Google Buys TheDealMap for Location-Based Deals

Google has purchased TheDealMap, a location-based deals service that will almost certainly be integrated into Googe's recent Deals service.

TheDealMap, which happened to be one of PCMag.com's best Web sites of 2010, rounds up local deals via an online map, and also separates them out via category. Users can also find deals by brand or by city, as well as via categories such as "restaurants," "medical," and "food and drugs," among others.

Google recently launched its Google Offers program in Portland, Ore., and later moving to New York's Manhattan and the San Francisco Bay Area. Like Groupon and other daily deals sites, Google Offers focuses on offers in a specific region, generally offering users the right to purchase a deal coupon for 50 percent off or more.

To date, though, Google's Offers beta places deals in a generic region, such as New York's MidTown, or "Oakland/East Bay". With TheDealMap, deals can be found outside those regions, with a much more refined sense of location. Google's strength in its Maps offering, with its Google Places becoming more of a home for businesses.

And Groupon recently launched Groupon Now, which provides location-based deals with time constraints as well, one-upping its competition.

"We believe Google provides the ideal platform to help us accelerate our growth and fulfill our mission. We're passionate about helping people save money while having great local experiences, and in Google we've found the perfect partner that shares this passion, as well as our vision and strategy," the company said in a statement posted on its site. "We believe that joining Google will help us innovate in new and unexplored areas of commerce."

It's unclear, however, how long TheDealMap will exist as a service.

"For the time being, we will continue to support The Dealmap's core products and partner services. People will still be able to access local and daily deals through The Dealmap website, mobile apps, and daily email, and we'll continue supporting The Dealmap API and feeds for existing sourcing and distribution partners. As we're ready to share more about integration and transition plans, we'll update our partners and consumers on progress and any news."

TheDealMap claims that it has over 2 million users of its branded mobile, Web, social, and email products, and that over 1 million people have installed its iPhone and Android apps. The site also claims over 85 million visitors have accessed its DealExchange distribution network.

Google Could Run Into Patent Issues Over WebM

Google is likely to face fire from as many as 12 separate companies. The issue seems to be with the WebM Media format for audio and video that was designed for the HTML5 format. Currently, most video streaming services use H.264 standard, which isn’t royalty-free and that’s probably the reason as to why it hasn’t been integrated into the HTML5 web format so far.

Google has been pushing WebM as the future of streaming media and one of the key points is that the format is royalty-free. MPEG LA, the firm responsible for licensing patents first put out an invitation for patent submissions for the VP8 specification, back in February. According to an interview with Streamingmedia.com, it turns out that 12 companies have responded to the call and submitted patents that are necessary for the VP8 standard.

Rough waters up ahead...

How things pan out for Google is yet to be seen? Some of the other companies supporting WebM are Adobe, Opera and Mozilla. Google was the one that actually bought On2 for a sum of $106 million. While the firms that file the patents could sue the users of the WebM, it’s Google, who’ll probably stand their ground, if it comes to that. Some of the other larger companies although supportive, have not implemented WebM in their products.

Google and Pottermore Sign Ebook Deal

Pottermore is bringing Harry Potter to the digital format with ebooks and has signed a deal with Google to use their literary services for this purpose. This fall, Harry Potter will make its ebook debut on Google eBooks, which lets users port their purchases to 80 other readers. The ebooks will be available via Google eBooks, as well as its iOS and Android apps. However, since the Kindle doesn't support ePUB or PDF files, it is not clear how the eBooks will be supported on that device. The books, as previously reported, will be DRM free. Buy your Pottermore ebooks via Google Google also said that it will provide the payment platform via Google Checkout and the video platform via YouTube for this digital Harry Potter experience. This means, that you will be paying for the eBooks directly to Google as opposed to other services like PayPal or Amazon Payments. Pottermore is expected to open up in October. Since the release of the last movie in the series, Potter fanaticism is at an all time high and Pottermore seems to be catching fans just at the right time. Google, too, will stand to gain by partnering with the Pottermore website right at the opportune moment.

Transfer Photos from Facebook to Google+ using Fotolink

So, you’ve managed to get a Google+ account, but don’t know where to start. You've managed to upload a profile picture, join a few circles and update a few streams. What's social networking without photos? However, all your photos are linked to your Facebook account. Here are a few quick steps to get your photos copied from your Facebook to your Google+ account. Fotolink, developed by Primadesk Inc allows easy integration of all your images from one account to another and has a relatively easy way to get all your Facebook images onto Google+.

• Go to the Fotolink application from your Facebook account and allow access, just like any other application.
• An integrated window will open that will display yours as well as your friends recent photos and albums. Click on the album you want to share with your Google account or select the photos to be shared and press Copy. The files will be copied to the clipboard. 
• Next, select ‘Photo Accounts’ and click on the Picasa Logo. Enter your Google username and password and press Connect. A separate window will appear that will ask you for access. Click on Allow Access.

Fotolink Access

• Your Google account is now integrated with Fotolink. Maximize the ‘My Online Accounts’ tab on the left hand side of the screen. Click on your account name that has been created. Create a separate album/ Click on an existing album and press Paste on the right hand side of the screen. Your pictures will be linked to your Google+ account.
• Log into Google+ Click on the photos tab. Next click on ‘Your albums’. Your photos will be available there. You can share it with your circles or post it on your stream. 

It’s that simple. So do try this out as I have and let me know what you think in the comments section below. Happy Google +ing!

Street View: Google and Karnataka Govt. Discuss Future

It can be recalled that a while back, we had reported that one of Google’s immensely popular services, Street View faced a complete ban in the city of Bangalore, India. Citing security concerns, as one of the key issues that came in the way of Google’s Street View getting a go-ahead, the government added that the recent terror attacks in Mumbai had only made matters worse for Google.

Getting the Street View

According to a report in The Economic Times, a recent meet between the legal team from Google, that included Google's legal expert, Geetanjali Duggal and Venkatesh Hariharan, Head of Public Policy and Government Affairs, in Bangalore and BJP’s media spokesperson, S. Prakash, as well as, the party’s lawmaker C.N. Ashwath Narayan, it was discussed that Street View was heavily violating security norms. However, Google’s representatives made attempts to convince the leaders that the Street View services would only display historical monuments and shopping complexes. Post the vicious attack on the nation’s financial capital; all metros including Bangalore were put on a high alert. In such a scenario giving out even the tiniest of details, let alone complete ‘Street View’ would be grave, the leaders added. 

The BJP government in Karnataka has asked Google to approach the Centre for further orders. According to BJP’s media spokesperson, S. Prakash, the Data Protection Act 2000 needed amendments keeping in mind technological advancements that have taken place, since its inception. Both parties are now looking at a third way, that of data protection. Although clashing on most grounds, both Google and the Karnataka government agreed that the entire mechanism needed serious monitoring. 

Google’s authorities now cite further discussions with local authorities as their next logical step. For the rest of us, it’s now a wait and watch game.

Google Buys g.co Domain for a Ridiculous Sum

When companies the size of Google decide to buy domain names and specifically, domain names the size of g.co, they shell out a lot of money. When Google bought this domain recently, they're said to have paid to the tune of $1.5 million for it. Google would most likely use the domain to host its array of apps, everything from Gmail to Google Docs. The .co line of domains belongs to Columbia. A whole bunch of companies own sites on the .co domains including Twitter (t.co) and Amazon (a.co). A compact domain, merely a luxury The CO Internet company is run with support of the Columbian government. As of now, g.co isn’t accessible for any services. Instead, you’re just pointed out to Google’s official URL shortening service - goo.gl. The .co domain range is close to a year old and has some 1 million domains registered as of early June. Not all of these domains are obviously single alphabet ones. Shorter domains are a bit of a novelty. It makes accessing sites a little simpler and quicker. It’s only sensible for dot com moguls the size of Google who can afford to buy such exotic domains considering the user base they have.

Google Adds ZIP and RAR Support to Docs

Google Docs already lets you view 15 types of files in Gmail without downloading them. Now they've added support for ZIP and RAR files. So if someone sends you a ZIP or a RAR file, you just have to click on "View" and you can view the file within the browser itself. This will bring up a view of all the files in the folder and what type of and size files they are. When you hover over the files, you'll get a drop down list of options to View, Save to Google Docs, and Print (PDF). You'll be able to view documents that are supported by the Google Docs viewer and print (PDF) those that offer PDF support.

Check out ZIP and RAR viewability in Google Docs

ZIP and RAR files embedded in other ZIP and RAR files also work. You can have a RAR file inside a ZIP file and you can just click on it to access the embedded archive. This feature is also available in Google Docs for mobile. For each supported file, there is a link that you can click on to view it. Google says that they're continuing to add more types of files to Docs. If you'd like to tell them what additional file support you'd like, post on their forums. To try this feature in Google Docs, click here.

Google Effect Affecting Your Memory: Reports

How many times have you turned to your faithful, ‘ever so right’ computer to find answers to the most basic questions, okay maybe, slightly trickier questions? If you find yourself turning in too often, then you may be suffering from the Google Effect. Well! That’s not us, but a report on the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS) weekly journal,Science. According to the report drafted by the AAAS researchers, internet (symbolized by Google) is replacing people’s own bank of information – memory.  You have the Google Effect, too? (Image credit: androidauthority.com) The research further revealed, and plunked a lot of blame on the hugely popular existence of ‘search engines’. In fact, a common observation would reveal that people are now replacing the word ‘search’, with ‘Google’. You now, usually ‘Google’ up something on the internet, instead of relying on your memory, or referring to a book. To better put their findings down, the researchers put a sample of individuals under a series of tests. The individuals were posed with a set of questions based on various themes, and were asked to type the answers to those on the given computer. It was found that when asked the same questions verbally, most of them couldn’t recollect the answers. Some stated that they didn’t find the need to recollect because they believed the answer to be stashed away in the computer. However, there is a visible pattern noted, too. The ones who thought that the information they entered wouldn’t be retained in the systems for them to go back to, showed better retention capacities than those who presumed that the information is retained and hence, it was unnecessary to store the additional data on themselves. In a report in The Telegraph, according to the researcher, Betsy Sparrow also believes that the dawn of Internet didn’t deplete our memory reserves, only modified it. She added that people just believed more in stacking additional information on their computers, and just off loaded their own memory reserves.

Google Encourages Reading News With Google Badges

If you’re an avid follower of news, irrespective of the beat, and spend a considerable chunk of your online time rummaging through articles, then this might interest you. Search giant, Google has come up with a unique offering.

A basketball fan's badge collection

Beginning solely for U.S.-based customers, at least for now, Google plans to reward avid news readers based on the number of articles they manage to read over a period of time on Google News. The more articles of a particular beat one reads, the higher are his chances of earning a Google News Badge. An average, regular reader will find himself worthy of the bronze badge, and then as he increases the number of his news pieces read, he’ll find himself earning Silver, Gold, and Platinum. The best of the lot, will win themselves the Ultimate badge – the highest level.

According to an official blogpost, Google currently has a collection of over 500 badges on itself. So users can choose to enhance their proficiency in any level and begin earning badges. Additionally, Google also lets users share their badge collection with their friends, share their expertise, or stay private about it.

In order to avail the services, users will have to visit the Google News service after they sign-in to their Google account, with their web history enabled. Once there, users can visit the Help Centre page for further instructions.

PayPal Launches NFC Solutions for Android

PayPal, the popular mobile payment solutions provider has introduced the concept of Near Field Communications for Android devices. Popularly known as the NFC, the concept achieved massive popularity, after it was learned that it made payments easier than what it used to be. At the recently concluded MobileBeat 2011 Conference (12 - 13th July, 2011) in San Francisco, PayPal revealed its plans for revolutionizing mobile payments and a swanky demo of the PayPal NFC widget for Android devices.

Interestingly, unlike before, where a user had to specifically look out for the PayPal app to proceed with his transactions; the peer-to-peer concept just requires the widget. In an official blog post, it was revealed that users can, using the tap gestures proceed with the final stage of the payment. When the phones are tapped together, the Android widget on the smartphone sends the payment data. Laura Chambers, Senior Director PayPal Mobile demonstrated the concept at the event. She tapped the smartphones with each other, and the transaction went off, smoothly.

The service can be expected to start rolling out later this year. PayPal India users hopefully should have something for themselves, too. However, that is speculative.

Indian Govt Now Wants Skype, Google to Provide Access to Services

Yesterday, even as the average Mumbaikar was on his way home, three explosions ripped through the financial hub. Although its famed resilience came to its rescue, the importance of government security agencies getting access to the services of Google.com and Skype, was reinforced. The request for the same was forwarded a while back; the sequence of events yesterday only strengthening the reason.

Time to share the information to prevent it reaching the wrong people

The information and other details on sites such as Google and Skype are encrypted in nature and hence their interception becomes impossible. Terrorist outfits and other miscreants have been taking advantage of this very situation, and have been smoothly carrying out operations. Readers would remember that the services of popular handset manufacturer, Canada-based Research in Motion’s (RIM) services were under the scanner for the same reasons, a while back. The government on strong insistence managed to get the intercepted communication records from the messenger service of BlackBerry. However, due to the unavailability of any technology to intercept corporate emails, the access to the same has been non-existent. According to a statement lent by Sachin Pilot, MoS for Communications and IT stated that in addition to Google, Skype, BlackBerry, popular services like Facebook, too have been sent notices for the same. According to PCworld.com though, Google is saying that they haven't yet received any offcial request to share data with the government and Skype is yet to comment on the same.

However, these steps for security will come at the cost of the loss of private space for the consumers, who will have all their data open to the government's security officials. It now remains to be seen if Google and Microsoft-owned Skype consent to having their networks intercepted. The success and the efficient use of the same should aid the nation in its war against terrorism.

iPhone 4, Samsung Nexus S on Space Shuttle Atlantis' Final Mission

Afew days ago NASA bid adieu to its 30 year long, space shuttle mission, with the launch of the space shuttle, Atlantis. Along with the four member crew, Atlantis had some special guests onboard. Reports suggest that the Atlantis crew carried with them, along with the other equipments; two Samsung Nexus S smartphones and an iPhone 4.

Simply out of this world, quite literally!

According to reports, the smartphones will aid the crew onboard with several experiments they routinely carry out. Both the Nexus S and the iPhone 4 will be connected to the Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, and Experimental Satellites, also known by the acronym SPHERES. With the smartphones doing the routine experiments, the crew members will spend a lot of time with  them. 

While the Nexus S smartphones would have been placed small spheres propelled by thrusters, completely ruling out the need of manual operations, the iPhone 4 will be used to run an app called ‘Space Lab’. Using the app, the crew onboard will be able to carry out numerous experiments with  the phones’ cameras, gyroscopes, and some other sensors, in addition to checking if the computer memory would suffer any repercussions owing to space radiation.

Google Updates Android Market for Smartphones

The Android Market is set to get a makeover with two new tabs being added namely movies and books for Google powered smartphones. Google has released a new version of the Android Market, which allows users to find new ways to search for applications, games, purchase books or rent movies on their phones running Android 2.2 or higher. Editors' choice and new tabs in the Android Market According to a blog post on the Google Mobile Blog, with the Videos app which is available in Android Market, there’s no more waiting for downloads, syncing, or worrying about storage space. One can simply sign into Android Market with their Google account and rent movies from anywhere. This includes the web or your Android phone or tablet. One can also download movies to their device so they’re available for viewing when a user does not have an internet connection.  In addition to videos, one can also purchase books from the Android market onto a phone. Books, like videos are connected with a user’s Google account; hence becoming available across all platforms such as computers, phones and tablets without the need for wires or downloads. Other updated features of the Android Market will include more space to feature some of the most interesting content of the week on the home page, more top charts, with newer, more relevant items and new collections of content like staff picks and Editors’ Choice apps. However, these attractive updates are presently only available in the US as of now; a global rollout will take place in the coming weeks for supported Android phones running 2.2 or higher. This is an automatic update so one does not need to do anything to avail of these interesting updates from Google.

Google Deploys Street View Cars in 'Earthquake-Hit' Japan

Four months ago, the world looked on helplessly, as one of the most technologically developed nations, Japan crumbled in front of an earthquake first, and the horrendous tsunami, that swelled later. Since then, the nation has been putting up a brave front, and has begun picking life from where it stopped on that fateful day. Those of you who followed our reports closely that time, would remember that Google had launched, the indispensable feature called ‘Person Finder’. The tool helped thousands of displaced people get to know the whereabouts of their relatives, family, and other acquaintances.

A quake hit stretch in Japan

Reports now point that one of Google’s most controversial and spoken about service, Street View has been deployed on Ground zero. Street View cars from Google have been plying on the earthquake ravaged streets of North Eastern Japan bringing in digital images of the affected areas using the nine cameras mounted on the car, which give out a 360-degree, panoramic view of the location. Google's popular service, although hit roadblocks in major nations, was welcomed with open arms in Japan.The mayor of Kesennuma, one of the cities in North Eastern Japan was particularly glad with the Google Street View cars plying around the city. In a statement,  he said that he was glad that they were here to record Kesennuma, and that he would want them to come back again, and record Kesennuma after it had restored itself to its original self.

Getting the Street View

The Street View technology, especially in Japan would track the extent of the damage, for starters, and would also gauge the progress in reconstruction. Google, had initially rubbed the Japanese the wrong way with the Street View technology. Privacy loving Japanese did not like it when Google's Street View cars started recording the most detailed images. They were allowed to proceed only when they reshot their entire sequence with less detailed images. Now, however, Google and several of its key features, like the above mentioned Person Finder, Street View and others like Google Maps have become indispensable to the lives of scores of Japanese, which most definitely is good news for Google.

Google’s Cosmic Panda is an Updated YouTube UI Preview

Google’s video service YouTube sees a few updates every now and then. The aim is to try and enhance viewing experience. There have been plugins and scripts for browsers that try and make it better by darkening the screen and hiding all the text content on it. Google has launched a new viewing mode codenamed Cosmic Panda that's available on youtube.com/cosmicpanda. It’s free to everyone and can be viewed by clicking on the Try it Out button on that page. The mode changes the interface of the flash player component itself with completely new buttons.

A fresh new interface

Comments can be seen listed below the video. Clicking on the Suggested buttons slides open a large listing of related videos. A neat new feature is the ability to change the quality of the video on the player itself and then choose a different viewing area. Typically, YouTube changes the image quality everytime you open a larger version of it. Real time comments are also available. It’s not just the video viewing page, but also the profile pages. Featured videos on profiles are shown as large, wide thumbnails instead of the tiny versions on the default interface. Having used it for a while, it’s easy to say that the Cosmic Panda interface is a good step up from the existing interface and we’re hoping Google switches to it, full time.

Google to Fix Google Talk Video Jitter on Android

A problem with video on Google Talk on Android (tablets and smartphones) is the jitter and instability. Google is looking to fix this issue and has approached SRI International to embed its video stabalization software in the Google Talk application for Android. This should help prevent the jitter and instability on Android smartphones and tablets, while video chatting via Google Talk. The company, SRI International is the same company that is responsible for the invention of the computer mouse. It's a Menlo Park, California based non-profit organization and has been working on this video stabalizing software since the nineties. Now that Android tablets are fast and powerful enough to sustain this software, it only makes sense for integration. Video chat on Android via Google Talk will be easier The software works by recognizing the face of the user video chatting and stabalizing that video before compressing for transmission. The steadiness and stabalization of that shot allows for better compression, making the video actually look sharper with less noise. The stabilization software is only available for devices that have Android 3.0 installed. The difference between this software and other stabilization software is that this works in real time, a necessity for video chatting.

Google Maps 5.7 Now Features ‘Labs’

Google Map’s swanky new update has made life just a little simpler in this metropolitan chaos we live in. Other than the new detailed transit routes, they’ve also introduced ‘Labs’, similar to the one in Gmail. This gives you access to some pretty nifty add-on features that extend the functionality of Google Maps. For now, we have just three to choose from, but I’m sure more are on their way.

No need for data roaming

To get started, head over to the Android Marketplace and update Google Maps. Once it’s done, open it up and go to Options>More>Labs. Here you can choose which lab you wish to enable. The first one called ‘Scale Bar’ shows distances in metric and imperial units and changes as you zoom in or out. ‘Measure’ allows you to gauge the distance between any two points that you select. But perhaps, the most exciting feature is the ‘Download Map Area’ lab. This lets you download the entire map of a particular area (only map tiles, no satellite and traffic info) in advance so when you arrive at your destination you don’t have to wait for it to load. This is brilliant since if you’re travelling to another state or country and don’t have data roaming, simply pre-load the map before your journey.

Once the map area has been loaded, you’ll see a square box to show you, which area is ready for viewing. This is currently only available for Android smartphones. iPhone users will have to wait for the next iOS release.