Here on the Google Finance team, we’re always looking for new ways to help you access the finance data, charts, and reports that you need in the blink of an eye. But all the data in the world won’t help if you can’t access it when you need it most. Since many of us are on the run throughout the day and don’t always have our computers in front of us, it came as no surprise that one of users’ most frequently requested features was a fast, easy-to-use mobile website for Google Finance.
Now no matter where you are, you can keep up with your portfolio, the latest market news, and the sectors you care about, with real time quotes and data — all at a glance.
Prefer it in app form? Android users can also get the Google Finance app in Android Market.
As always, if you have feedback on this or other topics, please share it on our Google Finance survey or visit our Product Ideas site where you can share and vote on ideas.
For more tips and tricks on Google Finance, follow us on Twitter.
Posted by Brian Shih, Product Manager
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Google Finance smartens up for your smartphone
You may already be familiar with Gesture Search, our Android app from Google Labs that lets you search by writing out characters on the touchscreen of your device. Today we’re happy to announce a new version, Gesture Search 1.2, which includes a new motion gesture. By doing a “double flip”, or flipping your phone away and then back, you can start Gesture Search at any time. This eliminates the need to activate Gesture Search from a home screen shortcut. You can turn the feature on or adjust its sensitivity in Settings. We’ve also fixed some bugs and improved usability by adding accessibility support. Gesture Search is still in its early stages (as with all things in Google Labs) but we’d love to hear your feedback in the comments below. It is available for Android-powered devices running Android 1.6 and above, and can be downloaded in Android Market.
Posted by Yang Li, Research Scientist, Gesture Search team
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Flipping for Gesture Search
(Cross-posted with the YouTube Blog)
It’s well known that the mobile internet is huge and growing fast; what’s surprising is exactly how fast. According to a recent report, within 5 years more users will connect to the internet via mobile devices than desktop PCs. YouTube consumption on mobile devices has also grown considerably — playbacks were up 160% in 2009 over the previous year. And we’re excited to announce that YouTube Mobile now receives more than 100 million video playbacks a day. This is roughly the number of daily playbacks that YouTube.com was streaming when we joined forces with Google in 2006.
We launched YouTube on mobile devices in 2007 with about 1,000 videos available on the mobile site (m.youtube.com). While this suddenly opened up the possibility to access videos on the go, our site, mobile browsers and the hardware had limitations that prevented the mobile experience from keeping up with YouTube on the desktop. Today, more than ever, we know that you want to be able to find and access your favorite videos wherever you are. That’s why we’ve been working hard to roll out an updated version of the mobile site.
Here’s what’s new about the new mobile site:
As the world continues to go mobile, we think this is a great improvement for users who want a more consistent YouTube across many devices, no matter where they are. We’re launching in English only today, but will be rolling it out in other languages in the coming months. You can access the latest YouTube mobile site from your iPhone or Android browser. To learn more, visit m.youtube.com to check out the latest improvements and take a minute to watch this demo video:
Posted by Andrey Doronichev, Product Manager recently watched “Insane street football”
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YouTube Mobile Gets a Kick Start
(Cross-posted with the Google Docs Blog)
Last week, we announced that the Google Docs viewer supports .doc and .docx attachments. Today we’re also releasing a mobile version of the Google Docs viewer for Android, iPhone and iPad to help you view PDFs, .ppt, .doc and .docx files you’ve uploaded to your documents list, without needing to download the file.
With our mobile viewer you can switch quickly between pages and pan/zoom within a page. On your iPhone and iPad, you can pinch to zoom in or out.
You can try it out by going to docs.google.com on your Android-powered device, iPad or iPhone and select any document in these formats that you’ve previously uploaded. Let us know what you think in the Mobile Help Forum.
Mickey Kataria, Software Engineer
Originally posted here:
Google Docs viewer on Mobile Browsers
We’re always working to help people grow their mobile business with ads. Today we’re making our tools even more flexible by allowing publishers participating in our AdSense for Mobile Applications beta program to use third-party mediators. Mediation lets app developers use multiple ad networks simultaneously - reaching a greater pool of advertisers, and focusing more time on building their apps, and less time managing ad inventory.
AdSense for Mobile Application beta publishers will now be able to manage their ad inventory using third party ad serving mediators, as long as their apps meet these conditions, including:
We think this is great news for our AdSense for Mobile Application publishers because it will allow them to easily optimize and fill their ad inventory. We believe this also shows our commitment to develop the mobile advertising ecosystem by ensuring that the most optimal ad is shown to users, and enabling our AdSense partners to earn more regardless of which networks they use.
To learn more about monetizing for mobile, or to learn more about how to apply for the AdSense for Mobile Applications beta program, please visit www.google.com/mobileads/developer.
Update 6/3/10 10:30 PST: We had previously written that this helps developers avoid implementing individual SDKs from each ad network, but this is not the case.
Posted by Jim Kelm, Product Manager, Google Mobile Ads
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Making AdSense for Mobile Applications Work With More Ad Networks
Location, location, location. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re really excited about all the ways location can make mobile apps and websites more useful. With Google Latitude, we created a simple way for you to own your location and let you easily share it with whomever you like, display it wherever you like, and even keep a history of it if you want. We wanted to give you even more ways to use your location, so today we’re announcing the Google Latitude API — an easy and safe way for you to use and reuse your Latitude location with any apps or services that you can imagine!
Since launching Latitude, our team has been talking about all the cool things you could do with your continuously updated Latitude location. While we’ve built some of our ideas, there are simply too many exciting ones for us to do alone. Instead, we wanted to let you safely share your Latitude location with third parties who could create apps that do more with your location. Developers could, for example, build apps or services for:
We want to help developers build all these applications and more, but our first priority is keeping you, the user, in control over your location. That way, you only use it when, where, and how you choose. Before any application, website, or feature you’ve chosen to use can access your Latitude data, you must specifically grant access to the developer and will see exactly what access or data they’re requesting. This includes whether you share your current best available vs. city-level location or your location history if you’ve opted in to using Google Location History. If you change your mind, you’ll be able to both see which developers have access to your Latitude data and revoke access from any developer at any time from your Google Account’s personal settings. Just like with Latitude, you always choose who can see your location.
We’ve also learned that making your phone’s continuous location available in the background is tricky to do accurately and efficiently — just imagine your phone’s battery life if several apps were continuously getting your location in different ways? With this in mind, we built a free and open Latitude API that lets the third-party developers you choose start using your updated location in new ways without reinventing the wheel.
If you’re a developer, go to code.google.com/apis/latitude to get started and read our documentation. Join the Latitude API Google Group to ask questions, discuss the API with the community, and give us feedback. The Latitude API is being launched in Labs so we can listen to developer and user feedback before it graduates. We’re excited to see what you can do with Latitude and location so please do let us know what you think!
If you’re a Latitude user, check out our existing Latitude apps and keep an eye out for future apps and services that you can choose to use and do even more with your Latitude location. If you haven’t started using Latitude yet, get started so you too can start using your location in new ways.
Posted by Ana Ulin, Software Engineer, Google Mobile Team
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Do More with Google Latitude and Your Location Using the New Latitude API
I’m happy to share with you that Gesture Search is now available on devices with Android 1.6 and higher. Additionally, it can be downloaded in all countries where Android Market is available, although it continues to only recognize the English alphabet. The new version also includes some improvements to performance and bug fixes. Please try it out and let me know what you think.
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Gesture Search now available for Android 1.6
(Cross-posted with the Google Merchant Blog)
Vic Gundotra, VP of Engineering, demonstrated last December a preview version of Product Search for mobile with local inventory, which lets you see right in your search results whether items are in stock at nearby stores. We’re happy to announce that as of today, if you’re searching for a product that is sold by participating retailers, including Best Buy, Sears, Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, or West Elm, you can just look for the blue dots in the search results to see if it’s available in a local store. If you see a blue dot, you can tap on the adjacent “In stock nearby” link, and you’ll be taken to the seller’s page where you’ll see whether the item is “In Stock” or has “Limited Availability” near you. You’ll also see how far away the stores are from you — as long as you’ve enabled My Location or manually specified your location.
If you have an iPhone, Palm WebOS phone, or any Android-powered device, and you’re in the US, just go to Google.com in your mobile browser, tap on the “more” link, and then select “Shopping.” Or look for the “Shopping results” section in Universal Search results when you search on Google.com.
Finally, if you’re a retailer and you’d like to participate in this program, we want to hear from you. Please fill out this brief form to let us know that you’d like to be considered. In the meantime, you can get prepared by making sure your Local Business Center data is up to date, and ensuring that your Product Search data is in great shape.
Posted by Paul Lee and Yury Pinsky, Product Managers
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In stock nearby? Look for the blue dots.
This month is the annual Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where the mobile industry gathers to present its latest innovations and the coolest new gadgets. As you may know, our CEO Eric Schmidt will be one of the keynote speakers this year, and we recently announced a special Android Developer Lab, as part of App Planet. In addition, I’m excited to let you know that the AdSense for Mobile Applications team will also be on the ground and answering questions. So if you’re going too, keep an eye out for us!
posted by: Mike Schipper, AdSense for Mobile Apps team
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The AdSense for Mobile Apps Team goes to Barcelona
Google is always looking to make it easier for you to search and explore the web on your phone. We recently launched Near me now, which lets you explore what’s around you from the Google home page, and a category browse feature on Local Search with categorized business listings. Today, we’re happy to announce Popular Images which lets you browse and find interesting images.
This feature is accessible from Google Image Search on Android-powered devices and iPhones in the US. To try it out, go to www.google.com on your phone browser and click on “Images”. Under the search box, you will see a few of the top images along with a link to “Browse Popular Images”.
Clicking the link opens up a categorized list of image searches and corresponding images.
We have organized popular images across a few categories like Movies, Sports, Cars & Bikes, Music, and Cartoons. You can click on individual categories to see related images corresponding to what’s popular on Google Image Search. The queries are automatically categorized with an algorithm that will continue to improve over time. One special category is Trends, which shows image queries from Google Trends that have especially high recent activity.
Give it a try and have fun exploring images.
Posted by Jignashu Parikh and Varun Sharma, Google Mobile Engineering
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Popular Images on Google Image Search for mobile