Easter Egg in Google Mobile App for iPhone

Google does believe in Easter after all. Apparently after a late night of eating cake in Zurich, the Mobile App Team at Google felt the need to add a few extra “Bells and Whistles” to Google Mobile App. The kicker is they hid the menu to these features and “neglected” to tell anyone about it. Last week on News Years Day they came clean by announcing the moApp Easter Egg for the iPhone. The post entitled “Ring in the New Year with Bells and Whistles” on Google Mobile Blog gives a little back story and a general outline on how to enable this feature in Google’s moApp. I really hope the announcement was their way of continuing the Easter Egg tradition they started last new years.

For the record, the Bells and Whistles feature was discovered prior to last week’s announcement from Google, which is contrary to what some have already posted. Chris Messina of Citizen Agency (twitter @factoryjoe) posted his discovery on Waxy.org, the blog of Andy Baio the founder of upcoming.org. Chris noted the different options listed in the Preferences.plist xml file under the kGMOPrefGroupSecretSettings node on Nov 18, 2008 almost a month and half prior to Google’s 1/1/09 announcement and only four days after the release of Google moApp version 0.3.144 which included the Easter Egg.

Google’s post is a little vague on how to access or activate these new features. Since their post leaves a few unanswered questions I thought I would take a moment to put together a Step by Step guide on how to unlock the Bells and Whistles Easter Egg in Google’s Mobile Application on your Apple 3G iPhone.

Step by Step Guide to Opening Bells and Whistles Menu

1. Tap the Google moApp icon on your iPhone. Visit the App Store icon on your iPhone and search for ‘Google Mobile App’ or visit the iTunes store if you do not have it yet.
   
2. Tap on the Settings icon, located on the lower right hand side of the page.
   
3. Here’s where the suggested perseverance from the mobile team comes in to play… once the Settings screen loads start flicking the screen in an up ward motion.
   
4. Don’t stop until you see the new Bells & Whistles button appear below the About Button.
   
5. Don’t give up! Based on my testing, it took about 100 short quick flicks before the button appeared. When I tried it again and it seemed to show up quicker if I did long sweeping stroke.
   

Bells and Whistles Summary

• Theme Color – Let’s you select a different theme color for Google’s moApp interface.
  
• Sounds – Let’s you change the feedback sounds when using the voice recognition search functionality. Your two new options are Chicken and Monkey. I went with Monkey.
  
• Live Waveform – Turning on Live Waveform displays the signal pattern of your voice as you are speaking into the iPhone while performing a Voice Search vs. showing you just the static pattern when analyzing your request.
  
• Open Links in App – This option let’s you open search result links within the Google moApp interface instead of launching Safari. This is the most useful feature contained within the Easter Egg. Unfortunately it this option does not seem to affect the links within the App area. Let me know if I’m doing something wrong. 
  

I hope you found this helpful. I really do hope this is truly a new tradition for Google. If so, i’m look forward to next years New Year’s Easter Egg Hunt presented by Google.

Upgrade is Complete

In celebration of completing the upgrade of my site to WordPress 2.7, I thought I write my post using the the iPhone mobile WordPress app. It’s not a bad little app. I can add photos. I cannot add links within my posts. I’m still getting used to typing on this thing vs the blackjack. It’s not bad considering I have big thumbs.

The upgrade process was pretty easy. I went from WP version 2.1 to 2.7. I really enjoy the new admin UI. It was pretty easy to set up the plug-ins with integrated download plug-in feature. I’m going to leave the default theme in place until I can design my own.

Now that I’ve completed the upgrade I’m going to start on the redesign.

Upgrading the ole’ Blog to WordPress 2.7

I just wanted to write a quick note to mention that I’ll be upgrading my blog to WordPress 2.7 aka Coltrane. Things might not be working right until I am finished. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause in the mean time.

Learn more about the latest WordPress 2.7, and why they called it Coltrane by visiting the WP Blog @
http://wordpress.org/development/2008/12/coltrane/

My New Little Side Venture: mobLine.org = Mobile + Online, Get It?

I’ve been toying around the idea of creating an official website dedicated to my interests in mobile technology, mobile web marketing & m-commerce. I don’t want to use my personal name domain as a platform for something that could easily grow beyond my personal thoughts and ideas.

 The idea for mobLine hit me during Alan M. Weber’s keynote address at the 2006 LinkShare Symposium in New York. Alan shared his thoughts on how to successfully lead a business into the new era of commerce fueled by a global economy. He covered a wide range of topics during his keynote, but a few things really struck a chord with me; the use of information as a catalyst for change, the importance of speed in innovation, globalization is something to embrace, the way we do business is going to change and the world is shrinking because of The Internet. Even though his keynote was a bit ominous, I agreed with assessment of the future. Near the end of his keynote, Alan made a statement along the lines of; “The invention of The Internet was just the start. The next great innovation will come sooner than you think.”

Overall his keynote was thought provoking. It got me thinking about how I could embrace this new era of commerce in a global economy. I really liked the idea of making use of web enabled mobile devices to help create my stateless business. Then it dawned on me how open the mobile web was ripe for new business ventures. I viewed it as Columbus’ New World, an undiscovered country with huge potential. I thought of the name mobLine as a cleaver play on words to distinguish / brand the difference between shopping on the World Wide Web and shopping on the mobile web. Instead of shopping online with your computer, you would be shopping mobLine (Mobile + Online = mobLine, get it?) with your phone. Unfortunately I got wrapped up with other things after the conference and I never did anything with this idea.

4Q of last year I launched a mobile version of The Woodwind & Brasswind website on the mPoria Mobile Commerce Platform, which I highly recommend if you are looking for a painless solution for mobile ecommerce. Two things quickly became very obvious to me; people are willing to buy musical instruments from a mobile commerce site and true multi-channel integration is tough because the tools, services and technologies are still young.  As an example I want to create a mobile version of my email to add into my multipart newsletter. I think it be great if someone subscribed to my newsletter and when they viewed it from a web browser they got my .com links, but if the viewed the same email from a mobile device it would have my .mobi links instead. Current web standards for email do not allow me to pull this off. 

The mobile industry is still young and standards are still being defined.  My goal with mobLine.org is to create a shared resource for all things m-commerce. The site is not live yet, but it should be soon. I’ll keep you posted as things develop. I’m looking for help if anyone is interested.

WordPress Mobile Edition Plugin

I wanted to share with you how easy it was to extend WordPress to create my own moBlog by using an opensource mobile blog software plugin called WordPress Mobile Edition. In short WordPress Mobile Edition is a plugin that shows a different user interface designed specifically for use on cell phones and other devices. When a user visits your blog from a mobile device, they will see a simplified version of your blog that looks great on most mobile phones.  Most mobile web browsers are automatically detected. Wordpress Mobile Edition requires no configuration by the user.

I give this wp plugin 5 stars for ease of use and setup.

You can download WordPress Mobile Edition from the Plugins Directory at Wordpress.org. Click here to learn more about this great little plugin.