Introducing Google Buzz for mobile: See buzz around you and tag posts with your location

[Cross-posted with the Google Mobile Blog]

Today we announced Google Buzz, a new product that integrates with your Gmail inbox and makes it easy to start rich conversations about the things you find interesting. Google Buzz lets you share web links, photos, videos, and more with those who are important to you. Rather than simply creating a mobile version of Buzz, we decided to take advantage of the unique features of a mobile device - in particular, location. We go through many experiences when we're on the go, and while there are lots of ways to share these experiences with your friends or even the world, there isn't always an easy way to let your audience know where you are when you post. Your location brings valuable context to the information you share. For example, does "Delicious dinner!" mean you're at a great restaurant, or that you had a wonderful home-cooked meal? Your mobile phone, which is with you almost all the time, can help answer these questions.

Google Buzz for mobile allows you to post buzz and keep up with your friends when you're away from your computer. It also uses your location to identify places around you. You can select one of these places and attach it as location tag to your posts, or read what others have posted about the place.

There are several ways to use Google Buzz on your mobile phone:
* Buzz.google.com: This web app provides access to Buzz from your iPhone or Android phone's browser, allowing you to view and create buzz messages. It has two different views: 'Following' view shows buzz from the people you follow, just like Google Buzz in your Gmail; 'Nearby' view shows public buzz that has been tagged with a location near you, and might be from people you don't follow. From Nearby view, you can also select a specific place from the list of nearby places and view posts attached to that place.

* Buzz on Google Maps for mobile: The new Buzz layer allows you to see buzz near you or anywhere on the map. You can post public buzz directly from the layer, and even attach a photo from your phone. Also, try visiting a mobile Place Page to read recent comments or to post buzz about that place. You can access Place Pages from the web app as well, by tapping on the place name in any location-tagged post.

* Buzz Shortcut from Google.com: You will see the buzz icon in the top right corner of the google.com homepage. Just tap on the icon to trigger the posting box.

* Voice Shortcut: The voice shortcut, which is available in the quick search widget on Android and in Google Mobile App on iPhone, allows you to post buzz without typing anything. Just say 'post buzz,' followed by whatever you'd like to post.



When adding location to buzz posts, we focused on places, not just a lat/long location or an address. We wanted to make location information more useful both to your followers and to help others discover information about nearby places. If you don't want to include your location when you post buzz, it's easy to exclude your location and post without it. You also control whether your buzz posts will be public or private - by default or for individual posts. While anyone can access your public posts, private posts are viewable only by the people you choose to share them with.

With Buzz for mobile, we hope you can start interesting conversations about places and be more spontaneous when you are out and about. How many times have you missed a fun event, even though it was nearby? Or a better choice of dessert, just because you didn't know about it? How often have you wondered "Where are you?" when reading a text message from a friend? Now, you can use Buzz to learn that there is going to be a movie night at your favorite park, share with the world that there is an awesome ice cream place right around the corner, or tell your friends about that delicious homemade lasagna.

To start using Buzz for mobile, go to buzz.google.com from your phone's browser. It is currently available for Android and iPhone, but we're working to bring it to other platforms. The Buzz layer on Google Maps for mobile is available on Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian, and iPhone (as web maps). Learn more in our Help Center.


Posted by Punit Singh Soni, Product Manager, Google Mobile

With coupons on your phone, it doesn't matter where you left the scissors

We know that coupons are a great way for local businesses to drive customers to their stores - that's why we created the option for businesses to add coupons to their Google Local Business Center listing back in 2007. Now, as the holiday shopping season kicks off, we've upgraded the ways that customers can find your coupons.

First up, with more and more people using their mobile devices to find local businesses, we've added a new option for Local Business Center users in the US to display their coupons on mobile devices. Additionally, we've made it simpler to find and print coupons from your desktop, so now it's easy to get discounts wherever you are.

Coupons on a mobile device
If you add a new coupon to your business listing in Local Business Center, by default it will now be available on mobile devices. To make your existing coupons available on mobile, edit them and check the box for Mobile Distribution, as shown here:

When users pull up your business listing on their mobile phone, they'll see a section that lists the available coupons. They can then click to find a specially-formated page which shows all the coupon details they need for redeeming it. Now even when customers are on the go, they can see all the great values and offers available from your business.

Improved interface for desktops
We've also overhauled the printable pages that people visit from a business' Place Page. Now you can be confident that every Google coupon customers bring to your store will look the same, helping you and your staff easily recognize and redeem them. In addition to the re-design, we've made sure that the coupons print out correctly and consistently across all major browsers and operating systems.

To create a coupon now or to claim your business with Local Business Center for the first time, visit google.com/lbc.

Posted by David Armstrong, Software Engineer

Google Latitude, now with Location History & Alerts

[Cross-posted from the Google Mobile Blog]

Since the launch of Google Latitude earlier this year, we've been getting a lot of feature requests. One of the most popular ideas was for Latitude to keep track of location history, allowing you (but not your friends) to see where you've been at any point in time. Another popular idea was to notify you when you're near your Latitude friends so you can easily meet up or grab lunch. Today, we're happy to introduce both Google Location History and Google Location Alerts (beta) to let you do even more with Latitude.

Google Location History
Whether you're taking a road trip across the country, backpacking across Europe, or just going out for a night on the town, it's fascinating to look back at where you went, and for how long you stayed. Enable Google Location History to store, view, and manage your past Latitude locations. You can visualize your history on Google Maps and Earth or play back a recent trip in order. Of course, you can always delete selected history or your entire location history at any time. While working on Location History, I found myself going back in time to discover things that would have otherwise been impossible. For example, I stopped at an awesome BBQ place on my way back from Lake Tahoe this summer, but I couldn't remember the name when my friend was asking about it a few months later. I pulled up my location history for that weekend, found where I was stationary on the drive home, and the restaurant name showed up in Google Maps: Drooling Dog Bar BQ. Check it out below:



Google Location Alerts (beta)
People also want to know when their friends were nearby, but it's not always convenient to keep checking Latitude to see if a friend has recently shown up near you. After working on this for a while, we realized it wasn't as straightforward as sending a notification every time Latitude friends were near each other. Imagine that you're Latitude friends with your roommate or co-workers. It would get pretty annoying to get a text message every single time you walked in the door at home or pulled into work. To avoid this, we decided to make Location Alerts smarter by requiring that you also enable Location History. Using your past location history, Location Alerts can recognize your regular, routine locations and not create alerts when you're at places like home or work. Alerts will only be sent to you and any nearby friends when you're either at an unusual place or at a routine place at an unusual time. Keep in mind that it may take up to a week to learn your "unusual" locations and start sending alerts.

To enable these features, go to google.com/latitude/apps. You must first be an existing Google Latitude user; if you're not already, sign up here. You must explicitly enable each feature, and of course, you can disable it at any time. Learn more in the Help Center about Location Alerts and Location History, suggest and vote on ideas in the Mobile Product Ideas page, or report problems in the Mobile Help Forum.

Posted by Posted by Chris Lambert, Software Engineer, Google Mobile

Go Mobile with Google Maps

It's "Go Mobile" week at Google, and across all of Google's blogs, we're giving insight into our philosophy about mobile versions of our products.  If there's one product amongst all of Google's that was destined to "go mobile", it is without a doubt Google Maps.



I still remember when I moved to San Francisco several years ago -- before the advent of smartphones -- and I didn't know may way around town.  Driving up and down the city's crazy hills was sometimes a fun adventure, but other times an exercise in frustration.  When I knew where I wanted to go before I left home, I'd usually print out driving directions beforehand.  But any time I left home without directions, or if I decided to go somewhere spur of the moment, all I had was a clumsy paper map.  It's not easy pulling over to the side of the road on a 40 degree hill to try to make out the tiny streets on a paper map.  And if you've spilled coffee on your map, or it's become tattered... forget it, it's much less useful. So I rarely looked at the map, and I got lost.  A lot.



When I think about these experiences, I realize why I remain so passionate about Google Maps for mobile.  You get all the power of Google Maps that you use at home, but you can carry it around like you can a paper map. Actually, easier than a paper map since there's no folding, and it connects you to more than just information about where the streets are. Now that I know the city a little better, I can be spontaneous not just when I take a wrong turn. Google Maps on my phone lets me decide to go somewhere spur of the moment, with no preparation and pre-printing directions. The addition of a business directory (remember those giant books?) is liberating as well. If I get a craving for something like "burgers" or "pizza", I just type my craving into Google Maps, which returns all relevant results nearby, and presto, hunger abated.  With features like transit and walking directions, I can now figure out how to get there without a car.  Street View even helps me recognize the place when I get there.



So if you still haven't got a smartphone, now is a great time to go out and get one.  We've got a lot of engineers building Google Maps for all the major mobile operating systems: Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, Palm, S60, and Windows.



Once you take the plunge into smartphones, then getting Google Maps for your phone is easy.  Just visit m.google.com/maps in your mobile browser, or go here to send a link to your phone. And if you have any questions for us on our mobile products, submit them here by 11:59pm Pacific time on Tuesday 10/13, and we'll answer some of the top questions on Wednesday on the Google Mobile blog.



Posted by Steve Lee, Product Manager for Google Maps for mobile

Columbus State University goes mobile with Google Apps

Editor's Note: We're pleased to welcome Robert Diveley, Executive Director of Operations at Columbus State University's Office of Information and Technology Services, as our guest blogger today. Robert's post describes how his school has provided real-time access to student information using Google Mobile Apps.

Columbus State University, located in Columbus, Georgia, started using Google Apps Education Edition in early 2009 and has since successfully implemented Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Sites and Google Video on campus. One challenge for our university, as with many others in today’s economy, is that student enrollment continues to rise while budgets remain flat. Accordingly, it's been pretty tough for us to keep pace with the IT demand.

We recently surveyed our students and learned that, no surprisingly, they strongly preferred to communicate with our school via cell phone andPDA . So we thought that we could get ahead of the curve by offering information live on these devices, allowing our students access to the latest information available and being able to avoid lines and other communications slow-downs, especially at the beginning of new terms.

To solve our problem we looked to Google for guidance on how to interface Google Mobile Apps with our Student Information System. We began our development process using the tools provided through Google’s online developer kit and even enlisted some Columbus State University students to take part in the project by taking advantage of the Android for Beginners group.

Thanks to this integration, the information we are now able to provide in real-time from our Student Information System onto cell phones and PDAs includes:

• Student Account Information – amount owed, refund available, holds on account
• Student Scholastic Information – GPA, adviser contact and grades
• Student’s Individual Schedule of Classes
• Required Documents – Financial Aid, Immunization
• University Activity Schedule
• University Sports Schedule
• Shuttle Bus Schedule
• Campus Map
  
  
  

We've included two screen shots displaying what students can see on their mobile devices below:

We foresee that the use of Mobile Apps will add to our customer service capabilities and allow students to more easily find information that might otherwise require phone calls or lines. Our ultimate goal is to duplicate all of the services that we now provide to students through our university portal. By doing so students will literally have all of our services on hand at all times.

As you can see, delivering this information on a mobile device makes everything easier for our students and proactively addresses frequently asked questions, helping students successfully take charge ofthier own issues and needs.

Robert Diveley, Executive Director of Operations
Office of Information & Technology Services, Columbus State University

Posted by Miriam Schneider, Google Apps Education team