Better Google News in Opera Mini

Opera Mini is one of the most popular mobile browsers, but not many websites optimize their interface for Opera Mini. Most Google services have two mobile interfaces: a basic WAP interface and a more advanced interface for smartphones. Opera Mini always displays the basic interface because the browser is actually a thin client that can't handle web apps properly. Fortunately, there's an exception to this rule: Google News shows the smartphone interface in Opera Mini.


"While the Google News team has been hard at work redesigning our service for smartphones, we've also been thinking about our milllions of users around the world who access the web not from a smartphone, but from a feature phone, using Opera Mini as their browser. So we have rolled out a redesigned Google News for Opera Mini in all 29 languages and 70 editions of Google News. This includes an enhanced homepage featuring richer snippets, thumbnail images, links to videos and section content without explicit navigation, a convenient search bar, comfortably spaced links and the ability to access your desktop personalization on your phone," informs Google.

Google's blog post ignores that Opera Mini is also available for iOS, Android, Symbian and other mobile operating systems, so it's not just a browser for feature phones. Opera Mini is really useful while roaming, for slow Internet connections and for data capped mobile contracts. Hopefully, Google News won't be the only Google service optimized for Opera Mini and Google services like Google Docs, Google Calendar, Picasa Web Albums will fully support Opera's desktop browser.

The Brilliant Bing for iPad

Microsoft has recently released an iPad app for Bing that's really impressive. "Bing for iPad goes beyond the traditional search experience, offering a unique and visually rich way to search the Web. The app is designed from the ground up for touch. You can quickly browse news, movies, Bing homepage images, local business listings and much more – all with the swipe of your finger," informs Bing's blog.

Bing for iPad transforms a bland search engine into a visual application that lets you interact with information. The app is fluid, the integration of all the specialized search engines is almost seamless and there are a lot of small features that make your life easier. For example, you can quickly highlight matches, go to the next image result using gestures and go back to the list of search results using a back swipe.







Unfortunately, Bing's results aren't always great, but they've improved a lot lately. Voice search didn't work well for me and there's no visual search.

Google doesn't have a search app developed specifically for iPad, but there's a universal app for iPhone and iPad that adds features like voice search and visual search to the standard Web interface. The latest version of the app added two gestures that enhance the interface, but many users complain that they slow down the app. While Google's results are still better, Google has a long way to go to catch up when it comes to the user interface.

Google's iPhone App, a Preview of the Mobile Search Interface

Google updated the search app for iPhone and unveiled a completely new interface that uses gestures for navigation. There are only two gestures, but they're so simple, powerful and intuitive that I'm sure they'll be used in other mobile Google interfaces.

"When browsing through search results or looking at a webpage, you can swipe down to see the search bar or change your settings. (...) We also included a new toolbar that will make it easier for you to filter your results. You can open this toolbar by swiping from left to right — either before you search or once you've got your results," explains Google.

The new gestures are easy to learn and they're more expressive than buttons. You can swipe down to see the search box even after clicking a search result.

Google Fast Flip for Mobile Web Search

Google calls it Instant Preview for Mobile Search, but it's actually a new interface based on Google Fast Flip that lets you preview search results. "Starting today, Google Instant Previews is available on mobile for Android (2.2+) and iOS (4.0+) devices across 38 languages. Similar to the desktop version of Instant Previews, you can visually compare search results from webpage snapshots, making it easier to choose the right result faster, especially when you have an idea of the content you'd like to see," explains Google.


Google replaced the stars that allowed you to bookmark results with the new zoom icons for Instant Preview. If you click on a zoom icon, you'll see a completely new interface that lets you preview one search result at a time. It's interesting to see that Google's screenshots show the mobile versions of the web pages.

Google Translate App for iPhone

Yet another Google app initially developed for Android makes its way onto the Apple App Store: Google Translate. It doesn't have all the features of the Android app: there's no conversation mode, no SMS translation, Google Suggest or a list of related phrases. Another issue is that the font size is way too big.

The application has a feature that's not available in the Android app: full-screen mode, so it doesn't make sense to use a such a big font size which is not even configurable. Google says that "the ability to easily enlarge the translated text to full-screen size" makes it "much easier to read the text on the screen, or show the translation to the person you are communicating with. Just tap on the zoom icon to quickly zoom in."


Why would you use the native application instead of visiting translate.google.com? The native application supports voice input for 15 languages, text-to-speech for 23 languages and it's better suited for quickly switching between multiple languages.

{ via Google Mobile Blog }

Android Market for the Web

Google has finally released the Web-based version of the Android Market, which is now available at market.android.com. You can link to applications, find apps from your computer and install them over the air.

Android Market for the Web includes all the applications, not just the ones that are available for a certain device or a certain version of Android, so it's much more comprehensive than the application that's installed on your Android device. You'll be able to find paid apps even if you live in a country where you can only install free apps and you'll be able to find apps that require Froyo even if your phone still uses Android Donut. In fact, you don't even have to be an Android user to explore the Market.

I've tried to install an application from the web site, but Google shows an "invalid request" error after the authentication process.



To make the Market even better, Google announced two additional features that will be available soon: in-app purchases and fixed pricing for various currencies. That means you'll see less apps that cost $1.73 or €2.26, assuming that developers will adjust their prices.

From Android to iPhone: Google Shopper

More and more Google applications that used to be available only for Android are now ported to the iPhone. After Google Voice, Google Latitude, Google Places, Google Goggles (a feature of the Google Mobile App), iPhone users can now download Google Shopper, a product search tool that recognizes barcodes, supports voice search and lets you compare prices at online stores and local stores. It's actually a mobile version of Google Product Search that knows your location and has more input methods.

Google Shopper saves your history and lets you star products, but it doesn't integrate with Google accounts, so your data is only available on a single device. Another issue is that voice search times out too fast, so it's quite difficult too use.

According to Google, "Shopper is available for iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 with iOS 4.0+ in English only for the United States and the UK."


There are still many Android-only apps (Sky Map, Google Translate, Gmail, Google Talk, Google Reader, Google Maps Navigation, Google Finance, Gesture Search) and it's likely that some of them will be available in Apple's App Store in the coming months.

Android Honeycomb's Browser Supports SVG

One of the most annoying things about Android's built-in browser was the lack of support for SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics). Android's browser was the most popular mobile browser that didn't support SVG and that was surprising, considering Google's push for better web apps.

Ariya Hidayat tried to see if Honeycomb's browser can handle SVG files and the good news is that the answer is affirmative. Hopefully, the next Android release for smartphones will include this feature.

Google Transcoder's Zooming Feature

If you're trying to load a web page using your mobile phone's browser, but the Internet connection is slow and you can't install Opera Mini, there's always Google Transcoder. Google's service shows a simplified version of the page that hides navigation links, removes scripts and compresses images.

Google Transcoder also has a "zoom out" feature that shows a screenshot of the page and lets you select the section you want to read. This means that Google has at least two databases of screenshots for all the indexed pages and Google knows a lot of about the structure of a web page.

Google Goggles Solves Sudoku Puzzles

Google's visual search tool has a new trick up its sleeve: solving Sudoku puzzles. Google Goggles 1.3 for Android scans barcodes much faster, recognizes print ads from the major U.S. magazines and newspapers, but most people will probably ignore those useful features and will try to see if Goggles can actually solve Sudoku puzzles. The nice thing is that this feature also works in the latest version of Google Mobile App for iPhone, along with print ads recognition.

"Now, Goggles on Android and iPhone can recognize puzzles and provide answers to help make you faster than a Sudoku champ. So if you ever get stuck, take a clear picture of the entire puzzle with Goggles and we'll tell you the correct solution," explains Google.

Maybe providing a hint would also be useful, especially if you want to solve the puzzle.




The new features show that Google Goggles has a lot of potential, but it's still not useful enough in the real world. An interesting article from Xconomy quotes Hartmut Neven, Google's technical lead manager for image recognition, who says that Goggles is not yet an universal visual search tool. "What keeps me awake at night is, 'What are the honest-to-God use cases that we can deliver,' where it's not just an 'Oh, wow.' We call it the bar of daily engagement. Can we make it useful enough that every day you will take out Goggles and do something with it?"

Mobile Blogger Templates

This year, Blogger's team added so many new features that it's difficult to count them: dynamic templates, comment spam filtering, a new way to manage comments, real-time stats, better post preview, static pages and so much more. Blogger is one the few Google products that have improved dramatically this year, after many years when it was neglected.

Since a lot of people use phones to browse the Web, it makes a lot of sense to add a mobile interface for Blogger and to create mobile versions for Blogger's templates. There's no mobile Blogger yet, but all Blogger blogs have a mobile version optimized for WebKit browsers. Just add ?m=1 to the URL of any Blogger blog, and you'll get a simplified version that works well on an iPhone, Android phone and probably other phones that use a browser based on WebKit. Here's an example: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/?m=1.


Bloggers can enable the mobile version of their blogs, so that visitors are automatically redirected to this version when they're using a supported mobile browser. This option is only available if you go to Blogger in Draft, click on "Settings", switch to "Email & Mobile" and enable "Yes, On mobile devices, show the mobile version of my template." This didn't work for me, so you'll still see the regular mobile version of this blog that uses a custom stylesheet.

Google says that the new feature only supports 12 existing templates (6 variants of the Simple template and 6 variants of the Awesome template) and that all the other templates will be rendered as the Simple template. The mobile version drops the sidebars and most of the gadgets, shows small excerpts from the posts on the homepage, hides the comment form (but you can still post comments), resizes images and videos, adjusts fonts and converts AdSense ads into mobile ads. Unfortunately, you can't customize mobile templates, at least not yet.

Google Latitude App for iPhone

Google has finally released a native iPhone app for Google Latitude. The web app is nice, but you can't use it to update your location in the background. Google Latitude for iPhone uses one of the new features in iOS 4 that allows applications to track your location even if they aren't in the foreground. That's the main reason why it requires an iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 or iPad 3G running iOS 4. (Update: According to Google, "the Google Latitude app will run on the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad, and iPod touch (3rd/4th generation). However, background location updating is only supported on the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, and iPad 3G.")

The native app is better because it shows more information about the locations of your friends and it sends you to the map view when you click on a friend, but the web app is just a layer in Google Maps and this makes a lot of sense. Google Latitude should not be a standalone app, it should integrate with Google Maps and Google Contacts, so you can quickly find your friends.


Marissa Mayer, Google's VP of geographic and local services, has recently said that Google Latitude will add explicit check-ins, inspired by Foursquare. "Latitude is useful for a smaller group of people. Only a handful of people you'll want to know where you are at all times. There will be new layers coming on top of it. It's more useful when more people are on it. And implicit and explicit — yes, the check-in. Maybe that's in Latitude or maybe it's in Maps."

Edit Documents in Mobile Google Docs

Until today, the mobile version of Google was only useful if you wanted to read a document or download some of your files. From now on, documents will no longer be read-only. If you have a phone or a tablet that runs Android 2.2+ or iOS 3.0+ and the Google Docs interface language is set to English, you'll be able edit documents from your mobile device and the best thing is that you don't need to install a new application.

"It's easy to get started: visit docs.google.com in a browser on a supported device, and select the document you want to edit. Then, when you're viewing it, press the Edit button to switch to the mobile editor," suggests Google.

I couldn't find the Edit button, but that's because the new features aren't yet available to everyone. Google promises that the mobile editor will be rolled out in the next few days and you won't have to buy an iPad or a Samsung Galaxy Tab to use it because it will also work on an iPhone or an Android phone that runs Froyo.

Unfortunately, the mobile editor will only work for documents created using the new document editor. It's difficult to understand why Google couldn't find a way to convert the documents created using the old editor to the new format.

Google Maps Navigation for Australia and New Zealand

Google's free navigation software is now available in Australia and New Zealand. "Google Maps Navigation is a feature of Google Maps for Mobile that provides voice-guided turn by turn directions in real time. That means that instead of printing out your directions in advance, or having your co-pilot read aloud from list of directions, you can use your Android smartphone to guide you there directly," explains Google. To use this feature you need a smartphone that runs Android 1.6 or a more recent version of Android.


At the moment, Google Maps Navigation is available in 17 countries, but this number will increase when Google starts to use its own mapping data in other countries. As Greg Sterling points out, "at some point during the course of the past couple of years, perhaps catalyzed by the shock of Nokia's roughly $8 billion acquisition of Navteq, Google decided it needed to 'own' maps top to bottom. Since that time the company has been making a systematic effort to collect and improve the base data for this highly strategic product. That's partly what Street View driving is about: getting roads and other data for Maps (and now Navigation) in addition to imagery and WiFi hotspot locations."

Google Voice iPhone App

After almost two years of waiting, Google Voice's iPhone app has been finally approved in the App Store. It looks much better than the HTML5 web app and you can enable push notifications for voicemail and text messages.


Google Voice for iPhone doesn't beat the Android app because it doesn't integrate with the standard phone app, doesn't synchronize the inbox and doesn't offer advanced options for notifications, but that's because iOS has many limitations.

Google says that the application requires iOS 3.1 or a more recent version of Apple's mobile operating system. Google Voice is still limited to the US, but you no longer need an invitation to use it. Hopefully, Google will add support for the VoIP service from Gmail in a future update.

Google Goggles-Enabled Ads

Google tests a way to monetize Goggles, the mobile application for visual search. "A year ago, Google introduced a smartphone application that lets users take photos of objects and get search results in return. The company will take that capability into the world of marketing with an experiment allowing five [US] brands to use the application in their promotional materials". Here are the five brands that are part of the experiment: Buick, Delta, Diageo, Disney and T-Mobile.

Android and iPhone users in the US will be able to scan the magazine ads for Buick Regal, T-Mobile G2 and the movie posters for Disney's "Tron: Legacy" to find more information from the official sites.

Michael Slinger, Google's head of mobile search advertising sales in North America, says that "it's a learning experiment for us more than an opportunity to make money," but it could be another reason to use Google Goggles.

Mobile Google Instant

Google Instant is now available for mobile phones, but it's not enabled by default. If you visit Google's homepage using an iPhone running iOS4 or an Android Froyo phone, you can enable the feature by clicking on "Turn on" next to "Instant (beta) is off".

Google Instant should be useful on a mobile phone, especially if it doesn't have a hardware keyboard. When typing popular queries, it's amazing to see that Google predicts your searches from the first few letters.

Unfortunately, the mobile version of Google Instant doesn't have all the benefits of the desktop version. Since the virtual keyboard covers most of the screen, you can't see the search results until you hide the keyboard. Another issue is that you can't press Tab to use Google's prediction and continue to type your query. Google Instant doesn't work well if you use a mobile Internet connection because of the high latency.


Google says that you should notice "a big improvement in speed when you search thanks to a new AJAX and HTML5 implementation for mobile that dynamically updates the page with new results and eliminates the need to load a new page for each query. Google Instant for mobile works best on 3G and WiFi networks, but since the quality of any wireless connection can fluctuate, we've made it easy to enable or disable Google Instant without ever leaving the page".

Google's Mobile App Search Engine

Google started to index Android and iOS apps in June, but the results were only displayed as part of an OneBox. Now you can select "Android apps" or "iPhone apps" from Google's sidebar and restrict the results to mobile apps from the Android Market or the Apple App Store. Obviously, this option is only available if you use an Android or an iOS device.


Google uses a different way to rank applications than the app stores, so this feature could help users find new applications. Unfortunately, Google's snippets aren't always useful because they include the first sentences from the descriptions, which are sometimes used to announce new features or promote other applications.

Does the World Need Another Mobile Platform?

Andy Rubin, Android architect and vice president of engineering at Google, says that the world doesn't need Windows Phone 7 or any other new mobile platform.

The world doesn't need another platform. Android is free and open; I think the only reason you create another platform is for political reasons. Why doesn't the whole world run with [Android]? They don't like the people who developed, or "not invented here," but [Android] is a successful, complete, vertically integrated free platform. I encourage everybody to use it, but I'm also not under the impression that everybody will use it, which is a good thing, because competition is good for the consumer and if somebody has an an idea for a feature or a piece of functionality in their platform and Android doesn't do it, great. I think it's good to have the benefit of choice, but in the end I don't think the world needs another platform.

Does the world need a better phone? Does the world need a phone that boots faster, a phone based on a web application framework, a phone that has a consistent interface? Just because Windows Phone 7 doesn't use Android, it doesn't mean that it's reinventing the wheel. Android is flexible, but it can't be used to build any kind of mobile operating system.

Millions of people will buy Windows Phone 7 phones and they'll find a new way to experience the Web. They'll probably use Bing, a browser that doesn't support HTML5 and they'll run Silverlight apps, but that's great: more people will buy Internet-enabled devices and will make the Web a better place. Great ideas come from everywhere and competition can only make Android better.

Google Goggles for iPhone

Google Mobile App for iPhone started to become a bloated app, just like Google Toolbar. Instead of developing new applications, Google adds extra features to the Google Mobile App.

The latest new feature added to the application is Google Goggles, a visual search tool that helps you identify objects in a picture. "Computer vision is a hard problem and Google Goggles is still a Labs product. It works well for things such as landmarks, logos and the covers of books, DVDs and games. However, it doesn't yet work for some things you might want to try like animals, plants or food," explains Google.

Google Goggles is available in the Google Mobile App if you use an iPhone 3GS running iOS 4 or an iPhone 4. Goggles is also a standalone Android application.