Feb 11

Google says its New privacy policy complies with FTC Settlement

Posted in Internet Content

Google is rebutting charges that its new privacy policy violates a settlement it moved with federal regulators lastly year.

The Internet search giant said the U.S. Federal Craft Commission that its policy complies with the settlement, granting to a self-assessment report the companionship handed over in January.

The report, obtained by Politico Friday, says Google has got to exceptional lengths to tell its users what data it harvests and what it does with it.

Google descended charges lastly year that it violated privacy polices by exposing Gmail users’ personal info when rolling away its now-defunct Google Buzz social networking service. The breach prompted an angry backlash from consumers and privacy advocates who enunciate the Stack View, Calif., society divulged personal information without their cognition or consent.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a consumer watchdog group, filed a federal causa Wednesday against the FTC in a bid to block Google from rolling out a young privacy policy that it says violates the FTC settlement. A federal judge has checked to expedite the case.

Last month, Google began alerting users around the ball that commencement March 1 it will portion data it collects from users across its dozens of services. Google says that exclusively users who are logged into Google will be affected. Google already shared what it knew about its users across virtually of its services just immediately it will also include YouTube and Google hunting history.

A Google spokesman refused to comment on the self-assessment report.

“The FTC takes compliance with our consent orders selfsame badly and ever appears cautiously at any evidence or allegations that they are being violated,” FTC spokeswoman Claudia Bourne Farrell enunciated in an emailed statement. “Allegations receive been created that Google’s latterly announced changes to its privacy policies and practices violate a Commission order. Altogether orders are bailiwick to a detailed and vigorous compliance brushup process, just such investigations are non-public, and we thus cannot comment further.”

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Jan 24

Google, MIT bestow App Inventor to the unwashed masses

Posted in Internet Content

Google must be flavour generous: it donated Sky Mapping to undeserving armchair astronomers and it’s letting the neat unwashed get at its App Inventor maturation platform. The software toolset was cooked up in partnership with MIT: a web-based interface that lets anyone build Android apps without getting elbows-deep in code. Those Massachusetts king-geeks won’t be accepting submissions only yet, however: it’s still got to mold away how it’s locomoting to deploy the public server and foster a “robust and active open-source project” under its young name: the jolly unimaginative MIT App Inventor

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Dec 10

Google Currents Challenges Flipboard, Zite on Android, iOS

Posted in Internet Content

Google Currents launches as a magazine-reading application on Android smartphones and tablets equally considerably equally on Apple’s iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. Flipboard, Zite and Yahoo altogether experience stakes in this game.

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Dec 9

Google’s Android racks up its 10 billionth app download

Posted in Technology Content

More than 10 billion apps experience been downloaded from Google’s Android Market.

To tag the moment Google pronounced that for the next 10 days it would cut the cost of some crown apps to 10p each.

The hunt giant declared the milestone on its blog adding that the store’s apps were being downloaded at a rate of one billion a month.

However, some industry analysts played down the pattern locution Google should do more to address poor-quality programs.
Cheap deal

Google enunciated the pace at which apps were being downloaded was starting to accelerate. Its figures demonstrate Android brought 22 months to ambit one billion downloads just exclusively one month to away from nine billion to 10 billion.

By contrast, Apple hit one billion downloads afterwards nine months. Although the iPhone maker still maintains a lead, some experts think it will exist short-lived.

“Apple declared the 15 billion download tag666 in July therefore it’s clear that Android’s momentum in device activations is translating to application downloads and usage,” articulated Geoff Blaber from analysts CCS Insight.

“We’d expect Android to overtake Apple in application downloads in the foremost half of 2012.”

However, added Mr Blaber, such swift ontogeny posed a challenge of how to helper customers break utilitarian software from whole the other code on offer.

“It’s an issue for developers and consumers similar only a significant chance for whoever solves the trouble first,” he said.

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Dec 7

Verizon Blocks Google Wallet

Posted in Internet Content

Google Wallet is a nearly selfsame NFC service. Unveiled by Google in May, the service requires two pieces: An NFC chip and Google’s app.

The first telephone to lineament native Google Wallet support is Samsung’s Nexus S, which got on sale last year with a built-in NFC chip. In September, Google Wallet got live and the Samsung Nexus S went Google’s mobile payments guinea pig.

Here’s the catch: Sprint, along with MasterCard and Citigroup, threw its suffer behind Google Wallet and partnered with Google. Verizon and the other major carriers are backing Squad Isis.

The two technologies may co-exist happily. MasterCard, for example, has partnered with both Isis and Google Wallet. Phones may easily digest both options, letting customers download either or both payment apps and choosing which they prefer to use.

But with billions at stake in the mobile payments revenue stream, every player in the ecosystem is going very, selfsame999 cautiously.

“This is an opening salvo in what is likely to be a selfsame long war for the mobile consumer wallet,” pronounced Carl Howe, analyst at Yankee Group. “I consider this is maybe a identical good indication that Google is directly a identical end frenemy of Verizon.”

The Samsung Galaxy Nexus, laid to die on sale subsequently this month, was supposed to exist the first Android device on the Verizon network to feature Google Wallet. It’s the tertiary of Google’s “hero” Android smartphones, which are designed by Google explicitly to establish dead the cutting-edge features of its Android operating system. Google partners with manufacturers on the phones — Samsung, in this causa — and releases them under the “Nexus” brand.

But a Google spokesman said Tuesday that Verizon Wireless has asked the hunt companionship “not to include this functionality in the product.”

Google’s spokesman declined to discuss Verizon’s reasoning or comment further.

Verizon’s spokesman Jeffrey Nelson countered that the companionship “does not occlusion apps.” The problem, Verizon says, lies in Google Wallet’s technology.

“Google Wallet is different from other widely-available mobile-commerce services,” Nelson enounced in a prepared statement. “In lodge to work as architected by Google, Google Wallet needs to exist integrated into a new, secure and proprietary hardware element in our phones.”

It’s straight that Google Wallet needs to access a special NFC chip constructed into the device. Verizon didn’t explain why that was a problem, peculiarly because Google’s technology has been working but fine on Sprint’s network for several months. But Verizon enounced it is continuing “commercial discussions” with Google virtually the issue.

“We’re working to provide expanded services that will furnish the best security and user experience in the market about mobile commerce,” Nelson continued. “We require to supply access to an open wallet when those goals are achieved.”

It’s not a point answer, just it’s potential to read between the lines. Since Verizon enunciated it is working to render access to “an” capable wallet, and not specifically Google’s Wallet app, it’s likely that Verizon is hoping to favor its ain mobile payments choice over Google’s.

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Dec 5

Google Hunting on the iPad vs. your desktop web browser

Posted in General

We know for a fact tablets are selling similar hotcakes, or at the selfsame least iPads and Kindle Fires are. The work factor is still relatively young and software is barely scratching the surface of its potential, or hence we are star to believe.

Google latterly updated its Hunt app for the iPad with a young interface and a turn of tweaks that construct it faster and easier to use. The young app is more effective at taking advantage of the iPad’s larger screen real-estate, and it honestly appears ameliorate than any search app for Android tablets that Google has withal to produce.

The video below was recorded by our friends at MobileBurn, bounteous you a fast overview of the app’s young features including part capability, side by slope tab viewing, and a selfsame77 tablet oriented version of image search.

With that pronounced and done, am I only believing browsing the web and multi-tasking on a tablet is excessively clumsy compared to what you could accomplish using a desktop web browser (in half the time)

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Nov 14

Leaked Screenshots Establish Go Rumored Google Music Service

Posted in Internet Content

Google is expected to unveil a licensed music store at a Wednesday result in Los Angeles, merely Spanish-language blog TecnoDroidVe has published what it says are leaked screen shots from the service.

As reported by Android Police, a blogger from TecnoDroidVe uncovered the music shop on his HTC Inspire 4G. It wasn’t operational, simply included features like a “free song of the day” and recommendations for like artists.

One screen shaft shows a page for Park Daytime music, which is available for $1.29 or $0.99 per song, the current standard for competing music stores similar Amazon and Apple’s iTunes. There’s too the option to purchase a full album, some of which were listed for $9.49 and $8.49.

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