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Posts tagged with "google"

Google Testing Clean New Google Search Design For Tablets

Multiple users are today reporting that Google is trialing a new tablet-optimized Google Search page that merges the recent design changes from the desktop version with a more touch-friendly design for tablets. Digital Inspiration managed to take a few screenshots of the new design running on their iPad which we’ve included above and below the break.

The new look uses just a single column layout, keeping the old sidebar options minimized below the search box instead. The new orange, dark gray and blue color theme is also present in this new design, which certainly feels cleaner with large amounts of white space. The one final design change that is of note is that the rather famous ‘Goooooooooogle’ at the bottom of the page that links to following search pages is gone – instead all that exists is the numbers one to ten.

This new design is currently being tested, and as is normal with Google product changes, is being randomly presented to a certain percentage of users. It may yet be a few weeks or possibly even months before this rolls out to everyone. Jump the break for some more screenshots.

[Digital Inspiration via The Next Web]

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Apple to Bid on Hulu Online Television Service?

After being put up for sale by owners Walt Disney, News Corp, and NBC Universal, Apple may be considering to bid on the online television service according to ‘people familiar with the matter’. It’s your typical response to rumors small and large, but let’s look at what’s on the table. Apple has stockpiled storage in the past (presumably for storing and serving video), and today’s speculation also coincides with previous rumors that Apple is working on their own online streaming video service.

Hulu has already been in talks with AT&T, Yahoo, and Apple competitor Google. Apple has $76 billion in cash, a data center to spare, and a competitor I’m sure they’d love to prevent from acquiring Hulu’s properties. Hulu has 33,000 episodes available for Hulu Plus subscribers, mobile applications, and ties with gaming consoles and other devices in the consumer market.

Update: In an updated version of the story, Yahoo is purported to be willing to pay up to $2 billion for four/five years of content. Microsoft dropped out of the bidding for the deal.

[Bloomberg[1][2] via @emilychangtv]

Official Google+ App for iPhone Now Available

Google has just released the official Google+ app for iPhone on the App Store. The app is free and available here, and at the moment of writing this Google hasn’t updated its Mobile webpage to showcase the new app yet.

The Google+ iOS app provides a native interface to access much of the functionalities of the website, such as the Huddle group messaging feature – which was exclusive to Android devices prior to the app’s approval. The dashboard of the Google+ app presents a grid of icons to access the Stream, Huddle, Photos, your Profile and Circles, as well as a Notifications tab at the bottom that will open a vertical list of all your incoming notifications. Whilst much of the navigation seems to rely on web views optimized for the iPhone and fetched by the device, the animations when switching between sections are quite snappy and fast on iOS 4. Just like on the desktop, the Stream provides recent updates from the people you follow and your Circles, allowing you to check for new posts with the popular “pull to refresh gesture” and comment or +1 others’s posts. You can’t +1 from the home page – you have to open a single post and hit the + button in the upper right corner, while a text field at the bottom will let you leave a comment. You can also “mute” or “report” a post. The app is capable of sending push notifications for new comments, shares, and so forth. Read more

Invite-only Photovine Now Available On The App Store

Photovine, an image sharing service with a strong social component that is trademarked and registered by Google, has released its first official iPhone app in the App Store, which is available now for free. Described as a “fun way to learn more about your friends, meet new people, and share your world”, Photovine is backed by a beautiful user interface design to share your moments and photos with your friends, and watch other photo replies coming into your social stream. Photovine is developed by Google’s subsidiary Slide, which has also created other apps for Google like Disco and Pool Party. Photovine revolves around the concept of adding a tag (or caption) to a photo, and explore other photos with that specific tag in the “photovine”.

Details are scarce for now, but the iTunes description reports:

It all starts with what we call a photovine: a group of photos around a single, shared caption. Start a new vine with a photo and caption of your own or add your photo/take on someone else’s vine.

Photovine is invite-only for now, and upon first launch the app will ask you to enter an email address to use the service – this has to be the same email address you received an invite to. You can request an invite at Photovine.com, and we’ll update this story with more details once we get the chance to try the app. In the meantime, you can check out the teaser video after the break. [via iClarified]
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Inside Google+ Mobile Web App

Two days ago Google launched Google+, the company’s latest effort to get into the social networking space and build a platform to share content and connect people. For those who missed the coverage (you can find some detailed reports here and here), here’s the gist of Plus: it’s a social network connected to your Google account that looks a lot like Facebook but it’s got a cleaner design and a set of different “apps” tied together by the Plus brand. What does it mean for consumers? It means that whilst Circles, Huddle, Hangouts and Sparks could be seen as separate services and concepts, they’re in fact sections of the entire Google+ website. Yesterday, Google started allowing people to send invites to other users, which resulted in a massive explosion of invite requests on Twitter and thousands of new sign-ups. After a few hours, Google was forced to close invites due to “insane demand” and promise more coming in the next few weeks as the service scales to accomodate new users and more content.

Google+ has a strong mobile counterpart, too. As the service aims at empowering Google users to share and connect at any time from anywhere, Google built native apps for Android and iOS devices to let users enjoy the Google+ experience on the go, and upload media such as photos and videos shot with their phones. Furthermore, the mobile apps get access to Huddle, a group messaging feature built into Google+ that some are already eyeing as Google’s response to iMessage, only it works on both iOS and Android. However, the official iPhone app is not available yet, and Google says it’s “coming soon”. In the meantime though, users can try a mobile optimized web app, which relies on Google’s recent mobile UI changes to lay out a unified interface to access Google+ and switch between various Google services.

Last night, I signed up for Google+ and played around with the website. Today, I decided to take a look at the mobile web app which, surprisingly enough, might just be the nicest thing Google has ever done on iOS’ Mobile Safari. Read more

Legal Disclaimer In iOS 5 Further Hints At Apple Mapping Service

Tipped off by a reader, MacRumors has found that the legal disclaimers in iOS 5 contain new references to a number of third party companies that provide various mapping services. The disclaimers come under a new section called “Map Data” that is not present in previous disclaimers and is completely separate to the section which deals in the disclaimer which deals with licenses used by Google for its mapping service that is used by Apple in the Maps app.

Today’s discovery comes after a number of other revelations, together they form what seems to be the suggestion that Apple is looking (or potentially actively working on) its own mapping solution that could replace Google Maps on iOS. Some of those clues include its acquisition of mapping companies Placebase and Poly9 and its recruitment of employees with navigation software expertise. The location log debacle also revealed that Apple was “collecting anonymous traffic data to build a crowd-sourced traffic database”.

MacRumors had a look into all the companies newly listed in the legal disclaimer and gave a quick description of each of them (included below). Noting two companies in particular that suggest Apple may be developing its own maps service. Urban Mapping provides some extensive additional data such as a wide range of demographic information that can be layed on top of traditional data. Waze, however, is experienced in developing crowd-sourced traffic data - it also has a popular app in the App Store now which demonstrates a lot of their services.

  • CoreLogic offers Parcel data which marks boundaries for of properties to provide positional accuracy in location-based solutions.
  • Getchee provides location and market data on China, India and Southeast Asia.
  • Increment P Corp provides location and traffic data for Japan.
  • Localeze provides local business listings.
  • MapData Sciences Pty Ltd. Inc provides mapping data for Australia and New Zealand.
  • DMTI provides postal code data for Canada.
  • TomTom offers global TeleAtlas mapping data which is also licensed by Google for their map solution.
  • Urban Mapping provides in-depth neighborhood data such as crime, demographics, school performance, economic indicators and more.
  • Waze offers real-time maps and traffic information based on crowd sourced data.

Whilst this doesn’t provide concrete proof of whether Apple is working on its own mapping service, we are fairly sure it (if it exists) will not be launching with iOS 5. This is likely related to the fact that Google recently renewed its agreement with Apple to provide Google Maps to iOS.

Jump the break to see some screenshots of the new legal disclaimer which features these new companies.

[Via MacRumors]

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Google Updates Google Sync for Better Mail and Calendaring on iOS

Not familiar with Google Sync? It’s not an app on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad, but rather something that exists in the background to help you keep your Mail, Calendars, and Contacts in check. Today, Google is announcing improvements to the service so you can better push and pull information from the cloud.

The first improvements are with Mail, and I think this one is my favorite. Google is now giving iOS users the ability to search for messages stored on the server, and not just locally on your device. The next time you’re looking up an old love letter, just search in Mail for your message and it’ll continue the search on the server.

Mail is also getting another improvement in the account department. If you have multiple addresses tied into one gmail account, it’s now way easier to send as an alternate address in Mail. If you “send mail as” in Gmail, iOS will now respect those settings so you’ll never send email from the wrong address again.

Want to edit calendar events? Now you can! Accept, decline, and edit calendar event (invitations) are now possible through iOS.

For more information, and how to setup Google Sync on your device, please refer to the recent blog post and how-to-guide here.

[via The Official Google Enterprise Blog]

Android and iOS Continue To Dominate In US Smartphone Market

Apple has continued making gains in the US mobile and smartphone market according to the latest comScore ‘Mobile Subscriber Market Share’. Surpassing RIM, Apple jumped to being the fourth largest OEM with a share of 8.3% of the US market. Samsung remains number one with 24.5% of the market, followed by LG and Motorola.

In terms of smartphone operating systems in the US, Google’s Android leads the pack with 36.4% of the market, an increase of 5.2 percentage points over the three month period. Whilst Apple’s iOS, is still in a solid second place, and grew its share by 1.3 percentage points. RIM continues its slide, falling another 4.7 percentage points and Microsoft also managed to see its market share fall by 1.3 percentage points.

Meanwhile in terms of usage, more US consumers ar using web browsers (up 2.1 percentage points), downloading applications (up 2.4 percentage points), playing games (up 2.5 percentage points) and using social networks or accessing blogs (up 2.7 percentage points).

[Via comScore]