Today Google finally releases a beta of Google Chrome for Mac and Linux. I've been using a Chromium build on my Mac for awhile now, and while it's faster than Firefox on the Mac, it's not nearly as fast and stable as the Windows version of Chrome. Also, without Google Gears for Mac OS X 10.6, Chrome and Google webapps are even less useful on the Mac. While I was on the road with my MacBook over the last few weeks, I found myself missing my desktop PC back at home only because of the more-stable Chrome and Gears availability. Will Gears for 10.6 will ever come out, since they're phasing it out in favor of HTML5? With features that depend on Gears like offline Gmail coming out of Labs, you'd think so.
Right now, Android is the phone OS you want only if your whole life is already tied up in your Google account. All of Android's can't-get-this-anywhere-else applications are made by Google. Android's Gmail client, Google Voice, Google Goggles, Google Maps, and even Google Sky and Google Listen are Android applications that either have no exact parallel on other platforms like the iPhone, or do things that their counterparts on other platforms can't match. Let's break this down.
Android's Gmail client is one of the two primary reasons why I went Android. If you live in Gmail in the browser, you'll swear by the fact that the Android Gmail client supports threaded conversations, labels, muting conversations, marking as spam--all the advanced Gmail goodness you get in the native webapp. The second primary app I use Android for is Google Voice. Being able to text via Google Voice for free as if it were the phone's native SMS application and get voicemail transcription in-app is awesome.* Beyond the Gmail/Google Voice two-punch, Google Maps gets updates on Android faster than on the iPhone or anywhere else, like turn-by-turn directions and What's Nearby. Finally, the brand new Google Goggles app looks like a search application I will use as often as search-by-voice.
The question is: where are the standout, can't-get-this-anywhere-else THIRD-PARTY Android apps?
Now that you can point your cameraphone at an object and get Google search results back about that image, what about photographing a stranger and getting Google results back for his or her name? With facial recognition in Picasa and Picasa Web Albums, that doesn't seem far-fetched. Today Google confirmed that the search engine could recognize faces based on photos, but they decided not to enable that functionality until they "work through issues of user privacy." (These quotes may not be exact; pulled from Danny Sullivan's liveblog of Google’s Web Search “Evolution” Event today.)
Today Google releases a new search-by-picture Android application called Google Goggles. You point your cameraphone at a product, landmark, logo, book or DVD, business card, or storefront, take a photo, and Goggles returns search results related to that photo. While I love the idea of the app, in practice Goggles is pretty slow to analyze a photo and return results, at least on my G1--and the results are hit-or-miss. I snapped photos of an Xbox 360 controller, a copy of Moby Dick, a bottle of Mucinex and a box of Sudafed (hey, I'm sick today). Goggles turned up information about Moby Dick and Sudafed instantly, but choked on the Xbox controller and the Mucinex. Download Goggles for free by searching for it in the Android Market, or check out the explainer video about Goggles here.
Yesterday on This Week in Google while I was complaining that Google's acquisition of EtherPad should have been handled much more gracefully--by, you know, notifying EtherPad users before they shut down the service--EtherPad was doing an about-face. The collaborative text editor service will now stay online and open for new pads "at least" until the creators open-source the code, to ensure "no or minimal service disruption in the future." This is exactly what they should have done in the first place.
Finally got to try out the developer version of Google Chrome OS (Chromium OS) on my Asus Eee PC today. Booting from a USB drive is a much faster experience than running it in a virtual machine, but you've got to have the right hardware to do that. Over at Lifehacker yesterday, I ran down the two main ways to try out Chromium OS and what you need to have and know before you start. Here's The Human's Guide to Running Google Chrome OS.
There's always lots of interest in posts about Google Apps, a lesser-known way to put Google services behind your domain name. This morning at Lifehacker I ran down some of the most important Google Apps settings, and how to do things like map multiple domains to one account, create users and groups, and configure your catch-all domain email address. Here's more on how to Trick Out Google Apps for Your Domain.
Google's inviting 100,000 people to the Google Wave beta today, which means Twitter is already awash in people asking about and begging for entry (hello, trending topic). For what it's worth, my sources tell me invites won't go out until later in the day U.S. time--remember the Wave team is in Australia. Update: There's no source link, but the Twitter trend explainer in Brizzly says re: Google Wave:
Google has announced that it will be sending out more than 100,000 invites to Google Wave. Each of those 100,000 invites will come with 8 invites to invite other people. The release time for these invitations (originally 16:00 GMT) has been moved back to "late in the day US time on Sept 30".
After "countless hours" of work, the Google Wave team has thrown up their hands and decided not to make Wave work in Internet Explorer natively. Instead, they released Google Chrome Frame, an IE add-on that puts Chrome's backend inside Internet Explorer. Next week another batch of Google Wave invitations will go out, and IE users will have to install Chrome Frame or switch to Firefox or Safari to try Wave. (The screenshot is the prompt IE users will get when they try to log into Wave.) Google explains why Internet Explorer just doesn't have what it takes to run Wave:
Google Wave depends on strong JS and DOM rendering performance to provide a desktop-like experience in the browser. HTML5's offline storage and web workers will enable us to add great features without having to compromise on performance. Unfortunately, Internet Explorer, still used by the majority of the Web's users, has not kept up with such fairly recent developments in Web technology.
On each new episode of This Week in Google (details) I'll highlight a tip for using cloud/Google apps smarter, faster, and better. I'll document those tips here.
The J and K keys navigate through lists of items in Gmail, Google Reader, and even Google search results--without getting the mouse involved, which saves you point-and-click time. J goes to the next item down the list, and K the previous. J and K aren't easy for your brain to remember, but they are for your fingers: most keyboards have a little nubbin on the J key, and if you're a touch typist, your right hand's forefinger rests on the J key. The J and K shortcuts move the cursor up and down in other (some old school) software too, like vim. Here's how to give your J and K keys a workout in Gmail, Google Reader, and even Google search results.
Funny web series about two guys living with Google as a roommate. After you watch episode one above, move onto episode two and three. [via Asian Angel]
During their session at OSCON, Google programmers Ben Collins-Sussman and Brian Fitzpatrick say that it's coders who can collaborate with others, not lone ranger geniuses, who are best at what they do.
For an solution built by an independent developer without an API, GV did a great job of putting Google Voice on Android. But today GOOG finally got around to releasing their official Google Voice app, and it includes a few more features than GV, even if it's not totally polished yet. I'm still getting my feet wet with the new app, and GV developer Evan Charlton is still deciding on his application's fate. But all indicators point to the official app becoming my main Google Voice interface on Android. (Huge thanks to Evan for all his hard and fast-to-market work on GV.)
At first glance the two things I like most about the official Google Voice application is label access and voicemail playback (which highlights words in the text transcription as it plays). It also feels snappier.
In the fall of 2007 I was thrilled when Google enabled IMAP for Gmail, but I also thought they were crazy. Who would use the web interface (and see ads) if they could get synced mail in a rich desktop client? Turns out that if you make your webapp better than anything on the desktop, people will use it. Less than two years later, I'm using Gmail's web client exclusively, mostly thanks to Gmail Labs. For the July issue of Macworld, I ran down my favorite Gmail power tools, in and out of the web interface. Google moves so fast with this stuff that between the time I turned in this copy and it got published, two more new Labs features were released that have made their way into my heart: Sender Timezone and Inbox Preview. Love it when good software is a moving target.
Seems a foregone conclusion that Google's the best search engine on the web, but at this point, there's not that much of a gap between the second-place engine, Yahoo, and the big G. This morning over at Lifehacker I confessed that amidst all my Gmail, Google Voice, Android, Google Docs, and GCal usage, I pointed my web search keyword at Yahoo to break Google's monopoly on my personal data. Resistance isn't futile!
Right now, Android is the phone OS you want only if your whole life is already tied up in your Google account. All of Android's can't-get-this-anywhere-else applications are made by Google. Android's Gmail client, Google Voice, Google Goggles, Google Maps, and even Google Sky and Google Listen are Android applications that either have no exact parallel on other platforms like the iPhone, or do things that their counterparts on other platforms can't match. Let's break this down.
Yesterday on 
After "countless hours" of work, the Google Wave team has thrown up their hands and decided not to make Wave work in Internet Explorer natively. Instead, they released 
In the fall of 2007 I was thrilled when Google enabled IMAP for Gmail, but I also thought they were crazy. Who would use the web interface (and see ads) if they could get synced mail in a rich desktop client? Turns out that if you make your webapp better than anything on the desktop, people will use it. Less than two years later, I'm using Gmail's web client exclusively, mostly thanks to Gmail Labs. For the July issue of Macworld, I ran down 
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