Google Maps 5.7 for Android adds Transit Navigation, better search, photo viewer [video]

Google took the wraps off of Google Maps 5.7 for Android devices on Wednesday, and the software update adds quite a few new features. The most noteworthy addition is Google’s Transit Navigation beta feature, which provides navigation instructions for public transportation in more than 400 cities around the globe. You don’t have to leave it open, either. Once you’ve started your trip, Transit Navigation will automatically remind you with an alert when your stop is coming up. Google also made it easier to find driving or walking directions in one click, improved search suggestions with category icons, and added a photo viewer to the Places feature of Google Maps. The update is available free from the Android Market for devices running Android 2.1 or newer. Hit the jump for a video of Transit Navigation beta in action.

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JailbreakMe highlights just how vulnerable iOS users are

Earlier today, Comex released JailbreakMe 3.0, which jailbreaks any iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch running the latest version of iOS, 4.3.3. It’s an untethered jailbreak, too, meaning you only have to apply it once. The big news, though, is that JailbreakMe is astoundingly easy to use: you simply navigate to a website on your iOS device, click Install, and a few seconds later Cydia will appear. JailbreakMe, unlike Redsn0w and PwnageTool, is entirely web-based. It’s really rather genius: a foolproof tool that empowers the everyday Apple user.
But let’s step back a bit and look at the actual implications of this exploit – because ultimately, that’s what it is. JailbreakMe can jailbreak your iPad or iPhone from a website. Yes, in this current incarnation you have to click Install, but you could easily copy the JailbreakMe site and create a version that jailbreaks your iOS device without your consent. Now, what if you use the same exploit to install something else, like a backdoor Trojan or code to turn the device into a botnet zombie?

7 Reasons Why Google+ Will Succeed (and 1 reason why it will very likely fail)

Speculation often causes people to talk out of both sides of their mouth when passing judgment or expressing an opinion. This is not one of those times. While expressed as opinions, everything I’m about to post is true about the Google+ Project. The only speculation is in how Google will proceed and if Facebook can make the moves to fight them off.
In reality, much of it is out of Facebook’s control. Their success or failure is, for the first time, almost completely out of their hands.

Bing for iPad Update: Searching Without a Search Box

In April we released Bing for iPad and needless to say, we were humbled by the positive response we received. In the first three months, we had more than 5,000 ratings in the App Store and an average score of 4.7 stars (out of five stars). But what we really liked was all the great feedback on areas to improve and features to add.

We’re pleased to release an update to Bing for iPad, rolling out later today  in the app store. In this release we made some improvements that you asked for and are excited to introduce a new feature called Lasso.

Google Tests Black Bar

Over the weekend, Google began testing yet another user interface. This one has a new top bar, using a black background instead of a white or light gray color.

Here is a closer look:

There are some complaints from daily Google users that the black bar looks wrong. Even worse, those that customize their Google home page find the new black bar to completely ruin their custom Google home page.

That being said - Google is indeed testing the new black bar.

They are also testing a new grayed out design.

Google often tests new interfaces, positions and colors throughout the year.

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help and Google Blogoscoped Forums.

Update: It is now official, more details at over here.

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Sorry Facebook, Google Beat You To One Billion Visitors

We continue to hear about Facebook’s 700 million users, on the way to a billion worldwide. According to comScore Google is already there, at least looking across all its websites.

Google: The Biggest Network Of Sites

The chart below, provided to us from comScore, shows the number of unique visitors that went to each company’s network of web sites over the past year:

comScore gets its data from a global panel of roughly two million internet users from which it extrapolates findings to the entire online population. This sampling methodology has been much criticized but remains the standard in the industry.

The visitors that comScore counts aren’t the same as the active visitor numbers that Facebook self-reports (see Has Facebook’s Active User Growth Dropped 25% to 50%? for more on that), but the numbers do seem to be close to Facebook’s own statistics.

Facebook: Likely The Biggest Single Site

Of course, the Facebook “network” is pretty much Facebook itself. “Google Sites” will include everything from Google’s search engine to YouTube to Google Blogger. On a “what’s the most popular site” basis, Facebook is likely ahead of Google.

Indeed, when we dig a bit deeper we can see this isn’t all about Google search, Gmail and Maps. Much of the time spent on Google sites happens on YouTube. Indeed, if you look at it by country, you see what a huge contributor YouTube is and what a strategic purchase the video site turned out to be for Google.

Facebook: Most Minutes Spent

In terms of total minutes spent and share of minutes (engagement) Facebook is the global leader, followed by Microsoft, Google and Yahoo in that order. What’s interesting is that Yahoo has half the monthly minutes of Google, which appears at first blush to contradict the “95% content 5% search” time-spent argument often made for display advertising.

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ICANN approves: beginning of the era .any

Once upon a time .com, .net, .org.  There was a world of simple and structured domains with dedicated compartments that made it easier to understand the overall structure. Now the gTLD (Generic Top Level Domains) have been extended to .biz, .info and many others. But is not enough. In fact, ICANN has approved the final explosion of the domains.