The google reader folks have published Google Reader Play, a new thought on the reader. Not for me personally, but pretty cool idea.
Google has enhanced their Street view to allow you to Edit places using Street View images, for example if an address doesn't show exactly where the location is supposed to be. Sadly the 'edit' for me is greyed out, but looking forward to being able to tweak google maps a bit. Good on google for crowd-sourcing.
Google maps just rolled out a way to Navigate your way through user photos in Street View. It's similar in a way to the Bing feature where you can view PhotoSynths, but done in (IMHO) a way more simple and Google-y way. I encourage you to watch the video, and then go play around. I love the "click and move the mouse to zoom" feature that blends from one image to another.
Not much more to say than that. Now wonder when Google will send me a Nexus one to evaluate and review it on... :)
Google Maps now has a 'labs' link at the top that gives you a peek into some of the next gen features that may or may not be making an appearance. Nothing mind blowing, but nice little incremental features you can turn on and off.
Lifehacker has Google Buzz Explained in a great screenshot tour.
My review so far (mobile client only) is it's kinda wave-like, very pretty, but a bit clunky feeling (response time) and missing some key features from the video (ie: how do I take a picture and share it from my phone?).
The live stream from the Google Event is now live. A bit stuttery for me, but live. I'll update as product / information is released. Sounds like they have new product(s) to announce. The rumors are something social-network oriented (facebook killer?).
Unfortunately my network connection here sucks so the stream is really choppy for me, but I just heard them talk about Gmail "Buzz", a new way to communicate inside GMail.
Another product demo up now, something to do with location. Hit the read more for the (updating) details.
Location aware updates for google maps and the google mobile experience. Related to Buzz as well.
On a side note, isn't there already a "buzz" webapp from Yahoo or something like that? I'm sure I've seen a "buzz up" button along with the standard digg/reddit ones.
They are launching it today, but it sounds like it's not done or completely baked.
Seems they are on to the Q&A now, and my net connection is complete crap so I'll stop updating now, I'm sure there'll be all sorts of Buzz (sorry) about this on the blogs soon enough :)
Scoble has a good post on The social failings of Google. Rumors are that they'll release something new and amazing in the "social space" tomorrow (Tuesday). Guess we'll see what they have up their sleeves, and if whatever it is (gmail + wave + google reader?) is going to threaten the Facebook / MySpace world.
The elves at google have been busily modelling the Olympic venues in Vancouver for the 2010 Olympics. Less than a month to go now (before the city explodes in people and I'm forced to hide in my basement that is)!
There is another nice video review of the Nexus One Phone from Uncrate.com. Thanks for the link Darren!
Google Earth has a Haiti imagery layer now available. This is imagery from the Google GeoEye satellite and is higher quality than the current data.
Well, the Google Phone has been bought, ripped apart, and the teardown posted. Thanks iFixIt.
The latlong blog tells us that there are now 4 more cities using the Google street view imagery on the 3D buildings in Google Earth.
Official Google Mobile Blog talks about their process to make the GMail mobile web app faster, stronger, more feature rich (and less calories).
Aryk pointed me to a deal that Gizmodo blogged, where you Buy 200GB of Google Storage, Get a Free Eye-Fi Card. The eye-fi geo card details are here.
This pains me a bit. On one hand, I don't need extra storage from Google. On the other hand, 200G of online storage would be kinda nice. On one hand I know this deal is basically hoping that you forget to cancel the 200G of space and keep on paying the $50/year, but hey, you get a $60 wireless eye-fi card for $50, plus online backup.
Some more info here as well, including some of the fine print. One of the items indicates ("...includes one free year of Web Share and Geotagging ($24.98 value)") that the Geotagging is actually a service, not built into the card.
Looks like google's integration / partnership with Twitter and friends has put something pretty interesting out there. Check out the video of Relevance meets the real-time web over on the Google blog. Basically results will have "real time" results brought in with AJAX magic from Twitter, Identica, Facebook, etc in a cool scrolling box. The features aren't rolled out yet, but you can check it out on the Trends page under hot topics. IE: check out this search for joojoo.
If you've got a bunch of money, time, and hardware, then you too could set up some thing like the eight screen Google Earth setup that googlers (googlies?) setup. They call it "Liquid Galaxy", I just call it awesome.
In their evil attempts to take over the internet, Google just announced Google Public DNS, a free service that aims to give speed, security and validity for users who choose to use their DNS service. I'm guessing that this will do similar "searchy" things on host not found errors, similar to the OpenDNS service. John Gruber (Daring Fireball) has a few quick thoughts on this as well.
So my question is "is this a bad thing?" Google has services that are part of pretty much every aspect of our online lives, should we decide to use them. RSS, phone, email, contacts, documents, etc. Is this move an indication that they're moving into providing other sorts of connectivity solutions (ie; free bandwidth from Google as long as you use their ChromeOS on a free netbook maybe?) Or just an honest attempt to use their infrastructure to make the web faster?
As an aside, check out the book Google Planet (I got it from the Audible free audio book giveaway at thanksgiving). Great look at how Google does it's things and why, and that (at least as far as I've gotten) most of their motivations are fairly pure and non-evil.
Update: I just did a 2 minute test and there's no domain wild-carding (ie: giving you back a page of ads or suggestions when you go to a non-existant domain) and the service seems speedy enough. Seems all very benign.
Only a truly evil person would set CSS3 Sideways Google as your friend's homepage. Really, don't do it. No matter how fun it looks.
I hear through the grapevine (read: RSS reader) that Google is Holding Chrome OS Event Thursday. Complete Overview And Launch Plans To Be Revealed. Guess we'll get to see what's going on there finally. I'm hoping it's not just a skinned linux running Chrome browser. Should be interesting though.
The Google Blog noted today their release of a Dashboard! From their entry:
In an effort to provide you with greater transparency and control over their own data, we've built the Google Dashboard. Designed to be simple and useful, the Dashboard summarizes data for each product that you use (when signed in to your account) and provides you direct links to control your personal settings.
Seems to work nicely, and nice to have the control over what they have on you. Glad they are answering some of the privacy concerns that have been raised lately of "google knows too much about me".
In an out of the blue move, Google has made a Chrome OS Beta available to the world. There's an ISO as well as a vmdk (usable in VMware and Virtualbox players). Kinda surprisingly, the system looks a lot like a standard linux distro, with GIMP, OpenOffice, and GNOME. Guess we'll see what it looks and feels like when people (including me, 30 minutes left in the download) get their hands on it.
Update: Either a scam or bad marketing, this wasn't an official google release of any kind and the small print clearly stated that. Definitely designed to look as official as possible though. Sorry for jumping the gun there folks.
You've been able to use the unofficial chromium builds for a while now, but the official Google Chrome released for Mac word came out today.
Personally I've been using Chrome under windows for my personal browsing at work, and other than missing adblock and a couple of firefox extensions I rely on, I gotta say it's fast and slick, and would love to see some of it's features in Firefox (and some of Firefox's in Chrome).
Google Reader has gotten a facelift with a few new features and some magic sorting. The Official Blog has details of Popular items and Personalized rankings.
AppStorm has a nice intro to Google Sketchup, which is cross platform, and a quasi-3D modelling program used in Google Building Maker and can be used for generic 3D modelling projects as well.
Lifehacker has Three Google Wave Searches Worth Saving for those who have finally gotten their invites to Google Wave and are being overwhelmed with the magic-growing-inbox that it seems to have.
The google blog points that they are implementing a trail view, street view from a bike. Very cool, how long before every inch of the earth is google mapped?! Wonder what else they can do, google ocean view (divers with the google cameras) or google building view (guys walking through each hallway of every building). I see a photoshop contest in the making.
I particularily like the icon they used for their LegoLand trail view ;)
Paul Thurrott points out that Google to Reveal More Chrome OS Details Thursday Night. Interested to see what's incoming. I'm pretty impressed with Google recently, with their Building Maker (just blogged about that) and Wave (not for everyone, but very cool tech), so I can only imagine how awesome (or disappointing) the Chrome OS info will be :)
Google Building Maker has arrived, making it almost stupidly simple for people to contribute to the growing 3D buildings on Google Earth. More info on the Lat Long Blog as well, including a demo video.
BTW, they've made it fun, as I can personally say I just lost about an hour of productivity creating a couple of buildings over in the West Vancouver area. Definitely you need some SketchUp experience if you want to refine your buildings to be more than blocks or triangles (however, this is a great way to crowdsource all the square and triangular buildings that need to be created!).
Google Street View has come to Canada. Canucks can now rejoice and start looking for themselves/cool/random stuff all throughout the great white north now :)
Update: I just found myself as I drove down the road beside the google car this summer. Trippy!
Google's What is a Browser? survey taken in New York either proves they're good at cherry picking amusing results, or the majority of people out there are pretty clueless as to what the difference between a browser and a search engine is. Amusing and sad at the same time. Though the answer to "why do you use Firefox" is pretty funny :)
First of all, Scoble isn't that wrong when he says that Google Wave crashes on beach of overhype. I don't know if I'd call it so cut and dry. I've played around with it a bit today and have a few comments:
Not sure if it was just my account being at the end of the 100,000 list, or someone at Google is a UFies.org reader, but my Google Wave invite showed up this morning! More details when I have a chance to play with it a bit.
Any other UFies out there got theirs? Reply in the comments.
Ah, seems like it was from an ex-coworker of mine as his is the only name in the contact list. So thanks midbach!
Update: Sorry folks, they're all gone :(
Lifehacker has a Google Wave First Look. Sorry folks, guess the only interesting news I've found today is Wave related.
Well, this morning is the big Google Wave release of 100,000 accounts, and the internet is all a-twitter. Amidst the porn spammers and link-baiters it looks like some folks have their accounts, and if you don't have one you can buy it on eBay.
Sadly I don't have one, but would appreciate one if someone's got a spare so I can do up a review :) Any of my readers get one, or are interested in wave at all? I see it right now a bit like tablet PCs.... a super-cool technology, if you have the right application. For google wave it looks like the right application is having a bunch of people in the same group all with accounts.
Everything You Need to Know About Tomorrow's Google Wave Preview Launch, via @scobleizer.
Picasa 3.5 is out and the desktop software now brings, among other things, the same facial recognition software available in the web version. Looks very cool! I just wish some of the features were in/integrated with my current image management solution, Lightroom.
The Chrome team has set up something called the Chrome Frame, which allows other browsers to use the HTML5 engine from other browsers automagically, based on a meta HTML tag. The video: Introducing Google Chrome Frame has more details. I assume you must have to configure IE to use the plugin, and wouldn't someone geeky enough to do that just use Chrome anyway? I guess the exception would be if you're required to use it for work/site access or something, but if they're that strict, they probably restrict you adding in plugins to IE all willy-nilly and higgledy-piggledy.
Google Fast Flip is the latest from Google Labs, basically a new way to view the news, using thumbnails and a fancy AJAXy "flip" (kinda like coverflow) to view the full screen images.
The Google Reader blog has news of their latest flurry of features for feed readers. This has some neat "send to" features, and more options for marking as read. Very cool stuff, good job guys!
Some leaked photos of Facebook For Android have surfaced. The client looks not too bad, though I'm interested in a refresh of the iPhone client.
Google has closed their Recreating the Google Chrome icon videos contest and has the submissions for you to peruse.
So anyone running the developer (and possibly beta) channel of the Google Chrome browser might have seen the "themes" support in the options, and up until today, the "get themes" just went to a 404 page. Now it goes to the Google Chrome Themes Gallery which gives you a fairly nice set of themes to use.
The one fail for this is there isn't a way to "apply" a theme, you save it, and Chrome picks it up right away, but you end up with a bunch of '.crx' files sitting in your download folder.... Still, I'm sure this'll change/get better as the feature matures.