Google Transcoder's Zooming Feature

If you're annoying to load a web page using your mobile phone's browser, but the Internet connection is slow and you can't install Opera Mini, there's forever Google Transcoder. Google's service shows a cut downward version of the page that hides navigation links, removes scripts and compresses images.

Google Transcoder also has a "zoom out" characteristic that shows a screenshot of the page and lets you select the part you want to read. This means that Google has at least two databases of screenshots for all the indexed pages and Google knows a lot of about the arrangement of a web page.

Google Latitude App for iPhone

Google has lastly released a resident iPhone app for Google Latitude. The web app is nice, but you can't use it to update your place in the background. Google Latitude for iPhone uses one of the new features in iOS 4 that allows applications to track your location even if they aren't in the foreground. That's the main cause why it requires an iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 or iPad 3G running iOS 4. (Update: According to Google, "the Google Latitude app will run on the iPhone 3GS; iPhone 4, iPad, and iPod touch (3rd/4th age band). Though, background location updating is only supported on the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, and iPad 3G.")

The native app is better because it shows more in sequence about the locations of your friends and it sends you to the map view when you click on a friend, but the web app is just a layer in Google Maps and this makes a lot of sense. Google Latitude be supposed to not be a standalone app, it should incorporate with Google Maps and Google Contacts, so you can quickly find your friends.

Marissa Mayer, Google's VP of geographic and local services, has recently said that Google Latitude will add explicit check-ins, stimulated by Foursquare. "Latitude is useful for a lesser group of people. Only a handful of people you'll want to be familiar with where you are at all times. There will be new layers upcoming on top of it. It's more useful while more people are on it. And implicit and explicit — yes, the check-in. Maybe that's in freedom or maybe it's in Maps."

view this : last chapter in epic journey

Introducing Nexus S with Gingerbread

The very primary Android phone hit the market in November 2008. Just over two years later, Android’s dream of openness has spurred the development of more than 100 different Android devices. Today, more than 200,000 Android devices are activated every day worldwide. The volume and diversity of Android devices continues to surpass our wildest prospect—but we’re not slowing down.

Today, we’re pleased to bring in the latest version of the Android platform, Gingerbread, and reveal the next Android device from the Nexus line of mobile products—Nexus S. And for developers, the Gingerbread SDK/NDK is now obtainable as well.

Nexus S is the lead device for the Gingerbread/Android 2.3 release; it’s the first Android device to ship with the new description of the Android platform. We co-developed this invention with Samsung—ensuring tight addition of hardware and software to highlight the latest advancements of the Android platform. As part of the Nexus brand, Nexus S delivers what we call a “pure Google” experience: not closed, unfiltered access to the best Google mobile services and the latest and maximum Android releases and updates.

Take a look at our backstory video for more on the dream behind this product and to understand why we think “a thousand heads are better than one”:

Nexus S is the first smartphone to feature a 4” Contour show designed to fit comfortably in the palm of your hand and along the side of your face. It also features a 1GHz Hummingbird processor, front and rear facing cameras, 16GB of internal memory, and NFC (near field communication) hardware that lets you read in order from NFC tags. NFC is a fast, versatile short-range wireless technology that can be entrenched in all kinds of everyday objects like movie posters, stickers and t-shirts.

Gingerbread is the fastest description of Android yet, and it delivers a numeral of improvements, such as user interface refinements, NFC support, a new keyboard and text assortment tool, Internet (VoIP/SIP) calling, improved copy/paste functionality and gyroscope sensor support.

Here’s a glimpse of the “magic” of Google on Nexus S:

You can find more Nexus S videos and in sequence at google.com/nexus or follow @GoogleNexus on Twitter for the latest updates. After December 16, Nexus S can be purchased (not closed or with a T-Mobile service plan) online and in-store from all Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile provisions in the U.S. and after December 20 at Carphone Warehouse and Best Buy retailer in the U.K.

Google Goggles-Enabled Ads

Google tests a way to monetize Goggles, the mobile application for a visual search. "A year ago, Google introduced a smartphone application that lets users take photos of objects and get search results in return. The company will take that capability into the world of marketing with an experiment allowing five [US] brands to use the application in their promotional materials". Here are the five brands that are part of the experiment: Buick, Delta, Diageo, Disney and T-Mobile.

Android and iPhone users in the US will be able to scan the magazine ads for Buick Regal, T-Mobile G2 and the movie posters for Disney's "Tron: Legacy" to find more information from the official sites.

Michael Slinger, Google's head of mobile search advertising sales in North America, says that "it's a learning experiment for us more than an opportunity to make money," but it could be another reason to use Google Goggles.

Google's Mobile App Search Engine

Google started to index Android and iOS apps in June, but the results were only displayed as part of an OneBox. Now you can select "Android apps" or "iPhone apps" from Google's sidebar and restrict the results to mobile apps from the Android Market or the Apple App Store. Obviously, this option is only available if you use an Android or an iOS device.

Google uses a different way to rank applications than the app stores, so this feature could help users find new applications. Unfortunately, Google's snippets aren't always useful because they include the first sentences from the descriptions, which are sometimes used to announce new features or promote other applications.

Does the World Need Another Mobile Platform?

Andy Rubin, Android architect and vice president of engineering at Google, says that the world doesn't need Windows Phone 7 or any other new mobile platform.

The world doesn't need another platform. Android is free and open; I think the only reason you create another platform is for political reasons. Why doesn't the whole world run with [Android]? They don't like the people who developed, or "not invented here," but [Android] is a successful, complete, vertically integrated free platform. I encourage everybody to use it, but I'm also not under the impression that everybody will use it, which is a good thing, because competition is good for the consumer and if somebody has an an idea for a feature or a piece of functionality in their platform and Android doesn't do it, great. I think it's good to have the benefit of choice, but in the end I don't think the world needs another platform.

Does the world need a better phone? Does the world need a phone that boots faster, a phone based on a web application framework, a phone that has a consistent interface? Just because Windows Phone 7 doesn't use Android, it doesn't mean that it's reinventing the wheel. Android is flexible, but it can't be used to build any kind of mobile operating system.

Millions of people will buy Windows Phone 7 phones and they'll find a new way to experience the Web. They'll probably use Bing, a browser that doesn't support HTML5 and they'll run Silverlight apps, but that's great: more people will buy Internet-enabled devices and will make the Web a better place. Great ideas come from everywhere and competition can only make Android better.

Google Translate's Conversation Mode

Google has recently demoed a new feature that will make Google Translate a lot more useful: conversation mode. Instead of typing the text you want to translate, you can just speak it and Google will convert speech into text, translate the text and use text-to-speech to output the result. You can already do that if you install the Google Translate app from the Android Market. Conversation mode lets you quickly switch between two languages, so that two people can have a conversation even if they speak different languages.

"Google showed off a new application that translates conversations on Android mobiles at a recent conference in Germany. Google employees held a conversation over two Android mobiles with one person speaking German and the other English. The application worked its magic after each persons statement and then referred the translated message back to the other person," reported Simon Thomas.

Unfortunately, the results aren't always great. Google Translate's conversation mode will be released in a few months.

Google Docs Editing for Android and iPad

Google announced that it will soon add the support for editing the documents in the mobile Google Docs.

"Today we demonstrated new mobile editing capabilities for Google Docs on the Android platform and the iPad. In the next few weeks, co-workers around the world will soon be able to co-edit the files simultaneously from an even wider array of devices."

It's interesting to see that the updated Google Docs will support the iPad, but it won't be available for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Right now, the mobile version of Google Docs shows a read-only view of your documents and you need to install third-party apps to edit your documents.

Google says that more than 3 million businesses use Google Apps and that the number of Google Apps users is about 30 million. It's not clear if Google Docs editing will only be available for Google Apps users, but it doesn't make any sense to add some unnecessary limitations to a feature that will make the Google Docs much more useful. 

Mobile Google History and Bookmarks

Google added a link to a mobile version of the Google Web History at the bottom of the homepage for the iPhone and the Android users. The mobile Web History lists the most recent searches, and the search results you've clicked on and your bookmarks. You can also remove some of your searches.

There are many missing features: you can't search the history, you can't restrict the queries to the image search or the Google Maps, you can't search your bookmarks or find the bookmarks that have a certain label. Google only shows the most recent 10 bookmarks, which seems an arbitrary type limitation. The most interesting feature that's not available in the desktop interface is showing the thumbnails next to each of the web page.

"If you've enabled the search history in your account (tap 'Settings' and select 'Save Searches' under 'Search History', then tap 'Save'), the history that you see is a combination of all your searches done while you are signed-in, whether you are searching from a laptop at the home, your desktop computer at work, or your phone while on-the-go. Your mobile searches are marked with a little phone icon so you can tell them apart. For websites you've visited while searching on a desktop or the laptop, you'll see screenshot thumbnails that can help you to recognize and return to the right sites quickly," explains Google.

A quicker way to see your most of the recent searches is to click on the search box from the Google's homepage.

If you don't have an iPhone or an Android phone, here are the links to the Google's mobile

site: http://www.google.com/m/gp and the mobile Web History:

App Inventor for Android

App Inventor is a new tool in the Google Labs that makes it easy for anyone—programmers and non-programmers, professionals and students—to create the mobile applications for Android-powered devices. And today, we’re extending invitations to the general public.

For many people, their mobile phone—and access to the Internet—is always within the reach. App Inventor for Android gives everyone, regardless of programming experience, the opportunity to control and reshape their communication with experience. We’ve observed people take pride in becoming the creators of mobile technology and not just consumers of it.

For the past year, we’ve been testing the App Inventor in classrooms around the United States, and we’ve found that it opens up the world of computer programming to students in new and powerful ways. David Wolber, professor of the computer science at the University of San Francisco and part of the initial pilot program, says “students are traditionally intimidated by technology are motivated and excited to program with App Inventor.” One student from Professor Wolber’s class told us: “I used to think that no one could program the except CS people. Now, I've made dozens of the applications for the Android phone!” Another student, who struggles with the dyslexia, was inspired by App Inventor to take more computer science classes and is now learning Python. Check out this video to hear more about the App Inventor for Android at University of San Francisco.

Visit our site to learn more about App Inventor and to see sample apps. To request an invitation, fill out this form and you’ll soon be on your way to building the mobile applications. And check out the video below to see how it works. We can’t wait to see what you create!

Mobile Google Docs Viewer

Google Docs Viewer, a service that lets you to preview online PDFs, Word documents and PowerPoint presentations, is now available for iPhone and Android devices.

Google added some features that make the service more useful on a touchscreen device: pinch to zoom (only for iPhone and iPad), buttons for to zoom and pagination.

Unfortunately for Google, iPhone's built-in PDF reader and the Microsoft Office viewer are much better than Google Docs Viewer because they don't convert documents to images. Some Android phones include a document viewer based on the Quickoffice, which also does a better job than Google Docs Viewer. There's also Adobe Reader for the Android, probably the best Android PDF reader you can download for free.

Celebrating Android

Today, Verizon and Motorola announced the newest device that powered by Android at an event in New York. We were thrilled to be there, and humbled by what our partners have been able to accomplish with Android. Every day 160,000 Android-powered devices are activated -- that’s nearly two devices every second, used for the first time by the people from New York to New Zealand.

Android started with one simple idea: Provide a powerful, open with mobile platform to drive faster innovation for the benefit of consumers. This idea has come to life around the world. Today, there are 60 compatible Android devices, delivered via a global partnership network of 21 OEMs and 59 carriers in 49 countries. The volume and the variety of Android devices continues to exceed even our most optimistic expectations. In some instances, Android devices are selling faster than they can be manufactured.

To celebrate, we are open-sourcing the new 2.2 version of Android, which we call Froyo, to our partners who manufacture Android devices around the world. Customers will now enjoy great new features and improved browser performance. And developers will benefit from new tools such as Android cloud-to-device messaging (which makes it easier for mobile applications to sync data).

We want to thank our partners for joining us in our vision, for creating such as compelling devices, and for continuing to push the limits of what is possible in a smartphone.

Google Indexes Mobile Apps

Sometimes, when you use a smartphone, the best search result is not a web page, it's an application. That's probably the reason why Google added an OneBox for iPhone and Android apps. If you enter a query that includes keywords like "download", "application" or "app" on an iPhone or on an Android phone, you'll see a list of results from Apple's App Store or from the Android Market.

"You can tap these links to go directly to the app's Android Market or iPhone App Store page. You can also get a quick look at some of the app's basic details including the price, rating, and publisher. These results will appear when your search pertains to a mobile application and relevant, well-rated apps are found," explains Google.

Maybe Google will develop a full-fledged search engine for mobile apps, index reviews, show recommendations and allow developers to advertise their applications.