Google has begun rolling out a new version of Google Reader, one that sports a brand-new design and deep integration with Google+.
The new Google Reader sports a more spartan interface. It’s similar to the Google Calendar redesign and Gmail makeover the search giant launched earlier this year.
The greater change is the addition of Google+ sharing. Google has replaced the “Like” button with the +1 button, which lets users share content to their Google+ accounts. Reader users with a Google+ login can choose which circles they’d like to share articles to using Google+ snippets.
The Google+ integration replaces the Google Reader social features the company unveiled in 2009. “Integrating with Google+ also helps us streamline Reader overall,” Google Engineer Alan Green said in a blog post. “So starting today we’ll be turning off friending, following, shared items and comments in favor of similar Google+ functionality.”
While Google Reader’s notes got some usage, dropping them in favor of Google+ is the logical move for a company that is now trying to unify all of its social efforts under one banner. The company recently killed off Buzz while adding Google+ to Maps.
What do you think of the new Google Reader? Let us know in the comments.
It’s Halloween, so we’ve taken a look at how people are celebrating the spookiest day of the year on Facebook.
The social networking site’s new Timeline design means you can display a big image at the top of your profile. We put together examples from Mashable readers who’ve Halloweened up their pages, as well as linked to some images you can use on your profile.
Take a look through our selection of 13 (don’t be spooked by the “unlucky” number) and link to your Halloween-themed social media profiles in the comments below.
Despite the debate over proper hashtag labeling (#snowtober, #snotober or #snoctober), all nor’easterners can agree on one thing: Saturday’s snowstorm was quite unexpected.
Twitter users snapped pics in awe of the premature winter weather and tweeted incredulous captions. Click through the gallery to see how these 11 Twitter users weathered the storm. Let us see any of your storm pics by posting in the comments below.
Balakrishna Narasimhan leads solution marketing for Appirio, a cloud solution provider that helps enterprises adopt, connect and extend cloud platforms such as salesforce.com, Google and Workday. Follow him on Twitter: @bnara75
With Google+’s unique features for search, selective sharing and rich communication, it offers consumers a very different user experience than the established social networks. For individuals, Google+ has quickly become a great place to build your interest graph — that is, find the latest content and people related to topics you’re interested in.
With its seamless integration with Google Apps, Google+ promises a very different type of social enterprise experience. In fact, Google+ has five unique advantages over other social business platforms.
1. Smart Integration With Existing Google Apps
Google+ is fully integrated with Google Apps. As a user, you don’t need a new login — it’s just another tab like mail, calendar, docs or video. Most business users spend their day in mail or calendar, so a tool that’s easily accessible from the daily workflow has advantages over third-party software.
Thinking a bit ahead of where the product is, the possibilities that are opened up by the integration with Google Apps are pretty exciting. You can imagine “+1” buttons and rich collaboration across sites, docs, spreadsheets, presentations, blogs, videos, photos and more. Or imagine working within a doc and starting a hangout with collaborators while sharing your screen. For companies using Google Apps, taking advantage of these features would require no additional software, logins or changes in behavior.
2. Google+ Already Knows a Lot About You
Because of its tight integration with Google Apps, Google+ could take advantage of what it already knows about each business user, including whom they email, how often and how recently, as well as the topics they write about and search for. Google+ is in a position to help an enterprise user not only quickly build out his internal circles, but also discover those outside the company who are talking about the same topics or industry. If Google chooses to pursue this, it would make a great tool to help each user build out broad interest-based professional networks.
3. Google+ Is Uniquely Positioned to Help You Find and Share Interesting Content
Nobody has a better index of what’s on the web than Google. So nobody is better positioned to help you find interesting content and people from both inside and outside your company. Google+ Sparks let you follow the latest from the web on topics you’re interested in, and one can imagine something similar within your domain. Internal Sparks could let you quickly find content and experts within your company on work-related topics you’re most interested in.
4. Google+ Integrates Public and Private Sharing
Unlike other social enterprise platforms, which keep most shared content behind company walls, Google+ integrates public and private sharing. When I’m using Google+, I can decide for each post whether I want to share it with my colleagues, my clients, or certain subsets of either category. Also, because a number of websites have already embedded +1 buttons, it’s easy to “like” content from across the web and share it with targeted groups.
5. Android Phones Sync Easily With the Entire Apps Suite
Finally, an Android mobile phone brings this complete integration to users on the go. Activating Android handsets with your company’s Google Apps account brings all this productive and social functionality to the palm of your employees’ hands. And the wide variety of devices and carriers means greater flexibility.
A Video Explanation of Google+
The Google+ project: A quick look
Google provides an overview of the entire Google+ project.
We went into a Halloween frenzy this weekend, finding the best techie costumes, and we used social media trends to choose our spooky attire and candy for the evening. Then, we watched some of the scariest videos this side of the Gates of Hell.
At the same time, we took a look back at the week and month, trying to figure out what we liked most about a busy social media and tech-filled time that was unlike any we’ve ever experienced.
Worried you missed something? Well you did, but we’ve got your back, because here it all is, replayed and gathered for you all in one place. Now go out and make a good week, and be careful out there.
Each week, Mashable picks a popular song, finds 10 covers of it and asks you to vote for your favorite.
Rihanna’s “We Found Love” moves into the top spot on Billboard‘s Hot Digital Songs chart this week on the heels of the Oct. 19 release of the track’s edgy music video.
The lead single off of Rihanna’s forthcoming Talk That Talk album also helped her become the fastest solo artist ever to earn 20 top 10 singles on Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart.
We’ve found 10 of the best “We Found Love” covers as well as one from Coldplay (see video number 11). Vote for your favorite rendition in the poll.
To listen to more covers used in past YouTube Cover Song Face-Offs, click here.
**The winner of this poll will be selected Nov. 4 at 9 a.m. ET.
Last Week’s Face-Off Winner: Kina Grannis and Imaginary Friend
The “Pumped Up Kicks” duet from Kina Grannis and Imaginary Friend snagged more than 20,000 votes in last week’s Face-off, beating out their closest competitor by 6,500 votes. In their cover of the Foster the People song, they changed a few chords, added harmonies and brought in a banjo.
“It was one of those songs that spoke to me for whatever reason even before I had any idea what it was about,” Grannis told Mashable. “By the time I actually stopped to think about the lyrics and internalize them, it hit me what a sad song it was. It lets you into the mind of an outcast, someone who really has no one at all to go to, and you realize what a desperate and tragic situation that is.”
Grannis embarks on a European tour in February 2012, where she’ll perform original songs such as “The One You Say Goodnight To” (see video two) and “Little Worrier” (see video four). Imaginary Friend plans to start recording his first full-length album, which will include “Chasing Ghosts” (see video number three).
Here’s a collection of original songs and covers from Grannis and Imaginary Friend.
"Pumped Up Kicks" Cover by Kina Grannis and Imaginary Friend
Want to know what the hottest Halloween costumes are this year? Or maybe you’re a contrarian, and don’t want to be seen in the same costume anyone else is wearing. Or maybe you’d like to know what the most popular candy is this Halloween, 2011.
You came to the right place. Find out what’s hot and what’s not by checking out the spooky stats on our Halloween infographic from Webtrends, showing you which costumes and candy garnered the most buzz.
According to Webtrends, the data used to create this infographic represents online mentions from October 1-24, 2011 and is an aggregation of Twitter, blogs, online news sites and other social media sources.
Want to know what the hottest Halloween costumes are this year? Or maybe you’re a contrarian, and don’t want to be seen in the same costume anyone else is wearing. Or maybe you’d like to know what the most popular candy is this Halloween, 2011.
You came to the right place. Find out what’s hot and what’s not by checking out the spooky stats on our Halloween infographic from Webtrends, showing you which costumes and candy garnered the most buzz.
According to Webtrends, the data used to create this infographic represents online mentions from October 1-24, 2011 and is an aggregation of Twitter, blogs, online news sites and other social media sources.
Tour Google’s sprawling Mountain View, Calif., campus and as you ogle the colors, great employee facilities and sense of whimsy, you’ll think, “Why can’t more offices be like this?” In reality, at least one of them can. It’s Google’s second largest office, not in California, but instead nestled among the towering skyscrapers of Manhattan.
The company calls this facility “Google NYC,” and it is big and surprisingly entertaining for a corporate office where 2,500 employees work on everything from Google Search and Ads to Google Maps, Docs and more. In fact, Google told Mashable that the office is host to the second-largest number of Google engineers in the company (you can guess where the rest of them are).
Google inhabits multiple floors of the downtown building and the one Mashable visited covers an entire city block. It’s so large that areas have been given special names so people can keep track of where they are and where they’re going. To get from one place to another, many employees use one of the hundreds of Razor scooters on the floor. As you would expect, there’s ample free food and lots of unusual places to sit, meet and read. On the day we visited, there was what looked like a lunch counter facing a cooking show/music recital set where one seat was reserved for Yo Yo Ma (yes, the Yo Yo Ma) who was visiting that day.
One entire wall is devoted to LEGO art and LEGO creation. It was a struggle not to stop, stay and play. There’s even a ladder to climb from one floor to the other.
The company is by no means new to New York. It arrived here way back in 2000, when Google was just two years old, and opened this office in 2006. In 2008, Google bought out an abandoned Oreo factory (yes, the Oreo cookie was invented there) on Chelsea Piers and established a second New York Office, just down the block from the first one.
Mashable got a quick tour of Google NYC, a place full of classic tech and LEGO whimsy. The gallery offers just a glimpse of what we found. See if you can guess the names of the classic computers before looking at each caption.
