atmaspheric | endeavors

Unlike the vast majority of crap that ran last night, Google delivered an incredibly focused piece for the Super Bowl.  The ad is simple, shows off the product and keeps the brand on screen for the entire time.

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As well designed as the new Google Voice app is, I really don’t want to have to wait to view my contacts while things load.

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Today Nokia announced Maps with free navigation for everyone which is a very big deal.  Previously the only way to get turn by turn navigation was to buy a Navigator device. Nokia had offered free trials of the navigation service on most newer mid to higher end devices but to put it all out [...]

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Email and PIM functions on the Blackberry are stellar. Dare I say the best actually. I’ve used a slew of mobile devices and the sheer speed with which you can cut through inbox clutter is unparalleled.
I should qualify that point by saying I use a corporate issue device running on BES, [...]

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Walking to the train tonight it suddenly hit me how awesome T-Mobile’s network announcement (Full HSPA+) was today.  It’s unclear how long they knew the Nexus One was coming, but clearly they knew enough and had enough lead time to pump out the upgrades for launch day.  Doing so takes the network issue  largely off [...]

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Today I caught a sticker in the sandwich shop by the office for Favorite Places on Google and decided to give the QR code a shot. Here’s what I got in return:

Reviews are helpful if I’ve never been t here before but needing to call or get directions (standing at the door) seems like [...]

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On my way home tonight I fired up Google Maps to get an address and since I use Latitude, I was also activating my location.  I got an sms telling me my friend and colleague Will was “nearby.”  I received the image above in an email with a similar message …
I actually had forgotten I [...]

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While this is hardly a definitive view, I think it’s an excellent example which highlights a key difference  in how Nokia and Google have gone to market with very similar ideas.
Ovi Prime Place and Google’s Favorite Places both seek to link physical businesses with mobile maps.  The main difference and it’s likely to be critical [...]

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Take a peek on Techmeme and you might think the only story in tech news is the upcoming and likely release of a Google Phone.  I’m sure it will be decent enough but am starting to question the logic a bit given the rumor that the Nexus One as it seems to be called will [...]

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With all the noise yesterday about Android 2.0 and Google’s new free navigation service, this release just feels a bit … Meh.
Navigation market leader, Telmap, has used its unique navigation technology and NAVTEQ’s superior global map data, to bring a comprehensive mobile search, mapping and navigation solution for the iPhone, thus enabling mass adoption of [...]

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So Google Latitude finally arrives on the iPhone and it comes through as a web app?! One one hand you have to admire the skill in which it was programmed by the Google team. Speed is nice and quick, features are rich including pinch zoom and it generally looks like a native app. [...]

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GMail started acting flaky last night but today I have not been able to log in a single time. I’ve gotten timeouts from the web UI, been unable to connect via mobile and even received a report from Nokia Messaging that they were unable to connect to push my mail. A quick post [...]

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jkOnTheRun reports on how Google is now honoring Psion’s trademark of Netbook effectively killing the search term for anyone else.  If this pushes further we are likely to see devices currently called netbooks go through a rebranding.
What’s strange about this is that Psion has effectively been a dead company for years and has no active [...]

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I woke up this morning to a few invites to join Google Latitude, which as is turns out is packaged into Google Maps Mobile 3.0. Once in the system I immediately saw how powerful this new service is going to be … While it is still very early Google and the Latitude / [...]

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While checking to see if my Gmail account’s offline mode had been activated I noticed that I had a new folder over the side … What the heck is the fakefolder?? Not surprisingly, it’s empty.

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I’ve been playing with the Android G1 phone for about 24 hours and while I’ll have some thoughts to share on it in general soon, there’s one striking thing I thought was worth mentioning right away. The Android G1 has without a doubt the most straight forward and simple initial user experience of any [...]

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Google has launched a new Mac application based on Quicksilver called Google Quick Search Box.  At first I missed why I would want a quick Google search on my desktop, but when I read this lifehacker post on the topic it became clear this was really Quicksilver reborn as a Google product.
I’ve used Quicksilver for [...]

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A team at VentureBeat was able to get Android running on an Asus EEEPC 1000H netbook, which is certainly a cool hack.
I’m not sure this is something I would personally want in the current state other than as a proof of concept. Though once things are perhaps more optimized for a larger touch screen [...]

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I spent some time with the G1 over the weekend and am still a bit underwhelmed. Overall the OS seems very polished compared and compared to my experimental install on the Nokia N810 it’s night and day. Still my view is that Android is far more designed for the power user rather than [...]

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I’m days behind on feeds and discussion, but I definitely saw some news on the Google G1 phone and find it pretty disappointing. I know it’s absolutely a first generation product and there are certainly nice features in the UI that I’ve seen, but what’s been left out is pretty poor.
Sure the Google phone [...]

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