If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to receive future articles delivered to your feed reader.

What I like the most about this is that I’m not boxed into a certain opinion just because I like a particular source. For example, when I used to receive the print version of The New York Times and only watched CNN, those were my two main sources for news. While both news sources try to stay in the middle and report the full details of a story, of course, there are other stories, access, and angles that different media sources receive. When Google News debuted, it immediately solved my curiosity to read multiple angles and to consume as much news as I could get my hands on.

Since Google News launched it has only had a few updates to it.  However, the Google News team has just launched a new, refreshed version with the goal of giving users more access to the specific news that is important to them.

The most noticeable aspect of this is when you first log in to the refreshed version, in the “News for You” section, Google asks you to customize your experience by telling them how often you read news from the different sections that Google News provides. Your choices are “Never”, “Sometimes”, or “Always”. You also have the option to provide custom topics that interests you besides the standard topic areas. Once you submit your choices to Google it adapts to your experience to show you news that is curated to your interests.

This is just one of several features of the refreshed Google News. To see all of the new features, check out the video below.

I’m really excited to have seen Google make these updates and I’m looking forward to seeing how well it provides more relevant news based on the ratings and interests I provided.

Do you use Google News? What are your thoughts on the updates? If you’re not a Google News user, how do you receive your news?

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to receive future articles delivered to your feed reader.

Based on interviews with their current and former employees, competitors, professors, and friends, Brandt details their early lives, the origins of their idealism, and the strategies underlying Google’s relentless expansion.  He explores misconceptions about the company’s culture, especially its motto, ‘Don’t be evil,’ and rule number one, ‘Focus on the user and everything else will follow.’

I really enjoyed how Brandt structured the book and I learned a lot about Larry, Sergey and Google that I didn’t previously know.  This book is definitely worth picking up if you’re fascinated with Google, their culture, their growth and the way in which they view the world.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to receive future articles delivered to your feed reader.

Sure, I push my Google Reader shared items through FriendFeed and I share a handful of posts daily through my Twitter account.  But, seeing that the majority of my community hangs out in Twitter more often than most other services, I wanted to be able to share with you through there.  Therefore, similar to what Louis Gray (@lgshareditems), Robert Scoble (@scoblemedia) and Chris Brogan (@broganmedia) have done, I have created a new handle on Twitter: @jlevymedia.  This will be, as Chris calls it, a pure stream of the content that I share or produce from around the interwebs.

Besides trying to provide you with, what you will hopefully find as a resource, what I like about having this Twitter account is that it allows me track all of the links that I share through Google Reader in Bit.ly.

While this might not be totally useful as of yet, it will still help me to gauge whether or not the info that I share is useful to you.  As time goes on I will tweak what based on feedback and stats such as Bit.ly clicks, retweets and more.

If you think it will be of interest to you, I hope that you’ll come join me over on @jlevymedia.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to receive future articles delivered to your feed reader.

If that wasn’t enough, visit FriendFeed for another welcome to 2010.  Once you log in to your FriendFeed account a duck celebrating 2010 will begin scrolling across your screen.  Moving your cursor over the duck will bring up cross-hairs allowing to fire a round at the duck.  The duck then flips upside down and falls off of your screen.  It definitely brings back thoughts of long hours spent playing Duck Hunt.

Have you found any other fun surprises across the interwebs today welcoming you into 2010?

For now, Google OS is not designed to be your main operating system.  It’s just a fast way to get online, a simplified operating system that removes unnecessary software and opens the browser in a few seconds.

Google OS will keep everything you do in the cloud.  Obviously, the suite of apps will be Google products.  While the launch of Google OS is exciting, and plenty of blogs have covered the launch, it does bring about the question of living in the cloud.

Many people I know turn to the cloud for some portion of their daily interactions but still feel more comfortable and interact with a typical desktop.  For example, I use Google Docs for documents that I want to share with others or that I want to be able to access any time (in addition to tools like Dropbox).  For day-to-day documents, spreadsheets, and slide decks, I use iWork or Microsoft Office.  Instead of sharing documents, I attach them to emails which then cause a long thread and confusion over the latest document version.  I know that using cloud-based apps like Google Docs would solve this, especially for a company using the Google Apps environment.  But, the challenge is that as a business society, we are still comfortable with doing the email thread method, even if we know it’s not the most productive.

Eventually we will all make the convergence fully to the cloud.  If Google has any say in it, their push of Google OS will help to make that convergence even sooner.

Check out this video from Google to find out more about Google OS.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What are your thoughts on living in the cloud?  What percentage of your time is spent using cloud-based apps versus desktop apps?

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to receive future articles delivered to your feed reader.

Check out my video review of Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs
(affiliate link).  If you can’t view the video, check it out over on YouTube.

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you’ve already picked up a copy of the book, what did you think of it?  Did it give you a list of things to go do?

Disclosure: HubSpot provided me with a review copy of this book.  HubSpot is a sponsor of many events run by New Marketing Labs and Chris Brogan, President of New Marketing Labs, is a member of the HubSpot Board of Advisors.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to receive future articles delivered to your feed reader.

Over the years they have continued to add tweaks to it such as being able to move around what sections appear where, adding in local news and more.  Recently Google added the ability to view YouTube videos for news stories.

This is fantastic because Google is integrating different forms of media.  They’re allowing me to consume the news in a format that I want.  I might not have time to read a full length article from the New York Times but I might have a couple minutes to watch a video posted by the Associated Press on the same topic.  By integrating YouTube, this means that I stay on the Google News page longer and am more likely to consume more information.

It serves as my central dashboard to news.  A lot of people choose to use Google Reader for this feature.  I use Google Reader for everything else but for mainstream news I turn to Google News.

I’m always thinking of what’s next.  I’m never happy with anything in its current form, even if it is serving my needs.  I like shiny.  I like new.  I like tweaking.  So, what should be next for Google News?  I think Google should integrate Twitter Searches for the news stories.  For example, I should be able to read the articles regarding President Obama‘s push for health care, watch associated YouTube videos, and then also see what others are saying about it.

Of course, this is a lot harder to manage then just adding in a YouTube feed.  Google would have to control for different topics, each in their own separate searches which are always changing based on the news day.  They would also have to have controls in place to filter spammers and inappropriate language/phrases.

There are other features that I could picture being part of Google News such as a section for blog content and the addition of Facebook Connect but I think Twitter would be the next most logical integration.  Will it happen?  If Google ever buys Twitter then I think we’ll see some variation of this concept.  Why?  Because Twitter has become an extremely powerful search engine and that itself is very attractive to Google.  If they don’t buy Twitter?  Who knows.  It will be interesting to see if Google News starts becoming more social like Google Reader has been becoming over recent weeks.

Do you use Google News?  Would this be a feature you think would be useful?  What other features would you like to see integrated into Google News?

Have you been keeping your Google profile tidied up?  Did you even know that you had (or could have) a Google profile?  You can find your profile here.

Over the past week or so Google has been making improvements to Google Profiles.

First, they changed the way the URL displays for your page.  It used to be (…and still is unless you change it) a string of numbers that identifies the page as YOU.  For example, to Google I was: http://www.google.com/profiles/113345621158656129639.  But, with the change in settings, I’m now easily found as: http://www.google.com/profiles/justin.levy.  The only two minor notes here, as reported by Lifehacker: If you’ve previously linked your profiles page to your Gmail account, you can’t change it.  Your link will be your Gmail user name.  The other caveat is that you can only change your URL once, so be careful with that choice.

The second change was announced this week and concerns the prominence that your profile receives from Google.  Google will now start displaying profiles on the first page of Google search results.

Both of these announcements are HUGE from Google.  Why you may ask?  For some, reaching the first page of Google is a never-ending losing battle.  It can be very hard, if not impossible, to reach the front page.  Now Google is ensuring that at least some part of YOU reaches that front page.  You need to take advantage of this.  Maximize your profile by linking your websites, blogs and other profiles.  Use the “About Me” section to highlight all of the important stuff that you would want a potential employer, prospect or partner to find.

Want some more tips?  Google has provided a few tips on making your profile more useful over here.

Now, stop reading and head over to your Google profile and optimize it…

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to receive future articles delivered to your feed reader.