Latest News

If you are a cyclist, now you can take advantage of bicycle directions that are added to Google Maps. Due to them one can plan routes in 150 U.S. cities, it is also possible to find cycling-specific directions in urban areas.

There are two ways that can provide you with Google Maps cycling information, the first one is considered to be step-by-step directions as for the second way, you are offered a map layer which shows you all possible cycling lanes and paths in your city. In case you want to know a direction you will need to click on the get directions link in Google Maps.

Before using it, you should know that cycling route indicators have three different levels, a dark green line displays a bike path, as for the light green line, it demonstrates regular streets that come with bike lanes while the dotted green lines offer you other recommended streets for cyclists.

According to Google, cycling directions are considered to be a great addition to Google Maps which will be used by many cyclists. A cyclist will be offered with the easiest possible route in order to get to the necessary destination. A tool that creates various routes uses inclines.

Google made alterations in its Gmail service, i.e. it has decided to upgrade Gmail Labs experiment in order to get standard Gmail features.

One can observe the alteration in Search Autocomplete. When you start typing in the Gmail search box you will be offered suggestions, i.e. contact names, advanced search operators like “from:” and “to:” and labels.

If you need to look for a particular label, just type ‘gl’ and as a result the “label:’ search operator will appear in your Gmail search box. Type the first few letters of the label name until it is highlighted below, then press enter and you will be provided with all your messages.

In case you forget to attach a document, Forgotten Attachment Detector will alert you.

If you have received a YouTube link via e-mail, you will be able to view the video in Gmail.

With the help of Custom Label Colors it will be much easier for you to organize your labels. You only have to click on ‘add custom colors’ from the regular label interface.

With Vacation Resonder you are able to set your vacation days in advance in Gmail, you will have to point out your beginning and end date of your vocation

To opt out Google Buzz , the search giant decided to add one way. But in fact there are two ways due to which it is possible to get the same result.

If you want to off Buzz you have to go down to the very bottom of the main Gmail page. There you are able to find such option as to “turn off Buzz”. If you click on it, then Buzz will pass away.

There is another option, i.e. bombing Buzz from the “Settings” that are located at the top right-hand corner of the page. The company included a “Buzz” option to the main settings due to which you are able to hide as well as disable Buzz.

Bear in mind in case you disable Buzz, your Google Profile and Buzz posts will also be deleted and as a result you will be disconnected to any connected sites.

With the settings tab you are able to hide the lists of people you are talking, also you can get the privacy option.

Probably you are not able to see these options as Google is only unveiling them to its user base. According to the blog post of Google, the new features will be added within several few days and engineers are working in order to make them available in the near future.

Google India released driving directions for those who have Google Maps. At present users are able to navigate Google Maps that can run in desktops and mobile phones. The map uses such landmarks as petrol stations, banks, schools, railway stations, bus stops, local businesses & traffic circles and signals. One should note that India is considered to be the first country in the world that has such option on Google Maps.

It is more convenient to use such landmarks as many roads in India are not marked with road signs. It may happen so that people do not even know the name of the road names. Nowadays users can use such feature online.

Google used good landmark data that was done by means of user-created “Points of Interest” in Google Map Maker. Google has a specific algorithm that detects what landmark is more helpful in navigation. Importance and closeness are considered to be the base of the algorithm. Due to this release, Google will be able to intermix landmark data, counted turns (“the 2nd right”), intersection names, and road names in order to understand what information is more useful.

Google offers two kinds of landmarks to detect the location that a user needs and provide confirmation that he is in the right direction

Gmail launched a new feature that allows users to delete every single duplicate contact entry immediately. Recently, in order to remove such contact users had to go through their address book that was considered to be enough time-consuming.
The new system offers a one-button solution that will unite the information for each contact, also the system is responsible for scanning the user’s contacts. One should say that it not a destroying method. Contacts that have more than one e-mail addresses demonstrate the same contact but in Gmail’s auto-complete variant.
Google is advertising the tool in order take contact lists that were imported from everywhere, i.e. mobile phones or other e-mail services. The company believes that this feature will be popular among users, moreover, it will be the top-requested option.
The bulk de-duper is another new feature that had to appear, more than 10 months ago it was released but it is still missing.

About two months ago changes were made in Orkut, i.e. Google Web toolkit was launched. Such feature is considered to be useful as due to it one can design complex browser-based applications. It was decided by the company to create another version to further exploit and as a result the Google Web Toolkit 2.0 was released.

According to Andrew Bowers, Product Manager at Google, nowadays the web is broadening and it is becoming very powerful and a big role in it plays improved developer tools. He also said that Google Web Toolkit’s work was tested, and it was noted that Google teams make the boundaries of web apps for such products as Google Wave and AdWords 3.0.

Ben Fried, Google Chief Information Officer, said that Google Web Toolkit is used for all Java-based internal apps. It perfectly suites for Enterprise-class Java GUI development and also the company use it in development of Google’s system.

In the new features on can find the Speed Tracer tool that uses modern HTML5 technologies. If there are any errors the tool helps detect them in the browser and also it gives information about low-level operations that happen in the browser. Another new feature is Code Splitting, it is very helpful for developers to analyze their application code.

The Google Web Toolkit has a new UI framework known as UiBinder. Due to it, one can easily design iteration as well as divide the application logic from the presentation layer.

This week one could see the ardent battle between such well-known companies as Microsoft and Goolge. The issue of the battle was the lunched innovations that will be used in 2010 or 2011.

As it was promised by Google, the users are able to utilize real-time search results. Due to such option users are able to get results only a few seconds old when they query a topic.

Also Google introduced Google Goggle this week. It is considered to be a photo-based search.

As for Microsoft, its Bing launched the beta of the latest version of Bing Maps last week.

According to Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group, the search is in the process of changing and it will never stop to do that. People that search for some information will get the same results, but the service itself will be more individualized and there will be more images, video, tweets and posts.

Many analysts consider that because Microsoft and Google compete in order to get a big amount of market share for that reason innovation is likely to appear very often.

“Microsoft’s willingness to invest in search and not just let Google walk away with it is driving a new level of competition,” said Hadley Reynolds, an analyst with IDC. He also said the one should wait the continuation of changes for the next six to nine months.

Google and Apple are competing in order to purchase some of the same Silicon Valley start-ups and developing products that lead the companies to a more direct competition.

Google had talks to purchase online-music company La La Media Inc. but as a result Apple succeeded in this deal and bought the company for $85 million. Also Apple wanted to have a deal with mobile-advertising company known as AdMob Inc.

It looks like the two companies want to move deeper into each other’s business: Apple is interested in the advertising while Google looks for a music service.

The companies concentrated on different parts of the tech market, Google is good at Internet search and Apple manufactures computers and various consumer electronics devices.

Not so long ago the companies shared two directors, among which was Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt. But Mr. Schmidt decided to quit Apple’s board in August because of increasing business overlap.

Google creates an operating system that becomes the base of various computers, it rivals with Apple’s Macintosh machines. Also the company launched a Web browser that competes with Safari, the product of Apple.

One should mention about the battle in the mobile arena, Google produces Google’s Android software like the Motorola Droid and as for Apple, it manufactures iPhone that has become popular among customers.

Google unveiled new features for its signature search tools Monday, including an ability to search by sight, a mobile translator and a real-time search of more than 1 billion new social media pages created every day.

Google executives showed off the upgrades at an annual company event called Searchology.

The search engine giant said it was working to tie its search service more closely to cellphones. It showed off a new search option called Google Goggles that allows users to submit pictures rather than key words as queries, which would allow for identification of images taken via cellphones.

“It is our goal to be able to identify any image,” said Google’s vice president of engineering Vic Gundotra. “It represents our earliest efforts in the field of computer vision. You can take a picture of an item, use that picture of whatever you take as the

query.”

Gundotra said the company has the capability of integrating facial recognition into the technology but was delaying the implementation while it considered the privacy implications.

“For this product, we made the decision not to do facial recognition,” Gundotra said. “We still want to work on the issues of user opt-in and control. We have the technology to do the underlying face recognition, but we decided to delay that until safeguards are in place.”

Future search results would feature the company’s “near me now” technology that will prioritize location-based items, he said.

Gundotra also showed off the search engine’s ability to translate a spoken phrase from English to Spanish using a mobile phone. The translator feature will become available early next year and Google will rapidly expand the number of languages it can use, Gundotra said.

“Our goal at Google is nothing less than being able to support all the major languages of the world,” he said.

The real time search technology is a product of partnerships announced Monday with Facebook and MySpace. Google already had an agreement with microblogging site Twitter, and said that the new search would be rolled out worldwide in the coming days.

Gmail is broadening its possibilities. Recently Gmail released its new product known as Gboard. This is a distinguishing keyboard that includes useful shortcuts, icons and colors that are able to assist users to access the shortcuts in no time.

With the help of this device users are able to carry out various tasks or even know the keyboard shortcuts in Gmail. It can be done by means of pressing the button to search, to reply, to archive, to blot out, and others.

This custom mini-keyboard comes with 19 essential colored keys in order to carry out pre-defined Gmail shortcuts by Google. It is not necessary to launch any software to induce the appealing device. It operates by means of the built-in capabilities of users’ operating system and browser.

It weighs 0.14 kg, it is available for $19.99.