Hasta La Gadget!

Today’s the day for updates to Google’s Android apps. The latest to get a revision is the company’s main Search app, which sees a slew of new features and minor tweaks. That includes the ability to display a related website based on your current location, as well as offer sports and flight updates in realtime instead of on a 15-minute delay. Beyond that, you’ll now be able to set reminders based on things like album or book releases, view event tickets from select websites, and see additional Smart TV cards (which require an actual smart TV) for news and music that’s currently on your TV. Another feature that’s said to be “rolling out gradually” is the ability to automatically tell others when you’ve left work. You can find the full rundown of all the new features (and the app itself) in the Google Play store.

Update: We’ll have to cool our jets for now — while there is a fresh APK for Google Search in the Play Store, it appears the features in the changelog are just hanging around from the last update. We’ll let you know if anything new and interesting surfaces (with the pace of updates rolling out today, a Google change-tracker dashboard would be nice).

Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Google

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Via: Droid Life

Source: Google Play

Traffic and weather updates are great, but Google Now never shines better than when you’re on vacation. To that end, Mountain View has taught the feature a few new tricks, equipping it with cards for keeping track of car rental and concert tickets. Not traveling? No problem, Google also updated Now’s public transit cards to notify users when the last train home leaves — a feature that was announced for Japan at Google I/O. While waiting, users will also be able to check the latest NCAA scores with a new football card.

New cards are always good, but more interesting are the reminder features the latest update tacks on. Thumbing a new “remind me” button while searching for media will prompt Google Now to notify you when your favorite band, TV show or author releases something new. A tweaked TV card will offer real time data as well, sussing out what program you are watching using your smartphone’s mic and digging up program information. Itching to try it out? Skip on over to the Google Play store and update your search app. You’ll find that link below.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Google

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Source: Google Play, Android (G+)

Continuing its efforts to speed up the way we find things when searching the web from our smartphones, Google is rolling out expandable sitelinks. Instead of wasting time sifting through a website trying to locate a specific page, this new feature generates a list of related quick links that allow you to jump directly to what you’re looking for. Already available in desktop results, expandable links are hit or miss when used on mobile. Not stopping there, Google also announced the release of its new Quick view badges. This experimental project produces highlighted links from Wikipedia, which offer snippets of information relevant to your query. Pictured above are results for different types of poker hands. It won’t stop you from losing your money, but now you’ll always remember a flush beats a straight. As of now Quick view is only available in English search results, but Google is working on adding support for additional languages.

Filed under: Internet, Software, Mobile, Google

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Source: Google

Tamar Yehoshua has led Google’s efforts to optimize Search across platforms, devices and languages and earlier this afternoon she took to the Expand stage to discuss how the discovery process has changed. Following her talk, Brian Heater caught up with Tamar to chat about the evolution of search and the company’s focus on voice. Check out our video after break for the interview in its entirety.

Follow all of Engadget’s Expand coverage live from San Francisco right here!

Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile, Google

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Everyone googles themselves at some point — even the people who say they don’t. But if you don’t like what you see when that search box offers possible queries linked to your name, don’t go suing Google. The search giant is officially not to blame. That’s the official ruling handed down by the 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago today which found Google not at fault for a search result linking Wisconsin resident Beverly Stayart’s name to ads for Levitra (a male erectile dysfunction drug). According to Reuters, presiding Judge Ann Claire Williams deemed the search result an exception to the state’s misappropriation laws due to its incidental nature (Stayart is a poet and animal rights advocate). The case marks the second courtroom loss for Stayart who had originally leveled the same charges against Yahoo. Unfortunately for Stayart, the buzz from news like this will only help promote the “scandalous” search results she so badly wants erased.

Filed under: Internet, Google

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Source: Reuters