Monthly:July 2012
New technology is turning the world into a playground, and play into the new business battleground.
Vast entertainment libraries can be accessed at the touch of a button. Video games are moving from teenage bedrooms to corporate boardrooms. Every lunch queue or quiet moment is an opportunity to create, collaborate or compete online with friends and strangers.
And in just a few days the greatest Games of all are coming to London, with 11,500 athletes taking part in a global celebration of sport.
At Google, we know that play is a serious business. It’s why we launched our new online entertainment service, Google Play, and it’s why this issue of Think Quarterly is dedicated to play in all its forms.
We speak with the world’s most playful brands, including the reconstruction of LEGO, the colorful evolution of Crayola and the free-roaming future of Disney. Our Country Director of Brazil, Fabio Coehlo gives readers a tour of marketing’s newest and most fun-filled frontier. We were granted exclusive access to the digital teams delivering the Olympics on both sides of the Atlantic; surfaced the latest research from our UX team on social gaming; and learned the secret to making YouTube videos that go viral.
I hope you have fun reading the issue and follow our Think with Google Plus page.
Posted by Rich Pleeth, Think Quarterly EditorRead More…
With so much going on this year at Google I/O — including an epic skydiving product demo –we wanted to make sure you caught all the action from the Google+ team.
This year’s event was our biggest and most amazing yet, and we shared it all with more than 5,500 developer attendees in person, and millions more in 172 countries around the world via I/O Live and I/O Extended.
Here are a few of the highlights from Google+:
- Launched Google+ Events, and Google+ tablet apps for Android and iOS.
- Extended the Google+ platform to mobile, with mobile web optimized social plugins and Google+ SDKs for iOS and Android (coming soon).
- Introduced new featured hangout apps, and showed off sandbox partners Google Art Project, MiniClip 8-ball Pool, Symphonical, and a preview of Dominion!
- Brought the Google+ history API into early developer preview, allowing sites and apps to privately save moments to their users’ Google+ history where users can, if they want, share those moments with others.
- Added +1 recommendations to help site owners show more relevant content to their users.
You can watch all nine Google+ session videos from I/O to learn more about the announcements, check out the beginnings of the Google+ developer showcase to get inspired, and attend this week’s Google+ platform office hours to have your questions answered.
Posted by Ken Norton, Group Product Manager, Google+Read More…