Author: Josh Wolford

After rumors that Google was planning on launching an Amazon Prime competitor that would offer same-day delivery on a wide range of products, Google has done just that – in a small pilot test.

Google Shopping Express, as it’s called, is a local delivery service that Google says they hope will help people get items that they order online on the same day, at a low cost.

Google has just opened up a testing phase for a small number of people in the San Francisco Bay area. If you want to look into being a tester and you live in that area, you can sign up here. Tester will receive a free 6-month membership in the service which will allow them to have unlimited same-day delivery.

Google is launching the test with only a handful of retail partners, including big names like Target, Walgreens, American Eagle, Staples, Toys R Us, and Office Depot. They’ve also partnered with a couple local institutions like Blue Bottle Coffee and the Palto Alto Toy & Sport shop.

Google Shopping Express offers a single site complete with all of the products offered by the service. It’s all the local stores online in one place. Then, all you have to do is buy, select a particular delivery window, and wait.

As far as the eventual price and future of the service:

“We’re still working out our long-term pricing plan but early testers will get six months of free, unlimited same-day delivery. The pilot will expand as we work out the kinks, so please stay tuned,” says Tom Fallows, Google Shopping Express product director.

Facebook’s second campus expansion has officially been approved by the Menlo Park city council.

The second campus will be located on the other side of the road from their current campus. The 22-acre West Campus will eventually sport a 433,555 sq ft building, designed by renowned architect Frank Gehry. You may know Gehry as the man behind the Guggenheim Museum in Bilboa, Spain and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in L.A.

Mercury News reports that the council voted unanimously to approve the expansion (4-0 with one member absent). They also approved an environmental impact report that says the projects’ benefits will outweigh any negative consequences.

“Congratulations…where’s the ‘like’ button?” said Mayor Peter Ohtaki.

Facebook first announced the project back in August of last year.

“It will be a large, one room building that somewhat resembles a warehouse. Just like we do now, everyone will sit out in the open with desks that can be quickly shuffled around as teams form and break apart around projects,” said Facebook Environmental Design Manager Everett Katigbak. “There will be cafes and lots of micro-kitchens with snacks so that you never have to go hungry. And we’ll fill the building with break-away spaces with couches and whiteboards to make getting away from your desk easy.”

The exterior of the building will be eco-friendly filled with trees and a rooftop garden (complete with oak trees). There will also be a tunnel under the expressway that connects the two campuses.

Gehry, known for designing beautiful but functional spaces, was reportedly willing to “tone it down,” which is what CEO Mark Zuckerberg wanted. Low key and functional.

Google is announcing another batch of fresh Street View imagery, this time coming from Japan.

More specifically, Namie-machi, a small city in Fukushima Prefecture that’s in the Fukushima exclusion zone. That means that although years have passed since the nuclear accident that occurred as a result of the great earthquake of 2011, Namie-machi’s residents are still unable to return to their city.

And that affects 21,000 people, according to a Google blog post.

Google’s Street View team combed through the deserted town, and what you have is some more stunning imagery from a natural disaster. Back in December of 2011, Google unveiled Street View imagery of the earthquake and tsunami-torn northeastern coast of Japan.

Here’s the kind of stuff you’ll see:

Namie-machi mayor Tamotsu Baba explains the above image:

This image shows an area located one kilometer inland from the Pacific Ocean. In the distance you can see Ukedo Elementary School. Nearby Ukedo Harbor once proudly boasted 140 fishing boats and 500 buildings, but suffered some of the worst tsunami damage. After being set off-limits, we have not been able to clean up the wreckage on the side of the road, including the many fishing boats that were washed several kilometers inland.

Baba goes on to heartbreakingly convey that some people just want to see the state of their home.

“Many of the displaced townspeople have asked to see the current state of their city, and there are surely many people around the world who want a better sense of how the nuclear incident affected surrounding communities.”

You can start looking around Namie-machi today.

Well, cider ads to be more precise.

Less apps, more apples. That’s the tagline for Somersby Cider, the new cider brand from Carlsberg, who just released the beverage’s first U.K. advert. In it, fans eagerly await the opening of a minimalistic store so they can be the first to experience the new product.

Sound like anything familiar? Cider. Apples. Apple. There you go.

Part homage and part ridicule, the new ad for Somersby Cider looks and sounds like a cross between an actual Apple ad and those Samsung ads that lampooned Apple fanboys. Anyway, check it out below:

[Somersby Cider UK via Mashable]

Google has just launched version 2.1 of their Gmail for iOS app and it comes with two really nice improvements.

First, you can now swipe to view messages, meaning that you don’t have to navigate back to the inbox. The swiping works intuitively – swipe left to bring up newer messages and right for older ones.

Though swiping is fun and much more efficient, the biggest improvement coming along with v2.1 is probably the new edit mode. With the new app, it’s much easier to perform the same action on different messages. This includes archiving, deleting, marking as read, and so on. All you have to do is enable edit mode by tapping a message in your inbox and then you will be able to select multiple messages.

These small, but important updates are going to make Gmail for iOS a lot more user-friendly.

Here’s the full list of what’s new in Version 2.1:

• Swipe left or right to move between messages without returning to the inbox
• Take action on multiple messages more quickly: Selecting a message in the inbox now enables edit mode. Once in edit mode, tap on messages to select them and then choose to archive, delete, or more, from the new actions bar. You may select Cancel at any time to leave edit mode.
• And of course: performance improvements and bug fixes

As you may remember, Gmail for Android just received an update with one-tap replying, as well as archiving from notifications. It also received better search suggestions and faster search.

You can snag the new Gmail for iOS today from the App Store.

As previously reported, the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation is looking for new innovations in the new round of their “Grand Challenges Explorations” initiative. One of these contests is for a $100,000 grant to develop a better condom, you know, to increase usage around to world to help protect against unwanted pregnancies and diseases.

The condom hasn’t really received an upgrade in nearly 50 years, argues the foundation. And why not?

The story is big enough that our favorite Taiwanese animators, NMA, decided to give it their treatment. As expected, it’s pretty off-the-wall. Check out the video below for hilariously misguided attempts to use condoms, Sims-like lovemaking, and a not-so-subtle hint that Apple is also looking to score in this department.

It appears that gay rights and marriage equality are issues that compel people to speak their minds, no matter what the cost. It’s just one of those topics that people know will cause fervent debate, but it’s simply too important to stay silent.

After a quick glance down your Twitter stream or your Facebook news feed, this is more than obvious.

But what you’re about to see is a simple graph that shows exactly how much of a disruption in the normal Twitter flow has been caused by the reinvigorated same-sex marriage debate (thanks the the Supreme Court’s interest in the topic).

First spotted by SFGate’s Tech Chronicles blog, it looks like the use of the term “unfollow” has seen a surge in the days leading up to the opening arguments in the two same-sex marriage Supreme Court cases.

Here’s the past week’s worth of mentions on Twitter (provided by Topsy). The yellow is mentions of “unfollow.” You can see the spike occurred near similar spikes for terms like “gay marriage” (blue) and “same-sex” (red).

It doesn’t take a genius to infer as to why these terms saw a similar surge. For the most part, you see people drawing a line in the sand, saying “hey, I support/oppose gay marriage, and if you don’t like it you can unfollow me.”

For example:

Im sorry but if you’re not for Gay Rights, unfollow me now.

— Corinaa♔ (@corona717) March 27, 2013

If you’re against Gay Marriage, go ahead and unfollow me please, thank you.

— Sofia Herrera (@SoofHerrera) March 27, 2013

No, im against gay marriage. Unfollow me if you want, but the bible is not for gay marriage. #Sorrynotsorry

— Brunette Love (@brunettelove123) March 27, 2013

If you’re against marriage equality, please unfollow me.You can hate LOST all you want, but you can’t hate love.

— Damon Lindelof (@DamonLindelof) March 26, 2013

Just FYI, the gay marriage support vastly outweighs the gay marriage opposition if you just scan Twitter.

Then you have the people who have already made the decision to unfollow someone based on one of their tweets:

I’m disgusted that any person I follow would tweet gay marriage is wrong. #Unfollow #GayIsOkay

— Juliet! ♥ (@Juliet_Dean98) March 27, 2013

Also, people that are warning others that they will be unfollowed if they tweet a certain way:

Pause, I will unfollow every person who has a problem with gay marriage or rights. Let me know how you feel 1x to make this simple.

— Kait (@darlingkait) March 27, 2013

And judging by the sheer volume of gay marriage-related tweets I’ve seen in the past couple of days, I can assure you that there is probably a whole lot of unfollowing going on.

[Image via erin_wagner, Instagram]

Netflix has just announced that they have gained the exclusive rights to the Wachowskis’ new sci-fi series Sense8. The 10-episode first season will debut on Netflix Instant in late 2014.

This is the first TV series to come from the Wachowskis, who are known as the minds behind The Matrix, V for Vendetta, and Cloud Atlas. Also attached to the project is Babylon 5‘s J. Michael Straczynski.

“Andy and Lana Wachowski and Joe Straczynski are among the most imaginative writers and gifted visual storytellers of our time,” said Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos . “Their incredible creations are favorites of Netflix members globally and we can’t wait to bring Sense8 to life.”

There’s not much in the way of plot details coming out of the announcement. Netflix describes it as a “gripping global tale of minds linked and souls hunted,” and says that it will be a sci-fi thriller told in the Wachowskis’ unique storytelling style.

“We’re excited to work with Netflix and Georgeville Television on this project, and we’ve wanted to work with Joe Straczynski for years, chiefly due to the fact his name is harder to pronounce than ours, but also because we share a love of genre and all things nerdy,” said Andy and Lana Wachowski . “Several years ago, we had a late night conversation about the ways technology simultaneously unites and divides us, and out of that paradox Sense8 was born.”

Netflix’s first foray into big-budget original content, the political thriller House of Cards, was by all accounts a huge hit for the company. It quickly became the most-watched title on the service, and topped IMDb’s list of most popular shows.

The original content strategy seems to have paid off in terms of Netflix’s stated goal – boosting subscribers. One survey showed that House of Cards made 86% of Netflix users more likely to stick around.

Likely, many are sticking around for more high-quality original content.

On April 19th, Netflix will debut the Eli Roth original horror series Hemlock Grove. The company has also announced a new kids series, Turbo: F.A.S.T., set to debut at the end of 2013. We’ve also heard talk of an original series based on the live of Pablo Escobar called Narcos that’s slated for a 2014 release.

Sometimes, kids have trouble saying certain words. And sometimes, it’s hilarious. In my opinion, this kid knew exactly what he was doing by the end of the video. Well played, kid, well played.

You know where this is going…

[aaronreynolds via reddit]

Tumblr has just hit a major milestone in its path to blog network domination. Today, Tumblr officially topped the 100 million blog mark.

Tumblr currently has 100.1 million individual blogs, which are responsible for 44.6 billion posts.

The Next Web first noticed that the ticker had crossed the 100 million mark.

Tumblr, which was founded in 2007, hit 50 million blogs about a year ago. At the beginning of March, Tumblr reported 93 million blogs. That means that Tumblr has added around 7 million blogs in less than a month. That’s some serious growth.

If you want to get a sense on how post blog posts are rolling in on a daily basis, Tumblr reports that there have been over 80 million post today alone.

In the last few months, Tumblr has launched a new native iOS app, and has added tablet support for both Android and iOS.

Tumblr also broke into the top ten sites in the U.S. rankings, although they currently sit at #14 in terms of Quantcast data.

Tumblr is growing like a weed – even topping Facebook in a recent usage survey of teens. Here’s to another 100 million blogs, guys.

Redbox has just hit a major milestone in Canada. In only 10 months after launching the first kiosks outside of Vancouver (and eventually spreading across Western Canada), the company has hit 1 million total rentals.

To celebrate this milestone, Redbox is offering specific rental deals to Canadians, which can be found on Redbox Canada’s Facebook page until April 11th.

“We’re delighted that Canadians have chosen Redbox as their destination for easy, affordable entertainment a million times over in just 10 months,” said Ron Cihocki, country manager, Redbox Canada. “To thank Canada for helping us reach our one millionth rental, we invite customers to enjoy great rental offers by visiting our Facebook page over the coming weeks.”

For Redbox, Canada is a market in its infancy. In the U.S., Redbox sees 62 million rentals a month. As of the end of 2012, Redbox had rented out over 2.5 billions discs to U.S. customers.

Of course, Redbox kiosks are everywhere in the U.S., with over 34,000 locations nationwide. 68% of the U.S. population lives within a 5-minute drive of a Redbox kiosks. By comparison, there’s less than a thousand Redbox kiosks in Canada – so 1 million rentals is a big deal.

Redbox kiosks in Canada, like Redbox kiosks in the U.S., have just recently received a boost from the brand new Redbox Instant service.

Redbox Instant, the company’s streaming service with partner Verizon, just launched out of beta and became open to the public earlier this month. The service costs $8 a month for unlimited streaming of over 4,500 movies (no TV shows yet), and also contains 4 free DVD rentals built into the monthly price.

Yesterday you may have noticed that your Facebook news feed was very red, and that there were a bunch of equals signs everywhere. This was the result of the Supreme Court beginning to hear arguments on California’s Prop 8 same-sex marriage ban. All of the red equals signs were simply marriage equality supporters, well, showing their support.

The red equals sign was a play on the standard blue and yellow equals sign logo for the Human Rights Campaign.

Today, Facebook has some quick numbers on the top-buzzing terms over the last day, and it looks like equality has won out.

According to Facebook’s Talk Meter, which looks at buzz around specific events, the term “Equality” was the most-used term surrounding the gay marriage debate. Facebook says its use was up 5,000% on Tuesday.

Also:

The top age group talking about the landmark cases yesterday, in advance of oral arguments, was the 35-44 range followed by 25-34 and 45-54.

Geographically speaking, people in Washington, D.C. were buzzing the most in anticipation of the hearings, followed by users in Utah, Oklahoma, Arkansas, California, Oregon, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, and Colorado.

Here’s Facebook’s full list of the top ten terms buzzing on the network on Tuesday.

1. Equality
2. DOMA
3. Supreme Court
4. Perry
5. Kennedy
6. Prop 8
7. Kagan
8. SCOTUS
9. Scalia
10. Defense of Marriage

Don’t expect the Facebook buzz for same-sex-related and Supreme Court-related topics to die down today. Tuesday, the court heard arguments on California’s Prop 8. But today, the court will begin to hear arguments on the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, which barred many federal agencies from recognizing same-sex marriage (in terms of some benefits and such). Many high-profile tech companies and other American businesses (including Facebook) have filed a amicus brief arguing that DOMA is simply bad for business.

Over the half year or so that the White House has been operating their We The People online petition site, we’ve seen that it can be used in a variety of ways.

There are the ridiculous petitions – the ones that have absolutely no basis in reality but I’m sure some people think they do. This would include the ones designed to have the Obama administration deport talk show hosts and let states secede because they’re unhappy about election results.

Then there are the meaningful petitions that deserve White House responses. This would include recent petitions like the one asking the Obama Administration to make cellphone unlocking legal or this anti-CISPA one.

Then, of course, there are the Stars Wars-related petitions. For a cultural phenomenon as powerful as Star Wars, it’s actually hard to believe that there aren’t more like this. You may remember the people’s attempt to get the U.S. government to build a fully functioning Death Star. It actually succeed, crossing the signature threshold and forcing an official White House response. But alas, the White House said that they do not support blowing up planets.

Today’s Star Wars-related governmental petition is a little more reasonable. It asks the Obama administration to “Create a national R2-D2 Day whose motto is ‘selfless not selfish’ and commemorates under appreciated heroes.”

Cute.

Here’s what creator S.M. from Alexandria, Virginia, has to say.

In the iconic Star Wars saga, R2-D2 always seems to save the day, getting his Jedi masters and the forces of the Republic out of harm’s way, and doing so with grace and humor. But the astromech droid never gets the full credit or honors he deserves for his deeds.

In that sense, R2 is a stand-in for all of the under appreciated and unheralded heroes in our everyday lives — in our workplaces, schools and communities.

We should all join together on a national holiday to pay homage to those who, like R2, live by the “selfless, not selfish” creed.

America sure does have some under-appreciated heroes. Sounds like a good idea to me.

As you may remember, Instagram had a little spat with Twitter that resulted in Instagram disabling all photo integration with Twitter. What that means for Twitter users is that they are no longer able to view Instagram photos when they click to “expand” tweets.

Instead, users have to click the link inside the tweet to be taken to Instagram.com to view the photos. At the time, Instagram said that it was “the correct thing for our business to do at this time,” and it may have been. But in the end, it’s the users of both services that ended up suffering.

Anyway, there’s a new Chrome extension you may be interested in if you want to bring back Instagram photos (or at least thumbnail previews) to Twitter.

It’s called Previeweet, and it’s a simple extension that adds thumbnail preview images to nearly every tweet containing photos.

Apart from photo previews from Instagram, you’ll also see them from a bunch of other image services like Dribbble, Twitter (pic.twitter.com), Photobucket, Facebook, Apple, Yfrog, Twitpic, Twitvid, Flickr, Imgur.

With all of the other services (that still have Twitter Card support), clicking on the image itself will open up the image, larger, in an expanded tweet – just like it would if you clicked “expand” instead. But for the Instagram photos, clicking on the thumbnail will take you to the photo’s home on Instagram.com, the same way it would if you clicked the Instagram link instead. So, it’s not perfect, but it does give you a small preview of the photo so you will get a better idea of whether or not you want to click out to Instagram’s site to view it full size.

All you have to do is install the Chrome extension and fire up Twitter. Previeweet warns that due to the twitter cache, you may need to clear the browser cache to get the preview to appear.

[via AllTwitter]

“Universal Pictures proudly presents the film you realized had absolutely no dialogue whatsoever only after you bought your ticket.”

Yeah, that sums up my experience rather perfectly. Please don’t tell my wife, but this honest trailer for Les Miserables is the best version of Les Miserables that I’ve ever seen. Check it out:

[screenjunkies]

Facebook is bringing its relatively new Exchange ads to your desktop news feed in an alpha test that will expand the scope of the re-targeted ads that Facebook launched out of beta last September.

Facebook Exchange, or FBX, lets advertisers target ads to users with a cookie-based real-time bidding platform. Before today, those ads only appeared on the right-hand side of you desktop news feed (and they’ve been doing pretty well).

“We wanted to give advertisers and agencies the opportunity to deliver highly relevant ads in News Feed, the most engaging place on the web. Previously, advertisers could run standard ads on the right hand side of Facebook on the desktop. Starting today, advertisers can run Page post link ads on the right-hand side of Facebook and in News Feed on desktop. As they do today, these ads will point back to specific landing pages to help direct-response advertisers drive conversions,” said Facebook in a Studio blog post.

Note: these ads won’t appear in your mobile news feed.

It’s also important to note that this is not going to drastically increase the amount of ads you’ll see in the news feed, so you’re not going to get inundated with ads at a higher frequency – it’s just that some of these page post ads will be much better targeted based on your other activities.

Facebook says that it’s all about providing users with more relevant ads, which is synonymous with better ads:

“Allowing advertisers to reach people in News Feed is important because people spend more time in News Feed than any other part of Facebook. We also believe that ads delivered through FBX will create more relevant ads for people.”

Depending on the types of friends you keep on Facebook, you may have noticed that your news feed is a little redder than normal today. Fear not, the Red Army hasn’t taken over Menlo Park. What you’re seeing is marriage equality supporters, well, showing their support.

As you may have heard, the U.S. Supreme Court began to hear arguments in the first of two cases involving same-sex marriage today. The first one involves the constitutionality of California’s voter-approved Prop 8, which bans same-sex marriage. The other one involves the nearly two-decades old Defense of Marriage Act.

Today, Facebook users are showing solidarity with the marriage equality cause by sharing and making a red equals sign photo their temporary profile pic.

The photo originated with the Human Rights Campaign, who posted the image to their Facebook page. As of right now it has over 15,000 likes and over 47,000 shares.

The red and pink equals sign is a play on the HRC’s logo, which is a yellow equals sign on a blue background.

The photo began to spread even faster when Facebook superstar George Takei shared it with his 3.7 million+ followers.

George Takei2 hours ago

For those friends wondering, this special “red” equality symbol signifies that marriage equality really is all about love. Thanks to the Human Rights Campaign for this effort. Please consider changing your profile today in support–esp if you are a straight ally. Powered by socialditto  1,000+ likes ·  1,000+ comments

Whether changing your profile pic in support of a cause is worthwhile or simply slacktivism is up for debate. But there’s no denying that the HRC’s campaign is one of the most successful campaigns of this type that we’ve seen in a while (ever since KONY 2012, really). Maybe it’s just the company I keep on Facebook. Are you seeing a lot of red in your news feed today?

If you’ve ever wanted to have you very own, functioning (minus the boom, of course), remote mine prop from GoldenEye 007 (the movie or the game, take your pick) – now is your chance…if you’re a 3D printer.

This is as fine a piece of nostalgia as I’ve ever seen. Takes me way back. Sleepovers, Mountain Dew, playing the Facility map with mines only. Hostile standoffs. Man with the golden gun tiebreakers. NO JAWS, NO ODDJOB. Man, I need to start up the old N64.

Anyway, this 3D printable remote mine beeps, lights up, and will turn any gaming room that much cooler.

And look, you can stick it anywhere. Magnets, yo.

Check it out in action:

If you’re looking to make your own, head here to get started.

[ComradeQuiche via Geekologie]

In order to combat showrooming, one Brisbane, Australia store is taking to some rather extreme measures.

The store is now charging people a $5 “just looking” fee in the hopes of deterring them from using the store as a physical showroom, and then running off to buy the same products online.

If the customer ends up buying something, the $5 fee is waived.

“There has been high volume of people who use this store as a reference and then purchase goods elsewhere. These people are unaware our prices are almost the same as the other stores plus we have products simply not available anywhere else. This policy is in line with many other clothing, shoe, and electronic stores who are also facing the same issue.”

The sign went viral on reddit, as user BarrettFox said that “when they open tomorrow I’m going to see how many times I can walk in and out without paying the toll.”

AdelaideNow tracked down the specific store, which happens to be a Celiac supplies store in Coorparoo, a suburb of Brisbane. The owner of the store, which sells gluten-free products, says that she was tired of “spending hours each week giving advice to people who leave empty-handed.”

She claims that around 60 people a week would come in, browse, ask her questions, and then leave to buy the product online (she assumes).

“I can tell straight away who are the rat bags who are going to come in here and pick my brain and disappear,” she said.

Many business owners, from companies as large as Best Buy to small businesses like this one, can surely relate to the frustrations of seeing people use their store as a testing ground for Amazon. But on the other hand, if you have competitive prices and hard-to-find products, do you really need to be charging a $5-a-head browsing fee?

Pissed off at people for showrooming or not, it simply seems like bad business any way you look at it.

[h/t BoingBoing]