Google+ isn’t going anywhere, says guy in charge of Google+

When Google+ head Vic Gundotra abruptly left Google earlier this year, it quickly led to rumors that Google would be scaling back its ambitions for the social network and cutting the division's resources. In an interview with Re/code today, new head of social media Dave Besbris said that the Google+ team is still going strong, and the service won't be going anywhere anytime soon.
“We’re the largest we’ve ever been,” Besbris told Re/code. "We’re actually very happy with the progress of Google+, [Larry Page] said this at the time that Vic transitioned that he’s going to continue working on building this stuff, that he’s very happy with it. The company is behind it."

The full interview is worth a read—while Besbris didn't give surprising answers to any of the questions asked, he did talk about Google+'s ad policy and the challenges of battling peoples' "pre-conceived notions" about the social network. He also attempted to reassure those who feel they have been forced into signing up for Google+ just because they want to use another Google service.

"I only want people to use the software when they want to use the software," he said.

Though Google+ will apparently be around "for the long haul," the social network is still being decoupled from many of Google's other services. Google+ sign-ins are required to comment on YouTube videos, but use of your real name to create a Google+ account is not. Businesses using Google Hangouts no longer need to give their users Google+ accounts. Creating a Gmail account no longer requires you to create a Google+ account. Reports suggest that the Google+ Photos service will eventually be separated from Google+ as well. So even if Google+ itself isn't actually going away, it's clear that it's no longer as central to Google's product strategy as it once was.

How To Hide Text In Microsoft Word 2007, Reveal It & Protect It

Sometimes what we hide is more important than what we reveal. Especially, documents with sensitive information, some things are supposed to be ‘for some eyes only’. Such scenarios are quite common, even for the more un-secretive among us. You want to show someone a letter composed in MS Word, but want to keep some of the content private; or it’s an official letter with some part of it having critical data. As important as these two are, the most common use could involve a normal printing job. Many a time we have to print different versions of a document, one copy for one set of eyes and others for other sets. Rather than creating multiple copies and therefore multiple printing jobs, what if we could just do it from the same document? That too, without the hassle of repeated cut and paste. We can, with a simple feature in MS Word – it’s just called Hidden and let me show you how to use it to hide text in Microsoft Word 2007. It’s a simple single click process. Open the document

Clip & Convert Your Video Faster With Quicktime X & The New Handbrake 64-bit [Mac]

Recently a friend of mine asked for my help to find a video of a good presentation to be shown to one of his classes. He also requested for it to be iPod friendly as he would also distribute the video to his students. Three things came to my mind: Steve Jobs, Quicktime and Handbrake . Mr. Jobs is well known for his great presentations which are often used as references. I have several Apple Keynotes videos. For my friend, I decided to choose the one that introduced MacBook Air – the one that never fails to deliver the wow effect to the non-techie audience. It’s a part of January 2008 Macworld Keynote. First step: The Cutting To get only a specific part of the Keynote, I clipped the 1+ hour video into about 20 minutes using Quicktime X (which comes with Snow Leopard). I opened the movie using Quicktime X and chose Trim from the Edit menu ( Command + T ). Then I chose the start and end of my clip by moving both edges of the trimming bar to the desired position. To increase th

Ex-Skypers Launch Virtual Whiteboard Deekit

Although seriously long in the tooth and being disrupted by a plethora of startups, for many years Skype has existed as an almost ubiquitous app in any remote team’s toolkit. So it seems apt that a new startup founded by a team of ex-Skype employees is set to tackle another aspect of online collaboration. Deekit, which exits private beta today, is a virtual and collaborative whiteboard to help remote teams work smarter. The Tallinn, Estonia-based startup is headed up by founder and CEO, Kaili Kleemeier, who was previously a Head of Operations at Skype. She and three colleagues quit the Internet calling giant in 2012 and spent a year researching ideas in the remote team space. They ended up focusing on creating a new virtual whiteboard, born out of Kleemeier’s experience collaborating with technical teams remotely, specifically helping Skype deal with incident management. “Working with remote teams has been a challenge in many ways – cultural differences, language differences, a

Kiran Upadhyay

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