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Google Patent for Pseudonyms in Social Networks

By Bill Slawski, on September 18, 2012

Google was granted a patent this week on the use of personas or pseudonyms in social networks today, with the patent originally filed a little less than a year ago. The patent explicitly points at Google Plus as an example of a social network that processes in the patent could be applied to. The patent doesn’t grant Google the ability to let people use pseudonyms in social networks, but rather that a pseudonym could be presented as someone’s name based upon their choices of who would see that name or their “real” name.

Screenshot from patent showing a user interface to create a persona

User Interface to Create a Persona for a Social Network

When Google first launched Google Plus, one of the policies in place was that people were required to use their commonly used names to join. After some very intense debate and discussion across the Web, Google started backtracking on their common names policy, and offered an alternative approach this summer.

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Category: Social Media and Social Search | 29 comments

Google's User Profile Personalization and Google Plus

By Bill Slawski, on September 17, 2012

A newly published patent application from Google describes how a combination of different types of Google generated profiles associated with a searcher might influence the results that they see. The description in the patent filing is substantially the same as some I’ve written about in the past involving personalization from Google, in my 2006 post Google Personalization Methods.

But I couldn’t help but think of the role that Google Plus might play in personalized search from Google as well, while reading through the patent. Is information from my Google Plus profile used in personalization? Is other Google Plus information part of personalized search?

My Google Plus profile, including information about where I work, where I live, and whom I'm employed by.

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Category: Search Personalization | 18 comments

Google, Electronic Textbooks, and Collaborative Schooling?

By Bill Slawski, on September 3, 2012

A series of Google patent applications describe the use of an electronic textbook reader application that makes using an electronic textbook a much better experience than just reading a book on a screen.

I remember lugging around a lot of books while traveling to classes on foot or my bicycle, or even while driving to law school. As an English degree undergraduate, I got away with buying a lot of my books for literature classes from a used book store (I probably left with a few hundred dollars in trade-in credit). Many of those were paperbacks that didn’t put a burden on the backpacks I wore out in those years, but many others were weighty volumes. Especially the texts from law school. I couldn’t carry all of my law school texts at the same time if I wanted – they just took up too much space.

A screenshot from the patent showing a electronic textbook reader application interface, including tabs for syllabus, book, notebook, and lectures

Google published 6 patents last week that cover different aspects of the use of electronic textbooks that attempt to capture some of the benefits of using real books while adding new value to the use of electronic texts. As the first patent I’ve listed notes:

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Category: Mobile and Mobile Search Marketing | 18 comments