Jul 252012
 

Google has added a calculator to its search results.

After typing in a formula into its search, Google will spit out the answer in a new calculator it has brought to its results. Once the calculator is displayed, users can tap numbers and scientific functions to send it a new equation. The company’s search box will also still work.

Prior to this addition, Google allowed users to type into its search any equation. The search engine would then spit out the answer. However, this is the first time that Google has displayed an actual calculator its users can interact with.

MORE:  Google adds calculator to search results | Internet & Media – CNET News.

 


Jul 162012
 

Those of you looking to buy Google’s new Nexus 7 tablet may have a wait on your hands.

Unveiled late last month, the tablet has slowly trickled into the retail market. Google was naturally first in line, offering the Nexus 7 as a preorder in advance of its official mid-July launch. Other retailers, such as GameStop, Staples, and Sam’s Club, soon followed suit.

But a lot of eager customers apparently scooped up those pre-sales, since the tablet is playing hard to get at most outlets.
GameStop, which is selling the 16GB edition, is showing the tablet as backordered. Further details reveal that the gaming outlet has ordered more stock from the vendor, and blogging site ITProPortal says another shipment of tablets is expected to reach GameStop in August.

Staples, Office Depot, and Sam’s Club all show the Nexus 7 as currently out of stock with no further information as to its availability. Google’s own site is promising that the tablet will “ship soon,” meaning a 1-2 week delay.

via Googles Nexus 7 tablet already out of stock at key retailers

 


Jul 092012
 

The 7-inch Android tablet is one of the scrappiest models in the gadget landscape. From one manufacturer to the next, one year to the next, these tablets have failed to find an audience or win any vocal supporters. Yet sales for the 10-inch iPad continue to vault higher with each quarter. All the while, companies keep trying to make 7-inchers work, hammering away at the form factor, making the same mistakes (underpowered internals, chunky bodies, poor performance), expecting different results.

The form saw its first measured success with the Kindle Fire, which cracked a few million unit sales in a single month during 2011’s holiday season. But the Fire’s reception then, and sales performance since, doesn’t suggest a raft of blissfully happy customers. While Amazon’s tablet has a couple of enthusiastic fans here at Ars, the guess in our review that it would “end up often as a gift from early tablet adopters to late ones” seemed to come true. You wouldn’t buy one for yourself, perhaps, but it was a good enough present for the technologically apathetic: Mom, Dad, Grandma, or Technologically Illiterate Sibling.

Enter stage right—well, more like stage from above, the God of Tablets bombing down in a skydiving suit wearing Google Glass—the Nexus 7. Google adopted the internals of Asus’s Memo 370 shown at CES in January, revamped the body, and bequeathed the device with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. All while maintaining a $199 base price point.

The specs, design, and cost all make the Nexus 7 seem like the Holy Grail of tablets. As we’ll show later, it can even keep pace with the (significantly more expensive) iPads in many respects. It’s great. Suspiciously great. Suddenly we have everything we want (well, close to it), for less money than we probably would have paid for it. Selling hardware cheap—in hopes that more money can be made elsewhere—is not a new game. But the Nexus 7 suggests Google is going to play that game harder and better than we’ve seen in a long time.

MORE:  Divine intervention: Google’s Nexus 7 is a fantastic $200 tablet | Ars Technica.

 

Jul 062012
 

Google has a long history of unceremoniously killing off its less-used services, having previously axed once-high-profile efforts like Wave, Buzz, Knol and Gears, among others.

The most notable Google service on the chopping block this time is iGoogle, the company’s customizable homepage. Similar to Netvibes, MyYahoo or the now defunct PageFlakes, iGoogle was a dashboard for the web, allowing users to embed gadgets like weather, email and news.

When iGoogle first launched in 2005 it was something of a me-too effort, duplicating features found in other services, but adding numerous Google-centric gadgets. Eventually iGoogle’s gadget selection grew to encompass everything from feed readers to web-based games.

Citing the growth of mobile and web apps that “put personalized, real-time information at your fingertips,” Google says “the need for iGoogle has eroded over time.”

Fans of iGoogle don’t need to panic just yet, Google doesn’t plan to completely shut the service down until November 1, 2013.

MORE:  Google to Shut Down iGoogle | Webmonkey | Wired.com.

 


Jul 062012
 

Twitter could be planning a major update to its search and discovery feature later today, according to one of its employees.

Twitter’s Pankaj Gupta, who runs the company’s Personalization and Recommender Systems, sent out a tweet yesterday congratulating his team on an improvement to its search and discovery tools that, he says, will dramatically change the service.

“Search and discovery in Twitter [is] set to change forever after tomorrow,” Gupta tweeted. “Team — congrats and enjoy the enormity of your impact few understand today.”

Twitter has quickly realized that improving the user’s ability to access relevant information from the service is a key component in its future.

MORE: Twitter to unveil major search and discovery update today

 


Jul 052012
 

Here is a great graphic tool that answers a question we’ve asked ourselves many times – what size does that image need to be? This graphic breaks down the layouts on all your favorite social sites, giving the dimensions so you can properly size your images, and get exactly the look you want. Link below, or you can find it in this post on our forum here.

 

Online Marketing Trends: Social Media Marketing: Most Used Tactics Across Social Media.

 


Jul 022012
 

The search giant today unveiled its 2011 Economic Impact report, and said that its search and advertising tools, including AdWords and AdSense, drove $80 billion in economic activity across the U.S. last year. The company was able to reach that figure with help from “1.8 million businesses, Web site publishers, and non-profits across the U.S.”

In order to arrive at that figure, Google used some fancy math. The company estimates that businesses that use AdWords make $2 in revenue for every $1 they spend on the advertising platform. In addition, the company assumed that a business will receive five clicks in search results for every one click on their ads.

MORE: Google: We drove $80 billion of U.S. economic activity last year 

 


Jun 222012
 

Thursday’s sporadic Twitter outages gave addicts like us the shakes. After all, Twitter users average over 100,000 tweets per minute, and the site was down for a whole lot longer than that.

Twitter is far from the only channel through which web users funnel data. Business intelligence company DOMO paired up with Column Five Media to create this infographic, which shows just how much data is generated every minute.

Next time you run a Google search, think about the fact that it’s just one of 2 million that Google will receive in that minute. In the same amount of time, Facebook users post 684,478 pieces of content. Crazier still, online shoppers spend an average of $272,070 every minute. That’s over $391 million every day — quite the chunk of change.

SOURCE:  How Much Data Is Created Every Minute? [INFOGRAPHIC].

 


May 232012
 

Rather than challenge Facebook and Twitter for mindshare, Google is a distant fourth to Pinterest, with its “pin it” button now appearing alongside Facebook, Twitter and email buttons on prime web real-estate such as eBay and Amazon product pages.

Google has never been able to ” succeed ” in any of its social media initiative and this infographic makes it  clear why .

Nissan, was among the biggest  brands on Google plus  for having one of the best new Google+ brand pages, even down to the animated GIF in its header image that gives the illusion of a car speeding by. Nearly 424,000 users have added the page to their “circles” Google+ lingo for following a person or brand and yet Nissans agency decided early on not to invest in developing content specifically for the page, which mostly contains repurposed content from Facebook.

“The bottom line was that it was pretty bleak in its traffic,” said Brandon Kleinman, director of social media and strategy at TBWA/Chiat/Day.The broad consensus is that Google+ is an empty city where the masses go to set up a profile but then seldom return.

SOURCE   Online Marketing Trends: Brands Flock To Pinterest, as Google plus sink to new low.