Google has unveiled it’s Google+ Developer page. As should be shock to anybody the page is hosted on Google+. This page will allow developers to keep up to date on all of the happenings with Google+. It is a good thing to see Google using its own products for promotion of said product.

The Google+ Development team states that they will be hosting regular hangouts on Google+ as well as letting developers know about conferences and hack-athons that are related to Google+.

Coincidentally, I tried to add the Google+ Developer page to my circles and I could not. I was already signed in, but the page displayed as though I was not logged in. Even after logging in a dozen times it was still not letting me add them.

The only way I was able to add the Google+ Developer page was to see it in somebody else’s post, and then click on ‘Add to Circles’. Then it worked without any issue. It just sound like a little development bug.

The biggest question that many users have is where is the API for Google+. Sure, we are all probably aware of the read API that is currently available, but there is no write API currently in place.

Maybe it’s just me, but as soon as the Google+ development team releases the write API, Google+ will just be littered with spam accounts. Granted, Google+ is chock full of spam account now, but those must be created manually. Once this comes to fruition, it’ll only be on a much larger scale.

You can follow all of the Google+ Developer happenings on their blog or their Google+ page or even their developer website. If you are at all interested in Google+ development, any of these pages are great resources to keep an eye on, it’s only a matter of time before the Google+ platform becomes much bigger.

Source: Google+ Developer Page

Wayne Dixon

I'm into anything technology related. I do some HTML/CSS/PHP development. I like to follow things that most people would find annoying or not worthwhile. I follow Apple, Microsoft, Google, The Cloud, cell phones and even programming. By Day I'm a Systems Administrator for a Library, which has it's own set of issues. Follow me on Twitter.

Website - More Posts

LinkedIn is a social network with over 53 million users that enables you to better use your professional network and help the people you trust in return. It is no secret that LinkedIn is a great place to network professionally, post and find jobs, post and answer questions and build your thought leadership among hundreds of thousands of members.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

It is probably the most obvious way to identify people you may already be connected with either directly or through your connections. From my direct use of LinkedIn, I find it to a great tool to leverage my existing contacts to connect with people and find potential customers online. The purpose for writing this post is to introduce you to some of LinkedIn’s basic elements and what it can do for you to help build your brand, promote your website, and how to use LinkedIn to generate leads for your business.

I bet many of you may already use LinkedIn but are not taking advantage of its full value? Some of you may have probably stuck your toes in the water to make LinkedIn a part of your integrated online marketing strategy but are not aware of how to network among the Groups and thousands of members so as to introduce them to your thought leadership? This post is meant to introduce you to LinkedIn’s key elements so let’s get started by taking a look at this primer for all of the above.

What Is LinkedIn?

* LinkedIn is a B2B networking platform with the highest concentration of educated professionals of any social network.

Image via Wikipedia

* It is a social medium that is not really very “social” at all but is 100% about connecting and interacting with other professionals.

* LinkedIn is a B2B search engine that helps professionals find other professionals and businesses.

Is LinkedIn Effective?

* 57% of companies surveyed said they’d acquired a customer through LinkedIn (HubSpot)

* 58% of small and medium-sized businesses are actively using LinkedIn to promote their business (Merchant Circle)

* LinkedIn, more than any other social media site, is driving referrals to B2B sites (Leadforce1).

Ultimately, that’s what we all want: more traffic directed to our site, which translates to more leads we convert to sales.

Here’s a brief overview of the basic elements you’ll use as you get started and familiar with LinkedIn:

1. Profile

• The first thing many people do after meeting someone is to check-out their LinkedIn profile.
• Setting up your profile is free and quick – think of it as your optimized online resume plus – which will become a powerful magnet to attract people to you.
• People searching for contacts will make a decision to connect or not connect based on the information you provide in your profile.
• Your profile should be 100% complete and accurately reflect all that you’ve done professionally, and the skills and experience you bring to the relationship.
• It is important to upload a photo because people are more likely to connect with you if they recognize your face and they feel they are connecting with a real person. Be sure to ask for recommendations from friends, current and former colleagues, partners and clients.
• Optimize your LinkedIn profile for SEO by optimizing keywords in your summary section, for example. This is a full text section, which is indexed by Google. Including your favorite keywords in your summary helps you rank higher in search engine results for these keyword searches.

2. Contacts

• Connect with people whom you have worked with or done business, or generally people with similar interests or have worked in your industry.
• Invite thought leaders in your industry to connect with you so that you establish a relationship with them and, eventually, gain access to their network.
• LinkedIn compiles a list of all your contacts, which is viewable only by your contacts. These contacts get updates on activities you share on LinkedIn; blog posts you promote and events at which you’ll be speaking, for instance.
• Start asking and answering questions on LinkedIn Answers that will enable you to interact and connect with other thought leaders, as well as establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry. Update your content often for your status to be current.
• How many contacts should you have? There are some people on LinkedIn with 500+, but you can feel pretty confident if you have ~ 200 with the idea of increasing the number with quality contacts.

3. Company Page

• A LinkedIn company page is just like your personal page, but showcases your company as a whole.
• It’s a good place to highlight capabilities, services, and competitive advantages. (Learn how to get more traffic to your company page by reading white papers and viewing webinars, and other compelling content offered by HubSpot, the premier inbound marketing company.
  

  Image via CrunchBase

4. Groups

• LinkedIn Groups give you a great opportunity to reach out to and engage prospective customers online.
• The Groups function is where LinkedIn becomes a powerful networking tool. You can create a group for your industry or participate in as many as 50 groups that LinkedIn allows you to join.
• You can join groups of peers or groups populated with potential clients. If you create a group, promote it on your website, blog, email newsletter and social media networks.
• To get started, search for Groups with the greatest number of members and those that are similar to the Groups that match your ideal corporate profile for lead generation. You find these Groups by doing an Advanced Group search without entering any keywords in the search field. Click on the search icon and LinkedIn will list in descending order the Groups with the greatest number of members.
• You can join as many as 50 groups. When in the group, you can do a search for the decision-makers title. The result will be a list of group members who match your search for CEO or CIO or CTO, for example.
• LinkedIn enables you to send banner ad invitations to the groups you have joined. You can also send uploaded videos and presentations, which you will be able to track by users who open the content you provided. The goal is to establish your expertise among group members who request you to contact them that you will convert to leads.

5. Answers                                        

Image via Wikipedia

• LinkedIn also acts like a forum where you can ask a question or respond to relevant questions posted by others (a great way to demonstrate your expertise).
• Make certain you do not sell your services, no spamming please, but, above all, feel free to drive people to relevant and valuable and compelling content on your LinkedIn profile, website or blog.

6. Search

• Use LinkedIn’s Advanced Search for fine-tuning your way of searching for decision-makers by title and function in specific industries that are located in cities you have selected anywhere in the world to do business.
• Refer to search methods (above) in Groups, which will help you identify the groups you should join that fit your company profile for lead generation and how you can upload content, which can be inmailed to group members. Here is a way to create a list of prospects who you can contact, qualify, and convert from lead status to a new customer.
• The goal for all of this is simple: to engage an audience with compelling content, which will establish you as a thought leader as you build a network and a list of leads.

What Can LinkedIn Do For You?

1. Build Your Brand

• It is impossible to attend every networking event out there. With LinkedIn, you will be able to get in front of everyone you want to – and they can find you too.
• By being visible and a genius resource on the #1 professional networking platform, you will build your brand, if you do it right and do it consistently. Find a time each day to interact with your network.

2. Promote Your Website and Its Content

• If you want people to find you when they’re looking for your niche like a law firm or a dentist or a contractor or whatever it is you can do for them, you need to draw them in like a magnet into your site by offering the audience valuable content in the form of: articles, demonstration videos, surveys, blogs – any compelling content that helps educate your prospect, and solves problems for customers so they buy what you offer to them.
• LinkedIn is a great community to promote your site and your expertise to a targeted audience.
• By sharing what you know with the prospect will lead to forming a trusted relationship, and will see how you can help solve their immediate challenges on the way to building your credibility for the long-term.

3. Using LinkedIn Applications

• LinkedIn offers valuable applications that will help you to promote your content and your brand.
• Connect your blog to your LinkedIn profile to continually share your content with your network. The Blog Link will automatically pull in the latest blog posts from around your network.
• Share and collaborate on files with others in your LinkedIn network by using Box.net file.
• Promote your content by sharing slides from current and past webinars or presentations when you use SlideShare.net.

4. Generate Leads

• LinkedIn can be used to generate new leads for your business by engaging an audience and building a network. You do this by demonstrating your expertise and thought leadership. Refer (above) to Search and Groups.
• Don’t sell your services but drive people to relevant and compelling content on your website and blog. You will learn to distribute content from RSS feeds via LinkedIn ads, newsletters and articles.
• If you do all of the above – create compelling content, promote it on your website, blog, and social media sites, interact and engage with your audience, and showcase your expertise and thought leadership – you will generate leads.
• You can also use LinkedIn’s DirectAds to push relevant ads to LinkedIn subscribers targeted by profile demographic information. This is very similar to ad targeting on Facebook and Google AdWords.
• Make the best use of marketing tools like a landing page where you direct prospects to a compelling offer that will differentiate your product or service and result in the prospect identifying themselves as a lead when they enter their name and email address for you to contact.
• As cited above, use LinkedIn’s Advanced Search to identify and join the largest membership Groups and those that are similar to the ones which match the ideal criteria for the companies where you will generate leads.
• When you are a group member, you will be able to send uploaded ppt. presentations and videos, create RSS Feeds, send banner ad invitations to Group members, and follow User Engagement analytics with a list of leads who have opted-in.

Enjoy the experience as you become familiar with LinkedIn’s capabilities for lead generation. Happy hunting!

Related articles

• Help Your B2B Company in 10 Minutes a Day Using LinkedIn (gcsagents.com)
• LinkedIn groups: Have you joined the conversation? (marketing.yell.com)

Dan

Dan has 25 years of experience in information technology (IT) services sales, marketing, and enterprise account management. He holds a degree in business administration from Miami University, a Master's in Public Administration from the University of Southern California and Masters Certificate in Internet Marketing from the University of San Francisco. Dan is also a certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach. Dan's passion is for cloud computing, Internet marketing, social media marketing, and mobile marketing.

Image via CrunchBase

We’ve prepared these “Cheat Sheets” to help you understand it is no secret in our society, mobile devices are more pervasive than computers and it is time for you to develop a mobile marketing strategy for your business. To help you make the leap to considering and implementing a mobile-friendly website for your business, we have prepared mobile device usage facts, mobile website facts and benefits and a mobile website “Getting Started” checklist.

Consumer Mobile Device Usage FACTS

• Consumers are using their mobile devices to access the Internet more than ever before – and it’s expected to grow at astonishing rates over the next 12 months and beyond.

• There are approximately 4 BILLION mobile subscribers across the world.

• Most mobile device users keep their phones within arm’s reach over 90 percent of waking hours.

• Nielsen predicts that smart phones will account for nearly half of worldwide mobile sales by 2013. This is a clear indication of how much more the Internet will be accessed via mobile devices.

• Americans today are spending an average of three hours per day on the Internet from their mobile devices.

• Over the past few years, the shipment of mobile handsets has grown 16% annually – reaching 400 million sold in the last quarter of 2010. Mobile device companies sold a total of 1.39 billion units in 2010.
  

  Image via Wikipedia

• Approximately 30% of U.S. mobile phone users have a smartphone according to Nielson. This number is expected to grow to approximately 43% by 2015 according to eMarketer.

• In 2009, approximately half a BILLION people went online using their mobile device. This number is expected to double within the next 5 years.

• By 2014, mobile Internet usage is expected to exceed desktop Internet usage.

• According to Nielson, 70% of mobile users plan to upgrade to 4G service within the next year so they can have faster Internet speed while using their mobile devices.

• According to founder and CEO of Amazon.com, Jeff Bezos, customers around the world have ordered more than $1 BILLION U.S. dollars from Amazon.com using a mobile device.

• Gartner also predicts that by 2014, more people will access the internet from their mobile devices than from their PC desktops.

• According to Facebook official statistics from January 2011, more than 200 million users (out of over 600 million Facebook users) access Facebook using their mobile devices; also, mobile Facebook users are twice as active as non-mobile users.

• More than 200 million YouTube views occur on mobile devices every day.

• 86% of mobile Internet usage happens while the users are watching TV.

• Mobile marketing methods have proven to be effective in acquiring new customers, providing service to existing customers, and driving repeat business through relationship-building.

• When combined with other marketing methods, mobile marketing has proven to increase conversion rates.

• Studies show that as time goes on, people will prefer to deal with technology over human interaction.

Mobile Website FACTS & BENEFITS

• Studies show that current mobile web-user experiences are dissatisfied when it comes to viewing and navigating websites. Websites that have not been optimized for mobile viewing are too cluttered and negatively impact the visitor’s ability to locate information.

• Traditional websites are designed to be viewed on a computer screen instead of a mobile device. This means that most regular websites are not compatible with mobile devices.

• More and more people are using their mobile devices to access the Internet while on the go. In fact, one-third of the world’s population use their mobile devices to perform Internet searches.

• One-half of all Internet searches for LOCAL products and services are performed from mobile devices.

• Gartner reports that approximately 96 million mobile searches performed in 2009 were by those looking for a “location –based” (LOCAL) service. This number is expected to grow to more than 526 million searches by 2012.

• Mobile-friendly websites receive higher mobile search engine rankings.

• Mobile-friendly websites have higher speed, making the visitor experience more pleasurable.

• Mobile-friendly websites attract both “new” and “repeat” customers by giving your business “instant mobile marketability” when your visitors land on your mobile site with all of the important business information clearly and easily accessible.

• Can be viewed anytime and anywhere mobile cell phone coverage is available.  Due to the massive amount of Internet-enabled mobile devices across the world, this means your website can easily be exposed to many millions of people.

• Makes it easier for “On-the-go” visitors to easily find your business and contact you with one-click calling, one-click email, and instant directions. This eliminates the need for your customers to take “extra steps” in order to contact or visit your business.

• When users are successful in finding what they need while visiting a mobile website, they’re more likely to come back.   When mobile users land on a website that is all distorted, they quickly exit and make a mental note never to return.

• Have the advantage of coming up higher in search engine results for local searches performed on mobile devices. This means that when people search for your type of product or service using their mobile device, you can show up higher in the results just because you have a mobile website.

• Gives you the advantage over your competitors; most of which are not even leveraging the powerful benefits of mobile marketing.

• It is easy to track your mobile success with free reporting and analytic tools available with most mobile platforms. Simply track your visitors and make improvements where necessary.

• Integrating social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube with your mobile website is simple and will help boost your profits even more.

                       Mobile Website “Getting Started” Checklist

                       Ready to get your own mobile-friendly website?

1. Decide what enhancements you want to provide with your mobile website.

• Easy access to your phone number and one-click calling.
• Easy access to your email address and one-click emailing.
• Easy access to your product information.
• Easy access to directions and a map to your establishment.
• Easily accessible through higher search engine rankings

• Retrieve Information Only
• Make Purchases
• Redeem Coupons
• Opt-in to Your List

3. Decide on the content for your mobile site. Keep the amount of graphics and content to a minimum as mobile devices navigate well the less content there is.

4. Decide on a mobile platform or method to create a mobile-friendly website for your business.

• You could purchase programs to help you create your own mobile website or you could hire a professional to do it for you.
• Design your mobile site to be very clean and simple. Only provide relevant content and information that is easy to access.
• Keep it simple – your visitors will appreciate it! Mobile users don’t care about the look and style of your website.
• Create a mobile site that enhances your visitors’ experience instead of distracting them.
• People who access websites from their mobile devices are usually looking for one specific piece of information and then leave.
• Make sure that all of your pertinent information is easily visible on your mobile website. This includes your phone number, address, directions, map, menu, contact capture forms, etc.

5. Track and measure your progress. Test various types of campaigns to drive traffic to your website. Use SMS/Text messaging and QR codes. Be sure to view the analytics of your mobile website to see how many views and conversions you are getting. No matter how many visitors you’re getting, at least you’ll know that they are finding what they need now that you have a mobile website.

If you would like more information about creating a mobile-friendly website for your business, give me a call at (925) 309-4888.

Related articles

• 7 Reasons why your Auto Dealership needs a mobile website in 2012 (slideshare.net)
• Mobile Ready Websites (centexmobilemarketing.com)

Dan

Dan has 25 years of experience in information technology (IT) services sales, marketing, and enterprise account management. He holds a degree in business administration from Miami University, a Master's in Public Administration from the University of Southern California and Masters Certificate in Internet Marketing from the University of San Francisco. Dan is also a certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach. Dan's passion is for cloud computing, Internet marketing, social media marketing, and mobile marketing.

The chat will take place Monday afternoon, Jan. 30, capping a week of social media engagement the White House is planning around the State of the Union speech.

Obama speaks to Congress and the nation on Tuesday.

Google Plus will solicit questions over the video sharing site YouTube, and users will then vote on their favorites. The president will answer some video questions, and will also chat directly with a group of the questioners.

The exchange will appear on the White House Google Plus page, and will be live streamed on the whitehouse.gov website.

Obama participated in YouTube town halls after his last two State of The Union speeches, taking questions submitted to the video sharing site. The planned Hangout goes a step further, offering some of those questioners a chance to interact directly with the president.

Macon Phillips, White House director of digital strategy, said the White House would have no role in choosing the questions or participants in the Hangout.

“For online engagement to be interesting, it has to be honest,” Phillips said. “We want to give Americans more control over this conversation and the chance to ask questions they care about.”

Google has hosted Hangouts with other political figures, including Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. But Obama’s planned Hangout will be a presidential first and is certain to draw more attention to Google Plus, which has battled to catch up with social networking giant Facebook in membership and influence.

The Hangout element “will make for really personal conversation with the president that’s never really happened before,” said Steve Grove, head of community partnerships for Google Plus. “Whether it’s good for Google Plus or not, I guess viewers will decide by how well we pull it off.”

Sidenote: It goes without saying that Google will raise the 10 person limit that is currently in place for Hangouts.

[summary via AP]

James Hicks

James is the Founder and Chief Technologist of HicksNewMedia, a technology consulting and digital publishing firm providing effective and relevant solutions to individuals and businesses looking to utilize all things on the interweb. Follow him on Twitter | about.me | Facebook | Google+

Website - Twitter - Facebook - More Posts

If you go to google.com you’ll see the following logo as Google is voicing their protest of SOPA and PIPA

If you click on the logo it’ll take you to a Google page providing additional information for citizens to begin to take action and contact their legislative representatives.

James Hicks

James is the Founder and Chief Technologist of HicksNewMedia, a technology consulting and digital publishing firm providing effective and relevant solutions to individuals and businesses looking to utilize all things on the interweb. Follow him on Twitter | about.me | Facebook | Google+

Website - Twitter - Facebook - More Posts

Here is a review of Android applications that can be downloaded and enjoyed on your mobile, as they are quite famous nowadays.

Google Voice
Google Voice is one of the best Android apps. Although, apple rejected it for the iPhone, but yet, it is a very handy application to use. It gives you a free number to receive calls, and sending messages. You can even use it to access your voicemail and text messages.

Advanced Task Killer
This is a great application from Android. It allows you to manage and close all your Android applications that run in background, so that they don’t suck battery or hurt mobile performance.

Every Note
Now, you don’t need to type on virtual keyboards. Every Note is a great note-taking android application that just not lets you save data on your mobile, but also allows you to sync it to other machines and devices.

DroidAnalytics
Since Google doesn’t have any official Android application for Google Analytics. So, as an alternative, Droid Analytics can be used to do the Google Analytics jobs.

Quick Office
Quick office is one of the best android apps. It allows you to read and write files for Word and Excel either from your cell or directly from your Gmail account.

Amazon Kindle
Amazon kindle is among the best android apps. Whenever you have time to read, you can read e-books on your smartphone easily through this app.

Places Directory

Places Directory is a tremendous Android application for searching shops, restaurants, hospitals, movie theatres and cafeterias near your current location. It always show accurate results and is better than any other GPS Android application.

Tripit
It is just one of those best android applications on Travel that keeps a tract of all your itineraries. It has a powerful system. All you do is forward your confirmation emails for flight, hotel, car rentals to Tripit and it will organize all the details and numbers for you.

Gist
Most of your contact lists are saved on different computers, devices or online services. Gist is a great Android application that will help you bring them all together to one place. It also has the ability to pull data from the web to keep you up-to-date with your contacts.

Dial Zero
Dial Zero is used for call assistance purposes. This Android application helps you to quickly get through the phone calls where you have to keep pressing “0” until you get to the real person.

Google Goggles
Another application among the best Android apps is Google Goggles. This application is basically a visual search engine. You add pictures and then, it tries to tell what they are about. It can also read the content written over the images and translate it into any language.

Fx Camera
Fx Camera is among the best Android applications, because it offers you great camera controls, plenty of customization options, and some great photo effects.

Frederic is a web-enthusiast, small business website builder, designer, who is interested in films, music and new technologies.

Related articles

• Top Android Apps of 2011 (kidfriday.com)
• Ten Android apps for your new smartphone or tablet: Christmas 2011 (slashgear.com)

Guest

Contributing authors on the cutting edge of technology reporting.

Image via Wikipedia

Apple is still selling more units of its two and a half year old iPhone 3GS handset than many manufacturers are of their more modern mobile phones, according to the latest figures.

The iPhone 3GS was launched back in 2009 and has since been superseded by the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S, but this has not stopped Apple gearing up to sell an impressive 1.5 million of the ageing model in the first three months of 2012.

Apple is getting a big boost in the sales of the 3GS thanks to its popularity in emerging global markets, where the high end iPhones are too expensive while the 3GS has become the best budget way to get in on the smartphone rush.

The iPhone 3GS looks quite tame when compared to the iPhone 4S. Its 3.5 inch screen does not have anywhere near the pixel density of the newer Retina Display and its single core processor lacks the number-crunching power of the more modern replacement. Even its 3.2 megapixel camera is looking decidedly ropey.

However, it is the software that really matters and with iOS 5 being made available for both the iPhone 4S and iPhone 3GS it is easy to see that in the mobile world it is possible to teach an old dog some exciting new tricks.

1.5 million sales over three months looks quite small when you compare it to the four million iPhone 4S handset which shipped in the three days after it was initially released. But Apple is playing the long game and stretching out its older hardware to maximise the potential and no other phone approaching three years old will come close to matching this figure in 2012.

Image via CrunchBase

Despite Apple`s long standing success it seems that Google is still being seen as the world`s most popular mobile software firm because its chairman Eric Schmidt has publicly stated that Android is outdoing the iPhone in terms of both functionality and sales.

He pointed out that app developers are likely to choose to create software for operating systems which have the largest potential audience for their works and because Android is packed into smartphones across multiple price brackets they are more likely to choose to stick with Google rather than Apple.

Despite Mr Schmidt`s statement it seems that Apple has at last found a way of retaining the premium image associated with its brand while accessing the lower end of the market where people have smaller budgets. By churning out millions of iPhone

3GS handsets and pointing out that they still run iOS 5, just like the new iPhone 4S but at a fraction of the price, it is able to reach into more pockets across the globe and give Google a real fight.

Guest

Contributing authors on the cutting edge of technology reporting.

Google has introduced its much rumored Google Music service at the company’s “It Goes to 11″ event held at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California. Google Music has been in beta since May when google first introduced the world to its Google Music Beta.

Google has evolved its Music service since the beta. It has become a full-fledged 13-million track service that offers music from Universal, EMI, and Sony Music. Warner Music has not been signed on yet to offer their music.

Google Music integrates beautifully with Google Plus by allowing users to share any song that they purchase, or get for free, more on that in a bit, with their Google Plus circles that will allow other users to get one full listen of that track. This feature beats out anything Apple, or any other music service, has offered in the past. Music has always had a social aspect to it, however Google expands this notion through the use of Google Plus.

I eluded to free tracks earlier. Google Music offers free tracks as do most paid services. There is a bit of a twist with this, Google has secured some exclusive tracks. Some of the launch artists include Busta Rhymes, Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews Band, and even the Rolling Stones. Google will be offering free tracks to bring more users into the fold. The Rolling Stones have released a Live Album that has not been released before, the 1973 Brussels Affair Live album. This is only available from Google Music. I expect Google to make more deals like this to bolster their position within the Market.

Regarding paid songs Google has integrated their Music shop into the Android Market. It works beautifully on a Desktop-browser, it can work on an iOS device, and Android devices will be receiving an updated Market application to include Music options. Songs from the paid section range from $0.99 to $1.29. This is the standard pricing from the music labels.

With the introduction of Google Music comes “Artist Hub”. Artist hub allows any artist, indie or mainstream to create an Artist Hub page. You must have the rights to distribute your songs. Artist Hub requires an artist to pay a one-time fee in order to create an Artist hub page. After you have paid this fee you are able to upload your music to be sold on Google Music. Here is the best part for artists, you set the price. Yes, you set the price. There are presets, but you are not required to use these. If you want to sell your music for $1.79 per track, you can do so. You could even sell a whole album for $2.99, it’s up to you. The royalty split is the same as Applications on the Mac, 30% goes to Google, 70% to the Artist. The new Google Music Artist pages will put a big dent into Myspace’s dominance with Music.

Google Music is not just a shop it is also a storage mechanism for your collection, up to 20,000 songs. The music you purchase through Google Music does not count against your total, only the items that you upload. This makes it a much easier option for purchasing music by not forcing you to include purchased music.

Google utilizes an application to upload, and download, your music. When you go through Google’s web interface for downloading your music, you are limited to 2 downloads per track. This is to limit piracy and is completely understandable as to the limit. Passing around Google Music logins would make it a bit too easy to commit piracy. If you use the Music Manager application it will allow you to download your music as often as you want, as well as upload your music to your Google Music storage locker.

Google Music works quite well, even for somebody without an Android device. It does have its limitations for those non-android owners. If you like Google, and/or hate Apple, and want a free storage locker for your music, Google Music is the way to go. They may not have all of the labels yet, but it is only a matter of time.

Wayne Dixon

I'm into anything technology related. I do some HTML/CSS/PHP development. I like to follow things that most people would find annoying or not worthwhile. I follow Apple, Microsoft, Google, The Cloud, cell phones and even programming. By Day I'm a Systems Administrator for a Library, which has it's own set of issues. Follow me on Twitter.

Website - More Posts

Google Apps for Education is headed to the Michigan campus. Even though 61 of the top 100 colleges in the US are using Google Apps – I had to give this special shout out to my hometown university of Michigan.

Great to see these implementations going in across the country.

James Hicks

James is the Founder and Chief Technologist of HicksNewMedia, a technology consulting and digital publishing firm providing effective and relevant solutions to individuals and businesses looking to utilize all things on the interweb. Follow him on Twitter | about.me | Facebook | Google+

Website - Twitter - Facebook - More Posts

Google Wallet is an app that allows owners of the Sprint Nexus S Android phone to, essentially, use that phone as their wallet. For instance, the app allows the owner to make Tap and Pay transactions at all PayPass enabled merchant terminals.

The Vision:

Google Wallet has been designed for an open commerce ecosystem. It will eventually hold many if not all of the cards you keep in your leather wallet today. And because Google Wallet is a mobile app, it will be able to do more than a regular wallet ever could, like storing thousands of payment cards and Google Offers but without the bulk. Eventually your loyalty cards, gift cards, receipts, boarding passes, tickets, even your keys will be seamlessly synced to your Google Wallet. And every offer and loyalty point will be redeemed automatically with a single tap via near field communication (NFC).

To be completely clear – watch the video below to understand what Google Wallet is trying to do:

Related articles

• A closer look at Google Wallet (news.cnet.com)

James Hicks

James is the Founder and Chief Technologist of HicksNewMedia, a technology consulting and digital publishing firm providing effective and relevant solutions to individuals and businesses looking to utilize all things on the interweb. Follow him on Twitter | about.me | Facebook | Google+

Website - Twitter - Facebook - More Posts