Google Plus is barely one week and there is so much demand for this new social networking service. I have been meaning to show a tutorial on it but fortunately I discovered this blog entry, “How to send Google+ invites ?”

1. Visit Google Plus
2. Click on Google Circles (the 4th icon on header)
3. Click on any of Circles. (Friends, Family, Acquaintances, and Followings)
4. Click Add a new person. Type email ID of the person. Double click on the friend icon. Invite.
5. You can also create your own Circles or use Drag n Drop method for the suggestions.

or watch this video. This is how I send out invites. It helps to know the email address if it is not in your contacts yet.

Sometimes it may take time for invites to appear in your friend’s email address. I noticed it worked in the morning (Philippine time) rather than night time.

You can also check out the tutorials and tips I gathered on Google Plus. There is so much to explore.

I heard of Google +1 from my daughter a week ago but today I got reminded about it during the Blog and Soul Google Adsense webinar. The Google +1 was officially announced March 30 in English speaking countries. The introduction of +1 (as in “plus one”), is similar to the “like” button in facebook but it can be shown all over the web. It is like saying “this is pretty cool” but for google they called it +1.

The +1 button is a shorthand for “this is pretty cool” or “you should check this out.” Click +1 to publicly give something your stamp of approval. Your +1′s can help friends, contacts and others find the best stuff when they search.

To install, users simply log in to their Google accounts and click the +1 button next to any search result. Just like the Facebook’s Like button, +1 s are being shared with a user’s immediate contacts in the google network. These preference are seen throughout the world wide web to see is visible for the whole web to see. “They can appear in Google search results, on ads, and sites across the web. You’ll always be able to see your own +1’s in a new tab on your Google Profile, and if you want, you can share this tab with the world.”

By accident, I was able to see the +1 code when I logged on to my adsense new interface so I quickly added the code to my blogs.

The Google blog explains more on the relevance of the Google plus one.

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). For more information about +1, watch this video:

1. Use Google Chrome extensions to make your browser even more powerful. Book flights on Philippine Airlines and Cebu Pacific, catch up on news with ABS-CBN, GMA and PEP/Spot.ph, look up forex rates with Banco De Oro, and much more, all in a single click, without ever leaving the web page you’re currently on. There are over 1,000 extensions in the Chrome gallery to choose from, including ten
made especially for Filipino users.

2. Personalize Chrome with Philippine themes — choose from twelve specially created themes by local top local designers and personalities including graphic design studio Team Manila, renowned comic book artist Arnold Arre, and the School of Fashion and the Arts, to make your browser reflect your personal style.

3. Search or type in URLs using the omnibox. Just start typing and Chrome figures out whether you’re entering a search term or website address and offers you suggestions of related search terms, URLs,
bookmarks or websites from your history.

4. Browse the web without leaving a trace using Incognito Mode. With Incognito Mode, pages you view won’t appear in your browser history or search history, and they won’t leave other traces, like cookies, on your computer after you close the incognito window. Especially handy when you’re surfing from Internet cafes or shared computers.

5. Surf the web in any language using Chrome’s translate bar. Whenever you visit a page that isn’t in a language you know, Google Chrome’s translation feature automatically detects what language it’s in
and will ask you if you’d like to translate it to your preferred language. This feature uses the supercool Google Translate technology that works across 58 languages and can automatically detect and translate entire websites in less than a second.

6. Re-sort the New Tab Page – The New Tab page replaces the blank white page that other browsers show when you open a new tab and helps you get where you’re going, faster, by showing up to 8 thumbnails of your most frequently visited webpages. You can drag and drop thumbnails to reorder them, delete ones you don’t want to see, or pin ones you want to keep in place. You’ll also see recently closed
tabs.

7. Search sites more easily by tabbing to search. To search another site besides your default web search engine, do a search on that site once, then in all subsequent cases just start typing the name of the site in the omnibox and hit “Tab” to search that site only.

8. Use Session Restore to get back tabs you closed accidentally. On the Basics tab under the options menu, select “Reopen the pages that were open last.”

9. Bookmarks are just a click away with instant bookmarks. Like a page? Click on the Star to the left of the omnibox, and the page is automatically bookmarked.

10. Bookmark sync is a handy feature for those of you who use several computers — say, a laptop at work and a desktop at home. You can enable bookmark sync to synchronize your bookmarks on all of
your computers so that when you create a bookmark on one computer, it’s automatically added across all your computers. This means that you won’t need to manually recreate the bookmark each time you switch
computers.

Meet Sony Internet TV, the world’s first HDTV incorporating the Google TV platform.

With the advent of Internet TV, who knows it will soon phase out the usual televisions? In the words of my friend Pocholo: “The TV that will literally kill the local TV. No more manipulative broadcasting. No more abusive ads. NO MORE NONSENSE BROADCAST. This is what I call Personalcasting. ABS CBN and GMA… what’s your next move!”

Imagine using Sony Internet TV that provides richer internet access so you can browse the web just like you would from a computer. Seamlessly navigate between websites and TV channels or enjoy both at the same time. On the same screen.

What else can it do?

1. makes searching for content faster and simpler than ever before. Whether you’re looking for a channel, show, or website, it’s never been easier to find what you want.

2. customize your experience that you’ll have access to the ever-evolving library of Web content and built for TV apps. Automatic upgrades help ensure the software powering your Sony Internet TV is up to date.

3. Enjoy the performance with Intel Inside®. The Sony Internet TV has enough processing power to easily load sites and stream videos, while a wireless handheld QWERTY remote makes navigation simple.

To understand Google TV, here is a video:

Visit www.google.com/tv

This isn’t a gadget feature per se, but this piece of news definitely deserves publicity. The latest series of natural calamities affected some 800,000 micro, small, and medium sized (MSME) Filipino entrepreneurs – which makes up 99.7% of the country’s business. What better way to bounce back than to make their products and services known to 25 million Filipinos and over a billion people worldwide through the Internet? To connect Filipino MSEMEs to a huge online market, the Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT), Go Negosyo, Google, and STI Colleges are partnering to offer a Business Stimulus Package that enables local businesses to harness the cost-effectiveness and reach of the Internet to access a wider market and increase sales. Any MSME can take advantage of the package by signing up at www.google.com.ph/stimulus between now and December 15, 2009.

The Business Stimulus Package aims to help local MSMEs:

Any Philippine company that has a product to sell and a valid business permit can apply for the package. Participants will enjoy:

The Philippine Marketing Association (PMA) and the Center for International Trade Expositions and Missions (CITEM) have also pledged to support the package by promoting it to their members and attendees of their many events and trade shows.

So if you or anyone you know can benefit from the stimulus package, sign up now at www.google.com.ph/stimulus.

I’ve had my Gmail account since 2003, and it’s been such an awesome web-based email service. It’s got tons of storage space, privacy options, plus the High Score theme changes from day to night with the time (*cough* Star Wars Gmail theme, please *cough*). But right now, I’m a little paranoid about its security. According to The Gadget Blog at EveryJoe.Com, there’s been a massive leak of web-based e-mail passwords by phishers. As many as 20,000 passwords from several webmail providers like Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, and AOL web mail were leaked.

So why should you be worried about a leaked password? For many of us, our email accounts are the foundations of our online social life and sometimes, our livelihood. If you gain access to someone’s webmail account, you can also access important accounts like Paypal, online banking, as well as social networking accounts. It’s also easier to achieve identity theft when you have control over a person’s email.

I’m not sure about other webmail providers, but there seems to be no immediate threat for most Gmail users. Based on this statement from Google, I think they’ll inform you if your Gmail account’s security has been compromised and ask you to change your password.

“As soon as we learned of the attack, we forced password resets on the affected accounts. We will continue to force password resets on additional accounts when we become aware of them.”

Just the same, everyone should take extra measures to protect their passwords. Try using different passwords for different accounts, and make sure you clear the cache if you check your email on a different computer.

Source

While we were indexing your webpages, we detected that some of your pages were using techniques that are outside our quality guidelines, which can be found here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769&hl=en. This appears to be because your site has been modified by a third party. Typically, the offending party gains access to an insecure directory that has open permissions. Many times, they will upload files or modify existing ones, which then show up as spam in our index.
We detected cloaking on your site and suspect this is the cause. For example at http://weddingbellsblog.com/ we found:
fosamax cheap rx purchase fosamax in eastbay california cheapest generic fosamax online compare fosamax prices find how to use fosamax fosamax for sale cheap 250mg fosamax fosamax 250mg online

In order to preserve the quality of our search engine, pages from weddingbellsblog.com are scheduled to be removed temporarily from our search results for at least 30 days.

However when I viewed the source file, I could not find anything. I also checked the templates.

When I typed cialis site:weddingbellsblog.com, 265 pages pertaining to the word came out. I clicked on a cache entry and lo and behold, I saw this on the header:

A css code was injected to my template with the id=’reklama_css’

Hundreds of spam links. Checking the templates once more, I could not find anything suspicious. I upgraded to wordpress 2.8 and then got a new template.

Two days later, I still saw the same results. I upgraded the plugins this time.

Then I asked the help of the system administrator of my server (Good thing I own my server), and he found this

we have checked your webroot files for inclusions. Tag with id=’reklama_css’ was found in the following files:

./wp-content/gt-cache/ca/image.php: echo “”.$rmm1.”";
./wp-content/gt-cache/gl/.default.php: echo “”.$rmm1.”";

So, the WP Super Cache was the culprit. I had the old version. The current version was Version: 0.9.4.3. One thing that surprised me is that the wp-content/cache folder was renamed to wp-content/g-cache. I instructed the tech guy to remove the g-cache folder because I didn’t have permissions to delete the folder.

Maybe the hacking was due to other factors other than a vulnerable wordpress plugin. It could have been a combination of an outdated wordpress, a writable folder and the vulnerability of wordpress plugin. It teaches me to always do regular upgrade.

Google is now processing my request for reconsideration.

I am blown away with Google Wave.

Google Wave is a new tool for communication and collaboration on the web, coming later this year. Watch the demo video above, sign up for updates and learn more about how to develop with Google Wave.

This will probably be the Facebook/Twitter killer.

I can imagine how I am going to use this. Email conversations as I plan a vacation trip with my siblings.
Techcrunch talks more on Google Wave

There are a number of impressive features that we didn’t even go into (yes, there’s that much to this). One of my favorites is that not only is search real-time in Wave, but it’s really live. For example, if you remove an ‘e’ from “Here” it will disappear from the results for that word. Likewise, if you add the “e” back on, it will pop up again — instantaneously.

Another great feature is the advanced spell checker that not only looks through a dictionary for spelling, but looks for context in your sentence. It’s crazy to think that this could work, but it does as they’re showing it off.

And yes, Wave will work with Twitter. The team itself created a gadget for it that they call “Twave” that brings in tweets from your stream, complete with your contacts’ Twitter icons. You can respond to these tweets from within Wave and they will go back to your Twitter stream. But the best feature is Twave’s search feature which scans Twitter in real time and updates live when new results come in. You can use this to track anything you want in real-time.

Now the team is showing off a wave that can translate to other languages in real-time. Again, impressive.