about-electronics.eu

ZDNet: Apple’s much-vaunted iPhone received a ringing endorsement from the chief executive of Google, Eric Schmidt, after he claimed that the handset was a perfect platform for the search specialist’s hosted applications.

Speaking at an event in Paris on Tuesday, Schmidt was questioned on whether, as Google’s boss and an Apple board member, he had any insights into future collaboration between the two companies. “What you are really asking is to see my iPhone,” he quipped before producing a handset from his pocket. “iPhone is a powerful new device and is going to be particularly good for the apps that Google is building. You should expect other announcements from the two companies over time,” he said.

The iPhone fully incorporates Google’s search and mapping services. Users can make phone calls directly from Google Maps.

Key to Google’s belief in the potential of the iPhone is Apple’s decision to integrate support for the Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) web-development technique.

read more

TG Daily: Internet analysis firm Comscore today said that Google has become the leading online video property with 1.2 billion video streams and 57.4 million unique people streaming videos in March.

The firm said that YouTube drove Google’s market share to 16.7%, reaching 53.5 million unique streamers and delivering 1.1 billion streams alone.

Yahoo came in second with 434 million streams, followed by Fox Interactive Media, which owns Myspace, with 421 million, Viacom with 260 million, Time Warner with 222 million and Microsoft with 151 million.

According to Comscore, 71.4% of U.S. Internet users streamed videos in March, with three out of ten users streaming from YouTube. Online viewers watched an average of 145 minutes of online video during the month; in total, more than 7 billion video streams were initiated by more than 126 million people in America alone, the research firm said.

read more

Smarthouse: Here’s a demo video of Google Maps’ fantastic new street level imagery of various cities (only in the US for now).  Street View is a new feature that enables you to view and navigate within 360 degree street level imagery of major cities

The company has also launched Mapplets to let you create a mashup of mashups directly on Google Maps.

Street View imagery will initially be available for maps of the San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Las Vegas, Denver and Miami.

With Street View, you can virtually walk the streets of a city, check out a restaurant before arriving, and even zoom in on bus stops and street signs to make travel plans, Google claims.

read more

Silicon.Com: This is one of the vans used by mapping company Tele Atlas to gather images and data that eventually ends up on numerous navigation devices.

The Dutch company is one of two major European mapping organisations – the other being Navteq – that provide maps to sat-nav manufacturers.

Customers include Google, Mercedes Benz, Navman, Nokia, Tom Tom, Via Michelin and Pioneer.

As part of the mapping process the company uses a fleet of 22 vans to map individual streets and landmarks across Europe.

More images here.

read more

I4U: The Google reader development team enhanced the Google Feed Reader to work nicely on the Wii console.

The Google Reader supports now the Wiimote. You can use up/down to scroll up/down, right/left to select next/previous item, 1 button to show subscriptions and 2 button to show links.

When showing subscriptions you can use up/down to select previous/next subscription, right to select current subscription, left to close and -/+ to collapse/expand folder.

To use Google Reader on your Nintendo Wii, just visit reader.google.com A video and more details is available on the Google Reader Blog.

read more

Engadget: After all the rumours, it appears that there is now a Google phone… of sorts.

LG just announced their plan to pre-install Google services on “millions” of LG cellphones in North America and beyond. So the headline over at Telecoms Korea which reads, “LG to launch Google Phone in Q2″ is in fact just Google software and not the magical Google phone touted by the rumor mill.

At least this clarifies the comments made by Google’s South-East Asia managing director when he stated that Google was “very focused on the software, not the phone.”

At least 10 new “LG-Google handsets” will start shipping globally in 2007, each with a preload of Google Maps, Gmail, and Blogger mobile applications. The first of these handsets are expected to hit in Q2.

So yeah, it’s not the Google phone we’ve all been hoping for, but with 18 R&D projects in the Google labs, we don’t expect this to be the final word on the subject.

read more

Mobile Guerilla: Following last week’s rumors regarding a possible partnership with Samsung to create the Google Phone, the search engine giant has quickly issued a statement denying everything.The company said that they are busy working on software and creating a phone would be a “dramatic shift in the company’s business model”. They want to port their technologies to mobile devices and they are not interested in developing a handset.

Softbank too denied iPhone rumors a little while ago, and look what happened. So don’t give up on this just yet.

read more

Ubergizmo: Speculation is surfacing that Google is currently working on a new cellphone, also known as the Google Phone.

The speculation comes from Simeon Simeonov, the former president and CEO of Danger; he is well established in the world of cellphones.

Some claim that the Google Phone is targeting the iPhone as its main rival, but that remanis to be seen until something more concrete comes is released.

read more

MarketWatch: EMI Music Chairman Alain Levy recently told an audience at the London Business School that the CD is dead, saying music companies will no longer be able to sell CDs without offering “value-added” material.