Twitter's New Feature: Promoted Tweets

Twitter announced through Twitter Blog a new feature called Promoted Tweets which show up at the top of users' feeds designed to generate revenue for Twitter and could alienate users.

  From the Twitter blog:

We all come to Twitter to connect with the latest information on the topics and people we care about. So when we decide to follow a favorite brand, business or charitable organization, we expect to be among the first to get a special announcement, access to exclusive content or a great offer.

That's why starting today, we're introducing a way to ensure that the most important Tweets from the organizations you follow reach you directly, by placing them at or near the top of your timeline. These Promoted Tweets will scroll through the timeline like any other Tweet, and like regular Tweets, they will appear in your timeline just once. Promoted Tweets can also be easily dismissed from your timeline with a single click.

Twitter is testing out the feature with a "select group of partners" including Best Western, Dell, Gatorade, Groupon, HBO, JetBlue, LivingSocial, Microsoft Xbox, Red Bull, Sephora, Starbucks, Summit Entertainment’s “50/50”, TNT and Virgin America among others — with more to come soon.

The risk is that this strategy will irk users by filling their Twitter feeds with ads and Twitter is likely trying to mitigate a potential backlash by enabling a feature that allows users to get rid of the Promoted Tweets  from the timeline with a single click.

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8 Tips On How To Protect Yourself Online

Using the internet can be fun and worry free as long as you do it safely and smartly. Follow these 8 Tips On How To Protect Yourself Online to avoid problems:

1. Shop safely. Many online stores uses secure technology for online purchases. Make sure to read and understand the online store's privacy and security policies before shopping. When you are at the checkout screen, verify that the Web address begins with https. Also, check to see if a tiny locked padlock symbol appears at the bottom right of the checkout screen or that there is a statement on the checkout screen stating that the checkout pages are secure with a security technology vendor. Check that the security technology does exist by checking the security technology company's Web site.
2. Watch out for phishing scams. Phishing scams use fraudulent e-mails and fake Web sites, masquerading as legitimate businesses, to lure unsuspecting users into revealing private account or login information. To be safe, if you receive an e-mail from a business that includes a link to a Web site, make certain that the Web site you visit is legitimate. Instead of clicking through to the Web site from within the e-mail, open a separate Web browser and visit the business' Web site directly to perform the necessary actions. You can also verify that an e-mail is in fact from a legitimate business by calling the business or agency directly.
3. Use e-mail wisely. E-mail is a great way to keep in touch with friends and family and as a tool to conduct business. Even if you have good security software on your PC, your friends and family might not have the same protection. Be careful about what information you submit via e-mail. Never send your credit-card information, Social Security number, or other private information via e-mail.
4. Install a trusted internet security software. Look for a comprehensive PC security software that protects you from viruses, spyware, adware, hackers, phishing scams, and identity theft. Choose a brand that you can trust,
   
   
5. Create smart and strong passwords. Make it difficult for hackers to crack your password. You can create a smart password by incorporating capital letters, numbers and special characters, and using more than six characters. An example of a strong password is: F33ling*luckY?
6. Pay attention to your children's online activities. Keep your home computer in a conspicuous area so that you can monitor their activity. Use child software that is age-appropriate. Limit your children's time spent online. Install and use parental controls software that allows you to monitor your children's activity online. This will keep your children from accessing undesirable Web sites and sharing personal information via online communications.
7. Fun and carefree online gaming. Internet games are fun for the whole family. Make sure you are careful when playing online games, especially when communicating with other players. Be sure that your security software still functions when you are in gaming mode.
8. Be smart when using instant messaging (IM) programs. If you use an IM program to communicate with friends and family, be careful about sending any personal information through online communications. Protect yourself by using a nickname for your IM screen name, so your name isn't identified through IM. Never accept strangers into your IM groups. Be smart about how you use IM at work because your employer has the right to monitor and view your messages.

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Get the Nexus S 4G for free (and nearly free)!

Best Buy promises all the Google phone you can handle for free as long as you sign on for a two-year contract, while Amazon lists the handset for $.01 (still on-contract). 

The phone originally launched with Sprint in May for $200 with a two year agreement, and then got cut to $99 when AT&T picked up the Nexus S 4G a couple weeks ago and listed it for a Benjamin at Best Buy. Obviously the deals at Amazon and Best Buy beat both carriers’ prices, but you’ll have to be a Sprint fan to take advantage of it.

So if you aren’t already salivating over a soon-to-be-launched phone, the Nexus S 4G is definitely worth your  consideration. Specs include NFC support, a 1GHz processor, Android 2.3 Gingerbread, a 4-inch Super AMOLED display and a 5-megapixel camera. 

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Malacañang Announces 4-day Long Weekend In August

You still have a month ahead to plan for an out of town trip or a nature trip or perhaps do shopping in Hongkong as the Palace declared a four-day long weekend towards the end of August.

Deputy Presidential Spokesperson Abigail Valte said August 29 (Monday); and August 30 (Tuesday) have been declared non-working holidays.

August 29 marks National Heroes’ Day while August 30 is the end of Ramadan.

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Google Maps 5.8 for Android Released!

Google has released Google Maps 5.8 for Android based  devices that promises improved Google Places and Google Latitude with the following features:

• Upload photos for a Place
• My Places as a simple way to manage the Places you’ve starred and recently viewed
• Descriptive terms for Places in search results
• Add a new Place on-the-go when checking in

Photo upload for a Place

When deciding on a place to go, people often want to know what a place looks like in addition to seeing ratings and reviews. You can now contribute photos to help others get a sense of places. You can now attach your photos to Places, and yours may even become the profile picture for that page. If you want to view or delete any photos you’ve contributed to Places, you can manage uploaded photos in the “Photos for Google Maps” album on your Picasa account.

Left: Uploading pictures to a place. Right: Photos in Android Gallery

My Places and descriptive terms for mobile

In June, Google announced descriptive terms and ‘My Places’ for the desktop. Both these features are now in Google Maps for mobile. Descriptive terms appear in search results for Places to inform you what businesses are ‘known for,’ such as their ‘eggs benedict’ or being ‘worth the wait.’

Also, My Places for mobile provides quick access to starred and recent Place pages you’ve looked at. You can access My Places by pressing your phone’s menu button while in Google Maps.

Descriptive terms and My Places in Google Maps for mobile

To start using Google Maps 5.8 for Android, download the update here. This update requires an Android OS 2.1+ device and can be used anywhere Google Maps is currently available. 

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Is Technology More Addicting Than Smoking Or Drinking?

A new British study released today backs up what we otherwise know intuitively, that Internet usage is increasingly becoming an addiction. Out of 1000 people surveyed after being cut off from the Internet for 24 hours, 53% reported feeling “upset” about being deprived of online access and 40% said that they felt lonely after not being able to connect to the Internet. Participants described the digital detox akin to quitting drinking or smoking and one even said it was like having his hand chopped off (!).

Participants were quizzed on their attitudes to the use of the internet, smart phones, and other devices, and were even asked to go 24 hours without any access to internet technology.

This British survey comes after a University of Maryland study in April that came to pretty much the same conclusion. 

Add this insight to the yet un-proven concerns that smartphone usage leads to Cancer and the smoking analogy becomes more and more apt. But for the moment Googling the name of a movie you can’t remember is hands down a lot healthier than smoking an actual cigarette, at least physically. For the moment.

With the internet technology reaching more and more people everyday, it's no wonder it will be much harder to quit than smoking or drinking. What do you think?

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Is Mozilla Developing An Android Competitor?

Open source powerhouse Mozilla have announced plans to create a truly open web-centric operating system to avoid the need for native apps all together that can be a competitor to Android.

Mozilla is best known for creating the Firefox web browser that re-ignited the browser wars in 2004 after Microsoft had essentially out-spent and monopolised the market. The rapid rate of progress we see with technologies on the web today is at least in part due to Mozilla pushing the boundaries and disrupting the status-quo. As well as Firefox for desktop and mobile based on the Gecko rendering engine, Mozilla also currently produces the Thunderbird amongst other smaller projects.

The Mozilla team have noticed that whilst HTML5 apps are improving all the time, they do not have access to some of the APIs of smartphones and tablets that native apps enjoy. Apple’s iOS is notoriously closed with app developers having their apps kicked from the App Store for using undocumented APIs, but even the supposedly open Android OS is not truly open – users cannot currently download the source of the latest Honeycomb build for example. These closed bundles give huge corporations such as Apple and Google control over much of how people use their smart devices – and Mozilla plans to disrupt the market with Boot To Gecko (BTG).

HTML5 apps currently need to run within a web browser, and so have no access to the APIs of the phone stack for telephony, SMS, and other mobile phone technologies. For the seamless integration that users prefer, the HTML5 apps need access to the phone’s base technology APIs, and that is something that BTG is proposed to offer. BTG will make use of many of the technologies developed for Android but will add a more open web-centric wrapper to give web apps the same access that native apps currently offer.

BTG is currently mostly theoretical, with Mozilla publicising the project to encourage the relevant experts within the Mozilla community and elsewhere to get in touch and sign on. They have already developed some of the building blocks needed, but this project is still a good way off from public consumption right now. Nevertheless, pushing Google to be more open and web-centric, something they have always claimed to be, will also be a significant bonus for Android users worldwide.

Could this be the beginning of the war between Mozilla and Google?

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[WARNING] Facebook Scam: Oslo Bombing Video

I cant' believe that after recent attacks in Norway, scammers are taking advantage of the said incident by immediately spreading a link, through a Facebook worm, to thousands of people's walls on Facebook that's suppose to show a video of the Oslo blast from a security camera.

The infection is spreading about one user per second at the moment.

The message reads: "[URL] [Video] OSLO Security Camera Captures Blast! [Video] OSLO Security Camera Captures Blast!".

According to security firm Sophos, clicking on the link redirects victims off-site that mimics Facebook with a fake YouTube video player. They're asked to take a survey, and then presented with an IQ test. After that, they're asked to enter a mobile phone number that will charge the victim $2 per trivia question, four times per week. 

Fake Facebook site with a face YouTube cideo player

So as what my Featured Video says: THINK BEFORE YOU CLICK!

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Google Cancels Google Toolbar For Firefox

This may come as a surprise, Google has cancelled Google Toolbar for the current and future versions of Firefox, and Mozilla is scrambling to help users who might be left in the lurch and postponing their browser upgrades.

The toolbar offers a variety of services, including a search box, a way to use bookmarks stored on a server, and a measurement of a Web site's PageRank--a score Google gives that measures its influence in Google search results. But Google has chosen to do in the Firefox version.

"As we all know, over the past few years, there has been a tremendous amount of innovation in the browser space. For Firefox users, many features that were once offered by Google Toolbar for Firefox are now already built right into the browser. Therefore, while Google Toolbar for Firefox works on versions up to and including Firefox 4 only, it will not be supported on Firefox 5 and future versions," Google said this week on a help page.

Mozilla is looking into options for what to do next, setting up a meeting to address the matter.

In case that you already upgraded to Firefox 5 and wanted to make Google Toolbar work with this version, Mozilla released instructions on how to resolve non-working add-ons after Firefox updates.

If after trying the above steps and Google Toolbar will still not work and you're desperate to use it on Firefox, then there's no other option but to downgrade to Firefox 3.6 which is the last previous version still being maintained by Mozilla.

Firefox 5 has the following features built-in so you may no longer need to have Google Toolbar installed:

• Suggest is in the Firefox Awesome Bar
• Autofilll is in the browser
• Custom searches from the Awesome Bar
• Spell-checker
• Bookmark sync
• Search box

Those desperate for the toolbar--search-engine optimization experts are one group that particularly values the PageRank score--can use a version for Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Although we would n't know yet whether Google also plans to discontinue the IE version.

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Google+ Hits 20 Million Users

The number of people on Google+ has passed 20 million according to ComScore, further validating Google's biggest attempt at social networking yet.

ComScore bases its estimate on a global measurement panel of 2 million users. Google hasn't confirmed the numbers, but last week, Google CEO Larry Page said the service had more than 10 million users sharing 1 billion items per day.

Business and Brand Pages

To the dismay of brands and businesses who want to reach the quickly-growing Google+ audience, Google is restricting its social network to personal use and banning accounts that appear to be tied to a business.

Google promises to have a system for all businesses and brands in the coming months. "The platform at the moment is not built for the business use case, and we want to help you build long-term relationships with your customers," Google Group Product Manager Christian Oestlien wrote. "Doing it right is worth the wait."

Games

It's kind of an open secret that Google+ will become a place to play social games, with hints found in the service's source code and help pages.

How exactly Google+ will attack the Facebook gaming juggernaut is unclear, but Google has reportedly pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into Farmville maker Zynga, and is rumored to be creating a separate "games" stream in Google+ so your friends won't have to hear about the status of your farm unless they want to.

Integration With Other Services

Over time, Google is expected to hook its existing services into the social backbone of Google+, allowing users to share Google Docs documents, YouTube videos, and more with the circles they've created on the social network. For now, integration is limited to the notification boxes that appear atop Gmail, Maps, and other services, but over time expect Google+ tie-ins to grow deeper.

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Blogging Made Easy Using Windows Live Writer 2011

Windows Live Writer makes it easy for anyone to tell stories like a professional blogger. You can create beautiful blog posts, and see what they'll look like online before you publish them to your blog. Plus, you can publish your posts to any of your favorite blog service providers.

Set up your blog

You can easily set up multiple blogs in Windows Live Writer in just a few steps. Writer works with many popular blog service providers such as WordPress, Blogger, and TypePad.

Create a new blog and add it to Writer

If you don't already have a blog, click Add blog account, and then click Create a new blog. Next, follow a few steps to go to the WordPress website and create your blog. After you create your blog, click the Set up in Writer button on the website. This will automatically set up Writer for you.

Add a blog that you already have

If you already have a blog account, click Add blog account, and then follow the steps to set up your blog in Writer.

Add photos

Click Picture, and then click to add a single picture from your computer or the web, or a thumbnail preview of photos from an album on Windows Live SkyDrive. After you choose the pictures that you want to add, they'll appear in your post.

Add videos

Open a web browser and find a link to a video that you want to display from a popular video service such as YouTube, Dailymotion, and Metacafe. Just copy and paste the link in the post, and a video preview will appear automatically. If you want to add videos from your computer, just click on Video and select From your computer.

I enjoyed a lot using Windows Live Writer as it makes updating my blog simpler and easier. Hope you’ll find this tool helpful too.
Download Windows Live Writer here

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Payatas Tragedy 11 Years After

On July 10, 2000, more than 300 people died when a mountain of garbage collapsed burying hundreds of home in Payatas, Quezon City. Eleven years has passed but no one has been made responsible and punished for what happened until now.

Relatives of the victims of the Payatas tragedy and various groups lighted on Sunday 11 candles and offered flowers to commemorate the tragedy that claimed the lives of their loved ones. They offered flowers and lighted candles in “Dambana,” the local marker that reminds the residents of Payatas of the tragic event 11 years ago.

The Payatas Tragedy should continue to serve as a warning that dump sites if not properly maintained and managed will result to catastrophic incidents. Hopefully, we Filipinos have learned from it.

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Philippine Volcanoes' Billboard Taken Down

The gigantic Bench Body billboards along EDSA near the Guadalupe bridge featuring the Philippine rugby team Philippine Volcanoes wearing nothing but underwear have been taken down by their advertisers. This is in response to the "request" of Mandaluyong City Mayor Benhur Abalos after receiving several complaints from people who found the ads "inappropriate and offensive" including fellow Mayor Sherwin Gatchalian of Valenzuela City.

The Valenzuela City mayor said he had to ask his niece to cover her eyes while they were driving along the section of EDSA in Guadalupe.

Some members of the Philippine Volcanoes expressed their sentiments via Twitter. "Heard bout the billboards being taken down! but thank you all for still supporting the @PhilippineRugby," said Ned Stephenson.Another Volcanoes member Arnold Aninion, also on his Twitter account, admitted being "surprised" by the advertiser's decision to heed Abalos' request. "But greatful for the support and work Bench did to spread awareness of rugby and for us volcanoes," he added.Actor-model Andrew Wolff, who has been playing for the Volcanoes since 2007, also expressed his side on the issue, saying the government seemed to be having double standards in regulating billboards. "The Mayor of Mandaluyong is having the Bench Volcanoes billboards removed.Dati ba wala bang nakalagay na billboard na my nakabrief?," he said on Twitter.Wolff went further and took a pot shot at Abalos. "Puwede bang patanggal din ang sangkatutak na mga billboard ni Mr A. sa Manda.? Kailangan bang makita ka sa bawat kanto?," the actor-model said.The Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) said that aside from size requirements, it would now also take images placed in billboards into consideration when deciding whether or not to order their dismantling."The state has the right to protect the morals of the community and the society. And the local government can do the same," said MMDA chairman Francis Tolentino said in a State of the Nation report Friday night that was aired on GMA News TV. 

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Step By Step Guide In Setting Up Facebook Video Chat

We now all know that Facebook, albeit hastily, launched its video chat feature known as Facebook Video Calling powered by Skypeaiming to spice up the appeal to its 750 million users in an effort to fend off increased competition from Google's Google Plus project.
 
By incorporating the free video chat directly into its service, which is for now limited to one-to-one video chat, Facebook will give its members another reason to use the site more often  and for longer periods of time.
But how easy it is to start Facebook Video Calling? No need to worry, here's the step by step guide in setting up Facebook Video Calling.

Step By Step Guide In Setting Up Facebook Video Chat

After Facebook login open the Video Calling page on Facebook by opening www.facebook.com/videocalling . Then click on the green Get Started button to activate video calling feature.

You can then start the video chat directly from  your online friend's profile by clicking on the Call button located on the upper right hand side of the screen.

Once the chat window is open you can click on the camera icon present on the title bar to the left to initiate a video call.



Since this is the first time that you'll be using Facebook Video Calling feature, you will be provided with a wizard that will guide you through the steps of this one-time setup. Click on the Set Up button to proceed.



This will prompt you to download a small setup file on your computer. Click on Save File and save it to your computer. You can also download this file directly from here.



Once file is downloaded, double click that downloaded file and click on Run to start the installation.



Facebook Video Calling plugin will start installing by itself. After the install, the video call is made automatically. Your friend will then be prompted to install the same plugin, assuming that it's his/her first time also using this feature, and after he/she finishes installing the plugin, the call gets connected.





Please note: Either or both of you and your friend should have webcam connected for Facebook Video Calling. If Facebook Video Calling does not detect webcam connection between the two of you, then video calling will not start and may get an error.

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Saudi Arabia's Saudization Policy: DOLE lists prospective jobs for Saudization

After Saudi Arabia Bans Filipino Maids, the kingdom is now said to be intensifying its Saudization national policy that encourage employment of Saudi nationals in the private sector which was largely dominated by expatriate workers that include Filipinos. This is an alarming news as Filipinos make up the fourth-largest group of foreigners in Saudi Arabia and are the second-largest source of remittances to the Philippines. I have friends and relatives who are currently working in Saudi Arabia who are worried because their contracts are near expiration but have not been renewed yet.

Meanwhile, the Philippine's Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) has listed 30 prospective jobs for overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) who may be affected by Saudi Arabia's intensified Saudization labor policy.


A news release posted on the DOLE website said the prospective jobs were classified into the unskilled, low-skilled and semi-skilled categories:

• Unskilled workers (9): laborer, domestic helpers, messenger, construction laborer, janitor/janitress, kitchen crew, housemaid, maintenance crew, domestic cleaner;
• Low skilled (11): field interviewer, food server/attendants, salesman/saleslady, security guards, waiter/waitress, merchandiser, sales clerk, service crew, cook (general), housekeeping attendant, baby sitter;
• Semi-skilled (10): accounting staff, accounting clerk, administrative assistants, call center agents, data encoder, cashier, customer service assistant, storekeeper, receptionist, office clerk.

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Facebook Launches Skype-Powered Video Calling

Facebook has just announced a major new feature that it’s launching in tandem with Skype: video calling.

It’s a feature that’s been rumored for quite a while, and it’s one that Facebook is putting a lot of weight behind. Now, whenever you browse to a friend’s profile, you’ll see a new button nestled between the ‘Message’ and ‘Poke’ buttons that says ‘Call’. Click that, the other user will see a popup asking if they want to accept a call, and you’ll be immediately connected (you’ll need to install a small plugin the first time you use the service).

You’ll also see video calling integrated into Facebook’s Chat product. Really, you can’t miss it — Facebook is launching a new chat sidebar today that by default it takes the entire right side of the screen, and the first time you click on any user you’ll see a prompt asking if you’d like to make your first video call. If you try to initiate a video call and the other user doesn’t respond, you’ll be prompted to send them a video message.

So why is this a big deal? Facebook emphasized the fact that users will not have to create new Skype accounts to make calls, and that this will allow users to call their friends and family with a very minimal amount of setup (the flow for installing the applet only took a few seconds).

Of course, this comes just a week after the launch of Google+, which includes a video chat  feature called ‘Hangouts’. Facebook’s video chat doesn’t support group chats yet, but when asked if Facebook will be rolling out group video calling, Zuckerberg said not to rule anything out. He added that one-to-one calling makes up the vast majority of video calling.

Facebook engineer Philip Su has just published some notes on how the team built the feature.

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Saudi Arabia Bans Filipino Domestic Workers

Starting July 1, 2011 Saudi Arabia stopped hiring domestic workers from the Philippines and Indonesia. This announcement was a formalization of the March 12 note sent out by the Saudi Embassy in Manila asking for the temporary suspension of the processing, verification and authentication of employment contracts of household service workers according toPhilippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) Chief Carlos Cao Jr.


The Saudi Ministry of Labor said it would stop issuing work visas to bring domestic workers from Indonesia and the Philippines due to the terms of recruitment announced by the two countries.


Prior to this, Indonesia already announced on June 22, 2011 that it would stop sending domestic workers to Saudi Arabia until Riyadh signs a deal on migrant worker protection. The moratorium followed the execution days earlier of an Indonesian maid convicted of murdering her Saudi employer's wife.


The Philippine government on the other hand is demanding a $400 monthly salary for household service workers as opposed to the $200 monthly salary the Saudis want to pay.


This ban in my opinion should be seen as beneficial because it is better if we do not deploy household service workers to Saudi in the meantime so that they would also avoid the possibility of being abused as has been reported before. The Philippine government though should work hard to find jobs for those would be household service workers bound for Saudi Arabia.


At present, there are more than 100,000 Filipino domestics working in Saudi Arabia on two-year contracts that would also be affected as they would no longer be rehired. Let's just hope for the best for the families of these Filipino workers abroad.

You may contact POEA at their hotlines: 722.11.44  /  722.11.55

or visit their website http://www.poea.gov.ph

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Avast Free Antivirus 6

I switched from AVG Free to Avast Free Antivirus about three years ago and never regretted it. I personally find Avast Free Antivirus easy to download, install and maintain. So far, it's doing a really nice job in keeping my computer free from virus and spyware attacks. It only consumes around 2.9mb of memory from system resources so it doesn't slow down the computer even if I'm running lots of applications including games.

For users new to Avast, the sleek user interface is a change that came at the end of 2009. The gray-and-orange color scheme stands out well on the screen, and the tab-based navigation on the left makes it easy to navigate between features. Highlighted with the familiar security colors of green for safe and red for dangerous, the Summary tab gives up-to-date info on shield status, auto-updates, virus definitions, the program version, and whether the silent/gaming mode is on.

Avast Free Antivirus 6 had a minimal impact on start-up time, slowing down the boot cycle by around five and a half seconds and on system shutdown by around 1.3 seconds slower than an unprotected computer.

When it comes to your security, Avast Free Antivirus 6 gets a lot right. It's got a usable, uncluttered interface, solid although not stellar benchmarks, and a set of features that keeps it at the forefront of Windows security. Using the Internet safely is no longer just about not getting phished and downloading only known-safe files, and the improvements in Avast 6 address modern security risks comprehensively.

Download Avast Free Antivirus here!

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A Quick Look At Google+: Will It Replace Facebook?

The Google+ Project

Facebook now has a challenger in the social networking world, introducing Google +. With Google+, the behemoth of Web search may have finally figured out social networking. Demand for Google+ invites is reportedly through the roof, and critics are generally pleased with how the service works.

Google+ will be built as a layer that not only integrates different Google social services, such as Google Profiles andGoogle Buzz, but also introduces many new features including Circles, Hangouts, Sparks and Huddles. Google+ will also be available as a Desktop application and as an application on Android and iOS. It has been said that this is Google's biggest attempt to rival the social network Facebook.

But do we really need another social network? Can Google+ offer a service that Facebook does not? While you wait for the chance to see for yourself, take a look at the following features of Google+:

• "Circles" enables users to organize contacts into groups for sharing, across multiple of its products and services. A drag-and-drop interface allows users into groups of their choice.

• "Huddle" is a feature available to Android, iPhone, and SMS devices for communicating with circles.

• "Hangouts" are places used to facilitate group video chat(with a maximum of 10 people partcipating in a single Hangout at any point of time). However, anyone on the web could potentially join-in into the 'Hangout' if they happen to possess the unique url of the Hangout.

• "Instant Upload" is specific to Android mobile devices; it stores photos or video in a private album for sharing later.

• "Sparks" is a front-end to Google Search, enabling user to identify topics they might be interested in sharing with others; "featured interests" sparks are also available, based on topics others globally are finding interesting.

• Through "Streams", users see updates from those in their circles, updates similar to Facebook's news feed. The input box allows users to enter a status update or use icons to upload and share photo and videos.

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