Apple are notorious for scrutinizing every app submitted before it’s allowed into its store. Anything that even veers close to breaking one of the rules is shot back to the developer with a long list of things to change before the app will ever see the light of day.
How then, did an unofficial Google Wave app which actually uses the Wave logo and Google brand make it past the checks?
It comes from a small, one-man company called CLapps and it cost $.99 from the App Store. It enables you to use Google Wave on your iPhone in a more streamlined way than using wave.google.com on the Safari Browser.
However, it won’t be there for long. Google will undoubtedly insist that the the infringing app is removed post-haste from the app store. If it’s still there by the time you’re reading this piece then you may want to give it a go by downloading it here.
While this story is an interesting one because both Apple and Google have egg on their faces; the more prominent question should be as to why Google hasn’t launched their own Wave app and why very few people are finding Wave even slightly useful.
While Google are just so dominant in the search space its still a little hard to understand why they are keen to slowly add more and more to their search result pages. Ive always thought with search its all about simplicity and great results, thats it!
Google’s vice president of search product and user experience has said that Google will soon begin testing a new permanent sidebar on its results page. It seems that users are happy with this direction that Google is taking, and it would certainly help us filter through the giant pile of data from Google.
We have previously reported about the new Google Chrome OS here on Crenk, but today we wanted to show you a video of a full working demo and what it can do. Enjoy!
Google Wave has taken the online Google community by storm. For many months there was teasing from Google on the development of a collaboration tool that would tie into all of their existing Google Apps, and revolutionize how we communicate with our colleagues, community, and groups. The release of Google Wave was nothing less but…interesting.
Google Image Search is used by most of us when we want to find an image for our blogs our websites – or even our desktop wallpapers. I’d like to introduce to you a new type of image search (currently in Google Labs) called Image Swirl. It’s a new way of displaying search results and it make the whole process much easier and more…fun!
When you first search for a term, the results are divided up into categories and are all stacked together as shown below.
When you click on one of these stacks the results are shown in a swirl format like below. At first, only one circle is displayed but then you click on an image that circle is moved further down the swirl and a new circle appears. This process repeats itself until your left with a huge swirl of results and the main circle has only one image left in it. When you click on that you’re brought to that image’s page.
A cool new way of searching for images. Check it out here.
Yesterday, Google released public information about its new Chrome OS at the official press event. They showed videos of the OS and gave real-time demonstrations to reporters.
It looks a lot like the popular browser of the same name. It uses tabs like those in the browser instead of buttons in the task bar. The colour scheme is also very bright with a lack of colour. This may pose problems for laptop users in terms of battery life.
Here are a few screenshots to give you an idea:
I guess this would be the equivalent of the start menu in Windows. It’s called the applications panel and it’s where you launch programs from. May of these are affiliated with Google as you would expect such as YouTube, Google Reader and GMail however they also have others such as Facebook, Twitter and their old rival, Yahoo Mail.
The Chrome browser is integrated fully with the OS, as one would expect. Other Google services such as Google Talk also work seamlessly with it by launching discreet pop-ups and notifications when user interaction is needed.
Here is chess, an example of an app, running in a tab in the new OS. All apps can either run as a tab or can be viewed in full-screen.
There’s a lot of sites out there that offer collaboration tools. From the simplified office collaboration tools like Google Documents and Zoho Writer, to the more sophisticated like Basecamp. In the end each of them appeal to different markets, different segments of the industry and each of them function differently. So with those options we choose one that best fits our needs and we run with it. But what if there was a sexier option, something with real personality, but still maintaining all the same functionality?
Now there is. Introducing WIPspace, the creative collaboration tool that offers up multiple levels of engagement in a sleek, sexy, yet functional package. The image blow is a visual diagram of all the things WIPspace is capable of.
You feeling it yet? There’s real fire under this engine, and the multitude of offerings it has makes it a very robust package. Working on projects or movies, this space allows you to fully interact with off-site teams, and engage the client all at the same time.
Be sure to watch the videos and test drive it. Let us know what you think and how it compares with Basecamp or some of the other collaboration tools out there.
For the last year or so we’ve all be yammering one about the Google phone. It appears as though every Android device that has been released – the media flock to it looking for evidence of the Google.
Google have now announced that they will be launching a proper, pure, Google branded phone. It won’t carry the manufacturer brand or have the OS tinkered with. No. This is going to be Google’s version of the iPhone – 100% Google just the the iPhone is 100% Apple.
What can we expect?
I’ve given this some though and asides from the obvious high-speed internet access etc… I think the Google phone will be putting more of an emphasis on communication than the iPhone has – which is largely an organisational and app tool. Adequate video calling, perhaps? Most definitely it will be fully integrated with Google Voice for users in the US. Dare I say it; maybe even a mobile version of Google Wave? (at least then Wave would have a purpose).
Search has become a hot topic for the past year. Bing, Google, Yahoo, and others have fought for dominance and in this battle, users have been introduced to a bevy of innovations in their searches. The concept of search is nice, type in a few words, or phrases and find content directly related to your query. Some searches are more successful than others all the while introducing users to content across hundreds of thousands of pages. Still, most users will not go past the first two or three pages at most.
SurfCanyon strives to change the user’s search experience and focus not just on getting content, but becoming a tool for discovery. Much like a tool we spoke about some time ago, Worio, SurfCanyon attaches itself to your browser of choice and adds a target tab that allows for further discover of related content right from your normal search. The reason behind such an app is the fact that sometimes your content is not where you expect it. I with users not typically going past page 3, SurfCanyon will pull related content together for you and place it right under all the links you see on the first page.
You don’t just get deeper results, but as seen below you can dig even deeper into your results. This provides a real drill down experience for search discovery. This immersive search experience might be something you’ve been longing for. There’s lots of results to search through and the concept is to provide you answers for even the most complicated of queries.
Google’s Chrome OS project, first announced in July, will become available for download within a week.
Google has previously said they are working with Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba on the project. It is expected that Google will be very careful are launch and will only endorse a small set of devices for installation.
There has been a lot of news around the Google Chrome OS, including Linux OS and reports that it was going to launch back in October.
PC users have been able to use the Google Chrome browser for some time now, however for everyone using Macs they have been waiting patiently for their own non-developer version. Chrome day for the Mac is coming very soon.
CNET is reporting that recent discussion in a Chrome mailing list points to an early December launch. We could be just weeks away from a beta version of Chrome for Mac.
The Google group update in question is light on details, but by requesting that developers update to support Browser Actions, it also suggests that a December launch date for a Mac version is fast approaching.
Google Chrome’s product manager, Nick Baum, writes:
“The extensions team has been working hard to get BrowserActions ready, and
they’re already working great on Windows and Linux. We’ve noticed that many
of you have updated your extensions to take advantage of the new UI. We’d
like to encourage the rest of you to do so as well!
Why make the switch now? The earlier you switch, the more time you will have
to polish your experience for our Beta launch in early December. We realize
this means dropping Mac support for a couple of weeks, but we already have
people working on that. If you prioritize the Windows and Linux versions,
we’ll bring you cross-platform parity as soon as we can!”
The post provides an interesting clue to the future of Google Chrome for Mac. We can only hope the early December beta launch date is accurate.
The other day here on Crenk with did a post about the major Internet giant Google buying AdMob - a mobile advertiser and we predicted that internet advertising was due to come up. Well it seems like it most definitely has – thanks to search.
Google reported the first rise in advertising revenue in over two quarters. The third quarter of 2009 stabilized the sector. However, as I mentioned above it was all due to the advertisements in the search results pages not so much the advertisements on websites.
While this is good news it’ll still be a while until the other advertisers such as AOL, Yahoo! and Microsoft recover from the recession – these being the weakest of the search engines.
So it appears that the advertisements on web pages still aren’t doing as good as what they used to simply because there are less ‘big’ companies using them. As such, people don’t want to click on them. Crenk’s advice for bloggers and webmasters? Use Google AdSence to put advertisements on your website’s search page!
Apple are notorious for scrutinizing every app submitted before it’s allowed into its store. Anything that even veers close to breaking one of the rules is shot back to the developer with a long list of things to change before the app will ever see the light of day.
Yesterday, Google released public information about its new Chrome OS at the official press event. They showed videos of the OS and gave real-time demonstrations to reporters.
There’s a lot of sites out there that offer collaboration tools. From the simplified office collaboration tools like 
