Topics: google
I guess Apple has some serious issues with Flash and vice versa as it appears that the iPhone might probably be the last hardware to have Flash running. Keeping that aside for now, HTC is all set to be the first cell phone manufacturer to bring Adobe Flash to the Android. This would make HTC to be among the first devices to let mobile users have complete access to web content based on Flash. The new device from HTC, HTC Hero will come loaded with Flash Lite 3.1, which will make it more interactive and have access to more than 80% of the online videos based on Flash. You can watch this in action here.
I always try my best to not contact customer care service of the large companies to report my problems, primarily because I hate to hear that voice shouting out what number to press to contact a particular officer. Isn’t there a more direct way? A way where I can directly contact the concerned person and move along? Well there is Fonolo, with its deep dialing feature. Simply browse through its directory on the website for the company you need to make a call to, browse and select the particular department you need to contact. You will be prompted to enter your number and once that is done your phone rings and you are connected to the right person. What’s more interesting is that you can make use of its app for the Android and do so directly via your phone. Simplifies all the problems and the agonizing moments you have to wait to get connected. That’s not it, Fonolo also offers a very new call history and notes about the calls you have made. Calling the startup useful will be undermining what it’s really worth and I happy that Abdur Binrsheed, Craig Gardner and John St. Jon have done a great job to bring it from the web to the Android based phones.
Google waved goodbye to Kevin Marks, the man who has been a key person behind almost every social initiative of the company. Those initiatives include Google Profiles, Orkut, to name a few. The reason for his exit is not yet known but I guess the man has called it quits just to build up on his experience and most probably take up an initiative of his own, perhaps a startup. I wonder how good was Google’s HR algorithm to test what employees will quit jobs.
While you and I may find it easy to recognize faces amongst the many in public or the locations we come across on the Web, but computers have a tough time. There has been some work done to improve facial recognition, Google has recently shown interest in teaching computers to recognize landmarks. With this researchers at Google put out a few pictures of an unnamed, untagged picture of a landmark and the system returned it with its locations and name. The system matched the photo with more than 40 million images stored at Picasa and Panoramio along with those found on Google Image Search. The system is pretty intelligent, given that it recognizes more than 50,000 landmarks with 80% accuracy, but to put it out to test it has to do even better primarily because the number of locations available, a 20% shortcoming is a lot more than one would want.
Google is out testing out a new way to put ads as it invites advertisers to try product ads. This would help users see photos, product info and prices of each item associated to your search. This wont necessarily alter the entire working of the site but provide companies a chance to have more choices when it comes to selling their items. This doesn’t sound something coming out of nowhere and I can bet Google must have been testing this for sometime, the idea? Well to post a threat to Amazon and more importantly Microsoft’s Bing; which is more than just useful when it comes to searching for products to shop for.
Google made some improvements to its search last month which included the wonder wheel. Today YouTube also got its own Wonder Wheel that adds a visual navigation to search. Simply type in your query and you can select the Wonder Wheel on the right side just beneath the advanced options. This follows the countless improvements that YouTube has made recently.
23andMe, the genetics testing startup that was founded by Sergey Brin‘s wife, Anne Wojcicki has scored another round of funding. The current round came from Google, bringing in $2.6 Million from the estimated $24.26 million it expects to raise in Series B. It has continued to grab funds beginning with a $9 million Series A round. The company helps consumers find information about their ancestry and predicting what diseases they might develop by analyzing their DNA.
Flipper is making its way out soon. No we aren’t talking about some fish or some Hollywood movie but a new product from Google. Google Flipper isn’t an entirely new concept, but more of an update to Google News and would enable users to browse through news by keywords, popularity of each news and how many recommendation each item has. The service isn’t active and reports state that it will even work on the iPhone.