Googling Friday #23

Hey gang and welcome to another edition of Googling Friday, a weekly blog about all things Google and Android related. We have a few interesting things to get into this week so let’s get right into the news.

Did Gmail eat your Mail?

This week a small percentage, about 0.02% of users found their email in Gmail was GONE! Just into thin air vanished! Luckily Google has been working hard on it and has now fully restored all email accounts effected. Still this may give some people some pause when it comes to cloud based email. About once every month I open up my Apple Mail application so I have everything in mail backed up locally.

Google pulls an App from Android Market over In-App Payment Policy

So for all the people that think Google is the good guy vs Apple when it comes to being friendly to apps, I would point you to this incident where Google pulled the Visual VoiceMail app after it collected payments after a free trial through its website and not through the app directly. Now personally I don’t have a problem with Google doing this, all the developer has to do is resubmit it with the option to purchase within the app. It is just a lot more easy for the customer than going to the developer’s website and buying it there. But for those that like to nit pick Apple for doing it, I’m just pointing out that Google is not without sin either.

Several dozen malware apps pulled from Android Market

So maybe Apple does have the right model for an App Store after all, to Google’s credit they pulled the apps pretty quick. One thing Apple has always stressed is virus free environments from its Macintosh computers to its iOS devices. Obviously Apple has a gate keeper for any app submitted to their store and one of the things that will get an app rejected is malware. Just something for Android to think about.

DoubleTwist Review

So you have all your media content run through iTunes but you have an Android based phone. How do you get your iTunes stuff into your new phone? Well, there are a number of ways, but one software developer has made it a lot easier to get that done. With this application it is easy to move your music, videos, and photos to your Android device. Also it has a built in Android Market so you can look at apps for the Android like you can via iTunes for iPhone apps. Install the doubleTwist app on your Android device and you can WiFi sync your files to it without connecting wires to your computer. DoubleTwist runs on both Mac and PC and is free so check it out if this describes you.



Well, that is going to do it for this week’s Googling Friday. See you all next week for more news from Google!