The new Google Calendar for mobile supports iPhone OS 2.2.1 and up and all Android-powered phones. It’s available in English only for now, but more languages will be supported soon. For Apps users please go to google.com/m/a/yourdomain and click on Calendar.

The new version allows users to respond to event invitations, send event invitations, change attendance status, as well as edit events directly from the phone. The previous version was view-only. The new version will also show the most recently viewed event if no wireless network is available.

[via Google Mobile Blog]

Today, the Google mobile ads team announced a new option that allows AdWord advertisers to show your desktop text and image ads on the iPhone and many other mobile devices with full HTML browsers. These ads can point to desktop landing pages so there is no need to create mobile landing pages at all.

These ads will have many of the same benefits as the standard ads, such as the delivery of mobile-specific calls-to-action. iPhone users may have already seen these ads on because Google Search shows desktop results pages that are modified for these handsets. Just recently, the Google mobile team launched new results pages formatted specifically for the iPhone.

Now advertisers can create ads to be displayed exclusively on the iPhone, create campaigns for them, and get separate performance reporting. If you choose not to have your desktop ads shown on these phones you may opt out and show these ads only on desktop and laptop computers. Also if you’re currently running mobile ads, the new option will not affect your campaign.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4R-wF6sdDg&eurl=http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2008/12/new-adwords-options-for-iphone-and-g1.html&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

[Via GoogleBlog]

According to the Vice President of Google’s Engineering department, Google will be providing applications for the iPhone from day one of the release of iPhone firmware 2.0, and will make them available in the App Store. Most already assumed this would be the case. Google says that the iPhone has changed the way people will look at mobile web browsing.

That’s because according to Google, all mobile browsers are different. There are so many platforms, and so few use the same mobile browser. Google thinks that with how successful WebKit based browsers like mobile Safari, and the browser found on some Nokia devices, most manufacturers will adopt a WebKit based solution in the future as well. Google made it known that despite bringing native applications to the iPhone, they will still maintain and develop web based applications, as they do know.

[Via MacWorld]

“Once you have devices out there from Motorola, HTC, Samsung, and so on, there’s a much larger potential market on Android than for the iPhone. [Apple is] a single manufacturer, it’s targeted at a particular demographic, and it falls far short of the 1 billion mobile phones sold every year worldwide” Rich Miner, Google

“There are things I saw people doing with the first version of the Android SDK that it seems like you can’t do with the iPhone at least at the moment” Rich Miner, Google

Strong words, you could say, from a company yet to ship a single handset to a consumer; last month, Google revealed that the Android SDK had been downloaded 750,000 times since its November launch. Apple’s iPhone SDK was downloaded 100,000 times in its first four days of availability.

According to Miner, of the four main handset manufacturers signed up to Android – Motorola, LG, Samsung and HTC – one is expected to reach the market with a device before the others; industry sources suggest that will be a smartphone variant from HTC.

Still, after roundly critiquing the iPhone’s sales, sales potential and the capacity of its SDK, Miner saved some love for last:

“It’s not a competitive thing — it’s great that people are finally building tools so all of these third-party applications can be built and get out there. If I were a developer] I’d certainly be looking at the iPhone, and if you believe there will be lots of Android phones out there, as we do, I’d be developing for both platforms” Rich Miner, Google

[Via Google: We’ll far outsell iPhone; our SDK lets you do more - PHONE Magazine]

“If you configured Gmail access on your iPhone by tapping the large ‘Gmail’ icon in mail setup, please note that installing software update 1.1.3 will automatically convert Gmail on your iPhone from POP access to IMAP access. This means that actions you take on your iPhone will now sync with actions in your Gmail web interface (i.e. messages you read on your iPhone will show up as ‘Read’ in the web interface). This also means that messages you delete on your iPhone will be moved to the Trash folder in the Gmail web interface, and thus deleted after 30 days. Please exercise caution when deleting messages, as this behavior is markedly different from POP access” Google FAQ

[via Krunker]

With plans to roll out the improved UI to international versions of the iPhone, as well as other handsets “that offer similar usability and browser capabilities”, this will only add fuel to the rumors that Google see the iPhone as a test-bed for internet-based applications eventually to be found on their own Android cellphone platform.

You can access the new version by visiting www.google.com on your iPhone.

[via TechCrunch]

GooSync comes in free and paid versions, the latter priced at £19.95 ($41) for twelve months, differentiated by how far ahead appointments are transferred to your iPhone (30 days in the free version, a year with the paid version), whether contacts can be synchronised (bidirectional sync only on the premium version) and the ability to connect your iPhone to multiple calendars.

If you already use Google Calendar then this could be ideal, particularly the ability to update while on the move.

[via press release]

I am especially listening since its risky business talking negatively, or too positively, about a pair of companies who both have handsets either in production, or in the works that are based on his processors. The iPhone has several ARM chips, and we found out during the Android conference call that the minimum requirements for the Android based OS is a 200MHz ARM processor.

Mr. East does have some good points though, citing the very distant release of any Android based phone as a major downside, for a couple reasons, first, other companies will have plenty of time with both the info and the SDK to create their own version of the OS, and secondly because the chances are high that Apple will have another iPhone out by then. Smartphone sales this year have hit 200 million this year, and with a new iPhone and the GPhone we could see 300 million by the end of next year, and if Apple has their way, at least 10 of that will be from their handsets alone.

ARM exec: Google no threat to iPhone [via electronista]

Well, Fake Steve Jobs isn’t scared want to know how not scared he is? Read the following quote:

“Reason #2 — the only companies that join consortia are the ones who are too stupid or shitty to make a great product on their own. It’s like, Hey, we’ve got forty spazzo companies that can’t fuck their way out of a paper bag; let’s put them all together and maybe they’ll magically become some kind of big bad powerhouse.”

That quote, straight money, then he goes on to liken such a monster more to Frankenstein, constantly drooling and tripping over itself. He really does have some good points, he even brings up the fact that chances are great that by the time the first Android based phone drops, sometime in the middle of next year, Apple, a single company, will have released at least one other mind-blowingly awesome product, probably more than one, but at least 1. Anyways, one last quote from Fake Steve, this one really puts the icing on the cake, “Companies don’t form alliances and consortia when they’re winning.”

It’s not a phone, it’s an alliance [via fakesteve]

How does this pertain to the iPhone? The iPhone is one of the few mobile devices out there with IMAP support, so, it will be a lot nicer, and a lot more organized when you peer into your inbox if you have been using GMail and tagging your emails.

Oh, there is another, really big, upside to using IMAP, any changes you make, like say you read an email, it will show as read, regardless of where you actually read it, on the web, on your iPhone, on your work computer, its all global and all changes replicate throughout the system. The only downsides are, it seems to be a bit of a pain in the ass to set up. However, if you are feeling adventurous, they are rolling out the IMAP support to all accounts, but its taking some time because IMAP is more resource hungry than POP, so it wasn’t they could flip a switch on, so, if you don’t have the IMAP option, in the same location where you’d find the POP settings, just wait, and keep checking, they’ll get to you eventually.

Changing the Game – Gmail Gets IMAP [via paulstamatiou]

“Apple is taking responsibility for “the user interface and people.” It’s designing the devices themselves, which will be typically elegant machines that run versions of OS X. While Apple puts together the front end of the integrated network-computing system, Google provides “the perfect back end” – the supercomputer that provides the bulk of the data-processing might and storage capacity for the devices” Nicholas Carr

It’s a concept based on the same principles of the low-cost, relatively closed ecosystem ASUS Eee and the sort of advertisement-funded service that many predict will flavour Google’s potential expansion into cellular wireless.  Carr envisages a highly efficient, low maintenance appliance client that stores and backups its media on Google’s all-seeing servers.

Not exactly a new idea, per se, but one with gathering momentum and ever-more potential truth to it.  Imagine, for instance, if Google won the 700MHz auction come January 2008 – then, you wouldn’t even have to rent broadband from your local telco, your simple internet appliance would just connect whenever, wherever.

What do you think, would you buy into the Google/Apple ecosystem?  Or do you reckon that the natural tendency of many to want to tweak and hack – as shown with Jailbreak and the rush to bring third-party apps to the iPhone – will prevail stronger than people’s desire for a stable, perhaps locked down experience?  Let us know in the comments.

[via Life on the Wicked Stage]

Word is, he is working on versions for PPC based Macs, and then he’ll likely begin work on a version for Windows. This version of the hack only requires the user restart the iPod Touch when told to by the software.

The software still uses the TIFF exploit, and then makes heavy use of iPHUC, but just about everything is automated. If I read right, once everything is done, you have the Installer.app app installed, AriX is adding features to his Jailbreak software all the time, I heard rumblings of making the ROM transfer process for the NES emulator easier, integrating the option to install the iPhone apps, integrating SummerBoard installation, since it’s a little trickier now, tons of stuff, only time will tell.

Working on an Automatic Jailbreak Installer [via apple-touch forums]

I don’t actually have a smartphone of any sort or an iPhone so I can’t test this, but the people over at The Boy Genius Report said they look nice on the iPhone. Oh yeah, the apps are gmail (I thought this was already mobile?), news, and photos.

Google Calender is also available in mobile form, but that apparently isn’t new. Now if they could just get Google Docs and Spreadsheets to work on mobiles we’d be on our way to being handset independent.

Google launches more iPhone-customized web apps? [via boygeniusreport]

There’s nothing new in terms of features, just access to the usual web, news and image search functionality with a nice big finger-friendly “Search” button. Considering the convoluted address, however, it looks like Google has more in mind for the page when it finally gets a proper release (or, knowing Google, a lengthy Beta release!)

Google iPhone Search

It looks like YouTube isn’t going to be the only application that Google is making available on the iPhone. There seems to be a web base version of Google Talk called Talk Gadget. Visiting this URL via Safari will pop up the following page, allowing you to log into your Google Talk account. If you don’t have an account, don’t worry because there’s an option for you to create one.

http://talkgadget.google.com/talkgadget/popout

Google Talk is Google’s instant messenger client. It’s tightly integrated with your Gmail account, which lets you use your existing buddy list to text or voice chat.