Open Handset Alliance, the consortium that is supporting the Google developed Android operating system, has some new fans.

Fourteen new members that comprise both telecom service providers and handset makers among others have decided to join the Alliance in a sign that the newly introduced platform may be gaining momentum.

The new entrants include ARM, Asustek, Garmin, Huawei Technologies, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Vodafone.

So far only T-Mobile has introduced an Android device, the G1 from HTC, in North America. Meanwhile, Motorola has said it will launch handsets based on Android OS next year.

Read more: wired.com 

Labels: Android, mobile, Sony

Google today announced that it has added a new option for AdWords advertisers to specifically target iPhones, T-Mobile's G1, and other mobile devices that have 'real' Internet browsers. Unlike the standard mobile AdWord ads that were targeted to appear on mobile web sites, this new feature will allow advertisers to target any mobile device with a full HTML browser. Google also points out that it is seeing 'a lot' of searches from iPhone and G1 users and the iPhone drove more traffic to Google.com during last year's holiday season than any other mobile platform.

Read more: readwriteweb.com 

Labels: ads, ADWords, iPhone, mobile

Google Mobile App helps you find the information you need quickly and easily with instant access to Google Search.

Search with your voice so you don't have to type.
Search with My Location makes finding business, weather, and movie info easy.
Suggestions appear as you type to save you time.
Launch Gmail, Google News, and more from one place.

Features

- Voice Search.New! Speak your queries without even pushing a single button.
- Search with My Location.New! Search for business, weather, and movie information without specifying where you are.
- Local search suggestions on a map. See nearby business suggestions on Google Maps -- just tap the "near me" suggestions.
- Instant access to search. Start a Google search with just one click.
- Google Suggest. Get relevant search suggestions as you type, saving you keystrokes.
- URL suggestions. Get to popular web sites quickly by tapping site web address suggestions.
- Contact search. Quickly find contacts in your address book.
- Search history. Get instant access to your previous searches.
- Easy access to other Google products. Launch other Google products like Maps, Gmail and News from the Apps tab.

Download: Google Mobile App for iPhone and iPod Touch or visit the iTunes store. 

Labels: apps, iPhone, iPod, mobile, phone

The T-Mobile G1 with Google powered by Android was unveiled this morning in New York with a list price of $179 -- undercutting Apple's iPhone -- and confirming many of the rumors that had been floating around about the device over the past few week.

But it was a surprise guest appearance by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who skated onto the stage wearing rollerblades, that drew the most enthusiastic response from the crowd and cameras.

“I’m a bit of a geek and I really like tinkering with things,” Brin said, pulling one of the black flip phones out of his pocket (also available in white and brown). The two, perhaps taking a cue from the legendary in-person marketing prowess of Apple's Steve jobs, hyped one of the most appealing assets of the G1: the completely open source Android platform, which allows third party developers to create applications.

Read more: wired.com 

Labels: Android, Dream, HTC, mobile, phone

If the infusion of walking directions in Google Maps interests you, and you don’t mind the privacy concerns voiced about Google’s Street View, and you happen to have a Web-enabled mobile phone on hand, you may be glad to know Google Maps for Mobile is now newly improved with both these features.

As logic would have it, walking directions and Street View compliment each another well. For city residents, walking directions can naturally give you a less circuitous route to your intended destination. Google’s engine isn’t always the best utility to devise pedestrian ways with efficiency in mind, but it’s bound to improve. Street View, in turn, allows you to see where it is your chosen path will lead. On a map that otherwise continuously sports a bird’s-eye view, the inclusion of ground-level roadside captures is pretty much a no-brainer. Bound together, they make for a supremely attractive couple.

Read more: mashable.com 

Labels: Maps, mobile, online mapping, Street View, Walking

More mobile, more visual, more social

Google has been revealing ways in which search can evolve to better meet users' needs.

Over the next three weeks, 10 of Google's search experts will be sharing their views on how search should evolve.

Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google, said in the first of the blog postings that search should always be available no matter the user's location, and should respond to more than just keywords.

One "far-fetched idea" is for a wearable device that can listen to conversations, carry out searches in the background and then flash the relevant facts to the user.

Read more: vnunet.com 

Labels: mobile, phone, search, social

SAN FRANCISCO--Yahoo on Wednesday released a preview version of a free new iPhone application called OneConnect that can centralize communications and social-networking activity.

"OneConnect allows everybody to keep connected to the persons they care about. It's a socially connected address book," said said Marco Boerries, executive vice president, Yahoo Connected Life, in a speech here at the CTIA Wireless show. "The address book now comes to life."

Read more: cnet.com 

Labels: apps, iPhone, mobile, Network, phone, social, Yahoo

AT&T Inc., the largest provider of telephone services in the United States, has become the nation’s first carrier that features Yahoo Inc.'s OneSearch Web search engine on its cellular phones, both companies announced on Monday.

Until the deal with Yahoo, AT& T’s cell phones were providing users with a search function from Infospace Inc. on the carrier's MEdia Net cell phone portal. Yahoo’s OneSearch joins the gaps of the search engine into one application.

Yahoo Inc. will also provide the advertising that comes with the search results. The two giant companies struck the deal in January. Under that deal, Yahoo became AT&T’s search provider for TV, mobile, and Internet services.

Read more: efluxmedia.com 

Labels: ATT, mobile, OneSearch, phone, Yahoo

With 10 weeks to go before the election, the amount of news coverage surrounding John McCain and Barack Obama is set to skyrocket (as if it hadn't already). In order to help you parse through all the chatter, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has set up a special Web site where mobile phone users can find the latest headlines.

Google appears to be throwing everything it has at the upcoming presidential election. It is using multiple avenues and products to provide coverage. Google believes that plenty of people will be interested in accessing news from their mobile phones. So it set up a "one-stop-shop" for mobile phone users to get what they need.

The site is located at m.google.com/elections.

The products that it is tailoring to election coverage are mobile Search, News, Reader, YouTube, and Maps.

Full article: informationweek.com 

Labels: election, mobile, sites, Web

Google Gears is an open source project that enables more powerful web applications, by adding new features to your web browser:

· Store and serve application resources locally
· Store data locally in a fully-searchable relational database
· Run asynchronous Javascript to improve application responsiveness

Google Gears is available for Windows, Windows Mobile, Mac, and Linux

Download: Google Gears 0.3.24.3 

Labels: browser, Gears, javascript, Linux, Macintosh, mobile, Windows

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is among the many developers introducing iPhone applications through Apple's iTunes App Store. On Thursday, the search company introduced Google Mobile App, a free dedicated search application for the iPhone.

Given that iPhone users can already conduct Google searches through the search window in the iPhone's Safari mobile Web browser and through the Google Maps iPhone application that comes with the iPhone, the idea of a dedicated search app might seem like an overdose of Googley goodness.

But as Google mobile engineer Robert Hamilton explains in the YouTube video below, the Google Mobile App makes a nice addition to the iPhone.

http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2008/07/searching-on-iphone-can-be-fun.html

It's faster to initiate a search using the Google Mobile App than it is to open Safari and search on the iPhone.

What's more, the Google Mobile App provides search suggestions as soon as you start typing. Trivial though this may seem, it can be a real time saver to have searches auto-completed after only a few characters have been typed.

Read more: informationweek.com 

Labels: Apple, iPhone, mobile, phone, search

According to the Wall Street Journal (which charges $90 per year to access full articles), Google’s Android plans aren’t moving quite as fast as the company had hoped.

Android chief Andy Rubin told the Wall Street Journal, “This is where the pain happens. We are very, very close.”

The slowdown appears to be a result of copious reams of red tape from carriers coupled with constant changes to the Android platform frustrating developers.

Read more: crunchgear.com 

Labels: Android, developers, mobile, phone, platform, Software

For about 10 minutes

Google I/O The second loudest cheer was for the opening of Google App Engine. The loudest was for a compass built into an unnamed mobile handset running Android.

This morning, during an extended keynote speech at Google's I/O developer conference in San Francisco, Android engineering director Steve Horowitz demonstrated the fledging mobile OS on a mystery handset with a Synaptics touch screen, showing off several applications for the first time. Among these was a version of Street View that moves through Google's virtual world in response to the physical movements of the phone itself.

"With a flick of the finger, you can navigate around," Horowitz said, as he used the device's touch screen to wander through Street View. But then he switched to "compass-mode," tapping into the device's built-in compass and accelerometer. He could spin through those virtual streets simply by spinning his phone. "This is one of my favorite new features on Street View," he said, as applause erupted from several hundred developers. "The device can actually track my movements."

Full story: theregister.co.uk 

Labels: Android, apps, mobile, phone

Web + search + LBS = success?

Google is aiming to make an impact in the mobile sector by focusing on web-based applications, super-fast search and location based services (LBS).

The online search giant has been ramping up its mobile applications for some time and unveiled its own mobile operating system, Android, last year.

London is now the main base for Google's mobile application development - with an 80-strong team – but the company also has centres in Bangalore, Beijing, Tokyo, Waterloo in Canada and Silicon Valley.

Speaking in London, Google's engineering site director, Ann Mai Chang, said: "We're focusing the majority of our development on web based applications. One of the winning formulas is really a phone with a full web browser."

Full article: silicon.com 

Labels: Android, LBS, mobile

Opera Mini already available for most other mobile devices

Opera sure is making a name for its browsing tech away from the PC – it has now announced a version of Opera Mini for the Google-backed Android mobile OS.

We clocked the first Android prototype devices in use at this year’s Mobile World Congress two months ago.

The move is yet another phase in broadening the appeal of Opera away from its traditional desktop-territory, where it loses out to big shots Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Full article: techradar.com 

Labels: Android, mobile, opera, phone

Boston (dbTechno) - Google announced on Monday that they are doing a major upgrade to their Web services offered to Apple iPhone users, just one day before the big Macworld keynote speech by Apple’s Steve Jobs.

Google stated on Monday that they are releasing improvements to the entire interface of the iPhone, which should upgrade it quite a bit and give it features it never had before. Google stated that the enhancements to the user interface are to allow for better response to touch-screen input.

Read more: dbtechno.com 

Labels: iGoogle, iPhone, Macworld, mobile, phone

Spotted by Google Operating System is a new iPhone specific interface for Google’s personalized webpage product iGoogle. The page can accessed directly from http://google.com/ig/i, although iPhone users should be immediately redirected to this page when trying to access iGoogle.

The new iPhone interface is a step up from Google’s previous offering of a mobile specific page at google.com/m which only offered limited customization options.

Read more: techcrunch.com 

Labels: iGoogle, iPhone, mobile, phone

Google's Android developer kit for mobile phones has been successfully installed on several hardware devices, a step toward turning it into a genuine mobile-phone platform.

The Android Software Developer Kit (SDK), first released in November, has been developed by Google and others as part of the Open Handset Alliance with the goal of spurring innovation in the mobile space. The platform, based on the Linux 2.6 kernel, will comprise an operating system, middleware stack, customisable user interface and applications.

Google released the preview version of Android without support for actual hardware - instead, developers were given a software emulator based on Qemu. However, running the software on actual hardware can give developers a more accurate idea of how their applications will run.

Read more: techworld.com 

Labels: Android, Google Phone, Gphone, hardware, mobile, phone

Google, apparently has taken substantial amount of floor space at the upcoming Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona, Spain, leading some to speculate that the company might actually be ready to launch its Android based phones.

While there is certainly an outside chance of the Google Phone launch, the more realistic and plausible scenario will be Google showing off a few prototype handsets. HTC, is the only handset maker that has publicly said that a device will be available in late 2008.

Read more: gigaom.com 

Labels: Google Phone, Gphone, mobile, phone

Google (NSDQ:GOOG) and Japanese mobile phone carrier NTT DoCoMo are considering a partnership to provide DoCoMo's subscribers with Google search functionality on their phones, Reuters reports. The deal would give Google access to DoCoMo's "i-Mode" mobile network, which boasts 48 million users.

The partnership could also boost DoCoMo market share. Although its 53 million subscribers make it Japan's largest mobile carrier, the company has struggled to grow amongst newer, smaller competitors like Softbank. It could also give Google a regional boost, where the company trails Yahoo subsidiary Yahoo Japan Corp. as the leading search engine.

Read more: crn.com 

Labels: DoCoMo, Japan, mobile, partnership, phone