As part of a series of blog posts, Google has released more information this week about some of the goodies we can expect out of version 1.5 of the Android operating system, which has been going by the code name Cupcake, and which wireless carrier T-Mobile is expected to push out to U.S. customers at the end of next week. High on the list of upgrades is the ability to record videos and upload them to Google-owned YouTube.
Take the video. Share it through YouTube.
(Credit: Google)Based on what we can ascertain from Google's introductory video, shooting a video on the Android 1.5 platform will be nearly as straightforward as taking a photo--except that after framing the picture, you'll need to turn the recorder on and off. After taking the video, you'll be able to share it via e-mail or MMS, or as a YouTube upload. You'll have the chance to type in a title and a caption, and set the viewing access as public or private before sending your recording on its way.
For the time being, YouTube will support one login per person, and you'll need an account before you'll be able to upload video. Those wishing to manage video on a separate account will need to access YouTube from the browser of T-Mobile's G1 phone for now.
Add a title, description, and privacy settings.
(Credit: Google)We also learned more about what's in store in Android 1.5. Following the phone-to-Web upload theme, G1 owners will be able to more easily push photos from the Android device to Google's Picasa Web Albums online. In much the same way you'll upload videos to YouTube, shooting photos to Picasa will be an option you encounter after taking a photo and pressing Share.
In addition, Android's Gmail will gain some batch editing capabilities similar to what's available in Gmail from the desktop browser. Instead of managing messages one at a time on the phone, as is the current mode of operation, you'll be able to select multiple e-mail threads to archive, delete, label, and mute at once.
You can watch more in Google's Cupcake walk-though video, and lick your chops in anticipation of the greater Android computing power that's imminent for T-Mobile's U.S. customers.
Google on Thursday released an application called My Tracks that turns the T-Mobile G1 Android phone into a full-fledged GPS receiver.
The free software can record tracks showing where you've been, display them on a map, show elevation gains and losses, and share data with various online services.
As a geography buff, I have to confess that this one of the first applications that actually got me excited. I carry a Garmin standalone GPS device so I can geotag my photos and keep track of my trips, but My Tracks one-ups it in several ways.
For one thing, it's a phone and therefore much more likely to be toted at all times, not just on dedicated occasions. But more important, it's an Internet-enabled device, which means it shows my position on Google Maps--either map mode or satellite image mode, not just the feeble and expensive Garmin Maps--as long as it can find the Internet. Track data can be saved not just as a GPX file, but also uploaded and shared with Google Maps. And statistics can be uploaded into Google Docs spreadsheets or even Twittered (for example using the Twidroid application).
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A correction has been made to this story. See below for details.
As mentioned in an earlier post about the upcoming firmware update for T-Mobile's G1, the built-in Google search tool is getting voice-powered search. Like Google's rule-breaking, first-party iPhone search application, users can simply talk into the application to have their queries transcribed into text.
(Credit:
Google)
The big difference, however, is that users will need to begin a voice search by tapping the microphone icon instead of simply holding their phone up to their face.
Why is this you ask? The G1 is missing the oh-so-important proximity sensor, which on the iPhone tells the application you're holding it up to your face. Also, the app doesn't make use of the G1's accelerometer, which means it can't fake knowing you're lifting it from palm to head. In the iPhone iteration, the application uses both of these sensors in tandem to do its voice searching magic.
No doubt future Android devices that have either sensor will fall in line with the iPhone's offering, such as the long-rumored G2. Until then G1 users will need to tap first.
Correction: This blog initially misstated why the G1 app does not allow you to just hold the phone up to your face. The T-Mobile G1 does have an accelerometer, but the application does not make use of it.
Opera Mini 4.2 enables standard features absent in the beta.
(Credit: Opera Software)The final release of Opera Mini 4.2 for Google Android adds regular features of the Java browser that were disabled in its November beta version. Think more of a mechanic tightening up loose nuts and bolts, rather than operating on engine guts, and you've got the premise.
Available starting Wednesday in the Android Market, Opera Mini 4.2 for Google Android now lets you upload and download files, save pages, and zoom in and out in response to a double tap.
You'll also be able to enter URLs directly into the address bar--instead of having to go through the phone's native input system--and, as with Opera Mini on other mobile platforms, launching a video from a Web page links up to your media player. Video playback had not been supported in Opera Mini 4.2 beta.
Opera has also dispatched some bugs in this final version, including one that displayed the characters of your password when you typed it in, and another that caused upheaval when you closed the app via the Back button. Opera Mini 4.2 also boasts a speedier response to the trackball and a slightly larger font size on most pages to improve readability.
Bringing the Mini browser up to snuff does improve the surfing experience for owners and future owners of Android phones. But for Opera, getting its browser first to Google's mobile platform, and maintaining a dominant presence on all the mobile platforms, is the company's big win.
Safari's built-in search box now shows iPhone-optimized search results for Google.
(Credit: Google)After revamping the iPhone's presentation of Google search results last month, the Internet giant has spread the change more broadly on the Apple device.
Previously, the new Google search results were available only when people typed Google.com into the phone's browser, then performed the search. Now the results also appear when using Safari's built-in search box, which, given that it's one fewer slow-loading page away from results, is how I use the service.
Google announced the change on its Google Mobile blog. The new results also appear on the T-Mobile G1, which uses Google's Android operating system. In addition to being better-suited to the devices' screen size, the mobile-formatted pages load more quickly, Google said.
iPhone customers can change their default search provider to Yahoo, if desired.
(Via Search Engine Watch.)
(Credit:
Flickr)
Flickr's mobile Web site hasn't traditionally been in step with its popular Web app. A fresh lick of paint and some API work under the hood brings the two experiences much closer in line.
On Thursday, Yahoo-owned Flickr pushed out a very worthwhile upgrade to its mobile-optimized site, m.flickr.com.
Video streaming is the big draw. As on Flickr.com since last April, anyone accessing Flickr from an iPhone or iPod Touch can play videos hosted on Flickr's servers. In a few weeks, Flickr will unlock this capability for anyone using a Webkit, Opera Mobile (but not Mini), for Firefox Mobile browser.
Of course, only pro subscriber members can upload videos at this point, each capped at 90 seconds in length and treated as a "long photo" rather than as a video per se.
In addition to getting video on board, Flickr has also reorganized the mobile home screen. Its freshly buffed layout now grants quick access to the activity feed, friends' recent uploads, and to the daily crop of hand-picked photos.
You'll also now be able to do maintenance work, like add contacts, mark images as favorites, adjust privacy settings, and browse interesting photos, all basic stuff that Flickr's mobile site should have already allowed. Nevertheless, we're happy to see it now.
Flickr's new mobile site worked great during testing, though its performance is limited by the strength of your data connection and video playback may as well be useless in Edge territory. There are also a few features that Flickr is leaving to third-party developers of native apps, like a quick way to take and update photos and video (where supported) within the app interface itself.
The changes, big and small, will better serve the 50 percent more visitors browsing Flickr photos from their phones, and will go a long way to making Flickr a more unified service from any outlet. The upgrade may also give Yahoo a boost of consumer confidence in the face of its recently sagging fortunes.
With the economy in continuing decline, keeping tight control over your money is no longer just for obsessives. These financial apps for Google Android help you count every penny.
Personal Budget Droid is a simple budget- and bills-tracker that lets you create multiple monthly budgets for groceries, housing costs, and so on. You enter every budget name and transaction by hand, but the app keeps a transaction history and calculates how much you have left for each category.
The more sophisticated FireWallet works with budgets inside various accounts and protects your information behind a four-digit pin you change from the all-zero default. It's a bit trickier to navigate, but also shoehorns in more options. In addition to a more refined interface, FireWallet has graphs and charts to help visualize your spending, and a rudimentary tool to alert you of upcoming bills. Both it and Personal Budget Droid are missing templates and more powerful features to optionally suck in real-time data from your checking, savings, and stock portfolios. Time for a mobile version of Mint?
Flick to either side for a calc that rounds up; up or down gets you a breakdown of numbers to pass around.
(Credit: TouchTip)TouchTip is our current favorite tip calculator for Google Android. Flick a finger left or right to slide between a simple tip calculator that rounds up to the nearest dollar or ten dollars, and one featuring a ten-digit keypad. Both views use the bill total, tax, and number of diners to calculate your total payment. Flicking up or down produces a breakdown of what you owe that you can pass around the table to friends.
Personal Tip Jar hails from the same developer as Personal Budget Droid, and shares a few visual characteristics, including a useless "news" tab. Yet Tip Jar is a great niche nod to those whose incomes are built substantially on tips. While a fuller budgeting app could easily accommodate gains from tipping, this application provides a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly summary at a glance.
Stock apps on Android are extremely mediocre, but the simply named Stock App is better than other skeletal tickers. This one opens with Dow, Nasdaq, S&P 500, Yahoo, and Google presets. You can add your own by pressing the menu key, and can browse frequently traded stocks. Stock App displays the value and percentage change up front; double-tap an entry to see more stats. While it's functional, Android is sorely missing the completeness of a stock-tracker like Bloomberg for iPhone. Get to it, developers.
Opera Mini 4.2 beta, a test version released for Java phones just two weeks ago, on Monday became the first third-party browser available for Google Android.
Opera Mini 4.2 is the first browsing alternative for Google's Android mobile operating system.
(Credit: Opera Software)Opera Mini for Android, which was previewed in April, includes most of the familiar Mini 4.2 features: zooming, saving, bookmarking, and searching for in-line text has stayed intact, as has syncing via Opera Link and swapping skins.
We couldn't make the video playback workaround that debuted on other Java phones work in this build, though T-Mobile's USA's G1 phone does support video playback (see our review on TuneWiki.) We hear that Opera will address this issue when the mobile browser comes out of beta.
What's distinctive and commendable of the Android-optimized build: fast speeds over T-Mobile's 3G network, a very crisp display, and quality that approaches the iPhone when it comes to viewing a zoomed-out Web page, thanks to both screen size and image clarity. The G1's two menu keys also enhance the experience, making Opera Mini's controls easy to access and navigate.
Google Android was low-hanging fruit for Opera. It would have been better, of course, if the browser had been available when the G1 began selling, but of all third-party developers, Opera still managed to bring its free browser first to Android's market--and a very able version at that.
We're hoping that Opera will port its more robust Mobile version to Android next, and as always, that Opera will release a version that lets users type directly into a text field without pulling up an intermediary screen.
Quickpedia isn't the only Wikipedia-scouring app for Google Android, but it's the best we've seen so far.
The free application makes it easy to search and browse Wikipedia for articles, throwing in a few tiny twists along the way to make navigating, reading, and learning interesting tidbits a breeze.
You can see it all unfold in this First Look video.
Meebo for Google Android is not a terrible instant-messaging application. But it isn't a very good representation of what IM clients for the Android platform can do, or even a good representation of what Meebo itself can do.
In this first release, the free Meebo mobile application lets you chat with friends on the major IM networks--Yahoo, Windows Live Messenger, AOL, ICQ, Jabber, and Google Talk. It also runs in the background while you work on other applications and scrolls message notifications across the status tray. So far, so good.
However, that about plays out Meebo's feature set on Google Android--a disappointment for a product making its world debut of a native application and a disappointment for a company that has recruited 40 million unique users into its Web-messaging niche.
(Credit:
Meebo)
Is it fair for me to hold Meebo to loftier standards? Absolutely. There are certain features common to competitive chat applications on any platform. Having an IM application save your log-in information is a must, and that goes double for a chat app that otherwise asks you to sign into six services every time you talk.
Notifications, simultaneous chats, emoticon support, and options are also must-haves. Of these, Meebo for Google Android has only notifications, and they're easily missed if you glance away from the screen. Though also limited, Meebo's iPhone-optimized site saves log-ins, supports some emoticons, and makes it easy to flip back to the buddy list.
Specific to this Androidized Meebo, I'd like to pick whether I get a buzz, a ding, or a text scroll to signal an incoming message. The organization of the buddy list should also be customizable, so I don't have to wear off the pad of my thumb scrolling through online and offline buddies from each service.
Meebo's team says the Android platform isn't holding back these features. They're just not ready yet. Of course, Meebo says, emoticons and log-in recall are coming 'round the bend. The company just wanted to get the application into users' hands quickly.
Meebo should have waited until there was more to offer.
As it is now, Meebo IM serves a purpose, but it isn't the only multinetwork IM application in the Android Market. Also free is IM+ All-in-One Instant Messenger, which provides a better multinetwork chatting experience on all counts--remembered log-ins, emoticon support, and incoming IM text that appears on the chat window.
Some users have complained about getting forced out of IM+ All-in-One Messenger, though that defect didn't plague my tests. Meebo's next attempt will hopefully bring it in line with this more competitive player.
