Google Prepares for a Better Mobile Web

One reason why Google and other companies develop interfaces optimized for iPhone is that people actually use Apple's phone to browse the web. New York Times (free login) reports that "on Christmas, traffic to Google from iPhones surged, surpassing incoming traffic from any other type of mobile device (...). A few days later, iPhone traffic to Google fell below that of devices powered by the Nokia-backed Symbian operating system but remained higher than traffic from any other type of cellphone."

Google has another reason for providing special interfaces for iPhone: they'll work on Android phones too, since Android's default browser uses the same rendering engine as Apple's Safari, namely WebKit.

Today, in the first day of MacWorld, Google will announce an update for its unified mobile interface, codenamed Grand Prix. Among the new features, the navigation bar will be customizable, Gmail will automatically show new messages without having to refresh the page, the compose page will include contacts, while Google Calendar will add a month-at-a-glance view. The updated iGoogle will probably be integrated in the interface.

"Google, which developed the first version of Grand Prix in six weeks, is introducing a new version on Monday, just six weeks after the first one. That is a speed of development not previously possible on mobile phones," said Vic Gundotra, vice-president at Google.

Vic Gundotra expects that "consumers are going to demand Internet browsers [as good as Apple's]" and the mobile web experience will improve.

Update.
From a Google announcement (my emphasis): "These new features provide iPhone users with a desktop-like Google web application experience in terms of ease-of-use, speed, and feature richness but optimized for the iPhone. This experience is made possible by the iPhone's general usability and the capabilities of its web browser, combined with Google's innovative mobile web applications. We plan to expand this experience to international versions of the iPhone and to other platforms that offer similar usability and browser capabilities. One of our goals is to support platforms that are fulfilling the promise of the mobile web - like the iPhone - and to ultimately deliver unique and compelling mobile experiences that improve people's daily lives."

Update 2: Google Mobile Blog has some screenshots of the updated interface.

Search, No Longer the Main Feature of Google Desktop

If you install the latest version of Google Desktop for Windows, you'll notice a new dialog that presents a list of features and lets you select the ones you want. Google Desktop enables by default the sidebar with gadgets, but the search feature is limited to filenames. To actually search the full content of your files, you need to enable the "enhanced search".


This is a strange choice, considering that Google Desktop was built for this "enhanced search", which is now disabled by default. Here's the description of the application when Google launched it, in October 2004:

"Google Inc. today announced a beta desktop search application that enables users to search their email, files, web history, and chats. Called Google Desktop Search, this new application makes it possible for users to find information on their computers as fast and easily as they can search the web with Google."

The desktop search application added gadgets in the subsequent versions and was renamed to Google Desktop. "Google Desktop is a new, easier way to get information – even without searching. You can think of it as a personal web assistant that learns about your habits and interests to identify and present web pages, news stories, and photos that it thinks you will be interested in," explained Marissa Mayer the shift.

Maybe performance was the main cause for disabling search, or maybe users didn't think it was very useful. You can still enable the search feature both when you install the application and in the settings, but not everyone will discover it. I recommended Google's software to someone who needed a tool for searching his documents and I was surprised to hear that the software didn't work as advertised: obviously, Google Desktop didn't index any file.

iGoogle for iPhone

Google created a version of iGoogle optimized for iPhone, that displays all the gadgets and feeds from tab in a single column. To switch to another tab, choose a name from the drop-down displayed at the bottom of the page.

The iPhone interface has a public URL: http://google.com/ig/i, but iPhone users will be automatically redirected to this URL.



The standard mobile version of iGoogle available at http://google.com/m is much more limited: it only displays feeds and a very small number of gadgets, you need to manually add items to your page and you can't change the number of items displayed from a feed. Another limitation is that it only works in the US.


{ via Blogoscoped Forum. The image doesn't show a real iPhone. }

Trends in Google Checkout

Google is all about numbers, metrics and stats, so it's natural to see features that explore trends in user's activities. There's a product for search trends, one for music trends and now a product that shows trends in Google Checkout.

"Google Checkout Trends aggregates the sales data of Google Checkout merchants and charts it in a matter of seconds," explains the product's blog. As usually, Google doesn't show actual numbers, just the revenue evolution over time. The charts are borrowed from Google Finance, so they'll look familiar.

Import Your Hotmail Messages into Gmail

I finally found an use for Microsoft's Windows Live Mail, a mail client that replaces Outlook Express as the light version of Outlook. Windows Live Mail has a unique characteristic: it's free and it allows you to access Hotmail accounts. Microsoft also provides a plug-in for Outlook with an exuberant description:

"With Microsoft Office Outlook Connector, you can use Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 or Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 to access and manage your Microsoft Windows Live Hotmail or Microsoft Office Live Mail accounts, including e-mail messages and contacts for free!"

Microsoft probably thinks it makes you a favor by providing ways to access your mail from a desktop client, so it uses a proprietary mechanism that can only be interpreted by Microsoft's software.

But I digress: Windows Live Mail is a good way to migrate the messages from your old Hotmail accounts to Gmail.

1. Enable IMAP for Gmail.

2. Download Windows Live Mail. Microsoft no longer links to the standalone version of the product and it forces you to install a package, but you can choose the software you want to install.

3. Add the Hotmail accounts from Windows Live Mail's interface.

4. Add your Gmail account and make sure you manually configure the IMAP settings.

5. To prevent some new Gmail labels from being created, right-click on your Gmail account from Windows Live Mail's sidebar, select Properties, go to the IMAP tab and uncheck "Store special folders on IMAP server".

6. Then go to the inbox of each Hotmail account, select all the messages (Ctrl+A), right-click, choose "Move to folder..." (or "Copy to folder..." if you want to keep them in Hotmail) and select the Inbox of your Gmail account (or create a new folder). You should repeat this for each folder created in Hotmail.


If you don't expect to receive other message in your Hotmail accounts, uninstall Windows Live Mail. Otherwise, check your Hotmail accounts from time to time and manually move the messages to Gmail. Microsoft doesn't allow you to create rules for IMAP and HTTP mail accounts, so you can't forward new messages to Gmail. If you try to use the forwarding option from Hotmail, you'll notice that Microsoft still tries to keep your mail hostage.

Social Yahoo Mail: from Contacts to Connections

Yahoo's CEO, Jerry Yang, made an announcement at CES about a new version of Yahoo Mail that will be more social and will integrate third-party apps.

"Jerry walked through a vision demo showcasing the possibilities of a more open Yahoo!, in this case focused on one of our key starting points, Yahoo! Mail. He showed how a smarter inbox could prioritize the most relevant connections in his life, both from Yahoo! and multiple social networks, and make all of his communications (email, IM, SMS, voice, status text, photos, etc.) simpler to manage. He then walked through how Yahoo! as an open platform—using Yahoo! Mail, Flickr, Yahoo! Local and Maps, and third party applications like Evite and eBay—could let you tap into the collective tastes, interests, and knowledge of the people you know and of the rest of the world. His example was trying to corral a bunch of very different friends, family, and execs for an awesome dinner. He was able to discover and explore what millions of people find interesting in Las Vegas (via Flickr and our TagMaps prototype) and what his dinner guests might enjoy as well."

It's interesting that the prototype allowed you to create "connections" by adding people from your inbox, your Yahoo Messenger list, but also from social networks like LinkedIn. So Yahoo tries to make the inbox more powerful by unifying all your connections and merging all their details in a single place. Based on information extracted from all these contexts, Yahoo Mail shows a list of the most important updates from your connections.

The third-party apps become tools that help you find information related to conversations and have access to your connections. The maps application can find a restaurant based on the preferences of those you want to invite for dinner.

Yahoo Mail moves from being a mail application to a social application that integrates mail in a broader context. Yahoo intends to connect you more with your contacts and to transform them into connections, links in a social graph.

{ Image licensed as Creative Commons by sdk. }

Related:
More screenshots from the Yahoo Mail prototype
Email connections
Updates from your Gmail contacts

RescueTime, Attention Monitoring Tool

What would you get by combining Google Web History with Google Analytics? An application that shows where do you spend most of your time on the web using beautiful charts.

RescueTime takes this idea, but also tracks the usage of desktop applications. "RescueTime is a web-based time management and analytics tool for information workers who want to be more productive. [It] doesn't record what apps or sites you have open, but rather what app or site you are paying attention to!"

RescueTime installs a desktop client (available for Windows and Mac) that monitors the web sites you visit and the software you use. The data is sent to a web application that processes it and displays statistics. For now, you can only see the domains, subdomains and apps sorted by the time spent and details for each item, but it would be interesting to see information about navigation paths and individual web pages.

If you don't like the application or you're concerned about your privacy, RescueTime lets you delete your data. It also makes it clear in the FAQ that the application only monitors "the names of the apps and sites you use and the times that you use them."