The guys over at the Google Mac blog have dropped a new little open source application called Visigami, which serves as a more "interesting" and "fun" way to browse and play around with images online. Basically, after installing the app, you can then pull in pics from Picasa, Google Images, or Flickr (iPhoto is just a suggestion so far), and then search, animate, zoom in or out on them, and even turn them right into a screensaver.

It's a pretty neat little application -- not exactly the kind of thing that anyone has probably been hoping for (it seems more fun than utilitarian), but if you find yourself often browsing photos online, this definitely seems like a more fun way to do it. And it's one more reason to praise all the great developers working on our platform -- it's little apps like this that make the Mac user experience so much better.

Just last week we noted that BusySync 2, which adds Google calendar syncing to the iCal sync app, is now shipping. Another 2.0 would seem to be around the corner, as a post on the SpanningSync blog shows a video demo of Address Book -> Google contact synchronization coming in the next version of the utility.

While Plaxo and other tools are lining up to take on the contact sync challenge -- most sync only in one direction right now, although with the Google contacts API in play that's going to change -- it's nice to see SpanningSync picking up the torch on contacts as the competition on calendaring heats up.

[via ars technica]

Apple's headed straight to the top with a bullet -- they went from 159 to 121 in last year's Fortune 500 ranking, and this year, they've pushed their way up to 103. On the list of the "20 most profitable tech companies," they are solidly at number eight -- Fortune says that the introduction of the iPhone and "record sales of Mac computers" have Apple on a rocket trajectory.

Of course, Google's sitting upstairs at number 7, and you-know-who (not the Harry Potter villain, but close) is up at number one.

But yes, there's no question that Apple has really been hitting it out of the park lately, and considering the future (the fruits of the SDK, another possible iPhone iteration, and whatever else they're brewing up in Cupertino), the trends will continue.

After six weeks in beta (not long at all in Google-weeks), the new version 2.0 of iCal-sharing tool BusySync is out. The headline feature for 2.0 is of course the new iCal --> Google Calendar synchronization capability, which opens up a wide world of cloud-based options for families and workgroups already using the LAN-based sync of earlier versions. You can keep multiple iCal users synchronized (even on the same machine), sync remotely via Google, and more.

There are plenty other options for syncing your calendars with gCal, but if you need to keep more than one user's iCal coordinated (think family schedules!) then BusySync may be the product for you, starting at $25 per seat. The guys behind BusySync have a long history with Mac calendaring (including creating the late great Now Up-to-Date, which actually saw its first update in over a year last week) and I've been impressed with the quality of the beta release. We'll do a head-to-head comparison of the iCal sync options soon.

Way back, one of our readers begged for an iPhone LoJack solution. He wanted his iPhone to "call home" regularly in case of loss or, let's be more realistic, theft. Over the past week, I finally had a chance to give this request some time, and I put together findme. It's a command-line program that returns the location of the cell phone tower nearest to your iPhone. When run, it tells you the tower id, plus its latitude and longitude courtesy of Google Maps.

Still, how to get the location report to a place you can get it... but nobody else can... and without receiving a zillion SMSes? For this part of the puzzle, enter Twitter. Twitter dev Britt Selvitelle helped walk me through the setup for a private account that allows your iPhone to phone home but keeps the location data relatively secure.

To do this, create a new Twitter account just for your iPhone (it will need its own unique email address, separate from your main account, so have one handy). Open the Settings panel, and look for the "Protect My Updates" checkbox. It's towards the bottom of the page, just above the Save button. Check this and click Save. With protected updates, only the Twitter users you approve will see the updates for this iPhone-only account (just you? you + spouse? spouse, kids, and "special friends?" Up to you).

Update: I've put an updated version of findme (findme-better) into the TUAW folder on my site. Please let me know if this works better for location for you. To use, just copy to your iPhone (you may have to use Firefox if you get errors after downloading with Safari), rename to "findme" and replace the original findme.

While some companies are busying trying to acquire other companies, big-wigs at Google are singing the praises of the iPhone. Sergey Brin, one of Google's presidents, is an iPhone toter and a happy one at that. Using the Maps application (which is, shockingly enough, powered by Google Maps) Sergey was able to find his way to a hotel rather easily.

Also worth mentioning is that Google is getting most of its mobile web traffic from the iPhone. This lead Eric Schmidt, Google CEO and Apple board member, to state that even though Google is developing their own mobile OS the iPhone will make Google money, in the form of web ad revenues.

Isn't it great when everybody wins?

The developers at Google are hot on the iPhone, due in part to something called the "Christmas cross-over."

The number of global Google queries (say that five times fast) from iPhones surpassed queries made from Symbian-based phones for the first time in December, probably due to all the iPhones that were activated over the holiday.

Earlier this month, Google released iGoogle for the iPhone as well as an iPhone-optimized Google landing page. Today at Macworld, they announced more improvements for iPhone users (beyond those made in December).

First all, Gmail features auto-refresh. Calendar is speedier and features a month view that isn't available at calendar.google.com, and iGoogle gadgets can be used with the iPhone. I've found that Picasa web albums are significantly faster, both over Wi-Fi and EDGE.

These are great changes. We don't know just how Google is rolling this stuff out, so keep checking google.com/m today.

Spotlight is great for searching your computer and networked Macs from the menu bar, but what if you want to search the internet also? Well, here comes Google Buddy, which allows you to search Google using the menu bar. There are multiple ways to search using Google Buddy:

1. Simple Search - this presents a spotlight-esque menu item that allows you to search for any web page using Google
   
2. Advanced Search - this allows you to use the advanced features that Google offers, such as searching using modifiers (all, exactly, any, none) or searching a specific site
   
3. Image Search - just as the name hints, it allows you to search Google images
4. Advanced Video Search - this allows you to search Google Video (however, since Google now owns YouTube, they should have included a YouTube search feature as well)
5. Advanced News Search - allows you to search Google's News archive
6. Special Searches - this feature allows you to search for movies, weather, links, and phone numbers

While using this application, the one disadvantage that I found was the auto-completion. While auto-completion is good, Google Buddy's auto-complete seemed to be "too-fast," so fast in fact that I ended up searching for wrong items. Luckily, there is an option in the preferences to turn this off ("Show search suggestions" check box). This looks like an excellent piece of software for the Mac, and it now has a permanent home in my menu bar! Google Buddy is available from Recurring Dream for the small price of $11.95; there is also a demo available.

I've been checking my dictionary, but it's hard to find an adequately cromulent word to describe the dramatic enbiggening embiggening of Google's iPhone-specific services. The big G now offers single-screen access to Gmail, Calendar, and Reader among other services, as well as the homerific Search capability, when accessed on iPhones and iPod touches. Rather than introubulating their service, this screen redesign applies a debigulator to the overall Google experience and allows you to use many of the most belovedest features directly from a single screen.

Google has announced that the next version of Google Desktop (we've written about Google Desktop before) will allow users to run Google Gadgets alongside Mac OS X Widgets in the Dashboard. This new functionality should be available tomorrow.

I don't use Google Desktop or Gadgets, and rarely use Dashboard widgets, so I just can't get excited about this. However, I know they each have their devotees, so those among you have something to look forward to tomorrow.

[Via MacMinute]

Despite Google's close Apple ties, it looks more and more as if Google will announce its own mobile phone project as early as next week, according to Forbes. Google, which acquired mobile phone technology when it bought out Android in 2005, looks poised to create a smart, high-end handset to compete directly with iPhone.

It's the iPhone's next-generation interactive technology and full quality data display (in Safari and mobile Mail) that really sets the device apart from the crowd. Will Google create a device competing head-to-head or will they continue their relationship with iPhone and focus on creating a separate ad-based information-rich platform?

The Mac folks over at Google have announced the release of an update to their Web Albums Uploaders for their online photo sharing site Picasa. The single download actually contains two packages. One is a plugin for iPhoto that adds compatibility with iPhoto '08 and automatic conversion of iPhoto keywords to Picasa tags. The other is a standalone drag-and-drop uploader application. In both cases, under the hood there are more substantial changes involving automatic updating and a new Picasa API. In any case, if you're a Mac Picasa user you'll want to check this out.

Update: Unfortunately, it looks like Google forgot to change the download link and it still points to version 1.0 instead of 1.1. The actual download can be found here.

Merlin Mann has been positing that at some point Google and Apple will (or at least should) join forces to bring the power of Google's online apps (Gmail, Docs, etc) to the iPhone. While of course you can access your Gmail account on an iPhone through the mobile interface (which was recently improved), it's a decidedly un-iPhone experience.

Enter iGmail - an Ruby on Rails application with a name that will almost certainly be forced to change by Google's lawyers.

iGmail is a simple view on your Gmail inbox, formatted to match the iPhone's native applications. You can try it yourself directly using their demo installation, however keep in mind that you're giving your Google ID and password to a third party.

iGmail is very pretty, but is definitely missing a lot of important features. For example, the current Todo list from the developer includes adding support for starring / unstarring messages, managing labels and contacts, and composing messages using JKeyboard.

Being that this is a Ruby on Rails application, to run it yourself you're going to need a web server that can run Ruby applications. For some people this will be a show-stopper, but if that's the case maybe you can seek out a friend with server space that is willing to let you access your email on the go using this method.

Google has released their iPhone makeover for Google Calendar. It's pretty nice. Simply point your iPhone to calendar.google.com and sign in. You'll see each of your color-coded calendars displayed in a iPhone-friendly layout.

Touch any day to view its details, and move from day to day with the navigation buttons at the bottom of the page. I did notice one problem. The "Quick Add" field is at the bottom of the page, and when I touched it to enter some text, the iPhone's keyboard rose to cover it, so I couldn't see what I was typing until I had hit "Done." I'm sure this will get fixed before long, but until then, brush up on your iPhone keyboarding skills.

[Via David Chartier. Hm, that name's familiar...]