Put on Your Google Goggles and Visually Search the World [Google]

Google’s breaking news left and right today. Of course the big news is that real-time search is live, but the release of Google Goggles can’t be overlooked. The brand-new addition to Google Labs is an experimental application for Android devices that supports visual search.

How does it work? Just open the app, snap a photo and voilà: Google will process the image and return search results. The photo search functionality eliminates the need to type or say anything on your mobile device, and it adds context to your real-world surroundings.

While the technology is pretty remarkable, Google admits that it is still in its infancy. So while some image searches work brilliantly — think photos of books, business cards, artwork, places, logos and landmarks — don’t be too disappointed if your image searches for food, animals, plants and cars are less than stellar.

Still, the application should prove useful, and we hope to see versions of it made available for other smartphone users as well. For now, though, iPhone users can turn to a number of different augmented reality applications for camera-enabled search functionality.

Watch the video below for a demonstration of Google Goggles.




[Mashable]

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Ninite installs 59 free apps with one double-click

Moving from Windows XP to Windows 7 will be a whole lot easier if you use Ninite. The free online site lets you pick those extra apps you always need to hunt around the web for when you do a clean install.
Once you've checked off your choices among the 59 possibilities, you download an installer (sorry, Windows only) , double-click it and you can just walk away while it loads up all those apps on your fresh operating system. It's even smart enough to avoid installing crapware such as unnecessary toolbars.

We've been testing this routine in its beta phase, and we can tell you it works beautifully. We test a lot of operating systems here, and it's a pain to individually install apps such as Adobe Flash, Adobe Reader (or better yet, Foxit Reader), iTunes, Firefox, Winrar, and many others. Now, with our custom installer, everything is ready to go in minutes.

The company aims to please, asking you to suggest more apps that aren't yet included. It's hard to believe this is free.

[DVICE via Ninite]

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Mozilla Raindrop Keeps Messaging Personal [News]

Today, Mozilla announced a new open source project called Raindrop, a service that pulls your social content from multiple sources and organizes it in one place to create a centralized messaging experience that matters to you.
The goal of Raindrop is to make email and messaging personal again, and allow complete customizability in how you manage that information. It brings in content from multiple, sources such as Twitter, RSS feeds, and email, and presents it in one central, web-based front end. Thus, instead of having to watch multiple sources just to keep up on your personal conversations, you can focus on one single bucket.
Raindrop can also decide which conversations are important to you and your life, and "bubble up" that information to the top—while keeping the less important messages out of the way. In addition, like all Mozilla projects, Raindrop will be extensible—whether through HTML, Java, CSS, or APIs—in order for you to further personalize your experience.
Mozilla says that the goal is not to invent a new protocol or system, but better handle ones that already exist. The video demo (above) explains some of the basic principles behind Raindrop.
Raindrop is still in very early stages, and isn't something the basic user can try out just yet, but it's certainly something we'll be keeping an eye on.

Raindrop

[Lifehacker via Mozilla Labs]

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Now This is How the iPhone Should Handle Multitasking [IPhone]

I really hope someone at Apple sees these concept interfaces from Ocean Observations. They've taken the best elements of the Pre's card system, combined them with Cover Flow, and created an awesome vision of multitasking on the iPhone.
The designers also have an idea for managing the mess of home screens that comes along with app hoarding. Tapping the home button would bring up a paneled Exposé page. From there, you could easily jump to a specific page, rather than swiping a hundred times to find Peggle.

Hopefully someone at Apple is keeping up with this page to see what else these guys come up with.
[Gizmodo via MobileCrunch]

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Form Autofill with Details in Latest Chromium Build [Features]

As of my last Chromium update I got a chance to select whether I want or not to use the Form Filling feature. It includes address details and credit card details as can be seen in the image below:

More addresses and cards can be added as well.

I'm still using the LastPass plugin as autofill service but will sure try out Chromium's soon. Currently it is saved locally and not in the cloud so won't have it handy at different locations you're using the browser. 

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