Well…do not get too excited. Only specific people and pages can customize their Google+ URLs.
“We’re not quite ready for everyone to start claiming their own custom URLs, we plan to expand the availability over time, so stay tuned,” explained Google in a Google+ post.
Google launched Studio Mode today for live Hangout concerts on Google+.
The tool fine tunes the video-chat service’s noisy audio to a high-quality level so instruments and beats are more defined and pleasant to the ear.
“We wanted to make these live hangout concerts sound more like the stage, so today we’re rolling out Studio Mode,” announced Googler Matthew Leske in a Google+ post. “Studio Mode optimizes your individual audio for music instead of conversation, and no else needs to change a thing!”
Musicians simply need to start Hangout On Air, click settings, and then switch from Voice to Studio Mode to activate the new tool. It appears only the person running the Hangouts session has the ability to toggle Studio Mode, however.
This firmware is specially for USA (Android 4.0.4)
Build date August
Changelist: 818980
PDA: P7510UELPL
CSC: p7510XABLPL
Many U.S.-based Galaxy Tab 10.1 Wi-Fi owners allegedly woke up to Ice Cream Sandwich this morning, as seen in AndroidCentral’s Forums (below). Rumors circulated heavily that the tablet would get the push sometime this summer, and it now seems like those reports are panning out. Some users have noted the flavor is missing for them, however, so the rollout appears to be gradual.
Google experienced more copyright removal notices for URLs in the last month than it did for all of 2009.
The search engine processed more than 4.3 million URL removal requests in the last 30 days, and it plans to redirect this data as a signal for search rankings. The bevy of infringing Web content spurred Google to take into account valid copyright removal notices for websites to verify its search algorithms yield the highest quality results.
Sites with high numbers of removal notices may appear lower in our results. This ranking change should help users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily—whether it’s a song previewed on NPR’s music website, a TV show on Hulu or new music streamed fromSpotify.
Google is using witty animation to enlighten folks in Brazil about the conditions of online advertising and how its service helps streamline those operations.
The Internet giant recently hosted five animated videos on YouTube as part of a Brazil-based campaign for Google Ads products. According to TheNextWeb (via Brainstorm9), agencies Pepper Melon and Ño Empire co-created the farcical advertisements that focus on brand awareness, audience engagement, efficient technology use, target selection, and new product launches.
The commercials are in Brazilian Portuguese with English subtitles, check ’em out:
There is a new sheriff in town for the mobile payments arena—or at least that’s what VentureBeat described in a report on the newly formed Mobile Payments Committee.
Electronic Transactions Association CEO Jason Oxman announced the group’s genesis in an interview this morning, where he explained the committee boasts representation from the four leading U.S. carriers.
AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile have apparently united to grapple with mobile payments, and it appears Google, PayPal, ISIS, VeriFone, and Intuit are also members, while Verizon Executive Director of Federal Relations Jackie Moran serves as the group’s chair.
According to VentureBeat, the Mobile Payments Committee will:
A few press images of the Sony Xperia manifested online before its expected IFA unveiling in September and just days after a slew of leaked slides on the tablet emerged via a German website.
Android Guys first spotted the latest high-res leaks on the XDA Developers Forum. The forum’s contributor noted the device offers a Tegra3 CPU, 1-megapixel front-facing camera, 8-megapixel rear-facing camera, 6000 mAh battery, and a magnesium-aluminum alloy body.
The 16GB Experia will apparently sell, according to the XDA thread, for $399.99, while the 32GB and 64GB models cost an additional $100 and $200 respectively, but previous reports for the tablet indicated a slightly higher price scheme.
More rumored specs include Android 4.0 or later, 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity, and a 8.8mm aluminum shell that is 42 percent thinner than the Tablet S. The slim design is certainly a draw, but that dramatic bezel pictured above is a completely different story.
We reported last week that the Federal Trade Commission voted to fine Google $22.5 million for violating browser security settings in Safari, but now Google has agreed to pay the record-setting amount and finally settle its dispute.
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Google Inc. GOOG +0.27% Thursday agreed to pay a $22.5 million penalty to settle a dispute with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. The FTC said the penalty stems from charges that Google misrepresented users of Apple Inc.’sAAPL +0.13% Safari Web browser after saying it wouldn’t place tracking “cookies” or serve targeted ads to Safari users. The FTC said Google’s actions violated and earlier privacy settlement between the FTC and Google. Google shares were up less than 1% at $643.63 in early trading Thursday.
The allegations against Google began in February, when the search engine and other ad companies were caught bypassing Safari security settings to install tracking cookies on devices and computers without consent.
“The record setting penalty in this matter sends a clear message to all companies under an FTC privacy order,” said FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz in another presser. “No matter how big or small, all companies must abide by FTC orders against them and keep their privacy promises to consumers, or they will end up paying many times what it would have cost to comply in the first place.”
It is worth noting that the hefty fine roughly equals five hours of revenue for Google based on Q2 2012 sales.
Google is currently giving a presentation at its San Francisco office to discuss the future of search.
The search engine first revealed the Web is home to 30 trillion URLs and it crawls 20 billion of those pages every day, according to TheNextWeb, while also answering 100 billion queries every month.
Googler Amit Singhal then reminded folks about the Knowledge Graph, according to SearchEngineLand, which now contains 5 million things and 3.5 billion connections between them. Singhal called the Knowledge Graph just a “baby step” in the future of search, and he noted the future ideally involves speech recognition.
Another Googler, Shashi Takur, came on stage to announce a worldwide Knowledge Graph rollout tomorrow for English-speaking countries. From there, Knowledge Graph Director of Product Management Jack Menzel demoed a redesign featuring a top carousel-like bar that helps users swipe through items more quickly when searching. The new look also provides search results with collections and lists instead of just the traditional blue links, according to Engadget.
More Googlers take the stage: Universal Search Director of Product Management Sagar Kamdar explained Gmail is now a part of universal search in a now-live “field trial.” He gave an example by searching for an item to purchase through Amazon, and then he highlighted a shipping confirmation in Gmail that immediately surfaced on the right-hand side of the Google results page. He also showed a similar example with a flight confirmation email.
Those who want to give the trial a spin can do sohere.
A judge ruled today that Google and Oracle must disclose any payments made to Internet authors, journalists, or bloggers for published commentary related to the Google vs. Oracle lawsuit involving Android software.
The trial is just now ending, but Judge William Alsup issued a court order (PDF) today that calls for both companies to divulge which Internet-based journalists were compensated. The judge is apparently concerned that evidence in the case includes analysis from influenced bloggers.
FOSS Patents‘ Florian Mueller revealed in April that Oracle and Microsoft pay for posts on his blog, where he regularly discusses the Google vs. Oracle case.
You may have already noticed, but Google’s latest Olympic-related doodle on the homepage is an interactive HTML5 game that celebrates hurdle races. Users can notably pair a USB-powered gamepad, keyboard, or mouse to control the game’s runner and to help him conquer the track’s hurdles.
Google revealed in a Google+ post today (screenshot below) that the doodle “makes use of the brand-new Gamepad API, which uses JavaScript to read the state of any gamepad controller attached to your computer, and which was just added to Chrome last week.”
Over a dozen people were killed in floodwaters caused by torrential rains that swept across the Philippine island of Luzon, according to Bloomberg, which brought the city of Manila to its knees and forced 130,000 to leave their homes yesterday.
Google Person Finder, an open source web application created by volunteer Google engineers in response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake, provides a forum and registry for survivors and those affected by natural disasters. Google now offers the people-tracking tool to folks in the Philippines to help find loved ones or to post and search for related information. As Google noted, the tool is embeddable and available in Filipino.
According to a Facebook post from yesterday, the Archos Gen 10 tablet will launch in just three weeks.
There is no other information provided on Archos’ Facebook page, but based on earlier reports, this 7.6mm thick tablet works with an ultra-slim, Asus Transformer-like keyboard dock. The Android-powered Gen 10 is expected to run Ice Cream Sandwich, but the recently launched Jelly Bean might ship instead.
The price is also a mystery at this moment, even though Archos generally builds low-end tablets, but rumors place it between $250 and $500.
Samsung just announced the production of its latest advancement in flash memory for mobile devices: the eMMC Pro Class 1500.
“Samsung Electronics announced that it has now begun volume production of an ultra-fast embedded memory for smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices in 16-, 32- and 64-gigabyte densities,” explained Samsung, as it noted the new chips feature read speeds of 140 MB/S and write speeds of 50 MB/S.
Those stats equal turbo web and video browsing, ameliorated multitasking, and a boost for processor-exhaustive gaming on smartphones and mobile devices. Users will love the performance enhancements, but manufacturers will enjoy the chip sizes. They go up to 1.2mm in thickness and just 0.6 grams in weight.
“The ultra high-speed storage device uses Samsung’s 64-Gb NAND with a toggle DDR 2.0 interface based on the company’s latest 20 nanometer class process technology. The new eMMC’s fully managed NAND memory comes with its own high performance controller and intelligent flash management firmware,” Samsung added.
The South Korea-based Company’s newest embedded multimedia cards are surely destined for more devices than the next-generation Galaxy.
Third-party developers often cry about the lack of an open write API from Google+. The absence notably means no tools, products, or services can add data to Google’s social network. Well, a few companies, such as Hootsuite, currently have permission to publish, but many more can only read.
With that said, entrepreneur Dalton Caldwell wants to launch ad-less social platform App.net to replace all the bogged-down, ad-supported social networks of the Internet. He even posted an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg yesterday about Facebook’s “bad-faith negotiations” with App.net and “the very real risk of 3rd party development on an ad-supported platform.”
Google Vice President of Engineering Vic Gundotra noticed Caldwell’s contentious blog post late last night, so he promptly explained in a status update why a public, read-and-write Google+ API is missing in action. His answer is simple: “I’m not interested in screwing over developers.”
According to the latest data from IDC, four of the top five worldwide vendors eyed shipment increases year-over-year and solid growth in Q2 2012.
Global tablet shipments hit 25 million units, with a 66.2-percent year-over-year increase, while Apple’s iPad set a shipment record in Q2 2012 by jumping from 11.8 million units shipped in Q1 2012 to 17 million.
Samsung sits at second place with 2.4 million units shipped, which is an increase from 1.1 million units in Q2 2011, and ASUS notably almost tripled its amount of units shipped from a year ago. Interestingly, shipments of the Google/ASUS-branded Nexus 7 are not a part of these totals.
Google is making Android the cornerstone of its social media presence.
Google Mobile will discontinue tweets through the @GoogleMobile Twitter handle, as the account was primarily for other mobile platform news, so Google can give more attention to the Android operating system.
The search giant now recommends the @Android Twitter handle as the go-to center for all-things Android in 140 characters or less. Visit the Google directory for a complete list of Google-based profiles on Twitter.
To go along with Google’s honed eye for its mobile OS, the folks in Mountain View also launched +Android on Google+. It further closed the Google Mobile blog to focus on the Official Android blog. Both resources serve as a comprehensive hub for the latest messages from the Android team.
“Our Mac and iOS support has now become so mainstream that we realized we just don’t need to keep Mac news on its own blog, so we won’t be posting here any longer,” explained Google.
Google encourages readers to find information about Google Chrome for OS X, Google Earth, and other iOS apps and products at its other individual blogs—like the Chrome Blog and the Lat Long Blog.
Google Wallet is now cloud-based, supports any type of credit or debit card, and it is safer than ever before thanks to secure storage and remote disabling.
U.S. carriers are extremely stingy about letting Google put the Wallet app on its own operating system. While Sprint and its Virgin subsidiary have Google Wallet enabled on most of their new Android phones, Verizon has outright banned it—even on the Galaxy Nexus. AT&T and T-Mobile, which, with Verizon, are part of the competing ISIS Wallet standard. Both refuse to carry phones that use Google Wallet, but you can buy an unsubsidized GSM Galaxy Nexus that works on both networks just fine.
“Today we’re releasing a new, cloud-based version of the Google Wallet app that supports all credit and debit cards from Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover. Now, you can use any card when you shop in-store or online with Google Wallet. With the new version, you can also remotely disable your mobile wallet app from your Google Wallet account on the web.”
Google Wallet is simple: Card information is entered on the app, or on its new online wallet and Google Play, and manageable transaction records for in-store and online purchases appear on the phone (and now the Web!) immediately after payment use.
Google also instantly charges the selected credit or debit card. Well, when a user pays, the virtual card is transmitted to the merchant, but then the back-end charges the selected card. Note: It does not directly charge the card, because it is a proxy card.
AnandTech ran the 16 GB Nexus 7 through the Android version of its standard SSD tests using Androbench, and the in-depth results indicate the Google-branded tablet boasts “strong storage performance.”
The performance highlights:
— Sequential read speed at 19.8 MB/s (slower than 8 GB model, 32 GB Motorola Xyboard 10.1, and 16 GB Samsung Galaxy Nexus).
— Sequential write speed at 10. 47 MB/s (faster than 8 GB model, 16 GB Samsung Galaxy Nexus, and 16 GB Asus Transformer Pad 300).
— Random read performance at 7. 79 MB/s (faster than 8 GB model, 16 GB Samsung Galaxy Nexus, and 16 GB Asus Transformer Pad 300).
— Random read performance at 0.46 MB/s (faster than 8 GB model, 16 GB Samsung Galaxy Nexus, and 16 GB Asus Transformer Pad 300).
AnandTech’s Anand Lal Shimpi said the difference in IO performance “isn’t significant enough to push you towards the $250 Nexus 7 if you don’t need the extra space,” but he told folks to consider the 16 GB model an “added benefit.”
Google Senior Vice President of Engineering Vic Gundotra just posted an exclusive link on his Google+ profile for users to Hangout with their fantasy league at NFL.com.
The league is integrating Google+’s popular Hangout video-chat feature on NFL.com to give users a chance to visually interact with other Fantasy Football players from anywhere at any time. This is a huge advancement for the imagination-based sport, which typically eyes participation growth without any changes to technology.
According to The Wall Street Journal, this is the first time Google has implemented Hangouts into a third-party service. The feature is free and available 24/7 by way of a button on fantasy team pages. Google also increased Hangout’s 10-person limit, because leagues usually have about 12 players.
Google just sent an email to customers who pre-ordered the Nexus Q to announce it will postpone the consumer launch of its media-streaming device.
The Nexus Q originally received a mid-July shipping time, but Google apparently decided to go back to the drawing board over “initial feedback from users.”
Google is apologizing to those who pre-ordered the $299 Nexus Q by sending them a free one. The U.S.-made device is akin to an Android- and Google services-compatible Apple TV, but it does not run apps.
Apple and Samsung appeared in a San Jose federal court today, where U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh presides, to give opening statements starting at 9 a.m. PST.
Apple filed the first suit in this monumental case in April 2011. The Cupertino, Calif.-based company claimed Samsung infringed its patents by “slavishly copying” its iPhone. Samsung, a South Korea-based Company, promptly countersued.
This is one of the important cases to go to trial among a slew of other litigations on smartphone patents. If Apple wins, Samsung could suffer a financial blow and the ability to sell its infringing products in a large market. If Apple loses, its “thermonuclear war” against Android smartphone manufacturers could essentially wither away as Samsung collects royalty fees.
This morning’s most notable highlights are below (continually updated).
Google just acquired social media marketing company Wildfire.
AllThingsD reported “people familiar with the transaction” estimate Google bought the social ad business for $250 million, “plus earnouts, employment agreements, etc.”
Wildfire currently serves 16,000 customers, including 30 of the top 50 brands, and it reportedly raised $14 million since founding in 2008. Google will likely merge Wildfire into its ever-expanding social and advertising services to better entice marketers into buying either traditional or display ads for a variety of platforms— even direct rival Facebook.
Both companies took to their respective blogs today to confirm the buyout (below).
OUYA, the Android-powered alternative gaming console that raised millions of dollars in mere days on Kickstarter, just revealed that it partnered with Square Enix to release Final Fantasy III as its launch title.
