Google launched Google+ Pages to allow companies and brands to connect with their customers. Danny Sullivan (SearchEngineLand) wrote a thorough overview. You can create a new Google+ page here.
This is the introductory video from Google:
Many people were excited about this announcement, but there were some critics. Some common complaints were:
It’s not designed for large companies who have multiple people managing the account (Robert Scoble)
It’s too easy to claim a brand that isn’t yours (ITWorld)
My take? Hopefully the Google+ team is listening closely and will address these issues in the near future.
If you’re looking for companies & brands to circle on Google+, just type in “+” followed by the brand name in the Google+ search box. Here are some brands that I’ve circled: Google+, This Week In Tech (TWiT), TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, Mashable, NPR, NPR Fresh Air, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, WIRED, San Francisco Giants.
Other Tech News This Week
Zynga is planning an IPO after Thanksgiving (Bloomberg)
Yelp is rumored to be planning an IPO in early 2012 (WSJ)
Salesforce launches a new collaboration platform called Do.com. Currently invitation-only (ReadWriteWeb)
Amazon announced more apps for the Kindle Fire (VentureBeat)
Is Google launching Google Music next week? (The Verge)
Bank Simple rebrands as Simple, opens beta (VentureBeat)
Apple release iOS 5.0.1 to fix issues with battery life but the issue still persists (All Things D)
Rock Health is a new seed accelerator for health startups. It’s like a Y Combinator for healthcare. This is how they describe their program on their About page:
Do you have an idea or startup that’s working to solve a health-related issue? Apply to join Rock Health, a group of dedicated individuals working to catalyze innovation in the interactive health space, and gain to access our unrivaled community of experts and seed-accelerator program. Startups partake in an intensive 5-month program, turning ideas into products and businesses. Our next class will begin in January 2012.
A few of days ago, their class of 2011 presented at Rock Health’s first “Demo Day” in San Francisco. I didn’t attend the event but I was able to follow some of it on Twitter by searching the #rockdemo hashtag. Many of these companies are still early stage and haven’t publicly launched their products yet.
Tagline: Parenting is tough! Whether you’re facing a fever or potty training, WeSprout helps you make great decisions. We safely monitor your child’s health records and give you access to resources, useful data, and a community of parents who’ve been there before.
Tagline: CellScope uses patent-pending optical attachments to turn smartphones into a diagnostic-quality imaging systems for telemedicine, skincare and education.
This was a heavy week for new product launches and major revisions of existing products.
After months of private beta, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz launched Asana, a collaboration tool. From the blog post:
Asana is a modern web application that keeps teams in sync, a shared task list where everyone can capture, organize, track, and communicate what they are working on in service of their common goal. Rather than trying to stay organized through the tedious grind of emails and meetings, teams using Asana can move faster and do more — or even take on bigger and more interesting goals.
Massive Health, a mobile health startup that had been in stealth mode for several months, launched an app called The Eatery. Someone on Twitter described it as “Hot or Not for your Mac ‘N Cheese”. You post photos of your food and people rate the food on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the healthiest. The Eatery keeps track of your food scores and gives you a rating of how you’ve been eating this week.
Ex-Engadet editor Joshua Topolsky launched a new gadget site from called The Verge.
Yahoo launched a couple of iPad apps: Livestand (Flipboard competitor) and IntoNow (video discovery).
Jawbone started selling the Up – a $99 wristband that tracks your fitness and your sleeping habits. Up includes an iPhone app that tracks your eating habits by encouraging you to take photos of your food and asking you how you felt a couple of hours after eating.
And finally, Google made a couple of Gmail announcements. First, they rolled out a new, cleaned up version of Gmail. Overall, the new design was pretty well received, although some people complained that the spacing of messages was too wide. If you prefer the spacing from the old design, you can change it using the Display Density setting.
The other Gmail announcement was a mess. On November 2nd, Google announced their rumored Gmail app for iPhone. Within minutes of the announcement, people were complaining about an error message that shows up when you log in. There were also complaints that the app itself was underwhelming. Google ended up pulling the app from the App Store and almost a week later, the app still isn’t available, causing some people to wonder:
How long does it take to fix a Push Notification bug? /cc @gmail
