Get Android L Look with this new theme for your Mobile

Android L is currently in the works and being sampled by a limited group of Nexus toting developers. If you’re suffering from a case of L envy and a Nexus 5 or 7 aren’t within reach, there’s now a way to bring the software’s look and feel to devices stuck on Jelly Bean or KitKat. An XDA member called “Adhi1419″ has put together a theme that emulates most of Android L’s appearance, including its status bar icons, settings, calculator and ringtones.

Toss in L’s keyboard and you’ve got yourself a genuine knockoff Android L handset. If you decide to take this theme for a spin, your device will need Xposed Framework support and some users are experiencing issues with various ROMs, so there may be a hiccup or two along the way. However, if you’re not moved by a slight challenge and your phone could use a makeover, head on over to the source link below to get started.


(via 9to5)

RIP Orkut Google shutting down Orkut social network

Google is shutting down Orkut, here’s how to safely export your data

Orkut launched 10 years ago and was part of Google’s “20 percent project,” which allowed employes to dedicate a fifth of their time towards working on a side project of their choosing. Google will preserve all of the Orkut communities in archive form. The archive will go live September 30th, as well. Google says if you don’t want your name and posts included in this archive, you can remove Orkut integration from your Google account.

Google now lets users search for animated GIFs

From running horses to falling cats, animated GIF lovers have a hard time keeping track of all the good ones on the Internet as there no single place to find them. But Google has made lives easy by adding an ‘Animated’ filter on its image search.



From today, when searching for images, you will be able to click ‘Search tools’ and then ‘Animated’ under type to filter to search for animated GIFs. You will also be able to see the images in action right there on the Google search page.
Google has added another handy filter to its search called ‘Transparent’ under its ‘Any Color’ dropdown box, which as the name suggests allows you to search for images with transparent backgrounds.

Remove Your Google Search History Before Google's New Privacy Policy Takes Effect

On March 1st, Google will implement its new, unified privacy policy, which will affect data Google has collected on you prior to March 1st as well as data it collects on you in the future. Until now, your Google Web History (your Google searches and sites visited) was cordoned off from Google's other products. This protection was especially important because search data can reveal particularly sensitive information about you, including facts about your location, interests, age, sexual orientation, religion, health concerns, and more. If you want to keep Google from combining your Web History with the data they have gathered about you in their other products, such as YouTube or Google Plus, you may want to remove all items from your Web History and stop your Web History from being recorded in the future.


Here's how you can do that:


1. Sign into your Google account.

2. Go to https://www.google.com/history

3. Click "remove all Web History."

4. Click "ok."

Note that removing your Web History also pauses it. Web History will remain off until you enable it again.


Note that disabling Web History in your Google account will not prevent Google from gathering and storing this information and using it for internal purposes. It also does not change the fact that any information gathered and stored by Google could be sought by law enforcement.

With Web History enabled, Google will keep these records indefinitely; with it disabled, they will be partially anonymized after 18 months, and certain kinds of uses, including sending you customized search results, will be prevented. If you want to do more to reduce the records Google keeps.

If you have several Google accounts, you will need to do this for each of them.

Stop YouTube from Keeping Record of The Videos You Watch

When you're logged into Google or YouTube, a record of all the videos you searched for and watch is logged in your account. You can clear those logs, but up until now you couldn't disable the logging altogether. Here, finally, is how to keep YouTube from recording your video searches and the videos you watch. The Ghacks blog, via its reader Odio, points out you can now go to this settings page on YouTube to get to the new options. 


There are actually two settings to change: 

• First, click on "Pause search history" which will disable the video search logging 
• Then, in the menu on the left, click "History" and then the button at the top, "Pause viewing history" to disable the recording of the videos you view on YouTube 

If ever you want to go back to having a log of the videos you've watched or searched for on YouTube back, you can click the resume buttons.

Google+ will have 400 mn users by the end of 2012, predicts a Google statistician

 An unofficial Google statistician, Paul Allen, has predicted that Google+ will cross 400 million user base by the end of 2012. The social network already has 62 million users and adds 6,25,000 new users on a daily basis. “It may be the holidays, the TV commercials, the Android 4 signups, celebrity and brand appeal or a combination of all these factors but there is no question that the number of new users signing up for Google+ each day has accelerated markedly in the past several weeks” wrote Paul Allen in his report. 



Since 700,000 Android devices are being activated daily, these new activations will become a very significant source of new users for Google+. If this rate of new signups (625k daily) continues then Google+ would reach 100 million users by the end of February next year and might also register a user base of 200 million by August 2012.

Google launches redesigned Google Bar

Say bye to the black Google bar!

Google has officially rolled out the next stage of their redesign with the an all new Google bar enabling users to quickly switch between services using Google menu, a drop-down list of Google services baked into the Google logo. The new bar, which replaces the old black toolbar, will also provide access to search and Google+ tools as highlighted in the video above. As part of the update, the new Google Menu will also be accessible when not signed into your account, providing quick links to Google services for everyone.

Above each of Google’s products, the gray bar has three main regions. On the left, the Google logo contains a drop-down menu with links to Google services that displays when you hover over or click on it. The central area contains a search box for the Google service you are currently using. The right side features a share box and notifications to participate on Google+ from any Google page.

The roll out is happening now, but it might take a bit of time to reach all users. Until then, you can learn everything you need to know about the new Google bar here.

Google launches YouTube Analytics

Find out who’s watching your Youtube videos using New YouTube Analytics

In a move that should make producers and video enthusiasts jump with joy, Google has finally rolled out an improved analytics feature on YouTube, allowing anyone to retrieve detailed reports and see who is watching their videos. The new capability goes beyond the existing Insight feature, which provides only basic analytics.
According to a post at the official YouTube blog, some of the features include a quick overview of how your videos have been doing in terms of view count, more detailed statistics, audience builders that let you discover which videos are driving the most views and subscriptions and audience retention, basically the ability to see “how far viewers are watching through your video”.

You can filter reports by a number of criteria, see line charts, download reports and analyze key metrics in different ways. The new tools should help anyone, especially YouTube’s content partners that share ad revenue with Google, make the most of their videos. The new Analytics feature will be released to everyone on a modern browser over the course of the day, Google said. More information is available in a support document here.

Get brand new YouTube Design

Do you want the brand new YouTube Design? - Here we go!

YouTube redesign with Google+ integration, overhauled UI, and social focus rolling out

If you want the new YouTube layout before it's rolled out officially you just have to follow this 4 simple steps:

1. Go to http://www.youtube.com
2. Press Ctrl + Shift and J in Chrome to open the Developer Tools
Press Ctrl+Shift+K in Firefox
3. Click on the "Console" Tab and enter
document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=ST1Ti53r4fU";
4. Reload the website and enjoy the new layout. 


There have been rumors that Google is testing a new redesign for YouTube. While we’re not sure if it’s rolling out to everyone today, we’re starting to get reports from Canada and elsewhere that the redesign is live. As you can see from the screenshots above and below, these are some quite significant changes including a new customized homepage that is essentially a news feed of trending content and your subscriptions and channels. A new sidebar on the left lets you manage and track all of your subscriptions, channels, and trending content, while Google+ integration lets you view and filter content recommended by people in your Circles.

You’ll also notice the new gray background, while the YouTube logo in the upper left now takes you to YouTube.com/guide.  In the image below you can see new resizing UI gives three buttons, one for your normal view,the second for an expanded widescreen view, and the third for full-screen. The rest of the site obviously gets a redesign in line with everything you see on the homepage. The screenshots below pretty much speak for themselves.

YouTube has also begun adding support for 1080p playback, native full-screen mode, annotations and captioning to the HTML5 video player  (via Electronista). More screenshots after the break showing the full redesign. 

Get to Know Your Google Music Keyboard Shortcuts

If you've taken a look at the official Google Music launch and think it may be your new music player of choice, you'll probably be spending a lot of time with it. Which means you'll want to get to know its shortcuts!

Like any good Google app, Google Music has plenty of 'em, and they're all accessible for your viewing pleasure at any time by pressing "?". The hits:

•     Space bar to play/pause
•     Right/left arrows for next/previous songs
•     Shift+ right/left arrows to seek forward and backward in the song (like fast forward/rewind
•     / to focus the search box
•     p to create a new playlist
•     i to make an instant mix from the current song

You get the idea. Like we said, you can peruse all the shortcuts at any time by pressing "?". And while you're learning the shortcuts, check out my Music Plus extension, which adds a popup controller, notifications, Last.fm scrobbling, and plenty more goodies to Google's new music player.

Google Roundup of the Week: Gmail Gets An Overhaul

Want to see what Google's been working on lately? Here's all their recent updates in one convenient post.

Here’s all of that in detail, plus a quick rundown of some minor updates.



Ever logged into Gmail, Google Docs, or any other Google product and thought, “Whoa, when did they add that new feature?” Google is constantly making updates to their products, but you’d never know without regularly digging through their many project blogs. So every week (or two) we like to find out what Google’s been working on, then condense it all into one convenient post. This week Gmail and Google Reader both got overhauled, Google+ took steps to integrate more tightly with YouTube and Chrome, and the new Chrome Beta showed up with a multi-user option.



Gmail’s New Look Goes Live, Adds Some New Tricks
In July, Google dropped several preview themes that showed off updates they were planning for the interface. Now the full redesign is available to all by clicking “Switch to the new look” in the bottom-right corner of Gmail. In addition to the visual switch toward the company’s new simple, white-space loving aesthetic, the redesign also comes with a few new options.

• If you find yourself balking at the inefficiency of Gmail’s new inbox, the first thing you need to try out are the density options under the gear menu. The Comfortable setting (like Chrome’s recently updated New Tab Page) seems suspiciously geared toward giving tablet users a bigger target to hit, while Compact squeezes the most items into view and Cozy falls somewhere in the middle. These views can dynamically shift based on the type of display you’re using, but if you choose Compact it will lock on that view no matter what.
• Email threads include the profile pictures of your contacts, making it look more like an IM conversation log.
• The left hand navigation area lets you resize its label and chat areas, so you could pull your chat list over the labels you don’t need all the time, or go in the other direction by hiding the chat area entirely.
• The Search box has added an incredibly handy advanced search drop-down panel that can also create filters—definitely a lot faster than navigating to a whole other advanced search page.
• The redesign includes a set of high resolution themes, including updated versions of old favorites.

Reader Redone
Google Reader also got a new clean-and-fast overhaul this week, along with the Google+ community features we mentioned last time. Users can now +1 an item to share it on Google+, either with or without a note included. Google’s posts concerning Reader acknowledge that some may not like the Google+ integration, although so far the visual redesign seems to be the more divisive issue. If either one is a dealbreaker for you, don’t forget that there’s a subscription export feature in case you want to move on to something else.


Google+ Adds a YouTube Slider, Handy Chrome Extensions
Google+ users may have noticed a new mouseover YouTube icon in their stream lately. It’s basically a quick way to launch a search-based playlist—not a killer feature, but it might be a nice method for playing some music while you browse. We especially like that you can navigate the list from the slider itself, even if you move the YouTube window away. Overall, though, we’d like to see more from this feature, like quick access to our personal YouTube playlists and subscriptions.


A pair of new Chrome plugins for Google+ also dropped this week, and shouldn’t be overlooked. Google+ Notifications lets you view and interact with your updates without navigating to Google+. If you’ve used the Google+ functionality in the black bar along the top of Gmail/Docs/etc, you know what to expect. The +1 Button extension resolves a common complaint by letting you +1 a page AND share it to Google+ AND comment on it, all right from a drop-down.


Chrome Beta Helps Multiple Users Share
Syncing has long been one of Chrome’s strong suits, but once you start relying on it you might have trouble sharing your computer with someone who has their own set of bookmarks and extensions. You could, of course, manage that problem with separate computer logins, but that might be a pain if you switch out frequently. The latest Chrome Beta has a quicker solution: multi-user support in the browser. From Options (or Preferences on a Mac), click Personal Stuff and “Add a new user.” A badge in the upper corner indicates which profile is being used, and clicking it shows a drop-down for switching between them.


Odds and Ends
Here’s a quick rundown of this week’s minor posts.

• Those Street View trikes have been adding new parks, including New York’s awesome High Line.
• Ads in Google search now include a “Why these ads” link (coming soon to Gmail) that shows information about why a particular ad showed up. The new Ads Preferences Manager will let you block advertisers and turn off personalized ads.
• Google Search has added a new feature for searching places. A panel to the right of the results displays extra information, including a Google Map of the location.
• Search has also been updated to better understand when a user wants more recent results.
• Google News settings are now included in Google Dashboard.
• Google Calendar has added a Suggested times option to help plan events with other people.
• Biking and walking directions can now be saved to custom maps and shared.
• Google eBooks has launched in Canada.
• Google Offers has a new Android app.

New Gmail redesign is live right now: activate in the bottom left

We think you’ll be quite happy with this redesign that was announced earlier this morning. To try it out simply activate it in the bottom left of Gmail.

Google to launch redesigned Gmail interface

Gmail’s new look arrives with streamlined conversations, elastic density, HD themes, and more

According to a report from Google Operating System, a video from Google’s YouTube channel (which has recently been made private) leaked a new Gmail interface that will more than likely be introduced publicly in the near future.


As you can see from the video above, they’ve redesigned the overall look of the UI (based on the new Preview theme) by using large icons opposed to text labels, a brand new conversation view with profile pictures, and a new flexible layout that maintains maximum usability when resizing browser windows.


A new customizable search bar adds the ability to easily select filters and advanced options for searching and even create new filters right from within the new search dialog. Display density settings including “Comfortable”, “Compact”, and “Cozy” will allow you to adjust the amount of content displayed in your inbox, and Label and Chat areas can now be resized. Many of the themes have been updated with new HD imagery as well.

Google is the world’s most attractive employer

Universum has released their global talent attraction index of the world’s most attractive employers in 2011, with Google topping the list for the engineering category, and for the third consecutive year taking the #1 spot among all businesses.

“The talent market for business career seekers is being dominated by the professional services firms, known for being great places to launch a career, and by companies that offer a new working culture in a dynamic environment. For the last 3 years we have been seeing Google leading the pack and it will take a strong player with a clear talent strategy to steal this number one spot”, says Lovisa Öhnell, head of Research and Consulting at Universum.

Other notable tech companies on the list include Apple at #9 among businesses and #7 among engineering, Microsoft at #3 for both businesses and engineering, Intel comes in a #5 for engineering (#38 for businesses), and IBM at #2 for engineering (#16 among businesses)
Universum’s global talent attraction index takes its data from student’s employer preferences in the top 12 economies (based on GDP) including Brazil, Canada,China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, Spain, U.K., and U.S. Check out the full list of 50 here.

Google’s Blogger adds seven new Dynamic ways to build a blog

 

Blogger is starting to look like it could take on WordPress.

Built with the latest in web technology (AJAX, HTML5 and CSS3), Dynamic Views is a unique browsing experience that will inspire your readers to explore your blog in new ways. The interactive layouts make it easier for readers to enjoy and discover your posts, loading 40 percent faster than traditional templates and bringing older entries to the surface so they seem fresh again.

Infinite scrolling and a bunch of other fun stuff awaits.

Google Analytics now features real-time data

Google has announced on their blog this afternoon that Google Analytics now features real-time data. In the past, Analytics was a great tool for viewing site stats from the past 24 hours, days, weeks, months, etc., but now the ability to see who’s on your site at any given time is an awesome feature.
The stats are pretty detailed showing the top referrals, active pages, and how many people are on your site at any given moment. There is even a graph that lets you know when your site peeked in terms of visitors.

Many other analytic services have had this feature, so it’s nice to see Google finally catch up. The ability to see real-time stats lets you know what content is doing well. Real-time will be rolling out to everyone in the coming weeks.

Google+ now open to everyone get yours today

Google homepage now points to Google Plus, so you don’t quite miss it (literally)

No, we did not photoshop that arrow in. In an effort to push Google Plus, which just went intopublic beta today, Google is now literally pointing to the Plus link with an arrow. Also, below the search box you will find a link to signup. With Google’s 1,100,000,000 pageviews a day (according to Website Outlook, so we’re not sure how accurate that really is) they’re bound to bring in some traffic. What are you waiting for; sign up!

Google rolled out nine new features pertained to its social thing dubbed Google+. Per the officialblog post by Google’s head of engineering Vic Gundotra, the service is no longer in limited beta. Beginning today, everyone can join the party at google.com/+ – no invitation required. Yes, Facebook’s worst nightmare comes true just three months following the service’s introduction.


Next up, Google’s search expertise comes to Google+. The big search box now returns relevant people, posts and web content. The popular Hangout feature has gotten lots of enhancements. For example, developers can now take advantage of the new Google+ Hangouts APIs to write more integrated, immersive apps. Google-created Hangout extras (still rough around the edges) include screensharing, sketchpad, Google Docs integration and named hangouts. Give it a try by clicking the “Try Hangouts with extras” link in the green room.


Even more interesting, it is now possible to broadcast a hangout for the world wide web to see. They call it Hangouts on Air and even though you can broadcast and record your session, there’s still that nagging nine-per-hangout limit. Of course, an unlimited number of people can be spectators of your live broadcast.


Another cool addition: You can join a hangout from your mobile phone, by finding an active hangout in the Stream of the Google+ app and tapping “Join”. This works on Android 2.3+ phones with front-facing cameras, but Google said iOS support is “coming soon”. The aforementioned features will be rolling out globally over the next day (not days, per usual), Google said.


Google released the Hangout API for developers as well.


Last,  but not the least, Dave Girouard, a Google Apps guy, announced on Twitter that Google+ is coming to business and education customers soon, indicating that Google+ will be rolled out to Google Apps users. “New stuff on G+ today that biz/edu will love! Working hard to bring G+ to Google Apps in the very near future!”, his tweet reads. In our opinion, this could be a game-changer in the social media landscape, probably putting Facebook on the defensive – especially when Google begins selling and promoting Google+ apps on the Apps Marketplace.

YouTube releases new editing features for users, simple but useful

YouTube has released a simple editor available on the web for users who want to make changes, before actually uploading a video.

The editor isn’t anything ground breaking, but adds the ability to add small changes like stabilizing, color changes, and rotation. The new editing features also work on videos that have already been uploaded. If you don’t like changes you can revert back to the original, or upload the changes as a totally new video. We’re sure Google will add more editing features over time, but in the mean time give it a try!

Google’s new sign-in page try it today

We already showed you how to give Google’s new search UI a try, but yesterday The Next Web discovered that you can also give Google’s new sign-in page a try. The new sign-in page goes along with the rest of Google’s general new design we’ve been seeing spring up across products, ever since the launch of Google Plus. Enabling the new design is much easier than what we showed you yesterday.


You could just go and click the option to preview the new sign-in page, but here’s the link to make things easy. While there isn’t much of a change, we do like the new colors and general spacing.

Browse Google+ on the desktop with Tab for Google+

Tab for Google+ is an app available on the Mac App Store that brings Google+’s web functionality to the Mac desktop. The app is available for free and offers just about every feature plus.google.com offers — except Hangouts. Upon logging in via your Google account, you’ll be greeted with the main sections of the app: Streams, Photos, Circles, Profile and Notifications.
Want to get your Game on in the new Google Games?


The sections follow suit with the functionality of the website. Streams and Photos curates content from the people you’re following. Circles allows you to see your list of circles and the content coming in from each specific one. Lastly, Notifications let’s you know what’s going on with your account.


Of course, this application won’t replace Google+’s website, rather it’s just a nice app that sits in your applications bar to view while you work. Perhaps if the website is more your thing, check out Google+ for Mac which is essentially just a browser window. We’re hearing the developer is working to make it native though. Check out another screenshot after the break:


Download Tab for Google+ – Download Google+ for Mac