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Posts tagged with "google"

Official Google Books iOS App Goes Live

Google launched its official eBook store earlier today, and promised an official iOS app for iPhone and iPad would follow in a few hours. The app is now available for free in iTunes here.

Google Books allows you to check on Google’s 2 million book catalogue and download ebooks to read them on your iPhone and iPad. The app comes with the same page turning animations of Apple’s iBooks, but the overall interface is quite different and similar to Google’s standard color schemes. Google Books features an offline reading mode to read books when you don’t have an active internet connection (useful on WiFi iPads when on the go), possibility to search within a book and adjust a font’s size, a night reading mode.

Surprisingly enough, the app doesn’t seem to support landscape mode on the iPad. I found the scrubber at the bottom to be particularly useful to jump between chapters of a book. Last, the app lets you download 3 books for free: “Pride and Prejudice”, “Frankeinstein, or, The Modern Prometeus” and “Wonderful Stories for Children”.

Check out the full changelog and more screenshots below.

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Mozilla Evangelist Asks Google and Apple To Stop Being Evil

Asa Dotzler isn’t happy about the behavior of software giants like Google, Apple and Microsoft. In fact, Mozilla evangelist and co-founder of the Spread Firefox project in 2004 thinks they all should stop being evil. How so? He’s tired of finding unwanted plug-ins installed in Firefox by software such as iTunes, Windows Live and Google Earth.

Why do Microsoft, Google, Apple, and others think that it is an OK practice to add plug-ins to Firefox when I’m installing their software packages. When I installed iTunes, in order to manage my music collection and sync to my iPod, why did Apple think it was OK to add the iTunes Application Detector plug-in to my Firefox web browser without asking me? Why did Microsoft think it was OK to sneak their Windows Live Photo Gallery or Office Live Plug-in for Firefox into my browser (presumably) when I installed Microsoft Office? What makes Google think it’s reasonable behavior for them to slip a Google Update plug-in into Firefox when I installed Google Earth or Google Chrome (not sure which one caused this) without asking me first?

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Google Docs Editing Finally Comes to iPhone and iPad

Finally, Google has announced that they’ll roll out Docs editing for mobile devices in the next few days. The feature, first announced several weeks ago but never actually deployed, is now ready to go for Android and iOS devices. All you have to do to edit a document on a mobile browser (including the iPad) is pressing the Edit button in Google Docs. That’s it.

In the next few days, we’re rolling this out to English-language users around the world on Android with Froyo (version 2.2) and on iOS devices (version 3.0+) including the iPad. We’ll be adding support for other languages soon. And as before, we also support editing of spreadsheets from your mobile device’s browser.

Well done, Google. A simple implementation we were all waiting for. Check out the promo video below. Read more

Official Google Voice App for iPhone Now Available

After months of wait, rejections, government’s involvement and third party applications, the official Google Voice app for iPhone is now available. You can find it here, and it’s free. We saw this coming after Apple published the updated App Store Review Guidelines.

The client basically allows you to access your Google Voice account right from your iPhone, and it allows you to make calls through the standard phone app. You can receive push notifications for text and voicemail messages, listen to voicemails and read Google’s transcripts or just manage your whole Google Voice inbox. Read more

Google Rolling Out Instant Search for iPhone

Update: official blog post from Google.

In September we announced that we were working to bring Google Instant to mobile, and today we’re making a beta version available to most iPhone and Android devices in the U.S. To try it out, go to google.com in your phone’s browser and tap the Google Instant “Turn on” link beneath the search box (if you don’t see the “Turn on” link, try waiting a moment and then refresh the page).

Like the desktop version of Google Instant, when you type on your mobile device you’ll see predictions of what you might be searching for. If you type [anse], for example, you should see [ansel adams] along with other predictions.

We hope you’ll enjoy using Google Instant for mobile as much as we enjoyed making it. It’s currently available for Android 2.2 (“Froyo”) devices and iPhones and iPods running iOS 4 in the U.S. in English.

According to a screenshot posted by 9to5mac, Google has started rolling out the Instant search to iOS devices. In the screenshot, you can see it’s labelled as “beta” and you have the option to turn it off. Read more

Back to the “iWallet”, Apple Allegedly Considering A BOKU Acquisition

According to a rumor published by TechCrunch, Google and Apple are keeping an eye on mobile payments startup BOKU, which allows users to complete online transactions by simply entering their phone number and confirming the purchase with a text from their phone. A simple and unobtrusive system that could really eliminate the need of credit cards and banks online: charges will be added to your wireless monthly bill. Boku has closed deals with carriers worldwide, including AT&T in the U.S.

Apple seems to be really committed to turning the iPhone into a digital wallet-like device you can use to buy stuff on the go and / or online, as we speculated in rumors surfaced earlier this year. Yesterday, Cult of Mac reported Apple not only wants to develop an “iWallet” based on NFC technology – they’re aiming at remote Mac controlling as well. Read more

Apple Grabs 26% Of U.S. Smartphone Market, Google Leads With 44%

According to Canalys’ latest report, Apple grabbed 26% of the U.S. smartphone market (still considered the biggest and most relevant in the world) but Google, thanks to its multitude of devices running Android, is still leading with nearly 44%.

The numbers, which refer to Q3 2010, also show that Apple really took the lead from RIM, stuck at 24%. Nokia is still leading the worldwide share with a resonant 33%, and Google’s share is expected to increase as more devices running Froyo and the future Android Gingerbread ship.

In the meantime, Apple somehow managed to obtain a 50% worldwide profit share with the iPhone. Not bad.

On iPhone, Android And People’s Perception

I was watching Chuck last night, and just like every episode recently aired I noticed there were many iPads and iPhones around. I don’t know if this is a trend amongst producers or Apple paying for product placement, but the thing is - Apple products are everywhere in today’s TV shows. I’m referring to “TV shows” as it’s the only kind of content coming from television networks I regularly consume nowadays.

So while I was watching and yet another iPhone showed up, my girlfriend - who is not exactly a “tech savvy” type - said: “Look, another iPhone 4”. The same happens every single time in the other shows we follow.

I also noticed, though, that there are other kinds of gadgets showing up every once in a while, namely non-Apple cellphones. They’re usually Motorola, HTC, Samsung Galaxy devices (I also spotted a Nexus One on Chuck) running, as you may guess, Android. I know those are Android devices, and when I see them I usually whisper “look, that’s an Android phone”. But I know those are Android devices, because I’m a geek who’s interested in technology and reads dozens of tech blogs every day. Do regular people notice these products at all? Read more

Gmail Mobile: Snappier on iOS 4, Still Featuring Fuzzy Graphics

If you use Gmail as your default email client and you happen to use it on your iPhone browser as well (because quite frankly, it’s just better than Mail.app) you may have noticed that Google rolled out a few changes in the past weeks.
The Google Mobile team made Gmail snappier with a much smoother scrolling on iOS 4 and managed to fix that weird issue with scrollbars continuously moving when scrolling the page. Gmail mobile has fixed scrollbars now. Yay. Read more