Internet & Media

Google's Hangouts group chat feature is now a little more useful, with one-on-one conversations, a way to look back at chat history, and a standalone app for people who want to use Hangouts as a general communications tool.

New in the chat service, which is a headlining feature of Google's Google+ social network, is a way to do one-on-one chats with people during a group chat. Google is calling the new feature facetoface, and hopes it will get more people to use Google+ instead of jumping to another communication service.

Google has also added a way to go … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO -- Facebook has been the photo king since 2008, but Google just put the social network on notice.

Changes to the Google+ social network -- announced Wednesday at the Google I/O conference at the Moscone Center West here, and launching Wednesday as well -- include a new interface, some new Hangouts features, and most impressively, a series of automatic filters and hashtags for your photos. "Automatic filters," though, doesn't really do justice to how comprehensive they can be.

"Quite a lot [of the new automation] depends on the Knowledge Graph," said Dave … Read more

Google's new education initiative, Google Play for Education, is designed to put more tablets into K-12 classrooms, the company said Wednesday at its Google I/O developers conference.

The new store launches this fall. It enables teachers deploy an app or an e-book to all of their students' tablets at once, and has apps that have been recommended by other teachers to make sure they are appropriate for specific ages and grades.

"Each app has been recommended by a group of educators," Engineering Director Chris Yerga said during the keynote. "This is key because teachers trust … Read more

Google's adding some new firepower to its photo-hosting service on Google+ with features designed to save people time when dumping their photos into the cloud.

Key among them is a feature that will automatically back up photos taken on smartphones and send them to Google's cloud storage. The move follows similar efforts from Dropbox, and more recently Amazon, to provide peace of mind for people who aren't manually backing up their files.

For files that have already been uploaded, Google also has new tools to automatically edit and adjust behind the scenes. That includes a new highlight … Read more

The Google+ news stream is getting a new face.

The new display is very similar in style whether viewed from a mobile device or large-screen computer. The only real difference is that it switches from one to three columns depending on the device used.

The change to Google's nearly 2-year-old social network was unveiled during the company's keynote at Google I/O, an annual developers conference in San Francisco.

At first blush when viewed on a large screen, the new design bears some resemblance to the social networking site Pinterest. However, Google is giving certain types of media, … Read more

Syria's Internet connection is up and running again.

Content delivery network Akamai revealed the Internet's return to life in the country, tweeting that traffic over its network to Syria started to flow again at about 15:30 UTC (8:30 a.m. PT). An image tweeted by Akamai showed Syrian traffic climbing up to within reach of its normal level.

Internet monitoring firm Renesys said routes to Syrian networks were restored at 15:26 UTC, which means the latest outage lasted 8 hours and 25 minutes.

A tweet earlier Wednesday from the state-run Syrian news agency said workers … Read more

Google rolled out a new design for Google Play on Wednesday, showing some extra love to tablet apps.

Google Play's recommendations -- some of which are based on a user's Google+ account -- will now surface apps designed for tablets in its top app charts, Google announced at its Google I/O developer's conference.

Engineering Director Chris Yerga said the new Google Play will make it easier for users to find the apps they want.

I had always thought Americans were willing to try something new -- at least once.

This sense of adventure often explains the nation's predilection for naivete, war, and forgiveness.

So I had imagined that from Alaska to New York, there were people desperate to adorn their faces with the new intellectual's makeup: Google Glass.

And yet, despite the fact that pioneers like Rep. Michele Bachmann have already been game enough to pose in them, ordinary Americans still seem to be feeling resistance.… Read more

Google launched a music streaming service Wednesday, taking its first stab at the growing industry with a new service linked to Google Play for Android.

The All Access service costs $9.99 a month and you get a 30-day free trial. And it's launching Wednesday in U.S., with additional countries coming soon. If you sign up by June 30, you get it for $7.99 a month.

The move puts Google in direct competition with music streaming companies like Pandora and Spotify, and also potentially with Apple, which has been inching in that direction. Just last week, for … Read more