Monday, August 29, 2011


The +1 button for retailers

Originally Posted by Brian Lam, Strategic Partner Manager (from google commerce blog)

The people we know and trust have a big influence on our purchase decisions. I bought the chef's knife I use every day on the recommendation of my friend Eliot, who more than knows his way around the kitchen. And I always try to bring my friend Brian along when I'm music shopping, since he has a knack for pointing out great albums I've never heard of.

We're excited about the +1 button because it brings these personal recommendations to a place where many purchase decisions start -- the Google search results page.

Adding +1 buttons to your product pages makes it easy for your customers to recommend the products they love on your site with a single click. And thanks to recent improvements to the +1 button, they can take the conversation even further by sharing your products right away on Google+

From there, +1 annotations can help your products stand out. Potential customers might see +1's from their friends and contacts on your search ads, your organic Google Search results, or even on your page itself.

We've worked with Bazaarvoice and PowerReviews to make it even easier to get the +1 button on your pages. Both companies have extensive experience in social commerce, and can help you develop the right strategy for implementing +1 buttons on your site.

Looking for a couple examples of retailers using +1 to help their products stand out on Google search? Jockey (working with PowerReviews) and Golfsmith (working with Bazaarvoice) have already added +1 buttons to the product pages on their sites.

If you'd prefer to add the +1 button to pages yourself, it's easy to do. Just install a small snippet of code wherever you want the +1 button to appear. For advanced implementation FAQs and documentation, you can visit the +1 button page on Google Code.

As more retailers add +1 buttons to their sites, we're excited about how much more helpful search results will get. The next time I need a new frying pan, I won't need to call Eliot up -- his recommendation will be right there waiting for me. 

Thursday, August 25, 2011


The Real FACEBOOK LIKE vs GOOGLE +1 War Begins!

Original Post from Daniel Dulitz, Group Product Manager (google web master blog)

For the past few months, you might have used +1 buttons to help visitors recommend your content on Google Search and on their Google Profiles. We’ve just announced a few changes that make +1 even more useful.

First, the +1 button now lets visitors share links to your pages on Google+. If someone wants to start a conversation about your content, it’s easy for them to do so. Second, you can use +Snippets to customize the name, image and description that appear when your content is shared. Finally, new inline annotations help increase engagement after users see a friend’s recommendation right on your page.

Here are a couple of tips to help you take full advantage of these improvements:

+Snippets
The +1 button opens up your site to a valuable new source of traffic with sharing on Google+. +Snippets let you put your best face forward by customizing exactly what appears when your content is shared.

For example, if you’re running a movie review site, you might want visitors to share posts containing the title, movie poster, and a brief synopsis:



You may already be using this markup to build rich annotations for your pages on Google Search. If not, marking up your pages is simple. Just add the correct schema.org attributes to the data already present on your pages. You’ll set a name, image, and description in your code:

<body itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Article">
<h1 itemprop="name">This is the article name</h1>
<img itemprop="image" src="thumbnail.jpg" />
<p itemprop="description">This is the description of the article.</p>
</body>

Example code containing each of the +Snippet attributes


For more details on alternate markup types, please see our technical documentation.

Inline annotations
Now, when a person visits a page that someone they know has +1’d, they can see a name and face reminding them to pay special attention to your content. Here’s how it looks:


Inline annotations let people see which of their friends +1’d your content


To add inline annotations, you need to update your +1 button code. Visit the configuration tool, select ‘inline’ from the ‘Annotation’ menu, and grab a new snippet of code.

Both sharing from +1 and inline annotations are rolling out fully over the next few days. To test these improvements right now, join our Platform Preview group.


How actually +1 button sharing on Google+

Wednesday, August 24, 2011


Bookmarking is now more easier in Gmail

Original post by Kathleen Chen, User Education Specialist (from gmail blog)


Now that Superstars has graduated from Gmail Labs, it easy to incorporate these different stars into your workflow. Go to the General tab in Settings, then scroll down to the "Stars" section:


Here you can select which stars you want to use, and in which order you want to them to cycle through when you click the star icon in your inbox. Simply click and drag the stars to the appropriate spot in the lists.


If you want to have all your starred messages show up at the top of your inbox so you see them right away, try out the Starred first inbox style.

You can also find messages with specific stars by using the following queries in your search box:

has:yellow-star
has:red-star
has:orange-star
has:green-star
has:blue-star
has:purple-star
has:red-bang
has:orange-guillemet
has:yellow-bang
has:green-check
has:blue-info
has:purple-question

Friday, August 19, 2011


Slide-in Animation for New Notifications in Google+ [VIDEO]


Description:
With a new slide-in animation, it's now easier to notice new notifications in the Google+ bar

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwaQNJRvrfY

Thursday, August 18, 2011


Magnifier - New Blog for Google Music

Original post by Paul Joyce, Product Manager for Music Beta (from official google blog)

Three months ago at Google I/O we launched Music Beta, a service that lets you upload your personal music collection to the cloud and listen to it on the web or your Android phone or tablet. Since the beginning, our goal has been to help you fall in love with your music all over again, and now we're taking that idea one step further. 

Today we introduced Magnifier, a new music discovery site that will keep your collection growing. Magnifier will feature great music and the people who make it, including videos of live performances, interviews with artists, explorations of different musical genres and free songs that you can add to your Music Beta collection. 

The featured artist on Magnifier this week is Grammy-nominated indie rock band My Morning Jacket. We're giving away two of their tracks to Music Beta users, one of which is an exclusive to Magnifier: a live performance of "The Day is Coming." To get these free tracks and hundreds of other songs in our Free Song Archive, you need a Music Beta by Google account (if you don't have an account, request an invitation). Head over to Magnifier, find the songs you want, click on the "Add free music" buttons and the tracks will be instantly added to your library in Music Beta. 



Stop by Magnifier regularly to get the free Song of the Day and reignite your passion for music.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011


Google Expands Sitelinks

Have you noticed this change in google? Yes google says “it even easier to find the section of the site you want.” Plus, Google is upping the number of sitelinks from eight to twelve sitelinks for these queries.


what do you think? comment below

Thursday, August 11, 2011


A New Android Market for Phones [VIDEO]


Description: Now you can find apps and games, rent movies and buy books in Android Market on your phone.
(Books and Movies available only in the U.S.)

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Pbo-d62ivY&amp;feature=player_detailpage

Sunday, August 7, 2011


Its Easier to Inviting Your Friends to Google+

Inviting your friends to Google+ just got a lot easier.

The update gives you the ability to share Google+ invites by simply sharing a link. By sharing your unique link with your friends, up to 150 of them can instantly sign up for Google’s social network. The search giant still offers inviting friends via email as an option.

The update was announced earlier this week by Google+ engineer Balaji Srinivasan.
We’ve heard that you want to invite your friends, but sometimes you don't know their email addresses... or sometimes its not easy to find it. 
To address this, we’ll be rolling out a new feature over the next few days that lets you invite others simply by using a link. 
When you click the “invite friends” button on the right-hand side of the page, you’ll find a new link that you can IM to friends or post on the web.  
Since we're still in field trial, we're limiting sign-ups from these links to 150 per person for now. We hope you'll like this easy way to bring your friends onto Google+. Thanks and keep the feedback coming!

Saturday, August 6, 2011


Google Search with Instant Pages in Chrome [VIDEO]

Description: With Instant Pages in Chrome, you can skip the extra seconds waiting for a page to load and get to the answers you're looking for faster with webpages that load instantly.


Gmail Introduce Preview Pane

Originally posted by Maciek Nowakowski, Associate Product Manager (from gmail blog)


When I check my email, I often rely on the message snippets to figure out which messages to open first. Sometimes, though, I want to see more than snippets, which is why I'm happy to announce that you can now preview messages in your inbox using a new feature in Gmail Labs called Preview Pane. It's probably a very familiar layout to those of you who have used Gmail on a tablet device. We also think it's going to work especially well if you have a larger resolution screen.



Click the image above to see a larger version.

After you enable Preview Pane from the Labs tab in Gmail Settings you'll see a toggle button in the top right corner of your message list, which lets you switch between preview and list views.


For those of you who have more vertical space you can also move the preview pane below your message list. You can enable this using the dropdown arrow next to the toggle button:


By default there is a 3-second delay in marking a conversation as read after previewing it. If that doesn't feel natural to you, you can change the timing in the General tab of settings:

Thursday, August 4, 2011


Smoother and Sharper Gmail for Mobiles

Originally Posted by Daniel Brotherston, Mobile Software Engineer (from Gmail Blog)


On the mobile team, we strive to produce web apps which look and feel just like installed apps. In the past few weeks, we've released a number of features which make Gmail for mobile look sharper and feel smoother.



Features

Pull down to refresh
You can now pull down to refresh your message list and conversation on all iOS and Playbook devices. To refresh, simply touch the message list, drag downwards and release.

High resolution icons
For those of you using Gmail for mobile on an iPhone 4 Retina display, the icons and graphics are now at a higher resolution, making Gmail for mobile sharper. 

Transitions
When you tap on a conversation, tap back to the inbox, go to the menu or go back, the view will slide left or right. This new transition animation is a quick, small indication that makes the view change feel smoother.

As always, go to mail.google.com on your mobile browser to check out the latest updates to Gmail for mobile.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011


Gmail calling goes worldwide! 38 languages. 4 currencies

Originally Posted by Pierre Lebeau, Product Manager


You can now buy calling credit in your choice of four currencies (Euros, British pounds, Canadian dollars or U.S. dollars) and there are no connection fees, so you only pay for the time you talk.

To help reduce the cost of staying connected, we’re also lowering our calling rates to over 150 destinations around the world. For example, it’s now only $0.10 (or €0.08) per minute to call mobile phones in the U.K., France or Germany (landlines are $0.02/min), $0.15/minute to call mobile phones in Mexico and $0.02/min to call any phone number in China and India. The complete list is available on our rates page.

We’re rolling out this feature over the next few days, so if it’s available in your country you’ll see a little green phone icon show up at the top of your chat list and you’ll be ready to make calls (you’ll need to install the voice and video plug-in if you haven’t already). If you're a Google Apps user, your domain administrator must have Google Voice and Google Checkout enabled in the administrator control panel in order to be able to use this feature.




Calls to the U.S. or Canada placed within those countries will continue to be free at least for the rest of 2011. Calls to the U.S. or Canada placed from outside these countries will be charged $0.01 per minute (or €0.01, £0.01, C$0.01 per minute).

source / related posts
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/calling-from-gmail-now-in-38-languages.html
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/calling-from-gmail-now-in-38-languages.html