Introducing the latest roll-out of the Google Mission- App Inventor for Android – a free web-based software tool meant for the masses or non-developers to realize their own Android applications. Yes, Google is bringing Android App development to the masses with the mobile platforms.

With the support of Google University Relations, the technology has been under development for a year, mainly involving educational organizations. User testing groups ranges from university undergraduates to even sixth graders, high school girls and nursing students. With the introduction of the Android ecosystem to the public as well as the classroom contexts, it may well be a boon for Google in the smartphone-software market. In contrary, Apple adopts a more tightly managed approach to app development for the iPhone via licensing and vetting.

App Inventor allows people to drag and drop blocks of code – displayed as graphical images that represents various app elements– and put them together, almost akin to building Lego blocks.The result is a mobile app made from scratch, making the idea of creating an app potentially well-received. As such, the App Inventor can be likened as a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) app development tool for Android, entailing a possible explosion of new mobile apps on the market. Disregarding the value of these ‘home-made’ apps, the App Inventor can help nurture and train a growing community of young content developers for the Android platform.

However, the App Inventor is currently limited to work only for phones that run on Android software. Being web-based, a sign-up with a Google Gmail account is required. A small software download is also needed to automatically syncs the programs created on a PC, connected to the application inventor website, with an Android smartphone.

New York Times quotes Mr Harold Ableson, both project leader and MIT computer scientist, “The goal is to enable people to become creators, not just consumers, in this mobile world.” A proponent of opening up intellectual and technological resources, Mr Abelson is also a founding director of the Free Software Foundation, Public Knowledge, and the Creative Commons.

They may not be able to see eye-to-eye when it comes to the Android and iPhone. But there is a twist in Google’s relationship with Apple around the new Apple iPad. To put it simply, the iPad frenzy has hit Google as well.

Google Enterprise President Dave Girouard had almost devoted  his entire lunch time on the 25th June with journalists in San Francisco to tout iPad’s success and how it will benefit Google. Apparently, Girouard has been attending more meetings with chief information officers who are eager to show their iPads, making it easier for him to demonstrate Google’s office tools bundle - Google Apps. ”Every CIO I meet is carrying an iPad these days,” he said.

Girouard described the iPad as “the ultimate statement of the consumerization of IT to date.” Past meetings with CIOs and IT managers traditionally revolved around queries on how Google Apps match up against Office features e.g. pivot tables, the data summarization tool in Excel. But the Apple iPad helped changed everything.

“Apple’s opened the minds of a lot of IT people” to think beyond the classic Office on a desktop PC model“, Girouard had added. Such enlightening effects of the mobile Apple iPad helps Google to demonstrate the business advantages of cloud-based Google Apps as an Office alternative.

While the iPad may seem lacking as a Google complement due to differences in nature between web-based Google Apps and Apple’s mostly downloadable native apps, Girouard highlighted the iPad as a promising class of devices that are “growing up in the world of the cloud.

Accumulating over a million users as of now, Google Voice - a web-based platform to manage your communications –  will soon revolutionize modern telephony by combining your regular phone service with the latest web technology, irregardless of what phone or carrier you use.

As seen in the figure and introduction video below, Google Voice allows one to communicate in much more ways than ever in telephony’s modern history.

To use Google Voice, you get the choice of using a Google number or non-Google number. Choosing to use a Google number while setting up Google Voice allows you to access a number of extra Google Voice features.  It is not possible to use your existing mobile number with all of Google Voice’s features at this time.

Choosing to use a non-Google number during Google Voice setup allows you to have access to Google voicemail and other select Google Voice features with your existing mobile number.

For more information, check out the Google Voice website to see the tabulated differences between using a Google number and non-Google number.

The revolutionary features of Google Voice include (For more information, you might want to check out Google Voice’s short but greatly informative and creative Feature Videos or http://www.youtube.com/googlevoice):

• Google Voice automatically transcribes your voicemails to text, allowing you to read your voicemail and search through past voicemails
• Use one number to selectively or ring all the phones at once
• Choose personalized voicemail greetings for different people
• Make international calls at very low rates (Calls can be initiated  from the web, your Google Voice number, or the Google Voice mobile app)
• Text messages sent to your Google Voice number can be configured to be sent to your email (You can reply on from your email account to save on outgoing fees)
• You can share voicemail messages with other people, just like emails
• You can also block unwanted callers
• You can now screen your callers before answering, listen in while the voicemail is being left, and ‘jump in’ to engage them
• Google Voice mobile app allows you to place calls featuring your Google Voice number as your outbound caller number, make cheap international calls, and VISUALLY ALTERNATE between voicemail messages.
• Conference calls are now easy with Google Voice on all phones (Just have the participants call your Google Voice number and you’ll be prompted to add them to the call)
• And more upcoming from the works (Sending SMS to multiple recipients, Google Chrome extension, send invites to friends, play voicemails within Gmail, receive & reply to SMS via email, Google Voice keyboard shortcuts to call & send SMS, changing your Google Voice number, etc)

However, Google Voice is currently only open to U.S. only but will be expanded to include other countries in the future, as seen in Google’s reply for a non-U.S. user.

Otherwise, sign in your Google account to experience this purported pinnacle of human communication.

I was enjoying a nice little pre-bedtime snack last night when I channel surfed and chanced upon Channel NewsAsia’s technology segment, “That’s IT with Timothy Goh“. It is at this point that my geeky ears picked up on mentions of “Android Apps”, “Development”, “SDK”, “Eclipse” and most importantly the phrase, “easy to create an app with these steps”. (more…)

Google unveiled some significant changes that they’ve made to their search services yesterday at their huge demo. But the biggest trick that they pulled out of their sleeve (which I found rather revolutionary), was the uncovering of Google Lab’s Google Goggles, a search to the world using images.

Gadgetell explains that it basically is a mobile app, where you can snap pictures of anything on your device and Google Goggles will analyze the picture taken and bring up any information on your image. So let us say you take a picture of a book, your mobile device would scan the picture and return Google search links that include information of the author, or places you can go to purchase this book. As with everything else, there are limitations, Google Goggles labs would not be able to help with pictures of animals, furniture and apparel. (It also only currently available for Android.)

A short video from Google that might help :

And a demonstration to give you an even better idea :

I say kudos to Google, as they never stop at innovation, with this continuous integration with mobile usage and their services. We already know there is an increasing prevalence in Internet mobile usage as mobile data traffic continues to surge in October , at the fastest pace in past seven months. Apple’s iPhone has changed our perception of utilizing the Internet on our mobiles. Since its concpetion in 2007, the melee of mobile vendors scrambling to rival the mobile Web experience has been countless, but Google Android is already threateningly close to superseding the iPhone. If Google continues to pull out these newfangled technological tricks, it’ll just be a matter of time before they dominate the mobile market.

Google’s operating system, Chrome, that was first announced in July, got its first public review yesterday. Google’s official blog has posted a video for those who missed the event at Mountain View. For those who want a quick read on the one and a half hour long video, here’s some highlights from PC Mag in addition to what I’ve noted:

1. Contrary to rumors, Chrome OS isn’t available yet. It will only be released near the end of 2010.

2. What IS launched, is the Chromium OS open-source project, the code will now be open to developers and third-party partners on Chromium.org, for them to install and enhance  it.

3. We will see releases of Chrome for Mac and Linux by the end of 2009. Extensions will also be developed, that is lightweight,easy to use and most importantly, requires low maintenance. The browser focuses on having HTML5 standard capabilities, for functions like video/audio chat, graphics, thread, real time communication and local storage (with a database API for web application)

4. Google Chrome OS looks like the Google Chrome Browser, but with features and functionality of an operating system.

5. Speed, simplicity and security are the three highlights of Google Chrome OS, with speed as its focus to be “blazingly fast”. They further demonstrate this point by showing us that the Chrome OS takes 7 seconds to boot, adding another 3 seconds thereafter to log into an application.

6. Multi-tasking made easy with panels and tabs. Panels are “persistent and lightweight”, they work in a way similar to a “Stay on Top” function some might be familiar with. You can play music, interact with external storage media and chat with friends while surfing. Top applications are also only a click or “tab” away.

7. Chrome OS provides you automatic updates, just like Google Chrome Browser (which was said to be updated 20 times in the past year, which users have been unaware of). It’s all about a seamless experience for the end user.

8. Chrome OS will repair itself. Googlers are also working on the concept of Verified Boot, with cryptographic signature keys, the system will detect malware in your machine and it will get an updated version of the OS and reinstall it.  There will also be security sandboxing, which will essentially protect the OS from web apps, and web apps from each other.

9. Every application is a Web application. No desktop apps, you’ll be relying on cloud based applications to get things done. The Googlers also reiterate this point by saying “third party apps will work as long as they’re Web applications”.

10. All data is in the cloud. Google Chrome OS will not store your data locally, any information you input into the machine, you can access from anywhere else (with the prerequisite of online access). They demonstrate by using the “Notepad” application, which simultaneously syncs to your Google Apps document.

11. There is no hard disk. Google Chrome OS will run on flash memory based storage; with an SSS (Solid State Storage) drive.

12. Google is targeting a specific type of hardware, more information on this is said to be released around June, 2010. Running on the SSS drive, there would be specific hardware components to complement the Google Chrome OS. They mention wanting to work with companies to produce their own “slightly larger” Netbooks, as it aims to have a full-sized keyboard to improve usability.

We would be keeping our ears peeled for more announcements and releases. Till then, if you want to give it a go, TechCrunch has already posted an article with a step-by-step pictorial guide to have the Chrome OS running in VirtualBox.

Give it a try!

Quick as a bat, “Going Google” campaign has already reached the sunny shores of Singapore.

Here are pictures of some messages spotted in Changi Airport terminals :

Spiffy isn’t it? If you’ve Gone Google and want the world to know it, announce your status with these too :

(These badges are my personal favorite!)

You can check the above out at Google Store.

If you want to join the 2 million businesses that have Gone Google and are interested in Going Google too, do explore your options at google.com.sg/appsatwork. (and seek our help here!)

Everybody must have heard of the “Gone Google” campaign that was launched in August. Now news has it that it is extending to 6 other countries including U.K, France, Canada, Japan, Australia and Singapore!

There has been much hype because Google does not traditionally use outdoor advertising and this has been the most impactful delivery by far. The simplicity makes it all the more brilliant, featuring an internal monologue on an IT manager’s frustrations on his company’s email system. The billboards showcase daily epiphanies on the advantages of Google’s enterprise offerings, be it Google Apps, Google Postini Services or Google Search Appliance.

This campaign targets advertisement spaces in high-traffic train stations and airports, imagine these in our very own Changi Terminals!

I gathered various “Going Google” billboard pictures, here’s the compilation:

Day #22: Would going Google make me a hero at work?hmm..

Day #23: Inbox is full again. Grr! Go Google???

Day #24: I’ve had enough. We’re going Google.

I can’t wait for its arrival in our Singapore environments, will keep you updated!

How much are you aware of the benefits from an efficient email system? In a study done by Osterman Research in September 2009, decision makers collectively underestimate the cost of messaging services. Most believe that their organizations spend not more than $15 per user per month.

In reality, Forrester Research has found that, for a 15,000-person firm requiring archiving, the fully loaded cost of on-premise email was $25.18 per user per month as compared to the cost of $8.47 for Google Apps. (Read the detailed report here.)

Even so, the misguided beliefs do not take into account the significant amount of time and money for maintainence and upkeep of the emailing system. At the end of the day, other than costs benefits, isn’t it also about employees’ satisfaction? The less they have to bother about spam, disaster recovery and malware, the more time they have to devote to the core business. Google Apps and its cloud system can help keep your IT infrastructure smooth-running, allowing you to reallocate your resources to its rightful purposes.

Join Google Apps expert, Rhona Stites for  a live webcast on October 8 as she discusses the financial gains in adopting Google Apps. You will hear about real customer service experiences, get your questions answered and have the tools you need to bring value to your organization.

Save Money with Cloud Computing and Google Apps

Thursday, 8th October 2009

6 p.m. GMT/ 11 a.m. PDT/ 2 p.m. EDT

It’s Google’s 11th birthday today, so here’s wishing them many more decades of success and may all their (and our) Google wishes come true!

To celebrate, Google has done a neat little trick by changing their logo to a version that has replaced “L” with an “11″.

There are some disputes about when Google’s birthday is considering Google.com domain was registered on September 15th, 1997. On the other hand, Google filed for incorporation in September 1998: the papers were filed on September 4th, but Google has been known to celebrate on both September 7th and September 27th.

Last year, Google released its logo on September 24th, this year however, they’ve released their logo to everyone today. Maybe, they’ve decided to officially adopt September 27th as their official birthday, you think?

Here are some of Google’s birthday logos from past years. Last year’s one is my favorite but i guess it needed to be a tad more decadent (excuse my unintentional pun) considering it’s been a decade.

Some of Google’s past logos for your amusement :

Check out more of their decorative logos here.