Google’s Geolocation API allows developers to deliver personalized data based on geographic targeting, and in developer-speak allows them to:

– Obtain the user’s current position, using the getCurrentPosition method

– Watch the user’s position as it changes over time, using the watchPosition method

– Quickly and cheaply obtain the user’s last known position, using the lastPosition property

Examples of applications Google cites that use the API are lastminute.com’s radar app and ITN’s Google Earth Mashup (pictured).

Developers will be happy to know that they can use the same code for both mobile phones and WiFi, and that it is supported by IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and will be soon by Opera. It is of course already supported by Android. Charles Wiles, the Product Manager of the Google Mobile Team writes on the Google Code Blog:

In Chrome and Android, with Gears built in, you can deliver a location enabled web site without requiring your users to install a plug-in, but in other browsers they will need to go through a simple plug-in install process. We also submitted a simplified version of the Geolocation API as a WC3 specification and the upcoming Firefox 3.1 plans to support the W3C version directly. The Gears Geolocation API is completely free to developers and users through the default Google location provider.

For laptop users this only means that around the world, they will be able to enjoy more geographically relevant information from applications created by a growing number of developers, which should ultimately make for a more useful and enjoyable experience with said applications. The WiFi-capability expansion also applies to Google’s My Location, the Google Mobile functionality that brings geographically relevant information to mobile phone users.

First off, DeWolfe told Arrington that 95% of Ad Revenues come from only 9 different countries. He did not elaborate much, or go into exactly what countries these were, but he did say:

Our international strategy is different than our competitors. We look at advertising dollars, and 95% of all advertising revenues come form 9 countries.

In those countries, we have 30% more unique users than our closest competitor in those 9 countries. So that is really our strategy.

There has been a fair amount of speculation as to just which countries make up this list of nine, but it is just that – speculation. TechCrunch’s own Schonfeld suggests that U.S., Japan, the UK, Germany, France, and Canada would be included. Profy.com goes so far as to graph out the regional interest in MySpace, and suggests that it might be close with some minor rearrangements. "In the regional interest chart France is actually on the 10th position but I could easily replace Dominical [sic] Republic or Jamaica on the list with France, I think," says Profy’s Svetlana Gladkova.

Regardless of which countries actually make up the list, it is astounding that such a large percentage of ad revenue comes from such a small number of countries. It is also an interesting look into MySpace’s own strategy.

The second piece of news that DeWolfe dropped is that MySpace has an upcoming Google Gears project that will allow users to integrate their MySpace profiles with their desktop. This is not the first time MySpace has been involved with Google Gears. They have also used the service for desktop Instant Messaging.  Of the new profiles project, DeWolfe says, "You will be able to archive it in a timeline, or create a scrapbook of all your profiles." For those of you unfamiliar with Google Gears:

DeWolfe also noted in the interview that MySpace Music (set to launch this month) is currently being managed by himself and MySpace COO Amit Kapur as the company looks for a CEO for that business (which itself consists of 70 employees). Myspace has excelled in the musical part of social networking thus far, and the launch of MySpace Music could be a big boost in the ongoing competition with Facebook.

Word of this development comes from Andrew Fogg.  Since Fogg serves as the chief marketing and strategy officer at Kusiri and a senior researcher at RBS, the odds that he’s kidding or incorrect are tiny, and on Twitter, he stated, "Gears on Gmail and Calendar in approximately 6 weeks.  Just had a preview at Google offices."

 Google Calendar Going Offline

The one problem – aside from potential missed deadlines and all other manner of usual hang-ups – is that Fogg continued, "Not sure if it is Google Enterprise only."

Enterprise is probably as good as anything, though, at least in a long-term sense – it’s almost certain that Google will eventually make the upgrade more accessible.  Also, from a sort of business/financial perspective, any Enterprise upgrade might count more than a consumer-level equivalent, since it’ll allow for whole companies, instead of random and far-flung individuals, to convert.

Now we get to just sit and wait for the release, which, it if happens in exactly six weeks, will occur on Jack Black’s birthday.  A hat tip goes to Ionut Alex Chitu in the meantime.

Some mobile web applications like Zoho, a productivity suite, and Buxfer, a personal finance tool, won’t work without an Internet connection. Google announced an implementation of Google Gears to enable offline availability of Gears-enabled applications.

“What if developers could deploy applications directly to mobile browsers rather than develop native applications?” Google’s Charles Wiles asked on the Google Code blog. “That would simplify the development process, as developers could use the same coding skills to create mobile applications.”

Wiles noted Google Gears for Mobile currently supports Windows Mobile 5 and 6. “We’re also working to bring Google Gears for mobile to Android and other mobile platforms with capable web browsers,” said Wiles.

We were surprised the Windows Mobile OS, rather than the Nokia-supported Symbian OS, received the first version of Google Gears. Despite Google’s closer relationship with Nokia than with Microsoft, as Nokia’s native mobile search recently became Google-powered, porting Google Gears to Windows Mobile must have been an easier prospect than starting with Symbian.

Now it appears Google Blogoscoped is seeing something similar with Google Docs.

(image courtesy of Google Blogoscoped)

After enabling offline access and confirming the security warning for Google Gears, my documents started to synchronize, just the same as feed items synchronize in Google Reader. (In case you encounter any error messages, Google allows you to reset and disable offline access through the offline access settings dialog box.)

Disappointingly, I wasn’t able to actually view or edit any of my documents after going offline; I could only view them in the document list and received a Firefox “Offline mode” message when I tried. However, I was able to perform simple operations like renaming and starring them while being offline, which were successfully synchronized once I reconnected.

Oh Google, why do you mess with our heads. Please give us offline access already!

Comments

• Google Gears for offline access of some Google (and non-Google) web applications
• Virtual desktops
• An improved Mac-like dock bar (tauntingly called the iBar)
• A Google search box smack in the middle of the desktop
• A browser based webcam application with special effects (gBooth)
• Integrated online storage through Box.net
• Adobe Flash 9 for Linux pre-installed
• Better wifi management with “Exalt”

gOS 2.0 Rocket requires a 400 MHz processor 128 MB of RAM, and, shockingly, 3 gigabytes of hard drive space.

Comments

1. Google Gears—heralded as a step toward the browser as a desktop

9. Facebook API—duh.

17. Zoho Notebook—compiles all kinds of information and enables you to share it

18. Radiohead’s In Rainbows—check out our our coverage of In Rainbows if you missed this ongoing story

20. Mint.com—brings all your personal finance information together, from bank accounts to credit cards

21. Microsoft Popfly—hailed as better than Yahoo Pipes, Popfly is the best masherupper around.

23. Ask.com—commended for Ask3D and AskEraser

The PC World story has met mixed reviews. At this writing, the “Recommend this story?” vote was almost exactly 50/50. What do you think? What did they miss?

via

Comments

"Now, you can read these updates whether you’re on or offline. It’s easy to read today’s financial news from the New York Times on the train, or catch up on your favorite blog while on a plane 35,000 ft. above the Atlantic.

Once you’ve installed Google Gears, you can download your latest 2,000 items so they’re available even when you don’t have an Internet connection."

I can’t believe I missed this piece of news. I am an avid user of this program but I have always found it sad that I couldn’t use it without an Internet connection… now we all can. Great work Google!!

What is Google Gears?

Google Gears is a new open source browser extension that allows developers to create web applications that also extend to offline use. Gears provides three key features according to the Google Gears FAQ:

• A local server, to cache and serve application resources (HTML, JavaScript, images, etc.) without needing to contact a server
• A database, to store and access data from within the browser
• A worker thread pool, to make web applications more responsive by performing expensive operations in the background

Above that description the details are beyond me but more information is available here. It definitely sounds like a very useful initiative.

PS. they note within the blog post that because this is a developer release there are likely to be some bugs in the short term.

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