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Google Now on your iPhone and iPad

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Re: Google Now on your iPhone and iPad

#211

Post by dirkgently »

eddieroger wrote: post #46

I fell for Google Now when I booted my old Nexus to test test something, and Google Now had read through my emails and showed me a tracking status for a UPS package I was expecting. I was pretty jealous of that functionality, but never convinced to go back to Android just for one feature. Now, I really have no reason. It's also pretty telling of something when more iOS devices have Google Now than Android devices do.

> It's also pretty telling of something when more iOS devices have Google Now than Android devices do.

It's also pretty telling of something when you can make such blind and broad claims when Android is holding significant lead to iOS across the board.

Re: Google Now on your iPhone and iPad

#212

Post by jfoster »

rogerbinns wrote: post #178
eitally wrote: post #79

My favorite feature of Google Now is that when I've searched for a place/address in Chrome on a PC, it automatically pops up with proposed navigation in a card on my phone. That has saved me so many times from the "dammit, I can't remember the street number" while moving from house to car. p.s. This is one widget where allowing it to use the maximum space possible makes a lot of sense, especially when traveling inter…

The problem with this is their false matches. For example I looked up cffi (C foreign function interface) library. They decided to add a stock ticker of the same letters despite me never clicking on any stock links. Any lookups of other things give the same results, such as looking up news stories (eg a plane crash starts tracking flights of the same number) or how many calories there are in a McDonalds burger (start…

Perhaps they're taking a lean approach. Before they build the clever stuff, they may want to see if people will use it even with the dumb string matching.

Re: Google Now on your iPhone and iPad

#213

Post by jfoster »

moskie wrote: post #111
driverdan wrote: post #93

After listening to friends rave about Now and reading so many positive comments online I really wanted to like it. I've been using it for a few months and my experience is significantly worse than what others have reported. It always seems to show me notifications for the wrong information at the wrong time. Take directions. I work at a coworking space 4 miles from my home. The hours I'm there vary. Now seems to try…

> I work at a coworking space 4 miles from my home. The hours I'm there vary. Followed by: > Overall it just doesn't seem to understand my usage patterns. It sounds like that's because there isn't a pattern, at least in the case of your commute. You should just configure it to not try to show you those directions.

I think one of the philosophies behind Now is that you don't need to configure it. Through it having access to your calendar, email, and searches, it is supposed to be clever. It'll probably get better in future, but if users have to configure it, then it's currently failing.

Re: Google Now on your iPhone and iPad

#215

Post by rogerbinns »

badgar wrote: post #206
rogerbinns wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this is their false matches. For example I looked up cffi (C foreign function interface) library. They decided to add a stock ticker of the same letters despite me never clicking on any stock links. Any lookups of other things give the same results, such as looking up news stories (eg a plane crash starts tracking flights of the same number) or how many calories there are in a McDonalds burger (start…

> You can't be sure if a card will appear for flights In my experience, Google Now finds my flights in my Gmail 100% of the time. For at least a dozen flights across the US. And for some airports (SFO is one, unsurprisingly) it even has the terminal and gate information ready! Google Now makes the "arriving at the airport" experience better every time for me.

I had some friends arriving at SFO from Dubai a few weeks later, but had no way of telling if Now would show the right flight on the right day since there is no card about future flights. Similar story for the cross country flight they took a few days later.

In order for me to depend on Now, I need to know I can trust it and it only got one of the flights right. There is no way to know if it will do the right thing in the future unless you keep checking and having a backup plan.

Re: Google Now on your iPhone and iPad

#216

Post by hnriot »

51Cards wrote: post #116
driverdan wrote: post #93

After listening to friends rave about Now and reading so many positive comments online I really wanted to like it. I've been using it for a few months and my experience is significantly worse than what others have reported. It always seems to show me notifications for the wrong information at the wrong time. Take directions. I work at a coworking space 4 miles from my home. The hours I'm there vary. Now seems to try…

"... I don't need directions for a route I drive all the time." It's not just about directions, it's about traffic as well. When it maps a regular drive for me it also factors in traffic delays.

Yes, but today as I was leaving work it told me there was heavy traffic. There wasn't any way to reroute so I used google maps and this time it told me traffic was light and gave a different commute time. All happened within a minute so it seems unlikely that it was right in the middle of updating traffic conditions. I drove the usual way and the traffic was normal.

So I'm not sure what its up to.

Re: Google Now on your iPhone and iPad

#217

Post by fakeer »

eitally wrote: post #79

My favorite feature of Google Now is that when I've searched for a place/address in Chrome on a PC, it automatically pops up with proposed navigation in a card on my phone. That has saved me so many times from the "dammit, I can't remember the street number" while moving from house to car. p.s. This is one widget where allowing it to use the maximum space possible makes a lot of sense, especially when traveling inter…

It would have a lot lot better feature if Android could manage battery usage for things like GPS in a low power mode[1] even if it was on all the time and would only activate in the background intermittently or AGPS fetches some region of interest. Though for this to work efficiently AGPS shall have to be more accurate than it is as of now - at least available on Android phones.

[1]Sth like Bluetooth Low Energy (it requires additional h/w though)

Re: Google Now on your iPhone and iPad

#218

Post by sneak »

badgar wrote: post #206
rogerbinns wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this is their false matches. For example I looked up cffi (C foreign function interface) library. They decided to add a stock ticker of the same letters despite me never clicking on any stock links. Any lookups of other things give the same results, such as looking up news stories (eg a plane crash starts tracking flights of the same number) or how many calories there are in a McDonalds burger (start…

> You can't be sure if a card will appear for flights In my experience, Google Now finds my flights in my Gmail 100% of the time. For at least a dozen flights across the US. And for some airports (SFO is one, unsurprisingly) it even has the terminal and gate information ready! Google Now makes the "arriving at the airport" experience better every time for me.

I was operating under the (apparently mistaken) impression that the only automated processing of email contents done by teh Google was for targeted advertising purposes.

It's sort of scary to think that they're now going to parse out and generate non-email records of potentially confidential information such as your physical location at a point in time (like a flight number + date).

I steal private data for a living and that's just fucking creepy.

Re: Google Now on your iPhone and iPad

#219

Post by mierle »

eitally wrote: post #79

My favorite feature of Google Now is that when I've searched for a place/address in Chrome on a PC, it automatically pops up with proposed navigation in a card on my phone. That has saved me so many times from the "dammit, I can't remember the street number" while moving from house to car. p.s. This is one widget where allowing it to use the maximum space possible makes a lot of sense, especially when traveling inter…

This card was my idea back when I worked on Google Now. I'm still proud of it.

Re: Google Now on your iPhone and iPad

#220

Post by julianz »

mierle wrote: post #219
eitally wrote: post #79

My favorite feature of Google Now is that when I've searched for a place/address in Chrome on a PC, it automatically pops up with proposed navigation in a card on my phone. That has saved me so many times from the "dammit, I can't remember the street number" while moving from house to car. p.s. This is one widget where allowing it to use the maximum space possible makes a lot of sense, especially when traveling inter…

This card was my idea back when I worked on Google Now. I'm still proud of it.

It's really a wonderful thing. I haven't yet figured out the specific magic combination of things that will guarantee it popping up on the phone though - sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. I really love Now but it needs to be omnipresent.
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