• Introducing Google+ When the Search Giant Goes Social

    // Gradly // blog, Featured, google, News, Social Networks, Tech. 2 Responses

    Google, the world’s largest search company, is competing, apparently, with Facebook to become a major force in social networking. Google+ announced today and it looks promising.

    Not to mention, Google+ designed by one of the creators of the original Macintosh. Wired’s Steven Levy is reporting that Andy Hertzfeld, actually, played an essential role in the design of Google+.

    With colorful animations, drag-and-drop magic, and whimsical interface touches, Circles looks more like a classic Apple program than the typically bland Google app. That’s no surprise since the key interface designer was legendary software artist Andy Hertzfeld.

    Google+ design really is excellent, especially for Google. It is invite-only at the moment.

    Update:

    Google has released many videos explaining the new project:

    +Circles:

    +Sparks:

    +Mobile: Instant Upload

    +Hangouts:

    And +Huddle, the Android App:

  • Facebook for iPad App Coming Soon

    // Gradly // Apple, blog, Facebook, Featured, iPad, News, Rants & Raves, Social Networks No Responses

    Facebook is about to release an official iPad app, according to the NYT. Facebook has been working on it for approximately the past year and is closing up their testing ahead of a launch in the “coming weeks.” The Facebook for iPad is said to be “carefully designed and optimized for the tablet” and will be totally free:

    People who have seen the application said it has a slick design that has been tailored for the iPad and its touchscreen interface. Facebook developers and designers have also overhauled the Facebook Chat and Facebook Groups features for the application. And the app will go beyond the features available on the Facebook Web site by allowing users to shoot and upload photos and videos directly from the iPad’s built-in cameras.

    “The photo and video experience is amazing, offering full resolution and full-screen images,” said a person who has seen the app.

    Facebook for iPad is said to include everything from the Facebook website but will add mobile-optimized features like taking and uploading pics directly from iPad’s built-in cameras.

  • iOS 5 Twitter Notifications Got Leaked

    // Gradly // Apple, blog, Cloud, Rants & Raves, Rumors, Social Networks, Twitter No Responses

    The last minute speculation and “leaked” stuff are becoming popular in every Apple event out there It’s the eve of Apple’s annual WWDC conference and it will not easily go without sort of unconfirmed tidbit gets leaked around.

    This time, TechCrunch got their hands on what seems to be a new notification system in iOS 5:

    “The last two are particularly interesting given the image above. Again, no clue if it’s actually real or not, but the idea might be right. Notifications that come down from the top bar could be how Apple ends up doing things in iOS 5. After all, this would mimic already existing functionality — when tethering, a blue strip appears along the top; when on the phone, it’s a green strip. Might notifications (or at least Twitter notifications) produce a gray strip?”

    iOS 5 is believed to have a “deep” integration with Twitter. Perhaps this leak reveals how Twitter’s notifications will be integrated with the new system.

    “But if the Weather app is to be believed, this is clearly a European version of iOS (note the 23 degrees Celsius in the icon instead of 72 degree Fahrenheit as you would see in the U.S.). Second, the Camera app icon is totally different, and looks a little odd being all-black, but who knows, maybe it’s changing. The icons are in the “correct” default order. Finally, if the talk of deep Twitter integration into iOS 5 is to be believed, it’s entirely possible that these new-style Twitter notifications could be working in iOS 5 right out of the box.”

    Another possible notification system in iOS 5 might be looking similar to MobileNotifier, a jailbreak only tweak that handles notifications pretty good. Interestingly, the developer behind the tweak, Peter Hajas, was recently hired by Apple to work there.

  • Rapportive Takes on Gmail’s People Widget

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

    As you might know Rapportive add-on is one of the must-have Gmail widgets that integrate natively and nicely with the mail dashboard, it shows you more contact details in the inbox for individual email along with its social ties such as Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc. in a nice sidebar.

    Last week Google unveiled The People Widget, which is being gradually rolled out to users over the next few weeks, it looks and functions remarkably similar to Rapportive’s sidebar, yet gives users more features like job titles, calendar availability, recent conversations, shared Google Docs and Buzz updates related to your email contacts in the sidebar with apparent deeper Google integration.

    Now Rapportive, in turn has responded to what many perceived as a direct attack from Google by integrating the People widget. Rapportive CEO and co-founder Rahul Vohra had to say:

    “We’re very flattered by how similar the widget is to Rapportive, In fact, some of the design details have been copied directly, from the new position of the ‘print’ and ‘new window’ icons, through to how the widget remains onscreen as you scroll.”

    “I knew it would happen sometime this year. Google has made acquisitions in this space, and social is their new mantra, I emailed our investors as soon as the news broke — I detailed how we felt, that we planned to integrate, and reminded everybody of our roadmap for the next year or so. Everybody was very positive.”

    Rapportive contact profiles will include the usual features along with the Gmail enhancements and users can get their access to the new Rapportive features as soon as they get the Gmail widget,

    [via mashable]