Flipboard is probably the most elegant app for reading news on an iPad (and now on the iPhone). Apple called it the iPad app of the year in 2010 and its success made other companies release magazine-like apps for reading news: Yahoo Livestand and now Google Currents.

Google's offering allows publishers to create mini-apps inside Google Currents. They can combine multiple feeds, photo streams and video streams, Google+ updates, create custom sections, add an icon and a splash page, customize the template and more. There are already 180 "editions" from sites like AllThingsD, Fast Company and more, but any site can be converted to an "edition" if it has a feed.

Currents is available in the US for iPhone, iPad and Android devices. You can only use it after signing in to your Google account, which has the benefit that all the settings are synced and you can read the same editions on different devices. You can add one of the built-in editions, import some of your Google Reader subscriptions or use the search feature to find blogs and news sites. Google also shows some popular stories from Google Trends.



"Great content needs a great audience, which is why Google Currents is integrated with Google+ so users can share articles or videos they've enjoyed with their circles. Publishers can also associate their account with Google Analytics in order to increase their awareness of consumers' content preferences, device use and geographic distribution," informs Google.



Google Currents automatically paginates articles, creates table of contents and emphasizes photos. The articles are synchronized, so you can read them even offline. This is especially useful if you have an Android device because the articles can be synchronized in the background.


Currents is a good alternative to apps like Flipboard and Pulse, but it doesn't integrate with Facebook and Twitter, the interface is not that smooth and it uses too many resources.


Update: Here's the Currents edition for this blog. You need to first install the Google Currents app on an iPhone, iPad or Android device and then click the link on your mobile device's browser.

Schemer is an invite-only Google service for sharing and discovering things to do. "A scheme is any activity that can be done in the world, whether it's ordering a favorite dish at a restaurant or snorkeling in the Caribbean with sharks," explains Google.

Much like 43 Things, Schemer lets you define goals and mark the things you've already accomplished. You can inspire other people, find people who have the same goals and join the conversation. To make it easier to find a scheme, you can add tags and locations. Google also partnered with Bravo, Food Network, Rolling Stone, IGN and Entertainment Weekly, so you can get ideas from experts, not just from your friends.


"Whether it's exploring a new city, checking out a friend's movie recommendation, or just finding new activities for your weekends, Schemer lets you discover new things to do, share schemes with friends, and make the most of your day," mentions Schemer's team. The service is integrated with Google+ and you need to join Google+ to be able to use it. "Schemer uses your profile picture and name from your Google+ account to identify you as a schemer user. This means that when you post a scheme, write a comment, post a reply, or indicate either you want to do or have done a scheme, your profile picture and name will be attached to those activities."

Schemer is actually a Google+ app and it's likely that you'll be able to use it inside Google+ in the future. Google also promises to launch a mobile app for Schemer so you can find schemes related to your location.

Now that Google+ no longer requires invitation, Schemer could make Google+ more popular. There's a great viral video, an interesting design and a site that doesn't look like a regular Google service. A scheme is "a secret or devious plan" (American Heritage Dictionary) and a schemer is a person who is involved in making these secret plans, so Google uses a mustache logo, a mesmerizing animated homepage, the Hitchcock font and catchy messages like "You're looking diabolical!" or "Invite your partners in crime".



{ Thanks, Venkat. }

Gmail's contact manger started to include information from Google Profiles. You can also find your Google+ circles in the sidebar, below the list of groups.


By default, the data obtained from Google Profiles is displayed below the information you've entered, but you can combine them: go to a contact page, click the "More" dropdown and select "[Show external data] inline".

It's interesting to notice that the Google Profiles data is automatically added when you enter an email address associated with a profile. To remove this information, just delete the corresponding email address.

The latest features are also available at google.com/contacts, which has recently switched to the new Google Contacts interface, but you can find them in the old Gmail interface, as well.

{ Thanks, Scott, Filipe, Venkat, Yavuz, Shimmy, Zachary and Matt. }

Google uses your search history to personalize the results for your future queries. That's not a new feature, but it was only used to disambiguate queries and to change the order of the results.

Now you might also see a small message next to the snippet which explains that the result was picked because you've searched for a different keyword before. For example, if you search for [tablet] and then search for [asus] Google will include some tablet-related search results and even highlight a page about the Asus Transformer. Right now, this feature is only available in the US.


Sometimes this could be useful. Google connects the dots and tries to provide better results by using keywords from your previous searches. But that's not always a good idea because two consecutive queries aren't necessarily related. You could search for [html table] and [blackberry] and the second result for [blackberry] will be:


Google's algorithms aren't perfect and Google should provide an obvious way to hide the "enhanced" results. You can scroll to the bottom of the page, click "view customizations" and then click "without these improvements", you can also "disable customizations based on search activity" if you aren't logged in, but these options are cumbersome.

{ Thanks, Nick. }

Google Goggles for Android has a new mode that lets you find information about objects without manually taking pictures. Just enable the continuous mode and Goggles will automatically analyze the scene, upload the photos to Google's servers and show the results at the bottom of the screen. "Continuous mode is a quick and easy new way to use Goggles. You can now get results instantly without having to take a picture - no shutter press required! Goggles will scan the scene continuously so you don't need to worry about taking multiple pictures. The new continuous mode works best with books, products, artwork, and landmarks," explains Google. For now, Goggles can't detect text in the continuous mode, so you need to switch to the snapshot mode to translate a text, find an address or call a phone number.


The "live" mode is useful if you want to scan many barcodes or if you want to find information about many objects without spending a lot of time taking the perfect photos. Goggles is still far from perfect, so it will sometimes detect a lot of incorrect objects. You'll need a fast Internet connection, good lighting and an Android phone with a decent camera. Unfortunately, the application doesn't save its findings. While it's obvious that cluttering the history is not a good idea, saving the list of detected objects to a temporary page would be really useful.

Google Goggles 1.7 also adds a feature that returns pages which include the text you've scanned, even if it's a long text. This is especially useful for news articles. Now you can quickly find the online version of the content you're reading.


You can improve Goggles by adding information about the objects you know. Tap "can you suggest a better result?", draw a box around the object and describe the object. "To date, hundreds of thousands of submissions have been made to improve Goggles. Starting today, if you choose to suggest a better result or submit a new object altogether, your suggestion could become a result for the next user who searches for a similar object with Goggles," informs Google.

If you have a device that runs Android Gingerbread, Honeycomb or Ice Cream Sandwich, install Goggles from the Android Market or update to the latest version. According to Google, about 50.6% of the Android devices run Gingerbread and 2.4% of the devices run Android Honeycomb.

If you change your Google account's password and you try to log in using the old password, Google shows a special message: "Your password was changed X days ago. Didn't change your password?" and links to this article.

It looks like you've attempted to sign in using an old password. If you remember changing your password, just sign back in using your most recent password. If you remember changing your password but have forgotten your new one, you can regain access to your account by going to our password assistance page.

If you don't remember changing your password, someone else might have accessed your account and changed your password. In some cases, your previous recovery email or phone might be available on the password assistance page for resetting your password. If that's not the case, you'll have the option to fill out our account recovery form to verify your identity and reclaim your account.

To show this message, Google needs to store your old password (actually, a password hash, since Google doesn't store the actual password). This is probably useful if someone managed to access your account and changed the password. Obviously, you'll still try the old password and you won't understand why it no longer works.

{ Thanks, Venkat and Brandon. }

Google tests a new tablet interface for the image search engine. The new UI uses a carousel that lets you browse through the image results, just like the search app for iPad. Google no longer loads the corresponding websites and only focuses on the images.



A similar slideshow is available in the smartphone interface and it will be interesting to see if it will be added to the desktop interface.

Google announced that the Android Market "exceeded 10 billion app downloads". The number is impressive, considering that the number of downloads was 1 billion in July 2010, but it's still lower than the number of downloads from Apple's App Store. In January, Apple announced that over 10 billion apps have been downloaded from the App Store. In July, the number grew to 15 billion downloads and it's likely that Apple will soon announce 20 billion downloads.

Google will celebrate the milestone by offering many popular apps for only 10 cents. "Starting today for the next 10 days, we'll have a new set of awesome apps available each day for only 10 cents each. Today, we are starting with Asphalt 6 HD ($6.99), Color & Draw for Kids ($0.99), Endomondo Sports Tracker Pro ($3.99), Fieldrunners HD ($2.99), Great Little War Game ($2.99), Minecraft ($6.99), Paper Camera ($1.99), Sketchbook Mobile ($1.99), Soundhound Infinity ($4.99), Swiftkey X ($3.99)," informs Google. Probably the most useful app is Swiftkey X, a really smart virtual keyboard, but you can download all the apps for only one dollar.

Now you no longer need to use Wolfram Alpha to plot Math graphs. Google shows an interactive graph when you search for a Math function or a list of functions separated by commas. "You can zoom in and out and pan across the plane to explore the function in more detail. This feature covers an extensive range of single variable functions including trigonometric, exponential, logarithmic and their compositions, and is available in modern browsers," explains Google.

For example, you can search for [sin(x)/x, 1/x^2] to see this beautiful SVG graph.


You can also search for [sin(x) from -pi to pi] or add extraneous words like "plot", "graph" to the query (example: [graph ln(x)]).


{ Thanks, Arpit. }

A week ago, I reported that YouTube tests a new interface based on Cosmic Panda. The most important feature is the redesigned homepage that helps you find new channels and explore the videos from your subscriptions. YouTube started to post additional information about the new interface and it's now obvious that it will replace existing UI in the near future (the link only works after you've enabled the new interface).

"We've given YouTube a refresh. When you login, you'll be greeted with recent activity from your subscriptions. You can also browse and add new Channels to your homepage. Connect with Google+ and Facebook to share your favorites with friends. There's plenty to discover, so login and give it a spin."


There's also an article about the new interface for channels.

This new look and feel makes it easier for viewers to to find and watch content. It also makes it easier for Channel creators to organize and showcase exactly what they want. We incorporated your Feedback from the "Cosmic Panda" Channels and Watch experiment, and are excited to present:

* A more streamlined and consistent design
* An easier way to find and view videos
* New, more flexible layouts for featured content, and
* A way to keep your audience engaged even when you don't have new uploads

It's interesting to notice that the new homepage and the new channels are built around feed views and activity streaming to make YouTube even more social.


The new channels are less customizable: you can only choose an avatar, a background image, a background color and a template (creator, blogger, network, everything).



Update: The new interface is available for everyone.