Google Docs Gets Lots of Updates Google Docs added lots of new stuff, including saved searches, offline Google Gears access for spreadsheets and presentations, custom document stylesheets (using CSS), speaker notes in presentations, and embedded YouTube videos in presentations.
Move Your Life To Gmail With Gmail Uploader Google released last month the Gmail Uploader, a free application that moves your email and contacts from Outlook, Outlook Express or Thunderbird (on Windows XP and Vista only) to a Google Apps Gmail account. Considering the huge number of limitations (only three email programs, two operating systems, and one very specific and less popular edition of Gmail), you may never get the chance to use it, which is a shame, because most new Gmail users would love the easy migration method.
Google Charts Now Does QR Codes
Google has been trying out QR Codes (a type of 2D bar codes) in its print ads, and now they’re making it easier to generate them on the web. Before, you’d have to use a web app or software to create a QR Code, then save the image to use on your website, but now the Google Chart API can be queried to get them automatically. Right now, all you get are website URLs, though hopefully Google will extend the API to handle more complex data.
Here’s an API-generated image for this site, using the URL http://chartserver.apis.google.com/chart?cht=qr&chs=300x300&chl=http://google.blognewschannel.com/:
Blogger Adds Future Posts
Google’s Blogger has added the ability to schedule posts to be published in the future by specifying a date yet to come for your post. This feature was tested in Blogger In Draft, and is yet another feature to make its way into the ever improving Blogger.
Google Invests In New Clearwire Google entered into an agreement with Sprint and others (Comcast, Intel Capital, Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks and Trilogy Equity Partners), investing half a billion dollars in a new formation of wireless ISP Clearwire. The new company will be 51% Sprint-owned, taking Sprint’s Xohm WiMax business. Google’s a wireless provider of sorts, now, and will help get open devices, including Android devices, on the network, and provide search and applications for the network.
Google Me - A Documentary About Search
This documentary features a guy searching for others with this same name as him. A concept we’ve heard before, though it seems to have resulted in an interest project.
Google’s Head of PR Goes to Facebook
Elliot Schrage leaves for Facebook, costing Google its vice president of global communications and public affairs. Of course, Google’s corporate PR policies haven’t been that smart the last few years, so maybe this isn’t great news for Facebook.
Google Maps Interface Slimmed Down
Google has finally trimmed some of the cruft building on Google Maps, combining and simplifying an interface that was getting too complicated and cluttered.
Blogger Gets Integrated Analytics
Google has integrated Google Analytics into Blogger for Blogger users that are interested, giving access to stats inside the Blogger Dashboard along with special stats tracking relevant to blogs. They’re also letting Measure Map users roll over their accounts into Google Analytics now.
Easter and Purim Search Logos
The biggest search engines didn’t mark Easter at all, but Ask.com did run this homepage on Sunday (all screenshots via Barry):
Also, Dogpile:
And Cre8asite:
And Bruce Clay:
SER ran this on Friday to mark Purim, the Jewish holiday celebrating Queen Esther and crew saving the Jews from the evil Haman in long-ago Persia:
A Collection of Bad Google Interview Stories Silicon Valley Insider has another of those stories about Google job interviews, and the unique experiences candidates have had on them. This one features blown interviews, and at least one somewhat disgusting story where a veteran of the armed forces was asked an insulting question about how many people he’d killed, and if he’d done it efficiently. The general feeling is that Google’s famous arrogance is alive and well. This one was really interesting too:
They have a process which intentionally filters out people who are single minded and focused on a goal in favour of people who like to spread around and tinker with things. At some point in the process you end up in a room with gadgets and things. The room actually has either a CCTV camera or a double mirror (no idea what is the actual technical implementation). If you open your bag and read a book so that you do not lose concentraion at that point and ignore the shiny gadgets you are most likely going to fail the interview. If you tinker with the shiny trinkets around you, the likelihood that you will pass will vastly improve.
Also, Valleywag has an ex-Googler venting about the company’s recruiters being out of touch. Former employee Hans Cardinal says, like we’ve heard many times, that 20% projects are a fiction, Google’s new hires work mostly on ads, the new engineers are hideously unskilled, and the PMs are territorial and unpleasant.
Google Releases Search Plugin For Windows Mobile Google has released a very basic searching plugin for Windows Mobile devices. The plugin adds a Google search box to the device’s home screen, letting you run a search without first opening your browser. It doesn’t do anything else, but it is a convenience and can supplant a similar implementation by Microsoft in Windows Mobile 6. If you’re interested, go to mobile.google.com.
Google Updates Charts API Google has updated its API for free chart generation, removing the limit of 50,000 queries a day and adding new chart types. Now, not only can you use the API without worry (those using over 250,000 queries a day are only asked to call in, nothing more), you can also make cool new charts, like this one:
Google announced last week Google Gears for Mobile (or specifically, Windows Mobile), bringing its promise to offline phone applications, even as the promises of Gears for computers has still not been realized. You can check out Gears Mobile here or watch this video:
Web-based office suite Zoho and personal finance site Buxfer are the first to use Gears Mobile (yes, not even Google’s products support this yet). Considering the lack of progress getting web apps to use Google Gears, especially the dissapointing support for Google’s own products, it’s amazing there’s already a mobile version before there’s, say, a Gmail version. It’s nice that, for once, Google is supporting Windows Mobile first, but considering the myriad of phone platforms not supported, and the many online apps not supported, it’s little more than “nice”.
Anyone want to bet that Gears for Windows Mobile is mostly just a developer platform in order to have Gears-supporting apps ready to run on Android, whenever Android happens?
Just got off the phone with my T-Mobile representative, and got her to look up their new information on T-Mobile’s unlimited calling plans. I have a family plan, and was hoping to see if there’s an advantage to getting an unlimited family plan, if one exists. It was so new, she had to go and find the paperwork.
The news? Not so good.
The base family plan is $199.98 with unlimited calling, unlimited text, picture, video and instant messaging. You get two lines. Each additional line is $99.99, up to three additional lines.
So, three lines, $299.97. Four lines, $399.96. Five lines, $499.95. As the phone rep admitted, there is no difference between getting several seperate individual plans and the family plan, except the family plan has a single bill and itemization for all accounts, and has a limit of five phones.
That’s a real shame. Normally you pay $10 per additional line, which would have been cool. $230 a month for five unlimited phones would have been a great deal, coming out to $47.50 per phone, $95 a month for my current two phones (with a in-theory buddy splitting the bill with me). With $99 per line no matter what, I’m not switching to this plan for a very long time, if ever.
Let’s see how Verizon and AT&T handle unlimited family plans. Anyone who’ll give me five phones for under $250 gets my business.
UPDATE: Just got off the phone with AT&T. Same deal, $199 for two lines, $99 per additional line. Damn. Will Verizon make it three strikes?
UPDATE 2: Verizon’s website actually has the info, unlike the others. And… Three for three! Yuck.
2 lines total $199.98
3 lines total $299.97
4 lines total $399.96
5 lines total $499.95
Oh well, so much for unlimited voice. Maybe in my next life.
Engadget has a great article explaining exactly what the rules are for open access on the 700 MHz wireless spectrum Google and the telecoms are fighting over. You may think you know what open access means, but you probably won’t fully understand it until you’ve read up on it.
They explain how the frequency’s ability to penetrate buildings makes it so valuable, what open networks would have meant (I’m actually glad that was shot down), Google’s possible Sprint trade for some WiMAX band, why the iPhone can’t be such an ass on an open device band, and what open applications will do, among other things. Go ahead, take a few minutes, it’s worth it.
GigaOm reports that the tenth round of bidding in the FCC’s auction for the 700 MHz wireless spectrum is over (with weeks of bidding to go), and it ended with a new bid for part of the coveted C-block of spectrum. For the nationwide package in the 22 MHz section, a new bid came through for $3.4 billion, most of the way to $4.6 billion minimum that will trigger the requirement for open access on the band. There’s plenty of time, so if Google wins or no, at least we’ll get our open spectrum.
The big new feature is the ability to log in, which allows you access to your YouTube account. That means you can go directly to your own videos to share them with others, watch your favorite videos and visit your favorite Channels, and change some settings. You can now share videos, rate them and leave comments, right on your phone.
YouTube also released a downloadable client application for a limited number of J2ME phones, which works similarly to the Helio and iPhone clients for YouTube. It requires one of these phones:
Sony Ericsson k800, w880
Nokia e65, n95, n73, 6110 navigator and 6120 classic
The application can be download by going to m.youtube.com on your phone’s browser, which should result in a prompt to download it. No reason has been given as to why the application won’t work on other J2ME phones, which is quite a shame, since it means that many powerful phones, like Windows Mobile phones, still have no simple means of accessing YouTube.
Still, the updates are very good ones, with YouTube mobile going from a too-small video selection to including almost every video you’d ever want to watch, and the client app a great step in the right direction. Get that application on every major platform (Windows Mobile, Palm and BlackBerry), and there will be nowhere YouTube can’t go.
Apple announced an update for the iPhone yesterday, and it includes the popular new Google Maps phone feature that lets users look up their location without a GPS. The feature is the same, for the most part, as the My Location feature on Windows Mobile and other smartphone versions of Google Maps, though it may work slightly differently, and uses data from SkyHook Wireless to triangulate your position. Users can also now save their location for later.
Google and RIM showed off last week a Picasa application for BlackBerry devices, letting users of the device upload photos to Picasa from their smart phones. Photos can be tagged, geotagged, captioned, assigned to an album and resized, all before they are uploaded to a Picasa Web Albums account. The application was announced at CES and will be available from the BlackBerry Owners Lounge soon.
Yahoo has announced at CES that its Yahoo Go platform will now allow independent software developers to design their own applications to run inside the platform. A software development kit is expected to be released within the next few weeks, and eBay, MySpace and MTV have already created their own Yahoo Go apps.
Yahoo Go is Yahoo’s all-inclusive mobile platform, designed to run on a variety of operating systems and phone types and allow access to all of Yahoo’s services. Anyone with a compatible phone can download and install it, but the real push by Yahoo is to get device makers and mobile service providers to pre-install it. With the new open application capabilities, Yahoo doesn’t just have its own application, but a platform to extend the features of mobile devices, a change which may make it very appealing to device makers.
The appeal of Google’s Android is that it can, in theory, enable more advanced phones at minimal or no cost. If Yahoo’s free platform does the same, but runs on the operating system the phone already has, it could be very popular. The more thriving platforms, the better, so I wish them the best of luck.
The FCC has put up the first list of bidders who have been accepted to participate in next month’s wireless spectrum auction. Yes, Google is in there, as are these noteworthy companies (96 have been accepted in all) who have either been accepted or are altering their bids in order to make the final list:
Google has released for Blackberry devices Google Sync For Mobile, a program that syncs your Google Calendar with the Blackberry’s calendar application. This means you can edit your calendar on your computer or your phone, and expect the calendar to stay the same in both places. Most likely, the blackberry is only the first to get this, and Google is probably producing similar software for other device platforms.
Google Maps’ excellent new My Location feature, which checks cell phone towers to determine your location without need for a GPS, should be coming soon to Palm phones. Palm says their phones have a private API for checking cell tower IDs, and that they will be including a means to access it in newer Palm phones. The Centro should get support for it in the future, and new phones will ship with it, which will enable My Location on those phones, whenever it happens.
Google has released the Google Mobile Updater for the Blackberry, a small bit of software that keeps an eye on Google applications and helps you install updates to them as necessary. Right now it works with the only real Google applications for the Blackberry, Gmail and Maps, as well as giving you the ability to add icons for Search, News, Picasa and Reader to the app launcher, but over time it would become ground central for Google’s expansion into the mobile space.
Presumably, Google is building this program for all platforms (Windows Mobile, Palm, Java) and just got the Blackberry version out first. With an updater on every device, Google has the means to promote new products to existing users and grow market share very quickly, and they know it. Don’t be surprised to see this become a cornerstone of Google’s mobile strategy.
A seperate question: Do you think Google should build an Android application runtime for other mobile platforms? Is it advantageous to Google to enable Android apps to run on Windows Mobile, or Java, or Palm, or should they lock Android down to Android phones?
Google confirmed over the weekend its plans to participate in the FCC’s auction for the 700 megahertz wireless specturm being vacated by analog TV. Google says that regardless of if it wins, consumers will win because it convinced the FCC to allocate a slice of the spectrum for open devices and open applications.
Google has put together a neat timeline explaining the auction process, starting with this past Monday’s submission deadline (and the beginning of the anti-collusion rules which prevent anyone involved, including Google, from discussing the auction):
December 3: By Monday, would-be applicants must file their applications to participate in the auction (FCC Form 175), which remain confidential until the FCC makes them available.
Mid-December: Once all the applications have been fully reviewed, the FCC will release a public list of eligible bidders in the auction. Each bidder must then make a monetary deposit no later than December 28, depending on which licenses they plan to bid on. The more spectrum blocks an applicant is deemed eligible to bid on, the greater the amount they must deposit.
January 24, 2008: The auction begins, with each bidder using an electronic bidding process. Since this auction is anonymous (a rule that we think makes the auction more competitive and therefore better for consumers), the FCC will not publicly identify which parties have made which bid until after the auction is over.
Bidding rounds: The auction bidding occurs in stages established by the FCC, with the likely number of rounds per day increasing as bidding activity decreases. The FCC announces results at the end of each round, including the highest bid at that point, the minimum acceptable bid for the following round, and the amounts of all bids placed during the round. The FCC does not disclose bidders’ names, and bidders are not allowed to disclose publicly whether they are still in the running or not.
Auction end: The auction will end when there are no new bids and all the spectrum blocks have been sold (many experts believe this auction could last until March 2008). If the reserve price of any spectrum block is not met, the FCC will conduct a re-auction of that block. Following the end of the auction, the FCC announces which bidders have secured licenses to which pieces of spectrum and requires winning bidders to submit the balance of the payments for the licenses.
Brian White speculates that Google could team up with Apple to combine their bids for the spectrum. Google could use the spectrum for its mobile aspirations, and Apple could use it for VoIP in order to escape the need to partner with AT&T on the iPhone.
Verizon has done a surprising about-face, joining up with Google instead of becoming their biggest enemy, at least when it comes to Google’s Android mobile phone operating system. Verizon says it is joining up in order to reduce customer service costs, as in an open architecture, it would only be responsible for making sure the phones can make calls, and not tech support for any other aspect of the handset or software.
When Verizon Wireless was founded in 2000, it ran 27 call centers to provide customer service. The company cut back to as few as 17 centers at one point, but the count is now back to 25, each with about a thousand employees. The company’s 2,300 stores, staffed by 20,000 employees, are also costly. While workers in those stores used to spend nearly the entire day signing up new customers, now only a tenth of their time is consumed by new subscribers. Instead, the bulk of their energy goes to helping current subscribers with questions and problems. McAdam & Co. decided the business model was not sustainable. “If we get to 150 million customers, boy, that’s a lot of overhead,” says McAdam.
In an open-access model, though, Verizon Wireless won’t offer the same level of customer service as it does for the roughly 50 phone models featured in its handset lineup. Though the company will insist on testing all phones developed to run on its network in the open-access program, Verizon plans only to ensure the wireless connection is working for customers who buy those devices. “They have to talk to their handset provider or their application provider if they have particular issues,” McAdam says.
If that’s Verizon’s only motivation, it’s a smart one. Reducing customer support costs and handset subsidies ultimately is great for Verizon and for the consumer, turning the industry on its head and reducing the “free phone, two year contract” mentality that is ruing the wireless industry. Verizon has been making some good moves towards openness lately, ones that may mean the company is finally wising up.
On the other hand, those of us who have followed and dealt with Verizon over the years know that, at its core, Verizon is definitely one of those “evil” companies with little regard for anything except revenue growth. Most likely Verizon isn’t trying to be the good guy, it’s trying to go with the “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, then use your insider knowledge to destroy them”.
If Google and Android winds up with an edge, Verizon can combat it, exploit it, or as a provider for it, control the spin of a competitor (for example, painting Android phones as low end and its own phones as high end). Google has to sit back and be all buddy/buddy with Verizon, and Verizon can stab Google in the back while still selling Google’s devices.
Is Verizon an undeniably evil company? Can this leopard change its red-and-black spots? No matter what, Google gets a very important network (with excellent call quality in many areas) for its platform, even if it has to fight off that network. The way to look at it? Everybody wins, and everybody’s keeping their enemies closer.
