Koolu - Works Everywhere

Posted by Michael van Ouwerkerk, Software Engineer, Google mobile team

Joe optimized Picasa Web Albums for the iPhone and Zak made it shine on Windows Mobile. This made me wonder about Nokia phones. Ever since S60 3rd Edition came out, phones like the Nokia N95 have had good web browsers. Why not give Picasa Web Albums on S60 some AJAXy goodness, with faster browsing and a slicker user interface as well? I investigated what it would take to make our existing design work on S60 and it turned out to be really easy! And since I'm Dutch, I also wanted to view this interface without needing to switch my account language to English. So we had it translated into 36 new languages. We also gave the toolbar an overhaul, adding simpler to understand icons. You can now get this new version of Picasa Web Albums on all S60 phones using a WebKit-based browser, as well as iPhone using Safari and Windows Mobile 6 Professional using Internet Explorer. As an added bonus we've also added support for Windows Mobile 6 Standard.

Finally, based on requests we've had on this blog, we've added a zoom feature for the iPhone. When viewing a photo that was uploaded to Picasa Web Albums in high resolution, just tap on the zoom button -- the one with the magnifying glass. This will take you to a page with a high-resolution image where you can use those wonderful finger gestures for zooming and panning around in the zoomed area.



Head to picasaweb.google.com to give it a try, and be sure to let us know what you think! There's a good chance now that your phone and preferred language are supported.

Posted by Zhengrong Ji and Ravi Jain, Google mobile team

At Google we're very excited about the promise of location technology to drive innovation in the mobile industry. We of course use this location technology already in Google Maps for mobile with the My Location feature. However, we wanted 3rd party developers to also have access to the same location technology across multiple platforms. Gears for Windows Mobile and Android already contain location APIs and we expect to see an explosion of mobile applications that use location technology, particularly on the iPhone starting this month.

Some have wondered: How does it work?

Google Maps for mobile version 2.0 launched last November with a new feature called My Location. My Location enables users to pinpoint their approximate location on a map even if their phone doesn't have a GPS chip. My Location is now available in more than 200 countries and across many different platforms, including BlackBerry, Nokia Series 60, Apple iPhone/iPod Touch, Windows Mobile, and many Java phones. Here's a video that explains what it does. Since the launch, we've seen accelerated growth in the adoption of Google Maps for mobile and have received lots of enthusiastic user feedback on My Location.

We're happy to lift the covers and give you a peek into the inner workings of the Google location server, which powers the My Location feature.

Wireless phones can make and receive calls because they are connected over the air to a nearby cell tower. The phone knows the ID of the cell tower that it's currently using. If the phone has GPS, the Maps application on the phone sends the GPS coordinates along with the cell ID to the Google location server. Over millions of such updates, across multiple phones, carriers, and times, the server clusters the GPS updates corresponding to a particular cell ID to find their rough center. So when a phone without GPS needs its own location, the application on the phone queries the Google location server with the cell tower ID to translate that into a geographic location, i.e., lat/long coordinates. Nifty, huh? We think so.


We're working hard to further improve our location platform and making it more widely available. Stay tuned!

Posted by Joe Hughes, Software Engineer

Ever since Google Maps added public transportation directions for San Francisco, it's been a lot easier for me to figure out which buses and trains will get me where I'm going around town, so that today's gas prices take less of a toll on my wallet. Even so, I've often found myself wishing that I had an easy way to get transit directions while I'm out and about.

Enter the new version of Google Maps for mobile. This version (2.2) allows you to get transit directions in all the same places as the web version of Google Maps, including Chicago, the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Vancouver, and over 40 other cities in North America.

This version of Google Maps for mobile even has a few tricks not yet available on the desktop version of Google Maps. For instance, you can find the last transit trips of the day (to figure out how late you can stay at the party) and more easily browse through earlier or later trips. The My Location feature, available on most phones, also makes it easier to set the start point of your journey.

To see how the transit feature of Google Maps for mobile works, take a look at this quick video walkthrough with my co-worker Ryan:


This version of Google Maps for mobile also includes a bunch of other goodies, like faster searching on BlackBerry devices and star ratings for businesses. It's currently available for BlackBerry devices and many other Java-based phones. To download it to your phone visit http://www.google.com/gmm from your phone's web browser or on the desktop.

We're working to bring public transit directions to Google Maps on other devices, so stay tuned!

Posted by Maryam Kamvar, Software Engineer

We all know that typing on mobile phones can sometimes be a headache -- especially if the phone in question has a small 9-key keypad. On those kinds of devices, we estimate that it takes an average of 40 seconds and 41 key presses to enter a query. When it comes to key presses, that's more than double what it takes on other phones!

In an effort to help our mobile users, we studied the effect of incorporating a feature like Google Suggest on mobile phones with 9-key keypads. We found that these users respond favorably to query suggestions: Users who were shown suggestions while typing their query rated their overall enjoyment higher and perceived workload lower than users who were not shown suggestions. Users who were shown suggestions also reduced their overall key presses by half. Surprisingly, the time to enter a query for these users was not significantly less than the average time needed to enter queries for users who were not shown any suggestions.

You can find a more complete discussion of our results and findings in the PDF version of "Query Suggestions for Mobile Search: Understanding Usage Patterns." It was presented at the CHI-2008 conference last month. Also, we've incorporated Google Suggest on Google's iPhone interface, so try it out if you haven't already!