After the orkut debacle, a newer and improvised version of social networking was bound to come from the Google camp. The latest version is all set to take on facebook and though the wait has been long, the end result is worth a mention. The product which has been delayed time and again has finally arrived. The best part about Google plus is that it is planning to turn the search engine into a giant social network vis a vis its highest grocer google.com.

The familiar grey strip at the top of every Google page has been changed into black and has the new option of accessing your Google plus profile. You can also see your notifications directly.

Although at the first look Google plus looks like any other social networking, it has many niche features of its own.
One of this is Google plus circles. The focus of this social networking is not on sharing information with all the friends. It will target small circles of friends. You will decide, which information to share in which circle of friends. It is up to the user to choose his circle of friends and get started on Google plus. Hence, information sharing can be controlled and segregated. In simple words, there is no scope of prying over by parents and siblings. HTML5 allows users to drag-and-drop their friends into different social circles for friends, family, classmates, co-workers and other custom groups conveniently.

The multimedia section is also worth a mention here. Google+ includes an image editor for editing photo effects, privacy options and sharing features. The photo tab takes a user to all the photos he has shared, as well as the ones he is tagged in.

The option for video chat is one of the most interesting and appealing section of Google Plus. It is given the name of a HANGOUT. It is a way to create your own custom video chat room. You can spread the word that you have started a hangout through your circles. Anybody from the circles wanting to come can join the hangout.
Another option is that of SPARKS to find the appropriate web content. You have to set your own sparks and Google plus will periodically find you relevant content which might be appealing to you. The utility of this feature, however, has to be tested with usage.

There is also a feature for mobile texting through which you san send group messages. It is called HUDDLES. You have the option of choosing multiples people in a text message conversation.

With all these new and innovative features, the new product from google is quite refreshing. However, it will still take a long time for it to be at par with facebook. Therefore I will conclude by saying that Google plus still has miles to go before it is able to realise all its unrealistic dreams.

National Award for Outstanding Entrepreneurship in MSEs Services:

The CEO & Founder of A3logics India Limited, Mr. Akhilesh Sharma is hailed for his Outstanding Entrepreneurship efforts with a National Award, by the Honorable President of India Mrs. Pratibha Devi Singh Patil on 2nd September 2011, Friday in New Delhi. Mr. Akhilesh Sharma is a man who has successfully steered the organization through periods of high risk and market uncertainty. He is the quintessential self-made man who triumphed through the application of his natural business acumen and sheer determination.

The award ceremony was organized by the MSME Ministry for MSMEs and presided by Honorable Union Minister Mr. Virbhadra Singh.

Today, the Organization, through the fruition of his efforts, enjoys tremendous goodwill and patronage, and is expanding at a rapid pace in and outside the country.

Among the other sections of Google’s search, “News” is one of the most fresh on the market block. While it’s true that the amplification in demand for current news after September 11th, 2001 had caused Google to start working on this project, News wasn’t actually released until much later and didn’t come out of beta until the year 2006. The service has made many modifications in its features and algorithm over time, but the most visible change is likely the layout of the site itself. There have been many alterations to the overall appearance and structure of Google News pages, and another major set of changes is now being rolled out.

There are numerous “ideals” being communicated through these changes. The first is Google’s standard minimalism. Rather than looking through large numerals of full stories, Google is now crafting a one-column, clustered, and collapsed setup as the default view. The clusters that is already a feature of Google’s organization in News, is now removing any story summary that is for non-top articles for a given story. The top story will still get its partial summary and headline, while everything else will form a part of the headlines only. Users can then click on the story cluster to enlarge this collapsed construction into a more full display that includes story details and a few new extras, such as labels and all.
Beyond clumping information into neatly packed, easy to skim segments, though, Google is also showing off their love for the media. When users set off into a story cluster, they will be able to utilize a scrolling bar to look through various media images, video, etc from all the pages of the cluster.

And the last thing, but definitely not the least, Google is appending personalized news stories in the Top Stories section. Apart from the three standard news stories, users will now see three or more additional stories picked exclusively for them.

Search engines are complex machines with a multiplicity of moving parts. We have seen that Yahoo has remained the second most popular site on the web. The credit for that ranking goes to the number of services proffered by them. These services comprises of Yahoo Answers, Yahoo Games, Yahoo Dating, Yahoo Mail, and a number of other integrated sites. Along with this, Yahoo’s powerful index of sites and search data has an appeal that is definitely one of its own kind.

One Yahoo element envelops both types (search data and independent service): Yahoo Search BOSS. BOSS is actually a developer API that allows the developers of the web apps, smartphone apps, and so forth, gain entrée to search information for any purpose they  dream about. This powerful database and the coding API furnishes full access to it and are available for low-cost “CPM” rates. For every thousand inquiry the API makes, the developer is charged a minimal rate that swings anywhere from $0.10 to $0.80.

What is all the more appealing is that the new ability of Search BOSS 2 to engender income for the developer. This is done by Yahoo by placing advertisements on the search pages and then splitting the revenue with the developer. The Yahoo ads, however, come from the Microsoft Ad Center. Yahoo also has a deal with Bing that includes handing over all advertising to their former competitor. This implies that the clever developers and site owners can function as a mini-search site owners.

Search BOSS has already made its appearance, but the version two was released early in April of 2011. In addition to standard refinements of the API, Yahoo’s new-fangled iteration puts forward the specialized searches for spelling, a limited version of the web that is available at a lower cost and a self-service center for billing and monetization.

Google firmly holds the ground as the dominant leader of search from the past 10 years. However, the same can be said for that of the Google’s predecessor, Yahoo, who was once thought to be undefeatable until Google banged the scene. Google’s innovative ways has a lot to do with the kind of success they enjoy today. But with the evolution of the web – and Google’s dual capability to see and respond to it, definitely makes it a vital factor. It becomes worthy enough to lend ears to, the new regions on the web that are more secured or addressed by Google’s competitors.

Talk about all such areas, you will find many. One such area is mobile applications, where Microsoft has made public an optimized version of Bing search. The smartphone version of the app made quite an appearance, with easy-to-navigate pages and mobile-specific features. Bing’s full-featured app has made quite a stir. Since, however, Google has added HTML5 support while Yahoo has fashioned a more fleshed-out version of their application.

Leading the internet again, Bing has shaped a second mobile version of their search, but this time for the tablet market. While it wraps much of the same ground as the iPhone/Android version of the app, Bing is also taking the pro of various additional app competences.

This can be seen most significantly in their focus on media-rich content. The Bing tablet app, includes:
• A movie trailers page.
• A “trends” page that illustrates the newest popular searches in a visual/image-based format. This feature is distinctive to the Bing iPad app.
• A rich search page that exhibits the same sorts of images seen on Bing’s standard homepage.
Bing has also taken into account the local features, proffering details such as local weather and maps. To gain from all the features, users must have an iPad withiOS 4.

David Burke, who is an Engineering Director at Google, proffers a brilliant example of this innovation with the account of his “Chrome to Phone” application. As it is with most of the Google innovations, the idea initiates during “20 percent time,” that is the segment of time granted to employees to work on whatever projects they believe to be fit. This 20% time was availed by Burke, when high in the air during his 12 hour flights to and from Japan.

Burke was of the firm belief that device-to-device interaction was one among the many areas of untouched potential. To get a start on exploiting that potential, Burke taught himself about various chrome extensions or the App Engine, neither of which he had worked with prior to his start of this project. By making the best utilization of his lengthy plane trips, he was able to look at the coding options and build up a new extension for Chrome. With a lapse of few days, the prototype was sent to Linus Upson and Andy Rubin, the engineering heads of Chrome and Android respectively. To his surprise before Burke began his next trip, he had already received the project’s approval.

Now what exactly is this chrome to phone story? The idea behind chrome to phone is that users with this extension can fire web information to their phones with a single click, be it a map data or a web page, or even a video. What is more interesting to know is that chrome to phone is now a spectacularly admired application, with nearly half a million users.

Sun Microsystems beforehand possessed the 57-acre Silicon Valley campus that Facebook is now looking to inhabit. That is, once the deal is freezed and through the State of Wisconsin Investment Board, the board will buy the one million square foot property for $100 million from the Oracle Corporation and then lease it to Facebook, at the rate of $12 per square foot, per year. Facebook is looking at putting up somewhere else since it is outgrowing its current headquarter operations at their South California Avenue address. But, they have paucity of time to judge any deal since their lease doesn’t conclude there until 2013. Until then, they are doing their due hard work and engaging in negotiations in order to hit upon a fair deal.

The company’s culture at their headquarters at Facebook is part of what has made the company such a “people’s place.” The employees are proffered with totally free food, drinks and entertainment which on the whole renders the entire atmosphere at the corporate office leisurely and laid back, making it a completely ideal place to work at. Analysts concur that this is a lot of what makes the company an ideal place to work, appending constancy and low turnover.

However, the spokespersons at Facebook pointed out that the deal will not necessarily go through, which is why the company is doing their share of hard work. The Silicon Valley campus seems to be a promising deal since Facebook headquarters will take up the entire campus, moving them away from a cool, heavily traveled current location to a more remote one. However, the company is looking forward at other sites where its long-term augmentation can be comfortably be seated in.

The latest regarding Twitter is that it has launched its services to its Korean users this week by proffering the platform in Korean. In Twitter’s broadcast to the 48.5 million South Korean citizens, the company has emphasized that it’s interested in serving a segment of the users who are already online and perhaps less served in that social area. This start on will give those users an entrée to the micro-blogging service in their native language. Including Korean, the total number of languages supported by Twitter now totals up to 7.

While other supported languages comprise of German, Italian, French, Spanish, English and Japanese. Twitter is also planning to release other language versions, but it has not speculated on which market they will be hitting next. Twitter chose Korean as the next language to launch because the number of Korean twitter users have amplified in the last year to about tenfold. In addition to this, there are also iPhone apps and the Twitter Android in Korean too, for mobile users. The most amazing fact is that the populace speaking English language in English countries is much more than estimated from the usual users. And what is more interesting is that they all love to Tweet and Tweet more on Twitter.

Along with this launch, Twitter also offered Korean users with a recommended user list which included Park Joong and Lee Oisoo.

This tabloid has a very rich source of internal social media and technology that it is looking to lend a helping hand and fortify this new-fangled business. Although it was officially launched just this week, the Social Code debuted originally last July. The Washington Post has however chosen to work only with its close partners for the time being.

But the question that arises next is that, what will this Social Code actually do? The newspaper that commenced in 1877 has built a rock-solid foundation as a highly regarded source for news and dependable information from a journalistic standpoint. The Post has inside the company an all-inclusive technological department and a quantitative approach to conducting business and getting great results. They wish to proffer that service to other companies as well, and will bring into play the Social Code to do so.

The resources that they will offer through this new company will be firstly used only by those companies with whom they nurture a business relationship. This trims down the preliminary learning curve of launching a new product to a brand new company. With existing clientele and a familiar relationship, the newspaper can spend more time taming how the service will profit their customers in the long-standing. It will also aid in relieving them into a smooth transition towards brand publicity.
By designing campaigns that are targeted to facilitate brands to capitalize on their marketing budgets, Social Code will help companies to benefit from those features proffered through Facebook’s advertising platform. They will also tailor social campaigns that are technically-heavy so as to streamline processes and attain a broader demographic.