Google posts

Thanks to a leaked screenshot from a Chromium bug report, we might be seeing an update to Google’s email service look and feel in the near future. The changes are subtle, but they do show some hope for Google’s awful aesthetic approach to designing web apps. As you can see, the ‘compose mail’ button is now a dedicated button rather than a text link. Shocking! Also, the buttons along the top of the email viewer have been simplified, with a drop down option being added for controlling multiple selected items. Scandalous! FInally, and most provocatively, you can see a ‘call phone’ button has been added…

As if Google didn’t know enough about you (and serve up ads accordingly), Google AdWords is now offering a feature that allows advertisers to beam location-based ads right to your smartphone. Advertisers can now select a “location extension” that will display based on a user’s GPS coordinates. The user can then get directions, contact information, etc – all at a local level. For some reason, I just imagine, like, local furniture ads. Wouldn’t that be fun on a smartphone. Seriously. Apparently, by this Christmas, Google will also be targeting ads based on users’ hair colour, shoe size, favourite…

Weather-obsessed people like pilots and surf bums will now be able to see the latest weather maps on Google Earth. In order to see it, enable the clouds layer, and zoom to the spot that you want to see (or do that in reverse order, it doesn’t matter). Precipitation data is only available in areas of North America and Europe at the moment, although this being Google, you know the rest is coming. This latest improvement to Google Earth puts all of the powers of the weatherman – scant though they may be – into your hands. What will you do with this unimaginable power? We’re betting major life events like putting…

Eric Schmidt (guy who runs Google, if you’re new to this ‘inter-net’ thing) was quoted this week as saying that Google was, in fact, not developing a service to rival Facebook. “The world doesn’t need a copy of the same thing,” he said. Oh really, Eric? Because be your inescapable charisma and otherworldly good looks as they may, that’s not what I heard. I heard you’re doing exactly the opposite of not creating a Facebook-like service. I heard it’s called Google Me. I heard it’s coming soon. So while you’re for sure the slickest, most hunkalicious snake charmer I’ve ever seen, I gotta go with…

When Google founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, wanted to do something creative with their logo back in 1999 to signify their attendance at the Burning Man Festival in the Nevada Desert, things were simple for the Google logo; just a stick figure stuck in the middle of the second ‘o’. Since that seemingly spontaneous burst of creativity, changes in the look of the logo have become as regular as Pink’s hair color changes. While the story of the “Google Guys” and their nerdy acknowledgment of their Burning Man attendance may be what originally sowed the seeds to the doodle concept,…

Whenever I see the word ‘endgame’, the only thing going through my head is Highlander. I wonder why that is. Either way, that’s how the headline up there is meant to be read. Like, imagine the poster for Highlander: Endgame, and just imagine Christopher Lambert is Google, or something. “More Action! More Steamy Scenes! All-New Ending!” All-new ending. If only. “Google agreed…that it will respect China’s laws and regulations,” said Zhang Feng of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on Tuesday. “That is to say, it will not provide any information that will endanger China’s…

Did you ever get a look at the Nexus One? I remember, back in The Day, I was even going to champion the Nexus when I moved up to a smartphone. But it looks like I’ll never get my chance – Google’s discontinuing the Android-packing iPhone killer. According to ReadWriteWeb, Google only managed to sell 135 thousand phones in the same amount of time it took Apple to sell a million. That’s not an awful lot of phones. So Google’s calling it quits. Well, almost. “Customer support will still be available for current Nexus One customers,” says Google’s announcement. “And Nexus One will continue to be sold by partners…

For all the chatter regarding the great democratizing power of the internet – its capacity to enable a generation of thinkers of creators to produce amazing things – a simple problem has kept the creation of applications limited to small number of people. To make computer-y things, you need to, like, know stuff. Well no more, internet! No more! Today, Google announced public invitations to its App Inventor for Android, an application that will allow those with almost no programming knowledge to create their own apps for the Android market. Using a simple graphical interface, users can choose…

Ever since broadband internet hit the mainstream around the turn of the millennium, we have been hearing how the web would spell the end of traditional TV. Rather than the ‘mere’ 500-channel universe offered by cable or satellite, the web was going to be a never-ending smorgasbord of programming. The future of television was supposed to be the web and it was going to be glorious. It would all stream in stunning high-definition. You would never watch an ad again. And unicorns would come pouring out of your screen in full 3-D. Or not. As it turned out, people were still pretty committed to their TVs,…

Pygmies in the Amazonian rain forest are all well aware of the addictive and widespread Facebook game Farmville, so I won’t insult your intelligence by explaining what it is. However, if you thought you were Farmville’s biggest fan, think again. Google has been been quietly investing in Zynga, the developers behind Farmville, to the tune of around $150m. Zynga has also been building venture capital from a number of other firms, including $150m from Softbank Capital and $180m from Digital Sky Technologies. What does Zynga plan to do with all this capital? How could they possibly become more pervasive…