SAN FRANCISCO – Google has reportedly yanked an app masquerading as Siri, Apple’s voice command personal assistant software, from the Android marketplace.

The move comes amid a deluge of Siri wannabes that have invaded the Android market since Apple introduced the iPhone 4S and its innovative features.
An app called Siri for Android, made by an outfit called Official Software, appeared in the Android market on Friday and was pulled from the bazaar by Google just hours after its arrival there, according to a report by The Next Web.
Also, all other apps by Official Software disappeared from the market, as it appears that Google has pulled the software maker’s account, which allows it to sell programs at the outlet.

The software company did a number of dubious things that appear to have prompted Google to act against the firm.

For example, it used Apple’s Siri icon for the Official Software Android app. The word “official” was used in a way to make the app look like it was a true clone of the Apple app. When the Siri icon was tapped, all Official Software’s app did was load Google’s own voice command software, Voice Actions.

This isn’t the first time something like this has happened.

A French developer has even found a way to tap into Apple’s servers to enable software running on other mobile phone platforms to duplicate Siri’s feats, although the legality of such a move would be doubtful.
A search for “Siri” on the Android Market by PCWorld revealed 131 hits, but less than a handful of the programs had more than 10,000 downloads. They were Vlingo Virtual Assistant (32,328 downloads), Iris (20,309), Skyvi (19,444) and Speaktoit Assistant (11,600).
While the Android world has been laboring hard to emulate Siri’s functionality since Apple pulled the wraps off it, it hasn’t quite made it there yet, according to PC World’s Ed Albro.
“I’ve concluded that you can find decent virtual help on an Android phone, but the assistants available likely won’t be as smooth and capable as Siri,” he wrote.

He described Siri as the classic executive secretary — “always well-dressed and possessed of an elephant’s memory and a dry wit.”

By Juan Carlos Perez
November 2, 2011

MIAMI – With its upgrade of Google Reader on Monday, Google has shut down the native social content-sharing features of the popular RSS feed manager and shifted the functionality in modified form to Google+.

Google Reader users who want to continue sharing RSS feed content with others thus need to set up a membership in Google+, the company’s new social networking site.

If they have been sharing on Reader using a pseudonym, they’ll now have to switch to using their real name, which is required for a Google+ account. Google has said that it will allow pseudonyms on Google+ at some point, but hasn’t said when nor how.

Reader becomes the latest Google application whose functionality has been changed — either mandatorily or optionally — by Google+, which the company is in the process of integrating with many other Google sites and applications.

For example, users of the Picasa photo service can continue using a pseudonym as long as they don’t set up a Google+ account. If they do, they have to integrate it with their Picasa account, and replace their Picasa Web name with their Google+ identity.

Google is also giving Blogger publishers the option of replacing their Blogger user profile with their Google+ profile, but doing so, again, requires that publishers identify on Blogger using their Google+ real name.

Google’s decision to shut down Reader’s content-sharing features, announced last week, has led some users to complain in discussion forums and blog posts, and even set up a petition.

In addition to objecting to the requirement to give up pseudonyms — especially in Iran — in order to continue sharing, users also have complained about the loss of a dedicated place for RSS feed sharing.

In their view, it will be less convenient and less useful to have Reader content sharing reflected within Google+, along with a wide variety of other non-Reader content.

Sharing Reader content will now be based on Google’s +1 button, which is tightly integrated with Google+, and on Google+ Circles, the feature that lets users organize their Google+ contacts into different groups, like family, co-workers and any other category they define.

In addition to the Google+ integration, the upgraded Reader includes a user interface redesign that is meant to be cleaner and simpler.

It’s not clear whether users will be able to carry over to Google+ the social connections they have established using Reader’s now retired “friending,” “following” and “shared link” features, or whether they’ll have to recreate them manually.

Google is making it possible for users who decide to stop using Reader to export their account data.

“We hope you’ll like the new Reader — and Google+ — as much as we do, but we understand that some of you may not. Retiring Reader’s sharing features wasn’t a decision that we made lightly, but in the end, it helps us focus on fewer areas, and build an even better experience across all of Google,” wrote Alan Green, a software engineer, in Monday’s announcement.

People who haven’t used the Reader social sharing features will feel no effect from the Google+ integration.

By Christina DesMarais
October 11, 2011

SAN FRANCISCO – Google isn’t reinventing the wheel with a new feature it is testing that allows any two computers using its Chrome browser to connect with each other.

But integrating remote desktop functionality into a Google product may be welcome to some users who may not trust third-party vendors that already offer the service.

Called Chrome Remote Desktop, the new feature is in beta testing and lets you connect any two computers that have a Chrome browser, including Windows, Linux, Mac and Chromebooks. The app can access all data on a remote computer and requires the person sharing access to their computer to give a code to the person who will tap into it remotely. That authentication must be done every time access is granted.
The company released the new cross-platform extension for its Chrome browser on Friday.

The feature comes in handy for people who need technical assistance from IT technicians in far-flung locations. Businesses also use similar services when training employees on new software or systems. Other products on the market that give people access to another computer include TeamViewer, which is free for non-commercial use, and a website called join.me, which also is free.

Google’s free app currently lets IT administrators — or anyone — have remote access to users’ computers to solve technical issues. In the release notes, Google stated that “Additional use cases such as being able to access your own computer remotely are coming soon.”

Google says the goal of the beta release is to demonstrate the core “Chrome Remoting technology” and get feedback from users.

By Eden Zoller
September 23, 2011

FRAMINGHAM – Adobe Systems announced Flash Player 11 and Adobe Air 3 software Wednesday to help developers build more sophisticated applications with dozens of new features across smartphones and tablets as well as desktop computers.

The releases are Adobe’s biggest in two years, and will be available free of charge in early October, said Anup Murarka, Adobe’s director of product marketing. The related tools, Flash Builder and Flex, will support new features in Flash Player 11 and Adobe Air 3 by the end of the year.

The releases will enable delivery of 2D and 3D games over the Internet to various devices, Murarka said. Developers of enterprise applications will also find the 3D capabilities popular for data-centric apps. Enterprises, for example, will be able to build application dashboards to “visualize complex data sets” with 3D images, he said.

Developers will also be able to use the tools to more deeply integrate business software like Excel and Outlook in devices and to accesshardware programming interfaces for functions such as Near-Field Communication being used more widely in smartphones, Murarka said.

The new versions will also help developers build more secure applications with the ability to leverage cryptographically secure random number generation, he said.

For 3D support, Abode said faster video rendering on desktops is provided through hardware acceleration. A pre-release version of those same 2D and 3D features for mobile platforms, such as Android , Apple iOS, and BlackBerry Tablet OS, is also now available, with a full production release coming “in the near future,” Adobe said in a statement.

Other features give developers the ability to package Air 3 within an application to simplify installation of apps on Android, Windows and Mac OS, much the same as Adobe has done for Apple iOS recently.

Adobe also said developers will be able to extend capabilities already built in to the device, such as the accelerometer or near-field communications technology, through HTML5 as well as Flash.

Even so, Adobe notes that 130 different models of smartphones and 85 tablets will run Flash-based apps by the end of the year, totaling about 200 million units. That number is expected to reach more than 1 billion units by the end of 2015.

SAN FRANCISCO – Google made the best search engine on the Web and then went on to create (arguably) the best email and mapping apps, too. But as you might expect, these services are filled with cool features that don’t stick out on the surface–including some of the most useful features offered by the apps.

We hit up Google for some insider tips for searching, gmailing, and mapping that are commonly used by the nice people who work at Google. We’ll start with search, and progress to Gmail and Maps.

The Searchers

You may know how to use Google to search for a flight, look up a definition, or solve a simple math problem, but here’s Google’s “Top 10″ list of search tips and tricks for searching like a Google pro.

Searching for a comparison chart about a certain topic? Sign in to your Google account and try searching Google Squared for collections of information. For example, search Google Squared for “roller coasters” to see a chart of the top 20 tallest roller coasters; or check out this chart of hurricanes for images, descriptions, and damage estimates of recent hurricanes. (Note that Google will be shutting down Google Squared on September 5, 2011, as part of its decommissioning of Google Labs, so run your Google Squared searches ASAP.) Not quite sure what you’re looking for? Google’s Wonder Wheel gives you another way of looking at the related searches near what you’re looking for. “Wonder Wheel” is listed in the left-hand sidebar and produces a circular chart with searches that other people have done recently that are related to yours. Your original search (example: space shuttle Endeavor) provides the starting node, with paths pointing off in all directions. Click one of these and you begin moving from node to node, getting farther away from the original search, but hopefully in the right direction. Need to find something you’ve found on Google before? Try searching your own Google search history. Sign into your Google account and enable Web history. Run your searches, and then visit www.google.com/history to see your search history and to revisit previous searches. Bonus: Search history also syncs to your mobile device. Speak your search queries into your mobile device when you’re on the go. Google Voice Search is a feature of Google Search app for iPhone, BlackBerry, and Nokia S60 V3 phones. If you have an Android phone, download the “Voice Search” app from PCWorld’s AppGuide; if you have an iPhone, download “Google Search” from the same place. Looking for information from a particular time period? The Timeline option (also in the left-hand toolbar) lets you zoom in on any time range and see news pulled from assorted sources, including books, news, and Web pages. Searching for the Anglo-French Wars, for instance, brings up a timeline that runs from 1600 to 2010, stepping down into individual years and then individual months. Filter your results in Google Images. Try searching for a word that could yield a wide range of images–a name like heather or raven or cliff, for example. Toward the bottom of the left-hand sidebar in Google Images, you’ll see a dedicated option to view only clip art, photos, or line drawings. Trying to find a particular type of file? Google doesn’t look exclusively for HTML content. Type what you’re looking for and then add filetype:tag on the end. For instance, “filetype:doc” will return only results from .doc files. This search capability supports PDF, Microsoft Office formats, Shockwave Flash, and many more. In fact, it will discover matches for ANY three letters that you designate as a filetype. Compare different Google Suggest results side-by-side. Visit Web Seer to get a visual comparison of two search prefixes. Though not a Google product, Web Seer was built by two Googlers and provides interesting insight into Google results. Search in the URL. If you know a specific string of letters or words contained in the URLs of pages you’re looking for, you can use “inurl” to find them. For example, many websites with public webcams have URLs that contain ‘view/view.shtml’. So a search for inurl:view/view.shtml will return the URLs for various webcams around the world. Search certain types of sites or just certain sites. You can search a wide variety of sites by inserting a close angle bracket (>) symbol before the type of site you want to search. For example, [penguins site:>.edu] searches for penguins across all .edu sites; and [crater image site:>nasa.gov] searches for crater images across NASA.gov.

Be a Gmail Ninja

Gmail is a very deep program, with too many tips and tricks to list in this article. In fact, Google categorizes its Gmail user tips into four stages–white belt, green belt, black belt, and master. The tips for each belt can be found at Google’s “Become a Gmail ninja” site. There’s even a printible guide; after all, even ninjas forget their moves once in a while. This cool blog gives you “Ten Tips for Using Gmail at Work.” What if you want to use Gmail when you don’t have a Web connection? There’s an app for that. Gmail Offline is a Chrome Web Store app designed for situations when you need to read, respond to, organize, and archive email without an Internet connection. This HTML5-powered app is based on the Gmail Web app for tablets, which was built to function with or without Web access. After you install the Gmail Offline app from the Chrome Web Store, you can continue using Gmail when you lose your connection by clicking the Gmail Offline icon on Chrome’s “new tab” page.

Mad Skills for Mappers

Check the weather for your upcoming trip directly on Google Maps. Whether you’re organizing a trip overseas or a picnic at a local park, make travel and activity planning easier by knowing the weather forecast. See temperatures and conditions for the next few days for places around the globe by selecting the weather layer from the widget in the upper right corner of the map. Zoom in for conditions in specific cities, and zoom out for cloud coverage over an area. Try it now: See icons denoting sun, clouds, rain, and so on via the weather layer on Google Maps. Fly around the world…and dive under the ocean. Google Earth enable you to navigate the world in 3D–you can zoom in from space to the streets of cities from Hong Kong to San Francisco to Johannesburg, watch the changing rain forests over time, and dive underwater to explore the Mariana Trench, tropical reefs, or shipwrecks. Endless hours of exploration can be found in Ocean in Google Earth. Find hotel prices directly on Google Maps. No more copying and pasting the address from one site into a map to see its location–for several major cities in the United States, you can easily see nightly rates when you search for hotels in Google Maps. Try it now: Search for a “hotel in Los Angeles” on Google Maps Preview your destination using Google Street View. Check out the attractions near your hotel by viewing our 360-degree ground-level photos in 30 countries around the world. Try it now: View the surroundings of the Plaza Hotel in New York View local search results on a map (on mobile). When you’re somewhere unfamiliar and want to find someplace to eat, enter the type of food plus the town or postal code, and Google will display the results on a useful map and give you directions for getting there. Try it now: Search for “barbecue in Memphis” on Google Maps Plot your trip by adding your own icons to Google Maps. Make travel planning a snap with custom maps, a feature of Google Maps that lets you personalize a map by adding your own icons. Before your trip, you can use this tool to mark all of the hotels you’re considering staying at and all of the sights you want to be sure to see. Then decide which one is in the most convenient location. You can also share customer maps with friends and family so that they can participate in mapping out your trip. When the trip is over, use your custom map as a virtual scrapbook: Add icons on the map for the great picnic spot you found in the park or for the great little gelato stand you kept revisiting. You can even add text, photos, and videos within the custom map to help keep the memories alive.