iGoogle Will Be Discontinued

Google's personalized homepage will no longer be available starting from November 2013. The official explanation is that "with modern apps that run on platforms like Chrome and Android, the need for iGoogle has eroded over time".

iGoogle started as a custom Google homepage that allowed you to add gadgets for weather, news, mail and more. "The goal of this initiative is to bring together Google functionality, and content from across the web, in ways that are useful to our users," explained Google in 2005.

Just like My Yahoo, Netvibes and other custom start pages, iGoogle became a dashboard that gathered your favorite content from the web. It was a simplified feed reader, a platform for mini-apps and games, a great homepage for your browser. Social networks and smartphones addressed most of these use cases and iGoogle's popularity declined.

Most likely, Google will promote Google+ as an iGoogle replacement, even though it lacks many of its features. Google+ apps, themes and maybe even a dashboard-like interface could fill iGoogle's void.

iGoogle is not the only Google product that will be discontinued. Google Mini, Google Talk Chatback and the Symbian Google Search app will no longer be available, while the videos uploaded to Google Video will be automatically be migrated to YouTube starting from next month. "Google Video stopped taking uploads in May 2009. Later this summer we'll be moving the remaining hosted content to YouTube. Google Video users have until August 20 to migrate, delete or download their content. We'll then move all remaining Google Video content to YouTube as private videos that users can access in the YouTube video manager," mentions Google. You can manage the videos uploaded to Google Video using this page.

Google Sound Search

Android Jelly Bean comes with a Google widget that lets you find the name of a song you're listening to. Just like Shazam or SoundHound, except that the widget links to Google Play, so you can quickly buy the song if you're in the US.

The widget's name is Sound Search, but the most prominent message you're likely to see when using the widget is "What's this song?". The internal codename for the app seems to be "Google Ears".

Here's the Sound Search widget in action:

Hopefully, Google will release Sound Search as a standalone app or integrate it with Google Play Music and the Voice Search app.

The Updated YouTube App for Android

The YouTube app for Android has been recently updated. Other than an interface borrowed from the Google+ app, YouTube 4.0 brings the seek bar to the portrait mode, updates the "history" page to show the videos you've watched on any computer and lets you preload the videos from your subscriptions when your device is charging and also using WiFi.

The app focuses on the videos from your subscriptions (and other videos from their activity feeds):

The subscribed channels are now displayed in a long list, but the links to YouTube's popular sections are buried at the bottom of the list. If you have many subscriptions, you'll have a hard time finding them.

YouTube now has a unified history page. That means that the desktop history page includes the videos you watch on your Android device and the history section from the Android app includes the videos you watch when you're using a computer.

While it's not a great idea to watch videos in the portrait mode, it's nice that you can read the comments or the video's description and watch the video at the same time. The previous version of the Android app didn't display a seek bar in the portrait mode, but this issue has been fixed in the latest release.

To cache the videos from your subscriptions or the videos from the "watch later" list, go to the "settings" section, tap "preloading" and enable "preload subscriptions" or "preload watch later". Note that the videos are downloaded only when the device is charging and is also using WiFi. Another downside is that you can't play videos when your device is offline. "You'll still need a connection to play the video, but once you do it's smooth sailing through the latest from your subscribed channels and Watch Later queue," informs YouTube's blog.

The YouTube app is now also a remote that lets you play videos on Google TV and other supported devices. "While the video's playing on TV, with the new YouTube app or mobile website you'll be able to use your phone to find the next great video to watch, comment, like or subscribe. We're working to make this broadly available across connected TVs and living room devices," according to YouTube.

The latest update to YouTube's app is only available for Android 4.0+ devices, but YouTube promises that it will backported to older Android versions.

Uninstall Android Apps Remotely

Now you can uninstall Android apps using an iPhone, an iPad, a Windows Phone phone, a different Android device, a laptop or any other computer. Just open the Google Play site in your favorite browser, click "My Android Apps", select your device and click the trash icon next to the app you want to uninstall.

If you've disabled the option that allows Google Play Store to automatically update your apps or if some of them aren't yet updated, you can also the "My Android Apps" page to update them manually.

What if you've accidentally uninstalled an app and you want to install it again? Check the "My Account" page to find the list of apps you've recently installed. Please note that when you uninstall an app, the settings and the app's data are removed and you can't get them back (easily). Use the "disable" feature from Android 4.0+ to "freeze" an app, while preserving its settings and data.

{ Thanks, Sterling. }

Flash Player, No Longer Supported in Android Jelly Bean

As promised, Adobe announced that the Flash player app won't support Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean). Adobe will continue to provide updates for the existing users, but starting from August 16 the Flash player app will no longer be available for new users in the Google Play Store.

"Beginning August 15th we will use the configuration settings in the Google Play Store to limit continued access to Flash Player updates to only those devices that have Flash Player already installed. Devices that do not have Flash Player already installed are increasingly likely to be incompatible with Flash Player and will no longer be able to install it from the Google Play Store after August 15th," informs Adobe.

An obvious consequence is that "there will be no certified implementations of Flash Player for Android 4.1," so no Android Jelly Bean device will bundle the Flash player.

When you update to Android 4.1, the Flash player will still be installed, but Adobe recommends users to uninstall it because "the current version of Flash Player may exhibit unpredictable behavior". Some Jelly Bean users report that the Flash plugin still works well.

Now that Adobe's app will no longer support future Android versions and the mobile Chrome has no Flash support, Android will lose an important advantage and Flash's relevance will continue to diminish. It was a bumpy journey and, even though the user experience wasn't great, it was nice to know that you can open a page even if it uses Flash.

Offline Editing, Back in Google Docs

What's old is new again. Back in 2008, Google announced offline support powered by Gears in Google Docs. At that time, you could view and edit text documents offline in Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Four years later, you can once again edit documents offline. Gears has been discontinued in 2010, the Google Docs integration has been removed and now the offline support is native. Unfortunately, it only works in Chrome and you also need to install a Chrome app.

When you're offline, Google shows a message and a link that lets you switch to the offline Google Drive/Docs interface. You can only view documents and spreadsheets and only edit documents. Google Docs features that require an Internet connection are removed when you're offline, but most of the basic features are available. Some of the missing features: sharing files, downloading them, printing files, revision history, inserting images and drawings, the research sidebar and the translation feature.

Once you're online again, Google Docs shows a message and a link for switching to the regular Google Docs interface. The transition is not seamless, since you have to load a new page.

"To start editing offline, first set up offline access from the gear icon at the top of your Documents List. Then, next time you lose your connection you'll be able to either open a document from your list of offline files or create a new one. Any changes you've made while disconnected will sync with the online version in your Documents List when you regain your connection to the Internet," explains Google.

Google Drive for iOS

Google has released a GDrive application for iOS (iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch) and it's pretty good. You can access all your files, search for them, share them with other people, preview them or open the files with other applications or download the files, so that they're available offline. The image search feature is really impressive: it uses Google Goggles to analyse your images and associate them with relevant keywords.

The app doesn't include the document editing feature from GDrive for Android and neither the file uploading feature. The Dropbox app has a better tablet interface, since it allows you to open files and still see the list of files in a sidebar. Dropbox has a better UI for photos and shows a small thumbnail next to each photo.

Hopefully, Google will improve the app, add the missing features from the Android app and make the interface a lot better.