As of 1pm on Tuesday July 1st, Songza is officially part of the Google Family.

For those who don’t know, Songza is a music playlist streaming service from Long Island that has gathered about 5.5 million users in its 6 years of existence.

Songza’s curation algorithm—or its “concierge” option, is unlike any other service in that it takes into account the activities the listener is participating in at the time of day and creating a playlist to fit that specific, unique environment. The range of activities is extensive—ranging from “Lounging In a Cool Hotel” to “Waking Up On The Right Side Of The Bed”, and my personal favorite, “Shopping At A Vintage Store”.

Google announced today that they’ve made a huge change to the way their trusty search engine operates. The change required a rewriting of its algorithm in order to handle more complex search queries (Bits, New York Times). Google has noticed that its users have been searching for more complex answers and entering lengthy questions especially with the voice search feature that’s available in mobile phones.

Bits explains the significance of this change in their article released today, “The change, which represents a new approach to search for Google, required the biggest changes to the company’s search algorithm since 2000. Now, Google, the world’s most popular search engine, will focus more on trying to understand the meanings of and relationships among things, as opposed to its original strategy of matching keywords” (Bits, New York Times).

The new algorithm has been named “Hummingbird,” and its main focus is to connect phrases and concepts together, which will in return provide more accurate search results.

Google rolled out this announcement today to be in conjunction with their 15th birthday (see today’s awesome Google Doodle). As Bits reports, they celebrated Google’s birthday as well as announcing the launch of Hummingbird in the garage Google’s founders rented when they began the company (Bits, New York Times).

We’re excited for this monumental change. Go ahead and try out Hummingbird for yourself!

There are days to be serious, but today is simply not one of those days. Spoiler alert! Today is April Fools Day, and what a glorious day it is for the Internet. Here are of my favorites in no particular order.

1. Google Nose

It’s become a bit of a tradition for Google to introduce some sort of pseudo-app every April Fools and this year’s edition comes in the form of Google Nose with the slogan “Smelling is believing.”

Had she not smelled her phone, I might have believed them.

2. Netflix Suggestions

Upon perusing the web for some other April Fools fun, it seemed that Netflix had performed the prank of all pranks. Netflix typically gives me ultra-specific categories, but today seems to be extra special on that front. Here is the suggestion from my own personal account:

Sadly I did not get anything about Nicolas Cage freak-outs as seen here.

Yesterday, Google announced a new look and updated features for its email service, Gmail. We at Oniracom are major fans of Gmail so we’re interested in the experience this redesign will bring.

Watch the video below of Google’s User Experience Designer Jason Cornwell explaining the new Gmail and check out their Official Blog for more:

Late last month, the unveiling of Google+ prompted the world over reconsider the future of social media and online networking, and many began to wonder if The Goog’s latest product would boast enough innovative features to dethrone Facebook, king of the social networking realm. Speculation has run rampant as the search giant’s latest foray into new media gains momentum, much of which attempts to size up Google+ against Facebook. Many in the tech world are projecting whether or not + will be successful both in stealing existing social network users and attracting new ones. But here at Oniracom, my compadres and I have been interested in how Google+ will integrate into the larger scheme of social media marketing and brand growth strategies. While wishful thinking would allow Google+, Facebook and others to harmoniously coincide with each other in the virtual world, it is becoming ever-more clear (as is obvious with Facebook’s Skype contract retaliation) that there really may only be room for one. It’s impossible to know which network, if any, will prevail, but Google+ is making a strong attempt by promising features and upgrades not available on Facebook or other social networking sites.

Groupon,a deal-of-the-day website that is localized to major geographic markets worldwide, is very much in the hot seat when it comes to quick and easy deals. Recently, “Google Offers” a service provided by Google wants to take part in this new craze. The company has now gone live with a signup for beta programs in Portland, Oregon, several cities in California, including Oakland/East Bay and San Francisco, as well as areas around New York City.

Groupon has been notorious for its awesome deals. However, I am definitely curious to see what Google has in store. Especially, since they promise “50% off or more at places you’ll love.”

Long gone are the days of records, tapes, and compact discs. But what is in store for music storage? Music streaming services are surfacing, making it possible to not only listen to music on computers, but also in cars, on TVs, throughout home sound systems, and on mobile devices. Countless services allow users to access thousands of albums and millions of songs instantly on the device of their choice. Users can create libraries of their favorite songs, listen to pre-made or personally created playlists, share songs with friends, purchase songs and so much more. While these services allow users to sync their created libraries and playlists, many music fanatics are looking for what’s next.

In april 2010, Google released an online advertising service to support small businesses in their online advertising, DFP Small Business. DFP stands for DoubleClick for Publishers, and DoubleClick is of course the company made rich and famous by annoying you on just about every other webpage before the advent of pop-up blockers. However, we can also thank DoubleClick for monetizing the internet and creating a new form of Advertising. DoubleClick was acquired by Google in 2007 and has since been augmenting and integrating with Google’s services creating an unprecedented network of advertisers.

DFP Small Business is a free hosted ad serving solution that helps online publishers manage their growing online advertising business. As opposed to AdWords, which allows you to advertise across Google?s ad networks on a Cost Per Click (CPC) pricing model, DFP actually has ad workflow and inventory features built in. DFP Small Business allows it’s users to upload an inventory of advertisements and prioritize them according to their value. DFP intelligently distributes Ads to target audiences by demographic, geography, and time. Google promises proper and effective ad delivery, utilizing not only their own AdSense features, but also third party services that offer similar management solutions.

If you are a publisher interested in these services, you can check out DFP Small Business here. If your business serves more than 90 Million impressions per month, you can contact Google about a DFP premium solution.

Wow, isn’t it about time that Google Images caught up with Web 2.0 trending?  I can finally use their incredibly snappy and robust database to browse at the speed a daily web user requires.

If you have not played with the new layout, I suggest you try it out.  In particular notice:

• “Infinite Scrolling” - No more pagination!
• “Litebox Previews” - See tiny images a little larger before committing with a click
• “New Left Sidebar” - Quickly toggle between search/media types

The image above is the results of a search on “Solutions for Dreamers.”

It seems that our major gripe with Google Chrome has been its lack of support for 1Password support but our prayers have been answered! Although it’s far from sexy, a rough extension gives you the ability to unlock 1Password!

Here’s how to install the 1Password Chrome extension:

1. Make sure you have the latest 1Password 3 installed. To keep up with the latest Beta version, enable Betas in the 1Password > Preferences > Updates window.
2. Pick your Chrome: you can either install the latest Chrome Beta (it now supports extensions), install the developer build of Chrome, or install the latest Chromium.
3. Enter this URL into Chrome’s address bar: http://aws.cachefly.net/aws/chrome/O…rome-0.7.1.crx
4. On the error page choose Window > Extensions, click the Developer mode link, and then click “Update extensions now” button to make sure you have the latest version.
5. Download the Extension here by accepting it at the bottom of your screen and clicking the “Install” button.

Voila! 1Password will now be compatible with your Chrome browser!

Polishing and more features will come in future updates for 1Password support. Auto-submit is not yet implemented unfortunately ⎯ a tiny fault that may potentially pester you. Chrome’s customizable browser, address bar direct search, and GleeBox extension seem to nearly make up for it though! For those of you who don’t know, GleeBox is a keyboard-centric approach to navigating the web; to offers alternatives (some efficient, some unnecessary) to actions like clicking, scrolling, selecting text fields, etc. for keyboard and command key lovers! Check it out here!

Rumors are starting to fly about Googles new music service.

It seems as if the service will be going after Bing who is trying to offers users a better search engine.  Google’s music service would simply be an upgrade to their search results for music.  If you search for an artist like Jack Johnson it would now give you a small list of some of his most popular songs and videos pulling data from music services such as LaLa, MySpace, and iLike.  You can stream the music right there on the same search results page, watch the video and even click a link to download and buy it.  While nothing is official yet we have been working on updating some of our clients on those music services just in time for press release.

Check out the sneak peak at what the service might look at over at TechCrunch.

Social media’s changed how users consume content. In the past, we’d read a few news websites or top blogs, and our trust came from those brands. However, with the rise of social filtering and tools like Facebook and Twitter, more and more of our news comes from our friends, who share what they find interesting. This is part of why retweeting and link sharing has become such a hot trend.

Google Reader, the most popular tool for reading RSS feeds, recognizes this phenomenon. In May, they launched a friends trends tool to help you determine who was worth following, but that’s nothing compared to the changes that Google’s making today: it has added the ability to follow specific users and to “like” articles.

There are really three big feature changes: followers, friend groups, and likes. On the first feature, Google has the following to say:

“Instead of sharing your items with others and hoping they reciprocate, you can now find people with public shared items and subscribe to their shared items with one click. Use our new Reader search feature (powered by Google profiles) to look for people who have public shared items. You can browse by name, location, or topic, and start following new people all from inside Reader.”

In short, you can follow not only an RSS feed or a specific blog, but individuals as well. This isn’t personal updates like the ones you find on Twitter, but the sharing of specific articles (so more like a retweet).

The second feature is friend groups, which we compare to Facebook’s privacy settings. You can set which group sees what content. You can share those dating blog posts with just your closest friends and change it so that comments, a previously integrated feature, are only viewable by friends as well.

Finally, likes is almost identical to the feature available on both FriendFeed and Facebook. You can pick any article and “like” it. The key to this, though, is that liking is public to everyone, thus we could see a lot of favoriting by a lot of people very quickly.

Read More Here…