So… now the only reason I have to go to Facebook is to play Cityville right? (at least until Zynga gets it up and running with Google).
Google+Facebook allows you to see your Facebook stream inside Google+. Simply Connect to Facebook, and get all the updates on your Google+ Facebook tab.
Check the screenshot for an example:
Only works in Chrome or FireFox, get Google+Facebook here.
As news of Google+ began unleashing on the web Google also started pushing out redesigns of a few of the flagship applications to bring them in line with the styling of Google+. The redesigned applications are, at least for the moment, “just cosmetic.” Google hasn’t added any new features to Calendar or GMail, but instead has made it look more like Google+.
You’ve probably never heard of Google’s Data Liberation Front, but they are an engineering team at Google whose ONLY goal is to make it easier for users to move their data in and out of Google products. We live in a web of services that want to control all of our information and NOT let it out *cough* Facebook not letting us export contacts *cough*.
So they have a funk and fun team name, but in the end this is just another Google service. It lets you easily take your data out of several Google products. So far it supports Buzz, Contacts and Circles, Picasa Web Albums, Profile and Stream. They promise support for more services and products later on; I certainly hope they get on Google Voice soon.
Watch you back Skype/Microsoft, Google is gunning for you. Alongside their social initiatives, Google is now implementing its open-source audio and video chat software into the Chrome browser, enabling users to chat in real-time without having to load up a secondary client like Skype.
Google has started to build its open-source WebRTC software into Chrome. WebRTC was introduced in May as a new open tech that allows developers to create quick HTML and Javascript APIs for building voice and video chat applications on the web. With WebRTC built into Chrome, users will be able to start video chats over Google Talk without the need for installing Google’s plug-in first. Oh and they’ve introduced this as royalty-free and are promising to work with other browsers developers(probably Mozilla and Opera initially, but then IE and Safari at some point too) to flesh out the project. This means that anyone building a site can make use of the new tech, and in theory, construct their own personal Skype battering ram. I bet someone is at MS is questioning if they should have spent that massive amount of money for Skype (then again, maybe they knew this was coming and they HAD to in order to compete?!).
The WebRTC (a la Google Talk via the browser) will certainly help the ChromeOS initiative, it’s one more piece of the “web as the OS” strategy coming into place. I also have to imagine that this will play VERY well in with Google’s new social initiative: Google+.
If you’re curious about Google+, the new social initiative by the worlds largest search giant then check out Wired’s Inside Google+: how the search giant plans to go social. In a sea of tweets and posts this is the most comprehensive review of what Google is providing, as well as what they’re hoping to accomplish: another shift in how we use the Internet.