Google Earth is now available for Android, but what sucks is, it’s available for Android 2.1 only. That means anyone who’s not using Nexus One won’t be able to install it, including Droid users. According to Google, this is their fastest mobile version of Google Earth yet, with a smooth framerate and 800 x 480 resolution. Google Earth for Android also contains the Roads layer, which lets you get a better sense of where you are with road labels drawn on top of the satellite imagery.
Google Earth also supports voice commands. With Google Earth for Android, Google has brought together Google Search by voice with the power of Google Local Search to make it easier than ever to navigate the globe and find whatever you are looking for. As with other versions of Google Earth, you can also browse photos, places, and local businesses.
I don’t understand why they can’t release it for Android 2.0. As reported in the web, it seems like Google gives special preference to Nexus One owners before they release it to others? Next step, release Android 2.2+ to Nexus One owners and any new application released after that will support Android 2.2+ only and others won’t get Android 2.2+ for few months?
Did Google change their search result page? When I did my search today, I got the result as shown below instead of the usual Google search page. I have seen this test layout before, but I’m not sure if it’s changed or Google is doing some random test.
Motorola announced in it’s Facebook page (picture below) that it’ll start rolling out Android 2.1 upgrade for Droid starting this week. It’s a good news. This will bring Droid to the same level as Google Nexus One on the software side. Android 2.1 got some good new features like Live Wallpaper, new widgets, speech to text enabled for most of the applications, Google Earth Apps for Android 2.1, Multiple accounts in the inbox, five home screens instead of 3, Cooliris – a new cool photo viewing app etc.
Update: Motorola now says the update is coming soon, but not this week.
Posted 05 Feb 2010 — by Arun Category Announcement
Mozilla Messaging team has released the 1st alpha version of Mozilla Thunderbird 3.1 code named Lanikai. I’m using Thunderbird 3.0 since it was released and I like it. I like the tabbed interface. The only irritating problem I have is with the folders that Thunderbird created under Archives for my GMail accounts. Even if I read the emails under my inbox, the archive folder doesn’t get refreshed and when a new email comes, I get new email notification with multiple email subjects. This is pretty irritating and I have no idea how to stop it unless I go and click each individual mails under Archives. I also would like to see the compose window open in a new tab instead of a new window.
Lanikai Alpha 1 is built on top of the Gecko 1.9.2 platform. Here are some important changes in Thunderbird 3.1 alpha 1.
Several improvements to IMAP.
Several fixes for Smart Folders, message filters, and attachment handling.
Several design improvements and corrections to the interface.
Download Manager is now accessible as a menu item (Tools > Saved Files).
Stability and memory improvements.
If you want to give it a try, read the known issues in this release, below.
All Systems
If you are using the Kaspersky Anti-Spam Extension, it is disabled in Lanikai Alpha 1. The Kaspersky Anti-Spam Extension will support Thunderbird 3 in their next version.
If you use or had previously used the master password feature, you may be prompted to enter your master password when you first start up Lanikai.
Your passwords are stored in a new location. If you go back to using a Thunderbird 2, or switch back and forth between Lanikai and Thunderbird 2, your password lists do not get updated.
Searching your emails is case sensitive for languages other than English.
If using SSL or TLS, and the certificate that comes from the server is self-signed, expired, or has a domain that does not match the server domain, a dialog will be shown asking if Thunderbird should permanently make an exception for the cert. This should only be done if the error is understood.
The extended columns in the folder pane were removed in Thunderbird 3 Beta 1. There is an add-on that restores this functionality.
The compact header view was removed in Thundebird 3 Beta 3. There is an extension that offers similar functionality.
Some Thunderbird 2 users upgrading to Lanikai may not be able to login to their smtp server because the secure authentication setting maybe turned on but not supported by the smtp server. Check your smtp server settings in Tools -> Account Settings -> Outgoing Server, and edit the smtp server with the issue. If use ’secure authentication’ is checked, uncheck it and try again.
Lanikai requires that extensions either come from a secure server using the HTTPS protocol or are digitally signed, or they will fail to install.
If you are unable to view content for your RSS feeds in the Wide View Layout, you may need to disable the Lightning Calendar add-on if you have it installed or switch to Classic View and restart Thunderbird.
Some emails sent in Plain Text may move the message and some of the buttons out of the message pane. Open the message in a New Tab, resize the window, or change your layout to Classic View or Wide View to view the message.
When working Offline, if you compose an email and select ‘Send Later’, your message may not be sent if you reconnect automatically to the Internet. You will need need to manually resend the email from your Drafts folder.
In some cases, using ‘Save As Template’ from the File menu may not work. You can still Save As Template from the email Compose window or drag the message into the Template folder.
Microsoft Windows
The keyboard shortcut for ‘Mark All Read’ has changed from Ctrl+Shift+C to Shift+C.
Google is releasing an over the air update to Nexus One phones which includes multi touch functionality which lets users pinch to zoom mechanism in the phone’s browser, gallery and map applications. Other updates include:
1. Updates to Google Goggles
2. Google Maps will be updated to version 3.4 which includes
Starred items synchronized with maps.google.com
Search suggestions from your personal maps.google.com history
Night mode in Google Maps Navigation
3. 3G connectivity fix.
I hope they will add the multi touch to Droid also.
Chromium project has laid out the UI concept for Chrome OS tablet. The UI is pretty similar to iPad. Here are some possibilities that might be explored:
Keyboard interaction with the screen: anchored, split, attached to focus.
Launchers as an overlay, providing touch or search as means to access web sites.
Contextual actions triggered via dwell.
Zooming UI for multiple tabs
Tabs presented along the side of the screen
Creating multiple browsers on screen using a launcher
Canonical’s Rick Spencer announced in a mailing list that Yahoo is going to be the default search provider in Firefox starting with Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx. The change is due to the revenue sharing pact that Canonical has reached with Yahoo. In other words, Yahoo is paying Ubuntu to increase the traffic for Microsoft’s search engine Bing, which is the search provider for Yahoo and against whom Ubuntu is competing in the desktop and server market.
I’m not totally against the deal. I’m happy as long as Canonical can make money with Ubuntu, so they can pay their developers better and invest more in Ubuntu, but I don’t want Ubuntu to help Bing gain market share in the search market. I would have been much happier if Yahoo was using their own search engine as they used to and Canonical made pact with Yahoo.
Having said that, users can always change their default search provider back to whatever they were using before. The Firefox’s default home page will switch to whatever the default search engine is.
Larva Labs has introduced a new Android Apps called SlideScreen. According to Larva Labs, the purpose is to create an intelligent home screen that creates a meaningful hierarchy out of a user’s information. The Apps displays messages/information from various sources like your email, Tweets, text messages, calendar, Google Reader, stocks etc. You can scroll through those information and each source has a color coded side bar to indicate it’s a tweet or it’s an email etc. A center bar divides the personal messages and appointments from news, stock and more general information. By moving the bar, you can see less or more personal information. You can also completely hide the personal information by moving the central bar all the way up.
Most of the information on the SlideScreen has icons to their right, which when long pressed will open the respective applications. The central bar also shows the weather information, which users can flip through to get weather, date and time for different cities. A micro forecast gives a compact indication of the week ahead.
SlideScreen is available in the Android Market in two forms, an ad-supported free version and the Pro version for $6.99. I’m not sure if I would go for it. Though it shows useful information in your main screen, it makes the phone look more like older version of text only OSes rather than recent Icon(ic) OSes. It also lacks Facebook and Google Talk integrations. I might give the free version a try once they add those 2 services and if I feel it’s quite useful, I might buy the paid version.
Google has introduced a new feature in their mobile search page, an ability to search based on your location. The feature is called “Near me now” which you would see under the search box when you visit Google home page in your mobile browser. Clicking on that will give you an option of exploring places right next to where you are at that time and also a list of categories to choose from. By selecting Explore right here, it will show you a list of places around you including restaurants, coffee shops , museums etc. or you can select what you want by selecting from the list of categories it presents.
“Near me now” is currently available in US for iPhone and Android version 2.0.1 or higher. You have to enable the location under privacy settings in the browser. You can access the privacy setting by clicking on the 2nd bottom touch button in Droid (note type icon) and selecting more and then selecting settings. I didn’t see the “Near me now” option when I enabled the location and closed and reopened the Google page couple of times. I finally got it when I selected the Refresh option. It’s cool.
Unlike iPhone, Android doesn’t let you install the applications to the SD card. All apps are stored in the built in ROM which is limited to few hundred megabytes. I have only 150MB left for apps. This restriction creates problems for developers since they can’t develop applications or high quality games that might take several hundred megabytes. This is one of the reason why Android market doesn’t have quality games or graphic intensive applications.
Google announced in yesterday’s Nexus One event that the storage limit for Apps will be lifted and Apps developers can use the SD card to store the applications similar to iPhone. The applications will be encrypted in the SD card. Google has not yet announced when this would happen. I believe it might be few months before that happens and I’m not sure how long the carriers would take to pass on the update. I hope Google will do it fast.
