The first, history sync, now makes it possible to carry over a record of your search queries when you switch between mobile and desktop versions of Google.com. Dubbed “Personalized Suggest,” Google will now remember your searches and will add them into the list of search suggestions you see as you type into the search bar. The new feature saves you from browsing through your history to repeat a query.

Of course, you do have to be logged into Google for this to work, and you’ve got to have Web History switched on. Enable it on a phone by selecting “save searches” in the Settings menu on Google.com. At launch, the feature is only available in the US on Android, iPhone, and Palm WebOS phones.

Google Local on mobile.

(Credit: Google)

The second addition today similarly gets the mobile and desktop versions of Google.com talking to one another. Google has redesigned local search to make finding places of interest while on the mobile Google site much more finger-friendly. Click or tap “Local” on the mobile browser and you’ll see a start screen with categories you can browse to find restaurants and other businesses nearby, similar to what you can do on Google Maps. You’ll need to have the My Location feature enabled.

There’s also a category for viewing the points of interest that you starred as favorites on a Google Map. Starring essentially bookmarks the location’s Google Place page. Bookmarking isn’t anything new, but the browsable layout is relatively new to Google, which generally favors bare links to graphical enhancements. This treatment has the mobile Google site looking like a mobile hotspot-finding app you might find in an on-phone app store. We have to say, it’s a nice change.

The rejiggered Local Search kicks off in the US and China, with support for more regions in the works.

Originally posted at Webware

Remember the Death Clock, that oh-so-depressing site that counts down the time you have left to live?

I won’t say this is the exact opposite, but it’s in the ballpark: Earn-O-Meter for iPhone tallies up your income, in real-time, while you work.

The idea of this tongue-in-cheek app is to help you endure workday drudgery by showing how much money you’re earning while “sitting through pointless meetings, dull conference calls and inane conversations with nitwits in the workplace.” (The developer’s words, not mine.)

And, let’s face it, wouldn’t it be nice if you could emerge from another mind-numbing meeting with the knowledge that you’d pocketed, say, $37 for your trouble?

Of course, depending on your income level, this might be just as depressing as the Death Clock. (I could tell you how much I earned writing this post, but I don’t like to cry onstage.)

Anyway, all you do is enter your hourly, daily, or annual wages, then set your workday’s start and end times. Then tap the Earn-O-Meter button to see how much you’ve earned so far today and your “time left to endure.”

Earn-O-Meter will run you 99 cents. Obviously it has little practical value, but it is kind of amusing (in an iNap@Work sort of way) and definitely enlightening.

Chase Jarvis is a professional photographer. Chase Jarvis has an iPhone. Chase Jarvis got tired of using five apps to shoot, edit, and share photos taken with his iPhone so he created the Best Camera app.

If you haven’t already started watching the demo video above, you can open the app, shoot a picture or open one from your photo roll, apply filters and effects, and then upload it to Facebook, Twitter, or Jarvis’s iPhone photography community Web site.

The app is only $2.99 and appears to be heavily branded to help sell copies of Jarvis’s book of iPhone photography, “The Best Camera is the One That’s With You”. Personally, it looks like it’s still missing some features that’ll keep me using other apps, but hopefully Jarvis and his software-engineering partners, Ubermind, Inc., will continue to evolve the app and not charge extra for updates.

Originally posted at Crave

Dropbox's iPhone app lets you access your documents on the go.

(Credit: Screenshot by Harrison Hoffman/CNET)

Dropbox was one of the companies that I was shocked to see didn’t have an iPhone app when the App Store launched last summer. The service seems like it would mesh perfectly with the iPhone. After all, one of Dropbox’s competitors, Soonr, launched its iPhone sync app in January. Unfortunately, Dropbox was MIA from our favorite mobile device for a long time. However, on Tuesday Dropbox released version 1.0 of its iPhone app. So, how does it stack up? Is it worth the wait?

This iPhone app is a great addition to Dropbox’s offering. If you already use Dropbox and have an iPhone, then this free app is a no-brainer. If you don’t use Dropbox, this app could be the thing that pushes you over the edge. It works beautifully, giving you instant access (with a network connection) to any of the files in your Dropbox. It also includes a “Favorites” feature in which you can designate a particular file to be automatically downloaded to your phone for offline viewing.

The app can view images (jpg, tiff, gif), music, movies (mov, mp4, m4v), Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Pages, and Numbers docs, PDFs, Keynote presentations, HTML pages, txt files and vcards. If you need to access a document in your Dropbox, this app will most likely allow you to view it. One of the cooler features is the music and movie streaming. If you have music or movie files stored in your Dropbox, they can be played back easily.

Finally, Dropbox lets you upload photos from your iPhone’s photo library or take a new one to upload. While this functionality has already been implemented by many other apps (Flickr, Facebook, various Twitter apps), it still rounds out the offering nicely.

It’s unfortunate that we had to wait so long for this app, but Apple’s approval process, which often takes longer than five weeks, is partially to blame. As I said above, this app is a no-brainer if you already use Dropbox and it certainly acts as an incentive to new users.

You can download the Dropbox iPhone app here.

Originally posted at The Web Services Report