscription or a la carte — for quite some time. In a marketplace that is already crowded with options, having solid integration at a device level with Android could give Google an edge.

Of course, even without a specific music store, over the air synchronization could still be a compelling feature. At Google I/O back in May, Google showed off some technology that would allow Android users to stream music from their desktop computers directly to their phone. Presumably, this sort of feature could also double as a way to sync music and playlists.

That could mean, for instance, that rather than relying on third-party apps like DoubleTwist or manually managing a device’s memory card for adding/updating music, transfers could take place over the air. (Add a new song to a playlist on the desktop, get that new song instantly on your smartphone.)

GizmoFusion surmises that this is a feature that other versions of Android (including Froyo) could get as well. If this is something that is tied directly to a Google-hosted offering, we’re inclined to agree. Of course, it could also end up being one of the features planned for Android 2.4, codenamed Ice Cream.

Assuming the screenshot is real, are you interested in either a Google-based music store or the ability to sync music wirelessly? Let us know in the comments.

Image credit: GizmoFusion

[via Engadget]

View the original article here

Android getting Google Music sync in Gingerbread?

By Chris Ziegler posted Jan 14th 2011 2:04PM Google's been teasing cloud-based music features in Android since its I/O conference last year, and the recent leak of a revamped first-party Music app suggests that the plans haven't evaporated into thin air. Here's the latest tidbit: GizmoFusion claims that this screen shot comes from a device running Gingerbread, clearly showing "Music" as one of the accounts configured in Android's settings, which suggests that the system will be pretty deeply-integrated to sync your tracks just as it would your Twitter updates, your Facebook friends, or your calendar entries. Note that we don't have any new evidence beyond this one shot -- and we need to take GizmoFusion's word that this is a Gingerbread device -- but we're wondering if maybe this isn't one of the new features in that Android 2.4 build we've been hearing a lot about lately.

[Thanks, Bryan]

View the original article here

So Much For Standards, Google Says WebM Plugins Coming Soon For Safari And IE9

We’ve already done a full breakdown of Google’s clarification of their H.264 pullout today. But buried in their post is another interesting nugget worth highlighting by itself: WebM plugins are coming shortly for Safari and IE9.

Yes, plugins.

This is both humorous and terrifying on a few levels. First and formost, the point of all of this H.264/WebM stuff is so that the web can shift to an HTML5 video standard going forward. Of course, since neither IE nor Safari will support Google’s, Mozilla’s, and Opera’s preferred codec for that standard, we’re right back to plugin land! Why don’t we just call WebM, Flash 2.0?

Here’s Google on the matter:

Bottom line, we are at an impasse in the evolution of HTML video. Having no baseline codec in the HTML specification is far from ideal. This is why we joining others in the community to invest in WebM and encouraging every browser vendor to adopt it for the emerging HTML video platform (the WebM Project team will soon release plugins that enable WebM support in Safari and IE9).

In other words, they’re going to try to get Safari and IE users hooked on WebM by working around Apple and Microsoft. It’s an attempt to create a standard by way of plugin. Again, ugh.

And while somewhat interesting, it’s unlikely to work. And it’s a dangerous move away from working together on standards and instead is likely to piss off Apple and Microsoft.

Generally, plugins suck because they’re not standards. Even ubiquitous ones like Flash aren’t everywhere. And that creates headaches for web developers and surfers alike. There will never be a truly unified web with plugins. Even plugins backed by Google.

Update: Google has this to say in response:

The HTML

That’s a bit obtuse, but as I read it, that sounds as if Google is trying to say that the WebM plugin more of a “half plugin”. When I asked if that was a fair way to think about it:

Haha, yeah, a ‘half-plugin’ is one way to think about it. There are plug-ins that add non-standard capabilities to a browser that web developers can make use of but then their code is non-standard and reliant on that particular plug-in. This is not the case here. The HTML standard

So it’s a standard-compliant plugin. But still a plugin. Also, does this mean Apple will make a H.264 Chrome extension next? I’m only half-kidding.

View the original article here