Archive for: October 1, 2009

Typing is such a drag, right? I mean, if I Google "someone to clean my house and make me dinner" on my laptop, do I really have to type it again on my smartphone when I try the same fruitless search later in the day?

Answer: no. Google on Thursday unveiled a new tool, dubbed Personalized Suggest, that will sync your Google Web searches with your Google mobile searches. All joking aside, it seems like a pretty useful service. Google cited someone searching for flight status online and later on a smartphone, but what about that random link you found during the day and want to show to a friend after work?

For the service to work, you have to be signed into your Google Account online and on your phone, and you have to enable web history for that account. Mobile users can activate or de-activate by selecting "save searches" or "do not save searches" under settings. Personalized Suggest will work for Android phones, the iPhone, and Palm Web OS devices.

In other mobile news, Google also introduced an updated local search for mobile that integrates with Google Maps on your computer and includes categories that let you search without typing.

OMG, you guys. Twilight!

If you can't wait for the November release of the sequel to the movie "Twilight," "New Moon," relive the original with a new "Twilight"-themed mobile trivia game.

Twilight: The Movie Game was developed by RealNetworks and is currently only available on AT&T, but will be open to other carriers in the coming weeks. An iPhone app version of the game will also be released soon, Real said.

"This game will test your knowledge with over 500 trivia and photo questions that go into every possible detail about the first movie in the series," Real wrote in a blog post. "Do you think you're a Twilight know-it-all? Challenge your friends in multi-player mode. You can choose from a multitude of characters, including the ever-popular Edward, Bella, Jacob and Alice."

Don't have AT&T? While you're waiting, Real will be running Twilight-themed contests on Twitter in the next few weeks. Follow @RealTweeter for the details.

T-Mobile confirmed today that they've begun to roll out Android 1.6, aka "Donut" to owners of the two T-Mobile Google Android phones, the G1 and MyTouch 3G. "The over-the-air update will be delivered to all G1 and myTouch customers in the coming days," a T-Mobile spokeswoman says.
According to Google, Android 1.6 brings several new features. There's a new integrated camera/camcorder UI that lets you quickly switch between camera and video modes (shown at left.) Launching the camera is now 39% faster. The system now tells you which applications are using the most battery. It supports VPNs. And the Android Market is easier to browse, with screenshots and top paid and free apps lists.
For now, neither our T-Mobile G1 nor our MyTouch 3G are reporting any available updates.

Several months after launching additional search options to help generate different views of search results, Google on Thursday expanded the feature to include a number of other options, including specific date range, pages not yet visited, and news.

To try it out, enter a search term at google.com and click the "show options" link at the top of the search results page. You will then be able to filter the information with nine new search tools: past hour, specific date range, more shopping sites, fewer shopping sites, visited pages, not yet visited, books, blogs and news.

Perhaps the topic you're searching has millions of entries, but you know roughly when the specific information you're looking for was published to the Web. The "past hour" and "specific date range" tools lets you see results from a specific time frame. And the shopping tools let you see more or fewer results from sites selling products.

Been to a site before and know it's not what you're looking for? Select "not yet visited' and Google will only produce results for sites you've never selected. The "visited pages" options does the opposite and pulls up pages you've seen.

Finally, you can click on books, blogs, or news to only see results from these sections.

The search options are rolling out now and will be available globally in English by day's end.

For content not in English, meanwhile, Google on Wednesday also announced a Web site translator gadget that lets you translate Web site content to 51 languages.

"Now, when people visit your page, if their language (as determined by their browser settings) is different than the language of your ...

Microsoft on Thursday unveiled the release to manufacturing (RTM) version of Windows 7 XP Mode.

XP Mode allows users to run older applications that might not be compatible with Vista or Windows 7 within the Windows 7 OS. It is geared primarily toward small- and medium-sized businesses, and works with the RC and release to manufacturing (RTM) versions of Windows 7 Professional, Ultimate, and Enterprise.

The final release of Windows XP Mode will be available on Oct. 22, though OEMs "will be able to offer Windows XP Mode on their PCs based on their manufacturing schedules," Microsoft's Brandon LeBlanc wrote in a blog post.

"We expect many Windows XP applications to be compatible Windows 7 however Windows XP Mode is meant to serve as an added safety net so small and mid-sized businesses can migrate and run Windows 7 without any road blocks," LeBlanc wrote. "Windows 7 Professional is designed to meet the needs of small and mid-sized businesses."

Microsoft made the release candidate (RC) version of XP Mode available in August.

Facebook this week has rolled out a number of new features intended to make it easier to participate in Facebook Connect.

On Wednesday, the social networking site introduced Translations for Facebook, a tool that helps Web site owners translate content on their site into the 65 languages supported by Facebook Connect. The site followed that up Thursday with Facebook Connect Wizard and Playground, which were created to help developers and non-developers connect their sites to Facebook.

Facebook Connect, which went live in December 2008, lets users put their profile information on various Web sites across the Internet.

With Translations for Connect, Web site owners can translate an entire site or just portions of that site like applications or widgets. "For example ... country tourist boards or travel sites that want to attract foreign visitors on holiday can use this framework to translate their sites and automatically present the content to users in their native language after they log in with Facebook Connect," Facebook's Cat Lee wrote in a blog post.

The service uses the results from "Translations" - an effort Facebook started in January 2008 that called on users to help the site translate content into other languages. In two years, users have helped translate Facebook into 65 languages.

"After you choose what languages you want your site or application to support, you can get help from the Facebook community to translate your site, as we did, or you can do the translation yourself, or make a specific person the administrator of the process," Lee said.

More detailed information is available on the developer Wiki.

For those just getting started with Connect, however, ...

Women read People; men read Gizmodo? Ugh.

Recent data from Nielsen reports that women, teens, and senior citizens have helped fuel a 34 percent spike in mobile Web usage, but information on what sites we're all looking at does little to dispel the notion that women are only interested in celebrity gossip, horoscopes, and shopping.

Overall, the number of people accessing the Web from phones increased from 42.5 million in July 2008 to 56.9 million in July 2009.

Teens and seniors saw the largest growth, with a 45 percent and 67 percent increase, respectively. Men continue to hold a larger percentage of the mobile Web audience at 53 percent, but the number of female visitors outpaced men - growing 45 percent year-over-year, compared to a 26 percent growth among men.

What are we looking at, though? Nielsen found that the top three mobile Web sites visited by women were celebrity haven People.com, AT&T Search, and Horoscope.com. Men, meanwhile, were more likely to visit gadget blog Gizmodo, men's magazine Maxim, and the NBA's Web site.

Other Web sites for women in the top 10: Target, MySpace, Kraft Foods (latest mac and cheese news?), T-Mobile, AOL Search, Facebook, and Sprint News.

For men: IGN, NFL, Drudge Report, Business Week, CNET, CBS Sports, and Wired.

While it's a little disheartening to think that most women equipped with the latest smartphone are only interested in Britney Spears' latest exploits, I suppose the results on the men's side are similarly stereotypical - sports, gadgets, and ladies.

"As with other forms of Internet technology, more men were early-adopters of the mobile Web and still make up a slightly larger presence today," Chris Quick, client services ...

Have some videos the world just has to see? If you're a Google Video user, upload away. The company on Wednesday increased the upload limit from 1GB to 16GB.

Users will need to have Gears installed to take advantage of the increased storage space. It's available for premier and education editions.

In other video news, Google-owned YouTube has quietly launched a new feature that lets users easily share private videos. They can now generate a special URL that can be sent up to 25 people who, when logged into YouTube, can click to view.

The feature was developed during YouTube's recent "hackday" - an effort similar to Google's 20 percent time, which encourages Google employees to use 20 percent of their time working on independent projects.

More information on how to share private videos has been posted online.

Google search got a little bit deeper today with the addition of forum posts to its search. Results from message boards will now appear among the site's standard search page, indented under the primary result from a site.

"We hope this feature gives you a deeper view into the relevant content available on sites throughout the web," the company wrote in a post issued today, "even when that content spans multiple pages or discussions. At the same time, the main search results are diverse as always -- so if you can't pinpoint a useful comment there's a list of relevant sites there to help."

The feature is now live on Google's site.

Back in July Apple acquired Openplaces.org. The announcement was not made by Apple (surprise), but rather by the site's founder, Fred Lalonde, in a tweet on his personal account. Lalonde speculated upon the acquisition of his own company via the tweet, writing, "Apple bought PlaceBase - all hush hush. Pushpin site taken offline. Hyperlocal iPhone?"

All of these months later, Lalonde's job position has changed from Openplaces CEO to a member of Apple's new Geo Team. What's a Geo Team? Who knows for sure? Well, Apple does, but they don't like to talk about anything that isn't a new iPhone. Computer World is speculating that the company may be launching its own homegrown version of Google Maps for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

If that is indeed the case, it's just another sign at the widening gap between the two once tight companies.

Bloggers looking to make sure their articles get noticed on the Web are likely familiar with search engines like Technorati and Google Blog Search--both tools are designed to help bloggers make sure their posts are published to people interested in them and that other bloggers notice and engage them on interesting topics.

One search tool that's already made waves in Europe but is also growing in popularity in the US is Twingly, a blog search engine that combines Digg-like social ranking with spam-free blog searches to create a powerful search engine that can help you publish your own posts or find new interesting blogs to read. At the Future of Web Apps (FOWA) conference today, Twingly announced Twingly Channels, a new service that allows readers to subscribe to and monitor blogs based on topics that interest them.
  Twingly already indexes thousands of blogs across the Web and gives users a fast, easy-to-use way to search those blogs to find topics and articles that interest them. Twingly's real stand-out feature is that its developers work overtime to make sure that spam and link-bait blogs aren't included in the search results and are quickly removed from the service's blog index.

Twingly's claim to fame is that its search results are largely free of spam, and when you search for an article you'll find the source blog quickly without clicking through a dozen others that only lifted the first paragraph in order to increase their Google Page Rank.

The service works ...

Looking for a way to organize the hundreds of people you follow on Twitter? For a select few, that is now a reality.

The micro-blogging site on Wednesday rolled out "Lists" - a feature that is exactly as it sounds. Group your work friends into one list or funniest Tweeters into another for easy access or to provide your friends with some follow recommendations.

"The idea is to allow people to curate lists of Twitter accounts," Nick Kallen, project lead for Lists at Twitter, wrote in a blog post. "For example, you could create a list of the funniest Twitter accounts of all time, athletes, local businesses, friends, or any compilation that makes sense."

Lists will be public by default, but can be made private. Followers can then subscribe to your lists, allowing them to find dozens of new people to follow with one click.

Kallen said that the platform team will unveil details about the Lists API shortly so developers can add support for Lists into favorite Twitter apps.

Lists is now in a limited testing phase, but will then be rolled out to all users.