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Posts tagged with "google"

Google Launching Cloud Print with iOS Support

With an official post on the Gmail blog, Google has announced that in the next few days they will launch the Google Cloud Print online service with initial support for iOS devices and Windows operating system. Cloud Print allows you to print any kind of document and supported Gmail attachment by configuring a local printer with Google’s remote system. Once a printer is connected to Cloud Print, an iOS device can remotely send a document to the printer from the Gmail webapp in Mobile Safari. Support for Mac OS X and Linux is coming “soon.

To get started, you’ll first need to connect your printer to Google Cloud Print. For now, this step requires a Windows PC but Linux and Mac support are coming soon. Once you’re set up, just go to gmail.com from your iPhone or Android browser and choose “Print” from the dropdown menu in the top right corner. You can also print eligible email attachments (such as .pdf or .doc) by clicking the “Print” link that appears next to them.

It all sounds fairly interesting, especially considering that it happens in the cloud, in the background. Will Google manage to pull off real driver-less, wireless printing?

Google Places App for iPhone Now Available

Earlier today, Google released its official Places app for the iPhone and iPod touch. The app is already live in iTunes and available for free here. Just like on Android, Google Places with Hotpot service helps you discover nearby places such as restaurants and cafes you might like. Google Places, though, not only does find nearby places, it also does take a guess at the best place for you with personalized search results.

You can rate places and build custom searches so the app will learn from your preferences; rating a place is easy and fast thanks to a Rate Now button that you can tap on at any time. The more places you rate and the more Hotpot reviews you write, the more Google Places will learn from your tastes and habits and send personalized recommendations to you. As for social features built into the app:

If you want to make things even tastier, just visit google.com/hotpot from your desktop computer. Here you can add friends to the mix and quickly rate all the places you already know. Once you’ve added friends, you’ll find your results seasoned not just with reviews from around the web and recommendations based on your own personal taste, but also with your friends’ opinions too.

Google Places for iPhone seems like a nice first version of a service that Google is testing to bring custom, personalized search results and recommendations to the web and mobile devices. The interface design of the app seems to be based on the usual schemes adopted by Google in all their iOS clients. If you feel like giving Places and Hotpot for iPhone a try, the app is available here.

Google Goggles for iPhone Gains Ad Recognition and…Sudoku

Earlier today, the Google mobile team announced an update to their official Goggles application for Android and the Goggles component in the Google Mobile App for iPhone. While Android users get advanced barcode scanning in version 1.3 of the app, printed ad recognition and Sudoku puzzle solving have been enabled both on iOS and Android. Yes, that’s right: as part of the Google Goggles labs experiments, the app can now solve Sudokuy puzzles. Just take a clear picture and let Goggles provide some help.

As for ad scanning, Goggles for iPhone can now take a look at any printed ad and return web search results for that brand or product.

Goggles will recognize print ad and return web search results about the product or brand. This new feature of Goggles is enabled for print ads appearing in major U.S. magazines and newspapers from August 2010 onwards. This feature is different from the marketing experiment that we announced in November. We’re now recognizing a much broader range of ads than we initially included in our marketing experiment.

The official Google iPhone app doesn’t seem to be updated yet, the new version should be propagating in iTunes in the next hours. In the meantime, check out the promo video for Sudoku support in Google Goggles below. Google Goggles for iPhone was launched in October as part of the Google mobile app. Read more

Google Planning Digital Newsstand, Apple To Launch Subscriptions “Early This Year”

According to the sources close to the Wall Street Journal, Google is in talks with major publishers like Time Inc., Condé Nast and Hearst Corp. to discuss the launch of a digital newsstand for magazines and newspapers that would run on the Android mobile operating system. The move, still in its early planning stages, would be Google’s direct answer to Apple, which has long been at the center of digital newsstand rumors and iTunes recurring subscription speculations. Google’s newsstand, either based on the existing Market or a new infrastructure, would allow Android users to read digital content on the go. Rumors point out to Google willing to share subscribers’ data with publishers. Read more

Why Apple Doesn’t Care About The $75 Android Phone

An article published by Seth Weintraub over at Fortune last week made the rounds of the Internet detailing how the Android platform will “explode” next year thanks to relatively low-cost components. Broadcom has announced a new 3G HSDPA chipset called BCM2157 that allows for popular specs like Bluetooth, GPS, dual core ARM processors, 5MP cameras and capacitive displays. Broadcom is marketing this new chipset to Android OEMs. And the best part, according to Handset Line of Business for Broadcom Jim Tran? Phones built on the new chipset will retail under $100, possibly even touching the $75 price point. And we’re talking about retail prices of unsubsidized phones. That would allow “average users” who don’t normally spend hundreds of dollars on smartphone to buy a high-end Android phone and runs apps on it. Read more

Mailboxes Comes Back To Offer The Best Gmail Wrapper for iPad

In the past months, I’ve tried a lot of iPad apps to access multiple Gmail accounts. Sure, I could use Apple’s Mail app to manage them. The problem is, Apple Mail doesn’t let me access most of the features of Gmail and I love the Gmail web UI for iPad. Also, Google has been busy updating Gmail to make it play nicer with mobile devices (smoother scrolling, better selections in the left panel) and these native “wrappers” provide a way to quickly switch between accounts with the tap of a button.

So far I’ve tried Mailboxes, MailWrangler, MultiG and Mailroom on the iPhone. On the Mac I use Mailplane (which is simply amazing) and on the tablet I’ve sticked with MultiG for several weeks. Until Google changed something on its backend, MultiG stopped working and the developer didn’t release an update. I had to change, and I went back to Apple Mail because of all the alternatives I had tested none of them managed to top the excellence of MultiG. Read more

Google Voice App Now Works On The iPad and iPod Touch

One month after the release of the official Google Voice app in the App Store, here comes an updated version that works both on the iPad and iPod Touch. Announced by Google a few minutes ago, the new Google Voice app has been updated to work on non-iPhone devices allowing you to send and receive text messages. As you can guess, no – you can’t make cellular calls on the iPod Touch.

Still, the Google Voice team introduced a new functionality called Click2Call which lets you initiate calls with your phones. On your iPad or iPod Touch, tap on the “call” button and select which phone you want to ring. It’s a very easy way to let Google Voice call your phone and then connect the call to a contact’s number.

Among other improvements and bug fixes, text forwarding is now disabled by default when you activate push notifications so you don’t get multiple and annoying dialogue boxes. You can now set a “Do Not Disturb” status in the settings, access you Address Book contacts from a built-in Contacts tab, tap & hold on inbox messages to delete or archive. Nice. I’m pretty sure MacStories’ own Cody Fink (who’s a die-hard iPod Touch user) is going to love this.

Google Voice app is, as usual, free in the App Store.

Google Instant for Mobile Now Available Worldwide

Back in November Google announced Instant for Mobile, the same instant search for the desktop ported to iOS and Android devices. Instant for Mobile, though, was unveiled as beta and made available only in the U.S. with searches in English language. Google promised Instant for mobile would be released internationally in the coming weeks.

With a brief post on the company’s blog, today Google announced the global release of Instant for mobile, now available in 28 languages and 40 countries worldwide. To use the feature, users will need to run a device with iOS 4 or Android 2.2 and above, visit google.com and tap on the Instant link below the search box to activate it.

In case you missed it, check out Google’s promo video for Instant below.

Move Your Browser Tabs Across Mac and iOS Devices

In a perfect world, we wouldn’t have to worry to manually trigger any sync process. Everything would happen in the background, in your local wireless network or over-the-air, and manual sync would be an option to customize contents and options. In today’s world, and especially if we happen to have multiple iOS devices, we’re stuck with cables and fragmented databases.

Several developers are trying to put an end to this by supporting online sync services such as Dropbox in their mobile apps, some devs are even trying to do this on the desktop. Apple, on the other hand, still forces you to sync music, apps and movies with the cable, in iTunes, on your computer. Read more