Keep your starred items in sync with Google Maps

(cross-posted with Google LatLong Blog)

Google Maps for mobile has long allowed you to add stars on a map to mark your favorite places. You may have noticed a few months ago that Google Maps for desktop browsers introduced the ability to star places as well. Unfortunately, there was no way to keep these starred places in sync with Google Maps on your phone. With today's release of Google Maps for mobile 3.3 on Windows Mobile and Symbian phones, you'll now be able to keep the starred places on your phone and on your computer completely synchronized. It's like magic, but magic that you can use. Let me show you how:

My colleague Andy is at his desk right now, and he wants to check out some comedy in London tonight. Google Maps lists the 4th result as Upstairs at the Ritzy -- it sounds like a great spot: cheap, fun and comfortable. With one click, Andy stars the item and he's done. When he walks out of the office and turns on Google Maps on his Nokia phone, Upstairs at the Ritzy will be the top place in his list of Starred Items, and it will show up as a star on his map. From there he can call the theater, get walking directions, or even SMS the address to a friend.

Starring on Google Maps for desktop computers and Google Maps for mobile

Starring places also works great when you're out on the town and you find cool spots using your phone. I was in Paris with my wife recently. We visited the obvious tourist spots like la tour Eiffel and le Musée du Louvre, but we also found a few interesting places we hadn't expected. While wandering the streets of Paris, we stumbled upon a cafe...the sort of place you'll remember forever, but immediately forget the name. I started Google Maps on my Nokia phone, searched for the name of the cafe (Les Philosophes) and starred it, knowing that when I come back to Google Maps on my computer at home, it will be starred, right there, on my map. How cool is it to create a trail of interesting places from your phone?!

For users upgrading from an older version of Google Maps for mobile, you'll be asked, when you log in, whether you'd like to synchronize your existing starred items with your Google Account. This means you can preserve all the work you've put into customizing your map on your mobile, and have it show up, conveniently, in Google Maps in your desktop browser.

To enjoy the benefits of all this mobile synchronization goodness, download Google Maps for mobile for your Symbian or Windows Mobile phone by visiting m.google.com/maps in your mobile browser. And don't worry, we're busy building this same functionality into our other mobile versions of Google Maps -- so sit tight.

Posted by Flavio Lerda and Andy McEwan, Software Engineers

Samsung Omnia II - Upgrade many feature

The next version of the famous smartphone Samsung Omnia, Omnia II has many improvements in design, features and configuration upgrades.

Samsung keep the playing field touch-screen phone with the Samsung Omnia II (another name is i8000), a next version of the smartphone Omnia was sold last year. Was released, the Omnia II, sold together weekly with "brothers" Omnia HD at the time II/2009 .


Design table format as Omnia, the Omnia II is larger and thinner than the "predecessor" Omnia, 118x59, 6x11, 9mm, weighs 117g (Omnia is the 122g). Front and back are glossy black, some details such as chromium-plated keys, or camera ... not only help your skin beautiful but also enhance the aristocratic. However, as most phone products other shiny shell, the shell of Omina II as easy "start" fingerprint, making the device is lost the ball seven partly inherent beauty.

Beyond most other smartphones have similar design and other famous, wide-screen Omnia II to 3.7 " use Amoled technology, 65,000 colors, quality, good display, even when using under the sun. Amoled fact was used in many Samsung mobile phone models have touch screens recently. This technology has several advantages compared with TFT monitors, the most visible is the ability to save electricity. Omina II is one of the new smartphone uses Samsung TouchWiz interface touch 2.0, this is an upgraded version of TouchWiz many improvements related to the widget, in addition to the interface is nice and responsive than ... Like the Samsung Omnia, Omnia II using the operating system (OS) Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional. Vibration feedback technology is also integrated in the touch interface of this new product.

Omnia II full connection and good design

Omnia II 5 megapixel camera with flash LED dual use technology, auto focus mode ... Quality photos through a good test. Those who preferred mobile entertainment can also listen to FM radio, music player with many different formats such as MP3 / e-AAC + / WMA / WMDRM / OMA DRM February 1; movies format: DivX/XviD/MP4/H .263/H.264/WMV ... support these functions have 3.5 mm headphone jack port, microSD card slot (card can be "hot" but after the opening), Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP and micro USB port ... With Internet connection, users can use Wi-Fi or 3G (HSDPA, 7.2 Mbps).

With Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional operating system, users can also use a lot of Internet applications and office applications on familiar Omnia II. For example, Pocket Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, PDF viewer), web browsing, e-mail ... Especially, since built several widgets online such as Facebook, AccuWeather, YouTube, CNN mobile, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo oneSearch, Google Maps, Google Mail ... Omnia II helps users easily connect to popular applications without need through a web browser, complex and time consuming.

Omnia II uses Samsung S3C6410 667MHz processor, internal memory allows users to choose a 2, 8, and 16 GB, machine use 256 MB RAM. This configuration showed stronger than II Omnia Omnia ... The time spent by battery manufacturers for the 420 hours of standby time, 10 hours for talk time, these are impressive figures compared to many smartphone models have design equivalent.

Using real-time, Omnia II allows listening to music with headphones continuously within 16 hours.

You can find to buy in Amazon here : Samsung I8000 Omnia II Unlocked Phone with 8 GB Memory 5 MP Camera, Windows Mobile, GPS, Wi-Fi--International Version No Warranty (Black)

Google Search by voice: Now in Times Square!

If you've been to Times Square in New York City over the past couple weeks, on any day from 12:30-2:00pm or 6:30-8:00pm, you may have noticed that Google Search by voice is powering Times Square's largest combined displays -- the Reuters Sign and the NASDAQ sign. Anyone can call 888-376-4336 and say the name of a business or a location that they want to search for, like "museum of modern art" or "pizza". Then, the query and local search results from Google will appear on one of the two electronic billboards. This is all part of Verizon's "Droid Does" campaign and has been developed in partnership with Reuters and R/GA, a digital advertising agency.

On Black Friday, Times Square's gigantic interactive search-by-voice demo will be running for 20 hours straight. So if you're in the area and have a chance to take a break from your shopping, or if you want to see your next shopping destination displayed on a Google map on the huge signs, give the demo a try and let us know what you think. And for those of you that aren't in Manhattan on that day, you can still watch the action via webcam.

I flew out to New York last week to try it myself. R/GA gave me a behind-the-scenes tour of the setup, and I was impressed by how they pulled this off. A caller's voice is sent through the phone system, directly into a small farm of real Droids running voice search that are connected to the big outdoor electronic displays! R/GA developers made use of the Android voice recognition API just like any Android developer can.

It's been quite a ride for the search by voice team -- from launching on the iPhone about a year ago, to our launches on BlackBerry and Android, and on S60 in Mandarin Chinese, to powering billboards in Times Square. We're thankful for the chance to work on technology that excites us and that can help more of you search faster and more easily on your phone. And we hope you've been noticing the ongoing improvements in the accuracy of our voice recognition. We can't wait to show you what we have in store for next year.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Posted by Mike LeBeau, Senior Software Engineer

Discovery Samsung ST550 and ST500

Two models ST500 and ST550 as "lead" in the line of sight taken with the camera dual screen. In particular, ST550 as "experts" on portraits with lots of features just fun, just new

ST 550 with good features

In the box around part of the women, ST550 are compact. It only 3 buttons: on / off, zoom and capture, are located on the surface. Zoom button as the machine's gotten a bit small and not very sensitive capture button, quiet. Left controls are designed by Samsung touch screen 3.5 "(1.152 million pixels) occupied almost the entire surface computer. 3.5 "screen is very sharp, clear and clear. Metal chassis for front glass and India, and hidden beneath a thick screen extra 1.5 "is next to Schneider Kreuznach lens with the German language with the ability to 4.6 x optical zoom (equivalent to 27 to 124.2 mm) . ST550 more attractive thanks to the way point purple highlights on glossy black background and the details are recorded very little meticulous, delicate. Notably computer use Li-ion battery and SD memory card support up to 8GB capacity.

Point - tilt

ST550 different things to do with other camera is 3 elements: dual screen, touch controls and motion sensors. To screen 1.5 "front, you absolutely can capture, create the layout is easy. In addition to display the preview, this screen also displayed a countdown timer when shooting. One other interesting feature is the screen will display images fun to attract the gaze of the young lens. Instead of the cumbersome system buttons, interface with sensors to adjust the ST550 very convenient, sensitive, easy to use. You easily switch shooting modes, adjusting speed, aperture, white balance, toggle flash ... very quickly just through touch screen. For example, when reviewing images, if you do not like the picture just slash (X) to which they are asked immediately whether you want to delete. Monitor 1.5 "front also features touch, you just tap on it to enable display. ST550 is carried in the chip to identify their movement to enhance interaction with the user.

ST500 as "experts" on portraits with lots of features just fun

You just tilt the machine slightly left or right, it will display the previous or next image; steam back to the screen to add the "Favorite" for a photo, slightly face down the screen to add "Protect" anti-clear images ... Besides the three unique features, ST550 also has many preset shooting modes and the ability to recognize faces very impressive. In addition to identifying face while shooting, ST550 also identify the photographs and to filter out faces in the picture to form the "Face list. Therefore, the ability to see out sequentially, see the "Favorite", you can review photos by face somehow (however, your process takes about 3 seconds). ST550 meet the new features of the sight-line camera shooting today: anti-red eye, optical anti-shake (OIS) and anti-vibration number (DIS), many pre-defined mode, film-quality HD (720p ), taking fully automatic (smart auto) or taking the option to speed, aperture, edit photos right on with more interesting stuff ...

Quality

Is designed for portraits should show ST550 color and very fine food, partly thanks to the ability to handle "late" filter. Images in, clear and fresh with light when shooting outdoors, shade, indoors. HP focus faster, download flash fast, sharp images are both central and edge images. However, the ST550 is not proved suitable for taking photos at night or lack of lighting conditions without lights: difficult to focus (can not do bright lights help gain right center frame), susceptible to interference particles.

HD video recording capability is very impressive, clear picture, with sharp definition 1280x720 (720p) at a speed of 15 frames / s. It can zoom while recording but when zoom lost hours. Samsung ST550's bold nature and technology, is one of the cameras capture the first-sight technology using "finger pointing" and motion sensors. If your favorite type of portraits and looking for a machine for hobby shooting watching this very worthwhile ST550.

You can refer to :

Samsung 12MP Dig Camera 5X Opt 3 In LCD Red

Get movie trailers and more with Google Search for mobile

Heads up, movie fans -- today we've launched a mobile version of our new Google Search results for movies, which makes it easier to plan a trip to the movies. Just go to google.com in the web browser on your iPhone, Palm WebOS, or Android-powered device, search for "movies", and then tap on the "More movies" link. From there, you can either browse a list of movies or select the "Theaters" button to browse a list of theaters near you.

Our new movie listings page now includes buttons to play trailers right on your phone, ratings and categories, movie posters, upcoming showtimes, and a concise list of the nearest theaters and their distances from you. We keep information on this page succinct so you can quickly browse through shows and showtimes to help you decide which movie to see. If you want more details about a specific movie, just touch the poster or movie title and you'll see our new movie details page that has a synopsis of the movie, a more detailed list of showtimes, the cast and crew, and pictures. Watch our trailer for a quick demo:



When you browse by theater, you'll see a map of the theaters nearest to you. Then, just tap on the link to any particular theater to see what shows are playing there and what times they're playing. Of course, you can also search for specific movies or theaters and see their listings right away. Try searching for recent movies like "New Moon" or "Where the Wild Things Are" or search for "glendale 18 los angeles".

If you enjoy searching for movies with Google nearly as much as we have during testing, then this will be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Our new search results for movies are available in English in the US, UK, Canada, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. As always, let us know your feedback. This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

Posted by Nick Fey, User Experience Designer, Google mobile team

The Iterative Web App: A new look for Gmail and Google mobile web apps

On April 7th, we announced a new version of Gmail for mobile for iPhone and Android-powered devices. Among the improvements was a complete redesign of the web application's underlying code which allows us to more rapidly develop and release new features that users have been asking for, as explained in our first post. We'd like to introduce The Iterative Webapp, a series where we will continue to release features for Gmail for mobile. Today: A new look for our buttons and toolbars.

Some of you noticed and asked us about recent changes we made to Gmail for mobile and a few of our other mobile web apps. If you use the web browser to access Gmail, Latitude, Calendar, or Tasks on your Android-powered device or iPhone, you'll see that we freshened up the look of the buttons and toolbars.

We never want the buttons and toolbars of Google apps to compete with your content; rather, they should complement them. So the headers and buttons are now darker, to better show the content of your emails and calendar entries.

We also made the all the buttons a bit larger, for easier button-tapping.

To try these apps yourself, point your mobile browser to Gmail (gmail.com), Calendar (google.com/calendar), Latitude (google.com/latitude), Tasks (gmail.com/tasks), or just go to google.com from you phone and find all these web apps under the 'more' link.

Is this an improvement? Let us know what you think.

by Charles Warren, User Experience Designer, Google Mobile

Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server now connects businesses of all sizes

(Cross posted from the Google Enterprise Blog)

When we launched the Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry® Enterprise Server in August, we focused on addressing the needs of companies operating their own BlackBerry Enterprise Servers, typically supporting a couple hundred BlackBerry smartphone users per server.

Of course, companies of all sizes are adopting Apps, and their needs for supporting BlackBerry smartphones are as diverse as their businesses. So today we're making it easier for companies large and small to manage their BlackBerry smartphones and save money.

With Google Apps Connector for BES version 1.5, large businesses can now support 500 BlackBerry devices per server, double the previous number. This lets them serve more users with fewer servers.

Small businesses get more flexibility too. The Apps Connector now supports BlackBerry Professional Software, which is designed for up to 30 BlackBerry smartphones. We've also made it possible for a single BlackBerry Enterprise Server to serve users in multiple Google Apps domains, enabling low cost hosting services to be offered by our hosting partners.

Stay tuned for more announcements from partners offering hosting services for Apps customers with BlackBerry smartphones. In the meantime, we're going to continue to make it easier for you to manage mobile devices of all types with Google Apps.

Posted by Zhengping Zuo, Software Engineer and Darrell Kuhn, Site Reliability Engineer