Andrea Bauer

Google on Thursday announced that it has used its Gears Geolocation API to make searching for businesses and locales in your area easier on Windows Mobile devices.

According to the company, Search with My Location approximates your location based on Cell ID technology already employed by Google Maps and returns businesses in that area. If you’re looking to find the best Italian restaurants in your area, you can input “Italian restaurants” into the Search field, and it will return a list of Italian restaurants around your location. But it goes beyond businesses and restaurants. Google said that if you want to know the forecast where you are, simply type in “weather” and it will return the weather for your area.

So far, Search with My Location is only available on Windows Mobile phones for users running Internet Explorer Mobile (a full list of compatible phones can be found here) in the US and UK, but Google said that wider support will be available as it continues to enter into agreements with vendors.

To use the new service now, surf to Google.com, click the My Locations link, and get started.

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AdMonitor, a Google Maps mashup from mobile ad serving company AdMob, provides real time data on who is viewing mobile ads worldwide, including the network they are on and the phone they are using.

San Mateo based AdMob has seemingly slipped under the radar in terms of attention whilst competitors have been acquired; Third Screen Media was acquired bought by AOL and Screentonic was acquired by Microsoft. And yet this is a company with some great stats and backing. AdMob is now serving 1 billion mobile ads a month and has amongst its investors Sequoia and Accel Partners. Director Maynard Web was COO for eBay between 2002 and 2006 and staff include Tony Nethercutt, the former VP of Sales for YouTube and Kevin Scott, a former senior engineering manager for Google.

The AdMonitor mashup provides an accessible way of seeing just how many ads AdMob is serving. Notably, Nokia would still appear to remain the world most popular provider of mobile phones.

AdMob clients include ESPN and CBS.

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The Android Blog is reporting that Google has officially announced the Android Market, an App Store like solution that allows publishers to upload programs and sell them online.

"Developers will be able to make their content available on an open service hosted by Google that features a feedback and rating system similar to YouTube. We chose the term “market” rather than “store” because we feel that developers should have an open and unobstructed environment to make their content available. Similar to YouTube, content can debut in the marketplace after only three simple steps: register as a merchant, upload and describe your content and publish it. We also intend to provide developers with a useful dashboard and analytics to help drive their business and ultimately improve their offerings."

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Further cementing Google Maps Mobile as one of the most useful free mobile applications ever, Google has added Voice search to its repertoire. It’s an experimental feature at this point, so it’s only on select handsets; if you’re using a Blackberry Pearl 8110, 8120, or 8130 - go update!

The new feature seems pretty easy to use: hold the left soft key, say your search, release the left soft key, and off it goes. It utilizes the same speech recognition engine used by 1-800-GOOG-411. Still, typing still works fine, allowing you to fall back on your thumbs be it that your environment just doesn’t mesh well with voice recognition.

While I’d be a bit surprised to see this feature make it into the generalized J2ME version of the application, we’ll probably see it to roll out to other big-name platforms as Google works out the kinks.

Pearl users can grab the update at http://www.google.com/gmm

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At Google, it’s all about speed. That’s doubly true for mobile applications. Google made some improvements to its mobile search, making it load faster on most mobile browsers. It does this by caching the page.

Google also added an iGoogle link to its mobile homepage. It also now allows you to customize and rearrange the widgets on the mobile version of your iGoogle start page so what you see on your mobile iGoogle can be different than what you see on your desktop. (You have to set this up from a regular computer, but can basically drag and drop widgets around to your liking).

This should make iGoogle a much more viable mobile start page. And, arguably, you need a start page with shortcuts to your favorite content on your mobile browser more than you do on your desktop. It’s just faster that way.

Below is a longish Google video with a demo of the new functionality (skip to about 1:44 in, when the actual demo starts:

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Google is developing a new search service for cellphones that will be focused on mobile specific content such as ringtones and games, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.

The new search site is said to enable users not only to find a list of mobile content providers, but will also provide an easy purchase interface for selected sites, most likely through Google Checkout. Google has apparently been working “for months with content providers — including large entertainment companies and smaller mobile-media aggregators” in preparation for the services launch. The report goes on to say that Google may also include a social-networking component that would let Gmail users exchange content.

Google already provides a number of mobile focused products, from mobile friendly versions of Google search through to a Gmail app for mobile phones. It would appear to be a logical step for Google to offer a mobile focused site such as this. Where the offering becomes interesting is in the challenge it presents to cellphone operators who profit well from services such as ringtones. On one hand we have AT&T offering unlimited data plans on the iPhone, on the other we have cellphone providers such as Verizon which are blocking VOIP services and other web apps because it wants to milk maximum profits from every user. I’d find it hard to believe given history so far that mobile operators will allow Google to undermine one of their most lucrative revenue streams without a fight.

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