Thursday, March 31, 2011

Google + 1



             Here it is, introducing the Google + 1 button. When you are looking for something, sometimes it get’s annoying without any help. You search and search, maybe through a tweet, a shared video, a blog post. Well the search just got a little better. It’s been clear that Google wants social media in their algorithm. It not only reduces spam, but you get better personalized results. The + 1 button will soon start appearing alongside search results and in time on websites.


                  This of course is the reason why it’s being introduced, to make sharing on the web an even more enjoyable user experience. People might share recommendations more often if they knew that in turn, it would help their friends out. If someone signs into their Google account and they have a friend who has a website and they in turn use the + 1 for their friends site after doing a search, thus recommending your site to the world. What a great concept.   Of course now we are going to have the big debate over what is better the “Facebook Like button” or” the Google + 1 button”. I don’t know about anyone one else, but as for me, I “like” the + 1 button just a little bet better. What do you think? I would love to hear your comments. As always, get out there and enjoy your day!         



























Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Welcome to the Heartland Google

          I don’t know how many people in this area are excited. I just know that I am. I guess that you could say that I’m a big fan of Google. That’s why I’m excited. They are bringing their high speed broadband to Kansas City, Kansas. That’s not too far from where I live, only about 20 miles west. They announced on their official blog that KCK would be the first city to receive their service. Google say’s that their ultra fast network will be capable of making internet access more than 100 times faster than the broadband connections in most U.S. homes. More than 1100 cities throughout the country made bids to become the test site for their network, which will provide internet connections of 1 gigabyte per second to up to 500,000 people. The city of Topeka, Kansas had even changed their city name briefly to Google, Kansas.


          The launch will coincide with Alcatel-Lucent Developer platform, Alcatel-Lucent provides service providers and enterprises with tools that enable third party developers to build, test, manage, and distribute applications across networks, including television, broadband internet, and mobile. Google says that the new network will be built in conjunction with the city. Google plans to work closely with local organizations, businesses, and universities as the infrastructure is built. Bringing Americans better access to high speed internet is part of this effort from Google and is also part of a U.S. government initiative as well, with it’s National Broadband Plan. The U.S. government recently released a map of broadband availability in the country, highlighting how much work needs to happen to bring high speed internet access at various cities throughout the country. I for one am happy about this. The high speed access in this area isn’t too good unless you spend a lot of money.



            Although as Google say’s , access is a part of the problem, but so is speed. As we consume more business and pleasure online broadband speed is critical. Google also hopes that supporting high speed internet, it will in turn spur more innovations around technologies that depend on it, particularly hospitals and universities. Google says that pending approval from Kansa City’s Board of Commissioner’s, the service will be available beginning next year. Google is also looking for ways to bringing the same internet speeds to other countries. The following video is from KCK’s mayor, take a look and please feel free to leave some feedback. It’s always my pleasure to hear from you. Go on now, get out there and enjoy your day!               









Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Music in the Cloud


Have you been over to Amazon’s website lately? If you haven’t, you really need to check out their new service. Yes, they now have cloud services for music. There were rumors of this. They done it before both Google and Apple. Both the “Cloud Drive” and the “Cloud Player” are live on their website.  Cloud Drive is the name that they have given to their media storage space on their servers. You just go and sign up and they give you the first 5 GB free and allow you to access the media player from any computer. There is one player for the web and another player for Android devices.


Any album bought through Amazon MP3 is stored for free in your Cloud Drive — a very nice perk.
  If you buy one album from Amazon MP3, they’ll upgrade your Cloud Drive storage to 20 GB for free for a year — another nice perk.
Normally, 20 GB of Drive storage will cost $20 for a year. 50 GB is $50. 100 GB is $100. And so on. All the way up to 1 TB for $1,000.
The Cloud Drive storage isn’t just for music — Amazon notes that 1 TB will hold 70 hours of HD video.
Other files can be uploaded — this includes music, movies, photos, and even documents.
The MP3 uploader accepts MP3 or AAC files, but they must be DRM-free (.wma, .wav, .ogg and others are not supported)
Old Amazon MP3 purchases aren’t put in your Cloud Drive, only new purchases going forward (though you can manually upload).
The Android Cloud Player is built into the Amazon MP3 app — it’s in both the Android Market and Amazon’s new Appstore.
This is for U.S. customers only for the time being.
Cloud Player for the web works on IE 8 and above, Firefox 3.5 and above, Chrome, and Safari. There is no Opera support. And Flash is required (but for uploads only).
There’s also a stand-alone uploader app for Mac and PC.
You can’t upload music from your mobile device “at this time”.


    We knew that this was going to happen and there you have it. Amazon was the first big company to offer such services. I see that it won’t take long before Google, Apple, Sony and some of the other big names out there will follow. I would love to hear your comments. As always Get out there and enjoy your day!  
                     


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