When Apple unveiled iOS 6’s new Maps icon, it became an emblem for everything that was wrong with Apple Maps, a service that — at launch — was widely criticized as being inferior to Google’s own maps data, which every previous version of iOS had shipped with.
Why the icon? Because it gave directions that would probably end up killing you if you followed them in real life. But that’s all changed in iOS 7.
SwiftKey creator TouchType will be closely watching Apple’s WWDC keynote on Monday, hoping that the Cupertino company opens up its iOS platform to third-party keyboards for the first time. The SwiftKey keyboard has been exclusive to Android since its inception, but the company is itching to bring it to iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches.
Today the story broke about PRISM, a supposedly top-secret program at the US National Security Agency (NSA) that has been in operation since 2007.
According to The Washington Post, current intelligence reporting increasingly relies on PRISM as its main source of raw data and is used in almost 1 out of every 7 intelligence reports these days.
Here’s the basic breakdown of what’s happening so far in the story, who’s involved, what’s being looked at, and more.
Google’s YouTube apps for Android and iOS have helped the company triple advertising sales on mobile in the past six months, the company has said. Mobile ads now contribute an estimated $350 million to YouTube’s revenue, with around a quarter of the site’s 1 billion users accessing videos on smartphones and tablets.
The New York Attorney General has called for Apple, Google, Samsung, and Microsoft to invent new ways to curb the ongoing smartphone theft “epidemic.” Eric Schneiderman wants meetings with representatives from all four companies, and he has urged them to “be as innovative in solving this problem as they have been in designing devices that have reshaped how we live.”
Following Gmail’s snazzy addition of categories for easily filtering your inbox mail, the Gmail iOS app has also been updated to support the functionality.
Want T&A beamed directly into your eyeball? The first porn app has come to Google Glass and it’s named after what it shows you: “Tits & Glass.”
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: