Hot on the heels of the Google+ Android app update last week, Google has pushed out an update to the iOS version as well. New features include:
You can get it in the iTunes app store here.
The video below is a reminder of why Instant Upload is so awesome.
Google just pushed out a fresh version of the Google+ iOS app, and it has some much-needed improvements:
Version 0.1.0.1938
Apple has just approved the Google+ iOS app, and you can get it now! Here is the iTunes link, and the application is free of charge.
It seems quite similar to the Android app, which is a good thing. Slashgear has a good look at the app. iOS users, try it out and share your thoughts in the comments section below!
We all knew that an iOS app for Google+ was coming eventually, but no one has known if the app was still being built by Google or if it had been submitted to Apple for approval. Now we know: it’s in Apple’s hands
.
Earlier today, Googler Erica Joy made it very clear in a post on Google+:
For my iPhone using friends: the Google+ iPhone app has been submitted to the App store (no not today, sometime prior to today) and is awaiting approval.
No telling when it might arrive, but I’d expect it within a week or two. Of course, this helps to showcase a major downside to Apple’s app approval process — the Android app has already been updated twice with minor bug fixes, and it’s only been out a few days. If there are any bugs in the iOS app, it’ll take weeks to get the bug fixes approved for the app store.
There’s the added advantage of Android having the auto-upload option for photos, which can be quite awesome — and Apple will almost certainly deny for the iOS app. For example, I shot a handful of photos at my daughter’s birthday party yesterday. While we continued to play, the photos silently uploaded in the background. When we settled down after eating cake, I was able to create an album for them on my phone and show them off in a matter of seconds. It’s brilliant!
It’ll be interesting to see what features are included when it’s finally released.
A few cool things to point you toward today:
More Cities get “Aerial View” in Google Maps — Portland, OR and Sacramento and Oakland, CA all have new “bird’s eye” imagery from Google.
National Geographic launches iPhone app — It allows a variety of mapping sources, styles and other cool stuff.
Micello Launches “Google Maps for the Indoors” — This thing could be very cool if they can expand their coverage. They have “over 250” maps so far, but none on the eastern half of the US.
Microsoft just released the “Bing” application for iPhone and it is a solid effort. It was voice search that is similar to the Google app, and Maps implementation that is similar to Google Maps on the phone.
It’s a free app, so it’s certainly worth downloading and trying out. Chris Pendleton has a nice writeup of it on the Bing Community blog, where he highlights some the new features on it. Most of the features are similar to the pre-installed Google Maps
, but the voice search in Bing Maps is a slick feature that Google Maps doesn’t have. The rest of the features are almost identical to the Google Maps app.
So which should you use? It depends what you do with it. In my case, I typically use it for real-time traffic. I’ll occasionally do a search on it, but usually just want to see which which interstate I should avoid. Below is a side-by-side look at the two apps showing real-time traffic around Atlanta. Google Maps is on the left, Bing on the right:
It’s not even close! Bing has all kinds of shading and blurring, which looks very nice, but makes it a pain to see what the colors are. Is that a yellow, or the road color? Is that orange in there? It’s quite a mess.
Google’s may look more childish, but it’s far easier to see. If I want a quick look at the traffic, I’ve got it.
The Bing app is pretty great, and overall I’m very impressed with it. However, I’ll keep using Google Maps (for now), simply because it does a better job for what I need.
Before I left for Disney, I considered Gowalla and Foursquare to be about the same. They both let you “check in” at various places (restaurants, stores, etc) and both have a bit of a game aspect to them. Foursquare is based on cities and addresses, while Gowalla is based entirely on GPS. While I’m in Atlanta, those work out about the same. When I get away from the city, things change quickly.
Foursquare dies between cities: On our way to Orlando, we passed through a lot of smaller towns. In some of those towns we stopped for meals, gas, etc. On Foursquare, I couldn’t check in. It’s based so heavily on specific cities that you’re simply out of luck when you’re between them. With Gowalla, I simply added the new location and checked in.
Foursquare makes it too hard to add new items: If you happen to be near a big city, but your particular destination isn’t in their system, it’s a pain to load it. You need to find the full street address to be able to add it. In my case, I’d fire up Google Maps on the iPhone, search for the location, memorize the address, open up Foursquare, add the location. With Gowalla, I simply type the name of the location, choose a category and I’m done! It saves the location based on GPS, so there’s no need for the address.
Foursquare is useless inside of Disney World: I thought it’d be neat to “check in” when we visited various attractions inside Disney World. With Foursquare, it was tough to find the one you were at because it listed everything based on street address. Not good. With Gowalla, it showed the attractions nearest your current location, which was perfect! I didn’t check in on all of them (too busy playing with the kids), but I got a lot of them. It worked very well inside the park.
That’s pretty much it. The comparison wasn’t even close
— Gowalla is better in almost every way. The one drawback it has right now is momentum. Foursquare is getting all of the press, and therefore is getting all of the users. In the end, if Facebook or Twitter doesn’t steal it first, Gowalla has a decent shot of becoming the geo app of choice.
Either way, it’ll be a fun fight to watch.
Just about exactly a month ago, I went out and purchased an AT&T Microcell. AT&T reception in our house is awful, and I’m not in a position to switch to Verizon. Therefore, the Microcell seemed like a good choice.
If you’re familiar with the Microcell concept, it’s a small device that uses your internet connection and essentially creates a cell tower in your house. I set it up in our office and now we have full 3G bars through the entire house! My wife and I both have iPhones, and friends have used various other 3G phones. They all work very well with the Microcell. You can read more about it on AT&T’s site.
Cost: $149 to buy the unit. If you want, you can sign a contract for $14.95 month for an individual ($29.99 for a family plan) and minutes you use via the Microcell don’t count toward your monthly minute caps. It’s a neat idea, but we’re always under our minutes anyhow so we didn’t do it. $149 and we were out the door.
Installation: Simple, but buggy. It’s not hard to set up, but you need to wait 90 minutes for it “configure itself”. After a few hours it was still failing so I had to call AT&T. There’s a GPS inside the Microcell so they can make sure you only use it from your house. Somehow the coordinates they thought I should have didn’t match with the Microcell, so it would never connect. Once they fixed it over the phone it worked great.
Adding Users: For a person to be able to use it, you need to add their number to the system. It’s easy to add one, but you’re limited to 10. I’d like to just add all of my AT&T friends and be done with it, so when they come over they’ll get full bars. Sadly, I need to swap them out from time to time. Seems pretty silly to have to do that. The idea behind this is to prevent your neighbors from leeching your signal, which makes sense. Still, why a limit of just 10? Also, it’s worth mentioning that only four calls can be made simultaneously on the device. I doubt that’ll ever be a problem for us.
Issues: AT&T brags about a seamless hand-off if you leave your house mid-call. It’ll transfer your call from the Microcell to the nearest tower without a hiccup. That may be true, but our data connection gets messed up whenever we leave the house. It’s a few minutes (or a reboot) before data will work again. Kind of a pain.
Bottom Line: If you have AT&T cell phones in your house and have bad reception, get a Microcell! It’s a shame that you need one, but it does the job. As a friend said: “You need to switch to Verizon. I don’t need anything special from them to get cell reception in my house.” It’s true. I hate that I had to pay AT&T $150 to fix their pathetic network, but now I get great reception with my phone and I’m happy I did it.
Facebook 3.0 is coming out soon, well let you know how it is soon!
We go to the Atlanta Zoo quite a bit — I’d say 8-10 times/year. We have a season pass so that makes it quite affordable, and the girls have a good time.
I recently got a new GPS, so I thought I’d plug the zoo address in there. I fired up my iPhone, typed in their URL and got this:
Ahh, so pretty. 100% flash. Done. I ended up just waiting for the Garmin to find it though it’s POI database (sloooow, but effective).
The sad thing is, the site isn’t
100% flash. They’ve just got some weird flash-detect script that means that the Flash-less among us (like iPhones) are DOA. Stupid.
They’ve got a few other problems as well:
Don’t get me wrong — the zoo is great. We had a wonderful time there today. Too bad their site is such a mess.