When you post a message to your channel, all the members of your channel get the message forwarded for free. The regular charges for sending out SMS apply as usual. You can also post a message to your channel from SMS Channels website.
After entering a nickname and my mobile number, I received a SMS having a 4-digit verification code instantly. Once you get the code, revisit http://labs.google.co.in/smschannels/browse, agree to TOS and paste in the code. It’s surprising to see that Google hasn’t provided a confirmation upon successful entry of the verification code. You can now subscribe to the available channels, search for channels and create your own. Once you are subscribed to a channel, you see a link to invite others.
Creating a new SMS Channel
While creating a new SMS Channel (Channel name must have at least 8 characters) available options are: publishing by any subscriber (making it like a forum/mailing list) or only you (like a newsletter); and whether any user can subscribe or needs to be invited to do so.
For a comprehensive FAQ on SMS channels, visit this page.
Conclusion
Google SMS Channels is a good alternative to SMS GupShup! It’s a useful free service to keep in touch with your friends and family and other groups via SMS. The service is not completely bug-free. For example, it said that MozillaFirefox channel is available when searched, but when trying to create it we are greeted with “This channel name is not available”.
If you blog on technology and are based in India, please join TechBloggers SMS channel. Every subscriber is free to post and add their blogs’ RSS feed(s) to bring/exchange traffic and to expand your network.
Source: Digital Inspiration
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Split view (seeing two browser tabs side-by-side at the same time) is in-built into some browsers like Opera and Maxthon.
ChromePlugins.org has released a bookmarklet which will bring the dual split view to Google Chrome.
this will enable you to create 2 side by side “panels” in Chrome in the same tab so you can browse two sites at once side by side.
To get the split view:
- Visit http://www.chromeplugins.org/plugins/google-chrome-dual-view/ and add the bookmarklet to your browser bookmarks.
- Click on the bookmarklet
- The existing tab location will be filled by default. You can change it to the URL of the page to appear in the left side and press OK.
- Then enter the URL of the page to appear in the right tab. You have the option to prevent this page from creating additional dialogs.
That’s it. Your existing tabs will remain intact and within a single tab, you can see both the sites like this:
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Collect questions in one place
Everyone has a chance to propose a question to the group.Vote for the questions you care about
The blue featured question gives everyone’s submission the chance to be voted on.Use at any event or gathering
Google Moderator works in any group setting, from lectures to town hall meetings.
To get started, log in to the service and set your signature (nickname and location)
Create a new series
Set the title, description and owner of series. Specify whether anonymous submission of questions is to be allowed
You are now ready to get your series going by creating new questions (character limit of a question is 250).
Your new question will appear after a short delay of about 2 seconds like so:
Once the series is created and question(s) added, you might want to right click on ‘Presentation view’ and copy the URL. That’s the direct link to questions of your series so other interested members can participate by voting on them. The URL shown in this example for the Firefox series is this.
Now others can sign in to their Google account and vote on the question and add replies.
Do you use Firefox? If so, please sign into Google Moderator and answer/vote on this question (click on the image to visit):
Conclusion: Google Moderator seems to be a mix of Yahoo! Answers, polls, Digg and forums. If Google provides the option to place ads in the question series, it would be a nice incentive for publishers to adopt to and start using it enthusiastically.
One cause of concern is the potential abuse of the system by few marketers looking to drive traffic to their products pages. Does Google Moderator have moderators to take care of this??
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]]>The way it works is: Say you want to search in Google for “free data recovery software”, you type the keyword associated with Google search followed by your search term and then wait for a second or so and the results will show up. You can go to your desired result either in the same tab or in a new tab (by navigating to and pressing Alt+Enter).
The add-on supports all these: Google search, Google Local search, Google Video Search, Google Image search (as pointed out in the extension’s page, this is not so useful since it doesn’t show the images or their thumbs), Google Blog search, Google Book search, Google Patent search and Wikipedia search.
In the add-ons options, we can modify existing search keywords and add more. These are some of my frequently used searches and their keywords:
- g – Google search
- dc – Searches in donationcoder.com using Google
- gi – Google Image search
- gblog – Google Blog search
- gvid – Google Video search
- t – Searches in techcrunch.com using Google
For full details including a video, visit the CyberSearch add-on’s page.
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Sergey Solyanik, left Google to re-join Microsoft as Dev Manager.
I think I am the first person in the Seattle/Kirkland area to do so, so this merits an explanation.
writes Sergey in his blog post. He explains why he chose to move back to MS and below are some notable points from it:
Plusses for Google:
- Peer-based review model where one’s performance is determined largely based on peer comments, and much less so based on the observations of the manager.
- Wide employee participation in corporate governance. i.e., A lot of internal aspects of Google are ruled by committees of employees who are passionate about an issue, and are willing to allocate some of their time to have this issue resolved.
- Doing many things by committee.
- Free food.
Negatives for Google:
- Some of the web properties are useful (some extremely useful – search), but most of them primarily help people waste time online (blogger, youtube, orkut, etc). All of them are free, and it’s anyone’s guess how many people would actually pay, say $5 per month to use Gmail. For me, this really does make the project less interesting if people are not willing to pay for it.
WTD Author’s comment: I think Sergey got it wrong because the underlying business model of Google is not to just produce eye candy stuff just for the coolness factor of it, but to build a platform (a platform so huge that even MS can’t complete with it) for a profitable advertising network – to connect advertisers and publishers.
- Google software business is divided between producing the "eye candy" – web properties that are designed to amuse and attract people – and the infrastructure required to support them.
- The culture at Google values "coolness" tremendously, and the quality of service not as much.
- It seems like every week 10% of all the features are broken in one or the other browser. And it’s a different 10% every week – the old bugs are getting fixed, the new ones introduced. This across Blogger, Gmail, Google Docs, Maps, and more.
- The Google Manager is a very interesting phenomenon. On one hand, they usually have a LOT of people from different businesses reporting to them, and are perennially very busy. On the other hand, in my year at Google, I could not figure out what was it they were doing. The better manager that I had collected feedback from my peers and gave it to me.
He concludes by writing:
Am I sorry that I spent this year at Google? Not at all! It gave me a different perspective. It gave me new ideas. It cleared my mind. It gave me a much needed change of pace after the death march of the Windows Home Server release. I enjoyed the company of quite a few really good people from whom I learned a lot…
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]]>* Google Affiliate Network: As part of the integration of
DoubleClick, the DoubleClick Performics Affiliate Network will now
operate as the Google Affiliate Network for advertisers targeting
users located in the United States. Similar to the AdSense
Referrals program, the Google Affiliate Network enables publishers
to apply for advertiser programs and get paid based on
advertiser-defined actions instead of clicks or impressions. For
further details, please visit:
www.google.com/ads/affiliatenetwork.
Here is a graphic that explains Google Affiliate Network (GAN) in simple terms:
To become a publisher:
- You need to fill an online application form. Acceptance in the program is not guaranteed and you will be notified within 48 hours
- The contact info you are going to fill in the application should match WHOIS registration info for the domain you are applying for
- The application form insists for Company Name field to be filled. I noticed that the form submission goes through fine after filling N/A (standing for ‘Not Applicable’) in that field
Once the application is submitted, you’ll see the following page:
Have you applied for this program yet? If so, do let us know whether you have been accepted or not by commenting below.
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]]>- Pop-up
- SMS
To get started, click on the little down arrow next to your calendar and select Notifications.
For receiving SMS reminders, click on ‘Set up your mobile phone to receive notifications’. Ensure that country is set to the right one and type in your mobile number and click on ‘Send Verification Code’ button.
You’ll then receive the code via SMS to your mobile. Enter that back in Google Calendar to complete the mobile reminders setup.
Click on ‘Add a reminder’
and add Email, Pop-up and SMS reminders.
You can have all your events for the day emailed to your inbox at 5am by ticking the check box next to Daily Agenda. Finally don’t forget to hit the Save button.
So never miss that all important birthday of your friend any more. Simply add an event in your Google calendar and
- You will get notification pop-up in your browser (as long as it’s open and logged into Google Calendar)
- You will get an email reminding you of the event
- You will get a SMS message to your mobile
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Google launched Google Sites as part of the Google Apps suite.
Google Sites is the easiest way to make information accessible to people who need quick, up-to-date access. People can work together on a Site to add file attachments, information from other Google applications (like Google Docs, Google Calendar, YouTube and Picasa), and new free-form content. Creating a site together is as easy as editing a document, and you always control who has access, whether it’s just yourself, your team, or your whole organization. You can even publish Sites to the world. The Google Sites web application is accessible from any internet connected computer.
Requirement: You need to be using Google Apps at your own domain
To start using Google Sites, visit http://sites.google.com/a/example.com where example is your own domain name.
Google Sites comes in 3 editions: Standard, Premier and Education. Standard and Education editions are free while the Premier costs $50 / user account / year. This page has the comparision table.
These are the sample sites given in the mail sent by Google:
- Company intranet — http://sites.google.com/a/organic-city.com/intranet/Home
- Team project — http://sites.google.com/a/altostrat.com/project-eggplant/Home
- Employee profile — http://sites.google.com/a/altostrat.com/jkraus/Home
- Classroom — http://sites.google.com/a/googleclassrooms.org/mrs-richau/Home
- Student club — http://sites.google.com/a/googleuniversity.org/ski-club/Home
To learn more and to get started with using Google Sites, visit http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/users/sites.html.
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