Suggest a Google Product Feature and Win a Ticket to Google I/O
Google I/O is a now annual event being held this year on May 27 - 28, 2009 in San Francisco. It's aimed at web developers, to whom Google will showcase "how to develop web applications with Google and open technologies." ReadWriteWeb has 10 free tickets to give away to Google I/O; and we thought an interesting way to do that would be to ask for your feature requests on current Google products. Choose any product you like - e.g. Google Reader, Google Health, or the new Google Latitude - and tell us what feature you'd like to see Google add to it. Or if the product has an API, what third party app you would like to see.
The ReadWriteWeb team will select the 10 most interesting responses and offer a free Google I/O ticket to those people. You can enter as many times as you like (1 comment per entry) and if you happen to have more than one winning comment, we'll give you an extra ticket for each winner.
The I/O stands for "Innovation/Open" (i/o is also a programmer term input/output). Google told us in May 2008 that we're at an "inflection point for web app development" and that Google is all about "driving usage of the Internet". The Web is now the defacto platform for application development, according to Google, and so naturally they want to encourage developers to use both Google and Open Web products.
Please leave your feature suggestions in the comments below and be in to win a Google I/O ticket, worth $400 USD each.
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The best enhancement Google could do is add multiple shared feeds to Google reader. That way you can tailor information sharing for particular audiences.
I think that Google should provide an API to GMail that allow third party developers to build plug-ins like the GMail labs.
For Google Reader: save/archive feed with user defined category name
For Google Search: group search results by domain. Add collapse/expand aka more pages/results from this domain.
Cheers!
Within Google Reader, I wish Google could show results across all RSS feeds when I query, not just the RSS feeds to which I subscribe (or have starred).
Google Latitude: should include semantic location data (as opposed to addresses, coordinate, or map data, which is how latitude currently allows you to find your friends), which would allow you to know where your friends are via textual data such as "friendx is @ locationame"
ie: "Jon is @ UC Berkeley" or even "Jon is @ Dwinelle Hall"
this could be integrated with the user-defined locations in gmaps; gmaps already has a vast directory of semantic location data, it can be put to good use in location-based networking/services and then mashed together with other location-based services (everyblock, etc) or location-relevant services/data (yelp, movietickets.com)
Google Talk: google really needs to release a new version for all the gtalk fans who want to use it on their desktop instead of inside gmail, but also want to be able to video chat...
Not really a feature as is, but there should be an established process to deploy
from google code
integration is the key feature. Just look at using Gmail, Google Sites and Google Docs WYSIWYG features. Same, but then again, quite different.
In other words: simple templates for building a new google/open-stack powered app, to target mashups / enterprise / browser / labs / mobile (all powered by app engine?).
Did i mention the need for a central developer hub? and i don't mean a feed mashup of the 80 blogs they have, but a holistic overview of all the groups, apis, services and resources available to those interested.
And why not have developers be paid through google checkout for using their appengine apps on your google apps domain?
New service - Google Contacts, which would provide a more featured contact manager that would be able to sync with social networks (namely, fb, myspace) and allow you to explicitly define who appears in your chat list or not - google cannot become a real social network until it deals with the problem of "my real friends aren't on google, theyre on facebook" (which was an initial criticism of latitude)
Google Apps should implement the APIs of common messaging and groupware systems so that users can point their clients at the cloud (e.g. Microsoft Outlook, Office, Lotus Notes) and collaborate seamlessly with their colleagues the way they are accustomed.
There is precedent for this approach with the recent implementation of ActiveSync, but it doesn't go far enough.
Google should really add Jaiku lifestreaming to the android platform. If the Android userbase picks up half as much as the iPhone with the upcoming lineup of smartphones, this could enable Google to compete well with Twitter in the realtime web arena.
Google Maps would benefit from a utility or tool for "My Maps" that allows users to overlay/georeference images on maps in similar fashion to Yahoo!'s MapMixer (http://maps.yahoo.com/mapmixer ... since retired) and Microsoft's MapCruncher (http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/mapcruncher/ ... a desktop app!).
This is kind of doable via the API, but obviously would be much more accessible on the main maps site and complement the user generated points/lines/polygons on My Maps. This is a frequent question that comes up with some of the folks we have helped...
Google Apps: Everything under one roof. Picassa and all the other disparate products available to Apps users with a single sign in and re-sellable as a bundle for Google. Inclusive of the elusive GDrive.
Google AppEngine needs to support languages other than Python.
GData APIs:
Google needs a geospatial data API (Google GeoData API) that supports read/write for data that has a spatial component (points, lines, polygons) like the ones created on Google My Maps. Would be great to be able to call this data as KML or JSON (GeoJSON).
GMail needs drag/drop support for images and files.
The webkit browser on the Android platform should expose the GPS location via an API for applications to use. This would spur a whole new range of location-aware browser based applications for Android and will shift focus to browser based mobile development.
That will obviously be a more unified approach to mobile app development (not having to implement natively for various phone platform) and also what Google really wants in the long run.
Gdrive - online storage with a dropbox-like ability to sync with a file directory on your desktop, hopefully with the feature to to sync any/multiple directories - this would be fantastic for collaboration, since not many people i know use dropbox, but if it were google, then it would be different (plus all my contact would automatically be integrated)
Stale data is the bane of the Web. Google Web Search needs to be able to sort (or at least flag) results by date.
Apply the Friend Connect way of making friends in Google Reader and get rid of the silly Gtalk invitations used for the same purpose. Allow commenting on others' shares without resharing. And, finally, create plugins that will show notes and comments under the oginal blogposts in the originating blogs (Friendfeed style).
The AJAX libraries need to provide more data (both more results and more data per result) with fewer limitations.
Google could easily sell this as a premium service.
Google Search needs to enable something similar to Search Monkey by Yahoo! so we can get this Semantic Web ball rolling.
Low hanging fruit: integration of Google Docs, Google Calendar and Google Groups.
Use Google Docs to edit group pages, integrate group calendar, and replace files section with a Google Docs folder.
Google App Engine could be far more than a variation on Amazon Web Services.
Google Apps is growing quickly, and based on Google's recent move to open a program of Google Apps resellers, it seems like they're eager to get Google Apps to dominate the enterprise cloud-based software management.
Here's an idea - a Google Apps store (or a Marketplace or a Bazaar...) allowing App Engine applications to have some special hooks into Google Apps taking advantage of all of those underused Apps features like Groups and messaging. This would increase the value of both Apps and App Engine, and since App Engine already ships with customized APIs, it wouldn't be very difficult at all to make it very easy for App Engine developers to serve Apps user. In fact, App Engine's upcoming XMPP support is a *huge* opportunity for App Engine developers to offer all kinds of collaboration tools to Apps users.
Wait a second....does this not sound so unfamiliar? Perhaps that's because you've tried the Labs feature for Google Apps where with one-click, you can add applications to your Google Apps account like Moderator and Short Links. These Labs applications - yep, that's right - all running on App Engine.
Between Google Apps Labs and the Google Apps Marketplace, Mountain View is already half-way there.
Go the rest of the way FTW, Google. It's a no-brainer.
Add ability to access protected feeds with Google Reader. Right now you can't even add Google Groups feed unless it is public (even though you are already logged in).
Phase I - allow access of non-public Google Group feed
Phase II - allow access to other protected RSS feeds using OpenID or other SSO method.
I'd like to see modification to gmail to avoid sending email to old email addresses. Although it is helpful to have gmail cache all email addresses that I send mail to, it can be a problem when I send email to someone who has updated his or her email address. I regularly end up sending mail to an old address because gmail auto-fills it in.
So I'd like to be able to start typing and have the usual list come up, but for email addresses that are no longer to be used, I'd like to be able to right click and remove them. (Or something like that.) Or alternatively, I'd like to be able to mark an email address I'm using as the "primary" and then only have primary addresses come up with the auto-fill.
I have two...
I would love to see a google checklist web app so that you can make online sharable checklists between co-workers. I build computers/windows servers for a rather large heavy equipment dealer and being able to share a checklist between the department would be AMAZING.
I would also like to see a todo list function added onto the calendar. If you are like me you do not always want to assign a time to what you have going on that day.
I would love to see Google add mp3 file support to Picasa or to create a Picasa-like product specifically for music.
This would be a one-stop place to organize and listen to and share your existing music files.
For Google Reader, a very useful feature would entail discovering feed entries which relate to the same topic, from my own and any friends' subscriptions, and cross-linking those entries. As an example, reading an article VentureBeat about the recent G2 Android phone should automatically highlight related entries from MobileCrunch, GigaOM and other sites/blogs I (and my friends) subscribe to, ranked according to my "trends" wrt to reading frequency.
I am not very good at IT, but I would like to see (maybe there is already).
Google Reader: filters.
Similar to Gmail filters. Example, you are subscribed to WSJ and receive all financial news (it is the label name), but also you have Google, Apple, Microsoft labels in your Reader. So when WSJ publishes a post about those companies, I would like to see it in both places in WSJ folder/label and Google folder/label. When I will read any of them, they will be marked in entire Reader as a read post. So i will escape double reading and it will be convenient for me to focus on specific topic. why it is good for me, I am an adman, so I have three websites that have print, Tv, outdoor ads sections, but i don't want to surf each feed and read all their news. I want to read only Print ads or Tv ads. I guess it is not really that difficult.
Snooze e-mail button
There are some e-mail chains that are worth keeping for reading(like the ones that you use to organize an event), but you don´t like to keep receiveing multiple responses during the whole day, and reading one by one. It´s even worse if you receive notifications!
Then, it would be great to have a "snooze button" insdide GMail e-mail chains. You could "snooze" it, keep receiving e-mails in that chain without receiving notifications, and open it at the end of the day or any time you want..
I think something that would be very useful would be an universal ID profile which could be attached to all consumer products.
For instance if I am a vendor on ebay and amazon, and also host a blog, wouldn't it be nice if I could use my universal ID so that all my endeavors link together. That way if people find they like what I sell on ebay, maybe they will also like my blog and perhaps purchase my items on amazon too.
I think a universal ID would go far beyond the rating systems put in place now at individual sites to give people an even better idea of the reliability (or lack there of) of online people. Your reputation can surpass the individual sites and help people discover other places of interest.
Google Ride (take-it as a code name) :)
A line of scenery: I live in Rome, a big and quite congested city. I often make use of private taxi. There are a lot more private taxis/limousine services than regular taxi.
I would like to have the dynamic position of these cars on my google maps/latitude display, sharing my position with them (if they also have a cartographic display).
So, we need two features (actually a new API and a feature):
- feed "Latitude" with a stream of data (giving each one of the taxi drivers an always connected device is not an option. Not a convenient one. They should use the typical hub-topology based localisation)
- Once I get in contact with the driver/car I choose, I should be able to share my position with him (without any other "friendship" to be estabilished).
The same service could be applied for regulars taxi/cabs, of course. The reason has more business value for the limousine/private taxi, because their model of business does not require a central hub for collecting calls.
"Google Infrared Home Inspections"
Blend together Google Earth, infrared satellite imagery and the Presidents $6.2 Billion dollar portion of the stimulus bill for energy efficiency and you have a tool for homeowners to look down on their homes to see if they are losing heat from their homes. Could be connected as part of Google Power Meter.
SocialGoogle -
Across all products, implement a strategy similar to Yahoo's Open Platform Strategy, and then make the Google / iGoogle page home page the equivalent of the newsfeed for people if they want that functionality turned on. Enable sharing of search results within SocialGoogle friends and on all SocialGoogle search results. Integrate the SERP sharing with Facebook Connect and MySpace ID so it is still useful to people who haven't joined GoogleSocial.
All of the product components are there, and integrating the combined app onto one screen (ideally the Google home page) with some awesome AJAX functionality. I think would give it the attention / distribution needed to make a serious play in the area.
Buy FriendFeed to accelerate the process if needed. Perhaps even buy MySpace and add in the communications platform that people like on Facebook, which would essentially allow MySpace to boom on risks as though it were a venture-backed company -- I'm sure Google can bring in some strong engineering there.
I love Google Analytics. I build websites for Unions across the country and teach them how to update their own website once I establish the architecture. Everyone enjoys analyzing their metrics and seeing how their site is doing. But I would really like to introduce all of my non-profit union clients to a visual web developer program by Google. I konw Google has Google Sites, but what if you already have an architecture that would like to update? How can Google help non-profits update existing websites?
Entry number 2 (guys, for a fan of Google like me, it's easy to think to a lot of hidden values in their services) :)
Location Support in International Google News
I really don't get why they didn't already implement it.
I mean, I use my long bus rides (I told you Rome is big and congested, did I? ^_^ ) to catch up with news. This doesn't mean I want news localized to that block, but ...hey, I'm here in Rome! Could you please at least give some evidence of news related to this town?
Note: the Italian interface of Google News does not provide a "location" field to filter the news (the English one actually does it). Using my position and just a bit of reverse geocoding magics should do the trick.
One less click and server round-trip page reload from the Google home page for many searches --
If I go to google.com as my home page, and want to search through news, or maps or images, I currently have to click the word news, maps images or GMail at the top, then wait for a new screen to load, before I can enter my search term and hit enter. Why not add a drop-down button next to the search button so I can specify what I want to search, or at least make it an option for users to show, and the next screen I see is the SERP I wanted?
(The free Google I/O ticket would be much appreciated and thoroughly used for a neat new startup if selected)
Google App Engine should get a background processing mode. Right now, there is only an HTTP request/response model where one can just install handlers for web requests on certain URLs. These handlers have 30 seconds to respond, after which the request is aborted.
What would be cool is if one can schedule CPU/memory intensive tasks in the background that send a notification etc. whenever they complete. This would be useful for resource intensive applications in 3D graphics rendering and genome research for instance.
Currently, one can do this with Amazon EC2 because you effectively lease a VM instance there and you can do whatever you want with it.
Google can setup a paid model for this kind of a service, of course.
GReader: Within search results, add a 'mark all as read' button.
(But honestly, the filters suggestion from above is what I'd prefer because that would allow me to filter out, for example, 'Mac software' from my 'beta software' feeds)
GReader: Disable Graphics
How about a Google OS API?
or- Conference chat in GTalk that allows each user to see all the other users in the "room"...
Post-upload YouTube video editor -> post...
Can Google Docs act more like Bento please?
Can I run Windows in iGoogle?
Google coffee anyone? j/k
I'd like Google Cal's XML feed to be feed to the end-user when the event occurs, or at least choose when it will be fed.
Love Skype! Where's Grand Central?
Can I use Gears and Google services without having to store any of it in the "cloud"?...
I didn't get in to Google Lively really, but I'd like to see Google take over Second Life...
Google Fonts? nah.
It's not that I want Google to buyout or push out other products, I just feel Google has always had a good approach and known when to back off. Thanks for the integration Google, you're good at that and it seems most products and services follow your model.
GReader: Adjust scrolling speed.
I like to hold down the 'J' key to advance through the entries, and then if my eye catches something interesting, I stop and push 'K' to go back. If we could add a delay, that'd make it easier.
GReader: REMOVE DUPLICATES!!!!
Google Mobile (Windows Mobile at least!):
Voice-to-SMS,
uses google chat's SMS feature, but be able to speak your text message into the phone and have Google mobile transcribe it.
Unified search: Google should enable a unified search that allows a user to search through all of their Google data from one place.
This way, I can search through my gmail account, my picassa photo tags, my google documents, appointments in my calendar, my Google notebook and relevant threads in Google groups - all from one place.
This could be, for instance, a special search option on the google.com main page when you're logged in.
Imagine using Google to book "Seats", e.g. in an Restaurant (maybe near to you: again, LBS could help), or in a theater or cinema show (an extended example below). Think about an "Expedia" for any kind of business.
Detailed Movie/Cinema example
do you already use google movie search?!? http://www.google.com/movies It's great! The only thing I miss is that I cannot buy my ticket on line, but I have to get there and walk the line to the desk, which in a multiplex it's quite annoying. And do not bother me with paper tickets: I could show a QR matrix or codebar on my device. It would be great if I could simply book/buy it online.
note on constraints: I know that real time availability it's a tricky thing, but, hey, things like Expedia work because big operators WANT to appear in search related results, so they have an option to provide their services with some kind of API to enable the on-line booking process. Small/medium operators can evaluate mixed strategies.
Many of these services could require a transaction. But I suppose that the payments (micro) business is an inevitable mark for any operator in the industry. How many years away? Two? Three?
I hear that in Japan (which has quite a lucky situation, with a single dominating operator) something in the field is already being done.
Ok, that's the last! ;) Forgive my less then perfect English. :)
Google Mobile:
Fully replace your phone's text messaging with google chat's sms to save you money.
Gmail: Highlight a border around input box if more than one recipient is entered.
Prevents accidental "reply to all" mistakes.
Gmail: update the "send" button on the fly with the first address in the to: box to ensure you are sending to the right person.
Google Maps Mobile: Create turn by turn, voice directions using street view.
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