Hasta La Gadget!

This week Google has introduced a new component to their search and location-aware ecosystem in the mobile realm called Google Now. This system sits at the heart of Android, with your ability to access it sitting right in your lock screen. Google Now is effectively an add-on to the Google Search experience, adding a selection of “cards” that show you where you are, how you’ll be getting to the next place you’re going, and where you might very well want to go.

To access Google Now, you’ve only to access it from your lockscreen or to tap on the Google Search widget or app icon. From here you’ll find that you’ve got a lovely and super simple search bar at the top that’s ready to accept all typed or spoken voice commands as well as search terms. The real magic of course is in the cards that sit below the search bar before you do your search.

Above you’ll see the Nexus 7 connecting to this service via the lockscreen – in the hands-on video below you’ll see the Galaxy Nexus working with Google Now.

These cards include Weather, Public Transit, Places, Traffic, Flights, Sports, Appointments, Translation, Currency, and Time Back Home. The last item on this list is something you’ll have to program, it simply needing to know when you’ll want to see a map back home – and it’ll need you to mark where your home is, but just once. Appointments are connected to your Google Calendar, Translation and Currency appear when you go to a foreign country, and Sports show the scores of your favorite teams.

Flights is a card that’s able to track your flight information, how late you’ll be, and how long it’ll take you to get where you’re going. The same is true of Traffic and Public Transit, these connecting to Google Maps and Navigation to bring you the information you need, while Weather and Places are the most common cards as they’ll almost always be active to bring you information on the place you’re physically at.

Once you’re done with the info these cards can bring you, you can head straight back up to the search bar where results will spill over the cards to bring you deeper into the web.

Stick around as we continue to bring on the heat via our I/O 2012 and Android portals all week!

Google Now hands-on is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Google has started taking pre-orders for its first tablet, the Google Nexus 7. Priced at just $199, the tablet comes jam packed with a 7-inch Corning Gorilla Glass IPS display with a 1280×800 pixel resolution, an nVidia Tegra 3 quad-core processor, a 12-core graphics chip, a 1GB RAM, a 1.2-megapixel webcam and the Google Android 4.1 Jelly Bean operating system. Its battery provides enough juice for 8 hours of video playback, or 10 hours of web browsing. Available in 8GB and 16GB of storage capacities, the Google Nexus 7 also offers several connectivity options, including 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and NFC. Additional specs include accelerometer, magnetometer, gyroscope, microphone, built-in speakers and GPS. The Google Nexus 7 comes with all your favorite Google Apps such as Gmail, Chrome, Google+ and YouTube. [Google]

As part of the continued effort from Bing Maps to provide more and better data to its users, Bing Map has announced that it is adding 2700 venues worldwide to its service. The additional data comes from the partnership that Microsoft is doing with Nokia in the mapping area.

If you have not used it before, Bing Venue Maps provides indoor maps for large buildings such as malls. Indoor map information contains store location, but also ATM, restrooms and other things that people may search for in such places.

Of course, 2700 additional venues worldwide isn’t much and chances are that you are not going to use this right away. But just like maps in the early days, this effort will increasingly become more complete, and therefore useful. By then, we can hope that indoor-location will be available on handset, which is what we’re really excited about. If you want to check at venues, just head to the Bing Venue Maps site and note that this is also available to Windows Phone 7.5 users.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Windows Phone Maps Traffic, Now Powered by Nokia, Google files complaint against Microsoft and Nokia over “mobile patent abuse” in the EU,

It’s an exciting time when two worlds collide, especially for iOS users that have an affection for Google services. The head honchos in Mountain View took to the stage at Moscone West today and announced two programs were going to be made available in the App Store by the end of day: Chrome and Drive. The latter pushed out first, so we decided to give the free app a closer look. Head below for some screenshots and our impressions of the service.

Continue reading Google Drive for iOS hands-on

Google Drive for iOS hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Jun 2012 17:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I always thought that the fact that the original Death Star had a giant weak spot in the middle that made it blow up was stupid. You’d think they’d design these things to be less susceptible to attack. But instead of improving upon the original design, the Japanese have gone ahead and made a Death Star that can be demolished by simply dropping it on the ground – or exposing it to heat. Yep, what you’re looking at here is the official Death Star ice cube sphere.

The guys at Kotobukiya have created this special round ice tray which can cast a perfect replica of the original Death Star. Just snap the two halves together, pour in your water, and freeze. You’ll soon have your very own icy Death Star, measuring in at about 60mm in diameter (~2.36 inches.) That’s way easier than having to hire a clone army to build one for you.

Kotobukiya plans on releasing the silicone ice mold this August for ¥1050 (~$13 USD), and I’m hopeful they’ll start to show up outside of Japan shortly thereafter. It’s like the Death Star and Hoth got together and had a baby! Isn’t it darling?

[via Rocket News]