S60 video contest winner features Google Maps for mobile

Posted by Ryan Pollock, Product Marketing Manager

The See into S60 blog recently ran a contest on YouTube that encouraged readers to submit videos highlighting how they use their S60 phones. We were pleased to see that the winner of the "Show Your Favorite Application" category was an amusing video featuring Google Maps for mobile. We're excited to hear from passionate S60 users who love Google Maps for mobile, and we look forward to rolling out exciting features on S60 phones soon.

Here's the winning video:

Mobile search access gets faster; iGoogle gets easier to use

Posted by James Watts, Software Engineer

We at Google are obsessed with making your mobile search experience as fast as possible. With that in mind, we've just updated our mobile homepage to allow for a quicker load time, providing you with even faster access to the information you need while on the go.

How do we do this? When you navigate to google.com in your browser, we cache the homepage on your phone. If you bookmark this homepage, then returning to Google using the bookmark is almost instantaneous. Whether you come to Google by browser or through our new search plug-in, starting your search is now quicker and simpler than ever before.

Also launching today is an improved mobile iGoogle interface that provides you with access to your mobile-compatible gadgets anytime, anywhere. We've linked your iGoogle gadgets directly from the new mobile home page and made it easier for you to set up your mobile iGoogle page from the desktop. By going to your iGoogle settings page on a computer, you can choose and rearrange your favorite gadgets for your phone. For example, if weather and news are the most important items to you when on the go, you can drag and drop these gadgets to the top of your page. In addition, you can now read article summaries by clicking on the "More" option on any RSS gadget.

Watch the video below as Steve Cheng and I demo the new search and iGoogle for mobile from opposite sides of the continent. Or just go to iGoogle to sign in and get started. And once your page is set up, remember to bookmark iGoogle on your phone for fast access to all your content. Note that these improvements are available on all non-iPhone devices, as iPhone users have alternative Google search and iGoogle offerings. Happy searching!

Picasa now customized for Nokia S60 and translated into 36 languages

Posted by Michael van Ouwerkerk, Software Engineer, Google mobile team

Joe optimized Picasa Web Albums for the iPhone and Zak made it shine on Windows Mobile. This made me wonder about Nokia phones. Ever since S60 3rd Edition came out, phones like the Nokia N95 have had good web browsers. Why not give Picasa Web Albums on S60 some AJAXy goodness, with faster browsing and a slicker user interface as well? I investigated what it would take to make our existing design work on S60 and it turned out to be really easy! And since I'm Dutch, I also wanted to view this interface without needing to switch my account language to English. So we had it translated into 36 new languages. We also gave the toolbar an overhaul, adding simpler to understand icons. You can now get this new version of Picasa Web Albums on all S60 phones using a WebKit-based browser, as well as iPhone using Safari and Windows Mobile 6 Professional using Internet Explorer. As an added bonus we've also added support for Windows Mobile 6 Standard.

Finally, based on requests we've had on this blog, we've added a zoom feature for the iPhone. When viewing a photo that was uploaded to Picasa Web Albums in high resolution, just tap on the zoom button -- the one with the magnifying glass. This will take you to a page with a high-resolution image where you can use those wonderful finger gestures for zooming and panning around in the zoomed area.



Head to picasaweb.google.com to give it a try, and be sure to let us know what you think! There's a good chance now that your phone and preferred language are supported.

Google enables Location-aware Applications for 3rd Party Developers

Posted by Zhengrong Ji and Ravi Jain, Google mobile team

At Google we're very excited about the promise of location technology to drive innovation in the mobile industry. We of course use this location technology already in Google Maps for mobile with the My Location feature. However, we wanted 3rd party developers to also have access to the same location technology across multiple platforms. Gears for Windows Mobile and Android already contain location APIs and we expect to see an explosion of mobile applications that use location technology, particularly on the iPhone starting this month.

Some have wondered: How does it work?

Google Maps for mobile version 2.0 launched last November with a new feature called My Location. My Location enables users to pinpoint their approximate location on a map even if their phone doesn't have a GPS chip. My Location is now available in more than 200 countries and across many different platforms, including BlackBerry, Nokia Series 60, Apple iPhone/iPod Touch, Windows Mobile, and many Java phones. Here's a video that explains what it does. Since the launch, we've seen accelerated growth in the adoption of Google Maps for mobile and have received lots of enthusiastic user feedback on My Location.

We're happy to lift the covers and give you a peek into the inner workings of the Google location server, which powers the My Location feature.

Wireless phones can make and receive calls because they are connected over the air to a nearby cell tower. The phone knows the ID of the cell tower that it's currently using. If the phone has GPS, the Maps application on the phone sends the GPS coordinates along with the cell ID to the Google location server. Over millions of such updates, across multiple phones, carriers, and times, the server clusters the GPS updates corresponding to a particular cell ID to find their rough center. So when a phone without GPS needs its own location, the application on the phone queries the Google location server with the cell tower ID to translate that into a geographic location, i.e., lat/long coordinates. Nifty, huh? We think so.


We're working hard to further improve our location platform and making it more widely available. Stay tuned!

A useful digital pen reviews

The pen, once mightier than the sword, has been getting trounced by the keyboard in the computer era. Now and then there's a push toward "pen-based computing" that doesn't get very far.

But in a test of the latest crop of pens that combine ink with digital technology, at least one stands out as a useful tool and a complement to the keyboard.

All three pens I tested record what the user writes, and can transfer an image of those notes to a PC. The standout of the group is the LiveScribe Pulse, which also records audio as you're writing. Later, you can tap a place in your notes, and the pen will play back what it was hearing when that was written.

As you can imagine, this is something of a Holy Grail for journalists, who run around with notepads and voice recorders. A classic problem for us is finding the right place in an audio recording without listening through the whole thing. The Pulse solves this problem.

Students also should pay attention to this pen. There is probably no better gadget for taking notes in class, except perhaps a Tablet PC, which allows you to write on the screen. But Tablet PCs are expensive and more difficult to use than the Pulse, which works with standard Windows PCs. You can also use it in a more limited fashion without a PC.

A Pulse with 1 gigabyte of memory costs $149 from LiveScribe's Web site. A model with twice as much memory costs $199, but the cheaper model has room for 35 hours of audio at the highest quality setting, or more than 100 hours at a lower setting, so it's a good value.

The greatest limitation of the Pulse is that it only works with special paper, preprinted with a pattern of dots. These are picked up by a small camera in the pen (this is the reason the pen is about as thick as a cigar), which lets it figure out where it is on a page. The pen comes with a 100-sheet college-ruled notebook. You can buy a four-pack of additional notebooks from the site for $19.95. Later this summer, LiveScribe hopes to make it possible for users to print their own paper.

The dot-sensing technology in the pen comes from a Swedish company, Anoto, and has been incorporated in a number of pens from other companies.

Another example is the Nokia Digital Pen SU-27W, which uses Bluetooth technology to transfer notes to a cell phone. Dash off a message on one of the small notepads that come with the $299.95 pen, and you can send it as a text message or as picture message through the phone.

The utility of this is hard to grasp. For your note to be converted to a text message, the phone needs to guess at what your handwriting means. If you use block letters, it does a decent job, but any sort of cursive will confuse it, and no wonder — even powerful computers can have a hard time interpreting handwriting.

You can bypass the text conversion by sending the note as a picture, but you really don't need a $299.95 pen and a special notepad to do that, just a cell-phone with autofocus camera. Write your note on any kind of paper, photograph it and send it off. Not as legible as text message, but more personal, for sure.

The Nokia pen can also transfer the notes to a PC, and does a decent job of this, but I really missed the audio-recording feature of the Pulse.

The third pen, the Iogear Mobile Digital Scribe, uses a completely different technology. It doesn't need preprinted paper. Instead, you attach a small "clip" with an LCD screen to the notepad you're using. The pen, which is the size of a regular ballpoint, signals its position to the clip using ultrasonic pulses and invisible infrared light. Connect the clip to your computer to transfer the notes.

The major virtue of this is that it can be used with any notepad. But as with the Nokia pen, the utility is questionable. If you need to save your notes on the PC, you can photograph them or scan them without using a digital pen. The pen does make the process easier, and the notes are clearer, but here and there I found that the clip missed part of a letter.

By tethering the clip to the computer, you can use the pen to control your mouse cursor, much like the dedicated pen tablets graphics artists use. This looks fun, but again, it's not very useful, and dedicated tablets do a better job.

The software that comes with the $129.95 Digital Scribe had the supremely annoying habit of launching when the computer started, and sending up an alert bubble every time, saying that the clip was not connected. This feature could not be turned off.

The LiveScribe Pulse software also had some odd limitations. I was unable to install it on my work computer because the "My Documents" folder was on another computer in the network. There's no way to convert the notes into a text file, or turn notes into e-mail, but you can upload your notes to LiveScribe's Web site to share them, with audio included. The LiveScribe, like the other pens, comes with Windows software only.

But at least the Pulse demonstrated that pens can still be relevant. Sure, you can bring a laptop to a lecture to take notes, but that means you need one eye on the screen. When writing by hand, it's much easier to pay attention to the speaker (and you can draw diagrams too). This is even more important in interviews, where taking notes by hand allows you to maintain more eye contact. Even in a digital world, that's important.

Source- http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080605/ap_on_hi_te/tec_tech_test_digital_pens;_ylt=Atm8nVPi7QFQ9ImMdMpagNwjtBAF

Get bus and train directions on the go with Google Maps for mobile

Posted by Joe Hughes, Software Engineer

Ever since Google Maps added public transportation directions for San Francisco, it's been a lot easier for me to figure out which buses and trains will get me where I'm going around town, so that today's gas prices take less of a toll on my wallet. Even so, I've often found myself wishing that I had an easy way to get transit directions while I'm out and about.

Enter the new version of Google Maps for mobile. This version (2.2) allows you to get transit directions in all the same places as the web version of Google Maps, including Chicago, the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Vancouver, and over 40 other cities in North America.

This version of Google Maps for mobile even has a few tricks not yet available on the desktop version of Google Maps. For instance, you can find the last transit trips of the day (to figure out how late you can stay at the party) and more easily browse through earlier or later trips. The My Location feature, available on most phones, also makes it easier to set the start point of your journey.

To see how the transit feature of Google Maps for mobile works, take a look at this quick video walkthrough with my co-worker Ryan:


This version of Google Maps for mobile also includes a bunch of other goodies, like faster searching on BlackBerry devices and star ratings for businesses. It's currently available for BlackBerry devices and many other Java-based phones. To download it to your phone visit http://www.google.com/gmm from your phone's web browser or on the desktop.

We're working to bring public transit directions to Google Maps on other devices, so stay tuned!

Resident Evil 5 Game Interview

In this Resident Evil 5 producer interview, we "get inside info on the game that will be the pinnacle of the survival horror drama."

Powerful lighting effects overwhelm the player with mirage movement and blinding brilliance, and even in the light of day, there is no safe haven in this Resident Evil.

Source- http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/resident-evil-5-game