Google Goggles Bring Visual Search to the iPhone

Tuesday, 05 October 2010. Posted in Google, News, iPhone, Consumer Electronics, Upcoming Technologies, Smartphones, Apple

Google Goggles for the iPhone

In December, Google introduced Goggles on the Android, allowing users to search the web using the phone's built-in camera. Well today the big G rolled out the same functionality for their Google Mobile iPhone app. To search with Goggles, simply tap the camera icon and take a picture of the item you wish to look up. The app will then scan the photo using it's image recogniton software and return what it thinks are the most accurate results.

Google has rather modestly stated that since this technology is still in it's infancy, the service works best at recognizing books, DVDs, landmarks, artwork and wine only. Having put this to the test, we've managed to successfully return the latter, alongside everything from obscure musical equipment to Spongebob Squarepants! Read on for some in-app snapshots and the G-unit's promo vid.

Today in Apple Hax: Apple TV on the iPod Touch and Chromium OS on the iPad

Wednesday, 29 September 2010. Posted in Google, News, iPad, Consumer Electronics, Apple

iOS Small Talk

Heads up iOS fans, there's a hot new UI in the house! Infact theres two, neither of which incidentally are likely to come our way anytime soon but hey, it's fun to gawk.

The crime in question: Blowing apart Apple's mobile software and installing another juicy interface.
The accused: One @DHowett and one @Hexxeh
The verdict: Guilty. Oh yes...

Google's Brainwashing, Time Wasting 'Pizza' Ad

Friday, 24 September 2010. Posted in Google, News, Viral Video, Business

Google Pizza

Google are leaving the digital world rather confused today with the viral-isation of their latest ad for 'Search with my location', fittingly entitled 'Pizza'.

The excruciatingly irritating 10-minute long video sees the (presently unknown) character cycle through a series of random backdrops, whilst attempting to search for pizza with his voice using the Google iOS app. The baffling absurdity of already finding local results 18 seconds in, before wasting a further 10 minutes of our lives is only exacerbated by the fact he's using an iPhone 4 as opposed to one of Google's heavily pushed Android handsets.

Excluding a Chrome speed test ad or two, Google hasn't exactly been a player to dabble in viral marketing. At least now we know why. Read on for the full video...

Google.cn To Switch Off Before April

Sunday, 21 March 2010. Posted in Google, News, Business

Google.cn to shut down by march

In a report published earlier today, Google are said to be on the brink of ending the epic censorship battle between themselves and chinese government in one brash maneuver, to just get out of the country's cyberspace all together.

Google Produces Series Of Short Films Showing Making Of The Nexus One

Friday, 05 February 2010. Posted in Google, News, Consumer Electronics, Smartphones

In an artistic marketing twist, the team behind Google's second smartphone have put together a series of online webisodes, documenting the story behind creating the Nexus One. Google's key message behind the four-minute first episode: 'Concept and Design', seems to be this idea of perfectly marrying hardware to software, which ironically automatically springs the iPhone to mind.

Still, this Nexus One promo remains a nice touch. Hosted entirely on YouTube, installment one and two of five are live now, although Ep.2 'Display & 3D framework' seems to be having some streaming problems.

Google-Branded Chrome OS Netbook For 2010?

Monday, 21 December 2009. Posted in Google, News, Consumer Electronics

Google's Chrome OS

As if the G-unit haven't exited us enough lately with news of the Nexus One Google phone currently in the works and the epic Twitter rollout. It looks like Google's next insane venture has been leaked and it comes in the form of a Chrome OS Netbook!

TechCrunch have reported rumours regarding a Google-branded netbook device set for release early next year. The notebook is reckoned not to have have Intel inside, but an ARM or Nvidia processor. It's also likely to ship with a data plan as Chrome OS is oh-so reliant on 'The Cloud'.

The premise of Google releasing their own brand of netbook looks likely when compared to the similar instance earlier this week. Talk is that Google have again given a 'request for proposal' in order to cite a suitable supplier for the product

Google Launches Real-time, Tweets Take Over Search Results

Sunday, 13 December 2009. Posted in Google, News, Social Media

Google rolls out real-time search and tweets

Back in October Google signed a deal with Twitter to include real-time tweets in search results to provide users with up-to-the-minute updates about their keywords. Now Google searchers have started to noticed a huge step up in Twitter-Google integration as many results offer a 'Latest Results for...' Twitter widget displaying the most current mentions of the keyword in question. For example a quick Goog' search for 'gigabyt3' returns us the scrollable tweet box above about half way down the page.

Google highlighted this new feature and more at the real-time search event on December 7, giving an insight into what is to come for search, SEO and live media in general.

Read on for full video coverage of the event...

Google Responds To 'Google Phone' Rumours, Mobile Lab Is Born

Saturday, 12 December 2009. Posted in Google, News, Consumer Electronics, Smartphones

The next Google branded smartphone?

Both the twittersphere and blogosphere alike have been on fire today with rumours of a new Google branded smartphone being out in the wild. The news came in the form of several Tweets from CNET reviewers and Google employees, claiming that 'the big G' had rolled out 'tons' of unlocked smartphones to it's staff for testing purposes. In true open-source open-thought style Google VP Product Manager Mario Queiroz was quick to fill in the details: