The mythical speeds of Google Fiber have been just that until now – mythical. Like the leprechaun’s fabled pot of gold, the service’s high speed riches have existed only in lore, but as of late last week it now has a basis in reality. Even though the Goog’s still busy laying the fiber groundwork in Kansas Cities, a limited Beta apparently launched in a Stanford residential neighborhood recently.
via Maximum PC | Google Fiber Delivering Face-Melting Speeds Near Stanford.
The new annotations appear when a user hovers over the +1 button. Hovering over it will display a list of friends and contacts that have already clicked the +1 button for that page. Google has also unveiled new code for the +1 button that will display the faces and names of friends that have used the +1 button. This feature works much like how the Facebook Like button appears for Mashable stories, displaying how many people have +1′d the page and which friends have +1′d it.
Although banner ads may be experiencing big growth this year, they’re not getting any more effective. The average click-though rate for banners fell in 2010, according to a survey by Google.
Google and Mozilla are developing new processes that will make it easy for developers to enable people to use the functionality of one web app inside another web app. For example, a photo hosting site could make it so that people can use any favourite photo editor within their site. Sites won’t even have to know about each other, and it takes only a few lines of code.
via Google and Mozilla working on interoperable web apps | News | .net magazine.
As we mentioned then, it’s been possible to watch videos with friends since the beginning of Google+, through a more complicated manual process that must be initiated in Google+. But this new button allowing you to initiate hangouts from YouTube with a couple of clicks makes it considerably easier.
App developer Michael Lee Johnson, conscious of the need to be big on Google+ or be nobody, wondered what the best way to levitate his Google+ circles might be. He hit upon a fine idea: he placed an ad on Facebook. It was a simple thing that was headlined: “Add Michael to Google+.”
The copy read: “If you’re lucky enough to have a Google+ account, add Michael Lee Johnson, Internet Geek, App Developer, Technological Virtuoso.”
If those words weren’t enough to persuade Facebook users that Johnson was a must for their Google+, he added a fine picture of himself wearing a jaunty cap.
via Facebook bans Google+ ad | Technically Incorrect – CNET News.
The potential to find almost any piece of information in seconds is beneficial, but is this ability actually negatively impacting our memory? The authors of a paper that is being released by Science Express describe four experiments testing this. Based on their results, people are recalling information less, and instead can remember where to find the information they have forgotten.
via Study: why bother to remember when you can just use Google?.
Berlin’s oldest university says it is partnering with Google and three German institutions to start a research institute.
Humboldt University announced Monday that the institute would open in the fall and examine the evolution of the Internet and its impact on society, science, politics and the economy.
Newsvine – Google to open research institute.