Youth Curry - Insight on Indian Youth

Posted by Zak Cohen, Software Engineer, Google mobile team

When Joe Walnes showed off the shiny AJAX interface on the iPhone version of Picasa Web Albums I started thinking - can we make an AJAX interface work on new Windows Mobile devices? After all, Internet Explorer Mobile supports many of the advanced browser features that we used to build the iPhone version. Joe and I wanted to give it a try so we got to work. Today we’re pleased to tell owners of Windows Mobile 6 touchscreen devices that you can now enjoy a much faster and slicker way of browsing Picasa Web Albums on your phone.

Working with Windows Mobile also meant that we could add some cool features using the newly announced Google Gears for mobile, which gives web applications the ability to work even when there is no internet connection available. This means that you can view albums of your choice offline. Gears also lets you add a Picasa icon to your Program Files folder so you can have faster access to your favorite photos. If you’d like to learn more about how we leveraged Google Gears for mobile, watch Dion Almaer’s interview with Joe.

To try out Picasa Web Albums on your WinMo 6 touchscreen phone, just go to picasaweb.google.com on your Internet Explorer Mobile browser. Let us know what you think!

Posted by Andy McEwan, Software Engineer, Google mobile team

As a mobile user, you choose a carrier, subscription plan, platform and handset model (think of it as a flavour) that suits your fancy. And with mobile applications becoming more and more important in your everyday wireless experience, you want to be sure that the apps you know and love will run beautifully on the phone you finally decide to call your own.

That’s why we’ve just released a “native” UIQ version of our Google Maps for mobile client application. Native applications are optimized for the platform on which they’re built, meaning they run fast and feel right. UIQ is an open mobile software platform that supports rich user interfaces like touch- and full-screen. Now that Google Maps for mobile runs natively on UIQ for Symbian OS, you can get the full benefit of handy features like My Location on a wider range of phones.

You can already get Google Maps for mobile clients custom-built for Palm, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, iPhone, and Symbian S60, in addition to the widely-used Java version of the application. Now, this list includes the following UIQ handsets (version 3.0 and up): new Sony Ericsson phones with touch screens — P1, W960i, W950, M600 or P990 — and the Motorola Z8. And new UIQ phones are coming out all the time; look for the soon-to-be-released Sony Ericsson G700 and G900, as well as the Motorola Z10.

Supporting so many platforms means only one thing: whatever gold-plated, diamond-encrusted or mint-scented handset you choose, a zippy mobile mapping experience is never more than a download away. Just visit google.com/gmm from your phone’s web browser, and we’ll get you sorted.

By Robert Hamilton, Product Manager, Google mobile team

A few weeks ago, we launched a plug-in for Symbian devices that put a Google search shortcut onto the phone’s home screen. This shortcut reduces the time it takes for you to get answers from Google by eliminating the initial search steps (e.g. finding the browser application, opening it, and navigating to Google.com before entering your query). The same plug-in has been available for BlackBerry devices since last December. Today, we’re making this available for Windows Mobile devices too.

If you’re a Windows Mobile user, browse to mobile.google.com on your device to download the plug-in and start searching faster than ever. Once you do, we think you’ll find it so much faster and easier that you’ll start conducting more mobile web searches than you ever had before. How do we know this? Well, when we look at the combined usage numbers for BlackBerry and Symbian versions of this plug-in, we see that users are able to get Google search results up to 40 percent faster. And, BlackBerry and Symbian users with the plug-in installed search 20 percent more than those without it.

We saw something similar after we launched an updated interface for Gmail on the iPhone during MacWorld earlier this year. Lots of iPhone users tried the new interface (hence the bump in Gmail pageviews between January and February), but they didn’t stick around like we hoped they would. Over the course of the next few weeks, we made some tweaks to drastically improve the speed of the product, and Gmail pageviews on the iPhone not only stabilized, but began to rise, as the graph below shows:
This link between increased usage and a faster user experience — be it search or mobile Gmail — reinforces something we at Google have known for a long time: Fast is better than slow. With mobile applications, we’re seeing that fast is much better than slow. Although this may seem pretty intuitive, it’s always nice to see new data backing this up. Moving forward, we’ll continue to focus on bringing you the fastest and most compelling mobile experiences that we can. So stay tuned!

Posted by Charles Wiles, Product Manager, Google mobile team

Ever use a mobile web application and suddenly lose your cell connection? That’s happened to me many times. If you’ve shared my pain, you’ll be excited to know that we’ve launched Google Gears for mobile, which lets users access Gears-enabled mobile web apps offline. Initially available for Internet Explorer Mobile on Windows Mobile 5 and 6 devices, mobile web app developers have already started integrating Gears for mobile into their online services.

Take Zoho and Buxfer, for example: Zoho is a powerful suite of web-based productivity applications, while Buxfer is an innovative personal finance web application that helps you track your money. With Google Gears for mobile integrated into mobile Zoho and Buxfer, you can now access these web applications even when your phone is disconnected from the mobile web. Stuck on a plane? No problem — you can still read your docs on your mobile with Zoho Writer Mobile offline. Want to buy that new plasma TV, but can’t remember how much is in your account? Check your balance with Buxfer’s mobile web application, even if there is no cell phone signal. Try them out on your Windows Mobile 6 device by going to m.buxfer.com or mobile.zoho.com.

When you first access mobile Buxfer or Zoho Writer on your Windows Mobile device and go offline, you will be asked to install Google Gears for mobile. Once installed, Gears sits happily on your phone helping you stay connected to your data — even when you lose your network connection.

If you’re a developer who’s interested in creating mobile web applications using Google Gears for mobile you can find out more information on our developer site. Finally, if you’re not a Windows Mobile user, stay tuned — we’re working to roll out Google Gears for other platforms with capable web browsers, including Android.