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Google Apps users who want access to all the same products that regular Google Accounts have won't have to wait much longer. An anonymous tipster tells me a Google Trusted Tester program is underway right now, which "transitions" Google Apps accounts to full access to all GOOG products, including Voice, Reader, Buzz, Analytics, and more. [...]

If you've got a Nexus One and have been patiently waiting for the OTA update to Android 2.2, this week's your week. Google says you'll get a notification by the end of the week for the update to 2.2. My sources tell me you'll get it even if you manually installed Froyo, as the [...]

Spent several hours running around town doing tedious errands the other day in neighborhoods I don't know well, so I was thrilled to finally tap the "Navigate To-Home" button on my GPS when I was done. It got me wondering: what are the software buttons you just can't help but love to tap, click, or [...]

Previously invitation-only Google Voice just opened to everyone in the U.S., offering free text messaging, multi-phone management, and voicemail features which, after more than a year of exclusive use, I couldn't live without. The three things I do on my mobile phone most--text, call, and check email--are powered entirely by Google at this point with [...]

Commenter seguetonowhere points out a useful Android keyboard feature I missed in my original Froyo rundown: if you swipe your finger over the top of the Android 2.2 default keyboard, it will extend two more rows out and show you keys for common punctuation and numbers. Click on the thumbnail to see the expanded [...]

Having a ball playing around with the just-released GoogleCL tool, which offers command line access to Google Calendar, contacts, Docs, Picasa, Blogger, and YouTube. With Python-based GoogleCL installed, you can do things such as list today's events on your GCal right in the terminal, like so: $ google calendar today title Coffee with Michael and Samir Dozing off Lunch [...]

For some reason I was under the mistaken impression that setting up an OpenID on my own domain, ginatrapani.org, would be a big hassle: that I'd have to host my own OpenID server software and that it would take all sorts of installation and maintenance BS to do so. I feel strongly about owning my [...]

Great conversation today on TWiG with our guest Chris Messina, who dropped knowledge on the history and differences between OAuth and OpenID--which in an age of "Facebook wants to own all your sign-ons," is an important discussion. My tip this week: to grab the Android Swype beta within the next couple of days while it's [...]

While last night's southern California earthquake shook up the Padres game, I was standing in a doorway downloading an Android app. Twitter was down, the news didn't have anything yet, but I remembered Reto Meier, a Googler who did an Android talk at I/O had demo'ed an earthquake detection app. It's called Earthquake!, and [...]

This week's episode of TWiG featured Jeff Jarvis Skyping over 3G from a moving car on a NJ highway, Brad Stone from the NY Times who was a total trooper during our criticism of the Times' takedown of the Pulse iPhone RSS reader, and Om Malik of Gigaom, a very smart teddy bear who I'd [...]

Nicole Lee does the hard work so I don't have to: feature by feature comparison of the iPhone 4 and the 4G HTC EVO. As far as I'm concerned, the EVO's the better deal: bigger screen, more customizable OS, Google Maps navigation, Google Voice native app, tethering/portable hotspot, kickstand, Sprint 4G network support, expandable MicroSD [...]

Steve Jobs announced the iPhone 4 yesterday in his WWDC keynote, and it's a gorgeous device with software upgrades that include multitasking, a video chat app called FaceTime, and more. I'm still a happy Android user, but I have to hand it to Apple. They continue to school the industry on aesthetics and marketing. Case [...]

In this week's episode of TWiG, Leo, Jeff, and I talked about Google's "ban" of Windows PCs for employees, Android tablets, the Sprint EVO (which I love), blogger journalism, and some of Steve Jobs' remarks at D8. My tip of the week was the new "Save to Google Docs" link in Google's PDF viewer.

Just stumbled upon a YouTube clip of one of the best Ignite presentations I've seen, by Hilary Mason, a computer scientist at Bit.ly. Mason wrote a series of scripts that auto-respond to email with particular content, and auto-nag folks she's emailed but hasn't gotten a response from yet. Hit the play button to hear more. [...]

Android 2.2 (code-named "Froyo," the next alphabetical installment of dessert-named releases after Cupcake, Donut, and Eclair) is now rolling out to Nexus One handsets. If you're tired of tapping and re-tapping the System Update menu item and getting nothing, you can update your N1 to 2.2 manually. Lifehacker runs down how. This method worked [...]

Released a few fix-it updates to the Better Gmail 2 and Better Flickr Firefox extensions this week, which you can get by pressing the "Find Updates" button in your extensions dialog box. Better Gmail 2 version 1.2 plays catch-up with Google's latest changes to Gmail: Hide Spam Count now works, and I swapped out Folders4Gmail [...]

Not only did Google pre-mail Droid handsets to I/O attendees, today they gave the Sprint HTC EVO 4G out to conference attendees at the Moscone Center, with a 2GB Micro SD card filled with music. Awhile back I tweeted that I wouldn't accept "free" phones like these, since I cover Google on TWiG and at [...]

Yesterday's live wave coverage of the Google I/O keynote was so much fun we're doing it again today. The Day 2 keynote starts at 8:30am (in less than 20 minutes), and Adam Pash, Kevin Marks and I will be live-waving it. Watch the live video stream on YouTube and follow along in the live wave [...]

Google kicks off its annual two-day developerfest Google I/O today in San Francisco, and no doubt there are goodies in store during the opening keynote this morning from 9 until 10:30am Pacific Time. Google TV? Google Storage? Android 2.2? A better Buzz, Wave, or Chrome? You can watch the live video stream on YouTube [...]

Maintaining your privacy online isn't as simple as Pirillo puts it, but his tweet made me laugh, because it's such an important point. Awareness and prudence are more critical than any piece of software or privacy setting when it comes to protecting your personal data. Over at Fast Company this week, I took a stab [...]