5 Best Chrome Extensions for Google+ Power Users

Power Google+ users can install these best Google+ Chrome extensions and improve usage and navigation around Google+ social interactions for a richer experience. We believe these 5 extensions you must install on your Google chrome browser right now. Tested to work as intended.

Best Google+ Chrome Extensions

Replies and more for Google+– the most useful feature it will add is “Reply’ and “Reply to Author” links for easily replying and mentioning other users (hopefully these features will become default in Google+). It will also badges the favicon with a number when you have new messages. You can use shortcut like Ctrl+Enter and Shift+Enter to submit a comment or post. The header bar floats down as you scroll and a dropdown will allow you to share with additional sharing options (Twitter/Facebook/Email). Must get this.

Photo Zoom- provides fast zooming for photos inside your Google+ Stream. Just hover over the image you wish to zoom and +Photo Zoom will load the enlarged version of the picture. You can choose to zoom only when a key is pressed as well as decided the zoom delay time. Choose if you want to zoom profile images on Google+, Picassa images or all external images – all without clicking open any image!

Surplus- Will put the notification icon alongside other icon in the browser bar itself (instead of only the Google+ page), which allows you to see Google+ notification alerts while you are on any page and interact with your friends without visiting the Google+ profile page or stream. Not only can you post or respond from within the popup, but also get Desktop Notifications, notification sounds and switch between multiple Google accounts.

So though there are many Google+ chrome extensions, I hope you like our choice of these must have Google+ extensions.

Plus One Anything - It will let you +1 any page on the web, even if there is no +1 button installed on the page. The +1 icon is loaded in the browser bar along with all other extensions. Simply click on it and a new +1 icon loads with url. Click to confirm and you have shared the page on Google+ easily.

+Comment Toggle – is a simple extension that hides any comments to posts within your Google+ Stream and makes them available if and when you actually want to see them. If you have a crowded comment stream, it can give quite a cluttered look. It collapses all comments and make the stream clean, so that you can click to see comments.

Share some other useful Google+ Chrome extensions below and we might add them here.

Evidence Of A Facebook Music Service Surfaces

References to a product called “Vibes” have been found in Facebook’s code, and it could be related to the company’s rumored music service.

The social network launched its Skype-powered video chat service on Wednesday. Part of the process of getting started with the one-on-one video communication product is downloading and installing a program on the desktop.

Eagle-eyed software engineer and researcher Jeff Rose was curious about what he was installing and how it interacts with Skype, so he decided to look into the code of the desktop app. In it, he found that the installer supports not one but two applications. One is called “Peep,” which is related to the video chat client, and one is called “Vibes,” which is apparently related to a music downloading app.

It seems clear that Facebook has something related to music downloading up its sleeve. Could it be an app for downloading your music and uploading it to the cloud? Could it be powered by Spotify? Or could it just be code that refers to a defunct or discarded product?

How to Add Google+ Profile Buttons to Your Site

The best way to direct visitors to your Google+ profile or content page is to use a Google+ Profile Button. Google has provided Google+ Profile Buttons generator tool which can give you a cut and paste code easily.

Google+ Profile Buttons

Visit the Google profile button page and you can grab Google profile buttons in various sizes, have an option to link to your content or profile page.

What is your profile url? We visit https://profiles.google.com and it redirects to https://plus.google.com/110720484075426485909/posts (this will only happen if you have a Google+ account). So either we can use that url or use this profile link https://profiles.google.com/110720484075426485909/ which will also redirect to the same page. You can choose to send visitors to your content or author info page.

Note the code also has the author markup recently introduced by Google built in. So if you select Author page, then the rel=”me” gets in, and if you select content page, then rel=”author” get incorporated. This will help show your profile in Google search results. Also note Google has strict branding guidelines and you cannot alter the Google+ logos, need to link to your profile and display the button clearly.

Google +1 vs Facebook – can it challenge?

I pretty much live on Faceboook - it’s my connection to the lives of my friends, a way of sharing information and self-expression in the further digitisation of our modern lifestyle. For many it has become the standard channel for social interaction and boasts six hundred million users and climbing.

Today Google launches its answer to Facebook. Google+1 which is a potential challenger to Facebook – but can it seriously provide a challenge to Mark Zuckerburg’s behemoth?

What is Google + 1?

Google +1 is a social media networking service like Facebook, but with a slight twist, search results become based on friend’s recommendations from the use of a +1 Button. Google says, “The beauty of +1’s is their relevance—you get the right recommendations (because they come from people who matter to you), at the right time (when you are actually looking for information about that topic) and in the right format (your search results).”

How does Google +1 work?

You can start to use Google +1 by signing up with a Google Account. From there you are able to create your Google Profile. Google Profiles has a similar interface to the Facebook Info page, allowing users to put in details such as a brief Introduction, Occupation, Education, Looking For and Relationship Statuses. It’s a nice looking page but does not have a Wall or the options to comment that makes Facebook so appealing.

But the Google Profiles is not really what Google is trying to push into the social networking market but rather their . Users will be able to recommend a website to their +1 Friends by pressing a +1 button. For example say you go to search Snowboarding Holidays and your best friend is a keen snowboarder you will be able to see any recommended sites he has pressed the +1 Button on. This is an interesting idea, clearly influenced by the Facebook “Like” button, but very much depends on people taking the time press the +1 button. The Like button on Facebook allows users to publicly show they like a certain person, programme, event etc. meaning it is far more a tool of self-expression than recommendation.

Google +1 v Facebook

Google +1, in my opinion, will not be able to compete with Facebook in the social networking arena. Facebook has dominance in the field and any it doesn’t have Twitter has pretty much taken control of plus there are hundreds of other small social networking sites. The Profiles page is a very basic Facebook page and offers nothing new and exciting that will attract new users or convert Facebook purists.

What is Google + 1 good for then?

Whilst Google +1 may never be “the New Facebook”, the +1 button is something that can catch on and become quite a useful feature for website searches but tying this into a social networking profile page is an issue. If you could use one without the other this would be a very interesting but I do not see many people signing up to the Google Profile Page to access the +1 Button. To make this work Google will have to really advertise the service but I just don’t see people being that interested in using this. I do not see many of my Facebook friends spending the time to press a button to recommend a site on the off-chance I might search the exact same thing.

Another major concern I have for Google +1 between Facebook, Twitter and the hundreds of other social networking sites, do we really need another site to relay information on. I think Google has arrived too late to make a big impact in the social networking world.

We will see once +1 is up and running!

Guest Post written by Richard Lovell

Multiplayer Game For Kids, Passes 20 Million Users

In the last few years, web game developers have started to bring online concepts, gaming and otherwise, that have proven successful with adults to a younger market. And the results have been no less compelling for younger audiences.

Mind Candy’s Moshi Monsters, which brings social networking and virtual worlds to kids, passed 50 million users in June. Club Penguin, a massively multiplayer role playing game for kids developed by New Horizon Interactive was bought by Disney in 2007 for $350 million. And today, KingsIsle Entertainment is announcing that Wizard 101, itself a massively multiplayer online game that targets that much coveted 6 to 14-year-old demographic, has passed 20 million registered users.

Though of course it’s all relative, Wizard101 has flown somewhat under the radar compared to Moshi Monsters, Club Penguin, and of course its older cousins like World of Warcraft and Free Realms. Yet, with 20 million in the U.S. alone and nearly 12 million unique monthly visitors, Wizard101′s latest numbers undoubtedly make it one of the most popular massively multiplayer (MMO) games in North America.

Wizard101, being a game that involves a fair amount of wizards and wizardry, is often compared to Harry Potter and the Hogwarts band of teen witches and wizards. Wizard101, too, takes place at a wizarding school, which is looking to populate its ranks with young wizards. Users start as wizard students, progressing their way through grades and various worlds, ultimately battling an evil character not unlike Voldemort.

Yet, while the comparison with Harry Potter may be an easy one to make, the KingsIsle team prefers to elicit what it calls the “Pixar model” when referring to its influences. This means that, while Wizard101 is a game built for kids and teenagers, it is rife with allusions, jokes, and imagery that makes it appealing to older audiences as well.

For example, Wizard101 is fully voice acted, and the game’s music has seen contributions from Nick Jonas (of the Jonas Brothers) as well as the lead singer of The Blue Oyster Cult, among others. Fred Howard, vice president of Marketing at KingsIsle Entertainment, told me that he has personally heard from a number of grandmothers — those who would never refer to themselves as gamers — who have racked up hundreds of hours of Wizard101 gameplay.

While the graphics, voiceovers, and fantasy elements are appealing to adults and kids alike, the game also owes its success to the fact that it’s free to play online, much like its older brethren WoW and Lord of The Rings, and is direct to consumer and direct to download. The game is easy to set up, and the barriers to entry are low — five minutes of setup and users are off and running.

As players progress, they run into Wizard101′s freemium model, in which users are asked to pay to access further levels and premium content. What’s more, there are more than six worlds users can play around in, and with the 300 hours worth of content recently added, gameplay in Wizard101 is far deeper than the experience one has playing a Facebook game like FarmVille.

Wizard101 also boasts a turn-based card game, with collectible cards in which users can build their own decks, virtual pets and minigames for those pets, and so on. While there’s competition for loot and in-game rewards, the game is casually collaborative, as users can work side by side in duels against evil bad guys, adding the social nature inherent to Facebook games, but building upon those with far more content and features than one might typically find in games made for the social networking platform.

KingsIsle has also taken Wizard101 to mobile with an iPhone app, and as it continues to roll out enhancements to its mobile experience and add levels and minigames to its online game experience, the startup is clearly making a play at users — both kids and adults — that find themselves looking for a deeper experience beyond those available in casual Facebook games.

KingsIsle was founded by Elie Akilian, who sold his Inet Technologies to Tektronix in 2004 for $500 million. Akilian partnered with a former Activision executive and brought on game developers from Austin-based WolfPack studios, the makers of Shadowbane, eventually growing the company to 120-plus employees. Since its founding in 2005, KingsIsle has been bootstrapped, taking no outside investment, but with Wizard101 recently launching in Europe, and online collaborative and immersive games for a younger market hitting the tipping point, it seems only a matter of time before Wizard101 catches up to the likes of Moshi Monsters and becomes more than marginally profitable.