Places. Google's Near Me Now is Live & Good Enough to Replace Yelp. One month ago Google unveiled five big new technologies in one day - and then launched real-time search that afternoon. One of those five was something called Near Me Now, and it just went live moments ago. The feature lets Google grab your geographic location and display restaurants, coffee shops, bars, ATM machines and more in your immediate vicinity. It's available today for both iPhone and Android users. It's enough to make a person bookmark Google.com, instead of just Googling through the browser search bar.
This feature is much more useful than Google Latitude and it's more lightweight than launching Google Maps. Near Me Now: Google’s Mobile Homepage is Location Aware. Go to Google.com in your iPhone or Android browser and you'll see a small new addition to the homepage: a tiny Near Me Now option below the search box. The new functionality turns your location into an automated search query and makes finding or learning about places in your immediate vicinity a no-brainer. The U.S. -only functionality uses GPS on your device to pinpoint your whereabouts and sort nearby results — right on the Google.com mobile homepage — into the following functional categories: Explore right here, restaurants, coffee shops, bars, and ATMs and banks.
In fact, the "Explore right here option" serves up an instant drop-down menu, providing you with results that are literally right in front of you. You'll immediately get a quick glance at a venue's Place Page rating and its distance from you. It's no mystery that Google is trying to attack mobile location-based services and customer review sites like Foursquare and Yelp head-on, and actively promote its Place Pages.
Google Buzz Could Have Dominated Location. (And Snuck Up On Face. Tomorrow it will be exactly one month since the launch of Google Buzz. The song remains the same: it’s a mess. Normally, that wouldn’t bother me so much — after all, a lot of services are a mess — but Buzz has a lot of potential. But again, it’s been a month. I’m starting to wonder if it will ever reach that potential. I’m also starting to wonder if it shouldn’t have been introduced as something entirely different. Despite its many annoyances, I’ve been using Buzz regularly over the past month (Gmail integration tends to shove it in your face and I hate unread counts). The one thing I keep coming back to is that Buzz on the iPhone and Android is pretty impressive.
Yes, I know Google already has a location-based service: Latitude. The past several months have proven that consumer demand for location services is contingent on one thing: the ability to “check-in.” Checking-in works for people because of two main things: simplicity (of the concept) and privacy. Oh well. App Inventor for Android.
App Inventor in Action. Google Launches App Inventor: DIY App Creation Tool for Android. Today Google launched "App Inventor," a do-it-yourself mobile app creation tool that lets anyone build their own Android applications without needing to know how to program or even write a line of code. Instead, using an online interface, would-be developers visually design the app's interface and interactions, using drag-and-drop blocks that specify what the app should look like and how it should behave. Want your app to talk to Twitter? There's a button for that. Want your app to use text-to-speech? No problem. See also:5 Big Questions About Google's New App Inventor Does that list of testers sound a little odd to you? Official DIY App Highlights Difference Between Apple and Google Philosophies But DIY app creation tools aren't new, nor are they unique to Google Android. For example, in Apple's ecosystem, there are a number of DIY apps that let non-developers create and submit iPhone applications to the iTunes App Store without needing to know Apple's own development language.
5 Big Questions About Google's New App Inventor. Google has announced the pending availability of App Inventor, a visual development software for the Android platform. Depending on your perspective, Android is the most or second most exciting mobile operating system on the market - and an easy and popular platform for everyday people to make apps is big, big news. What does it mean? Where will this go? There are five specific questions we'd like to ask about this potential game changer.
Is This The Next Quark, Blogger or HyperCard? App Inventor appears intended to unleash an army of everyday people developing Android apps. Those are very big shoes for new software to fill. Might such apps ever run on Apple devices? Will App Inventor Really Be for Personal Hacking? In most of the coverage of App Inventor's unveiling, there's been an assumption that these easy-made apps are going to flood the Android app store. Those are cool. When Do We Get to See AppRank? There are apps. What Does This Look Like Beyond Phones?
Will It Be Kept Up to Speed? Google App Inventor: Now Anyone Can Create an Android App. Google is launching a new tool on Monday that lets anyone create an app for Android phones. Google App Inventor claims to enable non-coders to develop complete, working Android apps by connecting a series of "blocks. " Google has been testing App Inventor in schools for a year, reports The New York Times. At the time of writing, App Inventor is only available to those who apply via a form. It's a smart concept. Not only is the Android Market an open platform for developers (with no approval process, a la Apple's App Store), but now we'll likely see a vast array of specialized apps built by non-developers. This could radically increase the volume of apps in the Market versus the App Store. The expansion may, of course, come at the cost of quality. Google and Apple are currently in a heated battle to win the hearts and minds of developers.
What do you think? [img credit: glen edelson] Checking in with the Places API. [Note: The Places API is now generally available to all developers for use in any app. For more information please see the launch blog post - May 10th 2011] At the Google I/O developer conference earlier this year we previewed the Places API, a new service that will allow applications to search for Places, and obtain detailed information about individual places selected by users. At that time we posted documentation and provided an Application Form that developers can use to indicate their interest in using the API. We have been delighted with the enthusiasm we have seen for the Places API, and the innovative ways in which developers would like to use it.
We have seen applications that offer check-in to places and need to identify an individual place at which a user is currently located, applications looking to show a user Places around them, and applications looking to offer a search and browse experience for Places similar to that offered on Google Maps. Google Focusing on Checkins with Places API. Google has indicated it's going to be working with developers on checkins for location-based applications through its Places API.
This spring, Google announced Places as a revamping of its local and local-business listings. Originally, we saw Places as a SEM/user review mechanism, perhaps a Yelp competitor. However, with the recent preview of the Google Places API at Google I/O, the company showed developers a whole world of geographical, commercial and social information attached to each Place on its vast radar.
In a May blog post, Maps API Product Manager Thor Mitchell wrote, "Each Place Page consolidates together everything we know about a single Place, be it a business, point of interest, or geographical feature such as a city or neighbourhood. We believe that this unified concept of Places more accurately reflects the way that Maps users see the world, and are working to bring an awareness of Places to the Google Maps API. " And what do you think this new direction bodes for Latitude? Respond to reviews for your business on Google Place Page. Google takes aim at Get Satisfaction with new Google Places feature. Business Owners Can Now Respond to Reviews on Google Place Pages. Verified Google Places business owners can now publicly respond to user reviews on their businesses' Place Page. This new feature further bridges the divide between Places and its biggest competitor, Yelp. For business owners, the ability to publicly respond to reviews — positive or negative — can be a great way to engage with customers, correct or address certain issues, and, when necessary, set the record straight.
Yelp introduced a similar feature last year, and business owners and users have responded positively to the ability to interact.In order to leave a response, owners first need to verify their identity with Google by going to the Google Places main page and claiming their listing. After that, owners can respond to comments following these instructions. Google has also put together a handy set of tips and guidelines for responding to reviewers. Google continues to make iterative changes to Google Places and its overall Google Maps ecosystem.
[img credit: kylesteed]