Google Voice Goes Live Globally

The new service, which is totally different from the earlier online voice and video chat offering, was first introduced to the company’s customers in the US in 2010, and it allows users to make calls to both landlines as well as to mobile phones from Gmail.

We were able to test the service at MyBroadband. After loading credit onto a Google Voice account we were able to call a South African cellphone at $0.17 (around R1.15) per minute.

According to Google, you can buy calling credit in Euros, British pounds, Canadian dollars and U.S. dollars.

The ability to get your own Google Voice number still doesn’t seem to be available, which means that the feature is currently limited to within the Gmail web client.

When Twitter Met Facebook -- Awkwardly

You would think that a meeting between the founders of the world’s most popular social networks would be a fun affair, with conversation revolving around funding, investments and who has the bigger userbase. In reality, it appears it is a much more dour experience, at least if Twitter co-founder Biz Stone is to be believed.
In November 2008, Twitter co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams jumped into a car and ventured over to Facebook to meet Mark Zuckerberg, in a meeting which we recognise as the time when Facebook tried to buy Twitter.
Talking in an interview with NPR’s Peter Sagal, Stone reveals the awkward meeting with Zuckerberg, thanks largely to the Facebook founder’s apparent lack of humour.

When asked whether Twitter’s founders were members of “incredibly luxurious club “you and Zuckerberg and the guys from Google all get together and you sit in these, like, solid gold armchairs and you all just stare at your smartphones and never talk to each other,”  Stone admits it wasn’t far from the truth:

    Stone: I had a meeting once with Zuckerberg, and every joke I said landed like a dead fish on the ground.

    Sagal: Really?

    Stone: So I said…

    Sagal: He just stared at you like a Vulcan.

    Stone: Yeah.

The Twitter boss also recalls the uncomfortable moment when they initially entered the meeting room:

    Stone: Evan and I walked into the room. He walked in first, sat in a chair. There was a loveseat left. It was a small room. I walked in next, sat on one side of the loveseat. Ev walked in third and Ev said, oh, do you want me to close the door or leave it open? And Zuckerberg said, “yes.”

   "So Ev said, 'Oh, well I guess I'll just close it this much.'" This probably loses some humour in the telling but it was greeted with much laughter by the audience, who presumably were fans of door-related humour.

How well the gang get along might be moot, as according to Stone Twitter is not courting a suitor. When they met Zuckerberg asked the Twitter founders for a price and Stone said $500m as it was a "ridiculous" figure.

Things seemed to get worse after that as Stone apparently does not like queuing for food, something that is apparently part of the culture at Facebook.

"The worst moment was he was like 'Hey, do you guys want to go have lunch at our cafeteria?' So we had to wait on this huge line for lunch. Evan (Williams) was like, 'Aren't you the boss? Can't you like kind of cut the line a little bit here?,'" he added. "And he's like 'That's not how we do things here.'"

After this Stone "bailed", because, he said, "We don't like to be queued up."

Google doodles father of genetics Gregor Mendel's 189th birthday

Today, with Google, let’s all celebrate the 189th birthday of the father of genetics, Gregor Mendel.

But who is Gregor Mendel?

I will be giving six trivial info about Gregor Mendel in the tradition of my free six cafe world cheats, my six
new philippine money, my free six video and my six free wow mounts posts.

1. Gregor Mendel is the Father of Modern Genetics.

2. He is famous for his pea experiments that discuss the dominant and recessive traits in heredity. I am
guessing that this is the reason why the Google doodle is pea shaped today.

3. He was also an Augustinian friar.

4. He was born in Czech Republic and spent most of his time in the city of Brno, Czech Republic.

5. Today is his 189th birthday so the Google doodle.

6. Super trivial stuff: His name was my section in high school - 3rd year (hehe shameless Batis ng Diwa
plug)

Mark Zuckerberg’s Greatest Asset for social media

Google Goes Social With Facebook Rival -Newsexcel

The logo of web titan Google is seen at the firm's headquarters in Mountain View, California. A dominant force in Internet searches the company has launched a social networking service in a bid to rival Facebook called Google+.

Google, the king of Internet search but a bust on the social front, has launched its rival to Facebook, a social networking service called Google+.

"Online sharing is awkward. Even broken. And we aim to fix it," Google's senior vice president for engineering Vic Gundotra said in a blog post about the long-awaited social networking initiative from the Internet giant.

Unveiling Google+, Gundotra stressed the ability it gives users to separate online friends and family into different "Circles," or networks, and to share information only with members of a particular circle.

"We'd like to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to software," he said. "We want to make Google better by including you, your relationships and your interests."

One of the criticisms of Facebook is that updates are shared with all of one's friends unless a user has gone through a relatively complicated process to create separate Facebook Groups.

"Not all relationships are created equal," Gundotra said. "So in life we share one thing with college buddies, another with parents, and almost nothing with our boss.

"The problem is that today's online services turn friendship into fast food -- wrapping everyone in 'friend' paper -- and sharing really suffers," he said.

Google+, located at plus.google.com, is currently being tested by a small number of people or is available by invitation only.

But Google said in a message on the site that it "won't be long before the Google+ project is ready for everyone."

Google unveiled several new tools integrated into Google+, including "Hangouts," which allows for video chatting among friends, "Mobile" for location-sharing and "Huddle" for group text messaging.

Photos and video can be uploaded and shared among Circles using a feature known as "Instant Upload," while an online sharing engine called "Sparks" delivers content from the Web into a user's feed.

Google dominates Internet search but the Mountain View, California, company has failed to make inroads on the social networking front, where Facebook has accumulated nearly 700 million users and Twitter around 200 million.

Former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, speaking at the AllThingsD technology conference last month, took responsibility for the company missing the wave when it came to making services social, saying "I screwed up."

Google's last major foray into social networking -- Google Buzz, launched in February 2010 -- spawned a slew of privacy complaints and led to a slap on the wrist from the US Federal Trade Commission.

Under a settlement between the US regulator and Google announced in March, Google is required to implement a comprehensive privacy program and will be subject to independent privacy audits every two years for the next 20 years.

Google+ makes its debut as Google and Facebook wage a fierce battle over online advertising dollars and how people navigate the Internet.

Google does not send people to Facebook and vice versa, and both companies are seeking to become the chief gateway to the Internet.

In May, Facebook was left red-faced after acknowledging it had hired a prominent public relations firm to draw attention to privacy practices at Google.

Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of technology blog SearchEngineLand.com, said in a blog post it was "anyone's guess" as to whether Google+ would be successful.

"If you're happy using Facebook, there seems relatively little to make you want to switch over to Google Plus, at the moment," said Sullivan, who received an early glimpse of the new service from Google.

"Perhaps if there are people who want a Facebook alternative, Google's now got a core to build on for them."

google social network

If Google adapts social network for the enterprise, as analysts expect,

it will target both Facebook and MicrosoftGoogle has unveiled its long-awaited social network, after months and months of rumors and speculation.Google+ project,

probably one of Google’s most ambitious plan to get into the “wave” of social networking. Being an issue that could generate a very big impact in the near futureIf you're eager to begin trying out Google+ and can't find someone with a spare invitation,


you can sign up to request a Google+ account here.The terrible name is a bad start.

Google+? Google+! I can’t even question or exclaim about the bad name without it looking bad in writing.

Most important, Google+ is a social network of your friends, family and other contacts, a way to connect to these people, just like Facebook.