“Find My Friends” – The New iPhone App for Location Sharing

 

One of announcements from today’s Apple event was an interesting new app called Find My Friends.

The app lets you track the location of other users, but unlike Google’s Latitude, which is meant to be used with a wide circle of people you know, Apple’s app seems designed for use with a close circle of friends and family.

Apple’s examples of how the app can be used includes checking out if your son made it to school today.

Of course, not everyone wants to be tracked all the time, so Apple has included some privacy options, such as temporary location sharing. (For example, you can set up the app to share your location up until 7 p.m. each day.)

We can imagine a lot of parents will like the app, but a great deal of kids will probably hate it, or think of ways to circumvent this type of surveillance.

 

Google Search for tablets

As part of our effort to evolve the Google design and experience, we’ve improved the www.google.com search experience on tablets. We’ve simplified the layout of search results pages and increased the size of page contents like text, buttons and other touch targets to make it faster and easier to browse and interact with search results in portrait or landscape view.

The search button located below the search box provides quick access to specific types of results like Images, Videos, Places, Shopping and more. Just tap to open the search menu and select an option to see results in one category.

For image results, we focused on improvements that enhance the viewing experience such as enlarged image previews, continuous scroll, and faster loading of image thumbnails.

This improved search experience is rolling out in the coming days to iPad and Android 3.1+ tablets across 36 languages. Give it a try by going to www.google.com in your tablet’s browser.

Salesforce Google Maps Mashup

Video demo of an innovation initiative on the iPad using Salesforce and Google Maps data mash up. Uses your GPS location and shows you directions to closest customers.

http://www.youtube.com/v/g9CKw5jNJpY?f=videos&app=youtube_gdata