TechiePost

Google has recently put a Google+ sharing box on its homepage. Notably, it rarely messes around with its homepage other than the occasional Google Doodles.



This big move has recently shown the tech enthusiasts just how much serious Google is with its social networking site, Google+. Adding the share box on Google homepage means a lot of things.When someone visits Google homepage without logging in, the top right features a sign in button that previously used to be on the top bar. Immediately after signing in, users are redirected to Google homepage with the share box of Google+.

It's time that will tell us how much big steps Google will take in order to publicize its rapidly growing social networking site.

Because numerous products did not have the impact the company hoped for, Google has decided to shut down a number of products and features in the coming months, said a Senior Vice President on Official Google Blog.


The products that will be shut down include Google Friends Connect - to be shut down on March 1, 2012, Google Gears - to be shut down on December 1, 2012, Google Search Timeline, Google Wave (here's our recent post on this matter), Google Knol - moving to WordPress.com and will stop working on April 30, 2012 and Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal (RE<C) project because there are institutions in better position than Google to take the research to the next level.

While Google did not show a statistics of how many people were using these services, it appears you have to visualize on your mind whether a service -- launched by Google -- has potential to create the impact it hopes for. Because if it doesn't, chances are the search giant will kill it and all your effort may just go in vain (think about Google Friends Connect on non-Blogger sites).

Google has just announced the date of shutting down the user activity of its once much anticipated collaborating service, Google Wave. The company nearly a year ago stated that it would stop developing that project although users would continue to enjoy the service until it's closed down.

Google, in an email to all Wave users, stated that all the existing Wave will be read-only from January 31, 2012. However, people will still be able to export Waves as PDF using its PDF export feature. Google has not strictly said when the service will go completely offline. But from the signs of the message, it's easy to guess that the service may be turned off soon after April 30, 2012.

You will be able to continue exporting individual waves using the existing PDF export feature until the Google Wave service is turned off. We encourage you to export any important data before April 30, 2012.

As an alternative to Google Wave, the email contained two external websites for interested people to try out. Apache Wave and Walkaround are the ones that made it into Google's mass email. Walkaround could be a better choice for people who like to collaborate using service like Google Wave because it has an import from Google Wave feature so you lose nothing if you were into Wave.

Apple's former CEO Steve Jobs (left) and new CEO Tim Cook (right).

Some shocking news for anyone just signing in to the web. Steve Jobs, the most seen person on the Internet who was the CEO of Apple Inc. has just resigned from his position. According to Reuters, he has submitted his resignation letter to the Board of Directors.

Earlier we reported that a new law passed in Missouri and effective from August 28, 2011 prevents teachers from becoming friends with their students on Facebook. Latest on that matter is that the teachers in Missouri has filed a lawsuit against this Amy Hestir Student Protection Act.

As reported by ZDNet, the lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of the concerned act claiming it to be unlawful. According to the act, any kind of private communication between teachers and students -- that includes text messaging or online communication -- are prohibited to protect children. However, Missouri State's Teachers Association believes this goes against the teachers' first amendment rights of free speech and association.

One of the two things the largest social networking site Facebook does is regularly changing its privacy settings (still not being satisfactory to end users). It happened again. As expected, Facebook came up with seven deadly changes on how users are exposed around the world.


The changes are mainly focused on its tagging system and sharing policy. Here is a list of six new features (along with our fancy rating) Facebook is rolling out to its 750+ million users soon:

HP gave up, but apparently the company wouldn't spend its last moments lazy. Probably that's why despite its falling market share, it has announced a new desktop computer focused on businesses. Reports according to Reuters.

The sources said that this is the first all-in-one PC aimed at corporate level users. The PC is called HP Compaq 8200 All-in-one Business Desktop. The computer-maker company earlier announced that it will kill production of its tablet device called TouchPad as well as other mobile devices. It might also sell off its PC unit.

Although the market share was down, Reuters reported that shared were up 4.2 percent at $24.59 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange in a market that was broadly up.

The world's largest computer maker company Hewlett Packard has dropped a bombshell this Thursday announcing that it will stop producing tablet devices as well as smartphones that run on webOS. Along with that, the development of webOS will also be stopped.



The Huffinton Post reported that the company is also considering to sell off its PC division as well. Analysts are saying that it's a signal that HP is changing its target from hardware to software as the current world is obsessed with mainly devices from Apple and others that run Android.

Every time you see a 'share-worthy' tweet on your timeline, what do you do? Yes, you hit the retweet button twice. First to actually retweet, and second time to confirm that you'll retweet. You'll what?

Retweet is a common word used in Twitter. In 2008, twitter users used "RT @username" method to share a tweet with their followers. However, that technically didn't do anything. That RT in the beginning meant that it was a retweet and the @ followed by twitter username meant that it was a reply. In 2009, twitter officially rolled out the retweet option which is now an independent feature on Twitter.

Not only that, the word is used so often across twitter and across the web that it made into the Concise Oxford English Dictionary. Along with 'retweet', 'sexting' is another word that made its place there.

For the first time in Australia, figures showed that sales of Android-run devices have jumped over iPhones.



42.9 percent of smartphones sold in the country run on Android operating system while Apple iPhone has 37.2 percent share. The boost in Android sales may have been caused by brand new smartphones from Samsung and HTC including Galaxy S II, Desire S, Desire Z etc.

The report of just last four weeks show that 54% of smartphones sold in the country are Android while another 29% of smartphones are iPhone.

The outlook of all Google products have changed, why keep Gmail behind? Exactly. The folks at Mountain View, California asked this question themselves and have come up with an identical log in page for Gmail.


If you go to Gmail's Login page (without being logged in to your Google account in other tabs), you'll see the old gmail interface with a new link at the bottom to try out the new login page. We've tested it, and we sensed the look of Google+, Google Search and so on right at Gmail login page.

We have started to embrace the redesign. What about you?

Would you like to start using Firefox 6? Wait, has it been released yet? Not really, but you can still use Firefox version 6. What, you don't like to mess with release candidates? Come on, it's not release candidate, it's the official release. But how on earth could you possibly download the official release even before it's actually released?

Well, as long as you are talking about Firefox 6, it's actually possible. The Mozilla Foundation has taken up a new schedule of releasing new version of Firefox every six week. As a result of that, Firefox 6 will be officially available on Mozilla website this August 16. But they made the new version available to download via their FTP servers. If you want to be one of the early adopters, you can download Mozilla Firefox 6 following these links:

We've seen how Google stepped into the mobile market with its physical devices called Nexus One. Because the popularity of the smartphone was less than what Google had anticipated, the production of Nexus devices stopped. This time, Google suddenly announced that the company will acquire Motorola for $12.5 billion.

While the amount can be terrific, it is the first time Google is acquiring a company that actually produces physical devices on the market. However, most of Motorola's latest handsets are already running Google's Android operating system. Therefore, Google literally doesn't have to do much with it.

If you are a social gaming fan and if you have been on Google+, chances are you have already started to miss some games on the site. Lately, the search giant has announced that some popular games are being brought on board with a separate page called 'Games'.

Games like "Angry Birds", "Zynga Poker", "Sudoku" and so on are very popular and well-known in other social networking sites specially Facebook. Google, in a blog post, said that it will bring these games including some other in a separate section inside Google+ called Games. The page, or tab called Games, will be accessible from the top of the page on Google+.

It's Anonymous again, and this time, it says it's next target is Facebook, the largest social network on the planet.



Hacker group Anonymous has become famous over past months by successful hacking, data theft and website take-downs on many websites including PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, etc. It also successfully took down the entire Play Station Network and hacked into many law enforcement websites including the CIA and police. But this is the first time the hacker group is targeting any mainstream social networking platform.

According to its self theory, the group Anonymous performs 'ethical hacking' for the sake of humanity. For example, last time it took down a Syrian website in its message to remove the Syrian president that they say the Syrian people don't want.

Anonymous said in a video statement (only voice is heard after a fancy animation to Anonymous' logo), Facebook is selling all personal data despite any privacy settings users apply. Anything a user does on Facebook remains on Facebook forever. Even if the uploader deletes certain information, it's stored on Facebook. That said, Facebook is the biggest threat to privacy of general people, and that's why the group is going to "kill" Facebook on November 5, 2011.

The famous group of hackers called Anonymous has claimed responsibility for hacking and stealing some sensitive data from about 70 websites of law enforcement across the United States. They claimed that most of these websites were of rural law enforcement units.

Like most of the time, the group posted cached version of data they stole from different websites that included emails, credit card numbers and other information. According to news blog The Huffington Post, "Anonymous said it had stolen 10 gigabytes worth of data in retaliation for arrests of its sympathizers in the U.S. and Britain."

Police said that the data stolen by anonymous includes sensitive information such as pictures of ongoing investigation.

 Microsoft has recently lost one of its brilliant employees, named Charlie Kindel, who was responsible for managing the Windows Phone group.

Charlie, after 21 years with Microsoft, has resigned to start up his own company soon. He posted about it on his personal blog. He was one of Microsoft's most important assets as he and his team has done a great job improving Windows Phone platform that has attracted both developers and consumers at a very short period of time.

In his fairly long good-bye mail intended for all his colleagues at Microsoft, he has joked around pretty much. He wrote [telling his kids] that just because he leaves Microsoft doesn't mean they [his children] may not use Google. This is where we find a similarity between him and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who is known to buy his kids Zunes preventing them from using iPods.

Skype has recently released an upgrade to its Mac version that enables users High Definition video calling and works perfectly well on Mac OS X Lion.



Mac users have long been missing HD Video calling on Skype although the feature has been available to Windows users for quite some time. Now with the upgrade, Skype supports HD video calling with iMac or MacBook Pro's built-in HD camera or an external video camera. For placing HD video call, Skype's recommended upload and download speed is 1.5 Mbps.

Along with HD Video calling enabled, the upgrade enables users on a Mac OS X Lion to enjoy Skype's full compatibility. For those still using Snow Leopard, upgrading to the newest version won't harm. It works on older Macs, too.

Despite the fact that law enforcement agencies and police are arresting people suspected to be linked to the hacker group Anonymous, the group has been continuing taking down websites in a series of what it calls to be ethical hacking. Recently, the group has claimed responsibility for taking down the Syrian Ministry of Defense's website.

As most of the time, the group had also posted a message that calls for the removal of Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad. The site is still down although the message has been removed. However, Anonymous has managed to upload a cached version of the site when the message was live. You can view the cache by clicking here.

If Gmail is your first Email provider, then you must have noticed the latest changes made in Gmail -- the Priority Inbox, floating buttons, etc. If you embrace changes, then there's a good news for you. Gmail team has created a revamped look of Inbox. Now you can view email's content without actually opening it.



If you ever used Hotmail, or MSN Mail, then you are already familiar with the look. All the emails are shown in the left panel. Clicking on them opens up a little slider, just like in new twitter, that shows the content of the email. You can read the full email, reply, and do all the tasks you usually do with a conversation.

While this is very similar to how Gmail looks on a tablet, we are looking forward to how people take this change. If you want to try this out, go to Gmail Labs and turn this feature on. We expect that Gmail will not permanently add this change to all Gmail users because in the first place I don't like it.

Tell us if you like the changes. (Please click the image above for a wider view of how the redesigned inbox looks like).

To turn on the new layout
Please click on the settings icon from the upper right corner of the screen. A menu will appear. Click Labs. Now, search for "Preview Pane" and click the "Enable" radio button next to it. Make sure you "Save Changes" before leaving.

You should now see the new layout in your inbox.