Tag Archives: Google

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Google Music opened slightly its beta in the U.S.

During the spring, almost no day that had not speculate on the arrival of the U.S. Spotify and the launch of Google Music . The first came earlier this month , the second was presented in May during the Google I / O 2011 . Music Beta by Google , which was the name given to the music service in the cloud of boys Mountain View, was released in a beta, which was closed on users and limited to the territory of the United States, and, after a few days left to generate comments. Now it seems that Google wants to revive a little something service and expand the beta, so it will allow users of the platform to send two invitations at its discretion.

After launch, the first criticism pointed that the service really does not add much since, in the absence of agreements with record labels, the user had to upload songs to the cloud then you can use them from any computer or their Android phone. This limitation coupled with the service is limited to the United States made a little Music Beta falling into oblivion.

With this in mind, Google has decided that the lucky few who participate in the beta can invite a couple of users to see if that wakes a little service and begin to recover lost interest by users and by technological means. The truth is that extending the beta it makes sense, we have only to look at the example of Google + to realize that a beta well run (opening and closing the invitations, a good release and offering features innovative) can generate a buzz and, practically, we stop for a month to talk about Google’s social network.

The cocktail of music and cumputing cloud seems to be the future of the music industry, I think it’s something that no doubt at this point, however, we are seeing different ways of implementing it. The views of Amazon and Apple are closely related to the acquisition of content (although Amazon also lets you upload files, but Apple also own a subscription), however, Music Beta is not proposing anything new, besides his own music and keep it up available on the smartphone.

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5 Alternatives to Google Music for labels and artists

Yesterday we saw how Google revolutionized the Music Internet scene with some very interesting proposals. Although the features of the platform are varied and surely we will see in depth in other posts, this time we will highlight one of them: the chance they will have independent labels and musicians to offer their songs for download and also sell a gain of 70 percent, something that gives prominence to Google Music for any other service available.

However, those not wanting to interact with Google have alternatives to pursue, which also can be profitable and interesting. There are many ways to promote our music over the Internet, even before the existence of Google Music, and not have to be through a label or platforms like iTunes, but can be through smaller sites or not intended to promote independent musicians, but they do it accidentally.

We have compiled a list of five services that are similar to Google Music in some of its features, but feel free to add your own choices in the comments.

Bandcamp : This service is one of my favorites, because as an artist allows you to upload music and offer it as a free download, but as a lover of music also lets you discover new bands. We need to make some investment to build an account on this site, but Bandcamp is, in my opinion, one of the strongest competitors MySpace as far as music is concerned. Why? Because we offer a customizable site, let us put the price we want to offer music online, and allows us to build a database of people who have downloaded our album.

SoundCloud : SoundCloud but is less than Bandcamp service as giving users the audio quality is one of the best found on the Internet, and although in recent times have been a little strict on the issue of copyright, dropping many songs and canceling user accounts (this will not do so without prior notice on several occasions, which is a detail worth noting), can be an interesting alternative. SoundCloud allows us to create players that can be inserted into any blog or personal page, fully customizable with colors and sizes. In fact, several independent labels in the United States use it as an innovative way to share their work.

SoundOwl : SoundCloud’s younger brother, SoundOwl have less aesthetic appeal but is just as useful as the latter site shares some of its basic functionality. Audio quality is also very good, and even if we can customize our players, they can be inserted as iFrame code in blogs and other sites. For us who are the ones who hear, also has an interesting search engine and categorized by genre we can discover new artists.

Grooveshark : the shark is already a well-considered online streaming service used by millions of people daily. Although it has some limitations that stem from the separation between a free account and a payment, paying nothing we can access thousands of songs from some of the most popular bands in the world. However, we can find many independent artists upload their songs to Grooveshark to impart. Although it has a search engine, Grooveshark nothing indicates that these songs are present, what remains in the hands of potential listeners artist go to their songs. This is one of those services that they talked, accidental partners in the dissemination of independent music.

YouTube : some may disbelieve the potential of YouTube to broadcast independent music, but the truth is that it is quite large. Simply just uploading a video, share it with the right people and let it all happen. Something that also helps is to upload videos with covers of famous artists to appear well positioned in the search results. To see better how it works, let’s look at two recent success stories. One of them is the Brazilian band A Banda Da Cidade Nice Mais, who published a few months ago the video for their song “Ora?ao” . The video was completely viral in Brazil, and in one weekend the band was on everyone’s lips. It did not take too much for the song, lovely by the way, got the rest of Latin America. It currently has nearly 9 million views on the site. Moreover, Americans Pomplamoose , that feeling that makes video covers classics, is transforming its task of “fun” in YouTube into something quite profitable.

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Google launches AdWords Express

Ads Google AdWords is a powerful source of revenue for Google and a useful resource for companies, since they can create campaigns to promote their companies or their products under a controlled cost. The service works really well and has also promoted the creation of an ecosystem of services around the ads, in addition to that already exists about SEO . And while managing campaigns is not overly complicated, there are certain barriers to entry to the service that Google has wanted to eliminate launching a new service: AdWords Express .

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With AdWords Express , Google wants to democratize the use of online advertising to small business providing a service that is easy to handle and allows the network to launch an ad campaign quickly. For now been released in the U.S. area and allows the advertiser abstracts the concepts of cost per click or the price of keywords, simply fill in the basic fields, indicating how much to spend and places a marker Google Maps for georeferencing on its establishment, paying only when users click on the link in the ad.

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From my point of view, I think this service is a great idea that will allow the web to launch campaigns establishments usually are not in the network and have no website. But if the democratization of the service is interesting, even more so if we think long term, Google could offer a “turnkey” service-oriented merchants: Places , Offers and AdWords Express, a service pack to advertise and revive any business clientele, combined, can jump to Foursquare and Groupon , yes, first and AdWords Express Offers should be accessible to everyone.

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Google Music comes to IOS as a web application

It has been many months since the May Google announced its music service in the cloud. A platform at that time was released as a beta only for the U.S. territory. Well, since then users have been waiting IOS application that can test the system, application has come today but somewhat different than expected.

What Google has done is to announce via Twitter the launch of a web application from Google Music for IOS. The reasons for him not to leave your own application for Apple devices do not know, maybe not yet been approved in the App Store or Google searches may promote web services.

In any case, users must enter the Web application music.google.com . From there, the company offers users to play music, search, shuffle … no need to open the browser, since we can use the controls for music playback IOS running in the background.

The web application will ask permission to use 25MB of memory on your device IOS, that will help the system space to store the songs you are playing. After consuming these 25MB go, the application will be deleting the first songs I listened.

Little more to add to this release. The application in this first beta perhaps suffers a little slow, probably for not being a native app. We must wait for future updates to see if Google eventually be encouraged to develop a system specifically for each platform.

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Google + IOS, the interesting apps

It’s been a few months since Google + started his career and could not have come with better standing. If you ask me what does not have Google + Facebook you respond with a simple idea: the best way to get rich of ideas and curiosities, there are interesting information exchanges. If you are from you are already enjoying the new social network, I recommend two apps that belong in your device.

On one side is the official application free for iOS , a development that interact efficiently with the network with our circles. We can share photos, locations, Huddle, or simply write a post and read the rest. If there was a feature that was missing in this implementation was the inability of recompartir or republish a post.

That was until now, because today the app has been updated including this function as well as correcting code errors past. What is still lacking to Google + for IOS ? An implementation of or become hangouts would be much appreciated, but assuming that this will take to appear, they should at least allow editing of our profile and our past issues. Of course, an iPhone application adapted to also be very well received.

Another application that may be of interest to us is Google + Photo Importer , a development that has seen the light of the App Store a few hours ago. Under this name provides an app 0’79 € (U.S. $ 0’99) to import within seconds our collection of photographs, in whole or in part, from Instagram, Facebook, Flickr or Photobucket to Google’s social network. In addition it will preserve all metadata, and the description or title of the image. Very interesting to know that the application does not affect our use of data in the terminal, because the transfer is done in the cloud without being downloaded to your device and then be uploaded again.

You see the ecosystem derived from Google apps + begins to appear in the App Store and is very positive news. We hope gradually adding other proposals that will enrich our use of this new social network out of Mountain View.

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Facebook to test smart lists look like Google +

We recognize, if we follow a little overview of social networks in the past year, Google + has introduced some revolutionary concepts that has removed a sector that was somewhat stagnant. Mostly because of the selection of simple circles and management of privacy. The downside of these innovations is that it is relatively easy for competitors to adapt these concepts to their websites, as seems to be doing Facebook with smart lists (Smart Lists).

Some users elect have started to see a new section on the website of Zuckerberg’s social network through which they are shown some users automatically grouped by the page itself in three areas: co-workers, classmates and local friends. We say well when using the term automatically grouped because unlike Google + is not the user who decides and gives names to these groups (or circles) but is the social network itself that performs the action for us.

Apparently the election of members in each group is based on the way we interact with them. It should be easy for an algorithm to analyze the commentators of a post and its subject matter to decide these issues. Although, logically, then allowed himself a member of the network to modify the group members at will, because it may be that one is in the wrong place.

Interesting is the group called “local friends” because it includes individuals who are within 80 miles around, in a clear effort to enhance services in-house geolocated website. Already we are imagining local advertising aimed at this particular group? Probably one of your applications.

Anyway it is a very important change. They are obviously the beginning, if it has made available a few conceivable that the service is under testing and will shortly receive further changes. From simple how Facebook could eliminate one of the main differences that separates Google +! If this system is an element of attracting Internet users to the community created in Mountain View, Zuckerberg could annihilate at a stroke.

What could come from here? The following logical steps are to create custom groups beyond the three that come by default, and integrating them on the home page to access the network to make it very easy for anyone to post to each set without affecting the rest. We will be alert to new developments on this issue, because it seems a very interesting news.