901am

New Media News Every Morning

Google Updates Mobile App, Endangers Default iPhone Apps

By

After releasing a web app that made the native YouTube iPhone app irrelevent, it looks like the boys and girls at Google have (finally!) updated their mobile app with push notifications for Gmail and gCalendar fans.

Ever missed an appointment or important email because you were away from your desk? Now Google Mobile App can help with push notifications from your Google account to your iPhone — an icon badge shows you’ve got new mail in Gmail, and Google Calendar event reminders appear right on your home screen.

We’ve also added spiffy features to get you information faster — when looking for flight info, weather, stock quotes or currency conversion you’ll see answers before you even hit ‘Search’. (Google Mobile Blog) [Read more…]

Originally posted on August 23, 2010 @ 3:30 pm

Is Bing Crippling Facebook Places?

By

As every iLover knows, Facebook recently added Facebook Places to their iPhone. However instead of choosing to partner with their frenemy Google, Facebook instead is allowing Bing to power its location feature.

And, while location-based services like this are certainly interesting to me I’m writing this for you because Facebook is using Bing Maps to pinpoint everyone’s location-based experiences on Facebook.com. […]

Select the Places button, find the location where you are and check-in. Just like that, the check-in will flow to your profile on Facebook.com complete with a Bing Map, a pin of your location and any commentary you’ve added to your check-in. Places also includes the ability to see where your friends have checked in, a link to get directions to a place (via Bing Maps) and a Like button for the respective place page. (Bing Community Blog)

While it’s no surprise Facebook chose Bing over Google (due to the latter’s upcoming social network), doing so may have handicapped the service as Bing via iPhone is only available for users within the US, despite the fact that Facebook has a large international audience.

Unless Bing plans on expanding their mobile feature beyond the US borders soon, Facebook’s places will probably fail to be as powerful as Twitter Places (the latter which choose Google Maps for their service).

Although Facebook places has the potential of making location statuses popular among the masses on a scale yet to be seen by any social network, its America only limitation may keep Facebook from being adopted globally (which may benefit rivals like Twitter and the upcoming Google Me).

Originally posted on August 19, 2010 @ 11:16 am

Rumor: Google To Launch FREE (or Cheap) iPad Killer?

By

The rumor mill is in full swing again, and this time it does not involve the iPhone 4, PalmPad, Windows 7 Phone or even the Android tablet.

What could it be you say? How about a dirt cheap tablet running Chrome OS by Google.

As for the launch date of November 26th, well, that’s all kinds of brilliant. It’s Black Friday 2010 and the busiest shopping day of the year in the U.S. — so what better day to have a shiny new tablet in the cabinet at Verizon kiosks and stores all over the country? You can bet Google’s Chrome OS tablet will be heavily subsidized, and I’d go so far as to say it will be substantially cheaper than the iPad – if not totally free — with a Verizon data contract. (Download Squad)

Note: Emphasis theirs. [Read more…]

Originally posted on August 18, 2010 @ 12:54 pm

Good Luck Bing! Google Maps Mobile Is A 100 Million Strong

By

On the heels of Bing announcing that it will be powering Facebook Places, Google has come out unveiling that it has more monthly users than many countries have citizens!

Almost five years ago, we launched Google Maps for mobile to help you get where you needed to go from your phone instead of a paper map. Today, more than 100 million people a month are now using Google Maps for mobile to get from point A to point B, find nearby places, and more. […]

With recent additions such as Place Pages, you can now pick a nearby place by browsing information such as opening hours and review snippets for the places around you. It’s easier than ever to find those places with Search by voice or the new Places icon on Android. With this latest Android version, we’re happy to see that you’re now searching for places almost three times as often, doubling how many Place Pages are seen a day. (Google Mobile Blog)

Its currently unclear how many users Bing! (or even Mapquest) have in the mobile sphere, although it would be safe to bet that their combined numbers do not even approach Google Map’s latest stats (at least on a monthly basis).

Although Facebook Places could help Bing overthrow Google’s mobile crown (by utilizing the social networks 500 million plus users), Bing will have to embrace the rest of the planet as their “America only” policy will guarantee Google’s success at Microsoft’s expense.

Originally posted on August 19, 2010 @ 4:49 pm