Google - Part 6

Google SMS Channels: Group messaging System

Its a great news for many people in India(2nd largest mobile users). Now we can publish and receive SMS messages from Google SMS Channels.
Google SMS is free for both content publishers as well as mobile phone users who subscribe to text updates via SMS.
We can create a group and send updates to all those who subscribe to our text updates, via SMS. Interestingly, we can integrate our blog using our feed and our SMS subscribers will receive the updates whenever we have a new article in our blog. And subscribers can choose when(time) and the number of SMS’s to be received through Google SMS service.

Presently there are a great variety of groups from most popular GoogleNews Channel to blogs and famous newspapers groups. We can subscribe to all these group’s updates.

We can post an update to our SMS group, using our mobile or directly from the web or automatically from our blog feeds(when there are new articles published).
We need to keep in mind that, our text updates won’t reach our SMS text update subscribers as soon as we publish something, it always arrives to their mobile inbox only at the time they have chosen to receive the updates.

If you are not getting SMS updates, then you need to look at the “settings“ in your Google SMS account.

Hope Google will extend this service to many more countries shortly.

For a complete explanation of this service and a self explanatory help center, click here.

If you are from some other country(other than India), and if this service is available in your country also, then please share some details with us.

Google services on your mobile browser, worth checking

Its a general convention to have m.domainname.com as the mobile version of domainname.com. And now its great to see the big “G” going that way. Yes now you can easily access almost all Google services using the URL m.google.com from your mobile browser.
We personally like reading stories on our mobile using “Google Reader” and to watch “youtube” videos whenever there is free time!
With the release of Android and “Chrome“, Google is quickly entering the mobile arena.

Do not miss watching this short video demo:

Mobile version of Google supports BlackBerry, iPhone, Windows Mobile, Nokia S60 phone, other Nokia phone, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Samsung and many Others..

Mobile version of Google has:-

Smooth and responsive user interface
Powerful shortcut keys and intuitive menus
Search and find any Gmail message
Includes almost all Google services.
You can also use IMAP to sync your Gmail with your phone’s native email client.

Google-mobile-services
click here to configure your mail client or wireless device to download Gmail messages.
Also look for your handset compatibility details here.
I am really thankful to Google, for making the entire world(internet) into my pocket. Clearing my “Google Reader” stories has really become dam easy now.
Thank you Google….

Google AdManager is now open to all AdSense a/c holders

Previously Google AdManage was a BETA product and Technotip.org was lucky enough to get an opertunity to try it.
But now, its open to all, if you have an AdSense account, you can sign in to Ad Manager today.

Previously Google AdManage was a BETA product and Technotip.org was lucky enough to get an opportunity to try it.
But now, its open to all, if you have an AdSense account, you can sign in to Ad Manager today.

“A Google AdSense account is a technical requirement for creating an Ad Manager account.”

Its a very good service and you can manage all your advertisers in a well organized manner.

AdManager-Google-AdSense

Google AdManager is used to:

Manage your online ad sales and inventory.
Google Ad Manager is a hosted ad management solution that can help you sell, schedule, deliver, and measure all of your directly-sold and network-based inventory.
Simple, intuitive user interface: Decrease training time and trafficking steps with simplified tagging and inventory management.
Google serving speed and reliability
Ensure quicker ad delivery and fewer reporting discrepancies.
Significant cost savings!
Pay no I.T. infrastructure, maintenance, or bandwidth costs.

Google AdManager might look like a complex thing to use, but it will be OK once you get used to it. Its all easy. You need to know, the uses of each option and you will be an expert to use Google AdManager.

I am sad for one thing here..i.e., OpenX. OpenX is also a script based software, which almost performs all the functions like Google AdManager, but it will be hosted in our own server and thus it will consume our bandwidth whenever a request is sent to it. On the other hand Google AdManager is hosted in Google’s fast servers.

Just follow the link and signin using your AdSense account…click here.

And for more information about Google AdManager, please visit AdSense blog.

Google face Lawsuit in India

hate-writing MUMBAI — An Indian, Mumbai-based Gremach Infrastructure Equipments & Projects Ltd Company is demanding that Google Inc. disclose the name of a person who used its blogging service, in a case that could change the way the Internet giant does business in India. The blogger known as “Toxic Writer,” is accused of attacking the Mumbai-based Gremach in what they are calling it as a “hate campaign.”

Many people just feel that, the decision by Indian Court is not fair, but think from the perspective of the company. If the so called “Hate Campaign” is being done by the company rivals or some anti-social elements ?

Indian court is not so foolish to give decision without reading what that guy has written in his blog. Ofcourse this decision will make many bloggers get scared, but don’t worry until you write somethink that has been written after some good research and thinking. Don’t just write to get the attention of others.

The only sad thing is, Google is being sued here. And as usual, Google need to give the private information of the blogger to the court! This will surly scare some of us. Previously we saw, how Google was forced to hand over complete YouTube user histories to Viacom, in a case of copyright issue.

The “Toxic Writer” blog was taken down, and Google’s Indian subsidiary is claiming they are not responsible for the Blogger.com service.

Google has been instructed to reveal the identity of an anonymous blogger in a defamation lawsuit filed by an Indian construction company against them, reports the Wall Street Journal.

“One of the most common places for people to sue, because they will generally win, are nations that are or have formerly been part of the British Commonwealth, where there is no First Amendment, and the law looks more toward protecting the reputation of people than protecting the free speech of speakers,” Watson told Wired.com.

“Google which is an American corporation enjoys a great deal of protection here in the United States, but in the rest of the world, it’s subject to the laws of wherever these articles or communications are published,” he added.

What do you think about this issue? Will this be a blackmark on the “democracy of internet” or is this the perfect justice done? or do you think there is someother measures to solve such issues in future. And what would be the future of Google, if everyone and their dogs keep sueing them? Please share your thoughts in the comment section. And remember, people have been sued even for commenting hatred things or wrong point of view! — Does this scare you, yes/no, why is it so ?

Feedburner Chicklet after Migration

Have you observed the change in the Feedburner Chicklet, after your feeds have been migrated from feedburner to Google?
Previously you could see the label “By Feedburner”. After the migration, that label has been marked with black color, making it almost not visible.
But I feel that, Google would have easily changed the image and labeled it “By Google”. Hope they are not so serious about their brand name! or they may be hard at work in changing this simple image!

As far as my observation, Google had never been left behind in branding, promoting its products, let it be a payed one or the free service. Its brand name “Google” itself brings more value and focus of many people around the world.

Hope Google will soon do something to this Chicklet image, and use it to brand themselves with the Free feed service.

Have you observed the changes in the Chicklet? And have you experienced any other changes after the migration? please share it with us in the comment section.

AdSense for Feeds, is rolled over to all publishers

With frequent hints from Feedburner, today all publishers account got AdSense for Feed in their account. Previously it was available only to some selective AdSense publishers.

I was excited to start using it, but when I rushed to “get started”, I saw a message that said- “You have no feeds in your account yet.”

After that I realized that, our feeds must be first migrated from our old feeds to Google.

I already have my feedburner account and I wanted to transfer it to Google, and that was too easy to do….

Just drop an email to adsense-support-aff@google.com with the following details…

Your FeedBurner account username

The Google Account email address you use to sign in to AdSense

I wrote to Google with the following Subject “Migrate all of my feeds, from feeds.feedburner.com to Google “, to make sure that my email is read.

Thats it, all your feeds will be migrated to Google.

Some of the features of AdSense for Feeds are…

customization

We can choose the color, image only/image and text/text only ads, Frequency of the ads to appear,Post length, Position of the ad etc.

Here are some of the screen shots…

Hope this will bring some value to those who publish full feed, like Technotip.org. And hope this will bring in some extra income to all publishers. And as always, thanks to Google…

“Happy Independence Day to India & Pakistan — Aug 15th.”

Get SMS alerts of your schedules from Google Calendar

We can’t be infront of our computer all the time to see our Google Calendar, for our next schedule. So Google has implemented SMS alert feature to its Google Calendar service. The SMS supports 38 languages so far.

Setting up the SMS alert is very easy. You should have your cell phone in your hand while you setup the alert, as you need to verify you mobile number.

Here are some self explanatory screen shots to setup Google Calendar SMS alert…

Make use of this Google Service without fail. This can help a lot. If you don’t have any near important schedule, then, keep a schedule of your loved ones birthday and an important date in your life and Google Calendar will remind you through SMS.