I just posted about these recent changes in my Forbes blog, but wanted to share a couple of images here.

When you do a search for Seattle Pizza, you see the results carousel ribbon/banner with black background. When you hover over a result in that banner, you get a change in the Google Maps result below (as you can see in this first image).

Then if you click on one of the results it takes you directly to a search result (usually with that company’s website in the first place), then there is a Google Maps page for that business listing to the right. Of course, if you click the map, from there you can see various reviews and map data on that company.

What I like about this “Google Carousel” ribbon is you see some core data about the company you searched — how many reviews, for instance.

You can read the full Forbes post here: Google Reviews More Prominent With Official Knowledge Graph Update. LINK

Tech Tool We Love:  Twist

This is a sore point for me — I don’t like to be late. And I like to know if someone will arrive on time for a meeting.

I frequently will reconfirm and remind someone who I know is usually late. I’m a punctual guy, so this Tech Tool We Love tip from Bill Lee caught my attention, for sure. Twist is a predictive tool that people can use to provide an estimated time of arrival for a meeting. Bravo!

“As an entrepreneur, business owner and investor, a large portion of my time is dedicated to meeting with potential business partners, colleagues and companies seeking funding. A pain point I have continuously dealt with over the years has been lost hours waiting for people who are late. That is why I co-founded and use Twist – the app that automatically lets others know when you are on your way. The system accounts for traffic, different modes of transportation and your own habits to estimate your arrival time and then notifies your pre-determined contacts of your location and real-time ETA. By using Twist, business owners and entrepreneurs can maximize productivity by knowing exactly when people are going to arrive for a meeting.”

- Bill Lee, CEO and co-founder of Twist, an investor in companies such as SpaceX, Tesla Motors, and Yammer, and board member of Big Fish Games

We’ll be keeping tabs on Twist.

Google announced on Monday (April 29) that the Google Now voice search capability is now available for your iPhone or iPad. The Google Now service is often compared to Apple’s Siri – both are considered virtual personal assistants that will work by natural language voice commands.

I wrote about this at Forbes this week, of course, and wanted to share that full post: What Is Google Now and also to talk about the potential of this technology to help your small business.

If you have your smartphone on your desk, keep that voice search option open — because you can do more than search. Google Now, which functions well on the iPhone 5 and 4, also functions on most Android-based phones, but some people report that you have to download the Google Search app to get it to work right. You would think it would be default.

The beauty of the Google Now functionality is this elegant “card” system where it shows you small items like the weather, transit info, and other things related to your search and Google activity. Unfortunately, this card function doesn’t work on my Samsung S3 (courtesy of Ting Mobile, which rocks for SMBs, btw). Works great on the iPhone 5, ironically!

However, the voice functionality works fine and you can open applications, craft and send texts, emails, and dictate entire posts, if you want. It is really good.

Comscore reports in its latest Mobile Metrix ranking of the top mobile apps by audience shows that Facebook finished the year strong to capture the #1 position from Google Maps. Even with losing the #1 position, Google maintained five of the top six positions.

In December, the unique monthly visitors for each app: Facebook had 85,574. Google Maps had 74,631. As you’ll see below, their app has incredible engagement.

Read the Full Post on Forbes.

The White House seems an unlikely place to encourage hacking, but the government just announced the National Day of Civic Hacking. This event is following the popular hackathon format where people come together in an open source type of way to solve problems, in this case, in American cities, communities, and states.

Read the Full Post on Forbes.

Google shares rose six percent in early trading today, based on Q4 results that profits had increased despite revenue declining. Many cite concern that the desktop search market is waning and the company is not tapping into mobile yet.

That is ridiculous. Mobile, particularly the smartphone portion, iPhone4, iPhone5, Android-powered Samsung Galaxy S3, and a plethora of other mobile devices are truly in their infancy.

Read the Full Post on Forbes.

1. If you are sleeping with your phone, you may have a problem. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 44% of cell owners have slept with their phone next to their bed because they wanted to make sure they didn’t miss any calls, text messages, or other updates during the night.

Read the Full Post on Forbes.

The Leveraged Buyout (LBO) for Dell is meeting skepticism from analysts. Some in the market don’t believe that it will help Dell’s fundamental position enough to help the company. But that is exactly the reason why Dell will be bolstered by going private, Michael Dell will go back to his scrappy roots with a long view.

Look at Amazon — the naysayers think Amazon is over-valued, but that negativity is partly driven by analysts dislike of Jeff Bezos‘ long term thinking and the investor community penalizes the stock for it.

Read the Full Post on Forbes.

After seeing poll results that 21 percent of Forbes readers don’t even know what Instagram is, a few details might be in order on what it is as well as how you can use it in your business life. Read Kashmir Hill’s post and scroll to the bottom for the poll: Everyone’s Freaking Out Over Instagram Turning Users’ Photos Into Ads (Even Though Most Grams Are Already Ads). It is also an excellent post if you want to wrap your head around the fiasco they created by announcing your photos could become ads.

Read the Full Post on Forbes.