“If you’re looking to price compare a product that’s right in front of you, why type out its name and dig through irrelevant results when you can just scan the barcode?”

via Google Product Search For Android Adds Barcode Scanning, Just As We Predicted .

There are some UI element updates that may break the layout of some existing Android apps:

You can see in this example that the buttons and checkboxes have a new appearance. Even though these changes do not affect binary nor source compatibility, they might still break the UI of your apps. As part of the UI refresh, the minimum size of some of the widgets has changed. For instance, Android 1.1 buttons have a minimum size of 44×48 pixels whereas Android 1.5 buttons now have a minimum size of 24×48 pixels

From source: UI Framework changes in Android 1.5

It turns out that G1 firmware revisions RC29 and earlier literally interpret everything you type as command-line operations, so if you happen across a legit command, it’s going to get executed — with superuser permissions, no less. No, seriously. Just go to the messaging app, the browser, or anywhere else a text box is convenient, type “reboot,” press the enter key, and watch magic happen.

Epic Android bug interprets your typing as system commands

Kogan Android phone by Christmas

First, this agreement is likely to change forever the way that we find and browse for books, particularly out-of-print books. Google has already scanned more than 7 million books, and plans to scan millions more. This agreement will allow Google to get close to its original goal of including all of those books into Google’s search results (publishers got some concessions, however, for in-print books). In addition to search, scanned public domain books will be available for free PDF download (as they are today). But the agreement goes beyond Google’s Book Search by permitting access, as well. Unless authors specifically opt out, books that are out-of-print but still copyrighted will be available for “preview” (a few pages) for free, and for full access for a fee.

Fred von Lohmann of the EFF goes on to outline five key concerns with the Book Search deal.

A 2.0 release that includes offline support for J2ME and Blackberry.

Includes email account switching between Gmail and Google Apps accounts.

Introducing Gmail for mobile 2.0

An interesting theory we heard recently is that Google will use Chrome to index the password protected Web – a.k.a. the ‘dark web’.

Most web apps are password-protected and so there’s no way for a normal search engine to index the data – even data that’s generalized and doesn’t identify individual users. But with a full-fledged browser to complement its search engine, Google now theoretically has the means to index this previously inaccessible data.

Interesting that Flock browser already does this, and saves the data to an offline cache on the local machine, presumably to support all the social integration / aggregation features they’ve got going on.

I guess that Flock keep a little data for themselves too, and that is the reason for the FAQ question: How do I disable collection of anonymous usage metrics?

Google’s New Patent. Its called Flexible Communication Systems And Methods and would ultimately create an auction type marketplace for all of your wireless services. The concept is that consumers should have a right to easily choose who their provider is in different locations. One at home, one at work, one in your car, one here, there and everywhere. An Adwords/Adsense bid system would turn wireless signals into a commodity whereby Google helps broker a deal between carriers and customers.

From the handy “News We Missed, You Shouldn’t” from Phandroid.