Hoe verwijder ik de Google Background
Sinds vandaag hebben veel mensen een achtergrond op de Google-homepage. Het leidt behoorlijk af en de mooie witte achtergrond van Google vond ik gewoon beter. Je kunt de achtegrond verwijderen door de volgende pagina te bezoeken; http://www.google.com/ncr je wordt dan niet geredirect naar een country-page maar blijf op Google.com waar de achtergrond niet te zien is.
Can I call my colleague abroad?
The difficulty of working with colleagues all over the world is that you never know for sure whether they are still working, having dinner/lunch or even worse, whether they are still or are already awake. Google recently introduced a small change on their mobile search pages which allows you to search for “time in [city/country]” and get to know exactly what time it is over there;
Wondering if you should call your friend abroad? Search "time in [city/country]" from your phone to see if you'll be waking them up.
GoogleMobile
Google Mobile
I have to say that I am impressed with this small change. It isn’t a large innovation but it does give me the liberty of grabbing my mobile, quickly look up the location of my colleague or friend abroad, search for their time and give them a call or when it is not the appropriate time, drop them a note through email or twitter. Go Google!
Multitasking – iPhone vs Android
Since the moment I got my first iPhone (2G about 2yrs back now) I always missed the option of being able to run/open multiple applications at the same time. Now yes, it was possible to do this by jailbreaking your iPhone but that always put you on a sidetrack when a new update was rolled out. You just want something basic like that to be default on such a phone. A few updates and phones later, the iPhone still didn’t had multitasking capabilities. So very quickly I resorted to Android when the phone was announced and released to the public.
Android has the multitasking capability enabled by default and I have to say, it works like a charm (see the below screen captures) but it drains your battery.
Android on the Farm – Google’s April’s fool?
I can only think of “April’s Fool” when I read the following blogpost.
Between the developer lab world tour and finishing Professional Android 2, I haven’t had the chance to focus solely on building an Android app for far too long. It’s been great to work as part of the Google team to put together something which (I think) is pretty incredible. We’ve spent the last couple of days doing final testing in the English countryside. With that now completed, and the launch imminent, I’m going to stay a few days longer and take a well earned break. All will soon be revealed, but while you wait for the app to be available in the Market I thought you might enjoy some video clips I took during the development and testing process.Between the developer lab world tour and finishing Professional Android 2, I haven’t had the chance to focus solely on building an Android app for far too long. It’s been great to work as part of the Google team to put together something which (I think) is pretty incredible. We’ve spent the last couple of days doing final testing in the English countryside. With that now completed, and the launch imminent, I’m going to stay a few days longer and take a well earned break. All will soon be revealed, but while you wait for the app to be available in the Market I thought you might enjoy some video clips I took during the development and testing process.
Google Earth for Android
Google just released Google Earth for Android (a short video review can be found below) and I have to say, I am impressed. It was quite the download (5+Mb) but after it was installed, everything worked rather smooth and quick on my Nexus One. I am not sure how it would work on a device with less power (also can’t try this one) but they have done a terrific job! Note here; Google Earth for Android only runs on device with Android 2.1 or higher!
First using Google Earth, I was using the HSDPA (3G) network, after switching to the regular 2G-network, I noticed that Google Earth became quite lagging. This of course can be traced back to the fact that you are constantly downloading satellite imagery. As the latest Android 2.1 release also added multi-touch, you can now use your fingers to fly over the earth.
Besides the usual layers that Google nowadays offers in Earth and Maps, I noticed one other nice feature that allows you to also use the application offline (while you are disconnected from any data network). Google Earth stores some of the data on your mobile device and allows you to use that to still see some satellite imagery. Once you are connected again, a message appears that you are connected, you are able to navigate beyond the locally stored satellite imagery.
