Politics in the Zeros

• Adsense
• Adwords
• Analytics (hit monitoring for Polizeros and my website clients)
• Calendar (it sends me text messages for appointments, etc.)
• Chat
• Chrome browser
• Feedburner (RSS feed for Polizeros)
• Local business (For website clients)
• Google+
• Gmail
• Maps
• News
• Reader (I read 300+ feeds in it)

In other words, Google is basically indispensable for my online and business life. What Google products do you use the most?

Calls within the US and Canada are free until the end of the year. (Not available in all countries yet.)

Mobile developers think Google+ will challenge Facebook

In addition to Google Plus’ impact on mobile growth and adoption, developers also said they believed Google Plus could catch up to Facebook in the long-term. Two-thirds said that the new social network would be an asset for Google in gaining mindshare among consumers and developers alike.

I agree. Google has been on a massive roll lately. The other behemoth is Apple. Microsoft is slipping badly because they are PC-based and the future is multiple devices and storing data in the cloud. Facebook will always be huge but after using Google+ for a few weeks, Facebook seems a bit, well, creaky. Plus it filters what you see, something I find highly annoying. G+ doesn’t do that, you always see all posts from everyone.

The new Google Page Speed Service will take data from your website, optimize it for speed, then serve to users from their servers all over the planet. Your website still exists where it is, but you point the DNS to Google. So, Google is the only site that actually reads your site and anyone else gets it from Google servers, which are worldwide, plus they optimize the code before sending it along. This promises faster speeds for your website loading, and you can test it now.

It’s not free. However, they say prices will be “competitive.” In effect, it’s a worldwide content delivery network for websites that also optimizes the pages.

(This is the first in a series of posts this weekend about Google)

Google got it right the third time around with their new social networking product Google+. I find myself spending more time on it and less on Facebook and Twitter. Why? Because it just flows better. It’s easy to find topics and people of interest. All the videos and images are right in the stream (unlike Twitter). Commenting is easy. Conversations easy to start. You see all the stream too, which you don’t on Facebook.

Plus it’s still just a baby, they’re adding new features fast. Something like 20 million people are on it now and it’s the fastest ramp up of any social networking site ever. In six months, with a raft of new features and 100 million more users, it should be amazing.

What’s new in Google+

I first learned about the Norway bombing and murders on Google+. So did Scoble. So did lots of people. Images and videos appear as part of the feed, unlike Twitter, and there’s no 140 character limit. On Facebook, what you see is filtered, so you may not see all of someone’s posts. This doesn’t happen on G+. Everything is open and it’s easy to jump in and add to a conversation. It was also easy to find posts from people in Norway with had photos, videos, and thoughts to share.

The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Andrew Keen, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — convened for yet another G+ conversation. This one, however, was noted for its evenhandedness as @ajkeen and @scobleizer traded social blows over the new Google service. As someone in the Friendfeed chat on the livecast noted, @stevegillmor seems surprisingly positive about the new service. As Keen observed, that’s because I think the new service is Friendfeed revisited.

Of course, it is. But it’s also Twitter without the 140 character limit, Facebook without the unseen authority algorithm, and the Gillmor Gang without a human director (Hangouts). @kevinmarks says it a little differently, seeing G+ growth gaining on Club Penguin. And that’s the fundamental reason Google has a winner, by underlining the best parts of each of these services and floating all boats on a rising tide.

That’s the crucial point. G+ has raised the bar. We all will benefit from this. The video is an hour and definitely worth watching.

Google has acquires a social networking company specializing in group management.

“You can guess what’s next for Google+”, says Leo LaPorte (on Google+, of course)

Comment by Brian Turner

Sounds like a nice acquisition by Google. Let’s see where it goes. Keep in mind that Google is treating G+ with a make-or-break mindset, so it’s pulling out all the stops to make sure that G+ succeeds.

Google, suddenly, is acting like a hungry startup coming out of nowhere with something new and different. Indeed, Google+ is taking social networking where it hasn’t gone before.

Google+ has been in beta for a few weeks now, and the early techie adopters haven’t gotten bored and moved on after dissecting it. Instead, they continue to be excited by it. People are writing add-ons, a sure sign of an active and engaged user community. Scoble mentioned recently that the G+ team is so enthused by the repsonse that they’re moving quickly to add new features. Group management will certainly be one of them.

Groups, whether they be a team at a company, bloggers, or hobbyists, can use G+ to post group messages via Circles and have group video meetups with Hangouts. You can do this now. Imagine what G+ will be able to do in a few months. After all, it only has 18 million users now. Soon it will be hundreds of millions.

If you want an invite, send your email address. You can also follow me.

Well then, get thee to Google Web History and delete your search history. You did know that Google carefully saves all your searches, right? All your little quirks will be there, staring you in the face. “Naked midget tap dancers wrestling in Jello” indeed.

But you can erase them, and even tell Google to stop saving them. Then use Chrome and do your secret searches in Incognito mode, which affords even more privacy.

Google had two abortive attempts at social networking, Buzz and Wave. Both got a bit of buzz then disappeared beneath the waves. Google+ is different. It’s fun to use, powerful, has features Twitter and Facebook don’t, and perhaps most importantly, shows no sign of slowing down a few weeks after it was introduced.

The early adopter geeks, unlike with Wave and Buzz, are still using Google+. What’s more, they are enthusiastic about it, their followings are growing, and they are getting more comments on Google+ then on their other sites or Facebook. Techies aren’t the public at large but clearly something is happening here.

Respected tech blogger Robert Scoble says that the enthusiastic response by users has spurred the Google+ team, who will be introducing new features soon. Some of his posts on Google+ get several hundred comments. Chris Pirillo, another techie with a large following, practically lives on Google+ now. This is a marked difference from the reaction to Wave and Buzz.

Scoble also says Google+ has made Twitter boring, and maybe Facebook too, I might add. I expect both of them will introduce new features soon. This benefits all of us.

If you want an invite to Google+, send me your email address.

In addition to installing 1-gigabit-per-second broadband in Kansas City, Kansas, Google is teaming with Kansas City Power & Light to expand the service across the state and to Kansas City, Missouri.

Google is also investing in a project to build 350 miles of transmission line off the Atlantic from Virginia to New Jersey to handle the power from the mega- offshore wind farm that Obama approved.

CoolPlanetBiofuels has received $20 million in funding from Google Ventures and other venture capital funds. The Camarillo-based business is developing innovative mobile refineries that turn biomass, agricultural leftovers, and wood processing byproducts into useful biofuel.

This is quite separate from biofuel originating from corn, which has deservedly come under attack for being expensive, unworkable, environmentally unfriendly, and quite possibly lethal as well. The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons says biofuel from land formerly used for crops will lead to higher food prices which in turn condemns those in Third World countries to “chronic hunger,” poverty, and an increased death rate. In other words, biofuel from farmland leads directly to people dying from starvation and malnutrition. A rise in food prices here in the US might be unnoticeable to many, but to a family in the Third World making $1.50 a day, it can be devastating.

Furthermore, to create biofuel from corn, the corn has to be trucked long distances to the refineries, something which increases costs as well as environmental impacts. It’s difficult to see how corn biofuel benefits anyone except agribusiness which receives large subsidies for it.

However, the approach taken by CoolPlanetBiofuels has none of those drawbacks. They produce the biofuel from waste at processing plants, not from crops grown on arable land. Nothing needs to be trucked. Instead, the refineries go to where the waste products are. Thus, instead of trucking the waste to a landfill or burning it, it becomes an income stream. Everyone wins. The processing plant company has turned an expense (disposing of the waste) into profit.

Initially, the mobile refineries will produce an additive that will help gasoline refineries meet California’s stringent new low-carbon standards. They then plan to make biofuel that can run directly in engines, with a test one million gallon per year refinery coming soon. Amazingly, they also say they can sequester carbon in the process and use it as soil enhancer for crops or even as a coal substitute. Such a process is at least carbon-neutral and may even provide carbon sequestration, which makes it even more environmentally friendly than wind and solar power.

Turning waste into useful products is not only friendly to the environment because it lessens what is dumped into landfills or burned, it also provides income for those with the waste. The key here is what CoolPlanetBioFuels is doing. They are bringing the refinery to where the waste is, and no cropland is used in this process.

(crossposted from CAIVN)