Google Wallet has already been available on a few smartphones and tablets, and now the search giant has announced more phones onto the list. From now on, users of Sprint’s HTC One, Galaxy Note II, Galaxy S4 and US Cellular’s Note II will be able to use Google Wallet to purchase in store via NFC-based contactless payments.

You can download the app for free by heading to Google Play here.

Meanwhile, Google has also announced a way to make sending payments simple, which will be as easy as sending an email. They are integrating Google Wallet with Gmail, and sometime in the coming months US users over 18 years old will be able to send money through Gmail via a $ icon in the attachment options. “It’s free to send money if your bank account is linked to Google Wallet or using your Google Wallet Balance”, but you will be charged a flat fee of 2.9% per transaction for payments using your linked credit or debit card. Receiving money will always be free.

Check out the video below to know more about the upcoming service.

[Source]

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Google has rolled out an update for the Gmail app so that now includs new actionable notifications for Jelly Bean phones and tablets.

Basically the update offers users a number of new features from inside the Android notification window, rather than actually having to open the Gmail app itself. Deleting, archiving and replying to emails from the Gmail app will now be that much faster and more convenient.

While actionable notifications is only coming to users on Android 4.1 and 4.2 Jelly Bean, ICS also gets faster searching and a few bug and performance upgrades. Froyo users aren’t completely without luck here either, as they a few performance updates added to the mix as well.

You can update Gmail via Google Play, but be warned that some users are experiencing problems with the updated app and the Light Flow LED notification app. Have you downloaded the update yet? What do you think of the changes?

[ Source ]

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Some of you may wonder what people do most on their Apple iPads.  Well, wonder no more.  InrediMail took it upon themselves to find out and polled 4400 iPad owners and asked them a series of questions.  Among those questions, 90 % of iPad owners rated accessing their email as either extremely important or very important.  The research was published yesterday and helps to answer some questions in this specified niche.

Now for the strange, 97 percent of the iPad users that were surveyed stated they used the device to read email.  However, only near two thirds of those sent replies.  Were they just too lazy to reply from the iPad, or is their inbox just like mine, riddled with email from distant Nigerian princes and grandkids locked in Mexican prisons needing bail money?  At any rate, not as many clicking reply as you would think.

The preferred app to access email on the iPad has Apple’s mail application as the clear winner with a 41 % use rate.  Following behind in second is the Gmail app with 31 % and Hotmail trailing with only 13 %.

What is your main use for your iPad: apps, web browsing, email?  Which mail program do you use, is your inbox as littered with junk mail as mine?

[ source ]

The post Hundreds of Thousands of Apps Aside, Email Checking is a Major Activity for iPad Users appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Google has announced Wednesday that users of Gmail in the United States and Canada can continue to get free calling for the next year for free.

Mayur Kamat, a product manager for Gmail said in a blog “You’ll continue to be able to make free domestic all through 2013”.

All it takes to utilize this service is an internet connection and an internal or external microphone.  You place the calls from within the email client.  There is a “Call phone” option that looks like a telephone receiver, once clicked a dial pad appears within the Google Chat menu.

Voice calls were originally debuted in August of 2010 and have been extended at the end of the year through 2011, 2012 and now 2013.  In the 24 hours after it was first launched in 2010, Google Voice had 1 million calls placed and was thought at one time to take out Skype.

While only domestic calls are free for the service, they have extremely competitive rates for their international calls.  These calls start at just $0.02 per minute.

[ source ]

The post GMail Extends its Free Calling for 2013 appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

This news comes by way of an email that one of the Google Apps free users received from Google. He only has a small personal blog and a single account, so “there isn’t anything that changes but I’m worried that in the future they might disable the free service.”

Google has typically offered a free option for any of its premium services, but this could indicate some changes moving forward. In any case, if you want to upgrade to the Google Apps for Business, it’ll cost you $5 per user per month. That gives you a 25GB inbox, business controls, and 24/7 customer support. they guarantee 99.9% uptime too.

[Source]

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Yesterday was April Fools’ Day, i’m sure most of you didn’t realize it. So what else do large companies with over the top budgets on attempting to create viral videos do? They attempt to make us laugh by revealing fake products with fake announcements. Some of these are quite stupid, actually, most of them are, but you can decide for yourself, have a gander below.

Kodak LIVEPrint for Kittens

Yes, Kodak is going through some tough times right now, but that doesn’t mean they’re not continuing to innovate. Printing photos isn’t good enough anymore, so they developed LIVEPrint which will actually let you print live kittens. Awww….

Conan O’Brien Buys Mashable

After seeing the “atrocious job” that Pete Cashmore was doing with the Mashable, comedian Conan O’Brien decided to buy the site, oust Cashmore, and take over as CEO.

Sony VAIO Q Series Ultrabook

Ultrabooks are smaller than their larger notebook counterparts, but they’re not small enough. So, the Sony VAIO Q was born. It’s an ultrabook that’s the size of a quarter and it happens to be powered by a Core i9 3.66GHz processor, 8GB of RAM, 256GB SSD, and a 1.25×0.75-inch full 1080p LED backlit display.

Microsoft Windows Pager

Microsoft is trying to make a splash with Windows Phone, but what about the days when people just had buzzers and had to call back? It’s a throwback with a touchscreen: here’s the Windows Pager from their Facebook page.

Razer SnakeEyes

What if you had Google Goggles for real? What if you could enhance your gaming experience as a result? That’s what you get with SnakeEyes, a wearable HUD that basically turns your life into a video game, identifying objects, fellow gamers, and whatever else.

Hungry Hungry Hippos for iPad

The iCade from ThinkGeek started out as an April Fools’ gag, but it turned into a real product. The same thing might happen with this, which is essentially a platform and dock for your iPad that turns it into a Hungry Hungry Hippos game. This might just work, considering the multi-touch capabilities of Apple’s tablet.

Toshiba Tablet Shapes

Who said that your tablet had to be a rectangle? Shapes by Toshiba challenges that notion with Oblong (Oval), Rhombus, and Amore (Heart). What shape are you? What shapes you?

WestJet Child-Free Cabins

Are you tired of flying and being bugged by all the crying babies in the cabin? WestJet is fixing that by letting you have all those kids as checked-in luggage.

Virgin Volcanic

Titanic director James Cameron may have gone to the bottom of the sea, but Sir Richard Branson wants to go to the center of the Earth. So, he has created Virgin Volcanic. The post reminds us that only 500 people have been to space, but no one has gone to the core of an active volcano.

8-Bit Google Maps

As with every other year, Google had one of the best pranks. This time around, they unveiled 8-Bit Google Maps for the NES. Yes, the original Nintendo Entertainment System. The graphics look like they’re inspired by the 8-bit era of gaming, more specifically like Dragon Quest. They even put in some extra gags like blowing into the cartridge and having a dial-up modem built into the NES cartridge.

Gmail Tap

Typing on the smaller touchscreen of your smartphone can sometimes be a pain, so Google wanted to make that easier by… bringing back Morse code. Your keyboard is replaced by just two keys: dot and dash.

Chrome Multitask Mode

Remember when Dual View for the Chrome browser was announced? That was kinda neat, but what if you could use two mice in two separate windows at the same time? This takes multitasking to a whole new level.

YouTube Collection

Why watch web videos on the web? With YouTube Collection, you get every YouTube video delivered to you in DVD format to browse at your own leisure. They even have thumbs up and thumbs down cards, plus comment forms that can be sent back via snail mail.

The post Some of the Best and Worst of April Fools 2012 appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Talks about Google Drive (GDrive) first started way back in 2006 and there have been no shortage of rumors and speculations regarding the mysterious online storage service ever since. But it appears like the service is finally going to launch. According to GigaOM’s Om Malik, who got tipped off by “well placed sources”, Google Drive will arrive in the first week of April 2012.

It’s really disappointing that Google is taking so much time for launching the much anticipated service. But, as you know, the company is already into online storage via other services. You can upload documents and files to Google Docs, upload photos to Picasa, and Gmail can also be used as a storage locker. There is unlimited storage available for photos via Google+ and Google Music allows up to 20,000 song uploads.

But the problem with these services is that you won’t be able to manage all your files at one location. That is why a service such as Google Drive is much needed.

Om Malik says that Google will be offering 1GB of free online storage via GDrive, but you will be charged for more storage (Just in case you didn’t know, Dropbox currently offers 2 GB for free). GDrive will come with a local client and the interface will resemble that of Google Docs. Reportedly, the service will be available for Google Apps customers.

But Malik himself is not too confident about the new info. He says, “…the storage drive might just see the day in early April…. I say might, just because of Google’s history with the Google Drive.”

And that’s not all on Google Drive today. According to this report, Google Drive might arrive in mid April with 2GB of free storage (5GB is also a possibility).

The post Google Drive Might Launch Next Week Or In Mid April appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

We know that many of you have been waiting for a while for this moment; the Sparrow mail app is finally available for the iPhone. From now on, you will be able to enjoy a simplified way of checking your Gmail, iCloud and other accounts.

Just in case you are new to Sparrow, it is a third party email application and was a Mac-only app until now. The new mobile version comes with a range of features and, according to reports, is almost as good as the Mac version.

Sparrow for iPhone offers support for IMAP mail accounts like Gmail, iCloud, or Yahoo, but there’s no POP support. The app brings a unified inbox, and navigation is possible via swipes and gestures. The app is also coming with “smart contact list”, which will suggest possible recipients for your email (a faster way of emailing frequent contacts), the ability to attach pictures directly from within the app, and much more. But the absence of push email might be a deal-breaker for many.

And updates in the future will also bring in a built-in web browser, a landscape mode among other features. Sparrow is currently available from iTunes and it costs $2.99.  The app will work on iOS devices which run iOS 5.0 and above.

The post Sparrow For iPhone Is The Mobile Email Client Google Couldn’t Build appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

There was no denying that the previous Google iOS/iPad app needed a makeover, badly. Google announced today that such a makeover had finally arrived with major interface enhancements and overall better performance. The update has a much improved UI and brings several new features that make the interface more gesture-drive and visual orientated.

As an example of the new gesture-driven features, if you select a result it now slides in as a pane from the right and you can slide it back to the right to return to your search results. The iOS app certainly takes advantage of the large screen of the iPad, and looks rather good in landscape as well. Viewing image results is also more visual and gesture-based. If you tap on an image it brings up an image carousel where you can easily swipe to browse through related images.

The app also adds instant search, meaning that it starts browsing for search options even as you type out what you are looking for. This isn’t a new feature for Google and is present on the desktop, but still it’s nice to see it here as well.

The app seems like a fairly solid choice for search, especially for Google fans. Probably one of the most exciting things about this new app is that it actually works like it’s intended to. This might sound like something you should just expect out of an app already, but as Google’s  Gmail app proved at it’s launch in early November, it doesn’t always work out that way.

To get a better look at Google’s iPad Search in action, check out the video below:

The post Google Updates Its Search App For iPads appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Gmail has been preferred by more and more users because of its large memory for storage and convenience when it comes to e-mails and other transactions. You might also have more than one Gmail account for a variety of purposes. The problem with using too many accounts is that you need to log out from one Gmail account to be able to use the other accounts, and this process can be inconvenient and time-consuming.

Well, Google has great news for for those who have multiple Gmail accounts! You will no longer have to undergo some hassles when using Gmail with your mobile phone because the site now has a support system for multiple sign-ins. This means that you will never perform the cycle of logging in and out just to check your other e-mail accounts because Gmail will allow you to use several accounts simultaneously! Isn’t that amazing?

About the Multiple Sign-In

Here are the steps to make your phone suitable for multiple sign-ins. Click on the account switcher at the bottommost part of the thread list and click “Sign into another account”. If you want to switch between accounts, you can select the desired one from the Accounts menu.

On Mobile-specific Signature

We know that autocorrect and other mobile spell-checks can be frustrating when you’re typing on the go. Let your friends know that you are responding via your mobile phone with a mobile signature, which you can create by pressing the settings icon. You need to select your preferred signature before checking the activation box. In the event that you want to disable the signature, you can do so by removing the check on the box.

The amazing Auto-Responder

Do you usually forget to set the auto-reply in Gmail before you go on a vacation somewhere? Well, there is no need to worry about that because now, you can set the auto-reply feature using your cell phone. Choose the start and end date, then write your message. It is similar to using the desktop or laptop, so you won’t have a difficult time doing this.

URLs are also updated as part of the multiple sign-in support to enable each Gmail account to have a separate bookmark. If you have already bookmarked Gmail for Mobile on your phone, update it now. Go to the website in order to make use of all the new features.

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