Hasta La Gadget!

Even as the rise of free navigation apps gives most paid competitors pause (if not killing them outright), Navigon has managed to stay well ahead of the pack with a robust, oft-updated smartphone solution, despite charging over $80 for the privilege. But now, even that last bit can change. For $30, Navigon’s MyRegion gives you its premium MobileNavigator software at around one-third the price, with the simple caveat that you only get maps for one-third of the US (East, West or Central) to go with it. Should you drive out of your designated zone, Navigon will generously allow you to buy another chunk a la carte for $15; and all of Navigon’s other add-ons, including the new MyRoutes feature (customized route recommendations and alternate routes) are similarly available. It’s not quite as delectable as gratis, but we have to admit a certain admiration for Navigon turning software investment into impulse buy. Oh, and speaking of impulsive: Navigon’s offering MyRegion for the low, low price of $25 through April 12th.

Navigon chops MobileNavigator into three regions, pick any one for $30 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 17 Mar 2010 08:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We talk about the FCC a lot here, but usually the ways ye olde Commission affects our lives are indirect. A little extra spectrum here, a nice leaked image there, that kind of thing. Not this time, though, as the FCC is getting involved directly with its own Consumer Broadband Test app, designed to probe network latencies and download speeds on your home connection or mobile device. Part of the hallowed National Broadband Plan, this will furnish the FCC will useful data to show the discrepancy between advertised and real world broadband speeds, and will also — more importantly perhaps — serve as a neat way for users to directly compare network performance in particular areas. It’s available on the App Market and App Store right now, with versions for other operating systems coming up, so why not get with the program and give it a test drive?

FCC comes through with a Consumer Broadband Test app for iPhone, Android and the home originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We just finished watching Google’s live announcement of the launch of the Google App Marketplace. Keep reading for information on what they’re offering users and developers. Oh, and know that the Marketplace is live today. Updating.

The event is called “Google Campfire One” and it’s all about how easy it will be to create, set up, and install apps using Google’s App Marketplace. It appears that the big focus is on how everything—apps and existing Google products—will work together seamlessly and allow for all your tools and data to sit in the cloud. Right now the appeal is for business applications, but the potential seems incredible.

The first portion of the announcement is about what developers will give and get in this whole deal. Google is offering them access to 25 million users and only asking for a one-time fee of $100 and 20% revenue in exchange—that’s less than what access to Apple’s App Store requires. Of course, Google is providing a solid system with apps being authenticated using OpenID, secured using oAuth, and made available through a universal Google Apps navigation system.

While there are already 50 partners right at launch, we’re hearing that after new apps are submitted, they may take a few days to show up in the Marketplace—mind you, there’s no word on what kind of approval process there is. But once an app is in the Marketplace, it’s easy for users or buyers to add them to their Google accounts: They agree to some terms of service, grant access to data—such as Gmail or GCal, and enable the app. Tada! It’ll show up in the new apps drop down.

Now apparently development of these apps is so simple that there are 40 developers who are on a bus traveling to an SXSW event and working on apps right now.

It looks like apps will be easy to integrate into existing Google products as seen by a demo of a payroll app by Intuit—information from it was embedded into Gmail or Google Docs.

Now remember how there have been some nice previews of YouTube videos in Gmail lately? Prepare to see more of that from these new apps because Google is offering developers the chance to set apps to be triggered by certain emails, events, or specific types of content.

What does all this mean right now? For business users, there are plenty of apps already available—ones for payroll, data entry, management, and an office suite—and they’ll be able to run everything right from the cloud. For us plain Janes and Joes though, the Marketplace is full of potential at this moment. Think social media, data management, communication—all the things you already get from Google, just better.

Yes, my head’s already in the cloud. Hopefully everything else will follow and I’ll be able to work and play there.

Google had added a sweet little extra that’s likely to make many Android users happy. The company is offering a new app called Gesture Search that lets users search their phone by just drawing the letter on the touch screen.

Open up the app, scrawl for instance ‘n’, and it will search through phone contacts, bookmarks, applications and music to find everything that begins with that letter.

To refine your search, you can just draw another letter, and the search results will shift accordingly.

To wipe off a letter or just start over,  you can draw a horizontal line at the bottom. Drawing from right to left deletes the last letter of the query and going from left to right wipe off the entire query, says Google.

Gesture Search recognizes both lower case and upper case letters and is available for free.

Google says the search is “fast and fun to use.” But be warned, the app is available only for phones that run Android operating system version 2.0 and higher. That means many of Motorola’s latest phones including the newly released Backflip and Devour as well as phones released late last year such as the HTC Droid Eris won’t support Gesture Search.

Gesture Search isn’t a game-changing idea but it’s a neat service from a company that still does the best search.

But because it is a Google Labs project, which means it is still in the beta stages, Gesture Search is not available outside the U.S.

Photo: Google

You’ve been up nights, we know, and now Microsoft has finally ended your torment: the long-promised Facebook application is now available for download to the Zune HD. Go wild, but not too wild, alright everybody?

Update: So we just got a chance to download and play with the app a little — and just like the Twitter app, things don’t seem to be quite fully baked at launch. We couldn’t get anything of the tabs to load apart from our personal photos, and there wasn’t any confirmation when we sent in a Zune music status update — although it did show up on Facebook, so it obviously worked. The photo viewer lets you leave comments, but you can’t pinch-to-zoom — or zoom at all, actually. We’re sure Zune HD owners will be happy — it’s free, after all — but we’re going to assume Microsoft and Facebook have something far better planned for Windows Phone 7 Series.

Update 2: It’s not just us — the official Zune Twitter account confirms that the Facebook app is “experiencing some issues accessing data.” We’ll let you kow if we hear anything else.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Facebook app now available for Zune HD (update: it’s also broken) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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