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The Big G released its first ever mobile application for the iPhone and iPod Touch last week. Dubbed the Google Mobile App, the application lets you search the web or your iPhone contacts, and includes many features you’d find within Google desktop search products (one of my favorites is Google Suggest).
The Google team released this video highlighting the Google Mobile App features:
It’s interesting to see Google’s investment in the iPhone platform, considering the Google Android phones are just a few months away from reality. Still, even Google knows it will take quite a while for the Android phones to knock the iPhone off it’s perch.
Google is making it just a bit easier to avoid the $4+ gas prices these days. Google Maps for Mobile now provides local transit directions. Find out how in the video below:
What do Yahoo! Finance, Scottrade, eTrade, and most other finance portals have in common? Their free stock quotes are all delayed by at least 10 minutes (Yahoo! Finance does offer a free trial for their service, but you must sign up for it).
Google Finance made a big leap forward today by announcing their quotes are now displayed in real-time. That’s impressive.
So what does this have to do with mobile, one might ask? You may be aware that Google offers a free SMS service, which includes providing stock quote information. Simply text message the ticker symbol to GOOGL (46645), and you will receive the current, real-time quote in a return message. I did multiple tests today, and each time I received a response within 18 seconds or less. That’s much better than the 20 minute market delay you’ll find at Scottrade or eTrade — and those are on their regular website.
If you dial 411 from your mobile phone, stop. Almost all carriers charge a fee, and those fees can add up over the course of a month or a year.
The good news is there are several mobile 411 services available for free today. One of those is Goog411, from Google. Simply dial 800-GOOG411. Take a look at the Google video below to see what it’s all about.
If you use any other 411 services from your mobile phone, let us know what you thought!
For the longest time, I checked my Gmail account from my BlackBerry by firing up the embedded browser and navigating over to gmail.com like it was 2005. That worked just fine and dandy, but it was slower than I would have liked and was not the best mobile interface. After breaking down and downloading the suite of Google mobile applications for the BlackBerry, I may never go back to my old ways.
Google Mobile Apps
So I downloaded the entire suite of Google apps, which includes the Google Mobile Updater to keep them all up to date. Here’s a quick list of what the Google Mobile applications include (in order of what I use most often):
Gmail
Google Reader
Google Search
Google News
Google Sync (syncs your BlackBerry calendar with your Google Calendar)
Picasa
Google Docs
Google Maps (I’m a guy. I don’t need directions.)
All the icons for these apps appear on your main screen. I can now check my Gmail much faster, and it’s got a cleaner mobile interface that I can do things like reply or compose emails so much faster. I now use Google Maps instead of the default BlackBerry maps application.
If you use Gmail and have a BlackBerry, trust me when I say this will make your life easier. Go ahead and pull the trigger on the Google Mobile apps for your BlackBerry, and call me out if you disagree!
Downloading Google Mobile Apps to Your BlackBerry
To download Google Apps for your BlackBerry (or any web-enabled mobile phone), navigate to mobile.google.com from your mobile browser, and select Google Mobile Updater. The download process will let you pick and choose which apps you want, or you can do what I did and download them all.
Tip: Here’s a tip straight from the folks at Google Mobile. To get instant access to Google Search from your BlackBerry, press the Convenience Key, then go to Options->Screen/Keyboard->Convenience Key and select ‘Google Search’.
Back in December, Google announced an iPhone version of Picasa for viewing pictures on the go. Just yesterday, Google announced a newer release specifically for Windows Mobile 6 touchscreen devices.
The feature that stood out for me was that if you download Google Gears for Mobile to your handheld device, you can access your Picasa albums even when your phone is not connected to the web. Now that is handy.
For all your Windows Mobile 6 touchscreen toting kids out there - go check it out for yourself.
MobileMammoth.com has learned of an odd, but interesting new feature to be included in the upcoming Google mobile phone.
What is it?
In what some are calling a bold yet questionable effort to out-feature the iPhone, Google has partnered with a Minneapolis bio-engineering firm to incorporate a feature to tell if a person’s breasts are real or if they have been artificially augmented. This team of engineers has developed wireless technology to sense if silicone is present or “nearby in a body of matter”.
The technology is not fool-proof, however. The phone must be within 7.5 feet of the breasts in question, and the phone must be held at “chest-level”, according to the engineer’s statement. Based on tests conducted in closed-door labs over the past 4 months, the tests have been “over 87% accurate.”
When will it be available?
While most analysts predict a late-2008 arrival of the gPhone, this silicone detecting feature will only be available for testing purposes on handsets sold in parts of Los Angeles and Miami, before being made available nationwide 3 months later.
I am a firm believer in creating new and interesting applications for the mobile phone, but I must say this one never entered my mind.
What say you?
My question for you is, would this feature sway you to buy the gPhone? Or do you see it as a novelty feature that you could do without?
According to Taiwanese handset maker High Tech Computer (HTC), that’s exactly what it will be.
HTC is one of a few handset makers reportedly developing a phone to run on the Google mobile platform (dubbed “Android”). According to a recent news report, the HTC handset will be called Dream. Here are the other characteristics of the Google Dream phone according to the unnamed source close to the situation:
Just over 5 inches long, 3 inches wide
Large touchscreen
Full QWERTY keypad, which will retract out from under the screen
Web navigation keys just below the screen
Expected to hit the market towards the end of 2008
While the talk of Google’s Android mobile platform continues, OpenMoko has one of it’s own that’s worth a look. Not only does OpenMoko provide a mobile development platform, they’ve also opened up the CAD files of the phone case design, allowing industrial designers to customize the actual hardware. Now that is different.
Now you have no excuse not to go build your bright yellow, tiger-striped phone with GPS and voice recognition software for your kid.
I check my Gmail on my Blackberry 8830 several times a day. Since many of our readers are venturing onto the mobile web for the first time, I thought it would be useful to take a fresh look one of the most common activities — accessing your Gmail account on from your mobile phone.
Before we jump in, you may want to have a look at this Google video explaining how to access Gmail from your mobile device:
Gmail for the Mobile Browser
First, know that there are two ways to access your Gmail account from your mobile phone. The one I use is simply to navigate to the regular Gmail URL, gmail.com. From there, you can quickly scan your inbox, open (most) attachments, delete, star, mark as spam, and use other general functionality.
The only requirement to access the Gmail mobile website is that your mobile browser be XHTML compliant, have cookies enabled, and that the network allow SSL communication. This should not be an issue for the large majority of U.S. users out there, so just give it a shot.
Gmail Mobile App
The other way to access your Gmail account while you are on the go is to download the Gmail Mobile App. It is a Java application, and the main difference here is that it involves significantly less data than accessing Gmail from your mobile browser. For those that often hit their data limit on their wireless plan, it is certainly worth a look.
Read more about it here: http://gmail.com/app. Better yet, go here to get the link sent to your mobile phone.
So do you access Gmail from your mobile? Use an email service that does not provide mobile access yet? Drop us a line in the comments and let us know.
