An update from Google Mobile:

Posted by Alexandra Kenin, Product Marketing Manager, Mobile Ads

In my last post, some of you expressed concern that intrusive and oversized advertisements on a small screen could result in a poor mobile user experience. You asked how we strike the delicate balance between ensuring a good user experience while providing effective advertising. At Google, we care very deeply about this balance and we’re constantly striving to make sure that you have the best experience possible. In this post, I’ll tell you more about some of the things we’re doing to try to achieve this.

At the core of striking this balance is working hard to improve ad quality. The more relevant the ads, the fewer ads there need to be. In fact, when you go to google.com on your phone and do a search, we now return no more than two text ads per query. These ads can appear above or below the organic search results and most take up just two lines of text on larger mobile screens. And while a single ad may appear at the top or bottom of a mobile content page, a double ad unit can only appear at the bottom of a page. Watch the video below to learn more about ad size and placement.

Of course, we also want to make sure our advertisers have a good experience with Google mobile ads. Fewer ads per page can be beneficial for an advertiser because there is less clutter on each page and each ad gets more visibility. More importantly, showing relevant ads and maintaining a good user experience results in better click-through rates and return on investment.

I hope this addresses some of your questions. Thanks so much for your comments on my last post and keep submitting more questions. This is your opportunity to guide the direction of this series!

[via Official Google Mobile Blog]

Yahoo! announced today that they will be joining the Google backed project OpenSocial. Both companies believe bringing social internet users more options other than say Facebook would benefit all. Yahoo! sees this as an opportunity to open itself up to more 3rd party developers.

What is OpenSocial? Well according to Wikipedia:

OpenSocial is a set of common application programming interfaces (APIs) for web-based social network applications, developed by Google, and released November 1, 2007. Applications implementing the OpenSocial APIs will be interoperable with any social network system that supports them, including features on sites such as Hi5.com, MySpace, Friendster and orkut.

I personally can’t wait to see Google and Yahoo! develop FluffFriends on crack. Take that cute and cuddly Facebook beasts!

(more…)

There’s a new entry on Google’s robot.txt file.  This is a sure fire way to see what Google’s been working on and not want you (the public) to see.  The new entry that forbids crawlers from seeing is http://www.google.com/m/lcb

Basically this is a no-typing needed search by categories tool.  Meaning it will intelligently let you get to what you are looking for by process of elimination.  Think of it as a “smart” directory geared towards the topics people usually search for while on the go.

Go ahead and check it out at http://www.google.com/m/lcb, but keep in mind that this is not a finished product.  From what I’ve seen, it looks promising and it is definitely something I would use daily.

(more…)

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Less than a week after losing in the latest U.S. spectrum auction, Google Inc. has started pitching its plan to use TV “white space” — unlicensed and unused airwaves — to provide wireless Internet.

In a letter to the Federal Communications Commission released by Google on Monday, the Internet search giant pressed the government to open up the white space for unlicensed use in hopes of enabling more widespread, affordable Internet access over the airwaves.

“As Google has pointed out previously, the vast majority of viable spectrum in this country simply goes unused, or else is grossly underutilized,” Richard Whitt, Google’s Washington telecom and media lawyer, wrote in the letter. “Unlike other natural resources, there is no benefit to allowing this spectrum to lie fallow.”

Google said the white space, located between channels 2 and 51 on TV sets that aren’t hooked up to satellite or cable services, offer a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to provide ubiquitous wireless broadband access to all Americans.”

In addition, opening up the spectrum would “enable much-needed competition to the incumbent broadband service providers,” Whitt wrote.

(more…)

I’ve been using the custom-built Google Maps on my Blackberry 8320 Curve since day one and in my opinion works 100x better than just going to maps.google.com on my phone’s browser.  So its no wonder people have been requesting such custom builds for their phones as well and Google has answered.  Heres the announcement:

As a mobile user, you choose a carrier, subscription plan, platform and handset model (think of it as a flavour) that suits your fancy. And with mobile applications becoming more and more important in your everyday wireless experience, you want to be sure that the apps you know and love will run beautifully on the phone you finally decide to call your own.

That’s why we’ve just released a “native” UIQ version of our Google Maps for mobile client application. Native applications are optimized for the platform on which they’re built, meaning they run fast and feel right. UIQ is an open mobile software platform that supports rich user interfaces like touch- and full-screen. Now that Google Maps for mobile runs natively on UIQ for Symbian OS, you can get the full benefit of handy features like My Location on a wider range of phones.

You can already get Google Maps for mobile clients custom-built for Palm, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, iPhone, and Symbian S60, in addition to the widely-used Java version of the application. Now, this list includes the following UIQ handsets (version 3.0 and up): new Sony Ericsson phones with touch screens — P1, W960i, W950, M600 or P990 — and the Motorola Z8. And new UIQ phones are coming out all the time; look for the soon-to-be-released Sony Ericsson G700 and G900, as well as the Motorola Z10.

Supporting so many platforms means only one thing: whatever gold-plated, diamond-encrusted or mint-scented handset you choose, a zippy mobile mapping experience is never more than a download away. Just visit google.com/gmm from your phone’s web browser, and we’ll get you sorted.

(more…)

The announcement US government made that television  broadcasts are going all digital opened up many opportunities.  The main one being a freed up 700MHz band.  Intense bidding and about 19.6 billion dollars later, the battle has concluded and no Google didn’t get a slice of that pie.  The FCC revealed to the media that Google did make a serious bid, but at the end of the day Verizon and AT&T overtook them.  I still stand by my theory that Google made a “serious non-serious bid”.  Serious in a sense to meet the minimum imposed by the government to keep the doors open for the 700MHz band being privately owned.  But non-serious by not having any intension of winning.  It makes sense for Google not wanting to own part of 700MHz, they are developing a software platform for mobile devices which will be hosted by wireless companies such as Verizon and AT&T.  It really should be them that owns 700MHz.

Here’s what the chairman of the FCC, Kevin J. Martin had to say:

“This auction provided an opportunity to have a significant effect on the next phase of wireless broadband innovation. With the open platform requirements on one-third of the spectrum, consumers will be able to use the wireless device of their choice on those networks and download whatever software or applications they want on it. The open platform will help foster innovation on the edge of the network, while creating more choices and greater freedom for consumers to use the wireless devices and applications of their choice” Kevin J. Martin, Chairman, FCC

(more…)

As many of you know HTC has been developing a phone that will run exclusively on the Google Android platform.  We’ve actually seen one of these in action recently.  HTC decided to officially name this phone the HTC Dream.  Here’s what Yahoo had to report on it.

San Francisco - The mobile phone High Tech Computer (HTC) has been developing to run on the Android software from Google  will be called “Dream,” have a large touchscreen and full QWERTY keypad, a person close to the situation said Thursday.

HTC may become the first handset maker in the world to put out a mobile phone developed around Android , but it faces stiff competition from Samsung, a separate source said. Samsung has stepped up its effort to put out a Google phone, the person said.

(more…)

The popular plug-in that places a Google Search shortcut on the main screen of your Symbian or Blackberry devices is now available for Windows Mobile. Simply point your Windows Mobile browser to mobile.google.com and download the app.

A few weeks ago, we launched a plug-in for Symbian devices that put a Google search shortcut onto the phone’s home screen. This shortcut reduces the time it takes for you to get answers from Google by eliminating the initial search steps (e.g. finding the browser application, opening it, and navigating to Google.com before entering your query). The same plug-in has been available for BlackBerry devices since last December. Today, we’re making this available for Windows Mobile devices too.

If you’re a Windows Mobile user, browse to mobile.google.com on your device to download the plug-in and start searching faster than ever. Once you do, we think you’ll find it so much faster and easier that you’ll start conducting more mobile web searches than you ever had before. How do we know this? Well, when we look at the combined usage numbers for BlackBerry and Symbian versions of this plug-in, we see that users are able to get Google search results up to 40 percent faster. And, BlackBerry and Symbian users with the plug-in installed search 20 percent more than those without it.

We saw something similar after we launched an updated interface for Gmail on the iPhone during MacWorld earlier this year. Lots of iPhone users tried the new interface (hence the bump in Gmail pageviews between January and February), but they didn’t stick around like we hoped they would. Over the course of the next few weeks, we made some tweaks to drastically improve the speed of the product, and Gmail pageviews on the iPhone not only stabilized, but began to rise, as the graph below shows:

(more…)

All games are designed and implemented on OmniGsoft’s proprietary cross-platform 3D game engine that supports multiple mobile platforms such as Android, Windows Mobile and JavaME. Powered by OpenGL|ES as 3D graphics power plant and Android accelerometer as an alternative game control, these mobile games are aiming to provide the highest quality of 3D graphics and gaming experience on Android platform.

The developers claim that the game “City Stage” runs at 24 FPS in it’s Windows Mobile port, but will the 24 frames hold on Android?…

(more…)

Watching Google tiptoe around its relationship with Apple as it rolls out Android is one of the most enjoyable aspects of watching the industry these days. This is perfectly illustrated in the words of Rich Miner, group manager for Google’s mobile platforms, who said, “there’s a much larger potential market on Android than for the iPhone.” A truthful statement in all likelihood assuming that the OS is robust upon its global release later this year and available on handsets from HTC, Samsung, Motorola, and LG as expected. Miner then took a few shots at the iPhone SDK saying, “There are things I saw people doing with the first version of the Android SDK that it seems like you can’t do with the iPhone at least at the moment.” He then noted that the SDK had been downloaded 750,000 times (compared to Apple’s 100k in 4 days) as of February. Naturally, he then applied a thick, brown coat of public relations salve saying, “[If I were a developer] I’d certainly be looking at the iPhone, and if you believe there will be lots of Android phones out there, as we do, I’d be developing for both platforms.” Kumbaya my BossEricSchmidtSitsOnTheAppleBoard, kumabaya…

[via Engadget Mobile]