Google - page 39

Google just released Chrome 27 for iOS. The big update for Google’s third-party browser for iOS should have faster page reloading speeds as well as improved voice search.

Google included voice search in its Google Now app for iOS, but the conversational search tools are now being packed directly into Chrome as well. The update also gives Chrome the ability to speak search results back to you so you pretty much never have to look at your screen again if you don’t want to.

Here are the full release notes:

Google Play will overtake the App Store’s recently celebrated 50 billion downloads and become the most popular app platform in the world within months, according to a new report from Distimo. Driven by popular devices from Samsung, Google Play is currently seeing over 500 million more app downloads per month.

The developers of the free, open-source Camino browser for Mac OS X have announced that it will no longer be developed after a decade-long run. They are now encouraging existing users to adopt a “more modern browser,” such as Chrome, Firefox, or Safari.

If you use Google’s maps app on your iPad, you’ll know that it kinda sucks. Search is great, and the fancy maps look ok, but the UI elements are comically big when blown up to fit the iPad screen, and they cover most of what you really want to see – the maps. And Street View isn’t much better.

Enter Streets 2.0, an update to – you guessed it – Streets, which brings Googles vector map tiles and live traffic as well as big-screen Street View.

Remember Motorola Mobility? Google bought it for $12.5 billion in 2011, and the smartphone maker hasn’t released one new device since. Now Motorola is ready to unveil several new Android phones between now and October. The upcoming flagship device from Motorola will be called the Moto X, and it will be assembled in Texas.

The news was just announced onstage by CEO Dennis Woodside at the D11 conference.

If you’ve been looking for that perfect mail client for Mac since Sparrow sold itself to Google, then now’s the time to stop and check out Airmail, a gorgeous new mail client that just hit the Mac App Store.

It actually looks a lot like Sparrow, and it’s designed to provide you with a “modern and easy-to-use experience.” But it’s packed full of great features to give you everything you’ll ever need for your email. It’s also a bargain at just $1.99.

It was just a matter of time before Google Glass got its first porn app, allowing wearers to enjoy hardcore movies more discreetly — yet more openly — than ever before. The first one comes from MiKandi, a leading creator and distributor of adult apps for Android, and it’ll hit the MiKandi app store sometime this week.

It would be hard to convey how little I care about Google+, but I’ll try:

Google what? Plus? What’s that? Never heard of it. And if I had heard of it, I would probably forget about it in less than a minute.

Pretty good, huh? Yet despite this I actually quite like the photos part of Google+, although until now I haven’t been interested enough to post many photos to it. But the newly-updated Google+ app for iOS has just launched and it has all th cool new photo features announced by Google at its dorky Google Glasses 1

Steve Jobs received a lot of criticism for not giving away more of the cash he made from Apple and his other ventures, but thanks to wife Laurene Powell Jobs, the Jobs family contributes more than you might think. In fact, they’ve been giving money away for more then two decades, they just happen to be very good at keeping it under wraps.

Google is considering a buyout of Waze, the mapping app for iPhone and Android that specializes in crowd-sourced information. Waze’s asking price is around $1 billion, according to a new report from Bloomberg. Other big tech companies have been courting the map startup, most notably Facebook.

“None of the bidders is close to clinching a deal and the talks may fall apart,” says the report. There have been whispers that Apple has also considered an acquisition, but nothing concrete has surfaced yet.

Waze would be a good asset for any of the three aforementioned companies. The service has more than 40 million users that report valuable information like traffic incidents and wrecks. At this point, Apple Maps could probably use the functionality more than Google.

Source: Bloomberg

Google started rolling out voice search functionally for Chrome on the desktop earlier today, and now the company has revealed that the same feature is headed to iOS. Chrome for iOS will be receiving voice search in the App Store in the next few days.

Google has brought the new voice search features announced at Google I/O last week to its Google Chrome web browser for desktops. The latest version of the app (version 27) puts a little microphone icon alongside the search bar on Google.com which lets you find the things you’re looking for without touching your keyboard.

Apple began adding the Galaxy S4 to its ongoing patent-infringement case against Samsung last week, and it has now specified five patents which it believes the device is breaching. The Cupertino company has also taken aim at Google Now, which allegedly infringes its unified search patent.

Despite increasing competition from the likes of Samsung and Google, Apple continues to be the world’s most valuable brand, according to the latest annual BrandZ report from Millward Brown.

The Cupertino company was one of three technology firms in the top five, with Google and IBM placed in second and third respectively.

Google Chrome’s app launcher, which lets Chrome users quickly find and launch their favorite web-based applications, is coming to Google Chrome for Mac OS X. Google has already begun work on porting the feature to Windows, but it’s also been found in the latest Chromium build for OS X.

Given that Google shows a lot of support for iOS with a number of popular apps, it’s quite a surprise that its new All Access music streaming service is only available on Android. That may change in the future, but for now, there is a third-party app that’ll let you use your All Access subscription on your iPhone.

It’s called gMusic, and it’s actually been around for just under 18 months. Until now, the app allowed users to access all the music they had uploaded to Google Music on their iPhone, but the app’s developer just submitted an update that’ll let you enjoy All Access, too.

It was just last Fall that Apple announced the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display but Apple is already facing some competition from the likes of Google’s  Chromebook Pixel and now Samsung is getting in on the game.

This morning Samsung announced that it is manufacturing a 13.3-inch display that will have higher pixel densities than both the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro and the Chromebook Pixel.

Turkey’s tablet loving Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has been going on a tour of the U.S.  in pursuit of the greatest tablet marker in the world to arm his students with. The prime minister visited Silicon Valley on May 18th to be briefed by the world’s best technology companies on their latest endeavors.

Erdoğan is looking to buy 10.6 million iPads for his country’s education new education project Faith. So far, Erdoğan was first greeted by Microsoft CEO, Steve Balmer, and then he paid visits to both Apple, Google.

Regarding his visit to the U.S., Erdoğan said:

There’s a lot of talk these days about Google Glass, Google’s new futuristic wearable computer that functions like a set of cyborg glasses, overlaying a HUD of Google products and search services over your life.

It certainly sounds impressive, and early reviews from the usual techno-nerds are positive. But what would Steve Jobs have thought of Google Glass?

He would have thought you were a dork for wearing one, and you needed to get laid.

This week on The CultCast: Google Maps gets prettier, smarter, and faster; Hangouts is a new chat app with some innovative features; Google Music is too late to party; Erfon eats H’orderves on a space jet with Tim Cook and Richard Branson; and Leander dons his powdered wig to judge an all new Faves ‘N Raves.

All that and more on this week’s CultCast! Stream or download new and past episodes on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing now on iTunes, or hit play below and let the good times roll.

Show notes up next.

Earlier this week, Google beat Apple to the punch by launching a streaming subscription music service before Cuperino could unveil its own offering, iRadio.

How did Google managed to do it? Apple has all the music industry clout, so how could Google swing a deal first? Because Google Play Music All Access is essentially a clone of services like Rdio and Spotify, and the contract terms of services like that are easy to copy.

Apple’s iRadio? It’s a wholly different beast.

Well, we can’t say we’re too surprised with this one following this week’s leak, but it’s great to see Google Play game services has been officially confirmed at Google I/O this morning. The service will rival services like Game Center on iOS, and features will include cloud-based game syncing, online multiplayer, and more.

OK, so maybe not a huge surprise, but Google is said to launch a paid, subscription-based music service, like Rdio or Spotify, as soon as this week at the Google I/O conference, reports the Wall Street Journal.

According to “people familiar with the matter,” says the WSJ, the announcement of the new service could happen as soon as tomorrow, when Google hosts it’s annual I/O developer conference. The WSJ says that Google has previewed new music initiatives at I/O in the past, so it might just announce the streaming service there, as well.

Google I/O kicks off today, and one of the announcements you can look forward to is a new Google Maps service. Google accidentally teased major changes ahead of its official unveiling by opening up a new webpage that allowed users to request an invite to a new Maps service.

That page has now been pulled, but not before screenshots began making their way around the Internet.

Nearly three in every four smartphones sold during the first quarter of 2013 were running Android, according to the latest statistics from the analysts at Gartner. Google’s operating system grabbed a whopping 74% of the market share during the three-month period, while Apple’s iOS came in second with 18.2%.

Companies choosing to build Windows Phone, BlackBerry, and Symbian powered devices might want to look away now.