Google Voice is the name of the updated version of GrandCentral that runs on Google's infrastructure. At this time, the service is only available in the US to the existing GrandCentral users, but Google promises to extend its availability soon. The good news is that GrandCentral will continue to be free and you'll only have to pay for international calls.
"Google Voice gives you one number for all your phones -- a phone number that is tied to you, not to a device or a location. Use Google Voice to simplify the way you use phones, make using voicemail as easy as email, customize your callers' experience, and more. Google Voice isn't a phone service, but it lets you manage all of your phones. Google Voice works with mobile phones, desk phones, work phones, and VoIP lines. There's nothing to download, upload, or install, and you don't have to make or take calls using a computer," explains the new help center.
Google Voice Blog mentions that the service added many new features: "voicemail transcription, SMS support, conference calling, GOOG-411 integration, low cost international calling". Voicemails are now searchable, you can embed them in a web page and you can receive email notifications. Text messages sent to your Google number are automatically forwarded to your mobile phone and they are also available in the web account, where you can reply to the incoming messages.
The following videos show how to use Google's new voice service:
To request a notification when Google Voice becomes publicly available, use this form. "We expect to have the service ready for new users in a matter of weeks, and are focused on opening it as soon as possible," promises Google.
Until now, the mobile interface for iPhone of Google Docs was only useful to read documents, spreadsheets and presentations. This is about to change now that spreadsheets can be edited: you can add rows, edit an existing row, filter the columns by value and sort the columns.
The new editable list view for spreadsheets is available for iPhone, T-Mobile G1 and Nokia S60 phones, that is for mobile phones that have WebKit-based browsers.
If you have an iPhone or a Windows Mobile, you can now synchronize Google Calendar events and Gmail events using Google Sync. "Once you set up Sync on your phone, it will automatically begin synchronizing your address book and calendar in the background, over-the-air, so you can attend to other tasks. Sync uses push technology so any changes or additions to your calendar or contacts are reflected on your device in minutes," explains Google Mobile Blog.
Google Sync already works on BlackBerry. For the rest of the mobile phones, you can only synchronize contacts if there's support for SyncML. Contact synchronization should work on some Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones, for example Nokia N-Series and Sony Ericsson W-Series.
Google mentions that the service available for iPhone and Windows Mobile uses the Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync protocol. "When setting up a new Exchange ActiveSync account on your phone, all existing Contacts and Calendar events may be removed. Please make sure to back up any important data before you set up Google Sync."
The latest version of Google Maps for Mobile adds a new feature that lets you share your location with friends and see their locations in real-time. Google Latitude is the first step for adding more social features to Google Maps and to other Google services.
"How often do you find yourself wondering where your friends are and what they're up to? It's a pretty central question to our daily social lives, and it's precisely the question you can now answer using Google Latitude," explains Google's blog.
After installing Google Maps Mobile 3.0 (only available for Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Symbian S60 right now), you can share your location automatically or set your location manually. You can also post a short status and choose a profile photo.
After selecting yourself, you can: - Change your status message across Google products. Your status will only be shared with your current Google Talk or Gmail chat friends. - Change your photo across Google products. - Submit or edit your phone number in Latitude for your friends. - Edit your privacy settings for all friends.
After selecting a friend, you can: - Show the friend in map view. - Search for places near your friend. - Call if a phone number is available in your Google Contacts or Latitude. - Chat using Google Talk or Gmail chat if available. - Send an email. - Get directions to the friend's approximate location. - Set sharing options. You can choose to hide your location or share only city level location with individual friends. - Remove the friend. Your friend cannot see your location and you cannot see the friend's location.
"Everything about Latitude is opt-in. You not only control exactly who gets to see your location, but you also decide the location that they see. For instance, let's say you are in Rome. Instead of having your approximate location detected and shared automatically, you can manually set your location for elsewhere — perhaps a visit to Niagara Falls. Since you may not want to share the same information with everyone, Latitude lets you change the settings on a friend-by-friend basis. So for each person, you can choose to share your best available location or your city-level location, or you can hide."
If your mobile phone is not yet supported by the new version of Google Maps, you can add an iGoogle gadget that has similar features.
Location-based services will be increasingly popular now that mobile phones with GPS and fast Internet connections become the standard and the privacy expectations are changing. Eventually, you'll be able to share your location with other applications and obtain personalized information, alerts and even recommendations. From this perspective, Yahoo's Fire Eagle is better-suited for shaping the future of location-based services.
iGoogle continues to make mistakes. After testing the new version of iGoogle without providing an option to end the experiment, after ignoring most of the complaints regarding the new interface, Google decided to redirect iPhone users to the standard mobile interface, instead of sending them to the iPhone-optimized interface. Apparently, G1 users were also affected by this strange decision.
"We've decided to direct iPhone users to the standard mobile iGoogle page. We've found that people hit iGoogle from lots of different phones -- we want to ensure you'll all see the same version. Most or all of your existing content should translate over to the standard mobile version. The only exception would be any gadgets that aren't compatible with most mobile browsers," explains a Google engineer.
The problem was that the iPhone-optimized interface included all the gadgets from the desktop version and the tabs, it was sleek and easy to use on a touch screen, while the standard mobile version only shows feeds and a small number of gadgets. Degrading user experience and taking away a lovely interface is not the best way to encourage people to use iGoogle.
iGoogle's forum has a long thread with complaints and some users suggest to change the user-agent in Safari because the iPhone interface is still available for other browsers. Here's one of the few polite messages from the thread:
"I have to admit I am quite surprised by the unofficial news that you have removed your previously excellent iGoogle adaptation for iPhone. I can understand that in times of consolidating services in order to increase your internal efficiency you need to keep down the number of platforms. But removing the iPhone support without properly notifying your users in advance and explaining the reasons why you do this is perhaps not the smartest move if you want to keep loyal customers and brand value. And especially since you yourself have found that iPhone users are very active web users compared to the other mobile platforms."
Spanish news site Expansión reports that Google plans to launch GrandCentral in Spain. GrandCentral is a service acquired by Google in 2007 and its main purpose is to centralize voice communications. "GrandCentral provides an innovative web-based voice communications platform that helps you manage all your phones and phone numbers through one simple interface. You get a single phone number that forwards to all of your phones, giving you one number for life."
Right now, GrandCentral works only in the US and you need to get an invitation to use it, but Spain is the first candidate for GrandCentral's international expansion. Here's a sightly improved automatic translation from Spanish:
"The company wants to offer international calls via the mobile phone and advanced voicemail, separately from the offers of other mobile operators. Google requires that users subscribe to voicemail, a service provided over the Internet. When a mobile user does not answer the call, the voicemail automatically activates. Once you have subscribed to this service, you can also make international calls through the voicemail number. (...) Google wants to avoid the legal hurdles and the investment required to get a carrier license, a model considered inflexible and incompatible with its approach, always based on open standards."
Apparently, voice calls are free, but they're linked to the voicemail service. The more calls you receive, the more you can call other people for free.
Google Mobile Search started to display short text ads in the middle of the search results page. The mobile interface mixes web search results, news, images and local businesses, but Google displays the ads after the list of regular web results. Google separates the ads using a different background, but it's weird to see the ads mixed with search results.
Here's an example for the query [love] as displayed in Opera Mini:
Sergey Brin said in an interview from 2004: "One thing that's important to us is the distinction between advertising and pure search results. We make it clear when something is paid for. Our advertising is off to the side and in a couple of slots across the top. Ads are clearly marked. There's a clear, large wall between the objective search results and the ads, which have commercial influence."
As more of its services are used in business environments, Google started to provide synchronization tools for mail, calendar and contacts, but their launch wasn't timely and they were pretty limited. For example, the Google Calendar/Outlook sync tool is limited to the main calendar, while the BlackBerry sync application doesn't upload preexisting events to Google Calendar.
You can find third-party tools that offer a better experience, but synchronization should be a built-in feature of Gmail and Google Calendar. Creating APIs is a good way to make sure that developers can create applications for more obscure platforms or less common needs, it's not an excuse for being lazy.
The good news is that Google's applications are constantly improving. The sync tool for BlackBerry added support for contacts synchronization. "This new functionality will enable you to sync your handheld's built-in address book with your Gmail contacts. This all happens in the background and over the air, so your information is always up to date, no matter where you are or what you're doing," explains Google Mobile blog. To install the application, visit m.google.com/sync from a BlackBerry.
If there's one thing that T-Mobile G1, the first Android-powered phone, did it right is the seamless synchronization with Google's services: contacts are automatically synced with Gmail, while the events are synchronized with Google Calendar.
Google's interfaces optimized for iPhone, Android and WebKit-based browsers look extremely well and they have more features than the standard mobile versions. For example, Google's homepage shows suggestions and has customizable navigation links, iGoogle shows all your feeds and gadgets and Google Talk lets you chat with your contacts. If you want to try them from your computer or from a mobile phone that has a modern browser, here are the direct links (some of the pages won't work very well):
In 2002, Google Labs introduced a service that allowed you to search Google with a simple phone call. Unfortunately, the service wasn't very useful because the results were displayed on your computer and Google discontinued it.
Six years later, Google Mobile App for iPhone introduces the same feature, but this time the search results are displayed in the same application. Google built a sophisticated platform for text-to-speech and speech recognition using data from GOOG-411 and we can already some of its applications in Mobile Google Apps, YouTube and in this updated iPhone app.
It's quite weird to say how to download the app: since Apple doesn't offer user-friendly permalinks, you'll have to visit the iPhone App Store and search for "Google Mobile App". This iPhone app is just a sneak-peak into the future of mobile search, which will become more intuitive and easier to use.
"In the next 10 years, we will see radical advances in modes of search: mobile devices offering us easier search, Internet capabilities deployed in more devices, and different ways of entering and expressing your queries by voice, natural language, picture, or song, just to name a few. It's clear that while keyword-based searching is incredibly powerful, it's also incredibly limiting. These new modes will be one of the most sweeping changes in search," anticipates Marissa Mayer. She even envisions a "wearable device that does searches in the background based on the words it picks up from conversations" to illustrate how search will become a part of our life.
The first desktop application ported by Google to a mobile phone is Google Earth. iPhone and iPod Touch users can download for free from the App Store the best way to explore satellite imagery in 3D.
"Not only is having Google Earth on your iPhone convenient, but the touch interface is a very natural way to interact with the Earth. Just swipe your finger across the screen and you fly to the other side of the globe; tilt your phone and your view tilts as well. You can pinch to zoom in or out, or just double tap with one finger to zoom in and two fingers to zoom out," says Google LatLong Blog.
CNet writes that iPhone's multitouch makes the experience much more intuitive than in the desktop version of Google Earth. Like Google Maps for Mobile, the application can detect your location using information from GPS, Wi-Fi networks, and mobile phone towers. You can explore interesting places and discover more about them using the integrated layers: Wikipedia and Panoramio photos.
The cool applications that were only available from your computer start to be ported to mobile phones. In the future, the most exciting applications will be first launched for mobile phones.
Google released version 2.0 of Gmail's mobile application for Java-enabled phones. The new version has been initially released for Blackberry phones, but you can now use it on any phone that supports Java.
What's great about Gmail Mobile 2.0? It works offline: you can preload messages from the inbox and from all your labels to read them when you are offline. You can also compose messages when you don't have an Internet connection and Gmail sends them when you are online.
The application notifies you when there is new mail in the inbox, so you don't have to constantly click on Refresh. It's now possible to save the credentials for more than one Gmail account and switch between the accounts directly from the menu. What's more, Gmail Mobile 2.0 supports Google Apps accounts, which previously required a separate application.
Some cool things to try: * scroll using the left or the right key of your phone * the updated interface for contacts which has more powerful search
To install the new version, go to m.google.com/mail from your mobile phone's browser. From what I noticed, this version is less responsive than Gmail Mobile 1.5 and it uses more data.
After less than a year since the initial Android announcement, T-Mobile USA launches today the first handset that uses Android's software stack: a smartphone built by HTC, which is known for manufacturing Windows Mobile portable devices.
T-Mobile G1 showcases some of the most advanced capabilities of Android, by including a touchscreen, QWERTY keyboard, accelerated 3D graphics, Wi-Fi and 3G support, GPS and accelerometer. The device won't have an impressive design and it won't be as easy to use as an iPhone, but it will certainly be able to run a lot of interesting applications.
Android's marketplace will accept any applications without a preliminary review, so that users decide whether they're useful. That means Angelo DiNardi's MailWrangler application won't be rejected because it duplicates the functionality from a built-in application. "Developers will be able to make their content available on an open service hosted by Google that features a feedback and rating system similar to YouTube. (...) Content can debut in the marketplace after only three simple steps: register as a merchant, upload and describe your content and publish it," explains Android's blog.
Even if the first device fails to impress, it will still be a success because Android pushes the boundaries further. "Consumers will see cheaper and more innovative mobile devices and services, which will inevitably feature more engaging, easier-to-use interfaces - as well as a rich portfolio of applications," envisions Open Handset Alliance's FAQ.
We will find more at 10:30 a.m. EDT, when T-Mobile and Google will announce the device in a press conference webcasted live.
Update. HTC has more information about the device:
Processor: Qualcomm MSM7201A, 528 MHz Size: 117.7 mm x 55.7 mm x 17.1 mm (4.60 in x 2.16 in x 0.62 in) Weight: 158 grams (5.57 ounces) Display: 3.2-inch TFT-LCD flat touch-sensitive screen with 320 x 480 (HVGA) resolution Camera: 3.2 megapixel color camera with fixed focus Battery: Rechargeable Lithium-ion battery, 1150 mAh Talk Time: 406 minutes Standby Time: 319 hours Memory: microSD memory card, 1 GB included Special features: Digital Compass, Motion Sensor
Update 2: CrunchGear informs that Amazon's MP3 music store will be preloaded on the device. "T-Mobile G1 users can search, download, buy and play music from Amazon MP3, which offers over 6 million DRM-free MP3 songs. (...) Downloading music from Amazon MP3 using the T-Mobile G1 requires a Wi-Fi connection but searching, browsing, listening to samples and buying MP3s can be done wherever customers are connected to the T-Mobile network."
Update 3. More details from T-Mobile's press release: three color options (white, brown and black); music player that supports MP3, M4A (iTunes AAC, DRM-free), AMR, WMA, MIDI, WAV, OGG Vorbis; pre-installed 1 GB Micro SD memory card; built-in instant messaging client with support for Google Talk, AOL, Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger.
Update 4: The phone costs from $179.99 to $399.99, it's locked in the T-Mobile network and it requires a 2-year subscription and a data plan that costs $25 or $35, depending on the number of messages included. T-Mobile customers from the US can pre-order the phone starting from today, but the phone will be available in stores from October 22. T-Mobile promises to launch G1 in the UK one month later and in the first quarter of 2009, for the rest of Europe.
Update 5: The entire press conference showed a surprising lack of enthusiasm until Larry Page and Sergey Brin came on stage. There were very few interesting questions about the device: we found that G1 is targeted to consumers, it doesn't support Exchange and there's no way to buy it unlocked.
Update 6. T-Mobile G1 tour (the most exciting phone in the history of phones?):
Update 7. An overview of Google's services connected to G1: search, Google Maps, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Contacts, YouTube. There's too much Google integration: the phone even has a Google logo on the back.
Update 8: android.com is now live and it shows an interesting video about running multiple applications in Android:
This playlist highlights some cool G1 features, including the not-yet-available-in-iPhone copy & paste.
The latest version of Google Maps for mobile phones brings two popular features that were only available in the desktop version: Street View and walking directions. You can download the application by visiting www.google.com/gmm from a supported mobile phone.
Street View is integrated in the local search results and you can see Street View imagery next to each step from driving or walking directions.
I tried to install the new version, but Google Maps linked to GMM 2.2.0, an earlier version launched in June.
Update. Here are the direct links for Google Maps 2.3.1:
Gmail's mobile client for BlackBerry has been updated and you can now download version 2.0.5 at http://m.google.com/mail. One of the most important changes is that you can add the credentials for multiple accounts and switch between them without entering the password. There's also support for Google Apps accounts, which previously required a separate application.
Users from the PinStack forums report that the application lets you copy-paste text when composing messages, it saves more than one draft message and there's a new option to preload the archived messages.
Gmail's help center mentions that "the Gmail application will run in the background, periodically checking for new email. This uses data. If you do not want Gmail to run in the background, you must explicitly quit the program by going to Menu > Exit Gmail".
Five months after the last released version, Google and the Open Handset Alliance publicly launched Android 0.9 SDK beta.
"Back in November, we made some SDK builds available that we referred to as early look SDKs. The goal was to give developers insight into the platform as early on as possible, and to get some initial feedback. Since then, we've been working with our Open Handset Alliance partners to incorporate much of that feedback, and finish the first devices. Since those devices are shipping in the fourth quarter, the platform is now converging on a final Android 1.0 version," explains Dan Morrill.
The release notes include a lot of changes: a new Home screen, context menus, two removed APIs (Bluetooth and GTalkService), but the good news is that the next versions will not have major changes.
The first mobile phone that will run Android, HTC Dream, has been approved by FCC and is on target for a launch until the end of the year. New York Times speculates that T-Mobile will be the first carrier to offer HTC Dream in October.
A video posted last week on YouTube claimed to show the smart phone, which looks anything but impressive:
TmoNews has some specifications of the upcoming phone: touch screen, full Qwerty keyboard, 3G/Wifi, 3MP camera with no flash, easy access to Google applications. "We have confirmed that the Android device will be available for current T-mobile customers online, for pre-sales, on September 17th. The Pre-sale will last for one week, with the device being delivered on October 13th, which happens to be the national public launch of the device."
Of course, it's good to keep in mind that Dream is just one of the mobile phones that will use Android and users primarily buy the device for its design and features, not for the operating system.
Update: some new specs (528Mhz Qualcomm 7201 processor, trackball, 1GB MicroSD card, POP/IMAP/SMTP, AIM/MSN/YAHOO/GTALK messaging, Google Calendar sync, Google Streetview with built-in compass, 3.17″ screen with HVGA, 5.6 oz weight).
Google has finally launched a mobile version of Google Talk, but it's optimized for iPhone's browser. You can access if you go to google.com/talk on an iPhone/iPod Touch or using this permalink: http://talkgadget.google.com/talkgadget/m (shorter URL: http://tinyurl.com/4vnfcd).
This Ajax version is based on Google Talk's Flash gadget, but it doesn't include tabs, group chat, options to add contacts and send email. What you can do is to update your status, search your contacts and chat with people that are online.
Besides this mobile interface, Google also has a mobile app for Blackberry. That means if you don't have a Blackberry, an iPhone or at least a WebKit mobile browser, you have to find a third-party service.
eBuddy is a service that offers both a basic mobile interface for Google Talk and a mobile application that lets you chat faster with your friends. eBuddy doesn't connect only to Google Talk, it's a multi-network IM client that works with MSN, Yahoo and AIM. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any information regarding the way eBuddy stores or uses your credentials and seeing that eBuddy sends the password in plain text is worrisome.
Another mobile application that lets you chat with your Google Talk contacts is Fring, but it only works on Symbian and Windows Mobile devices. As usually, make sure you trust the service before entering the username and password of a Google account.
An obvious use of the GOOG-411 service is to add speech recognition to Google's mobile mapping application. Microsoft already has voice support in Live Search for Windows Mobile and that's an important differentiating factor when you are on the go and you need a quick answer.
Google started to test Google Maps with voice search for three Blackberry Pearl models: 8110, 8120, 8130 and only for the US. Instead of typing when you want to search for a local business, hold the left-side key, say what you want to find and then release the key. Google Maps Mobile will display the search results on the map.
"Similar to other voice-recognition technologies, the accuracy of voice recognition will improve over time as more people use the voice search feature," says Google Mobile Blog. In fact, the main reason why GOOG-411 has been developed was to obtain data to train Google's speech recognition algorithms. "Whether or not free-411 is a profitable business unto itself is yet to be seen. I myself am somewhat skeptical. The reason we really did it is because we need to build a great speech-to-text model ... that we can use for all kinds of different things, including video search," explained Marissa Mayer from Google.
Speech recognition could greatly facilitate the way we interact with mobile phones and it's not hard to imagine that voice search will be the main way we'll use search engines in the future. This will change the way people formulate queries and processing natural language will become increasingly important. Microsoft's acquisition of Powerset, a so-called semantic search engine, could improve the way Live Search handles complicated queries, even though it's difficult to scale the computationally-intensive process of parsing text to the web and to all languages.
Google decided to remove the gadgets from the mobile homepage and place them in a separate iGoogle page. You still can't see all the gadgets from the desktop version of iGoogle, but your favorite feeds, the weather information and the Gmail summary no longer slow down the homepage.
Google Mobile Blog gives another reason why the mobile homepage will load faster: "when you navigate to google.com in your browser, we cache the homepage on your phone. If you bookmark this homepage, then returning to Google using the bookmark is almost instantaneous."
Since the homepage is now static and doesn't display personalized content, it can be cached indefinitely. Google chose to politely ask your browser to cache it for 1,209,600 seconds = 14 days.
But Google still wants to see how many people visit the mobile homepage and this is impossible if all the content is cached. That's why, the last element from the homepage is a tracking pixel, a 1x1 GIF image: http://www.google.com/m/ping?source=magmahome.
Google's mobile homepage, available at http://www.google.com/m, lets you add some of the gadgets from iGoogle: feeds, weather, stocks, Gmail and few other gadgets. While the homepage can be edited from your mobile phone, the interface is pretty difficult to use and it requires a lot of clicks. Now you can customize the mobile homepage from iGoogle's settings: rearrange the gadgets, delete the ones you don't use or add other mobile-compatible gadgets from your iGoogle page.
A better mobile version of iGoogle, optimized for iPhone, can be found at http://www.google.com/ig/i. This version includes all the gadgets from your iGoogle page and preserves many features from the desktop iGoogle.
Spanish news site Expansión 
After less than a year since 
Gmail's mobile client for BlackBerry has been updated and you can now download version 2.0.5 at 
Five months after the last released version, Google and the Open Handset Alliance publicly launched 
Google decided to remove the gadgets from 
