Googling Friday #11

Hello gang and welcome to another edition of Googling Friday. I know it’s been a couple of weeks and I apologize but there seemed to be a lack of Google news to report on so lets see what is happening this week.

Free WiFi on domestic Delta, AirTran, and Virgin America for the holidays!

We are approaching the major travel holidays with Thanksgiving and Christmas. For many traveling can be stressful with TSA screenings and connecting flights and crowded gates and planes. How about some free WiFi on the plane? Well if you are flying Delta, AirTran, or Virgin America domestic between November 20th-January 2nd, your in luck as Google is teaming with those airlines to offer Gogo Inflight WiFi for free! Now you can update your Twitter status when the flight attendant gets 2 beers and jumps...oh wait, that only happens on JetBlue!

Engadget review of Logitech Revue for GoogleTV

Engadget has posted their review of the Logitech Revue for GoogleTV. This is currently the cheapest way to add GoogleTV to your current TV setup at this point. Also if you are a Dish Network subscriber, you can get it for $179 plus $4 a month. As for me, I am holding off as the price is just too high for browsing web based content on my TV, but I love the search though.

Google Instant Search review

This week I wanted to review what Google is best known for, search! One of their new features is Google Instant Search. What that means is as you start to type words it is displaying search results live as you type and modifies on the fly as you are filling out your search. Well they have now brought this incredible feature to Android and iPhone/iPod touch devices. It’s a great feature and saves me a lot of time on searches. What will they think of next? Oh, how about instant previews which shows a snap shot of a page in your search results once you click on the magnifying glass icon next to the link. Good stuff! Well that is going to do it for this edition of Googling Friday. See you all next week!

Googling Friday #5

Hello folks and welcome to another edition of Google Friday. This week I really don’t have a review as much as I want to share how I have used Google to keep me on top of things with my contacts and calendar both in the cloud and on the desktop. But first, as always, some Google news for the week.

Google Searching goes Instant

On Wednesday, Google updated its search engine to now present search results as you type them. What this means is after you type just 1 or 2 letters it will start to present results based on your past search history. This is going to be great for power users as it will save quite a bit of time. Here is a screen shot I took just to give you an idea and then go try it for yourself...it’s OK...I’ll wait.

Pretty snazzy huh? What will Bing and Yahoo do in response?

Gmail Priority Inbox Initial review

Last week I told you how Google was adding a new Priority Inbox to Gmail. It has since been made accessible to me and it is very good. It does a great job on recognizing important email to me from the regular day to day email. For example, anything job related goes right to my Priority Inbox where as my mailing list stuff goes to the regular Inbox. Also, if you star email in either section it will place in in a third Starred email section within your Inbox. So basically your Priority Inbox has 3 sections: Important and Unread, Starred, and Everything else.

Chrome 6

Google released version 6 of its Chrome web browser. It is a lot faster and a newer interface. Well worth the update.

Google launching Music Store?

Google apparently is negotiating with major music labels regarding a music store. My thoughts are cool, I will continue to use iTunes, but if they can offer me music cheaper and still have it sit within my iTunes player like Amazon does, then great! I love competition for my dollars.

Staying in touch from the cloud and the desktop

Now for my thoughts this week. I love using Google Calendar and Contacts in conjunction with my desktop applications BusyCal and Apple Address Book. I really don’t update anything within the Apple Address Book as I do within Contacts in Gmail, but with BusyCal I do quite a bit and it syncs back nicely to Google Calendar which then syncs to my iPhone and iPad. So whatever device you are near, you can update it and it will reflect to your other devices. What this means for me is coming up in January, I will probably cease my MobileMe membership as the Google Calendar and Contacts are free. With BusyCal it has a side view for a ToDo list which really helps me stay on top of things. I’m using it to remember to call people back. My wife still writes things down in a planner, I have gone digital, so if it is written down and not in my calendar, I will probably forget it.

So that is what I wanted to share this week, see you all next week for another edition of Googling Friday.