Filtering Comes To App Store Searches.

With over 300,000 apps and no decent way to filter through search results means a long, painful process if you’re looking for anything particular. Well, it was a painful process. Apple has quietly updated the App Store to include new search filters/categories that will make all of our lives easier, and reduce the amount of time wasted needlessly scrolling. Search categories include:

• Category

• Customer Rating

• Device

• Price

• Release Date

Google Is the Place To Be: $1,000 Cash Bonus + 10% Raise — For Everyone.

Ask someone you know their idea of the ideal employer. I’m sure that out of all the responses, one of the most popular would be “self employed”. Ask a techie however and you’ll hear a few common names — Apple, Google, Microsoft, IBM, etc., etc. Tonight, the spotlight is on Google — the company known for their difficult, impossible, and “out there” hiring questions.

But none of that really matters because Google is simply an awesome place to work. How else would you describe a surprise, holiday cash bonus of $1,000 and a 10% raise. Yup, Google just committed to some $20 million up front in bonus and a solid $1 billion/year figuring in the new raises. The cherry on top: Google is covering the tax on that $1,000 bonus, allowing employees to keep the full grand. Nice. Want to rethink your employer choice?

Private, internal email detailing the increased employee cash flow after the break…

Update:

Google responded to TechCrunch regarding the leaked email with the following:

“While we don’t typically comment on internal matters, we do believe that competitive compensation plans are important to the future of the company,” a Google spokesperson tells us.

Thoughts?

Google Search goes real time, real big.

For some time now, Google has given users the option of narrowing down your search results based on various factors, with time being one of the more important options — in my mind anyway. For “in the now” folks such as myself, I’ve made heavy use of the relatively new “Latest” category in Google Search which pulled its information from Twitter as well as many other real-time, constantly updating services.

Today, however, Google is giving real-time a much more prominent position in their offerings with a new, stand along search page: Google.com/realtime. As one could expect, all of the search results are…realtime.

The latest info at your finger tips complete with a nifty graph that shows you the popularity of your search topic within the last 24 hours or so. But the coolest part about the new graph is that you can click on any one of the sections of time, and in return, Google will instantly queue up the relevant tweets and other real-time news sources from that exact hour. Pretty nifty, huh?

Google Maps getting all Yelpy with latest 4.4 update.

Android users and fans of food finding service “Yelp” have a new toy to play with residing in the latest Google Maps 4.4 update — food, ATMs, Bars, Gas Stations and more. In a market (no pun intended) that is heavily saturated with similar “food-based location search” apps, Google’s update may seem like a “me too” approach. For the most part, that assumption would be true. Google Places aggregates its data from Yelp, (Actually, Google Places aggregates it’s information from several more places than just Yelp — CitySearch, GrubHub, and Yahoo to be exact.) so right there you realize you’re going to have results that are pretty similar to Yelp. What does Google do to make their little bundle more valuable? From what I’ve seen, not a whole lot. Don’t take that as a reason not to use Google Places though. The app is very fully featured save for a few, oddly omitted features — reviews, comments, and a lesser tasteful UI.

But the lack of a few important, yet not quite critical features shouldn’t detract from an overall highly useful app. For example, when selecting a selection within Places, users have the option of navigating deeper down to things such as price level, Wifi hotspot information, shortcut buttons for Google Maps mapping/calling/street view images, as well as a link to the website of the business/service in question. That is of course on top of other information such as basic restaurant information, and in many cases, menu details.

Lucky for legacy Android users, Google Places will work on just about every version except for Android 1.5. However, finding Android 1.5-only devices is starting to get quite hard. (A very good thing by the way.) BlackBerry users on the other hand have a bit more waiting to do. The update has been mentioned as “coming soon” — which could mean a few days to a few months. It’s pretty vague. Hopefully BlackBerry Google Place users have some other service that’ll keep them happy until then.

Anyone out there tried the new Google Places in Google Maps 4.4 yet?

Nifty info graph lays out the search engines of yesteryear and what they’ve become today. [Humor]

Ever wonder what happened to those old staples of the internet such as AskJeeves, Info Search, and so on? Breathe a sigh of relief because you can sleep soundly again thanks to this handy little info graph that shows us (with a little NSFW languague) what was, and what now is. Hop inside for the full-sized image…

Google gets a face lift. Adds Bing-like customizable backgrounds.

It was bound to happen sooner or later. Some may prefer the stark white Google page we’ve all come to know (and some of us love). But in this visual age, we like color, rich media, and overall, entertainment.

Starting today in the U.S., users can upload their own images as well as use any public Picasa image for their Google Search background. Once the individual finds one that he or she likes, sharing it with others can be easily done via Twitter with the hashtag #myGooglepage.

Look for the custom background image feature to rollout globally over the coming days.

Deal of the century: Wolfram Alpha iPhone app slashed from $50 down to $1.99!

It pays to wait they say…

If you were one of the naysayers who realized the unique/(possibly gimmicky) feature set of the Wolfram Alpha complex function solver. Essentially it was an app for geeks and rather deep pocketed geeks as WA did go for $50. At that price, one would think hardly anyone would bite. But according to Wolfram themselves, a touch over 10,000 sales at $50 have been recorded so far — no small feat.

If you didn’t jump on the curiosity bandwagon and were waiting for a sale, pat yourself on the back because this is the sale of the century. Old Wolfram Alpha: $50. New Wolfram Alpha: $1.99. Ya, that’s basically theft. Now there’s no reason to try out this geekery.

For the record, those who didn’t wait, purchased the app at the old price, and subsequently feel robbed can go as far as requesting a refund from Wolfram Alpha whom have already stated they’d happily (really, happy?) refund unhappy customers’ money. Win win hmm?

AlleyInsider

Do you want to “bang” it? Microsoft’s *almost* naming snafu with Bing

Microsoft hasn’t always released the coolest, most “hip” consumer oriented products. Nor have they even gotten as far as choosing a clever and catchy name that didn’t sound dorky or “pushed too hard”. Lucky for us, they did alright with their search engine Bing, for it was almost “Bang”. Now being the somewhat mentally unstable person that I am, hearing of a search engine named “Bang” has failure written all over it. Take these few light hearted examples:

1. Don’t know much about Mrs. Obama? Bang her.
2. No idea on the true size of a fully grown female water buffalo? Bang it!
3. Need a splendid new apple pie recipe for Easter? Bang it!

Yes, Bing could have been Bang and all hell would have broken lose. Just think of all the money Microsoft would have thrown in the trash if they actually went forward with Bang, only to have to re-educate people once they renamed the search engine so it’s verb could actually be used in church. Good job Microsoft. You avoided the but of our jokes for the day.

AlleyInsider

Google strikes back…again. Incorporates uncensored Twitter feeds in search results. Your turn China…

And the battle wages on…

The latest in an almost juvenile yet entertaining (and I’ll admit it, liberating) move by Google has them yet again, sticking it to the red man. We’ve already seen Google close up shop with their .cn search page, choosing to redirect it to google.hk — Hong Kong’s freer flowing version. China responded by filtering results. So Google countered again with another “catch me if you can” by implementing the now common accompanying Twitter feed essentially killing two censored birds with one stone. First off, the Twitter feeds included in search results are not censored, including plenty of highly controversial topics involving China. Second, Twitter itself has been more or less banned in China for obvious reasons. Awesome, a twofer!

So now we all just sit back and wait for China to make their next move and then see how Google responds. It’s fun for me and I’m sure it’s fun for a lot of you out there. Nothing like a little playground justice, huh?

LA Times Tech Blog