The new Search app for iPad from Google

 

Google launching a significant redesign for the Google Search app for iPad. Whether you’re doing research and comparing results, or exploring beautiful imagery, we have added new features to make the app more interactive, more visual and to help you find what you want more easily.
 

More interactive

You’ll notice that searching is faster and more interactive from your first keystroke. As soon as you begin to type, Google Instant starts to display results, so you don’t even need to press the search button.

Once you pick a web page to visit, you’ll see the page load on a new, slide-in pane that will layer over the search results. You can slide the pane to the right to get back to your search results, and even keep scrolling through the results as your web page is loading. This allows you to go back and forth from results to web pages quickly to get the information you are looking for.

View search results on the left and a web page on the right in the slide-in pane


More visual

Viewing image results in the app is now much more vivid. Tap on any image result to use the new image carousel, which lets beautiful images shine. You’ll see the image you selected expand, and you can easily swipe through the carousel to see other similar images.  

Swipe through the image carousel


Often you may be looking to find something you have seen before again or are continuing research on a topic. But on a tablet, typing can be a challenge. That is why we have created a visual way to explore your search history. Swipe right to view snapshots of pages you’ve visited, stacked and organized by search term. You can also manage your search history from this new view.

With this release, we also brought Instant Previews to the app so you can quickly compare web pages before you choose your result. Tapping on an icon in the top right of the screen brings you into a visual preview of the pages for your search result, easy to scroll through with the swipe of a finger.


Find easily

Finally, we added a few extra features that we hope will help you find what you want more easily.

After you’ve selected a result, a new tool helps you find exactly what you need within a web page. Tap the magnifying glass on the top right-hand corner to highlight the most relevant section of the page. You can recommend pages you like with the new +1 button, right next to the magnifying glass, and help others find relevant sites more easily as well.  

Helpful tools while you search


We’ve also made it easier to find and use your favorite Google services like Google News, Calendar and more in the new Apps menu. Tap on an icon to quickly read an email in Gmail, or share a post on Google+ within the slide-in pane. When you slide the pane to the right, you’ll be right back to searching.


Easily find more Google services


The app is available worldwide for iPads with iOS 4.0+. Download it in the App Store and start enjoying a faster and more interactive experience now.

Conceptual design for land development

Back in architecture school, I once had to lay out a parking lot for a building I was designing. What a terrible, terrible exercise in nitpicky details and perpetual re-arrangement. The solution I came up with accommodated all of four Smart cars and a unicycle. Awful. If only I’d had access to a tool like SITEOPS from BLUERIDGE Analytics.

SITEOPS is conceptual land development software for folks like architects, civil engineers, landscape architects and land developers. After you’ve brought in a site, you can combine building footprints with critical elements like parking, islands and driveways. These elements are parametric, meaning that they re-draw themselves on the fly as you change aspects of your conceptual design. SITEOPS even provides budget tools for estimating the cost of a project.

Want to see what a parking layout might look like if your building were on the other side of the site? As you slide it over, the parking lot automatically reconfigures to maintain the proper number of spaces. Too cool. This short video shows SITEOPS it in action:

Realizing that lots of their users are also SketchUp devotees, the good people at BLUERIDGE have added an Export to SketchUp button to their product. It lets you figure out the complicated stuff in SITEOPS, then visualize your project in SketchUp. It’s available to SITEOPS customers who have also purchased the Grading and Piping Module. These pictures tell the story better than words can:

This is a view of a 2D site layout in SITEOPS.

 

A 3D image of the same site in SITEOPS’ Grading and Piping Module.

 

The site after it’s been exported to SketchUp. The model includes all of the 3D topographical information from SITEOPS.

Ice Cream Sandwich on the Galaxy Nexus

Beaming a video with a single tap or unlocking a device with only a smile sounds like science fiction. Now, you can actually do these things (and more) with a phone that fits in the palm of your hand.

Wednesday morning in Hong Kong—together with Samsung—we unveiled Galaxy Nexus, the first phone designed for the latest release of Android 4.0, also known as Ice Cream Sandwich.

With a super slim profile, Galaxy Nexus features a 4.65” Contour Display with true high definition (720p) resolution and a lightning-fast dual core 1.2ghz processor combined with 4G LTE or HSPA+ technology. Galaxy Nexus also features the latest in software: Ice Cream Sandwich makes Android simple and beautiful, and takes the smartphone to beyond smart.

Beauty and simplicity
With Ice Cream Sandwich, our mission was to build a mobile OS that works on both phones and tablets, and to make the power of Android enticing and intuitive. We created a new font that’s optimized for HD displays and eliminated all hardware buttons in favor of adaptable software buttons. We also dramatically improved the keyboard, made notifications more interactive and created resizable widgets.

The desktop-class browser is significantly faster, featuring a refined tab manager and the ability to sync your bookmarks with Google Chrome. Ice Cream Sandwich also features the best mobile Gmail experience to date, with a new design that lets you quickly swipe through your inbox and search messages even when you’re offline. Calendar boasts a clean new look and you can zoom into your schedule with a pinch.

Connect and share
People are at the heart of Ice Cream Sandwich. We rethought how you browse your contacts with the new People app, which combines high-resolution photos and updates from Google+ and other social services. It’s also easier to capture and share your life with family and friends. Galaxy Nexus sports a high-end camera with zero shutter lag, automatic focus, top notch low-light performance and a simple way to capture panoramic pictures. Shoot amazing photos or 1080p video, and then edit and share them directly from your phone.

Beyond smart
Galaxy Nexus isn’t just a smartphone—it’s beyond smart. Ice Cream Sandwich gives you complete control over the amount of mobile data you use by helping you better understand and manage it. We’re also introducing Android Beam, which uses near field communication (NFC) to instantly share webpages, YouTube videos, maps, directions and apps by simply tapping two phones together. Face Unlock uses state-of-the-art facial recognition technology to unlock your phone with nothing more than a smile.

This weekend marks the third birthday of the G1, the first-ever Android phone. Nine releases later, more than 550,000 Android devices are activated daily.

Starting in November, Galaxy Nexus will be available in the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia. Check out the Nexus website for a product tour and more info.