This week and next we're running our Spring Developers Project with none other than WIMM and their WIMM One developer preview kits. This is the same kit we reviewed in full a few weeks ago, now here ready to distribute to you! All need in exchange is your awesome ideas for mini-apps for the future of this watchface-sized Android device! We've chosen several winners already and the project is set to continue through until right before the start of Mobile World Congress 2012 - check below to see our first winners and their awesome contributions!
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‘Google Plus’ Stories
SlashGear’s WIMM Spring Developers Project Update!
Google+ iPhone app gets Instant Uploads
Up until now, the social network known as Google+ has had two separate application fronts - one for Android, the other for iOS. The only real difference between the two was in one of the biggest draws for the platform as a whole: Android's ability to access your Photo Gallery and instantly upload every bit of media you own. Chin up, Apple users, the iPhone version of the Google+ app has just been updated, and the Instant Upload feature is in full effect.
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H&M becomes Google+’s most followed brand page
Forget Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Nike, Disney, or even Google. The one company that people have flocked to more than anyone else in the search giant's increasingly massive social network is discount clothes retailer H&M. Sure, that Super Bowl ad featuring David Beckham in his underwear must have built a lot of brand excitement among at least part of the online population, but what is the real driving factor behind H&M catapulting ahead of so many other iconic companies?
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SlashGear Evening Wrap-Up: February 8, 2012
Zdravstvuj everyone! Especially our Russian friends. Yes, that weird word at the beginning of this post is "hello" in Russian, and is the perfect segue into our first story on today's evening wrap-up: Siri may get Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, and Russian language support in March. As we all know, Siri won't rest until she's taken over the entire world. That's something to worry about, but luckily the privacy issues people had with the iPhone's Path won't be. A Path update went live today to try to resolve the problem.
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Google+ Hangouts presents bold threat to Skype
The social network known as Google+ has once again shown another tiny improvement set to make big waves, and it’s got us all thinking that Skype may be on its way out alongside all over enterprise conferencing systems. Google+ Hangouts (the On Air version) now has a Full Screen button, this allowing you to turn your entire monitor into your conferencing station. While Skype and other conferencing systems have had similar functionality to this for a while now, Hangouts ability to use virtual whiteboards and screen sharing have the potential to put the competition out of business.
Facebook borrows Google+ style for UI tweak
Facebook may be looking at a $100m floatation, but it apparently only spent a few cents on photocopying the image gallery UI from Google+ and using it itself. The new Facebook layout floats a comments/Likes box over the right hand side of a black lightbox, Faceblog spotted, with the tweaked interface being rolled out to certain users already; Julien Girard snapped a shot of Mark Zuckerberg's desk, shown below, for instance. It's a layout that's mighty similar to what Google+ already offers, and the latest example of the two social sites seemingly "borrowing" design cues from each other.
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Google+ Hangout with Obama spurs SOPA discussion
President Obama appeared before the world tonight in a virtual town hall that took place on Google+. As could easily be expected, there were some controversial issues to discuss, one of which was the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Obama responded to a question about the piece of legislation by saying there could be other workarounds, though he did not firmly voice opposition to the measure.
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Obama post-State of Union Google+ hangout tonight
Tonight the President of the United States will rely on the power of Google+ Hangouts to address the people of the internet. This address has previously been billed as a post-State of the Union talk, but now appears to be more of a question and answer session in which questions submitted via the web have been voted upon by non-White House officials - voted upon by Google users, in fact. These questions will be answered by the President one by one in turn while the world watches from their computers, smart TVs, and mobile devices at home.
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Google fires back at Privacy critics as Congress demands answers
Google has struck back at outcry around its newly-combined privacy policy, insisting users “still have choice and control”, amid demands by the US Congress for answers on data use and collection. “You can use as much or as little of Google as you want” policy manager Betsy Masiello said on the search company’s Public Policy blog, reiterating that Google is “not collecting more data about you.” However, US lawmakers are already insisting on answers [pdf link] as to whether users can take advantage of Google services without leaving an unexpected data trail.
FBI seeks to track Social Media en masse
There’s a brand new job alert out there this week, engineers and developers, and you should hop right on it if you want to help the FBI work on a tool which will provide them with an “Open Source and social media alert, mapping, and analysis application solution.” What I want to do right now is, in a very basic way, debunk how this situation will almost certainly be blown out of proportion by the same crew of people that ultimately (and thankfully) took down the SOPA and PIPA bills. This tool, if I’m to trust the job offer I’m reading here from the Federal Business Opportunities website, is not going to be hacking into your personal or secured information in any way. Instead it will be a mass organization and search tool for the FBI to keep track of all social and open source sites on the internet at all times.
Google+ speaks on teens, privacy additions, digs on Facebook
There can be no denying that Google+ has one main competitor in Facebook, so it should come as no small surprise when they mention one another in day to day updates. What we're seeing today is an update to both the age range of Google+ users and the privacy which they all can enjoy on the Google-based social network. The mention of Facebook comes in the sad state of affairs Google sees on Facebook where 'teens end up over-sharing with all of their so-called “friends.”'
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Twitter, Facebook and MySpace team tells Google “Don’t Be Evil”
Engineers at Facebook, Twitter and MySpace have joined the protests against Google's search integration of Google+ results, crafting a browser add-on called "Don't Be Evil" that adds a far broader range of social into search. The tool, distributed at a site called Focus on the User, argues that rather than just pull Google+ profiles and topics into the search engine, Google would better serve actual users by integrating far more social networks: Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Flickr and more. Rather than see exactly what Google wants you to see through its forced Google+ promotion, you can be shown what the company's pure algorithm believes is relevant.
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