Tag: Google
Google confirms Android 'Cupcake' software upgrade and paid for apps
It’s probably easier to get excited about the free Cupcake software update on Android than having to pay for more games but, either way, today is a good day for Google.
From next month, all Android phones – so, er, the G1 – will get an on-screen keyboard, A2DP stereo Bluetooth…
Google Voice launches in the USA
Damn. I want this so bad. Google Voice, formerly known as GrandCentral and acquired by the company in 2006, has finally launched officially in the US. It’s a service that gives you one phone number that can access all your phones, for life, for free.
It’s been invite-only for nearly two years, and there are apparently tens of thousands of people on the waiting list, but Google will shortly be letting some of those people in. Accounts have, in the past, gone for up to $650 on eBay.
The way it works is that you get given a mobile phone number, and then a web interface lets you redirect that number to any phone you like. Going on holiday? Redirect it to the hotel you’re staying in. Leaving the office for an afternoon? Send people to your mobile phone. Expecting a call you don’t want? Put the caller through to the fax machine.
There’s also Spinvox-esque voicemail transcription, text messaging, friend settings (so that certain people can bypass your voicemail) and call recording. There’s even conference calling, and you can add credit to the account to make very cheap international calls, just like Skype.
Sadly, the service is only available in the USA. That’s a big 🙁 for me. When can we get that going down in the UK? It’s got to be possible, right?
(via TechCrunch)
Google CEO calls Twitter a "Poor Man's Email System"
When Google CEO Eric Schmidt was asked what he thought of Twitter, at a technology conference hosted by Morgan Stanley yesterday, he came out with the following gem: “Speaking as a computer scientist, I view all of these as sort of poor man’s email systems”.
Ouch. Now that’s the sound of a man hurting. Hurting because his company didn’t see the microblogging revolution coming? Hurting because they did, and backed the wrong horse – buying up Jaiku rather than Twitter? Maybe he’s just hurting because people are hacking Google to display Twitter results.
He went on:
“In other words, they have aspects of an email system, but they don’t have a full offering. To me, the question about companies like Twitter is: Do they fundamentally evolve as sort of a note phenomenon, or do they fundamentally evolve to have storage, revocation, identity, and all the other aspects that traditional email systems have? Or do email systems themselves broaden what they do to take on some of that characteristic?”
“I think the innovation is great. In Google’s case, we have a very successful instant messaging product, and that’s what most people end up using. Twitter’s success is wonderful, and I think it shows you that there are many, many new ways to reach and communicate, especially if you are willing to do so publicly.”
He also gave a quick mention of Google’s new Twitter account, but got a little confused by the character limit, claiming @google is somewhere to “go ahead and listen to our ruminations as to where we are and what we’re doing in 160 characters or less”. Actually Eric, it’s 140.
(via Business Insider)
Real-time Twitter searches on Google results
Have a click on the image just here on the right and once it’s bigged itself up, you’ll notice it’s a Google search page with five Twitter results at the top. That’s because some clever soul over on MT-Hacks has created code for the Greasemonkey add-on for Firefox which offers a degree of real-time search on Google…
CO2 emissions data mapped on Google Earth
A team of scientists at Purdue University have mapped carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels across the USA. The mega-high-res map will show you CO2 emissions in metric tons per state, county or capita.
The project, which took three years to complete, also breaks down emissions by their source – offering the option of viewing only emissions from electricity production, travel, or residential homes, for example.
To check out the map you’ll need the Google Earth browser plugin, and a bit of patience because it takes a while to load.
Meanwhile, an erstwhile group of Google Earth explorers that thought that they’d found Atlantis have been disappointed. Metro is claiming that the vast city that observers had spotted on the floor of the Atlantic to the west of the Canary Islands is actually just an artifact of the sonar scanning process on the ocean floor. Pity.
(via AFP and Metro)
Yahoo! clawing back market share from Google?
If the latest figures from traffic-trackers comScore are correct, it would appear that Yahoo! is slowly but surely clawing back some of Google’s utter dominance of the search sector, in the USA at least.
After many years of decline, Yahoo!’s search numbers have been increasing now for six months in a row, and in January they jumped up half a percentage point to 21%. Simultaneously, Google dropped half a percent to 63%.
It’s great news for Yahoo!, because it means that despite the acquisition dance around the company last year hasn’t had any negative effect on their core offering at all. Meanwhile, MSN Live Search is languishing at 8.5%, while Microsoft pours money into it, and Cuil is nowhere to be seen.
Google saving the world with PowerMeter – an online guide to how much electricity your fridge is using
Google has announced an odd little scheme it’s calling PowerMeter – which, it reckons, could eventually save us all 15% on our electricity bills.
How does it do this? Well, it probably can’t at the moment – the PowerMeter requires you to have a utility company and modern ‘smart’ electricity meter that gives out streaming power usage data. The main gadget for use at the moment is the AWESOME POWER of the MIND, which, by having a plug-in that constantly…
Google launches "Sync" beta for iPhone and Windows Mobile
Switching handsets is a pain, right? Having to copy across all your contacts, all your calendar info, your photos and videos, etc. Nightmare, unless you’ve got a handset like the INQ that just pulls it all off Facebook, or course. Well, Google wants to alleviate some of that pain with its release of “Sync”.
It’ll add your Google Calendar events and Gmail contacts to your phone, as well as syncing them in the background, over the air. Any changes you make are pushed, rather than pulled, onto the phone, so it all happens double-quick. If nothing else, it makes a handy backup of your important data if your phone gets stolen or lost. Now, where’s my S60 version?
Google Sync (via Official Google Blog)
More Google Apps: Google makes 1.5 million books available on mobile, free | Google Maps for Mobile gets an update – with friend tracking!
Google makes 1.5 million books available on mobile, free
Over the past couple of years, Google’s been industriously scanning, cataloguing and digitising millions of books whose content has passed into the public domain. These books have been available for a while on Google Book Search, but now they’re available on mobile too.
If you point your iPhone or Android browser towards http://books.google.com/m, then you’ll find mobile-optimised versions of the books which display text, rather than the digital images provided on the non-mobile edition.
I should admit, too, that the headline’s slightly misleading – 1.5 million books are available in the USA, with just half a million of those available outside the US. That’s a shame, but almost certainly due to copyright issues – books in the public domain in the USA may well not be in the rest of the world.
Google Book Search for Mobile (via Inside Google Book Search)
More about books: Vodafone extends entertainment portfolio with exciting new “books” option | British Library making rare books virtually available online
OPINION: Here's what I want from Google Latitude
I don’t really care about privacy. I recognise the fact that other people do, but I don’t have anything to hide. Add that to the fact that I’m not especially interesting, and that I’ve been on the internet so long, and have such a unique name, that there’s a lot of me out there already.
That’s why I’m not bothered by commenters saying that Latitude is a massive privacy invasion. For me, the social proprioception offered by Latitude far outweighs the downsides of having my location available to my friends.
