Because Verizon decided to be greedy with the GPS in the Blackberry Pearl (which, along with many other reasons, has made me suspicious of their recent “Any App, Any Device” announcement), users must pay for Verizon’s own VZ Navigator if they want any map positioning functionality. Yesterday, Google decided to save the day and announced a new triangulation location feature in Google Maps beta that can pin-point your location to within 10 city blocks, even if you don’t have GPS in your mobile phone (or your GPS has been crippled by the carrier). This can be very helpful when looking for nearby business and restaurants. Thanks for making up for Verizon’s shortfalls, Google.
Looks like IMAP is making it’s way into Gmail, which is exciting and long overdue. Great news for those who use desktop apps to manage their Gmail. Now changes you make in your desktop app are reflected in your Gmail account.
Although, still no love for it’s Google Apps for Your Domain (GAFYD) accounts. Which, actually, is not surprising. Google Calendar and Gmail have great mobile interfaces, but the business app users, who arguably need it more (and pay for it), get nothing beyond the standard Gmail BlackBerry app. Google seems to have it’s priorities backwards. They update their free consumer accounts before their paid business accounts.
I’m crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, where are you? Alright, not really, but I can pretend that I am. Google Maps has launched it’s rumored “Street View” maps today at Where 2.0. By selecting the street view button you can view and pan through a panoramic, high-quality, photo of the area. Right now, this feature is only available in certain areas, but take a look for yourself or at this example. Pretty…darn….cool.
[Update] If you, like me, have been wondering how Google obtained all of these images? It looks like they have a deal with Calgary video-imaging company Immersive Media Corp. They drive around in vans outfitted with special cameras mounted on top. What a great idea. They knew someone was bound to pay them a healthy sum for all those images.
I heard rumblings of some Google visual changes over the past week, but had yet to see anything different. Maybe it took time to propagate, or maybe it’s new today. Either way, this just hit my Firefox browser tonight.
A personalized Google homepage is now termed “iGoogle”. I understand that it is important to promote these personalized pages, because it probably allows Google to improve their algorithms by tracking logged-in users, but come on. Haven’t we had enough with the “i” something names? Yes, five years ago it was clever, because “I” do this and “I” do that, but let’s move on.
Maybe they were deciding between iGoogle, miiGoogle, and wiiGoogle? Wii - the next to be copied naming convention?
Yesterday, Google launched a new version of its mobile search. Now from your phone’s browser, you can view news, local movie times and weather, right from your homepage. This is very handy considering browsing through a sub par mobile phone browser is never enjoyable (enter iPhone, I hope).
The real improvements of the new Google service come into play when actually performing a mobile search.
We realize that when you’re on the go, you usually just want an answer to your query, rather than everything and the kitchen sink. So we’re continually refining our algorithm-based search to intelligently produce the results you want. You won’t need to sift through both mobile and regular web results, or specify your search type—local, image, web, etc.—as our new search experience will offer you results based on the nature of the query itself. So if you search for [bbc] on your device, you’ll get a link to the mobile-friendly BBC website. Search for [us post office], and you’ll get listings for the branches that are closest to your set location, and so on. No extra stuff that gets between you and the information you need.
Official Google Blog
Accessing this new mobile browser on my Blackberry, took a few steps:
Navigate to google.com in your mobile browser
Choose Mobile from “View Google in: Mobile | Classic” near the bottom of the page
Choose “Try our new mobile search”
Select info you would like displayed on your homepage
