Google fellow Amit Singhal has said that the search giant is “actively working” on bringing back Realtime Search, repurposing the tool to include data from Google+ and other social networks, Mashable reports.
Speaking during a search panel in Mountain View, California, Singhal admitted that “the value the product was providing was not enough,” indicating that the tool could be improved, despite it already indexing updates from Twitter, Facebook and other social services before it was removed from service.
Shortly after Google’s social network Google+ launched, the search giant announced it had disabled its Realtime Search service, noting that it “was exploring how to incorporate Google+ into this functionality”. It later emerged that Google’s deal with Twitter to display tweets in realtime search results had expired, leading to the temporary shutdown of Realtime Search.
Google and Twitter failed to reach an agreement and without tweets in the timeline, Google shuttered the service completely.
Google’s decision to bring back Realtime Search will see the company push ahead with Google+ integration but also to include other sources.
The panel also enquired as to why Google+ didn’t have its own search engine, to which Singhal replied “we’re working on it”.Image Credit
Instant Pages, a feature that enables almost instantaneous loading of certain web pages, has made its way to the stable version of Google Chrome.
The feature, introduced several weeks ago through Chrome’s beta channel, preloads some of the Google search results before you click them, making the loading process much faster than normal.
The new stable version of Chrome brings a couple of other features too, such as print preview (for Windows and Linux users only), as well as improvements to omnibox (Chrome’s combination of the search box and address bar), which now makes it easier to go back to pages you’ve visited before by typing a part of the page’s address and finding the matching page via a drop-down menu.
To see how Instant Pages work, check out the video below.
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A new report from mobile cloud platform providers Appcelerator and industry-leading analyst form IDC shows that new mobile platforms and cloud developments by Apple and Google are tempting developers to their services, redefining mobile app engagement, loyalty and cloud connectivity thanks to the new Google+ and iCloud services.
The survey, which polled 2,012 respondents, indicates that developers believe Google+ and iCloud will impact the growth and adoption of mobile the most, accounting for 25% and 22% of developer votes respectively. Developers also believe that Near-Field Communication will play an important part in driving mobile innovation, but with widespread adoption still a while off, it may have lost ground to services that have launched or are due to launch soon.
Scott Ellison, IDC VP Mobile & Consumer Connected Platforms adds insight:
Google and Apple are pushing mobile competition beyond OS platforms into the cloud and into social integration.
This means even broader battles with major players like Amazon and Facebook, creating new competitive complexities and opportunities going forward for everyone in the mobile ecosystem.
Of the two thousand respondents surveyed, 68% believe that Google’s suite of tools including Search, YouTube, Maps and its social network provide more opportunities that Facebook’s social graph, currently the dominant social player. Nearly half of respondents believed Google shows more innovation than Facebook with its new Google+ featureset, including Circles, Sparks and Hangouts.
However, developers aren’t ready to abandon Facebook’s platform, with 83% saying that they will use the world’s most popular social network’s tools and services in their apps this year. Twitter ranked second with 73%, followed by Google+ with 72%. Google+ has yet to announce a public or developer API, although this is said to be coming – especially after it was revealed Games were coming to Google+.
Apple’s upcoming iOS 5 release has the mobile community excited, with improved notifications (58%) and iCloud (51%) provoking the most interested from developers. This was followed by integrated Twitter support (40%), reminders (36%), and iMessage (32%). With iCloud offering space to backup music, files and documents in online, 50% of developer intend to incorporate iCloud support in their services.
It won’t come as a surprise to learn that iOS devices dominate mobile application development, with 91% of developers saying they are “very interested” in developing for the iPhone and 88% interested in creating apps for the iPad. Interest in Android rose from 85% yo 87% over the last quarter, with Android tablets rising to 74%. With HTML 5 development starting to gain momentum, 66% of developers say they are interested in HTML 5 development.
Google and Apple’s new platforms will help challenge more establish players like Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook but the battle is far from over. With consumers more aware of their devices and what opportunities are available to them, it is up to these companies to offer services that are easy to use and do not take away from their daily lives.
Anytime you sign up for a new product or service online, you need to ask yourself these three questions, says Google’s Brian Fitzpatrick:
1. Can I get my data out in an open, interchangeable format?
2. How much will it cost me to do so?
3. How much of my time is it going to take to get my data out?
Of course, most of us neglect to ask these questions, and as such, we frequently find our data “stuck.” We’re then locked in to using certain products because of the time or money involved in moving elsewhere – that and the lack of a “download your data” button.
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That’s bad for users, but speaking at OSCON today, Fitzpatrick argued that it’s also bad for the companies too. “If you lock your users in,” he said, “it makes you complacent.” Choice and trust matter for users, and by providing a way for them to get their data out, companies can make their users feel more secure in the first place. After all, this isn’t just “data” we’re storing online. It’s our memories.
Fitzpatrick speaks with some authority here as he helped found the Data Liberation Front, the team at Google that focuses on making it easier for users to get their data out of the company. Feel nervous about the number of products and services you use that rely on Google? Gmail, Google Docs, Picasa, and now Google Plus? Well rest assured, the Data Liberation Front wants to help ensure your data is actually yours.
Although the team has been in existence for several years, Fitzpatrick said that the project’s heritage dates farther back, to his own experiences at the end of college when he had to abandon all the messages he’d sent and received during that period of his life. As is common with most schools, his email address would no longer function after graduation.
Fast forward from the Nineties when our online data, while valuable was still pretty sparse to today. In fact, fast forward to June of this year when the Data Liberation Front unveiled a major product: Google Takeout.
As the name suggests, Google Takeout lets you take your data out of multiple Google products. You can choose to extract your data from all these services or from just one – a “per-product liberation,” as Fitzpatrick calls it. When you “takeout” your data, it’s in a portable and open format so that you can easily import it into other services. Currently, you can download an archive of your Contacts, Circles, Buzzes, Profile info, Google Plus Stream, Picasa Web Albums, and +1s. (You can also export products from other Google services too, such as the contents of your Blogger blog and your Google Docs. Those just aren’t integrated into the Takeout download yet.)
In his OSCON keynote today, Fitzpatrick talked about some of the “implementation details” that do complicate these sorts of data liberation efforts. “Delete is a very important element of control,” he said, pointing to the feature in Blogger, for example, that lets you simply delete your blog. But what are the implications of the broken links and missing information when someone does this? And what happens when there are multiple people contributing to a project? Who really owns this data?
These aren’t easy questions to answer, but as Fitzpatrick and the Data Liberation Front make clear: we have to start thinking seriously about the future of our data.
Posters are a great way to cheer up your work space, whether your home office, the walls of your cubicle or even your swanky corner suite.
We’ve got a great selection of geeky posters and prints from classic Apple advertising to curious Android typographical illustrations.
Take a look through the image gallery, click through on the blue title text for more info on each image, and let us know in the comments which posters you’d pick for your office.
We’re big fans of the eBoy group’s pixel art. They’ve created a whole collectible series of city posters that includes North American locations as well as London, Paris, Tokyo and Berlin.
The “Periodic Table of Typefaces” is a witty take on font classification. Also available: “So You Need a Typeface” flowchart and “Typefaces of the World.”
Cost: From $16
4. VectorSetPosters
As well as digital tools for designers, these VectorSets are available as prints. With tons of different sets, you could create a really striking grouping.
The Oatmeal’s “Grammar Pack” includes four great comics: “how to use an apostrophe,” “how to use a semicolon,” “10 words you need to stop misspelling,” and “when to use i.e. in a sentence.” We can’t think of a better set of rules to stick on your wall, especially if you work with words.
We adore Visual Aid’s huge collection of geeky prints. They offer graphical explanations of a huge range of topics including color theory, types of hats, The Beatles vs The Rolling Stones, table settings, flight times and much, much more.
This excellent Etsy poster offers you a field guide to Mac trackpad gestures. Also available is an OS X button legend and a quick reference for shortcuts.
Cost: $20
19. Why Working at Home is Both Awesome and Horrible
More from The Oatmeal with this hilarious comic that explains why working at home is both awesome and horrible. It’s an absolute must for any telecommuter.
iA has mapped the 140 most influential people on Twitter, when they started tweeting and what they first said. Fascinating.
Cost: $59.50
21. Apple’s “Think Different” Posters
Finally, you can still get hold of Apple’s iconic “Think Different” posters on sites like eBay. Some are more rare than others, but just imagine how great the whole set would look framed on your office wall.
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Anytime you sign up for a new product or service online, you need to ask yourself these three questions, says Google’s Brian Fitzpatrick: 
Fast forward from the Nineties when our online data, while valuable was still pretty sparse to today. In fact, fast forward to June of this year when the Data Liberation Front unveiled a major product: Google Takeout. 
