• Facebook Announces In-Browser Video Calling Powered By Skype

    // Gradly // blog, Facebook, News, Rants & Raves, Social Networks, Software No Responses

    After teasing an “awesome” announcement at the company for Wednesday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took to the chance to announce the launch of in-browser video calling powered by Skype.

    See The Friends You Message Most
    The new chat design includes a sidebar that lists the people you message most. Now it’s easier to find your friends and start a conversation. The sidebar adjusts with the size of your browser window, and it automatically appears when the window is wide enough.

    Create a Group Chat Instantly
    We’re also launching multi-person chat, which is one of our most requested features. Now when your friends can’t figure out what movie to see, you can just add them to a chat and decide together. To include more friends in your conversation, simply select Add Friends to Chat and just like your other chats, the history of your conversation is available in messages.

    Bring Your Conversations to Life
    Video chat has been around for years now, but it’s still not an everyday activity for most people. Sometimes it’s too difficult to set up, or the friends you want to talk to are on different services.

    So a few months ago, we started working with Skype to bring video calling to Facebook. We built it right into chat, so all your conversations start from the same place. To call your friend, just click the video call button at the top of your chat window.

    Hopefully Facebook plans to bring these new video calling features to its rumored iPad application. You can get video calling enabled by hitting the link below.

    Video calling will be available to everyone over the next few weeks, but if you don’t want to wait, you can get it now.

  • Google Realtime Search Goes Offline As The Deal With Twitter Expires

    // Gradly // blog, google, News, Rants & Raves, Social Networks, Tech., Twitter No Responses

    Google’s agreement with Twitter to carry its results has expired, taking with it much of the content that was in the service with it. Google has this explanation:

    Since October of 2009, we have had an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results through a special feed, and that agreement expired on July 2.

    While we will not have access to this special feed from Twitter, information on Twitter that’s publicly available to our crawlers will still be searchable and discoverable on Google.

    As for other features such as social search, they will continue to exist, though without Twitter data from the special feed.

    Our vision is to have google.com/realtime include Google+ information along with other realtime data from a variety of sources.

    Google Realtime Search had carried content from a variety of services beyond Twitter, including Facebook fan page updates, Quora and Gowalla content, Check out the full source list:

    • Twitter tweets
    • Google News links
    • Google Blog Search links
    • Newly created web pages
    • Freshly updated web pages
    • FriendFeed updates
    • Jaiku updates
    • Identi.ca updates
    • TwitArmy updates
    • Google Buzz posts
    • MySpace updates
    • Facebook fan page updates
    • Quora
    • Gowolla
    • Plixi
    • Me2day
    • Twitgoo

    Still, as said, Twitter was the by far the most dominant content within the service. It’s unclear why the agreement was allowed to expire. Twitter has this to reply:

    Since October 2009, Twitter has provided Google with the stream of public tweets for incorporation into their real-time search product and other uses. That agreement has now expired. We continue to provide this type of access to Microsoft, Yahoo!, NTT Docomo, Yahoo! Japan and dozens of other smaller developers. And, we work with Google in many other ways.

    For its part, Google said:

    Twitter has been a valuable partner for nearly two years, and we remain open to exploring other collaborations in the future.

    Twitter has largely outsourced the service of Twitter search longer than a few days to Google, a deliberate decision so that Twitter could focus on other search features, such as its new Top Tweets feature

    You can certainly understand why Google+ has become even more important to the service now. While Google has gotten by largely without social signals from Facebook, having its own data from Google+ gives it insulation if it now has to get by without Twitter signals, as well.

    [via searchengineland]

  • Google+ Official iPhone App Is Awaiting Apple’s Approval

    // Gradly // Apple, blog, Facebook, Gadgets, iPad, iPhone, News, Social Networks No Responses

    According to Google’s Erica Joy, an official Google+ iPhone application has been submitted to the App Store, and is currently awaiting Apple’s approval.

    The news came via Erica Joy’s Google+ account, in an update that read:

    For all my iPhone using friends: the Google+ iPhone app has been submitted to the App Store (no, not today, sometime prior to today) and is awaiting approval.

    Google+, a brand new social network, launched recently, and it is something to take on Facebook dominance in social networks. If you were lucky enough and have got your hands on an invite you will definitely find a cool and refreshing new social network.

    If Erica Joy’s update is anything to go by, we can expect a Google+ application to hit the App Store soon. and hopefully a universal app for iPhone and iPad for a real Facebook competition.

  • Google+ Invites Giveaway: Get Google Plus Free Invites Now

    // Gradly // blog, Featured, Giveaways, google, How To, News, Social Networks 351 Responses

    Google is rolling out its social network, Google+, to the masses, and as the service currently invite-only, we have a bunch of invites to give away.

    How to get invited?

    Important Note: Google seems to be shutting down the chance for getting invites .. however until we find another back door or workaround to send invites or Google opens up the invitation again … sorry guys

    follow the easy simple steps below:

      1. Follow @iGradly on twitter or like the Facebook Page and share this on Facebook.
      2. Tweet the post in the format given below with the username.

    Get Free Google plus, Google+ invites Giveaway – http://t.co/SbEppS4 @iGradly #Giveaway

    1. After you done with the 2 steps , don’t forget to leave your comment on why you want to join Google plus along with your email address , so that i can send you the invite to Google plus.

    Google+ was unveiled as the company’s answer to Facebook. It has features common to Facebook like news streams and photo albums, but also includes unique features such as Hangouts, which lets up to 10 people enter a simultaneous group video chat.

    Originally, Google only let a small number of test users into its social network, however users who are on Google+ can invite others.

    Update #1:

    Google seems to be shutting down the chance for getting invites .. however until we find another back door or workaround to send invites or Google opens up the invitation again … sorry guys

    Update #2:

    There is a another workaround that may work for people. anybody try it please and let us know

    • Update your Google Profile and Link Picasa to your profile. Your link should now work and allow you to jump right into Google+.
    • From your Gmail page in the upper right hand corner there is a drop down box next to your name. Click the View Profile option there. From there you can choose to edit your profile. After your done editing your profile it should automatically ask you to link your Picasa to your google account. After you do that you should be able to use the invite that someone sent you.

    Hopefully this will help people having the problem where you click the “Join Google +” and it re-directs you to the tour / try later page.

    Update #3:

    The invites are working now please check your emails and visit the links.