Move away old blog, Google+ is here to stay!
There is one thing that I would love to discuss, and that's the future of blogging. A lot of people have their own website with their own domain name. Blogging websites are spread all over the web and it is not that easy to detect everything that might be of your interest. I have myself tried to start several web pages to use for blogging, but I have never been good enough keeping the site up to date with my thoughts and experiences. The one thing that I always keep updated with links, thoughts and experiences, tech wise, is my facebook, twitter and Google+ accounts. Out of those three I am experiencing a draw towards Google+. I am posting a lot more rich content there. Why? I think it's because it's on Google and that I know my posts will easier be found on the search engine Google.com, that's certainly something I believe! I always post with Public privacy enabled so that everyone can see what I am writing. I never, almost never, posts personal things so I don't bother that I have set it to public as default. And, another good thing about Google+, is that you don't have to be a web designer to get your personal "site" up and going.
So, what I think is my conclusion on this matter is that Google+ is the new tool for bloggers. I think that if every blogger merged themselves to Google+ they will get more activity on their posts and more people will comment and read your post. This way we will have only 1 web page to relate to and we do not have to work so hard to find web pages / domains with content that we would like to read about. We can just use Google / Google+ search and find people who is writing about the topic of our interest.
The one catch is that Google+ is not designed to be a blog as of now, but I think and hope Google will do something about this in the future. One thing I would like is the ability to have a own tab, such as Circles, that is dedicated to use as a personal blog. And when you post something on your Google+ wall you can easily link to the more extended blog post. Now you only have 5-6 lines of text to use before your “readers” have to click on ‘Expand this post’ to see the rest. I think it would be better to have a link to the tab where your extended blog post is suited. And of course, if this is something Google will add, they also have to add the possibility to embed pictures and videos to the post. What about moving blogger.com to an own “tab” on your Google+ account?
Am I right or am I wrong?
Google Currents for those outside of US
Google Currents is a new news reader for your Android phone. This is for now available for people in the US, but there is a way to get it installed on rooted phones outside of the US.
Go to this link and download the APK file, copy the file to your phone and install it:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1382728
If you use Google Reader today you can easily add your Google Reader subscriptions to Google Currents! Pretty sweet!
Read more about Google Currents on the official website: http://www.google.com/producer/currents
Google Wallet finally LIVE, or almost…
I signed up for Google Wallet a few months ago and was reminded that this service was NOT available in Norway. I then thought to myself that this would take time to implement here in Norway because of different rules regarding payment than in the USA. Today I got an email from Google telling me that I now could start using Google Wallet for online payment.
Google Checkout is now automatically converted to Google Wallet. This means that my payment method on Android Market is now used by Google Wallet. So when I logged onto wallet.google.com with my Google Account I could see all my payments made on Android Market, pretty nice!
Nothing much to do with Google Wallet here in Norway than using it as payment on Android Market, but I am looking forward to having Google Wallet integrated to all my payments. I guess converting from paying with a VISA card and using my phone with Google Wallet is something that is NOT coming to Norway for a long time, but who knows.
I have been using PayPal alot for payments online and looking forward to more and more webshops starting to use Google Wallet insted of PayPal. In some wierd way I trust Google more than independent PayPal!
Here is a screenshot I took of my frst time logged info Google Wallet:
Want the best hotel room? Room77.com gives you the ability to choose, just like booking a seat at a flight
A lot of people like to book their seats when they are taking flights. Someone that's tall for example, like to get the seat near the exit's, because there is usually better space there for your legs. What about the ability to choose the best hotel room? Wouldn't it be nice to get to choose a room with sea view, far from the elevator, free wifi or other stuff that you would appreciate of a hotel room? Now you can, with Room77.com
I came over this service when I watched Techcrunch Disrupt for about a year ago. Now Robert Scoble has made a new interview with General Manager and VP of Product Kevin Fliess at Room77.com
When I watched this interview I remembered how awesome this service is. Now they have upgraded their website and it really looks awesome.
Watch this interview and visit their website afterwords:
A new kind of cloud-based backup for your hard drives: Bitcasa
I really like the thoughts behind this new cloud-based backup! Thanx to Robert Scoble for making this great interview!