July 31st, 2009

Apple and AT&T asked to explain denial of Google Voice app

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 10:27 pm

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Google Inc., AT&T Corp., Apple Inc., Federal Government, Smart Phones, Government, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, Garett Rogers

If you hadn’t heard, Apple denied Google’s iPhone app for Google Voice — the most interesting, and buzz-worthy Google product in a long time. This development is concerning to iPhone users, developers, and even the FCC.

In a letter to both Apple and AT&T, James Schlichting of the FCC asked the following question, to be answered by August 21st:

Did Apple act alone, or in consultation with AT&T, in deciding to reject the Google Voice application and related applications? If the latter, please describe the communications between Apple and AT&T in connection with the decision to reject Google Voice.

Any way you look at it, the answer to this question will look extremely bad for either one or both of these companies. Speculation over what has happened is already causing quite a stir in the media.

What do you think of Apple’s denial of the Google Voice app for the iPhone?

July 29th, 2009

Google OpenID's it up with Google Apps

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 8:58 pm

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Google Inc., Google Apps, Google OpenID, Ping Identity, Cloud Computing, Web Site Development, Software As A Service (SaaS), Web Technology, Internet, Emerging Technologies

Google has announced that users can now sign into third party websites (that implement the Google’s OpenID Federated Login API) with their Google Apps account. OpenID is a secure and private SSO technology that is slowly, but surely being adopted.

Some of the websites that are already supported include big names like Salesforce.com, SuccessFactors, and WebEX using Ping Identity. Ping Identity provides a solution that gives users a way to access these, and many other SaaS apps from one spot.

What do you think of Google’s OpenID implementation? Let’s hear what you think in the TalkBack!

July 27th, 2009

New features found in Android dev branch

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 6:20 pm

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Multi-touch, Donut, Garett Rogers

Donut is the development branch of Android that contains the latest and greatest features that are up for inclusion into the next version of the mobile operating system. Developers saw some interesting stuff get checked into this branch, including official multi-touch support.

Just because it’s part of this branch, however, does not mean it will be available in the next mobile device. It’s still interesting to see what Google has been working on, regardless if it makes it into the official release.

The new version of the operating system includes interesting features including:

• CDMA support for networks like Sprint
• Text-to-speech
• Some “Toggle” widgets so you don’t have to dig around in your settings to turn off bluetooth or wifi
• Multi-touch
• Universal search — similar to Spotlight for iPhone
• Automated backups (with GDrive perhaps?)
• Performance enhancements

Mobile Crunch has some screenshots from the simulator included in the SDK.

July 24th, 2009

Latitude for iPhone shows off iPhone deficiency

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 10:37 pm

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Apple iPhone, Google Inc., Dell Latitude, Smart Phones, Notebooks, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, Hardware, Notebooks & Tablets, Garett Rogers

Developers have been asking Apple for a way to run multiple applications at once — giving applications like Google Latitude the ability to run services in the background. Unfortunately, Apple has refused to do such, and has forced companies like Google to release sub-par applications that are forced to run in the mobile browser.

Native applications are far better, faster and more powerful than web apps right now — however, it has been said, by Google even, that one day web apps may be the preferred method of deploying mobile applications.

As you might have guessed, the new version of Latitude for iPhone simply launches a browser — not exactly what people were expecting from Google, but it may be the best they can do for now. Since Google can’t install services on iPhone that run in the background, updating your location could not happen automatically anyway.

What do you think of the new Latitude iPhone app? Let’s hear in the TalkBack!

July 22nd, 2009

More clues that new Google Docs is related to GDrive

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 9:39 pm

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Google Inc., Google Docs, Garett Rogers

As I speculated several days ago, Google Docs appears to be morphing into GDrive — or at least a web-based interface for it.

Some people who heard the news began doing some digging of their own, and have found some interesting things.

First, the filter for “PDFs” has been changed to “Files” in the new interface. There is no reason they would have done this other than for scalability — a generic “files” filter works much better than one for each type of uploadable file.

Kevin Mohr found an icon that isn’t being used anywhere called “icon_4_chome_folder_large.gif”

It’s easy to see how this type of folder may be used in the future. When Google announced Google Chrome OS, the mentioned that all data will be stored centrally — a “Chrome folder” would be the logical place to store it.

I’m definitely looking forward to GDrive!

July 20th, 2009

YouTube in 3D: Ouch

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 9:47 pm

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: 3D, YouTube Inc., Garett Rogers

An interesting experiment created by a Googler in their 20% time has hit YouTube — it’s a 3D viewer for some YouTube videos. If you have a pair of 3D glasses kicking around, you’re in luck.

If you want to brave the “Cross Eyed” view, go right ahead — but I have to warn you, it’s not easy on the eyes or the stomach. As cool as it was, I’m never doing that again.

Click here to start with the 3D experiments — you can find more in the “related videos” on the right hand side.

July 18th, 2009

Could new Google Docs be interface for GDrive?

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 1:49 pm

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Google Inc., Google Docs, Microsoft Office, Office Suites, Software, Garett Rogers

Google recently announced a couple smaller changes to their new Google Docs product that will begin showing up right away — including the removal of the “shared with” area on the Docs console page. They say that feature is redundant anyway — due to the powerful search capabilities already available.

Those small changes are going to be shadowed by a much larger interface change coming in the next couple weeks. The timing isn’t surprising, since Microsoft released their Office 2010 for testing on Monday — but the online solution that will work with Office has not yet been made public.

I am starting to think this new interface overhaul would be a great time to introduce GDrive (Google’s rumored online file storage system) — and make the current Google Docs console more of an online file browser. What do you think?

July 15th, 2009

Using Google Voice just got easier

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 10:23 pm

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Google Inc., Voice, Mobile App, Advertising & Promotion, Handhelds, Marketing, Hardware, Garett Rogers

Today, Google launched their mobile application for Google Voice, the most impressive Google service yet. With Google Voice, if you haven’t heard of it yet, you can consolodate all your phone numbers into a single “Google Number”. The mobile app is currently available on Blackberry and Android devices.

The new app lets you make outbound calls using your Google Voice number through native dialer in Android, or a separate dialer on the Blackberry. This makes using Google Voice a fairly seamless experience.

In addition to being able to make outbound calls with your number, you can now also access your voicemail and SMS messages sent to your Voice account. Have you tried the new app yet? What do you think?

July 14th, 2009

Google Calendar gets some labs features

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 6:26 pm

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Google Inc., Background Image, Google Calendar, Garett Rogers

Google Calendar — which was recently taken out of beta — just introduced a brand new “Labs” feature. This strategy is a safe way for Google to test out beta features under a non-beta label.

Some of the new features you can currently find in Labs for Calendar include:

Background image
Brighten your day with a background image in your calendar. After you enable this feature, you’ll find background image options on the General Settings page

Attach Google Docs
Attach a Google Docs word processing document, spreadsheet or presentation to your event. (Important: guests do not automatically have permission to view an attached document. You must share each attached document.

World clock
Keep track of the time around the world. Plus: when you click an event, you’ll see the start time in each time zone as well.

Jump to date
Quickly navigate to dates in the distant future or past (actual time travel not yet supported).
Next meeting

Free or busy
See which of your friends are free or busy right now (requires that friends share their Google Calendars with you.

Next Meeting
See what’s coming up next in your calendar.

It’s only a small list of available features right now — but I’m looking forward to the day when they open up labs to third party developers in both Google Calendar and Gmail.

July 11th, 2009

Consumer Watchdog blasts Google over privacy

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 12:57 pm

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Google Inc., Privacy, Behavioral Targeting, Consumer Watchdog, Garett Rogers

Consumer Watchdog got their hands on a “secret presentation” in which Google defends its behavioral targeting methods. Reading through the document(pdf), it certainly doesn’t seem that scary to me, but they seem to have their own take on it.

I personally don’t have any problems with Google’s privacy practices — in fact, I don’t even own a tin foil hat. I find that people and organizations like Consumer Watchdog are far too paranoid, and tend read too much into things. I subscribe to the idea that Google collects information to make my life better, but that’s just me.

Where do you stand on Google and privacy? Let’s hear what you think in the TalkBack!