- Where’s Google Going Next? (TED)
- Microsoft releases Office for iPad (Engadget)
- Why Facebook’s $2 Billion Oculus Buy Is a Bet Too Far (Wired)
- Starbucks Is the Microsoft of Coffee. Is This the Apple? (Slate)
- Beyond Incredible: Building The Next Pixar (Fast Company)
- The Next Big Health App Needs to Do More Than Just Track Our Numbers (Wired)
- Ageism (AVC / Fred Wilson)
Tag Archives: google
How It Feels [through Glass]
Google released a video showing what it’s like to use Google Glass…
Week of 11/7/11 – Tech News Roundup – Google launches Google+ Pages
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)
- FireFox 8 is released
- Charlie Rose interviews Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg
Week of 10/31/11 – Tech News Roundup
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.
Milk (Kevin Rose’s new company) launched their new iPhone app called OINK. This app allows you to rate anything: a hamburger in a local restaurant, a TV show, your favorite tea, a salad, etc.
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).
Apple released GarageBand for the iPhone. ($4.99 on iTunes)
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.
Sphero, a robotic ball that you can control using a smartphone – is available for pre-order ($129).
The Ball. Evolved. from GoSphero on Vimeo.
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
— M.G. Siegler (@mgsiegler) November 8, 2011
Other news this week:
- GroupOn IPO’d and finished their opening day up 31%
- Internet Explorer’s market share dropped to below 50%
- Apple started rolling out iTunes Match to Apple TV owners
Week of 10/24/11 – Roundup
Tech News
It was another dismal week for Netflix. The stock dropped 35% after announcing that they lost 800,000 subscribers and projecting that fourth-quarter earnings would be below expectations. Henry Blodget (Business Insider) says: Sorry, but this Netflix collapse is overdone.
HP announced that it will keep it’s PC division but there was speculation that they would shut down the webOS division. The head of HP’s PC division this was an unfounded rumor.
Google announced an update to Google TV and there were rumors of a Siri-powered, integrated Apple TV coming in 2013.
The New York Times published a very touching eulogy of Steve Jobs written by his sister Mona Simpson. A must-read.
Death didn’t happen to Steve, he achieved it.
– Mona Simpson, A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs
People aren’t happy about Google’s plans to discontinue the social features of Google Reader.
Flipboard, the popular news/social reader application for tablets, is about to get some competition from Google (Propeller) and Yahoo (Livestand).
Benchmark-backed Nextdoor launches a private social network for neighborhoods.
Y Combinator held their Startup School. Mark Zuckerberg, Paul Graham, and Marc Andreessen all spoke.
Mark Zuckerberg interview at Y Combinator Startup School
Apps
- Mint finally launches an iPad app (iTunes, Mashable post)
- Scan old photos and post them to Facebook using the Shoebox iPhone app (iTunes, TechCrunch post)
- The creators of Daily Booth launch a great new photo sharing app called Batch. The buzz about this app is off the charts.
- Mike Arrington (CrunchFund) says: Batch may be the perfect photo sharing app
- Paul Graham says he was “blown away” and “this is the app everyone’s been waiting for“
- Robert Scoble says” “I have NEVER seen an app get this widely hyped“
- Soundcloud launched a new iPad app (iTunes, All Things D post)
- You can watch live TV on DIRECTV’s new iPad app (iTunes)
- Bloomberg TV launched an iPad app (iTunes)
Television / Movies
- A couple of PBS shows worth watching:
- America In Primetime (premiers Sunday, 10/20)
- Steve Jobs – One Last Thing (premiers Wednesday, 11/2)
- Cars 2 is available on DVD, iTunes
Sports
- The St. Louis Cardinals win the 2011 World Series. Game 6 will be remembered as one of the greatest World Series games ever.
- The 49ers defeat the Cleveland Browns and are 6-1 for the first time since 1998.
- Buster Posey is swinging the bat in Arizona. Hank Schulman (SF Chronicle) writes about his recovery here.
David Freese’s Game 6 walk-off home run:
The Week Ahead
The Groupon IPO is scheduled for Thursday, November 3rd. Before you consider investing, read this piece by Nicholas Carslon (Business Insider): INSIDE GROUPON: The Truth About The World’s Most Controversial Company