Many of Google’s products are labelled “beta” even if it has been running for awhile. For example GMail started life on April 1, 2004 but the “beta” label on the GMail site is taken out only on July, 7 2009. Apparently Nexus One webstore is also a beta as Google plans to stop selling its smartphones online, instead will work with partners to sell the device through retail outlets.

Google opened its webstore in January, together with the launch of its own branded HTC-build Android smartphone Nexus One. By selling its smartphones directly to consumers, the online model was a threat to the established wireless carriers which have traditionally controlled handset sales through retail stores.

“It’s clear that many customers like a hands-on experience before buying a phone, and they also want a wide range of service plans to chose from.”

Google plans to make Nexus One available in more countries through partners. The webstore will stop selling Google phones once Nexus One becomes available at retail stores. Instead Google will use the online store to showcase Android phone available globally.

Google launched its latest Chrome 5 Beta via a blog post yesterday. The new browser is touted to have 30% speed improvement for its V8 JavaScript engine. Here are the six things about the new Google Chrome 5 beta:

1. Speed improvement. The Google developed V8 JavaScript engine has 30% and 35% improvement on V8 and SunSpider benchmarks respectively. Google has been “tuning, testing, and polishing the V8 engine to give Chrome a hefty boost in speed.”

2. On top of bookmarks sync to Google Docs, you can now sync your browser preferences including themes, homepage and startup settings.

3. You now use and install Chrome extensions in incognito mode (private browsing).

4. New HTML5 features: geolocation APIs, App Cache, web sockets and file drag-and-drop.

5. Integration with Adobe Flash Player plug-in, including auto updates for Flash Player with Chrome’s build in auto-update mechanism.

6. As with a number of Google products, Google Chrome seems to be always released with a beta label. And the version number is increasing at a comparatively fast rate compared with the other browser. The version is now more than Firefox’s 3.x and Safari’s 4.x, and we will not be surprised if Google Chrome 9 is released before Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9.0.

Download links:

Windows Mac Linux

Google Books announced in its blog post the availability of its over one million public domain books archive in EPUB format, in addition to existing PDF format.

By adding support for EPUB downloads, we’re hoping to make these books more accessible by helping people around the world to find and read them in more places. More people are turning to new reading devices to access digital books, and many such phones, netbooks, and e-ink readers have smaller screens that don’t readily render image-based PDF versions of the books we’ve scanned. EPUB is a lightweight text-based digital book format that allows the text to automatically conform (or “reflow”) to these smaller screens. And because EPUB is a free, open standard supported by a growing ecosystem of digital reading devices, works you download from Google Books as EPUBs won’t be tied to or locked into a particular device.

Visit Google Books or click here for the mobile version for iPhone.

Apparently one quadrillion is too much for Google’s calculator. Beside 999999999999997, you get the same 0 result if you minus with 999999999999998.

Well if you add a ’1′ digit in front of the number, you get the 0 result early, starting from 1999999999999994:

1999999999999999 – 1999999999999994 = 0

1999999999999999 – 1999999999999995 = 0

1999999999999999 – 1999999999999996 = 0

1999999999999999 – 1999999999999997 = 0

1999999999999999 – 1999999999999998 = 0

If you increase the number further, you get the 0 result earlier further:

2999999999999999 – 2999999999999991 = 0

2999999999999999 – 2999999999999992 = 0

2999999999999999 – 2999999999999993 = 0

2999999999999999 – 2999999999999994 = 0

2999999999999999 – 2999999999999995 = 0

2999999999999999 – 2999999999999996 = 0

2999999999999999 – 2999999999999997 = 0

2999999999999999 – 2999999999999998 = 0

For ’3 series’, the 0 result starts with 3999999999999988 and for ’4 series’ it is 4999999999999985.

Interesting if someone could reveal the algorithm used for this faulty calculator. Hope Google can correct it asap.

Google has optimized its Google Latitude for the Safari browser in iPhone and iPod touch. Google Latitude is a web application and requires iPhone OS 3.0 as the mobile Safari browser in this version of iPhone OS can feed back the device’s location to web application.

For the iPhone version of Google Latitude, you get basic Search and Directions functionality. However you need to fire up Google Latitude to keep your location updated to Google’s backend server since Google Latitude can not run in the background, just as any other non-Apple apps.

Unfortunately, since there is no mechanism for applications to run in the background on iPhone (which applies to browser-based web apps as well), we’re not able to provide continuous background location updates in the same way that we can for Latitude users on Android, Blackberry, Symbian and Window Mobile. Nevertheless, your location is updated every time you fire up the app and then continuously updated while the app is running in the foreground. And, of course, you can check in on where your friends are, so we think there’s plenty of fun to be had with Latitude.

Google is launching Latitude for iPhone in US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand at the moment, with more countries coming soon.

To visit Google Latitude, point your Safari browser on your iPhone or iPod touch to google.com/latitude.

This is big news and will have lasting impact for sure. Google has announced its plan for a Google operating system in its blog post, branding it Chrome OS.

Here’s the summaries of the announcement:

• Google Chrome OS is open source.
• It will initially target the netbooks market.
• Designed to be fast and lightweight, start up in few seconds.
• Build for simplicity with minimal user interface for the desktop.
• Complete redesigned security architecture to do away with viruses, malware and security updates.
• Netbooks with Chrome OS will appear second half 2010.
• Runs on both x86 and ARM chips.
• Chrome OS is basically Chrome browser running in a new windowing system on top of Linux kernel.
• The standard web is the application platform for Chrome OS developer.
• Chrome OS is separate from Android OS.

We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better. People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them. They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files. Even more importantly, they don’t want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates. And any time our users have a better computing experience, Google benefits as well by having happier users who are more likely to spend time on the Internet.

GMail label is the tool in GMail to help you to organize your inbox, as there is no concept of folder in GMail. Label is akin to tagging or categorizing your emails, and Google wants you to use more of it as they introduced new label features in GMail.

We realized that if you didn’t know about labels, it would be easy to assume Gmail had no way to organize your mail. Not only were “labels” unfamiliar, they were kind of hidden. So, we set out to make labels more accessible, as well as more powerful. Most of the changes have been in Gmail for a while, but we’re adding some new features today. We thought you’d enjoy a peek at the method to our madness.

The new GMail label features are:

• Labels are now given prominent location on the left column, above chat list and grouped together with system labels such as Inbox and Drafts.

• GMail now automatically shows only labels you use the most and hides the rest. A “more” link gets you the rest of the labels. You can show or hide a label by clicking on the down-arrow to the left of the label.

• You can now drag-and-drop to tag label to email items. You can drag from email items to labels on the left column, or you can drag the label to email item.

Source: GMail Blog Post

Google has added a new “What’s here” option to the pop-up menu when you right click on Google Maps. This option, depending on your zoom level, will display relevant location info on the left pane about the point of interest.

This feature takes into account the zoom level you’re looking at, and gives you the most appropriate geographical entity at that point. For example, if you’re zoomed in closely on Manhattan, you can get the full address of a point by clicking on “What’s here?”. Additionally, by combining this with the “At this address” feature that you may have seen in the left-hand panel, you can also see a list of the businesses located at that place.

Google has released Google Quick Search Box for the Mac.

Google Quick Search Box is similar to Spotlight and QuickSilver, allows you to search for information locally on your computer or the net, and perform actions on the item such as launching applications, opening files or email documents.

To use Google Quick Search Box:

• Download the app from www.google.com/quicksearchbox/.
• Drag the app from the mounted dmg folder to the Application folder.
• After the app is launched, press Ctrl+Space to activate the search box.
• Enter your search text on the search box. Search results will appear as drop down list below the search box.
• Select the item from the search result, press Enter to launch the default action. For example if the item is an application, pressing Enter will launch the application.
• Press the Tab key instead if you want to choose other possible actions for the item.

Google Quick Search Box has an extensible architecture, developers can create plug-in to enhance its functionalities. For example, the Twitter plug-in allows you to tweet directly from Google Quick Search Box. But too bad you can not search Twitter stream from Google Quick Search Box.

Google signaled its intent to enter e-book retailing at the annual BookExpo convention in New York over the weekend. Google will launch a program by end of 2009 that would enable publishers to sell e-book direct to consumers through Google.

Google’s move takes on Amazon Kindle in the growing e-book marketplace. Google will allow publishers to set the selling price, unlike Kindle’s aggressive pricing strategy by Amazon. Most of Kindle edition of latest best sellers are selling for $9.99, far less than the typical $26 for hardcover version.

Google’s e-book offering will allow consumers to read books on any device with Internet access, including mobile phones. And an offline mode will allow consumers to read cached versions of the e-book when Internet is not available.

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