Google

In a smart move, Google has opened up it’s APIs to iPhone SDK. What does that mean?

In a Google blog posts:

“Perhaps you want your iPhone software to send photos to a Picasa Web Albums account, or keep a journal of phone calls automatically in Blogger. Maybe your iPhone application accesses a database of information from a Google Spreadsheet or from Google Base. With the Google Data APIs Objective-C Client Library, creating software for these tasks is straightforward.” “If you are writing iPhone software, just drag the “GData Sources” group folder from the GData project file into your iPhone project, and use the GData APIs as you would when writing a Mac application. ”

Take a look.

I’ve never been a fan of Guitar Hero, but I am pretty interested in Pocket Guitar.

Pocket Guitar is a virtual guitar that transforms your iPhone and iPod Touch into workable guitar frets. Play a chord and strum your iPhone for an experience in music you thought you could never have and may have never wanted.

Pocket Guitar even lets you kick out the jams with songs loaded on your iPhone.

Pocket Guitar is super simple to install and you can find it here. Now if you could excuse me, I am going to work on my acoustic masterpiece!

Although 1.1.3 brings better support for IMAP in Gmail, Google is warning users that issues may arise after updating.

The problem results from updates to Mail in 1.1.3 in which a POP Gmail account will be converted to IMAP. Because of this, any messages read or modified on the iPhone will be reflected in other clients accessing the same account alongside the web interface. The only fix is to delete the account and recreate it.

Via: MacNN

The iPhone revolutionized the industry by making it easy and affordable to use the Web on a cell phone. With that in mind, the company thought to make the iPhone’s web capabilities even better.

Today, the first day of Macworld; Google unveiled a new user interface for its iPhone Web apps that make Gmail, search, Reader, Calendar, Picasa and other services faster to use and more customizable. It also has optimized iGoogle for the iPhone.

Now, new e-mail messages automatically show up so you don’t need to hit refresh, messages can arrive in 25 seconds or less and auto-complete makes composing an e-mail faster.

Calendar offers a month-at-a-glance view that is not yet offered on the desktop. Your favorite apps are in tabs at the top of the screen and they can be switched around.

Although I expected this, it is big news---and great news. It makes me wonder what the future holds and I look forward to it.

Picasa, Google’s photo posting and sharing web service is now made for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Now you can view your albums, see individual pictures with comments, search photos, and view your friends’ albums.

According to Joe Walnes on the Official Google Mobile Blog:

I had a look around some websites and I really liked how they looked on the iPhone. I could get to everything I needed. I went to picasaweb.google.com but it didn’t quite feel right. It was using some very cool AJAXy features, but these were designed with a desktop web-browsing experience in mind. So the next day I had a go at creating a new interface for Picasa Web, designed for the iPhone.

Yet another iPhone relationship with Google. It makes you wonder how many other projects the Google teams have cooking.

Yesterday, Google VP of Search and User Experience Marissa Mayer announced the search engine’s top 10 fastest rising searched terms and (big surprise), “iPhone” is numero uno. The blogosphere is riddled with dedicated iPhone and gadget sites. Not to mention the mobile and general tech sites that the iPhone constantly graces headlines on. Here are the top 10:

1. iphone
2. webkinz
3. tmz
4. transformers
5. youtube
6. club penguin
7. myspace
8. heroes
9. facebook
10. anna nicole smith

In a related and totally absurd related story, Yahoo announced there top 10 search terms of 2007 and it seems that Yahoo users tend to like the chicks more than Google users do. Granted, this list is total searches not “fastest rising” terms but 6 out of the top 10 terms are hot celebrity women.

1. Britney Spears
2. WWE
3. Paris Hilton
4. Naruto
5. Beyonce… more...

Similar to the cell tower based location tracing provided by the native app Navizon, Google has added an option called My Location. My Location is new software that is included with Google maps which works with non GPS phones. As most know the iPhone does not currently have GPS, so it fits into the category. As of right now this feature is only on the beta for the standard Mobile Google Maps. Unfortunately it is not yet on the iPhone, but I hope it will eventually be included in an update. I would love to see an integrated and reliable location finder that is authorized by Apple. As soon as the SDK appears we may have competition over these kinds of applications (Google vs. Navizon). When this occurs I will use the app that I know will be free, Google Maps. 3 cheers for simplicity, seamless integration, and free software!

Yesterday Google released the SDK for Android, right on time, as promised. And while most of the Apple world was focused on the UK release of the iPhone, Google made some even louder noise as they announced the $10 Million Android Developer Challenge.

In a post on the Google’s code site, “We welcome all types of applications but are looking to reward innovative, useful apps that make use of Android’s capabilities to deliver a better mobile experience.”

So what does this mean for the iPhone and the mobile phone/devices landscape? Plenty. Developers were already chomping at the bit to develop applications for Android, this prize money just sealed the deal where they will dedicate their time. And those that have promising starts to their programming initiatives will be funded by this prize money in a way that will forward their progress. When the first mobile devices running Android hit the market, it will be backed by hundreds of useful and free applications propelling those devices (at least in terms of functionality) above the iPhone.

So what do you think? Do you think Apple and the iPhone can… more...

Many people like to read blogs to keep in touch with news that has occured recently, and instead of going to each and every site, some use RSS. Google Reader, for those who are not familiar with it, is an RSS reader and collector. Imagine an inbox for all of the new stories that are published daily. When a story comes out, a summary (or the full text) can be read in Google Reader and then marked as read. This way you will never miss a headline, and you may read them at any pace that is comfortable. Google had previously developed a web interface formatted specially for iPhone users. This granted ease of use with the 3.5 inch screen. The old version had limited access to features found in the desktop version. This is common with many other mobile apps, but it got annoying when you wanted to check your feeds or tags.

Now Google has fixed this, and you can use these options. Another thing that I enjoyed was the repositioning of some of the key buttons. I have found that they have been placed more conveniently and with a… more...

Google has released a video (Shown on YouTube) to explain how to setup your GMail account on your iPhone while using Google’s new IMAP functionality for GMail.