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Google now has a landing page of a closed beta of a novel new system of monetizing tutoring over Google+’s Hangouts conveniently called Helpouts. The service was first reported a month ago.  The idea is pretty simple. If you have a skill area that you think other people can benefit from, you sign up as an expert. Then on the other end, people who need tutoring in that area find an expert in that area that is online for the right price. Google takes care of the transactions. IT will be

I know people who do their counseling and tutoring over Skype or iChat already, so there is certainly a need in this area.

But the devil will be in the details. Reputation building and scoring will be important as well as keeping it clean from porn (or segregated if that’s what Google wants). Right now Google is inviting people who might be interested. I’m keeping an eye on this one – I hope it makes it through Google Purgatory.
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A new update for the Google+ Android app rolling out in the coming days will make it easier for users to switch between multiple accounts, improve location sharing controls, and finally get rid of the in-app Messenger to make way for Google’s new Hangouts app.

Google employee Virgil Dobjanschi shared details on the new version of the app, noting that switching accounts will now be as easy as it is with Gmail:

Just like Gmail for Android, you can now switch between multiple Google+ accounts with a couple of taps (vs. signing out and signing in again). And the Google+ pages you manage are likewise in the app menu at all times.

The updated app also brings the ability to view and share photos and videos that are stored in Google Drive, and improved location sharing controls:
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In an effort to improve its local reviews and compete with services like Yelp, Google has just launched a new service dubbed City Experts (via Engadget). The network is open to users on Google+ who have reviewed at least 50 places already and are located in select cities  in the U.S., U.K., Australia, and Japan. In order to remain in good standing, City Experts must provide at least five new reviews each month that meet Google’s guidelines of being well written, are three or four sentences long, and include an image.

Are you an expert on all the best places to eat, shop and play in your city? If so, then we want you to join the Google City Expert program and start receiving exclusive perks! The Google City Expert program brings together the most active users on Google Maps who write reviews and upload photos of local places. A

Those who meet all of these guidelines will be rewarded with exclusive invites to local events, “special online recognition”, and “custom swag”, which is Google-branded items.

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Back in June, Google released a new Google+ Photos app for the Chromebook Pixel and noted that the slick app would also be coming to other Chrome OS devices. However, today we get some proof that the Chrome app might be soon making its way to other platforms including Mac and Windows. The Google Operating System blog notes that the app has recently made its way to the Chrome Web Store, with the app’s description describing auto-upload features for Mac, PC, and Linux:

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It’s pretty difficult these days not to have a Google+ account. Sign up for almost any Google service, and you find you’re on Google+ whether you wanted to be or not. But this aggressive approach of pushing accounts on people doesn’t appear to be paying off: a new report by Gigya cited by Marketing Land shows that only two percent of social media sharing takes place on Google+ … 
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Even though they are celebrating a birthday, the Google+ team is still hard at work improving the social network. On the official Google+ blog, the company has announced several new, redesigned plugins available for websites to use.

• A new follow button – a standalone plugin that allows visitors to easily follow a site without navigating away.
• A new badge for Communities – a plugin that offers a link to directly preview a Google+ community. The community will open in a new tab and from there the visitors are able to join and view recent posts.
• Updated badges for Pages and Profiles – new, more customizable plugins that make it easy for people to circle Pages and People. Users now have the ability to change the color theme, chose whether it should be in landscape or portrait, and add or remove the cover photo and tagline. The old badges will be live for 90 more days, after which they will automatically be updated to the new ones.

With these changes, Google says it is trying to keep the visual style consistent with the recent changes it has made on Google+. View them all below…
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According a report from the Unofficial Google Operating System blog, Google is preparing a new service called “Mine” that is heavily integrated into Google+. The service will supposedly allow you to keep track of the items you own or would like to have. As you would expect,  Google Mine will allow you to share those items to your Google+ circles and discuss them. The Operating System blog also dug up some code from the service that shows some of the keywords it will use, including things like “lent”, “given away”, “got it back”, “lost it”, “had in the past.” Basically, it is a lot like the gadget sharing and rating site GDGT.

Google Mine lets you share your belongings with your friends and keep up to date with what your friends are sharing. It enables you to control which of your Google+ Circles you share an item with. It also lets you rate and review the items, upload photos of them and share updates on the Google+ Stream where your friends get to see and comment on them.

The full feature list from Google is below: 
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With just over three weeks until Google officially puts its RSS service Google Reader out to pasture, the Mountain View company has decided to offer the widely respected product a few commemorative last words as it rests on its death bed.

Tech News and Social Products Senior Director Richard Gringras told Wired.com that Google Reader represented an old model of news consumption in an age where news is being constantly consumed throughout the day.

“As a culture we have moved into a realm where the consumption of news is a near-constant process,” says Richard Gringras, Senior Director, News & Social Products at Google. “Users with smartphones and tablets are consuming news in bits and bites throughout the course of the day — replacing the old standard behaviors of news consumption over breakfast along with a leisurely read at the end of the day.”

No matter the reason for Google Reader’s demise, alternatives have made a timely bubble up to the surface leading up to Google’s July 1 deadline. Apps like Reeder that relied on Google Reader for backend syncing have since opened up support for alternatives like Feedly and Feed Wrangler (which we reviewed at launch).
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Google is carrying on with its integration of Google+ across the rest of its services by today opening up the ability to search for photos from the service directly in Google search. Starting today, not only will Google search be able to display photos from friends and events in results, it will also be “using computer vision and machine learning to help recognize more general concepts in your photos such as sunsets, food and flowers.”

Here’s how it works:
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Following showing off a redesigned three column version of Google+ for the web and new “Auto Awesome” photo editing features at I/O, Google is today bringing some of the new features to its Google+ for Android app.

The updated app, which should be hitting Google Play some time today, will include a number of new photo editing features including the new Auto Awesome effects, auto backup for photos, and other photo editing tools from Snapseed:

• Auto Backup, to safely and privately store your photos as you snap them
• Auto Highlight, to browse a selection of top shots from every set of photos you add
• Auto Enhance, to make subtle improvements to the people and places in your images, automatically
• Auto Awesome, to create fun new versions of your pictures (like animations and panoramas) based on the photos in your library

The updated Google+ for Android app will also offer improved location sharing with a new Locations section that lets you view your friends’ current locations on a map.

Lastly, after updating you’ll have the ability to access Google’s new intelligent related hashtags feature:

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Google announced its new cross-platform messaging service called Hangouts at Google I/O yesterday, which prompted many users to wonder if Google had plans to bring SMS and messaging unification to the Hangouts inbox.

Droid Life points us to comments by Dori Storbeck, who manages the Hangouts and Chat Google+ community, which confirm integration with SMS is highly requested and coming soon.

We expect SMS integration will only be available on Android as iOS doesn’t allow the necessary hooks to pull off the feature, which makes the platform that much more appealing for fans of the Hangouts service.

Hangouts launched on the Play Store for Android and App Store for iOS yesterday, as well as Google+ or Gmail on the desktop.
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Google+ will receive a card-based interface redesign featuring a new three column view. The new interface is responsive to the user’s display size. The new multi-column view is customizable meaning you can toggle back to the previous single column view if you prefer.

Google+ will also begin rolling out intelligent hashtags for photos, meaning if you post a photo of the Eiffel Tower, Google+ can automatically recognize the subject and appropriately tag it for you.

Users will now be able to view related photos by clicking on the current photo and seeing related hashtags on the flip side of the photo. A video below highlighting the related hashtag feature is below.

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Google has updated Google+ today with a couple notable and highly requested new features for Hangouts on Air users. The first big new feature is the ability to rewind live broadcasts, allowing users to navigate back to the beginning of a broadcast regardless of when they started watching. Other improvements include higher quality video for those joining Hangouts on Air from a mobile device, as well new auto-playing broadcasts that don’t require users to refresh the page when aHangout starts.

Google did note that “it may take longer to set up your Hangout On Air. For example: the ‘Start broadcasting’ button may be grayed out for a bit, before it turns red.” That change is to provide users with enough time to get everything in place before starting the Hangout.

Google appears to have been able to implement the changes by now processing the video in real-time rather than after the fact, which also means it’s promising Hangouts will be instantly uploaded and ready to watch on YouTube the second you go off air:

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