With the Nexus 7, Google Aims to Dominate Post-PC Personal Computing

Google I/O was last week. While I didn’t attend, I did follow it closely at a Google I/0 Extended event at Google’s San Francisco offices where I watched both keynotes and a number of the tech sessions on the big screen. The most signifigant announcement of I/0 was the $199.99 (for the 8GB version) Nexus 7 tablet. It out-specs all the other 7 inch tablets in the market by a significant margin. I expect the Nexus 7 will quickly become the best … Continue reading

Thematic (In)Consistency Hall of Shame No. 5 – Google+

!= Thematic Consistency is the principle that a web link should serve essentially the same information to all browsers. Adapting content to better fit the target platform is good but redirecting requests for a specific image or news item to your site’s homepage spoils the user’s experience and discourages them from using or linking to your site or web service. Sites that break thematic consistency get a place of honor in the WapReview Thematic (In)consistency Hall of Shame. The latest honoree is … Continue reading

Google Acquires Motorola, Spoils TabCo Launch

Today was supposed  to be TabCo‘s big day when the curtains were pulled back to reveal a new tablet manufacturer whose  revolutionary product would relegate Apple and Android to the dustbin. Well Google apparently had other ideas (not really, I don’t think they care a wiff about TabCo) and annouced their intent to aquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billon. Make no mistake, the Google Motorola deal is strictly about getting a hold of Motorola’s portfolio of 17, 000 patents. That combined with Google’s existing 7, 500 … Continue reading

Google I/O – Music, Movies and Ice Cream Sandwich

I wasn’t able to get into Google I/O this year. I wasn’t the only one, the two day developer event in San Francisco, which is limited to 5000 attendees in San Francisco, sold out in 59 minutes. In response to the enormous demand, Google set up over 110 free Google I/O Extended live viewing parties around the world where the keynotes and selected sessions are shown on the big screen. At the I/O keynote Vic Gundotra announced that the I/O … Continue reading

Google’s New AdSense Mobile WebApp

If you use Google’s AdSense platform to to serve ads on your desktop or mobile sites you can now check your earnings with your mobile browser. Google’s new AdSense Mobile web interface opens up to show your current day’s earnings, total unpaid earnings and the amount of your last payment. You can also pull up graphs showing your daily earnings for the last 7 or 30 days or for the current or previous months as well as any custom reports … Continue reading

Use the iPhone Google Reader, Calendar, Talk and Gmail WebApps on Symbian

Asri al-Baker at i-Symbian.com has put together a set of  Web Runtime Apps that let you use the iPhone versions of the Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar and Google Reader WebApps on Symbian phones. The Asri’s pps are essentially bookmarks which launch the GoogleWebApps in the Nokia browser. But they several advantages over normal browser bookmarks. For one, they have nice icons and look rather smart sitting in your Application folder or a Symbian^3 Shortcuts Widget on your home screen. Plus … Continue reading

Google Finance Mobile Web Update Is Broken On Many Platforms

A new iOS and Android optimized mobile web version of Google Finance ( www.google.com/m/finance)  was launched a couple of weeks ago.  It looks (image above, left) and works great on the target devices and also on my Samsung Wave Bada phone,which I used to create the screen shots. However, the update has made mobile web version of Finance unusable for anyone using anything else.Visiting the site with Opera Mini, Opera Mobile or Symbian Webkit still brings up the legacy version … Continue reading