Earlier this year, we introduced interactive weather information in mobile search results and now this feature is available in 33 more languages. Now when you search for ‘météo’, ‘tempo’, ‘날씨’, or ‘weather’ in your language, you’ll see the current temperature, humidity level and wind speed for your location. You’ll also get an overall forecast and the weather outlook for the next few days. To see weather conditions at various times throughout the day, move the slider across the next 12 hrs; that way you’ll know if you’ll need a light jacket in the afternoon or perhaps an umbrella in the evening.
Give it a try by searching Google for ‘weather’ in your language on your Android or iOS mobile device.
Recently, we’ve been hard at work improving Android Market to give you new ways to find great applications and games, purchase books, and rent movies. Today, we’re releasing a new version of Android Market which makes all of these available on phones (Android 2.2 and higher).
In the U.S., you’ll be able to rent thousands of movies, starting at $1.99, right from Android Market on your phone. With the Videos app, available in Android Market, there’s no more waiting for downloads, syncing, or worrying about storage space. Simply sign into Android Market with your Google account, and you can rent movies from anywhere – the web, or your Android phone or tablet – and start watching instantly. You can also download movies to your device so they’re available for viewing when you don’t have an internet connection.
Also in the U.S., you can now purchase books from Android Market on your phone. Like movie rentals, books are linked to your Google account, so they’re instantly available across all of your devices – computer, phone, or tablet – without the need for wires or downloads.
You’ll be delighted to find we’ve overhauled Android Market to make it faster, easier, and more fun to discover great apps, movies, and books. We’ve created more space to feature some of the most interesting content of the week on the home page. We’ve added more top charts, with newer, more relevant items, and we’ve made it easy to swipe through these charts as you browse the store. We’ve also introduced new collections of great content, like staff picks and Editors’ Choice apps.
The new Android Market will be rolling out in the coming weeks to Android 2.2 and higher phones around the world. You don’t need to do anything - the update is automatic on supported phones. If you’re in the U.S., you’ll also be able to download the Videos app, rent movies, and buy books once you receive the new Android Market.
Your phone is about to get a lot more interesting! Enjoy the new Android Market.
Today we’re announcing a new set of features in Google Shopper for Android to make it even easier to research products and find great value deals when you’re on-the-go.
First, we’ve moved features around a bit to help you perform common tasks more quickly. For example, the ‘Starred’ and ‘History’ buttons are now at the top of the page. We’ve also added new tabs to the bottom of the screen for fast navigation to Google Shopper’s newest features.
With Google Shopper, you can now find, save and redeem offers at nearby businesses through three tabs:
Today’s Offer: part of the Google Offers beta program, this tab displays a single offer for discounted goods or services in your area. Today's Offer is currently available in Portland, Oregon, the San Francisco Bay Area and New York, with other cities to follow.
Nearby Offers: when you click this tab, you'll see offers in the 'Eat' and 'Play' categories which nearby businesses have submitted through Google Places.
My Offers: for those of us who occasionally misplace coupons or gloss over expiration dates, Google Shopper makes it easy to stay organized. When you come across an offer you like you can save it for later. Your saved and purchased offers appear on this tab and you can see which offers are close to expiring. To take advantage of an offer, just navigate to ‘My Offers,’ select the one you’d like, and click ‘Redeem’. In the future you’ll also be able to access and redeem your saved offers using Google Wallet.
Tap on Today’s Offer, Nearby Offers or My Offers to see great deals.
Visit Android Market to download Google Shopper 2.0, currently available for Android 2.1 and higher devices in the US and UK. If you already have the app installed you’ll automatically receive a notification to update it.
Posted by Richard Hung, Product Manager, Google Shopper team
Today we’ve updated the Google search experience for BlackBerry 6.0 WebKit enabled devices. We’ve added a number of enhanced search features integrated throughout the homepage and search result pages, making searching faster and easier on www.google.com, especially on touch-enabled Blackberry devices.
Left: Improved homepage with autocomplete and search history as you type.
Right: See more information with search options and enhanced results.
Enter searches faster: Save time by using autocomplete and search history queries that appear beneath the search box as you type.
Web search: Find what you're searching for fast. Comprehensive results pages let you see relevant websites, images, videos, news, real-time results and more. Simply click on the arrow button ‘>>’ to the left of the top search box for more refinement options.
Image search: Swipe through image results quickly and easily on touch enabled devices. Start by selecting ‘Images’ at the top of www.google.com, then enter a search. From there, click on any image to view a larger size.
Local search: Find restaurants, shops and other popular business categories with a single tap. Start by selecting ‘Places’ at the top of www.google.com, then click on an icon from the Places homepage.
These features and more are available on most RIM OS 6.0+ devices with WebKit browsers like the BlackBerry Torch and BlackBerry Bold 9780, and can be accessed in 20 languages across 70 countries.
To try out the new features, go to www.google.com in your mobile browser. We recommend that you bookmark Google Search to your phone’s home screen, so that Google search is just one click away.
Increasingly, people are using mobile phones to access information -- from email to web browsing to editing documents. Part of getting work done on the go is being able to easily access, edit and share content, which is why we’re happy to announce the new Google Docs app for Android.
With this new app it’s easy to filter and search for your content across any Google account, then jump straight into editing docs using the online mobile editors. The app also allows you to easily share items with contacts on your phone, right from within the app.
The Docs app also allows you to upload content from your phone and open documents directly from Gmail. You can also add a widget to your home screen for easy access to three core tasks: jumping to your starred documents, taking a photo to upload, or creating a new document with one tap.
And my favorite feature: Using the app and your phone’s camera, you can turn photos with text into editable Google documents with the power of optical character recognition (OCR). Just create a new ‘Document from Photo' or select the camera icon from the widget, and your converted document will appear in your documents list shortly after you snap the picture. You can also convert photos already stored on your phone by sharing them with the Google Docs app. OCR does a pretty good job capturing unformatted text in English but won't recognize handwriting or some fonts - stay tuned, it will get better over time!
The Google Docs app is currently available in English and works on Android 2.1+ phones. Try it out by scanning the QR code below or by visiting Android Market.
Let us know what you think of the new Google Docs Android app in our forum.
Today we launched an update to Google Translate for Android that allows you to listen to translations in several more languages.
We’ve dramatically improved the quality of our spoken translations in over 15 languages, including Russian, Chinese and Portuguese, and added the ability to listen to three new languages: Japanese, Arabic and Korean. Text-to-speech is one of the most popular features of this mobile interface. Whether you’re learning how to say a foreign phrase, or trying to share information with someone in their language, simply tap the Speaker icon after doing a translation and you’ll hear the difference.
With today’s launch, Google Translate for Android supports translation between 58 languages and can speak translations in 24 languages. The application works on phones and tablets running Android 2.1 and above. To download Google Translate for Android, scan the QR code below, or visit us on the Android Market.
While the Google News team has been hard at work redesigning our service for smartphones, we’ve also been thinking about our milllions of users around the world who access the web not from a smartphone, but from a feature phone, using Opera Mini as their browser.
So we have rolled out a redesigned Google News for Opera Mini in all 29 languages and 70 editions of Google News. This includes an enhanced homepage featuring richer snippets, thumbnail images, links to videos and section content without explicit navigation, a convenient search bar, comfortably spaced links and the ability to access your desktop personalization on your phone.
We hope that this will improve the news browsing experience for Opera Mini users around the world, including millions of people using a feature phone as the primary point of access for the web. See it here in the Indian Hindi and Nigerian English versions.
So, pick up your feature phone and point your Opera Mini browser to http://news.google.com to catch up on news anytime and anywhere. For more information or to share your feedback with us, please visit our Help Center.
Posted by Arun Prasath, Tech Lead and Dimitris Meretakis, Product Manager
Recently, we introduced Nexus S from Google, the first phone to run Android 2.3, Gingerbread. In addition to the UMTS-capable Nexus S, today we’re introducing Nexus S 4G from Google, available for Sprint. Nexus S 4G is part of the Nexus line of devices which provide a pure Google experience and run the latest and greatest Android releases and Google mobile apps.
We co-developed Nexus S 4G with Samsung to tightly integrate hardware and software and highlight the advancements of Gingerbread. Nexus S 4G takes advantage of Sprint’s high-speed 4G data network. It features a 4” Contour Display designed to fit comfortably in the palm of your hand and along the side of your face. It also features a 1GHz Hummingbird processor, front and rear facing cameras, 16GB of internal memory, and NFC (near field communication) hardware that lets you read information from everyday objects that have NFC tags.
In addition, today we’re excited to announce that Sprint customers will soon be able to take advantage of the full set of Google Voice features without changing or porting their number.
You can find more Nexus S information and videos at google.com/nexus or follow @googlenexus on Twitter for the latest updates. Nexus S 4G can be purchased this spring online and in-store from Sprint retailers and Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile stores in the U.S.
Earlier this month, we announced the first version of the Blogger app for Android on the Blogger Buzz blog. Today, we’d like to share some tips on how you can use the Blogger app to quickly publish posts when you’re on the go.
1. Attach photos as you compose
Take photos using your phone’s camera and instantly add them to your post while you draft. You can also insert photos from your phone’s gallery, all within the Blogger app.
2. Include your current location With your phone’s GPS, you can let your readers know where you’re blogging from by selecting your current location, no additional typing needed.
3. Share to Blogger Share videos, products, photos, links and other interesting things you would like to include in your blog via the share button that’s available in many apps, including Google Maps for mobile, YouTube, and your web browser. After you share an item to your Blogger, it will be inserted into new post that’s automatically created for you so that start can composing right away.
4. Switch across multiple Blogger accounts If you’re an author of more than one blog, you can easily switch between your different accounts by tapping on the orange arrow next to the title of your blog. That way, you can publish articles for each of your blogs to keep your all of your readers up to date.
5. Keep track of published posts and saved drafts See what you’ve composed in an easy to read list by tapping the list icon located on the top right-hand corner.
We hope that you enjoyed these blogging tips. If you haven’t done so already, you can download the free Blogger app for Android 2.1+ devices from Android Market or scan the QR code below. As always, we would love to hear what you think so please feel free to share your thoughts with us through our feedback form.
Today we’re excited to announce some updates to the official Google Reader app for Android. Over the last couple of months, we’ve added some of your most-requested features:
Unread count widget - choose any feed, label, person, or “all items” and get the unread count on your home screen. Clicking on the widget takes you to straight to that stream.
News ticker widget - if you prefer a bit more information, you can add a larger size widget that cycles through items on any stream you want in Reader. Clicking any headline will take you to the article, while clicking the folder will take you to that stream.
Mark previous as read - if you’ve used the mobile version of Reader before and missed this feature, it’s now back! As you scroll down your reading list, hit “Mark previous as read” at any time to only mark things above the screen as read.
In addition to these new features, we now have an official Russian translation as well.
We hope you enjoy the update - give it a try! You can download the app in all countries from Android Market. The Google Reader app is available for devices running Android 1.6 or higher, with widget functionality available for devices on Android 2.2+.
Over the past two years, developers around the world have helped make Android Market the go-to place for more than 100,000 apps, games and widgets. Previously, you could only access Android Market directly from your device, but today, we are introducing the Android Market website that lets you browse and search for great apps right from your web browser.
The website makes it easy to discover great new apps with a bigger, brighter interface. You can also send apps directly to your Android device with just a few clicks—no wires needed. We’ve built in new social features, too. You can share apps with your friends through Twitter. And you can read and post app reviews directly to Android Market from the web or from your device.
And what about all those apps you’ve already purchased and downloaded? Sign in to the website with your Google account and click “My Market Account” to see all the apps you’ve purchased or downloaded. It makes managing all your apps quite easy.
The Android Market website was officially unveiled today during an event at Google headquarters where we showcased Honeycomb (Android 3.0), our latest Android release built from the ground up for tablets. Honeycomb has a completely redesigned user interface, with more interactive notifications and widgets, improved multi-tasking, and the latest and greatest Google Mobile services optimized for tablets. We also showed off pre-release applications optimized for Honeycomb, from over 17 developers including:
AccuWeather
CNN
Disney Mobile
The Economist
Fuze box
Glu Mobile
Google Body
Grocery iQ
Intuit
Ngmoco
Pulse News
Quickoffice
Time Magazine
TouchType
Trendy Entertainment
War Drum Studios
Weatherbug
Zynga
Stay tuned for more at Mobile World Congress (February 14) in Barcelona where you'll see more than 50 developers demoing their latest phone and tablet apps at the Android booth in Hall 8.
Posted by Eric Chu, Mobile Platforms Program Manager
Update (5:20PM): Full video from the event earlier is now available. Check it out!
As we announced last November, millions of people have downloaded Google Shopper for Android to help them shop on the go. Today, we’re excited to let you know that Google Shopper, our popular Android shopping application, is now available for iPhone as a download in the App Store. Google Shopper turns your iPhone into a shopping assistant, so you can:
Learn more about products and read relevant user reviews
Compare prices at online and local stores
Save and share products for later consideration
Let’s say you’re planning a special meal for Valentine’s Day - but you need a cast-iron skillet to get the recipe just right. With Shopper, finding one is easy enough: just type in “cast iron skillet” or say it using Voice Search. Then, from the results, you can choose a specific product that appeals to you. Alternatively, if you were in the store and wanted to see product reviews, you could also scan the barcode of a particular product.
Once you’ve selected a product result, you can compare prices across web retailers, and even find where you can purchase the item nearby, which is especially useful for those of us who are last-minute shoppers. For some retailers, we also provide inventory information so you can see if a particular store branch has the item in stock, has limited availability, or if the item is out of stock and you should head to a different store.
If you’re not sure about making a purchase or are building out a gift list, you can “star” products for future consideration. You can also share items with friends across your social network to let them know about products you love or great deals you've found.
You can download Google Shopper for free in the App Store. Shopper is available for iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 with iOS 4.0+ in English only for the United States and the UK.
We hope you enjoy shopping with Google Shopper!
Posted by Richard Hung, Senior Product Manager, Google Shopper
On April 7th, we announced a new version of Gmail for mobile for iPhone and Android-powered devices. Among the improvements was a complete redesign of the web application's underlying code which allows us to more rapidly develop and release new features that users have been asking for, as explained in our first post. We'd like to introduce The Iterative Webapp, a series where we will continue to release features for Gmail for mobile. Today: A new look for our buttons and toolbars.
Some of you noticed and asked us about recent changes we made to Gmail for mobile and a few of our other mobile web apps. If you use the web browser to access Gmail, Latitude, Calendar, or Tasks on your Android-powered device or iPhone, you'll see that we freshened up the look of the buttons and toolbars.
We never want the buttons and toolbars of Google apps to compete with your content; rather, they should complement them. So the headers and buttons are now darker, to better show the content of your emails and calendar entries.
We also made the all the buttons a bit larger, for easier button-tapping.
To try these apps yourself, point your mobile browser to Gmail (gmail.com), Calendar (google.com/calendar), Latitude (google.com/latitude), Tasks (gmail.com/tasks), or just go to google.com from you phone and find all these web apps under the 'more' link.
Is this an improvement? Let us know what you think.
by Charles Warren, User Experience Designer, Google Mobile
Posted by Lawrence Chang, Product Marketing Manager, Google mobile team
If you own an iPhone or a Helio Ocean, chances are you've already been enjoying some of YouTube's tens of millions of videos through custom applications developed for your device. On the other hand, if you have a phone that supports streaming video and you've been visiting m.youtube.com through your mobile browser, you've only been able to view a smaller subset of YouTube for Mobile videos.
Starting today, m.youtube.com offers the full assortment of the tens of millions of videos that YouTube fans around the world have come to know and love. What's more, you can now log in to your YouTube account through your mobile phone browser to rate, share, and comment on videos, view your favorites, and even upload new videos.
Also launching today is a beta version of a YouTube for mobile Java application for a select number of mobile devices, including the Sony Ericsson K800 and W880 and the Nokia E65, N95, N73, 6110 Navigator, and 6120 Classic. Through this downloadable application (currently available in U.S. and U.K. English), you can access the entire YouTube for Mobile catalog. The application includes a super slick interface (with a carousel view of video tiles), as well as full community and uploading features.
Watch the video below to see product managers Dwipal Desai and Andreas Tuerk demo today's YouTube for Mobile releases. As always, let us know what you think by leaving comments below. And, feel free to leave these guys video comments as well!
