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May

PSA: Removing Or Adding Sports Teams Or Stocks In Google Now Currently Causes It To Crash Endlessly

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, Google, News, Tips & Tutorials

Listen up, Android users. If you're using Google Now, don't go to its Settings -> My Stuff and try to modify sports teams or stocks right now, as doing so completely borks the whole app. As soon as you go back to the main screen or click into Search, you will experience a force close. Repeated attempts to restart it will result in a crash as well:

The only thing that works is clearing out Google Search's data in Settings -> Applications, after which you need to re-enroll into Google Now. Changing your Home or Work locations does not seem to trigger the issue - it's just sports teams and stocks.

Apr

Google Improves Mobile Search With Easier Access To Rotten Tomatoes Ratings, Quick View Badges For Wikipedia

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in Google, News

If you use Google Search on a mobile device, but prefer the web interface, then your experience just got a bit better today. For starters, if you search for Rotten Tomatoes, you'll see expandable sub sections with links to areas like movies that are in theaters. According to Google, "many sites" will have similar functionality.

Additionally, for some searches, you'll see a blue "Quick view" badge that you can tap to get easy access to a Wikipedia page on the subject. This is different from the knowledge graph cards in that the button appears next to individual Wiki links no matter where they appear in the results.

Apr

Google Search Update Brings Real-Time Package Tracking, Faster Search Results, And Quick Feedback

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in Applications, Google, News

You know what we just can't get enough of? Google Now cards. Today, the data giant updated its search app with a new real-time package tracking card (as opposed to the static "Your order has shipped" option before). In addition, regular old search results should be faster, which users on older devices are likely to love.

As a bonus, the app now provides quicker access to feedback and settings on the cards themselves. All in all, this is a fairly small update, but the bump from the nice but mostly useless package tracking card from before to proper real-time tracking is a great benefit.

Mar

Google Continues To Make The Extravagant Mundane, Allows You To Explore Everest, Kilimanjaro On Your Phone With Google Maps

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in Google, News

Have you ever wanted to scale a giant mountain? It's a really cool thing to do that challenges you to reach your peak physical condition, invest heavily in gear, and the payoff is joining a tiny percentage of the population that can say they've seen the world from one of its highest points. Or you could just go to Google Maps, now that the company has added images taken from the peaks of the Seven Summits, the highest mountains on each of the seven continents.

The company sent several of its engineers to scale some of the highest mountains in the world and bring back Street View (can we really even call it that at this point?) data that you can now explore.

Feb

Quick Tip: Long Press Google Search Suggestions To Pop Them Into The Search Bar

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Android OS, Applications, Tips & Tutorials

Remember that little diagonal arrow that used to appear next to suggestions in the Google Search box as you typed? The arrows could be used to insert suggestions into the search bar, while you kept typing away. For a while now, though, the arrows have been missing from Google Search. Those that want that feature back are in luck, however – astute Redditor Foxsbiscuits notes that a simple long-press will fling search suggestions into the search bar, providing essentially the same functionality with a slightly more discreet UI.

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Keeping this handy tip in mind, your searches can be as quick and efficient as ever.

Feb

Google Search App Updated, Adds Google Now Widget, Movie Ratings, Real Estate Listings And More

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in Applications, News

Google just pushed an update to its Search app (which, as you know, includes Google Now). Among the new additions are the Google Now widget that we've all been hearing so much about, movie ratings, the ability to pull up movie passes purchased from Fandango, and real estate listings from Zillow when Google thinks you're in the market for a home. Now that's fancy.

Additionally, the update also adds a music button when a song is playing in voice mode, though that feature is currently limited to the U.S. only. It also adds support for U.S. college sports. We've seen some of this integration before, but now it's official.

Feb

Google Now Update: NCAA Basketball Teams Can Be Manually Added To Sports Card

Posted by Jeremiah Rice in Android OS, Jelly Bean 4.1, Jelly Bean 4.2, News

Good news, basketball fans. Google has been gradually upgrading the Now service to include a wider range of sports teams, and today Division I NCAA basketball teams from all over the US can be manually added to your personal Now results. Go into the Google Now settings page, tap "Sports," and search for your favorite school. Only basketball is supported at the moment - here's hoping that football teams are added before the season starts.

Previously, a few NCAA teams were showing up in the Sports card dynamically, if you searched for them enough. Now you can make sure that you'll be alerted whenever your guys hit the boards.

Jan

NCAA College Basketball And Football Are Finally Starting To Appear In Google Now, Still No Manual Team Selection [Update]

Posted by Jeremiah Rice in News

One of the most often requested additions to Google Now's card system is college sports for the US, and it looks like at least some people are finally starting to see it. A very small number of Google Now users have seen cards appear for their favorite NCAA football and basketball teams (sorry, women's ice hockey fans, no dice). The results seem to be entirely contextual at the moment; you can't add college teams in the settings menu yet, but a few sports fans are seeing the relevant cards appear after they search for their team.

Unfortunately, even that little bit of information doesn't seem to be live for everyone.

Dec

Google Search Gets Shown Off In Two New 30-Second Spots [Video]

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Google, News, Videos

In a pair of new thirty-second ad spots, Google is showing off what it does best – search. The spots both feature Google's Search app for Android, using the same cozy, refined aesthetic as Google's other ads in recent memory, even showing off Search's new "search with camera" functionality.

The first spot follows the story of a nervous job candidate, gaining some insight into his prospective employer's interests with a last-minute Google search, while the second spot shows us a "smart Dad" who uses Google Search as a cheat sheet to answer his inquisitive son's astronomical questions. Without further ado, here's the new set of ads.

Dec

Google's Knowledge Graph Expands To Several New Languages Including Spanish, French, Russian And Japanese

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in Google, News

Under the hood of Google Now, powering all those beautiful cards that pop up when you search for certain things, is Google's Knowledge Graph. In what might be the company's most ambitious project ever, Google aims to categorize and classify all information so that when you search for, say, Jeff Goldbum, the search engine knows you might also be interested in information about Chaos Theory or survival tips for raptor attacks. Today, the company announced an extension to this already-huge product: availability in Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Japanese, Russian, and Italian. Pretty huge.