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Google Goggles now solves Sudoku, taking an interest in ads, clearly entering middle age
There are no surer signs of the apocalyptic onset of middle age than a preoccupation with puzzle-solving and an unhealthy interest in adverts and barcodes. And those just happen to be the three new features Google has added to version 1.3 of its Goggles software. The visual search application for Android is now intelligent enough to decipher tricky Sudoku puzzles (and thereby suck all the fun out of them), while its algorithms have also been tweaked to make barcode scanning "almost" instant. Popular printed ads will be recognized as well, taking you to a Google search on the relevant topic. US newspapers and magazines from August 2010 are being supported for now, but we can't imagine the rest of the world should have to wait too long for this added convenience. Video of the new Goggles' Sudoku skills after the break.
Google Images get spruced up, don't need no stinkin' text
Those alchemists over in Mountain View have been fiddling with their search engine again and the product has been one of the biggest redesigns ye olde Google has received to date. Gone are the little captions and size measurements under each image -- well, not gone, just hidden away until you hover over a pic -- to be replaced by a densely packed compendium of your results, which just keeps going and going. Seriously, the new Images search can fit up to 1,000 pictures on one page, with thumbnails loading in a logical top-to-bottom order. A new landing page has also been implemented, showing you the image you selected superimposed on top of the website it belongs to, making for a more streamlined search experience overall. We like it, it's fast and it's pretty cool, but is anyone working on result relevance at all? Try looking for an iPhone 4 snapshot and you'll have to scroll past 43 mockups before finding the real thing.
OmniWeb 5.5 public beta
Earlier this month, the Omni Group offered a sneak peek of their upcoming 5.5 release of OmniWeb, their feature-rich web browser that pre-dated Netscape by a year. If the preview piqued your interest, you might be interested in their public beta. While this new release doesn't pack in a boatload of up-front whiz-bang features, they have implemented some great back-end stuff like using a more recent version of WebKit than Safari, a Site Inspector (also known as a DOM Inspector) and allowing site-specific CSS rules that update in real time.John Hicks of hickdesign has a few more details of what's new and upcoming in the final 5.5 release, and if you want to get in on the public beta, you'll have to register in the Omni Group's forums in order to see the forum thread with details on how to download your own copy.
