This month, William Shakespeare is the most searched for author on Google and The Bible is the most searched for book. Below, we’ve posted the top ten most searched for authors on Google.

Google has started automatically updating monthly charts for the top trending books and the top trending authors on the search engine.  TNW has more about the new tool:

Today, Google releases a new and improved version of the product with new charts, updated monthly, of the most-searched people, places and things in more than 40 categories with the ability to filter by 11 countries. PR companies and their customers now have another metric to be highly aware of. Everything from business people through to cars are ranked for the world to see. Each category goes back to 2004.

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If you have an iPad or an iPhone, you can now host a video Google Hangout on your mobile device–connecting with your writing group, book club or editor in a face-to-face chat.

Simply download the free Hangouts app and sync with your Google+ contacts. Once your circles are loaded, you can quickly launch a hangout. AppNewser has more:

Users on iOS devices can finally start using Google’s new chat app, appropriately call Hangouts, allows you to do what you’ve always done with Gmail’s desktop experience: text friends, start videos, and share photos in seamless conversations across multiple devices. The best part about the new Hangout app is how easy it is to continue a video chat from a text chat in seconds. If that feature doesn’t impress you, Google’s also putting in 850 emojis for all of those emotions you can’t express.

Would you read the news every morning on a pair of Google glasses? The New York Times has released a Google Glass app, bringing news reading to the eyewear-based computer.

It’s hard to imagine reading in this radically different format, but it could be the future. AppNewser has more about the app:

The app lets users read the news on their glasses while walking around town, scrolling through stories by tilting their head up and down. And users can, “tap to have article summaries read aloud,” boasts the app’s description. The media giant first demoed the app back in March at SXSW. To get access to the app, you have to allow The Times access to your name, photo, gender, birthdate, country, language, timezone, your Google Glass timeline, the ability to view your location and receive notifications when your location changes. And they request permission to do all of this when you are not using the app.

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Google will publish a series of eBooks based on its Ingress game, a game that interacts with the real world through an augmented reality app. Watch the video embedded above to learn more about the game.

AppNewser has more:

Niantic Labs, the startup that lives inside of Google and has produced projects like the Google Field Trip app, has plans to launch a line of eBooks based on the augmented reality game Ingress. Ingress is an augmented reality game that Google launched this past November and it is currently in the invite-only beta stage. Ingress’s website boasts,”the world around you is not what it seems,” and Nianticproject.com is full of cryptic messages and codes.

Do you use Google Reader?

Google will end the RSS reader service in July, but AppNewser collected five alternatives to Google Reader. In addition, Digg promises to build a new reader in the coming months. Check it out:

We hope to identify and rebuild the best of Google Reader’s features (including its API), but also advance them to fit the Internet of 2013, where networks and communities like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit and Hacker News offer powerful but often overwhelming signals as to what’s interesting. Don’t get us wrong: we don’t expect this to be a trivial undertaking. But we’re confident we can cook up a worthy successor.

Novelist Toni Morrison will headline a Google+ Hangout and a digital book signing.

Morrison will join the hangout from Google New York offices on Wednesday, February 27th starting at 3:00 p.m. EST.  You can watch this event online via the Google+ page, Morrison’s Google+ page or the Google Play YouTube channel.

Here’s more about the event: “Using a Wacom tablet, Morrison will sign digital versions of her newest national bestseller, Home, published by the Knopf Doubleday Group, and will be signing the Vintage Books paperback edition of Home for Google employees. The live Hangout celebrates the paperback release of Home, as well as the culmination of Black History Month events sponsored by the Black Googler Network.” (Image Via)

Who will win the Oscars for best adapted screenplay and screenplay? Below, we’ve linked to all the nominees in the top writing categories.

On Monday morning, this GalleyCat editor will talk about the screenplay winners along with a team of Oscar experts in a Google+ hangout. Here’s more about the virtual event:

Join KCRW’s ‘The Business’ producer Darby Maloney, TVNewser’s Alex Weprin, FishbowlLA’s Richard Horgan and GoldDerby editor Tom O’Neil for a post-Oscars Google+ hangout. What book adaptations were snubbed? How did TV news cover it? Learn more about the history of the awards show and get the L.A. perspective. All this and more on Monday, Feb. 25 at 11:30 a.m.  And we want to hear from you. With the hashtag #mbhangouts, send us your questions and comments on Twitter, Facebook or Google+

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Novelist John Green is among the people “who regularly discuss important issues of the day online” picked to ask President Barack Obama questions in a Google+ “Fireside” Hangout tomorrow (February 14) at 4:50 pm EST. Above, we’ve embedded Green’s video about this virtual event.

Along with the other participants, Green will ask the President both his own questions and queries submitted by readers. Google outlined the event in a blog post:

the President will turn to Google+ to continue a more recent tradition, by taking questions online after his speech … Much like the Fireside Hangouts held by Vice President Biden and Domestic Policy Director Cecilia Munoz over the past few weeks, the President’s Fireside Hangout will include a group of people who regularly discuss important issues of the day online.

Google has released its Zeitgeist 2012 report, a look at the search terms that drew the most attention this year.

In the humanities section of the report, Google revealed some dramatic surprises about authors.

Despite all the Fifty Shades of Grey mania in 2012, searches for New York Times staff writer and The Power of Habit author Charles Duhigg generated ”the highest amount of traffic over a sustained period in 2012 as compared to 2011.”

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Need some help keeping your National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) project organized?

We asked the Google Docs team for some suggestion on how to use the free suite of online writing tools during NaNoWriMo. We’ve collected five ways you can use Google Docs below.

This is our second NaNoWriMo Tip of the Day. As writers around the country join the writing marathon this month, we will share one piece of advice or writing tool to help you cope with this daunting project.

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