We recently started offering this Google Everything program to get people set up with all that Google has to offer, and I have to say it’s one of my favorite things to do as far as this type of work.
They’re coming out with so much useful stuff lately and it’s all tying together so seamlessly.
Two things I want to touch on real quick, and that’s social and real-time search. They’re somewhat interwoven and connected, so let me see if I can explain this – for my example, I’m using a search for basketball star “LeBron James”.
1) REAL TIME SEARCH
This launched in the past six months.
What real-time search will give you is not just the basics you’d expect like LeBron’s NBA profile page, etc – you also get the latest things that people are saying and posting right now – Google is set to scan the social networks like Twitter to find these results.
You can adjust for the time period, etc. I’ve highlighted the pertinent section, which you can see better if you click the graphic below.
You can try this yourself at Google – it’s a huge development for search and social networks, and quite valuable.
2) SOCIAL SEARCH
Google Social Search literally just went live in the past couple weeks, and it’s a big, big, big deal.
As long as you’re logged into your Google account, these results show up on Page 1, and if you go back to the first graphic, you’ll see there’s also a tab for “Social” in the sidebar above the real-time search results.
What Social Search allows one to do is tie their Google account to their various social networks. Now when I do my LeBron search, I’m also seeing what my personal network (and their network) is saying about him, right there in my normal search results. (Click the pic to see it bigger.)
Call it something like “six degrees of search separation”.
What does all this mean for you or your business? Well, you can be hitting Google Page 1 pretty easily with your links and marketing efforts…if you’re connected to enough people via social networks.
The whole point of social networking is sharing and trusting the opinions of those you know, and the people that know them – this is the way things are heading…and yes, I apologize it’s happening so fast.
This week in the email newsletter I’m going to talk a little about something else new that Google is up to. You know the drill – sign up in the proverbial sidebar, no spam, etc, et al, and some more etc.
A lot of people are complaining this week about what’s missing from the iPad, and how it’s not everything it was supposed to be.
(Before its release, many people referred to it as “the Jesus Tablet”.)
I think what people are missing is that the iPad itself is just a platform.
It’s the applications that will make it the all-knowing savior from the technology gods.
Look at it this way – the iPhone in and of itself isn’t much more than a really slick touchscreen phone/iPod with internet access.
Add in all the applications (140,000+) and you’re got a device that can quite literally do almost anything.
The iPad is the same thing, and the bigger screen means the apps will be that much more powerful and useful.
Mark Cuban wrote about this much better than me, so I will stop here.
I do wish it had a webcam – it seems like a glaring omission, and as a communication device it’s definitely lacking in that area. (I don’t particularly like video calls, but I do need them at times.)
This is only the first version though, and frankly the 3G networks (especially AT&T) may not be able to handle a high volume of video calls yet.
Anyway, in this week’s newsletter I’m going to talk a bit about how small businesses could come up with some useful apps for this thing – you can sign up in the sidebar – thanks!
It seems like I spend a lot of time sending links and explanations of the latest stuff around quite a bit to clients, non-clients, old clients, and random people I don’t know.
Being that the entire world seems to change every single week – the Apple Tablet is supposed to be unveiled this week, by the way – I thought it would be a good idea to consolidate these in a regular missive sent via email.
It’ll be weekly or bi-weekly, depending on what’s going on. What you can expect is some quick links and a quicker explanation for why the linked thing is something you should check out.
If you’re one of our clients, you know my goal is to get you or your business to a point where you don’t need me for anything other than an occasional check-up, so hopefully this is another way I can get you to that point.
It’s easy to sign up – just click below and you’ll get connected via your Google account. If at any time you decide you don’t want to receive them anymore, the unsubscribe will be just as easy.
For lack of a better name, I’m calling it EMNLB, for “Email Newsletter Begins”. The first of these comes out in the next few days – thanks!
You may have caught the news about the release of the Google-branded phone, the Nexus One.
It’s basically meant to be a rival to the iPhone and is sold only through Google itself. While it runs best on T-Mobile’s 3G network, it’s sold “unlocked” meaning it will work for anyone.
The phone runs on Google’s mobile operating system called Android, and naturally comes loaded with all the great (and free) applications that Google offers:
Google Mail aka Gmail
Google Documents
Google Voice
Google Calendar
Google Reader
Google Maps
Google Checkout
Google Marketplace
Google Friend Connect
That’s a lot of useful stuff.
Of course, Google also has their own browser (Google Chrome) which they’re developing into a full operating system that should rival Windows at a much lower cost.
To complete the package, they own YouTube and a photo-hosting service called Picasa. (Why they haven’t changed that one to Google Photos, I don’t know. Being a bit OCD, it gnaws at me.)
And never forget Google is really just an advertising company. They give all this to us for free if we agree to get exposed to their ads.
I think I’m going to break down how I use all this stuff one-by-one, and see if I can uncover anything Google should be doing that they’re not yet – somehow I doubt it.
If you’re not familiar with “cloud storage”, the basic concept is that your files live on another server, as opposed to your own machine.
For example, just like your email is stored at “gmail.com”, if you use Google Documents, those docs live, breathe, and get edited off of Google’s server.
The source of inspiration for this movement is the mobile age – now that things like the iPhone can do so much, it’s to your advantage to be able to access your documents and such from anywhere, just like with your email.
I’ve been really getting into it with my personal writing, and also a lot of business stuff, as well. It’s nice because I can write on my home computer at one time, then on my netbook if I’m not at home, all without having to carry a USB, tranferring files around, keeping track of which is the most current, etc.
Plus, if I’m with someone I want to show something to, I can do it immediately, so long as there’s a net connection – I don’t have to be like, “oh let me email it to you later.”
With all of those positives, my one concern has always been, “What if someone blows up Google’s server farm?”
Then I see this headline the other day:
T-Mobile: All Your Sidekick Data Has Been Lost Forever
So that…stinks for anyone using a Sidekick from T-Mobile.
There’s also the concern of hackers, etc – what if someone gets into my Google account and just deletes all my docs? I’ve been hacked before – it’s not unthinkable it will happen again one day.
I guess the solution is to do a good offline back-up of everything, just in case. This is definitely going to be an emerging issue, because everything is moving to the cloud.
(btw here’s a good link for how to back-up Google Docs, if you do indeed use it. I do it once a week.)
I kinda just want to document that I thought of this before it starts happening in the real world.
Multi-platform devices.
Streaming media and content.
Costs of technology dropping in relation to advancement.
Wouldn’t it totally make sense for the cable companies to embed the internet connection, cable de-scrambler, and DVR into a 50″ HDTV and make it part of your cable package?
Seems to me it would draw some people away from Direct TV.
(Comcast’s rumored flirtation with buying NBC/Universal brought this to mind.)
Google Social Search literally just went live in the past couple weeks, and it’s a big, big, big deal.
