Mountain View, California-based Internet giant Google has expanded its custom user interface for Apple  Computer's popular iPhone and iPod Touch mobile devices to include users in 33 countries using 16 different languages, and added better support for its news aggregation and Google Apps Web applications to the Apple devices, Google announced Thursday. Those using the iPhone and iPod Touch now have available a special version of Google News, the search leader's automated news service that gathers news headlines from more than 4,500 sources around the world and groups them into categories, and an improved interface to other popular Google services, the company said Thursday. Expanded Google News Coverage Including YouTube Video The new iPhone and iPod Touch support for Google News included improved results that in some cases may contain embedded videos from Google's YouTube video sharing site, according to Google software engineers Håvard Kvålen, Robert Leland and Amund Tveit, who announced the changes in a statement on the Google News blog which the company began in June 2007. The three initially began work on the custom version announced Thursday after asking themselves, "Wouldn't it be nice to make Google News accessible to readers on their iPod Touch or iPhone?" Apple iPhone and iPod Touch users can click on news headlines to visit the web sites where individual news stories reside, and in some cases can read a short sentence from certain news stories on the Google News site. The articles Google News selects are chosen using an automated system of computer evaluation, which Google says features stories that are “sorted without regard to political viewpoint or ideology.” Google News allows users to personalize which news headlines they wish to view, and to receive updated news alerts on a weekly, daily or “as-it-happens” basis, much like on its desktop computer based version of the service. Users of the two Apple devices can access the new version of Google News by visiting either news.google.com or by following the Google News links on the main Google Web site. Google Expands Global iPhone Service and Mobile Applications Google has also expanded global support for the custom iPhone and iPod Touch user interface it launched in  January at San Francisco's Macworld conference, building "a great way to access your most used Google services," on the iPhone, according to Google mobile team product marketing manager Ulf Waschbusch, who announced the upgrades Thursday in an entry on the Google Mobile blog. "Today we're launching our new integrated Google experience for the iPhone and iPod Touch in 33 new markets and 16 new languages," noted Waschbusch. Apple iPhone and iPod Touch users will find the updated custom Google interface offers single click access to search results when seeking general results, local information, images or news, and search term suggestions which appear when they begin typing, Waschbusch noted. Automatic completion of known e-mail addresses and the ability to receive e-mail from Google's GMail Web-based e-mail service without having to continually refresh the mobile Web browser are additional features included in the upgrade. Improved support for sharing pictures with Google's Picasa photo sharing service has been added to the improved iPhone and iPod Touch interface, along with a new combined Google Calendar view showing information about both the current day and month. A Custom Domain Shortcut For iPhone Users Users of the two Apple devices can use the new upgrade to set up a free custom Google Web site address for accessing their own Google  Apps online services with a single click, Waschbusch noted. Google Apps is a collection of online applications including word processing, e-mail, calendar, spreadsheet and presentation software, and the basic version of the service is free and requires no installation or maintenance. The new iPhone and iPod Touch user interface also offered improved support for other Google Web services such as its Google Reader RSS (Really Simple Syndication) news feed reader, Google Notebook Web clipping and storage service, and Blogger blogging application. Related Links:
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10:01 pm on May 2, 2008 (utc 0)
