Archive for the ‘Google’ Category

Picnik, which makes an online photo editor, announced on its blog Monday that the company is being acquired by Google.

The editor works directly with online photo libraries like Flickr, Facebook, and Picasa Web Albums. Users can also upload files to the service and download them again when they are done. The editing capabilities it offers are a natural complement to a Picasa, even though the technology appears to be a mismatch: Picnik works in Flash, while most advanced Google apps use the slower JavaScript. (Google, however, is working to improve JavaScript performance with its Native Client technology.)

Neither Picnik nor Google provided financial terms of the deal in their blog posts.

Flickr uses Picnik by default. It will be interesting to see how Yahoo, which owns Flickr, deals with the new owner of its preferred photo editor.

Picnik is a Webware 100 winner. It competes with Pixlr, Fotoflexer, and Aviary.

Picnik brings photo editing to the browser.

Source :

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10461627-2.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

This is what Google had in mind when it acquired DoubleClick.

Google unveiled its rebranded display ad serving technology Monday, bringing together the DoubleClick DART for Publishers and Google Ad Manager products under a new name: DoubleClick for Publishers. The new ad-management software has a redesigned user interface, links to the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, and APIs for company developers to build applications on top of the technology.

The idea is to give Web publishers that run “Ads By Google” a better way to control where their clients’ ads appear. Similar work on search ads has made many a millionaire at Google, and the company believes it can give display advertisers the same amount of precision and analytical tools that are available for text advertisers.

Hence the $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick in 2008. Last year Google unveiled the new DoubleClick Ad Exchange, which matches ad buyers looking for a discount with ad sellers hoping to fill excess inventory.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10457609-265.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

As the four biggest record companies wait to hear more about a proposed iTunes cloud music service, word comes now that Google has kicked the tires on a start-up specializing in cloud media.

Google has showed interest in possibly acquiring Los Angeles-based Catch Media, a company that intends to help make it simple for consumers to enjoy their digital movies, music, and books across numerous different hardware and service platforms, according to sources with knowledge of the negotiations. It’s unclear whether talks between Google and Catch have gone beyond informal discussions.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt (left) and Universal Music Group CEO Doug Morris prepare to shake hands at the Vevo launch party two months ago.

(Credit: Greg Sandoval/CNET)

If Google did acquire the company, it could help the search giant keep pace with Apple’s expected efforts to take iTunes to cloud computing. Last month, CNET reported that Apple has spoken to the top labels about plans to offer a streaming music service free of charge to consumers. Before agreeing to any new licensing deals, the labels are waiting for Apple to supply more information.

A Google spokesman responded to a request for comment by writing: “While we’re always talking to various people about various things, we don’t comment on rumor or speculation.” A representative from Catch declined to comment.

Catch doesn’t offer or store content. The company wants to be to digital media what Plus, Cirrus, and ATM networks are to the banking industry. Catch has developed a technology that helps hardware companies and service providers register, track, route and clear digital media as it moves across different platforms.

If Catch has its way, consumers will one day access media from different vendors and devices as easily as people withdraw money from any available ATM.

Founded in 2003 by brothers Boaz Ben-Yaacov and Yaacov Ben-Yaacov, Catch is focused on cloud-based music at this early stage in its development, sources said. In order to enable the cross-platform accessing of songs, Catch has licensed music from all four major record labels: Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, and EMI Music.

Conceivably, Catch is one way Google could equip Android cellphone owners with a means to access their iTunes music libraries.

Google’s interest in a start-up focused on cloud music has sparked speculation within the recording industry about the search engine’s music plans.

According to a December story in The Wall Street Journal (subscription required), Google was attempting to buy Lala, but Apple won out.

In December, Apple paid more than $80 million to acquire the company, which enables users to store a copy of their music libraries on the its servers and then access those songs from anywhere they can connect to the Web.

Barely two months prior to Lala’s acquisition, Google made news by partnering with the streaming service on a music-search deal. One music industry source said Google began circling Catch soon after losing Lala.

Because Google was pursuing an acquisition of Lala, some in the music industry see the search engine’s interest in Catch as part of a larger effort by Google to go deeper into digital music.

According to music sources, the industry would welcome a new music venture from Google CEO Eric Schmidt with open arms, sort of like how the chiefs of three of the largest labels literally welcomed Schmidt to the Vevo launch party in December.

Google’s YouTube has already become one of the Web’s biggest music outlets. Music videos at YouTube and Vevo, a site created by three top labels with YouTube’s help, attract millions of viewers each day.

The music industry has said for years that it would prefer an iTunes rival to emerge. As Apple and Google’s businesses increasingly begin to collide, who better than to face down Jobs and Apple than Schmidt and Google?

Source :

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-10455535-261.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

RSS technology makes it possible for anyone to keep up with fresh content without having to visit the site in question. Now the same holds for webpages without RSS thanks to a new Google Reader feature.

Today Google has rolled out a subtle change to Google ReaderGoogle Reader that lets you create custom feeds to track pages that don’t already have them. So you can subscribe to updates for any webpage simply by typing the URL into the “Add a subscription” text box.

Should you put the new feature to work, you’ll start to receive short snippets for any updates made to the pages, and GoogleGoogle asserts that it’s committed to improving the quality of these tiny blurbs over time. On the flip side, webpage owners can choose to opt out by adjusting a few lines of code.

So when might this come in handy? While most companies have their own blogs, receiving automatic notifications any time there’s an update to the homepage or product pages of a business of interest could prove to be vital. For example, with Apple releasing a “new product” and potentially news about the iPhoneiPhone on Wednesday, you bet that I’m going to create some custom feeds.

Source :

http://mashable.com/2010/01/25/google-reader-custom-feeds/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29&utm_content=Twitter

As part of National Cyber Security Awareness Month, we recently posted about how to pick a smart password. Having a strong password goes a long way in helping to protect your data, but there are a number of additional steps you can take to help you keep your Gmail account secure:

1. Remember to sign out. Especially when using a public computer, be careful to sign out of your Google account when you’re finished. Just click the “Sign out” link at the top right corner of your inbox. If you’re using a public or shared computer and want to be extra thorough, you can also clear the browser’s cache, cookies and history. Then, completely close the browser. On your personal computer, you can also lock your computer with a password-protected screensaver if you need to step away momentarily. Learn the best ways to lock your screen in Windows or in Mac OS X. Forgot to sign out? Open up a new Gmail session on another computer and use Gmail’s remote sign out feature to close any sessions that might still be open elsewhere.

2. Be careful about sending certain sensitive information via email. Once you send an email, you’re no longer in control of the information it contains. The recipients, if they so choose, could forward the email or post its contents in a public place. Even if you know and trust the people you’re emailing, that information may become exposed if their accounts become compromised or they get a virus on their machines. As a rule of thumb, should you need to provide a credit card number or financial account number to respond to a message, provide it over the phone or in person — not over email. And never share your password with anyone. Google does not email you to ask you for your password, your social security number, or other personal information — so don’t send it!

3. Enable “Always use HTTPS.” Any time you visit a webpage, your computer needs to send and receive information across the Internet. HTTPS is used to encrypt data as it is transmitted between computers on the Internet, so look for the “https” in the URL bar of your browser to indicate that the connection between your computer and Gmail’s servers is encrypted. We use HTTPS on the Gmail login page, and you can choose to protect your entire Gmail session with HTTPS as well. HTTPS can make your mail slower, so we let you make the choice for yourself. Open Settings and choose “Always use HTTPS” on the General tab if you want to turn it on.

4. Be wary of unexpected attachments.To help protect you from viruses and malware, Gmail automatically scans every attachment when it’s delivered to you, and again each time you open a message. Attachments you send are also scanned. That said, no system is foolproof, so if you happen to get an email from a friend with an attachment you didn’t expect, don’t be afraid to ask the sender what it is before you decide whether to open it.

5. Make sure your account recovery information is up-to-date. Your account recovery information helps you regain access to your account if you ever forget your password, or if someone gains access to your account without your permission. We currently offer several paths to account recovery. Every Gmail user must select a security question and answer — be sure to choose a combination that is easy for you to remember, but hard for others to guess or come across by investigating. Don’t choose a question like “What is my favorite color?” as others may easily guess the answer. We also encourage you to provide a secondary email address and/or a mobile phone number, so we can send you a link to reset your password if you lose access to your account. You can find additional security tips for Gmail in our Help Center. Learn more about protecting your computer, website, and personal information by checking out our security series on the Google blog or visiting http://www.staysafeonline.org.

Source :

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/gmail-account-security-tips.html

Google on Tuesday announced that its similar-images feature is now a standard part of the company’s image search technology.

The feature was originally launched in late April, alongside the visual-news timeline, as a way for users to find images that share certain visual similarities with those in Google Images search results. This means that you could do a search for “ice cube” and very quickly fork out Google’s results between images of the frozen chunks of water and the popular West Coast rapper, all without having to change your original search term.

Which ‘ice cube’ did you mean? Google’s image search can now offer suggestions for images that may be similar.

(Credit: Screenshot by Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

Google continues to host a dedicated Similar Images search page that provides identical results to what’s now found in the standard version of Google Images search. This is likely to remain, as has been the case for sites of other Google Labs graduates, such as Google Transit (now a part of Maps) and Google Suggest.

Google has also created a standalone Google Product Ideas page to grab user feedback for other features or changes to the image search service. This operates the same way as other product idea pages by letting users suggest new ideas to Google’s engineers, as well as giving others the chance to vote ideas up or down.

Source :

http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-10384618-248.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

Google has added new personalization features to Reader, its RSS feed aggregator, the company wrote in a blog post Thursday.

One new feature is dubbed Popular Items. Using algorithms, Reader will “find top-rising images, videos and pages from anywhere (not just your subscriptions).” From there, the app will lump all those pieces in the new Popular Items section. Based on a user’s subscriptions and what someone is reading, Reader orders those stories by what it thinks a person likes best.

Reader’s recommendations have been moved to the app’s Explore section. Google also renamed it Recommended Sources. Like before, that feature will employ the user’s Reader Trends and Web History to find a list of feeds he or she might like.

To make it easier for users to find the information they’re most likely to care about, all Reader feeds now feature a sort option called Magic. According to Google, Magic “reorders items in the feed based on your personal usage, and overall activity in Reader, instead of default chronological order.” Google said that the ranking is tailored to the user. The more the user clicks the “like” and “share” buttons on stories, the better the Magic sort will be.

Here is the Magic setting in action:

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)