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The White House joins Google+, invites you to Hangout
President Obama may have been on Google+ since November, but the administration is now stepping up its presence on the social network even further in anticipation of next week's State of the Union address and the forthcoming presidential campaign. It now has an official White House Google+ page, where it plans to post the usual news, photos and videos, and also host regular Hangout video chats. There's no promises yet that the President himself will take part, but the White House says it will regularly have administration officials and policy experts take part in the conversations, which will also be streamed on YouTube and WhiteHouse.gov. Those interested can click the link below to add the page to their Circles.
Google outs two new Galaxy Nexus commercials, touts Face Unlock and Hangouts (video)
Go figure -- it's Galaxy Nexus day. Again. And as such, Google has just pushed out two new commercials in its "Calling all..." series. The new spots tout the new smartphone's Face Unlock feature as well as Google+ Hangouts, where Ice Cream Sandwich is proudly showcased. We'd bother explaining more, but we're pretty sure the two play buttons after the break are more than sufficient.
Google+ update will add new Hangout features, give first dibs to famous people
The Big G has detailed a few changes that are en route in forthcoming updates to both the Google+ desktop interface, the Android app and -- with an undisclosed lag -- the iOS app. You and your inner circle will soon be able to attach Hangout invitations to specific posts, so you can "upgrade the conversation from long-form to live" with a single click. The Hangouts On Air self-broadcasting feature is still in development and only available to selected celebs, but Google is about to roll it out to "hundreds more" public figures and users with large followings, while also adding features that will eventually appeal to normal people's vanity too: including the ability to upload full-length and private recordings of your supposedly charismatic rants to your YouTube account. See the source link for more.
Google+ moves from field trial to beta, adds Hangouts on phones, search and more
Well, it looks like the "field trial" is officially over. Google today announced that its Google+ social network has moved up to beta status and, as a result, it's now open to everyone (no invitation required). It's also rolled out a slew of new features for the occasion, including a number of improvements to the Hangouts video chat service. That includes Hangouts on your phone (Android 2.3+ only, for now), a new Hangouts On Air feature for public broadcasts, and a number of "extras" including screensharing, a sketchpad and shared Google Docs (not to mention Hangouts APIs). Google's now also finally added search functionality across the site, and it's renamed the Huddle group chat feature to Messenger (which also includes a number of new tweaks). Hit the links below for the complete rundown on what's new.
Google+ for Android app (hands-on)
Given the number of apps Google's made available for smartphones, it shouldn't be much of a surprise that it's taken its suite of social networking services direct to the mobile world as well. As soon as Google+ was officially announced, an app was ready for download in the Android Market and a web app became available for Safari for iOS (with its full offering to the App Store coming soon). As usual, we couldn't resist the urge to play around with it, but how does the mobile iteration fare against the competition? Continue past the break to get a peek of the larger-than-life service squeezed into a 4.3-inch (or smaller) display.
