Posts tagged Extends
Gmail Calling Extends to 38 Languages, Rates Drop
Aug 3rd
As part of their Gmail pitch, Google has expanded the in-email calling feature to a total of 38 new languages. Simultaneously, the company lowered their calling fees.
The Updates to Gmail Calling
Google’s expansion into 38 new languages covers a large portion of Europe and the Asia Pacific regions. While the translation of the Gmail calling box and accepting new currencies is part of the effort, the bigger deal is the support for dozens of additional countries.
It seems clear that Google is improving their voice and data infrastructure (or, at the very least, the partnerships that provide it). It seems this has also allowed Gmail to drop their rates and waive their connection fees. India, France, and Mexico have especially good rates when compared with standard long-distance plans, and calls made from inside the U.S. or Canada to landlines or mobile phones in the U.S. or Canada will remain free at least until the end of the year.
Just days ago, Google also launched an “email intervention” campaign to promote Gmail. The campaign centered around voice and video calling. It’s clear that Google is prioritizing this feature, and has every intent of making it a long-term element.
The Loyalty War
Why would Google invest in a high-cost endeavor like global voice expansion? While there are some who theorize that Google could turn into its own multinational cell phone carrier (it’s a fun thought), the more likely reality is a continued push for user loyalty. Statistically, those who use Chrome and Gmail are more likely to use Google search and other Google services. By using voice as an incentive, Google can win users on Gmail and use that brand loyalty to lead the customers to other more monetized services.
[Sources include: The Official Google Blog]
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Gmail Calling Extends to 38 Languages, Rates Drop
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Layar Extends its AR Platform with Computer Vision Capabilities
Aug 2nd
Layar, makers of the Layar augmented reality platform for mobile, has today announced Layar Vision, a platform extension that enables phones to “see” and recognize real-world objects, including posters, magazines and newspapers. With Layar Vision, the goal is to provide brands and print media publishers’ with new ways to engage their audience using augmented reality experiences.
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About Layar Vision
To use Layar Vision, developers must first upload reference images to Layar’s servers. Those images are then used to extract the fingerprint of the object so it can detect, track and augment the object with audio, video and/or animated 3D objects, as specified. Currently the system only supports 2D images with 3D models on the target objects. Layar Vision will be able to instantly detect up to 50 target objects at launch.
The company says there are some limitations to what the technology can recognize and track. It works best on planar surfaces, like posters, magazines and newspapers, as mentioned above, as well as billboards, flyers, book covers, CD covers, paintings and other surfaces with “a minimum amount of discriminative texture and detail.” This is different than Qualcomm’s recently released AR SDK for iOS (the Android version was already available), which can track both planar objects as well as simple 3D objects like a box.
The Layar platform is already in use by over 10,000 developers who work to build AR experiences for smartphones. These experiences exist both as layers within the Layar smartphone application itself, as well as in 3rd-party apps using the Layar Player. The Layar app has been installed 10 million times, and now has over 2,500 layers, the company says.
Where and When
Developers can expect to see Layar Vision included in the newest beta of the Layar Platform, arriving in the coming weeks, says the company, but no exact date was given for the launch. For developers using the Layar Player in their own apps, they can expect to see Layar Vision in the Q4 release, on both iPhone and Android.
In addition, to kickstart development, Layar is hosting a contest called the “Layar Creation Challenge,” offering a total of $55,000 in cash prizes. The top 10 developers with the best and most useful concepts for Layar Vision will receive between $2,500 and $15,000. You can learn more about Layar Vision and the contest here.
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DOJ Extends Google-Admeld Acquisition Review
Jul 29th
Google has confirmed that the Department of Justice has made a “second request” for more information from Google, as regulators continue to review the $400 million acquisition of display ad firm AdMeld.
The DOJ’s 30-d…
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Google Extends Support for rel=canonical
Jun 20th
Back in 2009, Google officially started supporting use of the rel=canonical attribute in HTML. The canonical attritbute is part of a link tag, in the
section of your HTML page.This code allows webmasters to help Google identify pag…
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Searchmetrics Extends Global SEO Analytics to 29 Countries – SYS-CON Media (press release)
Jun 7th
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Searchmetrics Extends Global SEO Analytics to 29 Countries
SYS-CON Media (press release) NEW YORK, NY — (Marketwire) — 06/07/11 — SMX Advanced Seattle – Booth #9 – Searchmetrics, the global leader in search analytics software, today announced it has added tracking of five additional countries to its SEO analytics tool in response to … |
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Bing Extends Social Search Features
May 17th
Keying in on relationships with your friends on Facebook, Bing have added a new set of social features to search result pages, which include more Facebook likes inside individual listings to help you find the “best results.” However, Bing is inclu…
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Google’s Gmail Extends Contact Limit to 25k
May 7th
Gmail is still just the third most popular free webmail service (the top two are Yahoo Mail, with about 70 million users, and Hotmail, with about 45 million users; Gmail has about 25 million). However, those who use the service tend to be devoted – sometimes even fanatical. That’s due to the large number of features that Gmail includes that other services simply don’t, including items like color-coded labels, the various Gmail Labs, advanced filtering, and automatic contact saving. That least feature is very popular for those who don’t want to go through a contact-saving procedure at the end of every email: Google just stores the person’s name in your book for future reference.
Originally, Gmail had a limit of 10,000 contacts for this service. Anything beyond that and you were just out of luck. But some Gmailusers are apparently hitting 10,000 and were kind of frustrated. Google responded by quickly extending the limit to 25,000. “We want you to be able to store all of your contacts in a single place, so starting today [May 4th] we’ve increased the limit for all Gmailusers,” stated Mike Helmick, software engineer on the Gmail team. The limit increase also applies to anyone using any version of Google Apps.
Alongside this increase comes an expansion of the limit for each individual contact’s file size. Previously, each contact could have no more than 32 kilobytes of information attached. That limit has been quadrupled, allowing far more in-depth and consistent notes in the contacts section. Users don’t have to do anything to enable these expansions. They were automatically rolled out earlier this week.
[via the Gmail Blog]
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Google’s Gmail Extends Contact Limit to 25k
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Google’s Pandemonium extends to SMO – IT News Africa
May 5th
 IT News Africa |
Google's Pandemonium extends to SMO
IT News Africa However, it is not just SEO which has been affected by the Panda Update. The Panda Update will force websites to now consider how well their content is Social Media Optimised (SMO) and show them that SMO is becoming equally as important as SEO. … Get Ready for Summer Traffic with Brand New Site Content |
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Google Extends Gmail SMS to More African Countries
Mar 15th
Google has extended its Gmail SMS chat functionality to three more African countries, Tanzania, Uganda and Malawi.
Gmail SMS allows anyone worldwide to communicate with fellow Gtalk chat users even when they’re away from their computer. This year, Google added the extension to Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, Ghana and Zambia.
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Africa is a continent of mobile users so this tool seems like a good move by Google.
Gmail users can send and receive SMS messages for free using the service. (Non-Gmail users can SMS for regular text charges.)
Divon Lan, Google Product Manager for Sub Saharan Africa, wrote on the Google Africa Blog said the mobile carriers that provide the service include MTN, Uganda Telecom and Orange in Uganda, Vodacom in Tanzania and Airtel and Airtel and TNM in Malawi.
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Google Cloud Connect Extends Itself Directly Into MS Office
Feb 28th
Do you like the coolness of simultaneous document editing Google offers, but really need all the features in Microsoft Office? Now you can have both.
The Google Docs team recently announced Google Cloud Connect feature that allows you to share and collaboratively edit an Office document with others while still inside the Microsoft Office application.
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