Users who maintain Google+ pages can now add up to 50 managers as administrators for a page. This is especially useful for large brands who maintain very popular pages on Google+. It is not clear yet if managers will have the same powers as the page creator, or if their power will be limited. Google merely notes that managers will stay in “the loop on all the activity that takes place on a page” so that they can “stay involved in page conversations”. The feature will roll out in the coming days to all users of Google+.

More interesting from a user perspective are new stream filters that are currently rolled out. A slider to manage the filters appear on all circle pages on Google+.

The four filtering options have the following functionality:

• Show nothing from the stream in the main stream
• Show fewer things from this stream in the main stream
• Show most things from the stream in the main stream
• Show all posts in the main stream

The default setting is always set to show most things that get posted in the circle in the main stream. This way you can filter out posts by circles that you are not that interested in, and make sure that all posts from a circle that you are interested in appears in the main stream.

Notifications that appear after you click on the notification count in the Google header are now more meaningful. This includes better previews and the ability to see the +1′s and shares posts have received since the last check.

Photo Viewing has been improved with a new lightbox that offers improved navigation. The Google Blog offers additional information about each feature and videos that demonstrate each feature’s functionality.

Oh, and if you have not already: Follow us on Google+.

François Beaufort discovered (likely via Motou Xiao) that Google is already experimenting with a new toolbar layout that changes the display significantly (again). Francois posted instructions on how to display the new menu right now.

The two commands show what’s inside. They do not trigger the new menu, and are probably only interesting to developers or coders who know they way around JavaScript.

Go to www.google.com/ncr, open your console, and enter dir(window.google.Toolbelt) and dir(window.google.kennedy) to see what’s inside.

I tried to run the commands but could not get them to work. The menu looks like this.

The new toolbar, or toolbelt as Google calls is, is a dropdown menu that appears when a user clicks on the arrow next to the Google icon on a page where it is enabled. The dropdown menu displays the very same links that are displayed in the black navigational toolbar at the moment.

The black navbar has been completely removed and most of its elements have been moved into the header of the Google page itself. The unread messages count and share button on Google+ for instance have been moved to the header on that page.

It is not clear if Google will remove the black toolbar on all of its properties to replace it with the new menu layout, if it is a Google+ only change or if project Kennedy won’t make it to a public release.

The benefit of the new layout should be obvious: More screen estate for the site’s contents.

What’s your take on the new layout? Do you think that Google will go ahead and make it the new default design for their pages?

Google users who use the + operator nowadays for their searches will see a notification at the top notifying them that the “+ operator has been replaced” and that they now have to use double quotation marks to search for an exact word or phrase in the search engine.

Instead of searching for technology +news in Google, users now have to use the search phrase technology “news” instead for the desired result.

What if you want multiple exact words or phrases included in your search phrase? Then you need to use double quotation marks for all the terms. Say you want to search for technology and both news and blog included on each of the resulting pages. You would then search Google for technology “news” “blog”.

A Google Rep on the official Google Search support forum confirmed the change.

We’ve made the ways you can tell Google exactly what you want more consistent by expanding the functionality of the quotation marks operator. In addition to using this operator to search for an exact phrase, you can now add quotation marks around a single word to tell Google to match that word precisely. So, if in the past you would have searched for [magazine +latina], you should now search for [magazine "latina"].

We’re constantly making changes to Google Search – adding new features, tweaking the look and feel, running experiments, – all to get you the information you need as quickly and as easily as possible. This recent change is another step toward simplifying the search experience to get you to the info you want.

The question here is if the new method simplifies search. Users now have to use two symbols instead of one to include exact single word searches. It simplifies search if an exact search phrase needs to be included on the websites in the results, as users would have used double quotation marks in this case anyway for the desired result.

Some users on Webmaster World have criticized Google for that move as it can now happen that pages appear in the search results that do not include the exact phrase. While the pages are mostly relevant to the search query itself, it can happen that the exact term does not appear on said pages (e.g. some results for the query “new york train timetable” do not contain that exact phrase.

The video announcement highlights many upcoming Gmail design changes and features. This includes a new look and feel that looks very similar to the Google Plus interface, and other new features like Gmail’s ability to adapt automatically to the windows size in which it is displayed. Users who resize their Gmail window will notice that the relevant information, for instance the sender, subject and date of each email in the inbox, are always visible on screen.

The options button at the top right leads to additional display density options. The default comfortable setting uses big margins and whitespace areas between posts which users can reduce by switching to the cozy or compact display density options.

Another new feature is the slider that allows users to increase or decrease the label or chat area on the left sidebar.

Google has uploaded new high resolution themes that users can switch to.

Conversations have been redesigned to improve readability. You will also notice that profile pictures have been added if available.

Google has updated search as well. If you are a Gmail user you know that search consists of just a single form that you can use to search.

The new search comes with filters that include from, to and subjects as well as words, attachments and date filters.

Filters can now also be created right from the search box. You can see the video with all the changes discussed in this news article below.

There is no official word yet on the availability of the new features but it is likely that they will be rolled out soon.

I’m not really affected by the changes as I’m using Thunderbird as my main email client. If you are a Gmail web interface user, what’s your take on the changes announced in the video? (via)

The court ruling may have backfired big time for the newspapers, as Google has begun to block articles and sites not only on Google News but also on Google Search. That’s a serious blow to the suing newspapers considering that Google’s market share in the Belgian search market is believed to be higher than 90%.

Belgian newspapers like the La Capitale are now stating that it was not their intention to get banned from Google Search. All they wanted to achieve was to either get paid to be included in Google News, or do not appear at all there.

Google on the other hand believes that the court’s decision applies to all of their products, and that the company would face fines of 25,000 Euros if contents of one of the newspaper websites would appear in the search engine results, Google News or any other Google owned web property.

All banned Belgian newspapers are members of Copiepresse, a copyright management company. Websites like Alexa are already showing a downward trend for affected newspaper websites. While Alexa is not the most accurate tool when it comes to determining a website’s traffic stats over time, it can be used to visualize trends.

The search traffic for the LaLibre site dropped from 12.7% on average for the last 30 days to 3.2% yesterday, which indicates a traffic decline of almost 10% because of the ban. It is likely that search engine traffic will drop further in the coming days.

Sudpresse, another Belgian newspaper shows a decline from 17.1% to 8.7% yesterday. It is fair to say that the ban will hurt the newspapers in the long run. Possible effects are less links from third party sites which correlates with less visitors from those sites. It is likely that the newspapers will see further decline in traffic over the coming months and years.

What is your take on this? Let me know in the comments.

This changes with Google New, at least according to Google. Google New is the new central hub for all updates on Google products. Some may think it is one big advertisement, which it more or less is, but it still offers valuable information on new and updated products.

When you visit the place for the first time you notice that the upper half of the page is reserved for a product that they want to promote, while the lower half lists the new and updated products chronologically.

google new

A filter on top of those product updates offers to filter the products by name or area of interest. Users who only want to see the latest news on Google Search or Adsense, or all business or developer based products can use the filters on top to do so. A search complements the filter bar.

A total of nine updates are displayed per page which usually covers a few days of Google updates. Sharing options are displayed next to each update. There is however no option to subscribe to an RSS feed on the page, which would make things a lot simpler for users who want to receive update notifications whenever they are published on Google New.

We have created a basic feed using the Feed43 service so that you can subscribe to new updates in your favorite RSS feed reader.

Just use this feed url to subscribe to the Google New RSS feed. Please note that each feed item links to the product’s page on Google New, and not the news item itself. There may be an option to do that as well, let us know if you find a way.

Fast Flip combines the paged accessibility of print magazines with the near real-time refresh period of online magazines. The number of sources that have been added to Google Page Flip reads like a who is who of the most popular online news portals including the New York Times, BBC, Business Week or the Washington Post.

Several categories are available on the Google Fast Flip website including Science and Technology, Politics, Business and Sports.

A click on any individual article that is being displayed on the Google Fast Flip website is loading the interface for the individual news source. It is furthermore possible to access the categories directly which will combine the news of all news sources in that category.

Google Fast Flip basically embeds the article that has been published on the website of the news portal in their interface with options to “flip” to the next article in line just like in any print magazine. A side menu on the right displays thumbnails of the articles next in line with the option to open one of them with a mouse click.

The only other options currently provided next to the ones described are to email articles and to “like” the article which requires a Google account.

Google Fast Flip could be an interesting option for users who access the Internet from devices with smaller screens, e.g. tablet PCs, netbooks or smart phones.

Interested users can head over to the Google Labs website to take Google Fast Flip for a test drive.

Update: Google Fast Flip has been discontinued by Google. The service is no longer available.

I didn’t really think I could be interested in yet another crowd-powered news aggregating website… Mixx, Reddit, Regator, Social Median,  Soshable, Propeller, Sphinn even… whether they’re the next Digg I have no idea… but it sure isn’t worth the time signing up in my opinion.

I was very interested in the announcement yesterday however, that a new service called ‘NewsCred’ was launching with the aim of gathering and aggregating articles based on their credibility over blind crowd popularity.

It’s a fantastic objective, one which anyone who has used Digg over the last few years would probably love to see… it’s all too common where completely bogus stories are Dugg right to the front page (and sometimes consequently removed by the "invisible hand’ of non-existent editors’).

Crowd’s usually vote based on personal preference and opinion as well… a story about Microsoft may be brilliant, well-researched and accurate… but is buried by Apple fans purely because they dislike Microsoft.

W ether or not NewsCred can get around that will be interesting to see, although it isn’t the first to attempt this strategy; NewsTrust has been around for a few years (although I had never heard of it before) and has had slow but steady growth.

The most useful and interesting thing about NewsCred is the analytics option… you can examine the credibility of a publication based on how it fared on NewsCred. Just one indicator sure… but with time it should really be a good measure of the reporting quality of various news sources.

You can also customise the NewsCred front page based on your interests and the publications you prefer. In many ways, even if the credibility factor doesn’t worry you, it’s still a good source of daily news much like Google News.