Monday, January 26, 2009
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Google releases Desktop 5
Google has released its latest version of Google Desktop, which incorporates a new look and new features.
The application involves a sidebar for the user's desktop environment, including a variety of "gadgets", or mini-applications, designed to display a range of functions, including the time, photos and stock prices. Vista, the latest version of Windows, offers similar functionality to the desktop sidebar, but Google Desktop 5 appears to have taken the concept further.
The new version now includes previews of desktop search results and warnings for websites that may contain malware. It is visually more enhanced than its predecessors and Windows Vista's version, in that it samples the user's desktop wallpaper to set the colour for its own theme. Some popular gadgets have also been redesigned.
The enterprise edition of Google Desktop, which allows enhanced functionality, such as centralized control of employees' gadgets, encryption and Intranet search results, also benefits from Google Desktop's upgrade. So too do speakers of Hindi, now included in Google Desktop for the first time, alongside 28 other languages.
Google Releases Chrome - The Latest Edition to the Browser Wars
Have you heard that Google has it's own browser now? We here at NAV just downloaded the beta version and we've got to say we like what we see so far. The browser interface is clean and the browser seems pretty fast.
One thing we got a kick out of is that you can change the default search engine. Wacky!
We'll put it through it's paces and let you know what we think. In the meantime, you can download your own copy from Google.
Google releases WiFi Check Gadget
Google Desktop’s ravishing and efficient gadgets facilitates its users by working as as a handy tool to serve up to their expectations. It had released an Olympic gadget a few weeks ago, that was a boon to the exhilarated Olympic fans. Thus, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that it always try to cater user’s need by focusing generic Internet users. In this extension, Google has released a new WiFi Check gadget.
The WiFi Check gadget by Krid allows you to check the status of your WLAN. This deftly tool will genuinely check out the connectivity of your wireless network and you can have an instant updates without crawling into your network configurations and settings.
We would also like to review other gadgets that have been released few months ago by the same author. Network Check is a Google Desktop’s gadget that allows you to check the bandwidth consumption of your network.
Battery Check Google gadget displays the status of your battery. While the laptop Check gadget fetches all the information about CPU’s utilisation, memory status, battery status and currently used bandwidth.
Progressbar Clock gadget shows the current time with Progress bars of hours, Minutes and Seconds making it visually more appealing and eye catching while the GTAIV Clock gadget display the current time with an analogue clock ticking every second.
While the Hard disk Check and CPU Check gadgets allows users to view the hard disk and CPU usage of their machine respectively.
Though, the recently released WiFi Check gadget is worthy to use, the installation of all above mentioned gadgets will definitely make your Google desktop more productive and you will love to have these handy tools that are available with a single click installation.
latest Google Android SDK a big improvement
Late last year, we tested a prerelease of the software development kit for Google's Linux-based Android mobile phone operating system. Although we saw a lot of potential in the platform, there were a number of serious flaws in both the software and the underlying development process. Both have seen noteworthy improvement since our original tests.
The developers announced the availability of m5-rc14 this week, a new Android prerelease that addresses many issues and brings a significant user interface overhaul to the operating system. I put the new version of the SDK and Eclipse plug-in to the test on my Ubuntu desktop computer to see how it compares to the version that we tested in December.
As we noted in our previous review, one of the significant strengths of Android in the area of third-party development is the ease of installing the SDK. That advantage has been retained, but I ran into a minor snag with dependencies for the Android Eclipse plug-in. Ubuntu 7.10 users who wish to use the Android plug-in might need to download the latest version of Eclipse in order to do so. If you have a standard version of Eclipse, the installation process for Android and the plug-in is relatively straightforward and can be done in a matter of minutes.
Twittering away on Android
My first test after installing the new SDK was attempting to compile and run the experimental Twitter client that I developed for my previous article. This initially failed because of alterations to the Android XML manifest file format, but it was very easy to make the requisite changes. You can refer to the Android manifest documentation page to see how the current manifest file should look.
In the source code for the program itself, the only element of the Android API used by my Twitter client that no longer works is the now-defunct EmboldenedSpan object. I simply changed it to a StyleSpan object with a Typeface.BOLD paramater. All things considered, it wasn't all that painful to get my simple application working with the new version of the SDK, but developers with more complex projects might have a different experience. Google's documentation includes an overview of the API changes between the m3 and m5 releases. In general, the documentation seems to be a bit better all across the board.
Squashing bugs and polishing the UI
In our previous article about Android, we voiced sharp criticism of Google for failing to provide a public bug tracking system, an omission that greatly impeded the process of providing feedback. Google finally resolved that problem last month when it announced that it would be using the issue tracker at the Android code.google.com page. This is a very positive sign that Google is taking the needs of the Android third-party developer community more seriously.
The user interface of the Android platform also got a big boost with this release. The home screen menu system is a bit more finger-friendly now and still retains solid usability with navigation buttons. We noted in our previous article that Android has a highly hardware-neutral design that reflects Google's intention to make it support a variety of different kinds of handsets. The user interface changes generally seem consistent with that approach. One oddity is a slide-down panel that displays notifications. It can be dragged from the top of the screen, but I couldn't find a way to activate it with a button. Overall, the new home screen menu feels more functional and less cramped than its predecessor, but is a bit less stylish.
One very noticeable change in the Android user interface is the addition of transition animations. The animations show up in many places throughout the system, generally when windows, dialogs, and menus appear. They are very subtle and add some additional elegance without becoming a distraction.
I tested several of the applications that come with the SDK, including the mapping program, the contact book, and the web browser. I also tested the experimental Google Talk chat integration feature. I was able to connect to Google Talk and receive messages, which are displayed as items on the notification panel. The performance and usability of the bundled applications is pretty decent.
The interface feels more complete now, but there are still some holes. For instance, the home screen menu offers an option for changing the background wallpaper, but selecting it only displays a dialog stating that the feature isn't available yet. There is obviously still work to be done before the interface is ready for use on a phone, but it is definitely improving at a reasonable pace.
It seems like the initial prerelease was primarily to let developers see what the platform would offer, and this release is more about addressing the needs that emerged in the process. Google is clearly giving due consideration to criticisms of Android and resolving problems identified by third-party developers. There are still technical issues to resolve, but Google has now demonstrated enough responsiveness to developer demands to justify giving the company the benefit of the doubt. This second look at the platform and the development ecosystem has boosted my confidence in the endeavor and given me reason to be optimistic about Android's prospects.
Google Earth
Google Releases 'Google Earth' For iPhone (For Free) |  |
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Google has released a free iPhone version of its excellent Google Earth application [App Store]. And having spent some time with the app, I can safely say...it's great.
- With just a swipe of your finger you can fly from Peoria to Paris to Papua New Guinea, or anywhere in between. It may be small, but it brings all the power of Google Earth to the palm of your hand, including all of the same global imagery and 3D terrain. You can even browse any of our 8 million Panoramio photos or read Wikipedia articles.
If you have an iPhone or iPod touch--don't miss it.
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