Fabrizio Giordano

Mobile payments are a revolution waiting to happen. It just makes sense that, with so many of us carrying around increasingly advanced smartphones, we’ll be able to use them to pay at brick-and-mortar stores and the check-out line.

We’ve been hearing predictions like this for years. Recently, Juniper Research estimated that worldwide mobile payment volume would reach an incredible $240 billion this year. By 2015, Juniper predicts, worldwide mobile and point-of-service (POS) terminal payments will reach an even more incredible $670 billion.

And yet, we’re really not seeing physical retailers move to adopt POS technology.

Yes, a few physical retailers are trying out new POS technology — Office Depot, for example, just announced it has teamed up with PayPal to experiment with letting customers pay using their phone number. But this kind of toe-dipping leaves us quite far away from widespread adoption.

Is that because the technology just isn’t available yet? No, the basic technology is no longer a barrier. NFC technology has developed significantly and Internet security is advanced enough to enable secure payments. Even paying via mobile phones using your carrier contract for collection was possible a long time ago and has been used around the world (it’s very common in Japan and has been for years), so that’s not what’s holding back mobile payments.

The slow adoption isn’t due to a lack of investment or innovation among technology vendors, either. Many companies, big and small, have been pouring a lot of money into this market, intent on becoming market leaders and making their platform the end-all-be-all standard. But no one has truly acknowledged the complexity of today’s retail point of sale process and what is required to enable reliable, and scalable mobile payments (and mobile services, for that matter, such as social applications, coupons, loyalty programs) at the retail point of sale.

Costs to integrate new and legacy technologies

One key reason retailers aren’t rushing to deploy mobile payment systems is that they see the cost of the solution as too high for the benefit. Even solutions that do not require new hardware pose significant costs to the merchant through fees and overhead. In fact, the purchase of a new terminal, an NFC reader, or other piece of hardware will likely be the least of a retailer’s expenses.

Because today’s retail systems are so inflexible, the integration of any third-party systems will result in a huge IT expense for implementation. The customization required so that all components of the point of sale system (including inventory management and payment processing) interact with a new mobile payment platform without disrupting the operation of the existing systems is cumbersome and expensive due to complex software integration.

The retailer’s cost to add even one type of mobile payment technology (such as Google Wallet) is currently very high, and since the market is so fragmented, adopting just one of the mobile payment platforms will only address a tiny portion of the market. To pay with Google Wallet, for example, customers have to have a specific phone model and one of the two credit cards that are currently supported.

Retailers can’t absorb these costs. For us to see a real mobile payments revolution in retail that provides added value to the consumer, retailers will need to integrate additional services such as coupons and loyalty rewards, each requiring its own associated customization costs.

But physical retail is at a critical point these days. It’s lost a lot of ground in the war with online retail. To stay in the game, physical retailers will have to start offering added values to clients that they do not offer today. They’ll need to have real-time control over their inventory, and they’ll need high quality information about their clients at their fingertips.

In today’s technology infused world there are more and more disparate systems and technologies that a business needs to remain scalable. From accounting and other internal systems to external web-based providers of leads and information such as Groupon, Squarespace and others.

So what exactly are the costs of this kind of integration?

The investments typically required include:

1. Restructuring the inventory data: mapping products and characteristics, eliminating overlap, regrouping and sorting of items
2. Restructuring client data: creating a uniform data format for the clients of all branches and departments
3. Physical implementation: although smaller in order of magnitude than an implementation of a traditional inventory and POS system (there is no need for dedicated hardware and servers), you still need to make sure that all the devices that will be running the web solution are available and that the peripherals are compatible
4. Training employees and management to use a new system and a new approach to dealing with the data.

Redefining the retail industry’s “operating system”

Having real time access to all of your inventory, and having real time access to data about your customers’ purchasing history and habits, including customers that are in the store at the moment, will help physical retail remain in the game. For example, Amazon has been applying sophisticated algorithms in order to offer additional products to customers during their browsing experience to increase sales. A new “operating system” for retail that provides companies with access to real-time data of inventory and customers is a must in order to offer such service to users in the future.

Because of a lack of industry standards, retailers can’t afford to gamble and choose one standard of mobile payment over another – they need to be prepared to offer their customers the ability to pay through whatever means the customers want.

Take the online commerce space as a perfect example. Platforms like Magento, Demandware, Shopify and Venda, allow easy integration with third-party software, so that payment solutions like PayPal, BillMeLater, and Google Checkout are thriving and being adopted by online retailers and consumers alike.

The very good news is that we’re seeing a new generation of retail “operating systems.” For retailers who are using web POS software, accepting a new form of mobile payment can now be as easy as installing an app. There is no need to change payment processing vendors, rebuild integrations with inventory management systems, or incur any other hassles. In the last year we’ve seen that large retailers are beginning to understand the need for a cloud-local based comprehensive POS solution.

Still, it’s ultimately a game of wait-and-see for those of us working in this market. The future of the mobile payments industry is in the hands of retail companies. If they embrace the potential economic advantage and convenience of the new, more cost-effective technologies, they have a lot to gain. Retailers need to make the choice to start the retail revolution.

Kris Hiiemaa is CEO of retail point of sale software and inventory system provider ERPLY.

[Top image credit: Walmart Stores/Flickr]

Filed under: VentureBeat

Ryan Carson, the web design guru behind Carsonified, wants to teach you how to code. And he says he can do it in just five minutes using a web-based game.

Carson’s latest endeavor is Code Racer, a multi-player game designed to teach simple web skills through live-coding.

In an chat with VentureBeat, Carson explained that the game teaches total beginners how to code a basic web site in as little time as five minutes. Players can race each other to finish coding challenges, and along they way, they unlock rewards.

Code Racer joins a new genre of simple, interactive web tools that take novices through the steps of learning how to code.

One startup with a similar premise (though without some of the more obvious game mechanics), is Codecademy, which got its start with Y Combinator before raising a lightning-fast $2.5 million funding round. Codecademy is looking to increase its userbase with Code Year, a weekly program to turn web users into web coders throughout the course of 2012.

But Carson says Code Racer and Treehouse, its parent, are quite different from Codecademy’s offerings.

Treehouse, Carson’s code-and-design-focused startup lets visitors watch videos and learn basic web skills. The more you learn, the more badges you can unlock — and some badges, like the Advanced Node.js badge or the Rails Foundations badge, can earn you interviews with companies like Facebook and WordPress.

Currently, Treehouse employs eight full-time teachers to create videos for the site.

“Code Racer is kind of the next iteration of that,” Carson explained to us. “We can reach you through video, and we can also teach you through interactive gaming.”

In fact, Carson imagines that Code Racer, which itself is simply a weeklong hackathon-type project from Treehouse staff members, will eventually end up as part of the greater Treehouse product.

“We’re going to roll out a group Treehouse product so big companies will have a dashboard of their members, what badges they’re unlocking, how fast they’re learning, rankings,” Carson explains. “Code Racer would be good for groups to challenge each other.”

Carson gives us an example: Disney, he says, already has a rather sizable Treehouse account for its in-house development team. Code Racer “might be the perfect internal tool for group members to challenge one another and also have fun,” Carson concludes.

Late last year, Carson told VentureBeat he had sold the Carsonified events business to focus all his attention on Treehouse.

“We want to help people who can’t afford traditional education, want to change careers [or] don’t have access to cutting edge design/dev training at their school,” he said.

Carson also reveals that although Treehouse received very little initial funding (in the form of an angel round from some prominent Silicon Valley investors), the venture is already profitable.

“We’re doing $2 million [annually] in revenue,” he says. “We’re profitable, and we’re increasing revenue by a million dollars every three months.”

Image courtesy of Jolie O’Dell.

Filed under: dev

Twitter has just announced a new pilot program that will give developers access to the handles and metadata for Verified Accounts.

Verified Accounts are Twitter accounts held by persons of note — musicians, actors, celebrities and other public figures.

“This opens the door for developers to create new ways for fans to interact with the actors and artists they love and to build the Twitter experience into music and entertainment services,” a Twitter spokesperson told VentureBeat this morning.

In this pilot program, Twitter is distributing Verified Account public data to music and media services, device manufacturers and developers to give them richer ways to engage their users — and to give the Twitter brand a bit of a boost, no doubt.

The first participants in the pilot program are The Echo Nest, a music app platform; Gracenote, which offers a suite of “entertainment solutions” for gadgets and cars; and Rovi, a tech company with a focus on Hollywood and home entertainment.

These three partners, “will scale the distribution of Twitter account data for integration in consumer-facing apps,” writes Twitter employee Jason Costa on the company’s developer blog. “Developers in the Twitter ecosystem can now work with these three partners to integrate Verified Account @handles and Tweets into their music and entertainment services.”

The Echo Nest is integrating Twitter Verified Account data in its Rosetta Stone service (which supports multiple ID spaces). For example, using a bit of code as simple as twitter:artist:justinbieber will allow developers to show tweets from the Biebs inside an app.

Gracenote, which powers iTunes, Sony BRAVIA televisions, HTC mobile devices and Ford SYNC, will be doing something similar, as will Rovi, which is used by a plethora of consumer device manufacturers and service providers.

“Partnerships like these give music and entertainment fans the opportunity to interact with tweets from their favorite artists directly through the media services they use every day,” Costa concludes.

“We expect to add more partnerships to the pilot program, which will extend the Twitter experience to a new set of devices and applications.”

Below, you can see the new data in action on Echo Nest-powered app Discovr:

Filed under: dev, VentureBeat

Chances are if you’re working in tech then you’ve spent time deliberating over which of the multitude of conferences, events and shows you should attend in 2012. Time out of the office is a luxury most startups can’t afford, so how can you justify CES, NAMM, Macworld, Mobile World Congress, SXSW, plus the hundred or so others you’re considering?

The rule of thumb is that a few crucial conferences are a must, and that it’s better to go all-in for the best events, like CES, then to spread yourself thin at a lot of lackluster ones. And CES, which begins this week in Las Vegas, is definitely one of the events for tech startups to attend.

It’s hard enough to make a splash with a six-figure budget, so how do you make an impression as a startup at an event like CES? What can you do with a small budget and limited human resources? Luckily, you don’t need a booth to make an impact, you need a plan.

What’s most important about CES is that it’s the one place where everyone in the industry gathers for a few days each year. That means a wealth of opportunities for new business meet-and-greets, a forum to connect with people you’ve only communicated with via email, and a chance to pitch your story to the media.

If you’re spending the majority of your time looking at other people’s products at CES, then you’re not pushing your own. The name of the game is booking 50 meetings in one day instead of 50 days of meetings. If your goal is business development then your focus is building relationships, and there’s nothing quite like meeting face-to-face to do that. When you meet someone the second or third time, and feel like you know each other, that’s when the big integrations happen.

Here are a few other helpful hints to consider for CES, and for any other big conferences on your schedule this year. They aren’t earth-shattering revelations, but they’re often things that busy entrepreneurs forget time after time:

Early bird specials: Show up a places early because there’s a good chance others will too. Hotel lobbies and bars will be packed with people killing time before the show or events start — a perfect opportunity to meet them before things get too hectic.

Be visible: Be your product, your platform and your brand. Wear that company t-shirt, it’s a sure-fire way to strike up a conversation quickly and create a presence (so bring a few extras to give out!).

Be frugal: You have neither time nor money to waste. Book the low cost flight, share an Airbnb with other start-up folks. Don’t have a booth? Tap into your partners to see if you can also share their space.

It’s not a holiday: Focus. Stick to a schedule. Let people know what parties you’ll be attending and forward them invites. You need to go where the people you want to meet are. Ask around. Ask potential partners and journalists where they will be. Ask VCs. Read blog posts about conferences in your field. Organize.

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas … but it shouldn’t: There’s no point in treating this as a one-off. Be sure to follow-up with the connections you’ve made and work those relationships for when you meet them again.

When the show’s over, you need to come away with more than a stack of business cards, you need to have built some solid relationships. Maybe there’s a deal or two in the bag. That’s when you’ll know that CES was a winner.

Henrik Lenberg is the Vice President of Platform at SoundCloud, the leading social sound platform that lets anyone create, record, promote and share their sounds on the Web. In this role, Henrik is responsible for SoundCloud’s partnership integrations and business development. Henrik joined SoundCloud in 2009. You can follow him on Twitter at: @lenberg.

Filed under: Entrepreneur Corner, VentureBeat

Learning to read notes it is quite hard and it needs a lot of practice to become really fluent. I am learning reading sheet music and built this app as a quick way to practice this skill.

Featuring both Bass and Treble Clef, this simple but effective app allows you to practice reading notes until you become fluent in “sight reading” music.

Valuable for students, musicians and session musicians who are looking to go pro or just anyone who wants to learn to read music!

view more

If, like many of us, your laptop is your office, entertainment center and gateway to your social circle, then it deserves a decent wardrobe. We’ve found 10 excellent bags in which to carry your precious portable computer.

You’re safe from black nylon — we’ve searched long and hard to bring you the more interesting, unusual and attractive bags available across the web.

SEE ALSO: 10 Cool and Unusual Laptop Sleeves [PICS]

Have a look through the photo gallery for our hand-picked selection of brilliant bags. Let us know in the comments which of the options you’d consider.

1. OMGPwnies

OMG! ThinkGeek’s “pwnies” artwork looks fab on this case, which fits laptops up to 17 inches, along with a few other bits and bobs too.

Cost: $49.99

2. Plaid Doctrine Eco Tote

In addition to protecting your laptop, Plaid Doctrine’s Eco Tote also accounts for the planet. The water-resistant fabric is made from recycled bottles.

Cost: $449

3. Ruff Day at the Office

This sweet, stripy case features a veritable pack of adorable cartoon dogs.

Cost: $35.99

4. VAX Walden

With dimensions suitable for 17-inch laptops, this cool, modern case boasts an external side bag for quick access to smaller items.

Cost: Approx $130

5. Royal Canadian Correspondent

If the idea of vintage tech juxtaposed with high tech works for you, then you’ll like this brill bag.

Cost: $75

6. Patent Leather Carry Case

A striking design helps this playful patent leather case stand out from the crowd.

Cost: £155 (approx $250)

7. Speck A-Line

This bag’s unusual shape makes it a stylish, alternative option for 13-inch laptop owners.

Cost: $69.95

8. Pinstripe Messenger

Have fun with pinstripes when you carry this great messenger, which features two external and — count ‘em — six internal pockets.

Cost: $115

9. Nintendo Messenger

Gamers will enjoy this Nintendo-themed bag. With its reversible front panel, it’s practically two bags for the price of one.

Cost: $36.99

10. Harris Tweed Satchel

The ultimate in preppy chic, this Harris Tweed satchel offers some serious sartorial style.

Cost: £105 (approx $170)

BONUS: Red Fox

Finally, we’ve bonused this foxy bag because it might be a bit “out there” for most people, but anyone with the nerve to tote it will have tons of fun.

Cost: $52

More About: accessories, Bags, cases, gallery, laptop accessories, Lists

For more Tech & Gadgets coverage:

• Follow Mashable Tech & Gadgets on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Tech & Gadgets channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

After a steady stream of information in June, all has been quiet on the Facebook Project Spartan front in recent weeks. Originally, at least some thought the plan was to unveil Spartan in July — but that obviously came and went. It’s certainly possible we won’t hear anything until f8 in late September now. But one new bit of information has come to our attention that could be related. Say hello to BoltJS.

BoltJS is a UI framework that’s being built by Facebook for the purpose “helping developers build fantastic mobile web applications in HTML5 and Javascript,” as you can read for yourself here. It is written entirely in JavaScript and runs in the browser, meaning no backend processing is required. And guess where the focus of the project lies right now: mobile WebKit browsers — just like Project Spartan.

Here’s the description in developer Shane O’Sullivan’s own words from the project’s GitHub page:

BoltJS is a UI framework designed by Facebook to be compact, fast and powerful. It is written entirely in JavaScript and runs in the browser, needing no server backend. While BoltJS can be used in a progressive enhancement approach, it is primarily designed for UIs that are built mostly, if not completely, in the browser.

While it is the aim of the BoltJS project to support as many modern browsers as sensible, it is currently focused on supporting mobile WebKit browsers, with the intention of being the best possible development platform for mobile sites and HTML5 apps.

O’Sullivan is a software engineer at Facebook on the Client UI team. The other authors of the project are Will Bailey, Vlad Kolesnikov, and Tom Occhino.

BoltJS is built on top of Javelin, and plays nicely with Facebook’s current code, O’Sullivan notes. It also features modules that use the CommonJS standard. For all the other technical details, check out the GitHub docs page.

But here are a few other interesting things about the project. First, Facebook doesn’t seem to want to say a word about it. I asked them about it several hours ago after a back and forth about something else. So far, nada in response to this. That’s not surprising given what I’ve been told about BoltJS — namely that it’s still meant to be a secret.

While the documentation does reside on GitHub, the source code hasn’t been released to the public yet. The links on this page to the zip and tar source files don’t work. But I’m told that BoltJS is already being licensed secretly to third parties who are preparing apps to show off using the platform. At least one of those third parties is a major player in the consumer web space. Again, this sounds a lot like Spartan.

Also found on GitHub is a demo app built using BoltJS called “Weather App“. If it looks familiar, it’s because you own an iPhone. It is essentially the Weather app re-created using the JavaScript framework. Still think Facebook doesn’t intend to battle with Apple in mobile down the road?…

That’s all for now. More as we get it.

Update: As Holger Eilhard notes on Twitter, Google’s cache catches several other BoltJS examples that are no longer live. Among them: a few maze games.

I consider Sublime Text 2 to be the spiritual successor to TextMate – particularly when the likelihood of TextMate 2 coming to fruition becomes bleaker and bleaker. When Duke Nukem Forever is released before TextMate 2, you know you’re in trouble! But that’s okay, because Sublime Text 2 is one of the fastest and most incredible editors to come out in a long time! I’ll show you my favorite tips and tricks today.

Sublime Text 2 is currently available for all major platforms: OS X, Linux and Windows.

---

1 – Get a Better Icon

In its defense, Sublime Text 2 is still in a beta state. The official icon will likely/hopefully change with the official release. Until then, Nate Beaty created an excellent substitute.

To integrate it, you need to replace the existing “Sublime Text 2.icns” file with this new one. On a Mac, browse to Sublime 2 in your Applications/ folder, then right-click and “View Package Contents.” Lastly, browse to Contents/Resources/, and drag the new icon in, overwriting the existing one.

---

2 – Bleeding Edge Versions

Sublime is in active development. If, like me, you want to use the latest possible version of the app, you can download the dev build. You’ll find that new (auto) updates are available every other day or so.

Download a dev build of Sublime 2 here.

---

3 – Access the Command Palette

Similar to TextMate, we can use Sublime’s command palette by accessing the Tools menu, or by pressing Shift + Command + P, on the Mac. Whether you need to visit a Preferences page, or paste in a snippet, all of that can be accomplished here.

---

4 – Lightning-Fast File Switching

Press Control or Command + P, type in the name of the file you wish to access (fuzzy finder), and, without even pressing Enter, you’ll instantly be transported to that file. While Vim and apps like PeepOpen offer a similar functionality, they’re not nearly as fast as Sublime’s implementation.

---

5 – How Did We Survive Before Multi-Selection?

Editors like TextMate have long offered vertical selection, which is quite neat. But, with multi-selection, you can have multiple cursors on the page. This can drastically reduce the need for using regular expressions, and advanced search and replace queries. Perhaps a quick visual demonstration is in order…

To enable multi-selection, you have two options:

• Press Alt or Command and then click in each region where you require a cursor.
• Select a block of lines, and then press Shift + Command + L.

---

6 – Indent Guides

It’s such a small feature, but I’ve always loved how Notepad++ on Windows displays indent guides; it makes the page much easier to navigate and format. Sublime Text 2 offers this ability, via a plugin created by Nikolaus Wittenstein.

To integrate this plugin:

• Download it
• Rename the folder to “Indent Guides” and drag it into the Packages folder. On a Mac, this path would be Application Support/Sublime Text 2/Packages

---

7 – Package Control

The steps outlined in the previous tip (#6) are a bit tedious, aren’t they? Instead, we can install the excellent Sublime Package Control, which streamlines the entire process.

To install “Package Control,” open Sublime and press Control + `. Next, paste the following snippet into the console.

 import urllib2,os;pf='Package Control.sublime-package';ipp=sublime.installed_packages_path();os.makedirs(ipp) if not os.path.exists(ipp) else None;open(os.path.join(ipp,pf),'wb').write(urllib2.urlopen('http://sublime.wbond.net/'+pf.replace(' ','%20')).read())

Don’t worry if you don’t understand the code above; just copy and paste!

Lastly, restart Sublime Text, and browse to Preferences -> Package Settings. If the installation was successful, you’ll now see a Package Control item in that list.

With Package Control installed, the process of adding new plugins and functionality becomes incredibly simple!

For a usage example, refer to the next item in this list.

---

8 – Alignment

If you’re the type who prefers to line up your equal signs – for example, in your JavaScript…

// Before
var joe = 'joe';
var johnny = 'johnny';
var quaid = 'quaid';

// After
var joe    = 'joe';
var johnny = 'johnny';
var quaid  = 'quaid';

…this process can be automated, via the Sublime Alignment plugin. Rather than downloading and installing it manually, let’s instead use Package Control (outlined in #7).

• Press Shift + Command + P
• Type “install,” to bring up the “Package Control: Install Package” option, and press Enter
• Look for “Alignment,” and press Enter to install it.
• You’re done; so easy! Type Shift + Command + A to auto-align.

This process can be repeated for all of the typical plugins we install, such as Zen Coding.

---

9 – Vim Fanatic

I’m a huge fan of Vim. The amount of power it provides is insane. The fact that I’ve switched over to Sublime Text 2 should speak volumes then!

If you’re using a dev build of Sublime Text (see #2 in this list), you can enable Vintage mode, which provides support for the Vi commands that we know and love — okay…some of us love. The rest of you hate it!

To enable Vintage mode, browse to Preferences/Global Settings - Default. Once this file opens, browse to the very bottom, and change "ignored_packages": ["Vintage"] to "ignored_packages": []. Next, restart Sublime, press the Escape key, and, tada: command mode!

---

10 – Distraction Free Editing

Sometimes, we need to filter out all of the additional fluff that gets in the way of our coding. Use “Distraction Free Mode” to take this idea as far as possible. This option is available, via the View menu. Select “Enter Distraction Free Mode,” or use the Mac keyboard shortcut, Control + Shift + Command + F.

---

11 – You Can Still Use TextMate Bundles

TextMate snippets and themes port over nicely to Sublime Text. You only need to drop them in the Packages folder — .tmbundle extension intact, and Sublime will recognize the files. This means that the entire catalog of TextMate themes will work in Sublime!

For example, I’ve been working with the (fantastic) Slim templating engine a good bit lately, and needed better syntax highlighting. Fred Wu created a bundle for TextMate, but, tada, it works perfectly in Sublime Text as well! If you’re interested, you can download the Slim bundle here; it includes both snippets and syntax highlighting.

---

12 – Custom Themes

The default theme for Sublime Text is excellent, but I much prefer a custom light and dark theme, Soda, created by Ian Hill.

Installation

As taken from the Github page…

“If you are a git user, the best way to install the theme and keep up to date is to clone the repo directly into your Packages directory in the Sublime Text 2 application settings area.”

Using Git

Go to your Sublime Text 2 Packages directory and clone the theme repository using the command below:

 git clone https://github.com/buymeasoda/soda-theme/ "Theme - Soda"

Download Manually

• Download the files using the GitHub .zip download option.
• Unzip the files and rename the folder to Theme – Soda
• Copy the folder to your Sublime Text 2 Packages directory

Activating the Theme

To configure Sublime Text 2 to use the theme:

• Open your Sublime Text 2 User Global Preferences file: Sublime Text 2 -> Preferences -> User Global Settings
• Add (or update) your theme entry to be “theme”: “Soda Light.sublime-theme” or “theme”: “Soda Dark.sublime-theme”

Example User Global Settings

{
    "theme": "Soda Light.sublime-theme"
}

---

Conclusion

The more I work with Sublime Text 2, the more I realize how incredible it is. But all of this would mean nothing if not for the fact that it’s an insanely fast editor, and, even better, it’s not finished!

Webmaster level: All

For the past few months, you might have used +1 buttons to help visitors recommend your content on Google Search and on their Google Profiles. We’ve just announced a few changes that make +1 even more useful.

First, the +1 button now lets visitors share links to your pages on Google+. If someone wants to start a conversation about your content, it’s easy for them to do so. Second, you can use +Snippets to customize the name, image and description that appear when your content is shared. Finally, new inline annotations help increase engagement after users see a friend’s recommendation right on your page.

Here are a couple of tips to help you take full advantage of these improvements:

+Snippets

The +1 button opens up your site to a valuable new source of traffic with sharing on Google+. +Snippets let you put your best face forward by customizing exactly what appears when your content is shared.

For example, if you’re running a movie review site, you might want visitors to share posts containing the title, movie poster, and a brief synopsis:

You may already be using this markup to build rich annotations for your pages on Google Search. If not, marking up your pages is simple. Just add the correct schema.org attributes to the data already present on your pages. You’ll set a name, image, and description in your code:

<body itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Article">

<h1 itemprop="name">This is the article name</h1>

<img itemprop="image" src="thumbnail.jpg" />

<p itemprop="description">This is the description of the article.</p>

</body>

For more details on alternate markup types, please see our technical documentation.

Inline annotations

Now, when a person visits a page that someone they know has +1’d, they can see a name and face reminding them to pay special attention to your content. Here’s how it looks:

To add inline annotations, you need to update your +1 button code. Visit the configuration tool, select ‘inline’ from the ‘Annotation’ menu, and grab a new snippet of code.

Both sharing from +1 and inline annotations are rolling out fully over the next few days. To test these improvements right now, join our Platform Preview group.

Update later the same day, August 24, 2011: If you have any thoughts or feedback you’d like to share, continue the conversation on Google+.

Posted by Daniel Dulitz, Group Product Manager