Google Releases Hurricane Map

The 2011 hurricane season is an event in the annual cycle of tropical cyclone formation. Both the Atlantic and Pacific hurricane seasons will end on November 30, 2011. Source: Wikipedia

Growing A Media Empire! [Chrome Advert]

The brilliant advert that aired this weekend featuring rising "media mogul" Jamal Edwards on how he built his empire online. The 1m30s video looks at the rise of SB.TV in to a leading youth broadcaster in the UK.

Let us know what you think...

6 Things Google Give You For Free! (of many)

[Part of our "things" series] 

What I like about Google is many of their productivity tools, which I only need one log in to use all the tools and services they offer.

1. Google Docs - Great for sharing projects if your working remotely or want to communicate whilst you edit a document (distracted us for hours on first use)


2. Google+ Hangouts - A nice way to stay in touch with colleagues (or others) if you want to look at up to ten peoples faces & share things whilst you speak. Perhaps whilst your away because you used Airbnb.

3. Gmail - Get an email address whilst your using the other products.

4. Chrome - A simple and fast browser which allows me to download applications for the web browser.

5. Calendar - Enter everything that's coming up and any tasks you need to do in to lists. You can then share your calendar or have separate calendars or work and home.

6. Maps - This one is just helpful for getting places and looking at places you cant afford to go too. But if you can afford to go, then you can get some directions. Going to London? get a public transport route.

Let us know what you think...

Google Another New Feature!

That's right if your travelling in London then Google Maps has added a feature for you to "Get Directions" using "Public Transit". Hope this helps the London Olympic Visitors next year.

So now maps had more features that we might get to utilise globally in the future as street view was a slow progression. After Google+ launch earlier this year can we see Google with more good innovation.

4 Top Google Map Tools


1. Street View - Although I've noticed the address is often wrong.


2. Email Route - This is good for emailing the root to my mobile.


3. Directions - Great for getting directions to any destination by car/ walking and now in London Public transport.  Also estimated route times.

4. Est. Fuel Cost -  Good Indicator although I always add some more just incase.

Apply with LinkedIn

LinkedIn which was launched in 2003 and now has over 100 million users has launched an application button for developers. The service which operates in over 200 countries allows professionals to network online. The company went public on the 19th may 2011 and today have a market cap of over $9.5bn (USD).

The new button will allow candidates to use their LinkedIn profile to apply for jobs when the "Apply with LinkedIn" button is displayed. See more Below or on LinkedIn Developer Page. Is this more good innovation from social networking sites to make sure they don't fade away fast and the recent professional users for Google+, do LinkedIn need to be scared.

Let us know what you think...

Three Lessons from Facebook last week!

Last week we wrote a number of articles on Facebook but this is because they are such an interesting company that are getting so many things right. We are well aware Google+ bought out a product which allowed group chat(Hangouts) but Facebook know that the majority of people have one-to-one chats and launched their video chat feature.

Facebook have given businesses people lessons for years now and we managed to see some just last week

1. Get your product right - make sure the consumer loves it then start charging for it - this could mean market research first & knowing your customer - Facebook have data on over 750m people.

2. Innovate - because once you have a great product then people will copy and it's important to always be one step ahead - but for Myspace and Skype partnership in 2007, may have been to early.

3. Stay Efficient - if your not efficient enough to do something then outsource or partner with someone who has the resources such as Facebook and Skype - Spotify are also reported to be reaching a deal with Facebook.

Let us know what you think...

SnakSocial - Our First Week

To You the Reader,

From yesterday SnakSocial had been blogging for one week and what a week it has been.

We have been reviewing the new Google+, seen Skype come to Facebook, find out that the UK's 168 year old newspaper - News of the World is publishing for the last time on Sunday and MySpace get sold for £22 by News International for a fraction of what they paid for it. So really not a good week for News International which holds News Corp.

We have managed to get readers in over 10 countries, post 21 articles and tweet 35 times.Our Poll closed with Twitter being the favourite business social tool.

So thanks to all our readers! Let us know what you think...

15 Billion Downloads - have you got an app?

Apple have recently announced that they have had 15,000,000,000 application downloads and this makes you realise the power of the phone applications knowing that this is no longer a FAD but the way we will consume information globally in the years to come.

So are you involved? I think it is important now for every business to make themselves accessible via an "app" to  engage your customers through mobile because they'l see you everyday. We recently wrote about QR codes and how they can be used to take a user to a website on the go. Applications however give users the choice to see what your business is doing everyday. The problem is they can be expensive to make for the more complicated applications.

Their is a lot of competition in the Apple "app" store with over 425,000 of them to choose. Their are places which allow you to make applications for Androids and Ovi. Ovi App Wizard is in its beta stage and allows you to make an app in minutes for Nokia phones - not doing too well.  Android from Google has an app inventor in Google Labs. Will the other operating systems catch up?

Tell us what you think...

No brands! Well not yet. - Google+

Google+ have today told businesses not to use their service whilst they continue to develop their platform for brands. They still haven't opened up the service to everyone yet either but those brands who have managed to get on their have been told that the service won't be ready until later this year.

With yesterdays launch of Facebook's video calling feature, is this going further damage to the appeal for Google+? because not everyone will need the Hangouts 10 way calling and will users stick to the brand profiles where they are offered things? - on Facebook. We recently wrote about the use of Google+ for professionals!



Let us know what you think...

Facebook + Skype = 2 Way Chat

The recent reports were right - So we now have Facebook with one-on-one video chat, not to long after Google+ launched and gave us hangouts. This i'm sure is going to be quite a problem for Google attracting users, who don't need to chat to more than one person.

So we have Google+ hangouts where you can get up to ten people in to one chat and yet to be opened to everyone. Whilst Facebook has launched its one-to-one chat that brings Skype inside your browser. You don't need a new account either to use the Facebook video chat. I still see Google+ as an additional profile for remote workers and Facebook video calling for those personal social calls. We also found out that Facebook have their 750 million users - WOW!

How easy do you find Facebook's Video Calling - here's a clip from YouTube.

To be continued. Let us know what you think...

What do Google, Facebook and the Huffington Post have in common?

The recent knowledge that Google is going to rename their Blogger (very special to us!) and Picasa to Google Photos & Google Blogs is some interesting news for out tech readers but we also have a bit of business side to us as well so I think a mention of the importance of branding to an organisation needs to be mentioned.

Blogger and Picassa are already strong brands in their own right but Google has been ranked fourth by Interbrand best global brands with a "brand value" of over $43bn. We realise that it can have a lot more attraction to a larger market and we understand that Google is making a lot of changes to accomodate Google+, most recently their Realtime feature went down. Reported that this was because their contract for the twitter firehose ran out but also to work on developing it for Google+. The point is that these brands contribute a large part of the valuations of many of our big online names such as Facebook.

Another "brand" is Huffington Post and they have just launched their UK version, will they have the same success in the UK and will they get it right?

Tell us what you think...

YouTube - Search and they will find!

YouTube is a real cool tool for businesses and many have adopted the platform as part of their online marketing campaign.YouTube is a search engine in its own right and is the second most used in the world after Google. This makes it a very important part in the online presence of any business because of it’s viral capabilities. YouTube was bought by Google in 2006 for $1.5bn - they recognised potential.

So create a video and upload it to YouTube make sure the description, title and tags are what your audience would be looking for - but not false. You can find what your less competitive keywords with Google insight so that your video’s will often pop up in Google’s first page.

Few facts before your example...YouTube is third on the Alexa ranking(top sites used in the world) and Mashable reported "YouTube has 490 million unique users worldwide per month"

Anyway...I recently advised a start up business about the use of video and they have found it really helpful in explaining their idea to people who like visual concepts. Blendtec used this idea by putting objects that wouldn't usually go into a blender, into a blender and the video went viral. Another business called bluQube which makes software used it by starting a contest among some yachtswomen.

Let us know what you think...

Is email going to die?

I know this is really quite far fetched but I think we need to look at the growing population of social network users and also the increasing features available on these platforms. With many of them you have private messaging features and I know that Facebook allows you to add attachments as well. I've also seen that many websites are allowing users to sign up with their Twitter or Facebook and this is growing.

Email is like your key to the internet you can use it to sign in to the vast number of websites on offer some which will send you discounts on your favourite stuff! but every time we visit our inbox many of the unfortunate ones need to delete a load of emails we don't want. This is time consuming and frustrating that when you get to the ones you want it's like finding a needle in a haystack. If your a daily deal subscriber you can get some cool stuff or your teeth whitened for cheap :)

On the other hand, this isn't very likely anytime soon because many websites would need to find a new way for them to stay in contact with their users and have them sign up. Also sometimes its good to keep your email for work and then personal social platforms for keeping in touch with friends & family - not saying people don't mix them. However we all know about Google+ having a circles feature which allows you to separate groups and change the visibility they have on your profile.

Tell us what you think?

Skype on Facebook!! - ***CONFIRMED***

***NOW CONFIRMED***
This recent spoiler that I have heard, doesn't surprise me - Skype is being brought to Facebook! With the recent knowledge that Google+ has a group video feature how will Facebook's compare? Are both skype and Facebook going to see a huge rise in users, almost certainly.

Skype was recently bought by Microsoft for $8.5bn. Microsoft became the "exclusive third-party advertising platform partner for Facebook" and began to sell advertising for Facebook internationally on  Oct. 24, 2007. This shows their close ties and Microsoft's lack of entry in to the social network market other than Facebook. Is this as Mark Zuckerberg put it "awesome"? Tell us your thoughts @snaksocial

Reported on techcrunch - Facebook Announcement on 6th July 2011

To be continued...

Facebook Announcement

Facebook's making an announcement next Wednesday on the 6th of July. I've had a little look around and I can see some speculation around a new application. Mark Zuckerberg says its "awesome", so would anyone who was releasing a product - so we need to wait and see. After a number of good reviews on the new Google+ (Google plus) this week we'll need to see if Facebook has done again what it is so good at - Innovate.

Next week though, we will display twitter feed from the press conference.

Let us know what you think and will be updating this post.

Office 365. doing a 180?

I have recently looked at Microsoft office 365 and seen that their new "cloud-based management tools" are somewhat late as this article. Microsoft seem to just be following other services and then shoving them in users faces as we have seen with Bing. This now seems like a bold move as they have to compete with the what is becoming a fast and simple to use product - Google docs. We are all aware that Microsoft have been making office software for years so I don't understand the lateness, although they had tried a partnership with Facebook. Which was Facebook docs by fuse labs but I don't know of anyone using it and couldn't access when I was writing this because its being fixed?! However we know that their are still problems with Google docs in that they don't have all the features Microsoft can provide, which I only assume is why Microsoft are still charging for their software, because they still are market leaders.

The £4 per user/month starting price for using office 365 is fairly cheap and the options to sync your files across the web and mobile devices make it an attractive option but even when I began to sign up for the free trial I was felt it was time to leave as the sign up process was ridiculous. It wanted you to set up a sub-domain then a email address or that... blah blah blah. It may be targeted towards professional and different sized organisations but I never found ZoHo(4m users) that mundane.

To be Continued... Let us know what you think

Google+...Should LinkedIn be scared?

OK this story was broken a while back but I have received an invite to try it out. I have seen some cool features with the new google+ which I think is going to be really helpful for some business people. Their idea to give invitation has only made the buzz more appealing because we can see the product but only a number can touch it.

The first cool feature is the hangouts which I think is going to be really helpful for any conference calls which if you want this service at the moment many people use Skype's group video calling which costs around £5 per month (not much but still...).

I have also seen sparks now this can be quite cool for sharing news stories perhaps industry news with colleagues and can also help you to collectively gather cool stories that you'l find benefit the people you work with.

Circles has got to be one of the coolest things because this will allow you to put your contacts into what can only be called "circles" so that you can share certain information with those who you wish to target. In a business sense (which this article is targeted to) the circles will be great for putting your contacts in to different circles such as media contacts, editors, directors, programmers & so on. this could be great for finding new staff, getting answers, marketing the business etc...

My conclusion is that the odds are stacked against Google+ becoming the next Facebook but I think it will be one like Twitter, Foursquare, LinkedIn and so on because it will be used "as well as" not "instead of". Remember though I haven't actually tried Google+ yet. With all these useful features for business as well as people I believe that allowing integration with a company like Linkedin will give Google+ a strong position for a more mainstream social growth if it doesn't grow that way at first.

Let me know what you think...