Google new photo-sharing service Photovine has just landed in the App Store. Strangely enough, Google has picked iOS over its own Android to be the carrier of the first mobile app of its new service.

So here is the deal with this new social/photo service that Google is launching. You can create vines of photos by uploading one and giving it a caption. Your friends are than able to add more shots to the vine, making it a constantly growing album.

Of course, each of the photos can have a description of its own, but all of them share a single title. Google describes this as "a fun way to learn more about your friends, meet new people and share your world like never before"

The Google+ social network definitely appears to be taking off and the search giant has just updated its Android app to includes some new features and to fix some bugs.

The Google+ Android app 1.0.2 now includes:

 

• - Customize your Stream to show streams from individual circles (Stream>Menu>Manage Views)
• - New UI allows adding multiple people or entire circles to an existing group Huddle
• - Set photo as wallpaper (when viewing photo)
• Good Fixes
• - Fixed some issues with the Swype keyboard
• - If someone you’ve never huddled with before invites you to a group Huddle, you can now dismiss the invitation
• - Performance improvements and bug fixes throughout the app

 

Thats a nice little start and check out the video below for an example of what you can do with the service with the Android app.

Video Below!

Google Plus has reached 10 million users already, despite being less than three weeks old. The influx of people was so large that Google had to shut down the invitation system for a while.

Thats right that many people got in before the service is officially open to anyone. One problem though girls do not seem to be into it. According to some statistics, as much as 87% of Google Plus users are male. Thats according to website socialstatistics.com, though findpeopleonplus.com lowers that estimate to 74%.

Google continues its offensive on the social networking world with a new photo sharing service called Photovine. Today they are released a quick teaser video (it used to be just a two line description and a mockup image), which gives us a basic idea of what the service will be about.

The tagline of Photovine is "Plant a photo, watch it grow" basically, you post a photo with a two or three word description. Then other people send back photo requests of their own on that topic. Its not clear right now what social networks Photovine will support. Google Plus is almost a given, but maybe the big G will connect their new service to Twitter and Facebook too.

Bill Gross, the founder and CEO of the business incubator Idealab, as well as the Twitter app companyUbermedia, has high hopes for Google+. "I predict that Google+ will go from 0 to 100,000,000 users faster than any other service in history" Grosswrote on the service this morning.

A bold prediction indeed, but there is a very good chance that he is on the right track. Once Google+ becomes available to anyone with a Google account, the amount of users on it will undoubtedly explode. Gmail alone has over 200 million users globally, and Google reach via search and other services adds hundreds of millions of other potential users just waiting to jump into G+.

Currently Google+ is available to people with a public Google profile, and the search giant resumed sending out Google+ invitations last week after closing them for a few days due to what it said was "insane demand."

Gross is no stranger to social networking. He launched the Twitter aggregation startup TweetUp last year, which eventually became Ubermedia as Gross added features to the company core app and purchased mobile Twitter apps Echofon and TwitDroid. Ubermedia was also reportedly in negotiations to acquire the popular client TweetDeck before Twitter snapped it up.

This Sunday the US citizens will witness the birth of yet another eBook ecosystem. The iriver Story HD is the first e-reader integrating direct Wi-Fi access to Google eBooks open platform and its bound for a Sunday release over at Target stores all over the country.

The iriver Story HD, will retail for $139.99 and will offer over-the-air access to hundreds of thousands of Google eBooks for sale and more than 3 million for free. As long as you are hooked up to a Wi-Fi network you will be able to browse, buy and read Google eBooks without the need for a computer for uploading them to the device.

A really cool feature lets you store your personal ebooks library in the cloud picking up where you left off in any ebook you are reading as you move from laptop to smartphone to e-reader to tablet something Amazon Kindle has been offering for a while via their proprietary Whispersync tech. According to Google, its eBooks platform was designed to be open to all publishers, retailers and manufacturers. This means that there is a good chance many will follow iriver in releasing a Google-powered e-reader.

The Nexus S 4G looks set for some important updates from Sprint on July 11. One of the features in the update is enabling the NFC element, which could herald the much-anticipated Google Wallet. The update, labeled as version GRJ90, does not look like a huge one, but it is bringing a number of features and upgrades to the phone:

• Enables the NFC Secure Element
• 4G Settings Widget
• TTY Support
• NI Push Support
• Improved Wi-Fi connectivity, speakerphone audio quality, 4G throughput and signal acquisition
• Tuned signal strength indicators

It looks like a nice update all around, especially with the fifth bullet point, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled for it starting July 11. The update will be a gradual roll-out that will take place over the course of four days, so if it doesn’t hit your device immediately, just be patient. You might also want to try a manual update, but we’re not sure if it will work in this case.

Vodafone UK has released a new maintenance update for the Google Nexus One, featuring a number of fixes and improvements including UI enhancements, new Android keyboard with easy copy/paste, improved power management, improved Internet calling support (SIP) and multiple camera management. Presuming you are in the affected group, after the update your Nexus One will run Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread.

The Big Red carrier has already started pushing update to the users and you should be prompted to "push the button" from where you can proceed by following on-screen instructions. Inpatient folks can check for the update manually from "Settings" and then "About phone". The new software version should appear as Build GRJ22.

Google Maps just keeps getting better, folks. The latest update of the popular service, version 5.7, brings a whole bunch of improvements, along with a shiny new feature for its users Transit Navigation (Beta).

As the name of the brand new feature suggests, Transit Navigation helps you find your way in the public transportation networks of over 400 cities around the world. Think of it as "stop by stop" GPS navigation, as the people in Google call it.

Download Latest Version

Video Below!

Google really wants its Google+ social network project to succeed. So much so that the company will be rebranding its popular Picasa and Blogger services in order to help the promotion of the Facebook competitor.

Apparently Google will be trying to solidify its brand name by renaming Picasa "Google Photos" and Blogger "Google Blogs". Rumor has it that other services might be affected too, though YouTube will remain as it is for the time being.

The re-branding of Picasa and Blogger will take a month to month and a half to complete so it might not be finalized by the time Google+ launches officially. Rumor has it that the service will become publicly available on 31 July.

By the way this is the exact deadline that all Google Profile owners have to make them public. The company feels that private profiles are not serving the purpose they were meant to and will be deleting all profiles that are listed as private at the start of next month.