LONDON (AP) ? The eurozone economy has passed another bleak milestone.
Official figures Tuesday showed that unemployment across the 17 European Union countries that use the euro has struck 12 percent for the first time since the currency was launched in 1999.
Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, said the rate in February was unchanged at the record high after January's figure was revised up to 12 percent from 11.9 percent. Spain and Greece have mass unemployment and many other countries are seeing their numbers swell to uncomfortably high levels.
A total of 19.07 million people were officially out of work in the eurozone in February, nearly two million more than the same month the year before. For the 27-country European Union, of which the eurozone is a large part, the unemployment rate was 10.9 percent.
"Such unacceptably high levels of unemployment are a tragedy for Europe and a signal of how serious a crisis some eurozone countries are now in," said EU Employment Commissioner Laszlo Andor.
Even though the eurozone has achieved another disappointing record, for the positively-inclined there was some comfort to be found.
The 33,000 increase in the number of unemployed in February was the smallest monthly rise since April 2011 and way down on the 222,000 recorded in January. And Germany, Europe's biggest economy, has an unemployment rate of only 5.4 percent. That's even better than the U.S. rate of 7.7 percent.
However, the February figures came before the recent Cyprus crisis.
The worry in the markets is that the chaos surrounding the country's bailout has reignited concerns over the euro and may have further dented confidence across the eurozone ? a backdrop that's hardly conducive to job creation, economic recovery and stability across the eurozone.
"The economic and social consequences of high unemployment continue to represent one of the most significant threats to the future of the eurozone," said Marie Diron, senior economic adviser at Ernst & Young.
It's certainly a real threat to the immediate future of Cyprus.
Unemployment on the east Mediterranean island nation of barely a million people is expected to ratchet higher over the months ahead as the economy contracts sharply.
Many economists are forecasting that the Cypriot economy will shrink 10 percent this year alone and see unemployment rise up to Greek and Spanish levels. In February, Cyprus' unemployment stood at 14 percent, compared to Spain's 26.3 percent.
Greece, which is in its sixth year of a savage recession, had an unemployment rate of 26.4 percent in December. Its figures are compiled on a different timeframe and the actual rate in February will probably be even higher.
Prior to the Cypriot crisis, there were signs that Europe's debt crisis had calmed. Stock and bond markets had risen for nearly six months, boosting confidence in countries' ability to finance themselves.
But while markets have improved, the eurozone economy sunk back into recession as many governments in the region enacted big spending cuts and tax increases in order to get a handle on their public finances.
The eurozone's economy is forecast to contract by 0.3 percent in 2013, according to the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU. Official first-quarter gross domestic product figures for the eurozone and EU are due to be released next month.
A closely-watched survey released Tuesday indicated that the recession is likely to have continued in the first quarter. The monthly purchasing managers' index for the manufacturing sector ? a gauge of business activity published by financial information company Markit ? fell to a 3-month low.
Though the PMI was not as bad as first estimated a couple of weeks back, it fell to 46.8 points in March from 47.9 in February. Anything below 50 indicates an economic contraction.
The worry in the PMI survey was that manufacturing activity weakened across the eurozone, including Germany, Europe's export powerhouse.
"While in some respects it is reassuring to see that the events in Cyprus did not cause an immediate impact on business activity, with the final survey results even coming in slightly higher than the flash estimate, the concern is that the latest chapter in the region's crisis will have hit demand further in April," said Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit.
____
Juergen Baetz in Brussels contributed to this report.
MOSCOW (AP) ? The U.S. and Russia should overcome their cold spell by focusing on their common economic and security challenges, former diplomats to Moscow and Washington said Tuesday.
The ex-ambassadors, who gathered in Moscow to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the restoration of diplomatic ties, said the strains have been driven by emotions and misperceptions rather than fundamental differences.
They strongly urged the Kremlin and the White House to move past mutual grievances and deal with common threats.
President Barack Obama's initiative to "reset" relations with Russia has run into obstacles as the Kremlin accuses Washington of meddling in Russia's domestic affairs. Ties also have been strained by a dispute over U.S. missile defense plans and differences over the Syrian civil war.
U.S.-Russian relations hit a new low in December when Russia banned Americans from adopting Russian children to retaliate against a U.S. law calling for sanctions on Russians who are identified as human-rights violators.
"In many ways, people are passing legislation in both countries that is undermining some of the most important achievements of the last three-four years," said James Collins, the U.S. ambassador to Russia from 1997 to 2001.
He voiced hope that Moscow and Washington would find a way to approach their differences in a "more reasonable and rational way."
"We don't really see a reason, any fundamental reason, why Russia and the United States can't find common purpose and find means of cooperation to address the real issues that face both of our people," Collins said.
He added that "neither Russia nor the United States really knows what to do about Syria," where a civil war has killed an estimated 70,000 people in two years.
Russia has blocked attempts to pass new U.N. sanctions against Syrian President Bashar Assad, but has sought to distance itself from the Syrian ruler and signaled its resignation at the prospect of him losing power.
Vladimir Lukin, the Russian ambassador to Washington in the early 1990s who is now the nation's rights ombudsman, suggested that Washington was too focused on its own interests to pay attention to the nuances in Moscow's approach to Syria.
"It's like an elephant passing by a bear and accidentally stamping on its foot. The bear would feel hurt, but the elephant wouldn't even notice he did it," he said.
Lukin recalled a conversation last week with President Vladimir Putin, who asked him about U.S. policy goals in Syria.
"The president asked me... what the Americans want in Syria, saying he couldn't understand what they want," he said. "I honestly acknowledged that I can't make out what they want, but that I know for sure that they want us to join the U.S. in its failure to understand what to do in Syria and to not act independently."
Moscow has argued that international efforts should focus on encouraging peace talks between Assad and his foes, even though the Syrian opposition has refused such negotiations. The rebels say the Syrian strongman must step down over his violent crackdown on the uprising.
The ambassadors said in their conclusive statement that Moscow and Washington should work together to encourage "negotiations without preconditions or linkage," to seek an immediate U.N.-monitored humanitarian cease-fire and to encourage protection for all minorities in Syria.
"We both agree that preconditions to negotiation aren't the way to start talks," Thomas Pickering, the U.S. ambassador to Moscow in 1993-1996, said during a discussion at the Moscow office of the Carnegie Endowment.
Pickering also said that Russia and the U.S. are "a little closer together on Iran than many people suspect" and are "providing a serious leadership" in the international negotiations intended to end a standoff over the Iranian nuclear program.
Moscow and Washington also see more common ground than before on the Mideast peace settlement, and their "ideas of what might be the final agreement are very close together," he added.
The ambassadors said that joint action on common threats should help mend the rift.
"We must try to find a way to keep these basically emotional issues that have been so much in the news recently, keep them in their perspective and concentrate more on those areas where we need to cooperate, we can cooperate and where our countries need that cooperation," said Jack Matlock, who served as U.S. ambassador to Moscow in the waning years of the Soviet Union.
CAIRO (AP) ? The Egyptian president's Freedom and Justice Party on Tuesday sharply dismissed U.S. criticism of the investigation of a popular TV satirist, calling it a "blatant intervention" in Egypt's internal affairs.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said on Monday that the interrogation of Bassem Youssef along with arrest warrants issued against five anti-government activists for inciting unrest underlined a "disturbing trend" of growing restrictions on freedom of expression in Egypt.
Nuland also said the U.S. administration was concerned that the Egyptian government has "been slow" or didn't "adequately" investigate cases of attacks against anti-Morsi protesters, journalists and police brutality. "So there does not seem to be an even handed application of justice here," she said.
She spoke a day after Youssef, who ridicules Morsi and hardline clerics on his weekly TV show, was released on bail following hours of questioning over accusations he insulted Morsi, an Islamist, and Islam. Both are considered crimes in Egypt according to longstanding laws.
Morsi's party said it received Nuland's comments with "extreme reservation" and that they would inevitably be interpreted by Egyptians as a U.S. endorsement of the contempt of religious practices by some in the Egyptian media.
"The comments by the American spokeswoman give the impression that the issue is to do with insulting the president when in fact the core of the complaints is to do with contempt for the Muslim faith and ridicule of religious practices," it said in a statement. "If proven, this contempt constitutes a grave breach of the law, customs, social and cultural constants in the Egyptian society."
The statement made no mention of Nuland's comment on the slow pace of investigation into cases of attacks against anti-Morsi protesters and reporters or police brutality. Its contention that Youssef is primarily guilty of contempt to Islam rather than insulting Morsi is likely designed to appeal to the extreme sensitivity most Egyptian Muslims show toward any hint of criticism of their faith.
Youssef, who models his style on Jon Stewart's, denies the charges of contempt for religion.
"Islam is a wonderful religion, it's a great and peaceful religion," Youssef, a Muslim himself, told CNN this week. "There are some people who claim to be the sole (representatives) of Islam; they are actually giving a bad image, and they're basically insulting the image of Islam."
A trained surgeon who started his program online during the 2011 popular uprising that toppled Mubarak, Youssef said he would not be intimidated by the legal proceedings against him or the prospect of going to jail if convicted.
"I'm not intimidated. I'm just exhausted by this. So, I'm not going to let this drain me, I'm just going to continue with the show, with the same high tone of the show, we're not going to back down, and actually we're not going to relax. We're just going to have fun doing it, as usual," he said.
The questioning of Youssef and the warrants against the activists come amid the latest bout of unrest to roil Egypt in the two years since Mubarak's ouster as the country appears more divided at any time in living memory.
Morsi came to office in June as the country's first freely elected president, but the nine months he has been in office saw the country plunging deeper into an economic crisis, surging crime rates and a seemingly endless series of protests and strikes.
Morsi accuses the media and politicians he has not named of inciting violence and charged that foreign powers, which again he has not named, of meddling in the country's internal affairs.
Google today announced a new partnership with social login providers Janrain and Gigya that will bring its Google+ sign-ins to thousands of new sites. In February, Google launched Google+ sign-ins to developers who can use it on the web and for their Android and iOS apps and starting today, all of the 400,000 sites that use Janrain to provide social logins and the 600,000 sites deployed across Gigya‘s 650 premium clients can now use all of the features that come with Google’s new and improved sign-in service. As Google product management director Seth Sternberg told me yesterday, developers obviously like the fact that they can use this service to easily enable two-factor authentication on their sites. In his view, however, there are two breakout features that so far have been more successful than Google expects: over-the-air Android installs – which check if a website user also own an Android phone and lets you install a site’s mobile app with just a click – and the interactive posts to Google+ that are made possible through the new sign-in infrastructure. While he didn’t share any concrete numbers, Sternberg said that the interactive posts have resulted in “fantastic interaction rates” and that people who see them are “disproportionately likely to interact with them.” For publishers and other website owners who use Janrain and Gigya, this new feature means that they can also pull in more information about their users. The regular Google login, after all, isn’t coupled to a social network so while they could get more information about their users from Facebook and Twitter, users who used Google’s old sign-ins remained relatively anonymous. As Janrain’s CEO Larry Drebes told me yesterday, he believes that this will be the main reason for many of the 400,000 sites in the company’s network to switch (which only takes a few clicks for companies that already use his service). About a third of Janrain’s users currently use their Google credentials to log in to its partner sites, and as Drebes told me, Google’s numbers are growing at the expense of Facebook. Some of the Janrain customers that are enabling Google+ sign-ins at launch include NPR, HSN.com and Universal Music, so Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber fans can now sign in to their idols’ websites with their Google+ credentials. On Gigya, American Idol and other Fox Broadcasting properties will enable Google+ sign-ins at launch, as well as
Contact: David Ruth david@rice.edu 713-348-6327 Rice University
Rice University developing computational models for more successful extraction
Rice University researchers are developing a comprehensive model that will predict how brine, oil and gas drawn from ultra-deep wells react to everything encountered on the way up to the surface and to suggest strategies to maintain the flow.
Deepwater production involves hydrocarbons but also formation water (brine), chemicals, and materials that make up the complex machinery of modern oil extraction. Under high pressures and temperatures, the brine can form acidic mixtures that corrode pipes or form solid mineral deposits, called scale, that inhibit flow in a well.
Rice professors Walter Chapman, Kenneth Cox and Mason Tomson will combine their expertise in materials and computer modeling to analyze the brine and its environment on the molecular to macro scales. Their research is supported by $1.2 million awarded last fall by the Research Partnership to Secure Energy for America, a contractor for the US Department of Energy, through Brine Chemistry Solutions LLC.
A molecular-level model based on Chapman's Statistical Associating Fluid Theory (SAFT) equation and on Tomson's expertise with the Brine Chemistry Consortium will predict the likelihood that scale and corrosion will hinder the flow in a well based on variables found at the site. That will save money, cut risk and make deepwater production safer and more environmentally sound, Chapman said.
"This is all about flow assurance," he said. "Companies want to maintain their ability to produce by knowing how to deal with potential obstacles -- scale, asphaltenes, natural gas hydrates, wax -- anything that could prevent them from being able to flow the fluids. Rice works in each of these areas, but the current project involves scale and corrosion."
The degree of difficulty increases as explorers drill further out to sea. Ultra-deepwater wells are those with water depths greater than 7,500 feet. In these fossil fuel reservoirs, extreme temperatures up to 500 degrees Fahrenheit and pressures greater than 25,000 pounds per square inch can turn benign mixtures into pipe-eating acids or clogging solids.
"There are a lot of components," said Cox, who spent 17 years as a research engineer at Shell before entering academia. "You have water, all kinds of salts and other species in a very complex mixture over many extreme combinations of temperature and pressure. But most of the data we have to base our models on, to calibrate the models against, are taken near room temperature and at atmospheric pressure.
"It's kind of like sending someone to the moon, when you only know what you've experienced on Earth," he said. "We mean to take this limited body of data and make the best possible use of it."
"Our idea is to have a single model able to describe all the phases -- for gases, water and aqueous solutions, and hydrocarbons -- from very hot, high-pressure conditions down hole all the way through the platform and even through transmission and refining," Chapman said. "We want to use one model to describe conditions along this entire path."
Samples from the deep are difficult to analyze, even when they can be obtained, he said. "Even though sample cells can maintain pressure, and a very few will maintain temperature, by the time they come up to the surface, the samples are completely different," he said. "So we have limited data from which to project a highly complex system."
That system not only includes the oil and gas, briny water, sodium chloride, calcium carbonate, barium sulfate, carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide and other elements found in the chemical stew in and beneath the sea, but also the hardware used to extract oil. Every pipe, every seal, every tank and every part of every pump has to be accounted for in the equation, to see how each might react. Pressure and temperature changes along the entire path affect how or if the product flows.
"The temperature's high enough for water to dissolve sand," Cox said. "That's an interesting problem in itself, because at very high temperature it forms volatile silicic acid. The presence of this kind of thing is what we try to pin down."
"We're trying to get basic data into a fundamental model that, given the water chemistry and the conditions at any site, allows us to model what should be expected of that site," Chapman said.
He said a good model would help companies plan their approach to a potential well before committing millions of dollars to set up a platform. "They want to know what they're going to find. Their inhibition strategy (to limit corrosion), the materials they're going to use and the separation equipment will all be based on their knowledge of the fluid properties down hole."
The Rice team is working with project leader Brine Chemistry Solutions LLC, a Houston company founded by Tomson's son, Rice alumnus Ross Tomson. Chapman is the William W. Akers Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Cox is a professor in the practice of chemical and biomolecular engineering. Tomson is a professor of civil and environmental engineering.
Funding for the projects is provided through the ultra-deepwater and unconventional natural gas and other petroleum resources research and development program authorized by the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The program is funded from lease bonuses and royalties paid by industry to produce oil and gas on federal lands and is designed to assess and mitigate risk, enhancing the environmental sustainability of oil and gas exploration and production activities.
###
Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews
Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation's top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,708 undergraduates and 2,374 graduate students, Rice's undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice has been ranked No. 1 for best quality of life multiple times by the Princeton Review and No. 2 for "best value" among private universities by Kiplinger's Personal Finance. To read "What they're saying about Rice," go to http://tinyurl.com/AboutRiceU.
RPSEA is under contract with the U.S. Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory to administer three areas of research. RPSEA is a nonprofit consortium with more than 180 members, including 24 of the nation's premier research universities, five national laboratories, other major research institutions, large and small energy producers and energy consumers. The mission of RPSEA, headquartered in Sugar Land, Texas, is to provide a stewardship role in ensuring the focused research, development and deployment of safe and environmentally responsible technology that can effectively deliver hydrocarbons from domestic resources to the citizens of the United States. Additional information can be found at http://www.rpsea.org.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Contact: David Ruth david@rice.edu 713-348-6327 Rice University
Rice University developing computational models for more successful extraction
Rice University researchers are developing a comprehensive model that will predict how brine, oil and gas drawn from ultra-deep wells react to everything encountered on the way up to the surface and to suggest strategies to maintain the flow.
Deepwater production involves hydrocarbons but also formation water (brine), chemicals, and materials that make up the complex machinery of modern oil extraction. Under high pressures and temperatures, the brine can form acidic mixtures that corrode pipes or form solid mineral deposits, called scale, that inhibit flow in a well.
Rice professors Walter Chapman, Kenneth Cox and Mason Tomson will combine their expertise in materials and computer modeling to analyze the brine and its environment on the molecular to macro scales. Their research is supported by $1.2 million awarded last fall by the Research Partnership to Secure Energy for America, a contractor for the US Department of Energy, through Brine Chemistry Solutions LLC.
A molecular-level model based on Chapman's Statistical Associating Fluid Theory (SAFT) equation and on Tomson's expertise with the Brine Chemistry Consortium will predict the likelihood that scale and corrosion will hinder the flow in a well based on variables found at the site. That will save money, cut risk and make deepwater production safer and more environmentally sound, Chapman said.
"This is all about flow assurance," he said. "Companies want to maintain their ability to produce by knowing how to deal with potential obstacles -- scale, asphaltenes, natural gas hydrates, wax -- anything that could prevent them from being able to flow the fluids. Rice works in each of these areas, but the current project involves scale and corrosion."
The degree of difficulty increases as explorers drill further out to sea. Ultra-deepwater wells are those with water depths greater than 7,500 feet. In these fossil fuel reservoirs, extreme temperatures up to 500 degrees Fahrenheit and pressures greater than 25,000 pounds per square inch can turn benign mixtures into pipe-eating acids or clogging solids.
"There are a lot of components," said Cox, who spent 17 years as a research engineer at Shell before entering academia. "You have water, all kinds of salts and other species in a very complex mixture over many extreme combinations of temperature and pressure. But most of the data we have to base our models on, to calibrate the models against, are taken near room temperature and at atmospheric pressure.
"It's kind of like sending someone to the moon, when you only know what you've experienced on Earth," he said. "We mean to take this limited body of data and make the best possible use of it."
"Our idea is to have a single model able to describe all the phases -- for gases, water and aqueous solutions, and hydrocarbons -- from very hot, high-pressure conditions down hole all the way through the platform and even through transmission and refining," Chapman said. "We want to use one model to describe conditions along this entire path."
Samples from the deep are difficult to analyze, even when they can be obtained, he said. "Even though sample cells can maintain pressure, and a very few will maintain temperature, by the time they come up to the surface, the samples are completely different," he said. "So we have limited data from which to project a highly complex system."
That system not only includes the oil and gas, briny water, sodium chloride, calcium carbonate, barium sulfate, carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide and other elements found in the chemical stew in and beneath the sea, but also the hardware used to extract oil. Every pipe, every seal, every tank and every part of every pump has to be accounted for in the equation, to see how each might react. Pressure and temperature changes along the entire path affect how or if the product flows.
"The temperature's high enough for water to dissolve sand," Cox said. "That's an interesting problem in itself, because at very high temperature it forms volatile silicic acid. The presence of this kind of thing is what we try to pin down."
"We're trying to get basic data into a fundamental model that, given the water chemistry and the conditions at any site, allows us to model what should be expected of that site," Chapman said.
He said a good model would help companies plan their approach to a potential well before committing millions of dollars to set up a platform. "They want to know what they're going to find. Their inhibition strategy (to limit corrosion), the materials they're going to use and the separation equipment will all be based on their knowledge of the fluid properties down hole."
The Rice team is working with project leader Brine Chemistry Solutions LLC, a Houston company founded by Tomson's son, Rice alumnus Ross Tomson. Chapman is the William W. Akers Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Cox is a professor in the practice of chemical and biomolecular engineering. Tomson is a professor of civil and environmental engineering.
Funding for the projects is provided through the ultra-deepwater and unconventional natural gas and other petroleum resources research and development program authorized by the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The program is funded from lease bonuses and royalties paid by industry to produce oil and gas on federal lands and is designed to assess and mitigate risk, enhancing the environmental sustainability of oil and gas exploration and production activities.
###
Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews
Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation's top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,708 undergraduates and 2,374 graduate students, Rice's undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice has been ranked No. 1 for best quality of life multiple times by the Princeton Review and No. 2 for "best value" among private universities by Kiplinger's Personal Finance. To read "What they're saying about Rice," go to http://tinyurl.com/AboutRiceU.
RPSEA is under contract with the U.S. Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory to administer three areas of research. RPSEA is a nonprofit consortium with more than 180 members, including 24 of the nation's premier research universities, five national laboratories, other major research institutions, large and small energy producers and energy consumers. The mission of RPSEA, headquartered in Sugar Land, Texas, is to provide a stewardship role in ensuring the focused research, development and deployment of safe and environmentally responsible technology that can effectively deliver hydrocarbons from domestic resources to the citizens of the United States. Additional information can be found at http://www.rpsea.org.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
President Barack Obama consoles Donovan Frazier during his Easter egg roll event (Jason Reed/Reuters
Taking a turn as comforter-in-chief, President Barack Obama on Monday consoled a 5-year-old boy distraught after losing his White House Easter roll with a hug and a kindly, "Shake it off."
The boy, Donovan Frazier, and his dad, Donnie Frazier, 35, came from Scranton, Pa., for the annual celebration. They joined some 30,000 Americans from all 50 states who got tickets for the festivities on the South Lawn of the White House. There, in the spring sunshine, groups of about 10 kids at a time raced to see who could push their hard-boiled Easter eggs with spoons across the finish line first.
The younger Frazier apparently did not win, and did not take it well, slumping on the grass and crying. Obama stopped to comfort him.
"Here, you want the egg? You get to keep it. Shake it off. Shake it off. There you go," the president said, according to a pool report from Alex Leary of the Tampa Bay Times.
The entire Obama family attended the event?the president, first lady Michelle Obama, and daughters Sasha and Malia. A costumed Easter Bunny and "Kid President" (viral video maker Robby Novak) were also on hand.
Made of comfy polyurethane foam, Fabio Novembre's new Jolly Roger chair looks like it's capitalizing on the Pirates of the Caribbean trend that unfortunately faded a few years back. However, the film presumably spawned a new generation of pirate wannabes that will find the chair's subtle skull shaping more marvelous than morbid. More »
Google today announced a new partnership with social login providers Janrain and Gigya that will bring its Google+ sign-ins to thousands of new sites. In February, Google launched Google+ sign-ins to developers who can use it on the web and for their Android and iOS apps and starting today, all of the 400,000 sites that use Janrain to provide social logins and the 600,000 sites deployed across Gigya‘s 650 premium clients can now use all of the features that come with Google’s new and improved sign-in service. As Google product management director Seth Sternberg told me yesterday, developers obviously like the fact that they can use this service to easily enable two-factor authentication on their sites. In his view, however, there are two breakout features that so far have been more successful than Google expects: over-the-air Android installs – which check if a website user also own an Android phone and lets you install a site’s mobile app with just a click – and the interactive posts to Google+ that are made possible through the new sign-in infrastructure. While he didn’t share any concrete numbers, Sternberg said that the interactive posts have resulted in “fantastic interaction rates” and that people who see them are “disproportionately likely to interact with them.” For publishers and other website owners who use Janrain and Gigya, this new feature means that they can also pull in more information about their users. The regular Google login, after all, isn’t coupled to a social network so while they could get more information about their users from Facebook and Twitter, users who used Google’s old sign-ins remained relatively anonymous. As Janrain’s CEO Larry Drebes told me yesterday, he believes that this will be the main reason for many of the 400,000 sites in the company’s network to switch (which only takes a few clicks for companies that already use his service). About a third of Janrain’s users currently use their Google credentials to log in to its partner sites, and as Drebes told me, Google’s numbers are growing at the expense of Facebook. Some of the Janrain customers that are enabling Google+ sign-ins at launch include NPR, HSN.com and Universal Music, so Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber fans can now sign in to their idols’ websites with their Google+ credentials. On Gigya, American Idol and other Fox Broadcasting properties will enable Google+ sign-ins at launch, as well as![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vEx5RoTVSfo4PBhtqAEo1-SE2jygqJfBlBVEWgRgrpdlJYCCY1mL2gHPypcvhSHc6f8_hWjR7w5bYDvEaWDXInsQ0Ou3rCvJFjfwXtTVM=s0-d){kind=small}
Public release date: 1-Apr-2013
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