Google has announced a brand new Google News offering for iPhone, Android, and Palm Pre users. Google currently offers a mobile-optimized version of Google News for other phones, such as Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and S60, and more improvements will be coming to those in the near future.
This new version provides the same personalization and richness on your phone as Google News provides on desktop. Google's new homepage displays more stories, sources, and images while keeping a familiar look and feel. Also, you can now reach your favorite sections, discover new ones, find articles and play videos in fewer clicks. If you are an existing Google News reader on desktop, you will find that all of your personalizations are honored in this mobile version too.
Google today announced version 2.0 of Google Earth for the iPhone. Google Earth is one of the most popular free applications in the App Store. New features include the ability to view maps that you create on your desktop computer from your iPhone, explore the app in new languages, and improved icon selection and performance.
Now you can view a custom map with Google Earth on your iPhone. When you log into your Google Maps account, you can view the same maps that you or others have created, using the My Maps interface.
With Google Earth 2.0, now you can browse the world from the palm of your hand by viewing photos, Wikipedia articles, and place information to discover new parts of the globe. When you touch an icon, a small glow appears under your finger to let you know which icon you have picked.
Google announced today that they acquired Gizmo5, a company that provides Internet-based calling software for mobile phones and computers. Gizmo5's engineers will be joining the Google Voice team to continue improving the Google Voice and Gizmo5 experience. Current Gizmo5 users will still be able to use the service; however, Google will be suspending new signups until further notice. Existing users will no longer be able to sign up for a call-in number.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, however it’s been reported that Google purchased Gizmo5 for $30 million. Gizmo5 previously raised $6 million in a round of funding 3 years ago. In the past 4 months Google has acquired 4 companies which include On2, reCaptch, adMob and now Gizmo.
Google has added Location History for Latitude allowing you (but not your friends) to see where you've been at any point in time. Additionally, now you can be notified, via Location Alerts, when you're near your Latitude friends so you can easily meet up or grab lunch.
Google Location History: Google Location History will store, view, and manage your past Latitude locations. You can visualize your history on Google Maps and Earth or play back a recent trip in order. You can always delete selected history or your entire location history at any time.
Google Location Alerts (beta): Using your past location history, Location Alerts can recognize your regular, routine locations and not create alerts when you're at places like home or work.
Google Inc. announced that it is working with airports across the country as well as Boingo Wireless, Advanced Wireless Group, Airport Marketing Income and others to provide free Wi-Fi as a holiday gift now through January 15, 2010. The gift currently includes 47 airports, including Las Vegas, San Jose, Boston, Baltimore, Burbank, Houston, Indianapolis, Seattle, Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando, St. Louis and Charlotte. Additionally, as a result of this project, Burbank and Seattle airports will begin offering airport-wide free Wi-Fi indefinitely.
Google is also offering free Wi-Fi on every Virgin America flight through January 15, 2010. The upcoming Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's holiday is one of the heaviest travel seasons of the year, and according to FAA estimates, over 100 million people will pass through the participating airports between now and January 15, 2010. Due to bad weather and other extenuating circumstances, travelers often have extra time on their hands in the airport after they pass through security - 70 minutes, on average.
Google Inc. today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire AdMob, a mobile display ad technology provider, for $750 million in stock. This acquisition will enhance Google's existing expertise and technology in mobile advertising, while also giving advertisers and publishers more choice in this growing new area.
The deal will help Google in its efforts to develop more effective tools for creating, serving and analyzing emerging mobile ads formats. As this ecosystem continues to grow, the company expects these new marketing media to offer significant benefits:
Advertisers will be better able to engage mobile users with AdMob's ad formats
Publishers and developers will be able to monetize their content more effectively, which has benefits for the wider mobile ecosystem
Users will see more relevant ads and ultimately get access to more ad-supported content and applications - improving their mobile experience
Want to text from your iPhone or iPod touch? Well you are in luck! There's a free app for that! textPlus has a free app that allows you send free, unlimited text messages. (See video to the right)
Your textPlus username makes having a cell number unnecessary, even if your friends don't have textPlus! As long as your friends have a text plan they can text to your username from any phone.
Any cell phone can be used to send text messages to textPlus. As an example, your friends can text your username to 60611 (text 'drew' to 60611) from their flip phone, iPhone, Sidekick, Blackberry, whatever.
textPlus also allows group texting. You can Text with a bunch of your friends at once, like reply-all in email. Your friends don't even have to be a textPlus user.
A map of the New York City subway system is now available for BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Symbian powered smartphones thanks to Google Maps for mobile.
Now you can carry the NYC Subway map in your pocket. Several weeks ago Google announced Layers which allows users to view many layers of information on mobile map at the same time. This new feature was used to create the NYC subway map.
One cool feature is that with the NYC subway map, users also get step-by-step public transit directions by using the "Get Directions" menu, and then selecting the public transit icon.
Visit m.google.com/maps from your smartphone to download the latest version of Google Maps for mobile with Layers.
Best Buy Mobile today announced a retail partnership with Google that will help bring Google Mobile App to consumers and expand their mobile experiences. Best Buy is the first retailer in the U.S. to work with Google to distribute Google Mobile App on smartphones sold in store.
Google Mobile App makes it fast and easy to search Google from your mobile phone. Key features include:
One-click access to Google - search Google without having to navigate to the internet
Search by voice - speak your query in plain English
My Location - search for local businesses without having to type your current location
Google Suggest - search for suggested queries and businesses that appear as you type
Links to other Google apps including Google Maps, Gmail, YouTube
Google recently introduced expanded mobile reporting features in Google Analytics to help developers monitor how people are using specific parts of their iPhone and Android applications. The same Google Analytics reports that provide insights into website traffic and engagement are now available for mobile apps.
Redfin, an online brokerage for buying and selling homes, recently tested Google Analytics on their mobile application. (See video to the right).
According to Google, "As with websites, there are two basic categories of user interaction you can track: page views and events. Since mobile apps don't contain HTML pages, developers simply determine when their apps should trigger page view requests. Google Analytics then aggregates this data in the Content reports to display the number of visits, session length and bounce rates. The data gives insight into how your users interacted with the app.
Google announced today that Google search by voice is available for Nokia S60 phones, and now understands Mandarin Chinese. (See video above). The application is for version 3 of Nokia S60; more recent phones running version 5 (touch screen) are not yet supported.
The new version of Google Mobile App now places a shortcut to Google search on Nokia phone's home screen. This allows users to search using their voice or by typing. Users can search for anything, from "movie times", to "fish 'n chips", to "masala dosa."
Back in August of 2007, we reported that The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) confirmed that Google will launch a cell phone within a year. The WSJ claimed Google had developed a cell phone prototype to ultimately give away free cell phones and service to subscribers. The Google was to be bundled with advertisements from its search engine, e-mail and Web browser software applications and considered a major threat to existing carriers like Sprint, Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile.
Nothing ever came of the Google phone until today. Today TheStreet.com is reporting that Google will be launching an Android powered smartphone by the end of this year. The Google phone will be available via retailers and not via telcos. This is according to Northeast Securities analyst Ashok Kumar, who has been in contact with Google's design partners about the plan.
Google announced today Google Maps Navigation (Beta) for Android 2.0 devices featuring a GPS navigation system which includes 3D views, turn-by-turn voice guidance and automatic rerouting. Unlike most navigation systems, Google Maps Navigation is built from the ground up to take advantage of your phone's Internet connection. (See demo video above).
The first phone to have Google Maps Navigation and Android 2.0 is the Droid from Verizon. Google Maps Navigation is initially available in the United States and is free.
Below are seven features of Google Maps Navigation because it's connected to the Internet:
Asurion Mobile Applications, a provider of people-centric mobile applications, has a free app for Android powered devices called AddressBook. The app allows mobile phone contacts smart and social. (See video below).
With the numerous social media services, AddressBook cuts through the chatter to ensure you’re always up to date with social feeds, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr, from your most important contacts, placing them directly into your phone’s AddressBook.
Users can get the updates they want and interact easily with their key contacts all from a central location without bringing the social network “clutter” into their mobile phone. AddressBook uses an open framework, allowing developers to continuously add features and functions.
Verizon Wireless today officially unveiled DROID by Motorola, the first smartphone powered by Android 2.0. DROID by Motorola features the brainpower and breakneck speed of a modern smartphone, designed to outperform where other smartphones fall short. The DROID goes on sale Nov. 6.
The DROID comes with:
High-speed Web browsing
Voice-activated search
Customizable large screen,
Access to thousands of Android applications and
Hundreds of widgets
DROID by Motorola has a solid exterior, intelligent interior and is one of the thinnest full-QWERTY slider phones available. It is a no-fuss, high-tech, location-aware, voice-recognizing, over-the-air updating, multi-tasking machine – and it is available just in time for holiday wish lists.
Up until now, Google Voice required you to pick a new number called a Google Number. Taking your calls via your Google number offered call recording, call screening and getting text messages via email. Google realized that everyone don't want to switch to a new phone number, so Google has created a lighter version of Google Voice for people who are willing to give up some features in order to keep their existing phone numbers.
Now you have a choice to get Google Voice with your existing number or with a Google Number. When you sign up to use your existing number, you'll still have access to many of Google Voice's features, like Google voicemail as explained in the video to the right.
If you already have a Google Voice account, you can add Google voicemail to any cell phone you've linked to your account.
Google announced that Google Custom Search is now formatted for mobile phones. Google Custom Search allows web site owners to add Google-powered search boxes to their websites. With Google Custom Search you can include one or more websites, or specific webpages, get results on your own website and customize the look and feel of the results to match your site.
If you have a web site and add a Google Custom Search box to it, when your users visit your site on an Android-powered phone, iPhone, iPod Touch, or Palm Pre, they will see optimized search results formatted for these devices. When they search your web site, they are redirected to a Google-hosted Custom Search results page created specifically for your Custom Search engine. If you'd like to serve these mobile results from your own web site, you can host your own version of the mobile Custom Search home page.
Microsoft and Google have signed agreements with Twitter to allow Tweets in Google's and Bing's search results. Microsoft has signed an agreement with Facebook to allow Facebook updates in Bing's search results. It's expected that Google will also make a similar deal with Facebook.
According to Marissa Mayer of Google, "We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months. That way, the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you'll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information."
Lowell McAdman, CEO of Verizon Wireless and Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google has released a joint statement about finding common ground on an Open Internet.
According to both companies, "Verizon and Google might seem unlikely bedfellows in the current debate around network neutrality, or an open Internet. And while it's true we do disagree quite strongly about certain aspects of government policy in this area--such as whether mobile networks should even be part of the discussion--there are many issues on which we agree. For starters we both think it's essential that the Internet remains an unrestricted and open platform--where people can access any content (so long as it's legal), as well as the services and applications of their choice." Read the entire statement here.
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