Google Shared Spaces is a new Google Labs offering that provides users with Google Wave gadgets to collaborate via maps, puzzles, polls, YouTube, Twitter and other tools. – Google made good on reheating leftover scraps from its failed
Google Wave experiment by launching Shared Spaces with gadgets from the defunct
real-time collaboration platform.
A new Google Labs project, Shared Spaces leverages more
than 50 gadgets, or mini-apps from Google Wave to let people col…
If you own an Android, chances are you have heard of Gesture Search from Google Labs. For those who are unaware Gesture, the app was developed to make it easier to locate contacts and applications rather than trawling through them on your phone. Wondering how it works? Well, Gesture lets you simply draw a gesture [...]
Have you ever wanted to create your own Apps for your Google Android? Well, the guys at Google are now offering you the ability to do so, with their new gizmo dubbed – App Inventor.
Google’s App Inventor promises users to be able to create just about any app you can imagine, from simple games to [...]
Finding a parking spot can be quite a painful experience, especially if you have no idea where the next open spot is. And even if you’re the one of the calmest people around, searching high and low for a parking spot that may not even be available may set off feelings of road rage. Guess [...]
Google has launched Open Spot, an experimental Android application to help drivers find parking spots. Open Spot will show parking spots located within 0.9 mile of their location, marked by colored dots on the app’s map. – Google has created an experimental Android application called Open Spot to
help drivers find parking spots, a cool tool for time-constrained people who
have neither the time nor inclination to troll for empty spots.
Launched from Google Labs July 9, Open Spot
will show drivers parking spots loca…
Google is continually updating their applications though official development and outside programmers designing  extensions and labs. If you have some spare time and familiarity with Google Maps, then here are a few features you might find useful.
Get Directions: Not a new feature by any means, Google has refined their algorithms to allow for variations in [...]
Recently Google added three more gadgets to labs in Google Calendar. These include event flair, gentle reminders, and automatically decline events. Here is a list of the 5 coolest (and most useful) Google Calendar labs.
To enable any of these gadgets, you have to visit Google Calendar Labs. Select “enable” next to any of the functions [...]
Google March 10 continued to toy with new ways to present Web content to users with the introduction of Google Reader Play. This Google Labs experiment leverages the Recommended Items section in the Google Reader feed to show users items on the Web that others found interesting. For users who sign into their Google account, Reader Play will be personalized with items that people users are following have shared in Google Reader, and items similar to ones users have previously liked, starred, or shared. Check out the Reader Play tour in this eWEEK slideshow.
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Don’t worry, Google Reader is not going to be replaced, but the Google Reader team did come up with a cool new feature. It’s called Google Reader Play and is an experiment in Google Labs.
Google Reader Play is all about the visual experience. It uses the same technology as recommended items to find content you [...]
Google Labs’ experimental Public Data Explorer allows users to view and create charts based on public data such as mortality and fertility rates. While Google already incorporates such data from the World Bank and other sources into its search results, this new application draws on even more publicly available information. Bing, one of Google’s main search competitors, uses the Wolfram Alpha computational engine to provide similar statistical results.
– Google announced the launch March 8 of Google Public Data
Explorer, an experimental application offered through Google Labs. The tool
allows everyone from students to policy wonks to create a wide variety of
charts from public data, such as fertility or unemployment rates.
For example, a user …
Google last week acquired social search service Aardvark. The service lets users ask questions and get answers from other users in their social circle within minutes. Rather than integrate Aardvark directly into its core search results (how might that work, anyway?), Google put Aardvark into Google Labs, where it will arguably evolve and improve, thanks to access to millions of more eyeballs. But did you know that Google has several other experiments in search and other areas percolating in Google Labs? Some of them, such as Google Social Search, even graduate. See current Labs experiments here.
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Google just came out with a new way to search information: Google Goggles.
This is a new search application for android phones, where you do not have to use your fingers to type in a search, and you do not use your voice for a voice-activated search either. Google Goggles is based on the principle of [...]
Google launches Google Social Search from Google Labs Oct. 26. The experiment is designed to make search results more relevant by mining the rich Google profile information users provide. This includes all Gmail contacts and Gmail chat buddies, as well and people users are publicly connected to on social sites such as Twitter and FriendFeed. Not Facebook though. If there’s Web content written by contacts relevant to the search query, Google’s algorithm will sniff the content out and serve it up at the bottom of the search results page in a section called Results from people in your social circle.
– Google Oct. 26 released Google Social Search, the company’s stab at making
search more personally relevant by putting content from searchers’ contacts
directly into search results.
Users must opt in to use the experimental service from Google Labs here. Google
Social Service requires users to ha…
Microsoft launched the beta version of its Visual Search for Bing, its search engine, on Sept. 14. Visual Search presents its users with a series of image galleries, which can then be clicked and scrolled through to find a particular one – all without ever having to type in a search term.
Google Labs produced a similar visual-search feature, called Similar Images, earlier this year. Despite sharing some outward characteristics, Microsoft’s and Google’s still-in-development products have sharp differences. For example, Similar Images dictates that the user type in a search term before being able to search through galleries; it also lacks some of the granular-search options of Bing’s Visual Search.
As the battle for U.S. search engine market share intensifies between Google and Microsoft, both companies are looking for ways to gain and retain users through offering an ever-wider array of search functionality. In the following slide show, eWEEK uses the search for a smartphone to illustrate how both companies’ thinking differs when it comes to visual search.
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It may not stand out to you right away that there are Labs features in Google Calendar as well. Although they are easy to find directly in Google Calendar, or through the Google Labs website. To view and enable any of the labs features, check the link in the top right corner of your Calendar [...]
