Posts Tagged ‘app’

Google has added new personalization features to Reader, its RSS feed aggregator, the company wrote in a blog post Thursday.

One new feature is dubbed Popular Items. Using algorithms, Reader will “find top-rising images, videos and pages from anywhere (not just your subscriptions).” From there, the app will lump all those pieces in the new Popular Items section. Based on a user’s subscriptions and what someone is reading, Reader orders those stories by what it thinks a person likes best.

Reader’s recommendations have been moved to the app’s Explore section. Google also renamed it Recommended Sources. Like before, that feature will employ the user’s Reader Trends and Web History to find a list of feeds he or she might like.

To make it easier for users to find the information they’re most likely to care about, all Reader feeds now feature a sort option called Magic. According to Google, Magic “reorders items in the feed based on your personal usage, and overall activity in Reader, instead of default chronological order.” Google said that the ranking is tailored to the user. The more the user clicks the “like” and “share” buttons on stories, the better the Magic sort will be.

Here is the Magic setting in action:

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Voice over Internet Protocol service provider Vonage on Monday announced that it has launched its first mobile apps for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and BlackBerry devices.

Dubbed Vonage Mobile, the company’s free VoIP app enables users to place international calls from their mobile devices. iPod Touch owners can do so by placing calls through Wi-Fi. BlackBerry owners will transmit calls over the cellular network only. iPhone owners will be able to place calls from Wi-Fi or through AT&T’s network.

According to Vonage, its app will help users save up to 50 percent on international calling charges levied by carriers. After downloading the app, users need to enter an international number. They can also select a call recipient from their existing iPhone or BlackBerry contacts list. Those who receive calls will see the user’s cell phone number on their caller IDs. Charges will be taken against the user’s credit card, which they need to input when they first start using the app.

For now, Vonage is offering per-minute rates. The company said in a statement that by the end of the year, it will offer the Vonage World plan to users. Vonage World for home users currently allows them to make calls to more than 60 countries for $24.99 per month.

Vonage’s app launch comes on the heels of controversy over whether Google’s similar Voice app should have been denied access to Apple’s App Store. The debate still rages on.

Vonage’s new mobile app is available now in Apple’s App Store and Research In Motion’s BlackBerry App World. Both versions are free.

Source :

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-10367280-17.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

If your office has given you a BlackBerry for work purposes, you may soon be accessing your Google Apps Gmail, calendar, and contacts via the BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

On Friday, Google announced that some functionality in Google Apps, its suite of premium enterprise-level applications, will now give company-issued BlackBerrys some push and sync functionality.

The Google Apps Connector promises to push Gmail messages within 60 seconds, and sync in-box actions like assigning labels and archiving messages. You’ll also be able to search contacts from the company’s global address list, a huge bonus for mobile workers. Synchronization between the Google Calendar and the BlackBerry calendar is one-way in this release, with Google’s calendar populating your schedule on the phone. Google plans to include bidirectional calendar syncing in the future.

While the connector opens up syncing to some of the Google Apps, in this iteration it does not sync with Google Docs, the intranet site-hosting app called Google Site, and Google Video. You’ll still be able to view content through the mobile browser, however.

The Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server (download) is available for free to corporate Google Apps Premier and Education Editions customers, and must be implemented by an IT administrator.

Check out more details in this Google blog post.

Source :

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10315236-2.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

CNETNews Corporate BlackBerrys to get Google Apps syncing http://bit.ly/DoKeS

On August 11, Randi Levin, the chief information officer of the city of Los Angeles, stood before City Council members at a hearing of the information technology committee and made her case for why the nation’s second-largest city should adopt Google Apps.

“The ability to get whatever information the city needs, whenever they need it, on whatever device they need it on will fundamentally change the way the city works and enhance productivity greatly,” she said. “In a fiscal crisis it is difficult to find technology solutions that will save money without requiring a significant capital outlay to achieve those objectives.”

Security concerns have kept many government agencies and large corporations away from Google Apps. That is starting to change. A number of small U.S. cities are using the suite and there are Google Apps pilots in more than a dozen federal agencies. If Los Angeles signs on, it would join the District of Columbia as one of the largest government adoptions.

Full Story…

http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10313846-245.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

Source :

CNETNews Los Angeles gets its Google Apps groove http://bit.ly/4ptPH3

When you want to listen to music from your computer or your friends’ collections on your iPhone, Simplify Music is one solution. On Wednesday, Simplify Media introduced a similar iPhone application called Simplify Photo, which provides the same service for pictures rather than songs.

After logging in, Simplify Photo for iPhone ($0.99) talks to the Simplify Media application on your desktop (download for Windows | Mac | Ubuntu). So long as you have the newest version installed (2.5), and the photo-sharing element selected (configure in the Options menu), you’ll be able to view the photos in your network. Networked images can include pictures from your multiple computers, and those that friend son your Simlify network have given permission to see.

The initial syncing will take a few minutes. After that, you’ll see a list of shared computers. Tap to see options and tap again to view photos by timeline, places (geotagged images show on a Google map), folders, events, albums, and faces, when available. You can also search for a specific photo in a search field.

Simplify Photo’s media is view-only for now; though ideally the app would also open up iPhone photos for computer viewing and friends. You can swipe through images in the viewer or can play a slideshow. As a perk, you can also save the picture locally to the iPhone. Unfortunately, and unlike the desktop viewer, Simplify Photo doesn’t yet rotate images by 90 degrees. The interface could also use some prettying up.

However, Simplify Photo is functional for existing Simplify Media users looking to view friends’ pictures, or their own, remotely.

Source :

http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-10312526-12.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

Even though Apple prevented it from listing Google Voice on the iPhone App Store, Google is planning on retooling the application as a Web-based app, according to The New York Times.

In David Pogue’s Friday column regarding the ongoing saga of Apple and Google Voice, he reveals that Google has already found a loophole:

Full Story…

CNETNewsReport: Google Voice to be retooled as Web app for iPhone http://bit.ly/kFai0