How Google Stole Christmas (And is Bringing it Back)

How Google Stole Christmas (And is Bringing it Back) - Google's Nexus smartphones and tablets have a unique feature that's also a curse. They come with the latest version of Android (which is actually unusual among Android devices), and they're basically guaranteed to get updates throughout their lifespan (which is also unusual). But on the downside, Nexus owners are also the first to discover new "features" in each version of Android ... like Google's new 11-month calendar.

​'Tis (not) the season

​ You may not have noticed, if none of your friends or family members were born in December. But if you tried to enter in somebody's birthday in Android's "People" app, you may have noticed that the spin-dials for selecting a date don't include the last month of the year, in one of the oddest bugs to hit Android.

Other bugs found in the Android 4.2 update include random reboots, unstable apps, and overall slow and sluggish performance. David Ruddock of the Android Police blog has written up an extensive list of these bugs, and of which Nexus devices have been affected.

​Appy holidays

Most of these bugs are tied to specific apps not working correctly with the 4.2 update. The HD Widgets app, for instance, seems to cause the random reboots. Even first-party apps, like the Google Currents web magazine reader, are apparently responsible for some of the issues.

Some developers have fixed their apps. Mozilla quickly corrected a bug in the Android version of its Firefox web browser which caused it to randomly (and frequently) force close. But for now, the only real solution is to stop using certain apps, or features of apps like Currents' background sync.

Need a little Christmas?

Fortunately for Nexus device owners, a fix for at least one of the issues (the missing month of December) has already been written, and is on its way if you haven't gotten it already. A new version of Android is being sent over the air to Nexus devices, and Android developer Al Sutton reports that "Santa is back."

It remains to be seen, however, whether or not Google can "save Christmas" for people who've ordered (or tried to order) an unlocked Nexus 4 smartphone from its Google Play store. Right now, the 8 GB model "Ships in 8- 9 weeks," while the 16 GB model won't ship until around New Years'. And that's if you can even place an order; many Google customers are reporting that the ordering system simply won't work, although Google+ user Syko Pompos has discovered a way around the faulty website. ( yahoo.com )

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Sanebox Is Priority Inbox for Gmail Done Awesome

Sanebox Is Priority Inbox for Gmail Done Awesome - I’ve been using Sanebox for awhile and I absolutely love it – it has changed the way I use Gmail. I was very excited with Priority Inbox for Gmail when it launched, but it didn’t quite hit the mark for me – perhaps it would have gotten better if I had invested more in training it. I found too many emails marked as priority that really weren’t. So I eventually reverted back to the regular view of Gmail.

When I heard about Sanebox, I was initially skeptical. It was hard for me to believe that a product could actually do a good job of sorting my emails into high and low priority emails. But Sanebox proved me wrong. I had two main asks of any product in this space – for me to use it, it has to do meet the following two key criteria:

1. Accurately score the vast majority (95%+) of my inbound emails with the right level of priority. I don’t want to miss too many important emails due to the system scoring.
2. Don’t ask me to do much work in terms of training – the more work I have to do, the less valuable the product is to me.

Sanebox has worked great for me on both counts. All I did was sign up and then connect my Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts. And from the day I turned it on, it gets most of my emails right. I don’t think it’s too hard to figure out which emails are regular ecommerce subscriptions / notifications and put those in a separate place. But where Sanebox really shines is in solving the hardest email problem of all – determining whether a person with whom I have never emailed is in fact an inbound priority or not. Sanebox gets this right 99% of the time. Which makes me trust the service more and worry less about missing important emails.

Also, Sanebox does a good job of putting the emails they’ve filtered out into an easy place to find them – your SaneLater label. I only check it once or twice a day – the advantage of having faith in the accuracy of the Sanebox judgment score around priority is that I don’t have anxiety that I’m missing important emails. And “SaneLater” is the right label for the folder – it’s mostly stuff I should read but just not right now if I’m pressed for time or want to stay focused on the most important stuff.

I also think that it’s really interesting and cool that they’ve taken an anti-freemium approach. While I really like the freemium business model, this is one of those products where I’m glad to pay if it means that the developer will stay in business. Plus, with the design of the product, there is no natural or easy segmentation between what you would give the free and paid users while maintaining a good service for both.

Disclosure: I am not an investor in Sanebox – I’m just a fanboy. ( charleshudson.net )

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Here's What Happens to Google Employees When They Die

Here's What Happens to Google Employees When They Die - It’s no surprise that the employee benefits of Google are among the best in the land—free haircuts, gourmet food, on-site doctors and high-tech “cleansing” toilets are among the most talked-about—but in a rare interview with Chief People Officer Laszlo Bock I discovered that the latest perk for Googlers extends into the afterlife.

“This might sound ridiculous,” Bock told me recently in a conversation on the ever-evolving benefits at Google, “But we’ve announced death benefits at Google.” We were scheduled for a talk on Google’s widening age-gap (the oldest Googler is currently 83); I wanted to know how child- and healthcare benefits have evolved as the company has scaled.

Instead, Bock, who joined the company in 2006 after a stint with General Electric, blew me away by disclosing a never-before-made-public-perk: Should a U.S. Googler pass away while under the employ of the 14-year old search giant, their surviving spouse or domestic partner will receive a check for 50% of their salary every year for the next decade. Even more surprising, a Google spokesperson confirms that there’s “no tenure requirement” for this benefit, meaning most of their 34 thousand Google employees qualify.

“One of the things we realized recently was that one of the harshest but most reliable facts of life is that at some point most of us will be confronted with the death of our partners,” Bock says. “And it’s a horrible, difficult time no matter what, and every time we went through this as a company we tried to find ways to help the surviving spouse of the Googler who’d passed away.” The case-by-case do-goodery was formally implemented in 2011. In addition to the 10-year pay package, surviving spouses will see all stocks vested immediately and any children will receive a $1,000 monthly payment from the company until they reach the age of 19 (or 23 if the child is a full-time student).

What makes the death benefit notable isn’t just its generosity—Google is, of course, far from cash-strapped—but rather that, unlike most employee perks on Google campuses that aim to increase happiness, creativity and productivity, providing death benefits is a no-win for the company. “Obviously there’s no benefit to Google,” Bock concedes. “But it’s important to the company to help our families through this horrific if inevitable life event.”

Google has been anticipating the major life events of their employees since day one. According to Bock, Sergey Brin got the ball rolling when the company had fewer than 100 employees, suggesting that the company could provide a nanny to each working mom or dad on staff. (“Obviously that’s an idea that’s been toned down,” Bock jokes). The company does have on-site child care but has raised its monthly fees significantly in recent years.

In maternity and paternity leave, however, Google benefits are at the head of the pack: according to a company spokesperson, new dads enjoy six weeks of paid leave while moms can take 18 weeks after the birth of a child. (Even better for the cash-strapped new parents: stocks will continue to vest on your leave).

But the link between maternity benefits and retaining employees is clear. According to a 2008 report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 60 percent of men and women in the work force have kids under the age of 6, so anticipating their needs can mean keeping new parents on-board and, most importantly, engaged.

“When we think about [employee] needs at Google, we think less about how old you are that we do about your particular cluster of needs,” Bock says. “For someone who fits a certain profile—say, an aging parent to take care of, or kids or grandkids to support–whatever your cluster of needs are, we do our best to discern the best package of perks and programs to meet them.”

Google People experts use three methods to tap into the needs of employees: an annual survey called “Googlegeist” that measures the temperature of employees in every department and analyzes data to identify emerging trends, employee resource groups (read: clubs) where like-minded employees share ideas that are funneled up to HR (Bock says the most active are the “Grayglers,” the self-titled club for over-the-hill Googlers), and email aliases that run the gamut from financial advice to childcare options to café feedback.

Google gets a lot of press for its perks, Bock says, but he’s loathe to even use that word. “People say ‘you’re Google, of course you can offer these crazy things,’” but from where Bock sits, it’s not even about the money. “There is, of course, research that show employee benefit programs like ours can improve retention, and appear to improve performance on some level,” he says.

“But it turns out that the reason we’re doing these things for employees is not because it’s important to the business, but simply because it’s the right thing to do. When it comes down to it, it’s better to work for a company who cares about you than a company who doesn’t. And from a company standpoint, that makes it better to care than not to care.” ( Forbes )

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What happens when a Google employee dies?

What happens when a Google employee dies? - Death is a part of life. And as much as we'd like to think it'll never happen, occasionally a company has to deal with the too-soon death of an employee. Not all companies handle the situation well, but Google certainly does, according to a Forbes report.

When a Google worker dies — a tragic event to be sure — the company ensures the worker's family will be well taken care of. The surviving spouse or domestic partner will receive 50% of the employee's salary for 10 years. And if there are any kids in the mix, Google offers a $1,000 payment per child up to the age of 19 (or 23 if they're still in school). Any stock plan the employee has with the company will also be fully vested upon death.

Death is never easy to handle, but Google does its best to comfort

Says Google's Chief People Officer Laszlo Bock: "One of the things we realized recently was that one of the harshest but most reliable facts of life is that at some point most of us will be confronted with the death of our partners. And it's a horrible, difficult time no matter what, and every time we went through this as a company we tried to find ways to help the surviving spouse of the Googler who'd passed away." Google had been providing beyond-the-standard benefits on a case-by-case basis prior to 2011, when it formally instituted this policy.

Though Bock claims there's no obvious benefit to Google for providing such benefits, we disagree. The company has built its image around a "Don't be evil" motto — an image that's taken a number of ugly hits over the past few months. A reminder that Google is, as they say, "good people" goes a long way toward rehabilitating their once-pristine image. ( Today in Tech )

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Love and Lust Are Seasonal, Google Study Finds

Love and Lust Are Seasonal, Google Study Finds - Real-time tracking by researchers has identified a risqué trend in winter and early summer — people on the Internet looking for love — or at least sex.

In a new study published this month in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior researchers tracked Google keyword searches in the United States for pornography, prostitution and dating sites between January 2006 and March 2011. Researchers wanted to gauge the real-time mood of the nation and found that online interest in the mating game peaked around Christmas and early summer.

This bi-annual cycle isn't unheard of. A 2007 review of research on sexual activity in young people published in the journal Health Education found a six-month cycle for human sexual activity in the United States. Research on the so-called "holiday season effect" and the "summer vacation effect" has involved studying the outcomes of sex, such as births and sexually transmitted infections (STI) — events that occur weeks to months after doing the deed.

Scientists have also documented increases in condom sales around Christmas week and during the summer months.

But psychologists Patrick and Charlotte Markey at Villanova University in Pennsylvania and Rutgers University in New Jersey, respectively, wanted to see if they could detect patterns and changes in sexual activity more quickly, especially given health concerns such as STIs.

Data on how frisky people feel at specific points in time are hard to come by. The difficulty of obtaining accurate self-reports, and the sheer amount of information needed to detect trends has hampered researchers' abilities. So the psychologists turned to the Web.

Using Google Trends, the Markeys studied monthly patterns in search terms people used when looking for sex or romantic partners online. They included terms such as "porn," "boobs," "xxx," "call girl," "massage parlor," "eHarmony" and "Match.com." They compared the frequency with which people used the titillating terms with that of neutral searches for pets ("dog," "cat" and "bird"), popular websites ("Facebook" and "ebay"), and car parts ("tires," "brakes" and "windshield").

Patrick Markey was surprised to find the bi-annual trend in pornography searches. Porn-related keyword searches peaked during winter and early summer, a trend not seen with neutral search terms.

"I was amazed that an almost identical trend existed for dating and prostitution searches," Markey wrote in an email to LiveScience.

He hopes his study will be of broader use. "It would be great if these findings could be used to target the timing of safe sex campaigns," he wrote.

The reason for the 6-month sexual seasonality is not yet clear. The findings could represent a "primitive biological cycle," U.K.-based neuroscientist and blogger NeuroSkeptic, who was not involved in the study, wrote on his blog in response to the paper. Or the findings could have to do with free time.

"One possibility is that it's purely a social construction driven by the fact that in Western cultures, Christmas and summer are the main holiday seasons," NeuroSkeptic wrote. ( LiveScience.com )

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Google is making better Apple ads than Apple

Google is making better Apple ads than Apple - Apple (AAPL) was once the king of advertising, from its iconic 1984 Macintosh advertisement to its simplistic iPhone commercials. The Cupertino-based company has seemingly been slacking as of late, however. Its slew of celebrity-endorsed Siri commercials are annoying even to some of the company’s devout followers, and its latest “Genius” campaign has been called embarrassing.

According to the ad research firm Ace Metrix, which measures effectiveness of ads by showing them to 500 consumers and scoring them in areas such as persuasiveness and likelihood of watching again, Google’s (GOOG) “Camping” advertisement is more effective than Apple’s latest TV spot. The Nexus 7 commercial scored a 662 out of a possible 950, and was the most-effective TV spot to debut in the last week and the most-effective technology spot in the last 90 days.

Google is making better Apple ads than Apple

Google has found success in its recent advertisements for the Chrome Web browser and Google+ social networking site because of its connection to human emotion. The Nexus 7 advertisement has found even great success due to its demonstration of product utility according to the firm, which is typically one of Apple’s strengths, according to Ace Metrix’s vice president of marketing Jonathan Symonds.

“Google has taken their strong emotional appeal and married that with strong product demonstration,” Symonds told Ad Age.

Rather than focusing on a product, Apple’s latest advertisements focus on a service, and the majority of them haven’t been effective. Symonds notes that the Genius on the street commercial scored in the bottom quintile, although the one on a plane was in the upper-middle quintile. ( BGR News )

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Google Glasses Gets an Evil Twin in 'Sight'

Google Glasses Gets an Evil Twin in 'Sight' - A man's blind date gets off on the wrong foot after he unknowingly chooses a burger joint to meet his vegetarian lady friend. He knows she's upset because his "Sight" bionic implant detected her mood as being anxious and unimpressed, but it's all under control — the man's "Wingman" app predicts the lady might like some wine instead.

Such is the reality of tomorrow's blind dates in the short film called "Sight" — a brilliant but terrifying graduate project of two students, Eran May-raz and Daniel Lazo, at the Bezalel Academy of Arts in Israel. The film's fictional vision resembles a more sinister take on Google's geeky optimism toward augmented reality technology that can fuse the digital and real worlds.

The fictional Sight implant puts a sinister twist on the augmented reality future offered by Google Glasses.

Google envisions its Google Glasses, a wearable augmented reality device, giving people instant access to information about the world without having to tap on their smartphone or tablet screens. The glasses' augmented reality technology takes digital information — normally locked away inside mobile apps or Internet browser windows — and displays it in a timely fashion directly on top of what a person sees in the real world.

But "Sight" pushes augmented reality and other technology trends to the creepy extremes by imagining a Google Glasses device implanted in your head. That cyborg technology enables the man in "Sight" to do a lot more than just check on the woman's social networking updates on the date in progress.

Perhaps the most disturbing example in the film is the fictional "Wingman" app — a supercharged version of creepy dating apps that uses facial recognition technology to assess the date's facial expressions, predict her likes and dislikes based on personality, or run a vocal analysis to detect her emotional state.

The film even envisions the outcome of the "gamification" trend by turning exercise, household chores and dating into the equivalent of mobile games with digital achievements or rewards. Imagine a real mobile game such as "Fruit Ninja" applied to cutting up vegetables, or the fictional "Wingman" app tracking the date's progress with a "bronze," "silver" and "gold" status.

"Sight" also hints at the problems humans might face when they become too dependent on an omniscient technology in their daily lives — an ever-present fear haunting many past and present technologies. And a final twist at the end of the film suggests the "Sight" technology goes deeper than just the wearable contacts version of Google Glasses. ( LiveScience.com )

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