Now that Apple has already released their new Retina Display MacBooks, the biggest question remains if the non-retina apps will look as good on the laptops. Google has already started working on a Chrome browser for Retina MacBooks, and it looks pretty nice. In a blog post the team showed off the image above with a comparison on what the high res edition will look like compared to its current counterpart based on “early results.” Users on the Canary channel should see the upgrades first, with more rolling out over the next few weeks and eventually reaching all as they go along.
Google maps are set to add a new dimension! The announcement was made by Google from their San Francisco office where a press conference was held, keeping in mind Apple’s press event, the WWDC, which is set to take place next week. It is deploying a fleet of small, camera-equipped airplanes, via contractors, above several cities, the Internet search company’s latest step in its ambitious and sometimes controversial plan to create a digital map of the world. The images would be recorded at a 45-degree angle and would be integrated with Google Earth.
[quote]We’re trying to create the illusion that you’re just flying over the city, almost as if you were in your own personal helicopter, said Peter Birch, a product manager for Google Earth. [/quote]
The imagery would be done at a 45-degree angle.
Brian McClendon, Google’s head of engineering for its maps product, said that privacy issues were the same as that accompany aerial imagery. Privacy has been an issue for various countries, especially when Google’s Street View cars had been inadvertently collecting emails, passwords and other personal data from people’s home wireless networks.
A demo of a San Francisco map in 3d was showcased and it was nothing short of spectacular.
It also announced that Google maps for Android would soon get an offline caching feature, allowing users to download a part of a map on their devices and use them later.
Google doesn’t want to say when these features will become available, making it pretty obvious that today’s announcement is meant to preempt Apple’s rumored announcements next week.
For all those android users using a CyanogenMod 9 or AOKP ROM (Oh yes, we know), who want their phones to run HTC’s beautiful Sense 4.0 UI, here comes the app that you’d been waiting for! This theme from BlackDub imitates the new streamlined and functional interface to perfection. A must have for spicing up your phone.
The HTC Sense UI 4.0
JetAudio Basic (Free)
This is an app worthy of replacing the default music player on your Android Smartphones.
It comes with 32 equalizer presets that will provide a wide array of listening experience. For those who would like to customize their own sound experience, it also allows 10 bands graphic equalizer and other advanced playback functions including playback speed control, crossfading, AGC and much more. It’s available for free on the Play Store.
There are multiple Presets and equalizer options.
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[tab title=”iOS”]
SkyDrive (Free)
It comes as a shock, but Microsoft online storage service has been available for iOS users. The latest release adds a couple of new features such as support for Retina displays on the new share of apple devices. Features such as the option to upload multiple pictures and videos, sharing of these files via e-mail or web link help it to be the app of the week. The SkyDrive app also lets the user open files uploaded to SkyDrive using other iOS apps. So, if you fancy additional-based cloud storage, head to the iTunes store for the latest version.
Music Unlimited (Free Trial + subscription)
Yet another music streaming service, but this time, from Sony. It’s biggest advantage is that it is offered across a ton of Sony hardware-Android, PlayStation 3, PS Vita, and Sony TVs and Blu-ray players. It also boasts music from all the major labels, not just Sony’s own music division. If you’re interested, you can get a free 30-day trial.
The interface is smooth and flowing.
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WizTiles
This app makes it into the list because it brings the much needed option of customizing your home screen. You can choose from images and other themes to make your home screen more lively. It is available for download in the Windows Market Place.
When Google completed a $151 million acquisition ofrestaurant rating firm Zagat in September it was seen as an attempt to compete with Yelp’s popular online rating service and it was only a matter of time before they integrated the service into their products. On Wednesday, Google Maps for Android was updated to prominently feature Zagat-based reviews on many restaurants around the world. The changes announced on Wednesday, a video on youtube by googlemaps, eliminates an annual $25 subscription fee that Zagat had been charging for online access to its surveys of diners. Those diners have rated about 35,000 restaurants in more than 100 cities around the world.
This integration is part of a larger rollout called Google+ Local, on which you can get personalized recommendations from people in your Google+ Circles. According to Google’s Lat-Long Blog,[quote] Each place you see in Google+ Local will now be scored using Zagat’s 30 point scale, which tells you all about the various aspects of a place so you can make the best decisions. For example, a restaurant that has great food but not great decor might be 4 stars, but with Zagat you’d see a 26 in Food and an 8 in Decor, and know that it might not be the best place for date night.[/quote]
Zagat uses a 30 point rating system which includes everything, from food to the ambiance.
Google’s check-in services have never really taken off, so Local’s renewed focus on personalized recommendations goes a long way to making Places relevant again.
The update for Google maps was made available in the play store on Wednesday.
Google has an amazing new doodle to mark the 78th birthday of Robert Moog,the inventor of the electronic synthesizer. The reason why techno is techno and house music now exists can be all thanks to this dear invention which is todays Google Doodle.
The Google doodle is intrinsically designed, with a synthesizer that has knobs for oscillators, mixers, filter and envelope and allows the user to make virtual music. It also encompasses you the minute you look at it , as we spent the most of our morning playing with it.
Check out our composition (total nonsense) : http://g.co/doodle/ujb6xa
Google Chrome has now become the world’s most popular internet browser as it leaves the long running champion the “Internet Explorer” in its dust. According to new numbers from StatCounter, last week Google’s Web browser garnered a 32.76% share, ahead of Microsoft’s 31.94% and Mozilla Firefox’s 25.47% share. At the start of this week, however, Chrome’s share began to slide, falling to 31.88%, just ahead of Internet Explorer’s 31.47% share.
Do you use Google Maps to navigate to your destinations on a daily basis ? Google just made it a tad bit easy for you to go about your daily business, by adding the option of permanently tagging important places by their familiar names.An update to the web version of Maps now lets you define specific home and work locations that will stay attached to your Google account, and its all computer independent and all you need is a login into your Google Account.
Looks like Google is planning to release a series of Nexus devices this year, including some tablets, on Google Android 5.0. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google is planning to partner with a variety of OEMs (in order to have up to five Pure Google Nexus devices available at once. All of these devices will ship with Android 5.0 Jelly bean
This move is likely to be announced at the next Google I/O conference.
After many a rumors Google has now finally launched Google Drive cloud service. Still in Beta stage with limited access to users the cloud service offers up quite a unique mix to fend off the competition. Google Docs is built right into Google Drive, so you can work with others in real time on documents, spreadsheets and presentations. You can install Drive on your Mac or PC and can download the Drive app to your Android phone or tablet (iOS coming soon). Search by keyword and filter by file type, owner and more. Drive can even recognize text in scanned documents using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology.
When you sign up You can get started with 5GB of storage for free, an choose to upgrade to 25GB for $2.49/month, 100GB for $4.99/month or even 1TB for $49.99/month. When you upgrade to a paid account, your Gmail account storage will also expand to 25GB.
You can attach photos from Drive to posts in Google+, and soon you’ll be able to attach stuff from Drive directly to emails in Gmail. Drive is also an open platform, and Google is working with many third-party developers so you can do things like send faxes, edit videos andcreate website mockups directly from Drive.
Google has also launched the Drive SDK to enable developers to work closely with Google on taking this forward.
Google’s Dropbox competitor, Google Drive has been confirmed thanks to a leaked image. Google will give away 5GB of free storage to Google Drive users and will have dedicated apps for mostly all platforms. The service should go live next week, around Wednesday or Thursday if rumors are correct.
In an interview with the Guardian, Google’s Sergey Brin said he was worried about the state of the internet and that Google could not have flourished in an online ecosystem like today’s.
The threat to the freedom of the internet comes, he claims, from a combination of governments increasingly trying to control access and communication by their citizens, the entertainment industry’s attempts to crack down on piracy, and the rise of “restrictive” walled gardens such as Facebook and Apple, which tightly control what software can be released on their platforms.
He said he was most concerned by the efforts of countries such as China, Saudi Arabia and Iran to censor and restrict use of the internet, but warned that the rise of Facebook and Apple, which have their own proprietary platforms and control access to their users, risked stifling innovation and balkanising the web.
“There’s a lot to be lost,” he said. “For example, all the information in apps – that data is not crawlable by web crawlers. You can’t search it.”
Were you wondering if the Google Glass prototype was actually real or just a pro type in the testing? Well, here is the answer, apparently Google is really serious about the project. How serious you ask? Google C0-Founder Sergey Bring was spotted wearing a prototype at a recent charity event for the Foundation Fighting Blindness. Robert Scoble posted the images on his Google+ account for the world to see in amazement. According to the comments in his post other people, including Google exec Vic Gundotra also have the prototype glasses.
Most of the world is speculating that the internet search giant will enter the Tablet market this year with its own brand of Tablets, despite most tablets running their proprietary Android OS. It is believed that the above is an image of the upcoming Google Nexus Tablet, which will be a a 7 inch tablet holding the Google logo. Look closely and you will see a full sized SD slot, a microUSB connector and a micro HDMI port.
However this appears to be an old image, or an image of some other product all together, because its still carrying the Google Market icons vs the already available upgraded Google Play store.
Google is expected to launch their new tablet at the annual I/O conference on 27th June 2012. Another tablet that could enter the budget segment making it difficult for existing survivors.
Google Wants to give you the full Maps experience on the most popular computer system ever made, the Gameboy. Google has deployed thousands of servers to over come the limitations offered by the NES systems. A dial up cartridge allows you to get real time results from said servers.
Google Chrome browser has just been updated to version 18, to be specific 18.0.1025.142 on a Mac. The new version brings GPU-accelerated Canvas 2D along with software WebGL to allow older computers to access simple 3D web content. If you are on auto update, you will find that your Browsers have auto-magically been upgraded to the new version. FOr those who are still not rocking the browser can download it below.
