The social network Google+ will soon allow people to use pseudonyms. Until now, Google has enforced Google+ users to enter their real names. You were not allowed to use a pseudonym, even company names were forbidden. Yet, this attitude has caused much critics.

The opposers argued: Nobody can enforce people to use their real names on the Web. In some countries, it is even dangerous to use your real name on the Internet. In any case, many people don’t like to go online with their real-life name – for example while talking about diseases or other personal matters. This attitude should be respected.

Google and other people against pseudonyms in the Web argue that browsing the Web with your real name increases the discussion quality. Furthermore, people on the Web can be identified easier if necessary. Yet this advantage was no real one, as Google did not check whether the “real name” that you entered were really correct.

Now on San Francisco’s Web 2.0 Summit, Vic Gundotra, Senior Vice-President of Social Business at Google, declared that in the future, Google+ is going to allow pseudonyms and other forms of identity. Possibly being company and artist names. The manager did not add information about when this change will be applied.

Starting in January 2010, Google had introduced SSL encryption for its Gmail website. Within the coming weeks, many users having a Google account will be redirected to Google’s encrypted web search. Search terms and the result pages are sent via SSL. You may access the encrypted version directly by browsing to https://www.google.com/.

Skype had delivered its Windows installation file bundled with the Google toolbar, and offered Chrome upon updating. Skype’s Raul Liive explained that the partnership with Google has been quit.

In this Skype release we have removed Google product offers from the Skype install flow.
We have also released the same update for Skype 5.5 for Windows.

By bundling its products with popular third-party software, Google tries to increase their popularity, like Google Chrome. Skype’s large user base has given Google a good chance to inform millions of Windows users about the alternative browser.

Users had been counselled to delete the chrome.exe file. After the patch had been released, numerous users in Google’s support forum as well as on Twitter talked publicly about the issue. A Microsoft spokeswoman declared that in 3,000 cases, Google Chrome was uninstalled by one of the mentioned security tools.

Google tells users to install the patch fix first, then to reinstall the browser. According to a Google blog post, an update is going to be published fixing the error automatically.

Some years ago, Google started a cooperation with AOL, so that users of the chat software Google Talk could also establish a connection to their friends in AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). Now, this integration has been enhanced.

It has always been possible to chat with your AIM buddies directly from Gmail, but you needed your own AOL network account for this feature. You don’t need such anymore — AIM contacts can be added directly. This feature is not only supported by Gmail, but also by iGoogle, Orkut and Gtalk on Android smartphones. This works from AIM’s end as well: you can add Google users with their mail address.

As consequence of this new enhancement, the Google developers have removed the possibility to enter your AIM account at Google Talk. AOL has developed a little tool to make it easier for you to add your chat buddies in Google Talk.

Google Talk is based on the open XMPP protocol. Google has added VoIP functionality called Jingle. The service can be used with any chat programs, as long as they support the XMPP protocol.

For years, Gmail offered the possibility to label incoming messages. These labels are a combination of a color-coding and folders that categorize emails. Until now, you had to get active once and set up your filters. The Smart Labels now presented will do at least part of the work automatically.

The experimental feature that you can turn on in Gmail’s Labs section, tries to detect certain e-mail types automatically and adds a matching label to them. Google developer Stanley Chen talks about advertising mail, social network notifications as well as messages from mailing lists or similar discussion platforms.

Chen explicitly notices that you can still use your existing filters. If there are some duplicate actions resulting of the new Smart Labels, you can edit them too. If an e-mail gets miscategorized, you can forward it to the developers. They will then check why the error happened. However, be conscious that you will send the complete e-mail to the developers.

The file viewer Google docs viewer is able to display numerous new document types in your browser, among them Adobe Photoshop- and Illustrator files.

You are confronted with the Google docs viewer when you use Gmail – when opening e-mail attachments that the browser cannot display on its own. With the update, the web application can now display twelve new file types, including Microsoft Excel spreadsheets (.xls and .xlsx) as well as PowerPoint 2007 and 2010 presentations (.pptx).

Apple Pages files can be rendered in your browser as well. Other new supported file formats are Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Postscript and true type fonts. The list is completed with Autocad files (.dxf) and Scalable Vector Graphics (.svg).

The rendering is quite faithful. However, some browsers cannot directly copy selected texts to your clipboard. With Google Chrome and Firefox, this works using the Ctrl+C keyboard shortcut. The viewer itself is limited to correct rendering; you cannot edit the files.

Google docs viewer is available outside of Gmail as well, at docs.google.com/viewer. To view files with it, they must be available on the web (callable with http or https).

Google now offers a tool to import bookmarks from Yahoo!’s social bookmarking service Delicious. This way, you can import your contents to Google Bookmarks. The tool also copies your tags and labels. To use the bookmarks import tool, you have to sign in with either your Yahoo! ID account or your old Delicious login.

In late 2010, Yahoo! announced that they want to close several projects. There were rumors that Delicious might be one of them. Few days later, the Delicious operators stated that they don’t want to close down Delicious.

We’re actively thinking about the future of Delicious and we believe there is a home outside the company that would make more sense for the service and our users. We’re in the process of exploring a variety of options and talking to companies right now. And we’ll share our plans with you as soon as we can.

Google is one of the companies that had and have to take rather much criticism. Everything started when Google launched their new e-mail service Gmail in 2004. Privacy protectors were much worried – as Google uses contents of the messages that users send and receive to display personally customized advertisements.

Google has to read my e-mail to guess my interests and to be able to display matching ads in Gmail. But exactly this collides with the secrecy of the post, according to privacy advocates and the U.S. Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). Concerning Gmail, this is not a real problem in my opinion, as it is not employees reading my e-mail, but automatic programs – in fractions of a second, and completely anonymous. Here the displayed ads help to ensure that Google can continue to offer its e-mail service for free. I find: That’s totally okay.

In the meantime, Google has the reputation of a data hydra. Maybe not totally incorrectly. In any case, Google knows what I am watching on Youtube, where I am at the moment (Google Maps location service, for example on iPhone), what my house looks like (Street View), who my friends are (Android cell phones and Gmail contact list), which web sites I like to surf (Google Chrome browser), what I like to read (Google eBookstore), and which things I am shopping for on the Web (Google Shopping search).

But why the current discussion around Google Analytics? It is a statistics service used by website operators, bloggers and shop owners to get more information about their visitors. Therefore, data about your browser, your screen resolution and your operating system are sent to Google as soon as you open any website making use of Google Analytics.

The total collected data are not suitable for an exact location detection or definition who I am as visitor of the website. Plus, the collected user information is made available to the site owner only in anonymized form, for example: “50% of your visitors use 1024 times 768 pixels as screen resolution.” Here I see clear advantages for the owners – and finally for me, the visitor, as well. Finally it is me drawing advantage from the website knowing me well, being optimized for my needs and browser features. This is why mynetx.net uses Google Analytics as well.

Collecting these anonymous data – yes, my IP address belongs to them as well, as it changes once per day anyways – does not appear to be a big problem for me. I think it does not collide with privacy guidelines. And I am sure that if there is a test court case, it is going to have a similar judgment. After all, I live in Europe, and I should be allowed to make use of tech to my advantage. And Google belongs to tech as well.

For example, on the new home page there is a combined list containing subscriptions, friend activities and recommendations. You will find browsing the many lists easier with this combined list. Also, you don’t only see the latest video from channels you subscribed to, but all new clips that have been uploaded since your last visit.

The video display has been optimized. You can hide clips you don’t want to see by clicking an “X” icon. Videos you have already watched are shown half-transparent, so you won’t watch them again without wanting to. The new home page also contains recently liked and favorited videos.

Directly below the search box, you will now find links to your inbox and to the latest comments. At the end of the page, there is a link for loading more videos, so chances are higher that you won’t have to leave the home page that often anymore.

To check out the new features, simply visit the opt-in page for the new homepage. Switching back to the old version is possible anytime.

Google Chrome is the fastest browser and getting more and more popular as alternative to Internet Explorer and Firefox. Gmail users however miss the integration of their email account into the Google browser. The free “Google Mail Checker Plus” extension adds this feature and links Google Chrome to Gmail.

As soon as the Chrome extension “Google Mail Checker Plus” is installed, a red envelope icon appears on the right side of the address bar. The figure at the bottom right of the envelope shows the number of unread messages in your Gmail inbox. Clicking this envelope opens a popout window with all unread messages. You can read and reply to messages directly from this window. Sure, the add-on cannot replace your full-featured mail program; however it is ideal for accessing your Gmail account quickly.

Download for free: Google Mail Checker

Since this week, Google has added a new useful feature: On entering a search term, you may discover a small magnifying glass next to each result. Clicking it causes Google to display a preview thumbnail of either the website or the document.

I consider this really useful, as it avoids me having to visit ad-bloated, messy or disgusting websites. Sadly, there are just too many of them, and thanks to the new preview feature, you can miss at least some of them. That is, you will find the right website faster, the site that you’re interested in — a nice thing, the new previews.

Another new feature is this: Google users can navigate through the search results using the keyboard. That’s useful as well — especially when using a notebook on your knees while not at home. Sometimes it is the little things that make your life easier.

7,225 inhabitants, idyllic position in the German Alps with mountains and cows—that’s Oberstaufen. At once, this small town gets highly popular, as Google starts its Web service Streetview in Germany with photos from Oberstaufen.

So it is not one of the announced 20 big cities that is made available online first. However, all of this is not coincidentally: Marketing experts baked a pie and made it the center of a campaign, inviting Google to camera drives.

Walter Grath, Major of Oberstaufen, stated:

Potential visitors want to preview the area they will be going to for holidays. We surely hope that Oberstaufen gains more popularity as tourism town and that people planning their holidays in the Alps and in the Allgäu will first think about Oberstaufen.

My personal opinion: He is right. A small spa like Oberstaufen can only profit from the additional popularity. Google makes it possible—this time without any privacy concerns.

For encrypting all search terms and receiving encrypted search results, you have to call Google with this special web address (URL):

https://www.google.com/

The “s” indicates a safe and encrypted connection. The addition “SSL” above Google’s logo also reminds you that all data are sent and received encrypted. All result pages will have “encrypted.google.com” as host name. Your advantage: Search terms and result pages cannot be sniffed while on their way between you and Google’s servers. Of course, Google itself still knows what you are looking for.

Obviously, images consume the largest amount of data needed to transmit when browsing websites. Nowadays, images on the Web are using technologies developed a decade ago, like JPEG or the ancient GIF format.

A first developer preview for WebP proves that image file sizes can be reduced markably, while retaining the image quality. Like JPEG, WebP is a lossy format — while PNG and GIF are lossless. According to Google, images make up to 65% of the received data when browsing a website.

For WebP (Web Picture), Google is working with the VP8 codec already being used in the free video format WebM (Web Movie). The data overhead (header information etc) in WebP images is just 20 bytes per file and can be extended for storing Meta data.

To test the advantages of WebP in the wild, Google has selected one million images by random and converted them to WebP. Most of the files were JPEG files, but also some GIFs and PNGs. The result: In average, the file size could be reduced by 39% while retaining the image quality. Google assumes that the compression can be stronger when starting with uncompressed source images.

On a special website, Google compares WebP images with the same images in other graphics formats. Besides the optical differences, you can view the corresponding file sizes. You want to test WebP yourself? Use the provided conversion tool. For the future, the developers plan to add an alpha channel so WebP can support transparency.

For now, you cannot use WebP on websites, as there is no browser supporting the format. Currently Google is working on Webkit support, so Chrome and Safari will soon be the first browsers being able to display WebP images. Google hopes for other browser manufacturers as well to realize the advantages of WebP and add support, like they did with WebM.