This will show up the list of files, file types and their sizes in a listing format. However, the Google docs feature still uses the (now) old Google layout.

On mouse hover, the “Actions” menu gets activated, providing the options to even view the archived file (provided supported by Google docs), download file, add to Google docs or print PDF version. Nested archive files are also supported by Google Docs viewer.

Google has also extended the feature to the mobile version of Google docs.

Google now reveals its native eBook device. The device in itself might have not gained much attention but there are speculations about it being backed by Google eBookStore. Since, its launch in December last year, Google eBookStore has added around 250 independent bookstore partners.

Google eBook device, iriver Story HD is priced at $139.99, which is almost same as Amazon Kindle. The black-grey screen also reminds us of Amazon Kindle. The device with 6 inch display and high resolution XGA(768 x 1024) sports a QWRTY keyboard for easy search and can access more than 3 million free Google eBooks. In addition, you can also buy paid eBooks. The device is first of its kind to allow downloading eBooks via a Wi-Fi connection. Existing eBook readers require the titles to be downloaded on PC and then transfer them to eReader. On top of it, the reader supports more than 80 compatible eBook formats.

According to Google Blog, “Starting this coming Sunday, July 17, the iriver Story HD e-reader will be available for sale in Target stores nationwide and on Target.com”.

iriver becomes the first manufacturer to launch eReader integrated with Google eBooks. More details about the device can be found at the iriver website.

Invites can be sent by clicking a link provided on the right panel of your Google+ main page.

Click the link “Invite people to join Google+”, it opens a modal box to add the email IDs of the people to be invited. You may add multiple email IDs.

Unlike the way it was, the invitee has not to open the invitation mail and click on the link to accept. On signing in with the invited gmail ID, the user automatically joins Google+.

In response to his post, Vic received more than 250 comments from the users offering praise, criticism and suggestions.

Before this post, Vic explained the reasons behind the spam caused on 10^th July.  Acknowledging something bad and improving it gives them a chance to earn more credibility.

People, following Google+, are most excited about Circles and most of the criticism and suggestions came for this feature. Circles is a great feature that was never there is any popular social networks and now people want it to be extended further to allow circles within circle and merging of circles.

Google hasn’t responded to any particular suggestions that they plan to integrate but the social network is still evolving. In spite of all the feedback, Google is generating enormous interest among the users.

One particular comment that captured my attention says “Facebook is still the prettiest girl at the dance for the masses; G+ is more thinking man’s crumpet.”

There are talks about the possible Google+ API for developers and the buzz about enterprise version of Google+ may alarm the people at LinkedIn, which was recently reported to be second largest social networking site in US.

The process of getting started with Facebook video chat involves downloading and installing a small program file. Jeff Rose, a software engineer and researcher became curious considering the small size of the file. In the jar file, Jeff found the code snippet supports more than one application. One is called “Peep” and could be related to video chat client and other is called “Vibes”, which is possibly related to some music downloading application.

On his blog, Jeff writes “The video chat plugin, called peep, is what is downloaded now. At some point in the future they seem to be prepared to download another app though, called Facebook Vibes.”

Its strange, how some Google+ code got leaked earlier and now the Facebook Vibes code is leaked. It is still not clear what Vibes will actually do. From the naming convention used in the code, it looks like something related to music downloading. So, it could be similar to Google Music or iTunes.

At the launch of video calling, Mark Zuckerberg called the event to be the start of “Launching Season 2011″. Facebook had announced that they are launching a number of products over the coming months. Let’s wait to hear from facebook.

Gplus – Google+ URL shortener

Gplus.to is the unofficial URL shortener for Google Plus. If your Gmail ID is yourname@gmail.com, then, your Google+ profile will have URL http://plus.google.com/yourname/. Due to security and privacy reasons, Google is not allowing plus profiles to use the Gmail ID. The URL’s as above can expose your Gmail ID to hackers and spammers.

The generated short URL takes you to your Google+ profile. Like, my refulz short URL is gplus.to/refulz.

Plusbar – Add Audio and Video live stream to Google+

Not impressed with Gplus.to, well, you will find plusbar to be really amazing. Plusbar adds a media player to stream audio and video in Google+. As seen in the screenshot, Plusbar integrates elegantly into Google+ UI. Currently, plusbar includes BBC News, Al Jazeera, Amazing Radio, DFH, TWiT and NASA livestream. With this kind of beginning, we might see more services added to Plusbar.

The two-step simple to use instructions can be found at the Plusbar project page.

On the official blog, Facebook announced “A few months ago, we started working with Skype to bring video calling to Facebook. We built it right into chat, so all your conversations start from the same place. To call your friend, just click the video call button at the top of your chat window.”

As per Facebook blog, the facebook users will be able to call their friends right from facebook. The facebook chat not only allows one-to-one chat but group chats as well. To start a video chat with your facebook friends, you just have to click the video call button at the top of your chat window or at the top of that friend’s profile. If the person is not available to respond, then you can leave them a video message.

Facebook is going to make the video calling available throughout the world in next few days. But for the inpatients, the video-calling is available at the URL facebook.com/videocalling.

Google+ – Early Jitters & constant improvements

Google+ is still in its first week of trail and Google is required to make certain changes related to privacy loopholes. One of the main USP of Google+ is the feature called “Circles” and user’s ability to add/edit circles and share based on circle. But, this feature looked somewhat confusing when it was discovered that anyone can share publicly a post that was meant to be private by its original sender. Kelly Ellis, a software engineer working on Google+, said, “Google got the message and is working on a fix that should roll out over the next week that will keep intended items private.”

In a video released publicly, Ellis says “We’re making changes all the time but today we wanted to call out two changes in particular. First, while many of you loved the option to share others’ posts, some of you weren’t quite sure how it worked. Commenting and sharing on posts can always be disabled and the next time you post you’ll see a tip that describes how to do this.”

Continuing, Ellis adds, “And starting next week limited posts will not be shareable publicly. This is really important to us. On Google+ you should be in control of who sees your posts. Users can disable the resharing of their posts by clicking a small grey arrow in the corner of a post to bring up a menu that gives them the option to disable reshare.”

Informing about an experimental change, Ellis said. “We hear you and we’re rolling out a few experiments that display posts with activity from the people you’re close to.”

Uniqueness – Circles

The “social circles” seems to be the smartest idea and best feature of Google+. The concept is best suited to the actual situations. I mean, its ridicules to share same content or information with business and family contacts. Google+ not only allows you to organize your contacts into circles like family, friends, business, but also allows you to create new circles. You can keep one contact in multiple circles as well. Powered by HTML5, the adding and removing of people into and from circles with drag and drop is damn cool. Google is highlighting the flaws in the features of organizing friends in top social networking sites and the concept of circles is enough reason to do so. Facebook or other social networking, don’t allow you any means to organize them into groups or Circles.

Picasa Integrated into Google+

Just imagine, close to full screen picture opening in Google+ using integrated Picasa. It’s going to give some tough time to facebook feature where only up to a certain resolution and size is allowed. Want more!!! Google+ has in-built image editor to edit images and give some retouching.

Google+ Spark

It is another distinguishing feature that uses Google search engine to quickly search and share the content. Unlike facebook, which doesn’t have any search engine and user has to leave the site to find relevant content to share.

Same goes for video chat. Facebook doesn’t offer this feature to its users.

Support for social games

As per the reports published in Engadget, Google+ is built to be compatible with social games. According to Engadget, the section of the code discovered reads “have sent you Game invites and more from Google+ Games.”

Avoiding a direct response, Google did say in a statement, “Google+ is an ongoing project and this is just the beginning. We plan to add a lot of features and functionality to Google+ over time. We’re just excited to get started.”

Google+ API coming soon

“For Google+ users, developer access is coming. It’s simply a matter of time, said Vic Gundotra, Senior Vice President, Google Social, “I’m a developer guy at the core. It is inconceivable I would build something without a platform.”

In fact, Google is set up an email hotline for developers who are interested in working with the upcoming API.

As per information that I read on certain blogs, Google offers might also get integrated into Google+. Google offers service was launched along with Google wallet service in May.

Conclusion

I discussed some of the features of Google+ in the post. But, Facebook is facebook because it is feature rich and user friendly. Among thousands of social networking sites, facebook is not only lone survivor but winner. Starting from a small sharing portal among a group of friends to becoming social networking giant in few years; journey could have not been possible without a user engaging interface and features. Google+ is new kid on the block and people are discussing and comparing it with facebook. I will say advantage Google, because of its preexisting services and especially, the real to life concept of circles. But, it’s just the beginning of battle of the titans.

There are speculations about what the announcement could be. Some believe it could be related to some video broadcasting product in partnership with Netflix, others are speculating about Facebook application for iPad. Few believe that it could be some photo-sharing Facebook application for iPhone. Also rumored to be announced is Facebook’s mobile photo sharing app. However, the most probable could be a native video chat application. As per the TechCrunch post, the reported “something awesome” might end up being a new video chat feature built in partnership with Skype. Skype is the popular video chatting and Internet calling service that Microsoft bought for $8.5 billion in May, this year.

If the TechCrunch reports are to be believed, then the feature would come at a time when Google is launching Google+ to counter the dominance of Facebook. Presently, facebook users had to leave facebook for video chats and use alternatives like Skype, Google Talk etc. And interestingly, this is a feature that Google+ offers in addition to all routine facebook features.

The move could further strengthen the ties between facebook and Microsoft. And no matter what is announced, it will surely take away some headlines from Google Plus.

According to the Google’s official Gmail Blog, the idea behind changing the original look is to “strip out unnecessary clutter and make Gmail as beautiful as it is powerful.” It’s all part of Google’s drive for a better experience that it calls “more focused, elastic and effortless” across each of its products. Google is referring to the two new themes as “a sort of sneak peak” because they plan to make this interface a permanent part of the Google’s new interface.

Google also informs us that the new interface “will eventually expand dynamically to accommodate different screen sizes and user preferences, but until then you can pick the information density that you prefer.”

Giving details about using the new theme options and their use, Jason Cornwell, UI Designer, informs about the two themes “Preview” and “Preview (Dense)” made available in the Themes tab in Gmail settings. On the availability of two almost similar looking themes, Jason writes “Our new interface will eventually expand dynamically to accommodate different screen sizes and user preferences, but until then you can pick the information density that you prefer.”

Above is the theme titled Preview and second one, below, is titled Preview (Dense). Personally, I liked Preview (Dense).

Your old favorite themes are still there to choose from or continue with. Although, technically way ahead of competition, Gmail has started to look an old website and the new look is cleaner and modern. The work also seems to have been put on performance tuning. Since, the themes are experimental so you might find some Google Labs features to be strange looking. Google plans to roll out the themes in coming months.