Google Gesture does not work on my Android phone

Posted by BA on Mar 9, 2010 in Uncategorized | 0 comments

If you’ve been reading about Google Gesture, the new hand-writing based search mechanism on android phones and have not been able to find it to download, there is nothing to worry about. If  you have any OS version that is lower than 2.0, the app will neither install nor will show up in your Android market. Similarly, if you are outside US, the app is expected not to work.

So if I use the QR code on my good old G1 with an older OS, the QR code and URL is recognized but no download is available for my phone. Time to buy a new android phone?

This fact is also confirmed on the discussion groups here on Google Gesture’s own discussion forums. 

If you have a device with 2.0 OS and you are in US, you can download the software from http://gesturesearch.googlelabs.com/download.html .

Google search has 4 out of 5 senses if you are on Android

Posted by BA on Mar 8, 2010 in Uncategorized | 0 comments

You can touch, you can see, you can hear when you are searching Google on Android phones. Human beings are said to have 5 senses including touch, see, hear, smell and taste and then some of them have a sixth sense too.

Android phones can search based on what they see through their camera, what they hear from their microphone and what do they feel when the user touches them on the touchscreen. To see all these three in action, grab a Google Android phone and start using Google Search for mobile on that.

I’ve already discussed how Google search responds to the two senses i.e “hear” and “see” in my earlier article “Google gives eyes and ears to mobile“. Today I will also mention the sense of touch. All android touchscreens are quite brilliant and here is an application that gives the sense of touch to the android phones.

Google Gestures allows you to search using the written gestures. The app comes from Google labs and is available for Google Android platform only. Here is the official announcement of the availability of the Google Gestures and you can download the application from to Google market or here from the Google Labs page.

You must be wondering, if touch, see and hear are the three senses, where is the 4th sense that Google has given to its search on Android phones? Well, every search that happens has a background knowledge of you and your location. GPS in the phone tells your location and your search trend and surfing history tells about your interests and eventually this helps refining the search to a big extent. I take that as the 4th sense of Google search on android phones