Some things just makes you happy, when life gives you treats, just like on Christmas. When Google launches applications like this… It makes me happy. I can’t do more than agree with Mr. Wauters, it is stunning.

You can even tilt your phone to change your viewing angle to see mountains in 3D! The application also includes geo-located Wikipedia articles, which you can choose to display or hide (it can get cluttery) as well as geo-located photos from Panoramio, all geographically related to what you’re viewing.

Say you search for a company, and you view information about that new Pizza place you’ve heard people talk about, but you have no idea where it’s located. Just click the address and Safari takes over and you can get directions. Just like that.

If you’re just feeling a bit confused about where you are, or if you want to check out your surroundings, you can just make use of the My Location feature, to show your current whereabouts in the real world.

Read more at the Google Earth’s Lat Long Blog and be sure to check out the video below. It shows how amazing this application really is.

Intrigued? Of course you are, you are after all a mere human being, are you not? Go straight to iTunes App Store and try it out for yourself! Language availability lists 16 different languages, so there’s a good chance you’ll be happy.

Direct link to Google Earth in iTunes App Store

Google announced yesterday that they are rolling out some Google Labs features for Gmail, which is very exciting! The gadgets include Calendar, Docs, Mouse gestures (like the famous All In One Gestures for Firefox), Signature tweaks (to place your signature above the quoted text when replying, very much wanted by many Gmail users) and many more.

A few gadgets that truly offers more usability are “Navbar drag and drop“, which simply allows you to rearrange the gadgets on your left hand side. This gadget, or more of a plugin if you ask me, is a true miracle worker. At least in my opinion. Being able to choose what gadgets to sit where makes all this so much better. Another gadget that offers more customization for your Gmail inbox is “Custom Label Colors”, which allows the users to personalize Labels, making it slightly better from a usability standpoint.

Lastly, “Mark as Read Button”, here to save the day! Or at least 1.8 seconds of your life. Per click. This gadget places a Mark as Read button right in your inbox. So instead of hiding under the More drop down, you can access it directly, saving you one click. This may sound dorky to some, but it actually make sense from a productivity standpoint, and I can honestly say I’ve wished for this a number of times.

In their announcement they mention a possible performance loss using these, as they are still working on optimizing the gadgets, but that they are keeping a close eye on the performance as they move forward. Well, the last thing we want is a slow email application. They also say that some of them does not work with https, which could introduce some issues for some. You’ll see some error messages if you run in to this.

They also say they are aware of the lack of scalability of gadget real estate: “We’re not tied to the left-nav as a primary way to extend Gmail — in fact we think it is relatively limited and doesn’t offer scalable real estate.” which is nice, that they approach this publicly. Adding in the ability to stretch columns, or maximize them, or possibly pop out a gadget could be cool. But let’s just be happy they finally allows us to implement Calendar huh?

At long last, YouTube offers the feature of deep linking, to link to a certain point in a YouTube video. This is done by adding a short tag to the end of the URL, a tag that looks like this “#t=4m45s”. 4m meaning four minutes and 45s meaning 45 seconds, and this would take you 4 minutes and 45 seconds into the video. Duuh. Anyway, just add in the time you want to link to in the video. Very useful feature!

Click the link and see for yourself, this is what the URL would look like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZjMgbRUsZM#t=4m45s

There’s no easy copy’n'paste type way of using this yet though, you’d have to mark the time using that thing we call memory, the human memory, you know? Not a To-Do list, Stickies or Notepad… Or you could try a piece of paper and a pen. I don’t think I own a pen anymore… Whenever I actually DO use a pen, I cramp up in five seconds, can barely write my darn signature. Damn computers making me lazy.

OK, sure, you can write the time down however you like, but my point is, you have to copy the URL for the video and paste it wherever you’d like to paste it, and then add in the specific time for the specific point in the video you want to link to, at the end of the URL at the above noted fashion.

Via TechCrunch

The Google Street View is a fairly new addition to Google Maps where the user can view panoramic images as if they were standing on the street, able to pan and move around where ever the images are available. Google Street View is a feature that ships pre-loaded in the T-Mobile G1 by HTC, that features the Google made platform Android. This is exciting news to me, I feel this feature is a real treat for all iPhone users.

The ability to turn off auto-correction for keyboard has been a wanted feature for a while, and it seems the voice got heard. Yet another user feedback action from Apple.

Lastly, the Japanese emoji icons feature could be a move from Apple to increase sales in Japan, where the success of the iPhone has been moderate. It’s a popular feature amongst Japanese mobile devices.

No word from Mr. Steve Jobs as of yet as to when we could expect to get our hands on the new iPhone 2.2 software.

Via MacRumors.com

Another thing mentioned in this article is that the G1 lacks video recording capabilities. Now this is truly a big surprise, and not a good one. I mean, with todays standards in mobile devices, how on earth can this be omitted? Also it seems to lack a camera at the front, which means no video calls. Not a deal breaker, but it’s pretty standard amongst 3G-phones where I come from. But I have to admit, I don’t know anyone who actually uses it…

I think I’m going to have to view this device as a bleak first try, and hope there will be other devices featuring Android. I expected more from Google, and I hope to see something more impressive in the near future.

Finally, T-Mobile, Google and HTC held a conference in New York City in honor of their new creation, the T-Mobile G1, which is a mobile device by HTC featuring the Android platform developed by Google.

This is an interesting announcement in light of the Apple iPhone 3G release a few months ago. By now, the iPhone has been out for a while and people have had time to find its snags, like poor battery life and the fact that it spontaneously combusts into flames every now and then, nearly killing people. Not really the desired result people might be expecting. So. We hear about these “iPhone killers” soon to be released, like the Sony Ericsson X1 (Xperia), HTC Touch Diamond/Pro/HD.

The HTC G1 is set to be released on October 22nd with a price of $179 for existing customers, and comes with two choices of data plans: $25/month (unlimited web access and limited text messaging) and $35/month (unlimited everything). Sounds fair to me. But what about people that’s not currently on T-Mobile? Or even in the US, like us Swedes? I’ve heard mentions of Germany and some other European countries, they might get it via T-Mobile in the beginning of Q1 in 2009.

You need the Flash Player to view this video.

G1 vs. iPhone then…? Well, the G1 does have a full QWERTY keyboard, which the iPhone does not. The G1 also features Google Maps, a GPS, an Accelerometer, Gmail, a Webkit based web browser, all just like the iPhone, but a bleak but fancy 3.2″ touchscreen. But doesn’t the G1 look rather chunky? Oh, and it’s supposed to have some App store a la Apple Store.

Some other nice specifications are the Turbo 3G: Up to 7.2 Mbps down-link (HSDPA) and 2 Mbps up-link (HSUPA), Quad-band, 3.2 megapixel camera and a very nice design I must add.

You can read more about it on htc.com

From a web developers point of view, I’m sad to say that Safari is still a semi-shady browser, because it still doesn’t display web pages like you’d expect it to. It compares very well to the improvements IE6-IE7. Better, but still not quite there.

Anyway, let’s get to it. To add the keyboard shortcut Command (Apple) + K, go into System Preferences and choose Keyboard & Mouse like so:

Hit the plus sign at bottom left to add a new Shortcut. Choose Safari.app as Application, and type in “Google Search…” as Menu Title. Note the dots, very important. This is how Safari has this shortcut programmed, so you have to use them as well. Highlight Keyboard Shortcut and hit Command+K on your keyboard.

Click Add button, and voila! You have a brand new Keyboard Shortcut for your Safari 3.0 to play with.

Isn’t it a treat? This can be done in Opera quite easily as well, but that’s a different post. My next project will be to get/hack the Bookmarks to work like I want them to. Like, why the hell does the Bookmarks manager open in the active tab, kidnapping you from the very very interesting web page your currently on, reading this article about Somaliland on Wikipedia, and how it never seems to get recognized as an independent state god damn it…

Google is set to release its own mobile platform, supposedly called Google Switch. Maybe not too surprising, but oh so joyful! Open Source. I wonder how this is going to play out, with Microsoft and Symbian as such heavy opponents. But the development platform will be freely available to anyone, so hopefully it will inspire to new and better mobile applications.

I mean, from what I’ve heard and read about Apple’s iPhone, the Google platform would kill it in a heart beat. Apple contributed to the design of a new platform, how to keep things organized and neat, but the functionality is so limited, it’s – not – even – funny. I’m not sure about this, but you can’t really install or easily develop applications for the iPhone, can you?

Go Google, good ol’ Google! Their applications are so great, I can’t wait to see what this will do to my geek nerve. Engadget is not, nor am I, claiming that this is a real photo. It could very well be fake. The device is about as big as the iPod Classic. Rumor also has it that it will feature GPS for Google Maps. Oh the happiness! Too bad this thing probably isn’t going to feature 3G network. I wonder id it’ll have WiFi. Would be stupid to launch something without it these days, huh?

Photo courtesy engadget.com.