18
Sep
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CloudMagic Receives Major Update To Version 2, Can Now Search Through Even More Services

Posted by in Applications, News

CloudMagic, the supersearch service that crawls through your Gmail, GDocs, GCal, Contacts, Twitter, Office365, and Exchange accounts just got a whole lot more powerful. It was bumped up to version 2.1 in the Play Store, which brings integration with even more services, including Facebook, Dropbox, Evernote, Box, iCloud, AOL, mail.com, and GMX. That's a whole lotta services.

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That's not all v2.1 is good for, either: the app has been completely redesigned to shed the old-school Google Search look and to make it more ICS/JB friendly. It looks quite nice.

But wait, there's more!

This update also brings a new "snapshot view" that gives you a glimpse of all your data, rich previews, more actions, and the ability to forward e-mails, as well as view attachments.

29
Aug
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T-Mobile's Last Galaxy S II Update UVLH1 Also Quietly Removed Universal Search

Posted by in Galaxy S II, News, Samsung, T-Mobile

Yesterday's update UVLH1 for the Galaxy S II on T-Mobile may have shaken things up a bit when it comes to NFC and ISIS, but it now looks like Samsung has also sneaked in a tweak dumbing down universal search. A similar "fix" was discovered in T-Mobile's version of the Galaxy S III 2 weeks ago, and it seems like Samsung is not taking any chances with its older sibling either.

As evident from the screenshots below, searching for "maps" only brings back relevant suggested web searches and results, but not the local Maps application. For comparison, I've included a shot of doing the same on the EVO 3D.

16
Aug
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Google Voice Search Now Available In Thirteen New Languages

Posted by in Android OS, Applications, Google, News

In a post to its official blog that's sure to excite users across the globe, Google has just announced that Voice Search is now available in thirteen new languages. The list of newly included languages, which range from Basque to Swedish, brings the total number of supported tongues up to 42.

In the post, Product Manager Bertrand Damiba explains just what it takes to add a new language to Voice Search – first and foremost, Google must collect "hundreds of thousands of utterances" from volunteers to bring speech recognition up to par.

While this sounds easy enough, Google engineers also face challenges in adding support for new languages – Damiba explains that languages that don't follow predictable pronunciation rules (like Swedish) require that Google recruit native speakers to pronounce thousands of individual words.

15
Aug
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Meet Ubi: The Totally Voice-Controlled Android Computer You Plug Into A Wall Outlet

Posted by in News

Another day, another Kickstarter project. This one actually looks like it could have potential, though. Ubi is an Android-powered speaker system that connects to your local WiFi network. The small black box plugs into a power outlet and is controlled primarily via voice. It comes equipped with colored LEDs for notifications, and an array of sensors including temperature, humidity, air pressure, and ambient light. To round out the specs, the box packs a full-size USB port and a 3.5mm audio jack. Couple all that with an open development platform and the potential is nigh on limitless.

The device appears to be built largely around Google's voice actions and search.

14
Aug
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Google Adds 'Prior Art Finder' And European Patents To Its Patent Search Tool, Pretends There's No Subtext

Posted by in Google, News

Earlier today, Google rolled out a brand new feature for its online patent research tool: prior art search. Now, while looking at a patent, you can click a single button to pull up a host of results from Google Patents, Google Scholar, Google Books, with a bit of Google's typical search results sprinkled on top. The goal, of course, is to aid in researching whether a patent that's been filed is "new and not obvious." Which is far more complex than it sounds.

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Reading between the lines, one could possibly infer that Google wants to make it easier on its partners (or itself) to prove their inventions are unique, or to avoid infringing patents that have already been granted (which is different from a patent that has been filed, mind you).

10
Aug
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[Whoa!] Google Will Start Down-Ranking Search Results That Receive Too Many Takedown Requests

Posted by in Google, News

This may not be strictly Android-related news, but it's safe to say that what Google does to search results is relevant to our readers' interests, no? Today, Google announced via its Inside Search blog that the company will start including the volume of valid copyright removal notices as a factor in determining how high or low a site ranks in its search results. Translation: pirate sites won't be removed entirely, but they'll start ranking lower than legitimate sites.

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Pretty soon, sites like the Pirate Bay won't be the #1 search result anymore.

The net effect of this change will likely be very minimal to the more hardcore pirates.

09
Aug
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Google Rolls Out Aesthetic And Functional Improvements To Mobile And Tablet Search Quick Answers

Posted by in Google, News

In a post to its "Inside Search" blog, Google announced today that several improvements are currently being rolled out to mobile search (for phones and tablets), making some of the engine's quick answers "richer, more beautiful, and more interactive."

In the recent past, users have enjoyed improvements to weather and calculator searches, with handy interactive cards (reminiscent of Google Now's visual style).

Google is now updating a heaping handful of other quick answer features including finance, currency conversion, unit conversion, dictionary definitions, local time lookup, and holiday and sunrise times.

CurrencyConversion - Mobile Finance - Mobile flight status quick answer unit converter

With the aesthetic and functional improvements, Google Search will keep its intuitive quality – for example, a user could search for "how many miles are 42 kilometers" and see an interactive quick answer card with the answer to your query displayed prominently above a host of interactive elements.

27
Jul
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Samsung Delivers On Its Promise To Return Universal Search To Galaxy S III - At Least In The UK

Posted by in Galaxy S III, Legal, News

When Samsung inadvertently removed the universal search feature from the international Galaxy S III, everyone assumed it was for legal reasons. Not so, says Samsung! As it turns out, the feature was removed on accident and, as of today, the feature has been restored. If you live in the UK, at least. No word yet on restoration to any other devices.

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As you can see in the photo above, the device model this is being applied to is t he GT-I9300, which is the model for the international Galaxy S III. We're still waiting to hear if any users outside the UK get the feature restored, but for now, it looks like if you own the device inside Her Majesty's borders, you should be getting local search back before you know it.

26
Jul
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Google Adds Handwriting Recognition To Search In Your Mobile Browser, Makes Search More Awesome

Posted by in Google, News

In its endless attempts to make searching easier for everyone, Google has introduced yet another way to search via its mobile site at google.com: handwriting recognition. If you go to Google's search page from your phone or tablet's mobile browser and enable the feature via settings, you can now scribble your searches on the screen, even after receiving results. It's pretty fancy!

Of course, this does raise the question of whether this input method is any faster. In the video above, in an attempt to show how this might be used, we see a man who has had nearly all of his fingers broken scribble the words "ski lessons" on the screen.

26
Jul
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Samsung Says It Didn't Mean To Remove Universal Search From International Galaxy S III, Will Put It Back Soon

Posted by in Galaxy S III, Legal, News

Well, this is awkward. While it was recently reported that Samsung removed the universal search feature from its international Galaxy S III devices, it turns out Samsung didn't mean to. Oops. According to the Korean manufacturer, the company only intended to remove the feature from certain US variants of the handset. Samsung told TechRadar, a UK-based tech publication, that the feature would be returning to the UK variant of the Galaxy S III. It's unclear if this means that it will only be returning to the UK variant, or if Samsung is simply informing TechRadar and the BBC of the versions relevant to their readers.

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