Trumblog

Google launched a Mobile Updater for BlackBerry yesterday. You should be able to download it at mobile.google.com, but it wasn’t there yesterday; you had to do some digging to http://www.google.com/m/download/pack/apps/v2.14/en/BlackBerry-42/pack-0.jad in order to download the thing. It’s worth the digging.

The new pack includes 7 applications; Google Mobile Updater, Search, Google Maps, Gmail, News, Google Docs and Picasa, which you can install all of or pick and choose. Some of the icons seem to have gotten an update, I noticed this yesterday, but honestly I can’t tell which ones now.

Google Mobile Updater is exactly what it sounds like, a program that will ensure that all of your mobile applications from Google are the most up to date and perhaps even download new apps as they become available (please Google where is my Google Reader app?). It seems easy enough to use, but there hasn’t been an update in 24 hours so I haven’t had an opportunity to test it.

Search has a cleaner launch than the previous version, opening a sparse, simple, Google search window to type your query into instead of launching the Browser to Google.com as it did before. Once you search though, you the browser does launch and there seems to be no difference from the older version.

Gmail doesn’t seem different, except for one enormous change; the addition of an alert icon. It really is the little things. Having a little envelope indicator show me that there’s new mail is such a pleasure. Thank you. I’ve found Gmail on the BlackBerry useful, but not a great email application. If it was my only option I would be very disappointed. Links are not always available and formatting stinks. Gmail is great online, so I’d think that Google could deliver a higher quality product for the Blackberry.

Google Maps has been updated to include my location as a flashing blue dot. Woo hoo! I’d read about this a couple of weeks ago and was looking forward to checking out this functionality, but I hadn’t realized how big 2200 meters is until I saw where Google Maps was showing my approximate location. That 2200 meter range is pretty big in an urban area like Cambridge. Sitting at home, my flashing blue location dot is far enough away to make directions either incomplete or too long. I know that this is calculated based on triangulating cell phone access, so Google’s doing the best that they can, but I’m not sold on the usefulness of this feature yet. There is either a new feature or one that I never noticed before, favorites, that allows you to indicate your favorite locations (home, work, etc.) and add stars to them on the map. Maps is tiling a whole lot faster for me so they must have cleaned up some other issues with the application too.

News is still just a link to the Google News mobile site. I’ve never really played with this, preferring to use an RSS reader, but I’ll try to play with it a bit and see if it becomes part of my BlackBerry habit.

Google Docs and Picasa are two more applications that I’ve never explored and don’t have accounts for so I can’t tell you much about the BlackBerry experience. Both applications are links to the mobile sites. How much access they give, whether the mobile site is a satisfying experience, I can’t tell you because I don’t have anything to judge it against, so I’ll leave those reviews to the real experts. I’m sure that they are happy to have mobile access to these products and will have some sort of feedback on their benefits and limitations.

The biggest disappointment for me in the Mobile pack is what is missing; Google Reader. I really want a Google Reader application. I live off of RSS feeds. Google has a darn good product there, but the mobile site is unusable from my BlackBerry. An update to the mobile site would be welcome, but what I REALLY want is a BlackBerry application where I can read feeds when offline, like on a plane and without the lag time from the Browser. I’ll keep an eye on the Updater, hoping and praying that a little Reader application is available for download sometime soon.

The entire pack seems to be a step forward without any steps back. If you are already using Google’s applications for the BlackBerry then download the Updater and other programs for a little upgrade now and hopefully more to come.

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