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Boot up: Google's new maps, tricks for monetising games, Dropbox's numbers and more(Guardian Web Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) A burst of 8 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team A new Google Maps app for smartphones and tablets >> Google Official Blog One important change you should know about is that Latitude and check-ins will be retired. These features will no longer be a part of the new Google Maps app, and will stop functioning in older versions by 9 August. We understand some of you still want to see your friends and family on a map, which is why we've added location sharing and check-ins to Google+ for Android (coming soon to iOS). More details about Latitude and check-in changes can be found in our help center. The offline maps feature for Android is also no longer available. Instead we've created a new way for you to access maps offline by simply entering "OK Maps" into the search box when viewing the area you want for later. Finally, My Maps functionality is not supported in this release but will return to future versions of the app. So Latitude is now part of Google+ - as everything will eventually be. The offline capability isn't important enough to merit a menu option, yet is important enough to be implemented. Odd. The limits of Facebook's search tool >> NYTimes.com Vindu Goel: In practice, Graph Search has many limitations. Because Facebook uses so-called structured search technology to scan the boxes and buttons that users fill out on the site, it's only as good as the boxes checked. For example, when I searched my social network for "friends who like ice cream," Facebook only returned 12 results. Left out was the silent majority who regularly lick cones and never bothered to tell Facebook. Graph Search also tends to be too literal, often failing to discern the broader meaning of specific data points. For example, a search for "my friends who work at newspapers" returned no results, even though several hundred of my Facebook friends have listed specific newspapers as employers. Latter point is tricky if you don't have structured data. Former point is just, well, life. 40% of consumers are unaware that Google Adwords are adverts >> Econsultancy While conducting a research project for an insurance sector client, Bunnyfoot discovered that 81% of users clicked on Google Adwords listings as opposed to natural search results. Further investigation of this surprising bias revealed that 41 out of the 100 individuals tested did not know that Adwords were paid-for adverts, believing them instead to be the most authoritative links. Looking at a Google results page for 'car insurance', the paid ads do stand out thanks to the background shading, while Google does add the label 'ads related to car insurance' at the top. The survey seems to be robust (people were recruited in the street, and eye-tracking was used to see what they looked at). If verified more widely, it would be ammunition for Google's detractors in its fight with the European Commission's antitrust arm. Behavioral economics of Free to Play games >> Boing Boing Ramin Shokrizade's "Top F2P Monetization Tricks" shows how the free-to-play world deploys practical behavioral economics to convince players to spend more than they intend to, adapting to players to hook them and then pry open their wallets wider and wider. I was very interested to learn that some games look for behaviors that mark out "spenders" and convert themselves from "skill games" (win by being good at them) to "money games" (win only by spending). Pirate Bay plans encrypted messaging app where 'no one can listen in' >> The Verge In the wake of recent revelations about NSA surveillance efforts, the co-founder of The Pirate Bay has launched a drive to crowdsource funding for a new mobile messaging app — one so secure that its creators say they couldn't turn over people's messages even if they wanted to. Hemlis (it means "secret" in Swedish), is being developed by Peter Sunde, one of the individuals behind The Pirate Bay, along with Linus Olsson and Leif Högberg. It's described as an easy to use messaging app in the vein of WhatsApp or iMessage, with one important twist: it uses end-to-end encryption to ensure that nobody can monitor your messages. "No one can listen in," the Hemlis site promises. "Not even us." UK.gov's digi-by-default plan slammed >> The Register A letter that demands answers to a wide range of concerns expressed by MPs about the government's digital-by-default has landed on Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude's desk. The Science and Technology Select Committee's chair Andrew Miller fired off the missive (PDF) to Maude, after gaping holes were spotted in evidence submitted to the panel during a public grilling last month. It is now calling on the minister to provide responses to unanswered questions about cost; security; awareness and uptake; identity assurance and data accuracy; and public confidence. Glass, Home and solipsism >> Benedict Evans When I was watching the launch event for Facebook Home, a loud alarm bell started ringing for me when Mark Zuckerberg said words to the effect that "phones should be about more than apps - they should be about people" - by which of course he means "about Facebook". The problem with this is that actually, we've spent the last six years making phones about more than just people. People use Facebook on their phones a LOT, yes, but they do a lot of other things as well. If all I wanted was a phone about people I'd be using a $20 Nokia with a battery that lasts a month. The same point, I think, applies to Google Glass. If you spend all day in the Googleplex, thinking googly thoughts about data ingestion and Now and the interest graph, then having 'Google' hovering in front of your eyes instead of rubbing on a phone seems like a really obvious progression. It's a wider musing on the meaning of "customer". But when did Google change from being a company that wanted to send you away from its site to the best search result as fast as possible into one which wanted to wrap itself, Alien-like, around your face all day? Dropbox now has 175 millions users >> TechCrunch DRopbox is so big it now has its own conference, during which it announced a datastore API, Dropbox integration with Yahoo Mail for Android and revealed its latest user numbers. The company now has 175 million users, up from 100 million in November 2012. DBX also saw the launch of several new APIs for the 100,000 apps on the Dropbox platform. Still, most stunning might be Dropbox's growth. It reportedly turned down some serious acquisition offers and the bet on itself seems to be paying off. Days storage is no longer an nerdy niche service. It's becoming a necessity of modern life. You can follow Guardian Technology's linkbucket on Pinboard To suggest a link, either add it below or tag it with @gdntech on the free Delicious service. (c) 2013 Guardian Newspapers Limited. |