Google now: A guide to world's most powerful personal digital assistant

The translation card is also another great card that can be used with the Google Now voice commands. You can ask Google Now to translate any word into any other language[r]

By Darren John Nelson

Copyright © 2014 Gold Medal

Solutions, Inc

All rights reserved No part of this workmay be reproduced or transmitted in anyform or by any means, be it electronic ormechanical, without the prior writtenpermission of the copyright owner andthe publisher Trademarked names mayappear in this book, and instead of usingthe TM symbol with every name, theyare used only and strictly in an editorial

fashion, with no infringement intended orinferred.

Information contained in this book isprovided for educational purposes only

and on an as is basis without any

warranty Though this work wascompiled to the best of the author’sability without error, the author shall nothave any liability to any person or entitywith respect to any loss or damagecaused or alleged to be caused by theinformation contained within this book,

be it direct or indirect in nature

From the Author

I sincerely hope that you enjoy and canbenefit from this book to get the most out

of Google Now My passion for

technology and unique ability to explaintechnical concepts in a way that is easy

to understand, motivates me to helpothers become comfortable and

confident with the challenges of newtechnology If you have any questions orcomments about the book, please don’t

hesitate to contact me at

darren@goldmedalsolutions.com

Sincerely,

Table of Contents

Introduction

Why You Need This Book

What is Google Now?

How Do I Get Google Now on MySmartphone? Here is How!

What are the Differences Between the

iOS Version and the Android Version

of Google Now?

Google Now Settings: Helping

Google Now to Deliver the ContentThat You Need

Google Now Functionality and the

Keep Track of Your Monthly Activitywith the Activity Summary Card

Never Print a Boarding Pass Againwith the Boarding Pass Card

Never Miss an Appointment with theNext Appointment Card

Know Your Commute Times with theTraffic and Transit Card

Keep Up to Date with CommercialFlight Schedules with The FlightsCard

Your Weather, Wherever YouAre with the Weather Card

Get to the Restaurant On Time withthe Restaurant Reservations Card

Quickly Access Your Event

Information with the Events Card

Your Hotel Information When YouNeed it With the Hotels Card

Tracking Your Important Packageswith the Packages Cards

Get a Reminder at a Specific

Location with the Location

Reminders Card

Get a Reminder When A New MovieOpens at Theaters with the EventReminder Card

Get Personalized Sports Scores withthe Sports Card

Go See a Movie When You are Close

to a Theater with the Movies CardThe Invaluable Time Reminders CardSee Your Favorite Stars with the

The Fandango Movie Tickets Card

Is There Anything Going On Nearby?Find Out with the Nearby EventsCard

Find the Right Word Quickly with theTranslation Card

What’s Nearby? Find Out with theNearby Places Card

Ready for New Music? Find it withthe New Albums Card

All Aboard with the Public TransitCard!

Check Out the Nearby Attractionswith the Nearby Attractions CardLooking for a Great Spot for a Photo?

Find it with the Photo Spots Card

Need to Know How Many Pesos tothe Dollar? Check the Current

Currency Rate with the CurrencyCard

Get Updates About New Content onYour Favorite Websites with theWebsite Update Card

Find Out What’s On Television Nowwith the Watch Now Card

Never Miss a New TV Episode with

the New TV Show Card

Use Google Now to Identify

Television Shows and Songs

More About the Awesome GoogleNow Reminders

Learn How to Quickly Add Events toYour Calendar with Google Now

Learn How to Set A Timer or Alarmwith Google Now

Translate English Words to AnyOther Language with Google Now

Opening an App on Your

Smartphone the EASY Way!

Need Help Calculating the Tip? LetGoogle Now Make it EASY!

Time to Wake Up! Setting YourMorning Wake Up Alarm

Using Google Now to Call, Email orText Your Contacts

Using Google Now to Find What isNear

Personalized Sports Updates withGoogle Now for Sports

Find Out the Current Weather for AnyLocation

Using Google Now for Web

Browsing

Using Google Now for Entertainment

Do You Have the Time? Find theCurrent Time for Any Location in theWorld with Google Now!

It Will Only Take a Minute: Please

Leave a Review!

More from Darren Nelson

Google Now is one of the most excitingthings that I've written about! Not onlybecause what Google Now can do today,but for the promise of what Google Nowwill eventually evolve into As Googlecontinues to improve this product, youcan see how it will become much better,much more accurate and much moreintegrated with your daily life

Using voice commands and voice

recognition as well as proactively

anticipating what information you'regoing to need at what time, Google Nowwill continue to become one of the mostinnovative products that Google has everproduced.

I would anticipate that Google will

continue to push forward with homeautomation and also with Google Nowpossibly in motor vehicles The

consistent experience that Google Now

is able to provide will continue to grow

in all aspects of our lives

TIP: Be sure to tap or double tap

and pinch to zoom any of the images inthe book for a closer look This willenlarge the image so that you can seemore of the details.

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Why You Need

This Book

Google Now is evolving into one ofGoogle’s most valuable and useful

products ever! It was awarded

“Innovation of the Year” for 2012 byPopular Science magazine and willcontinue to evolve as time goes on Itdoes take a little time and practice to use

it but it can dramatically improve yourlife

This book is designed to help users on

an Apple device or Google Androiddevice get the most out of Google Now

as quickly as possible The book willexplain all of the capabilities of GoogleNow as well as providing a referencetool that you can refer back to as youcontinue to learn about Google Now and

as Google Now continues to evolve

This book contains very descriptive textand screenshots that will demonstrateexactly how to accomplish each activitywithin Google Now When you haveread the book completely, you will have

a great understanding of Google Nowand what it is capable of not only now

but in the future as well.

What is Google

Now?

Good personal assistants help you whenasked but great personal assistants

anticipate your requests and act

accordingly Google Now is Google’sversion of a personal digital assistant It

is somewhat similar to Apple’s Siriapplication Google Now uses voicerecognition to allow you to search or askfor things using normal speech You canask Google Now a question like “Is itgoing to rain today?” or “What is the

time in India?” Google Now is superior

to other personal assistants because it isbuilt on top of Google’s own searchengine We will cover all of the voicecommands for Google Now later in thebook

Google Now is also passively

predicting what users will want to seebased on their location, search behaviorand interactions with other Google

products, like Gmail It presents thisinformation in “cards” which we willdiscuss later as well Information likeweather reports, personal reminders,nearby events, airline boarding passes

and traffic reports are all automaticallydelivered to the user.

This is one of the first steps into whatwill evolve into one of the greatest

Google products ever As you go throughthe book, you will be excited and

amazed about all of the potential uses forthis product to improve your life Let’sget started!

How Do I Get

Google Now on My Smartphone? Here

is How!

Let’s first look at how to install GoogleNow on an Android device In somecases, your Android device may alreadyhave the Google Search app installed If

so, you can skip this step If GoogleSearch is not already installed on yourdevice, you can search for “Google” inthe Google Play store and look for

Google Search app like in the screenshotbelow.

If you are using an iOS device like aniPhone or iPad, search for “Google” onthe Apple app store You will see

something similar to the screenshotbelow

Depending on which device you use, theinformation or process that you will gothrough to setup Google Now will besimilar Just say “I’m in!” and then sign

in using your Google account In mostcases, the app will recognize that youhave a Google account or Gmail

account on your device and will use thatinformation If you don’t have a Gmail

or Google account and want to be able

to fully utilize Google Now, I

recommend that you create a GoogleAccount

To get the full Google Now experience,you need to use several Google services.

If you don’t use many Google services,Google Now will be somewhat limited

on the quantity and quality of data that itcan provide to you Using Gmail as yourprimary email service is the most

beneficial tool to Google Now to

proactively deliver the information toyou that you need Things like hotel

reservation information, airline flightinformation or package tracking

information will all come from Gmail

What are the

Now Because of the closed nature ofiOS and the inability of apps to talk toone another, the Google Search orGoogle Now app may not be as

functional as the Android version Iexpect that Apple will do everything inits power to give it Siri personal

assistant an advantage over GoogleNow

For now, the Google Now products onboth iOS and Android smartphones arecomparable

Google Now

Settings: Helping Google Now to

functionality is the same For these

examples, we will use the Android

versions of the Google Now settings Toaccess the settings within Google Now,scroll down to the bottom of the pageand click the three dots in the lower rightpart of the screen

The main settings screen is divided intounique sections We will take eachsection separately and provide a briefdescription of each section.

Keep in mind that the iOS version willhave the settings divided into two

different areas There is a gear icon inthe upper right part of the iOS version aswell as the three dots in the lower rightpart of Google Now

Under the “Phone search” screen, youwill be able to specify which areas ofthe phone are searchable when you do aGoogle Now search You can see that itcan include apps, music, contacts, etc.This is only available on the Androidversion Because of the closed nature ofiOS, these options are not available It isdisappointing that this feature is absentfrom iOS but we hope that will change

in the future

The next setting screen is the “Voice”settings This allows you to modify thesettings around speech recognition Most

of these should be let at the default

setting

The next section is the “Accounts &privacy” section You will want to playclose attention to these settings GoogleNow asks some of these questions in thecourse of asking what type of

information that you want to see Referback to this section to be sure that youare sharing only the information that youwant to share

The next section is “Notifications”.Nothing real exciting here Adjust if andhow you want to be notified.

The last section on the Android version

of Google Now is the “Help &

feedback” section This section explainsmost of the sections already mentionedabove There is good information herestraight from Google if you have anyquestions about the settings that we havealready covered

As I mentioned before, the iOS versionwill have a different look to the settingsmenu but most of the same settings will

be present You should be able to easilynavigate the iOS version of Google Nowbased on the previous examples

Google Now

Functionality and the “Cards”!

The Google Now intelligent personalassistant is not only meant to use naturallanguage interaction to perform searchesbut to also proactively predict whatinformation that you might need based ondata like your physical location, trackingand confirmation information from yourGmail account and repeated searches oractivities This proactive information isdelivered to you within Google Now as

These cards are incredibly useful andprovide you with timely and relevantinformation You can also let GoogleNow know if a card is not appropriateand prevent certain types of cards fromappearing Below is a list of cards

currently available in Google Now Asthis list of cards will surely increase andchange over time, I have provided a linkbelow the image to all of the currentlyavailable cards

(Image provided by Google, Inc.)

If you would like to view the most

current list of cards available, pleasevisit the Google site here:

http://www.google.com/landing/now/#cards

As you can see, there a lot of incrediblyuseful cards that are generated from thevarious Google services that you use

(not all cards are available on the iOS

versions) When you begin to see and

use some of these cards, you will realizehow incredibly useful this product is It

is truly exciting to foresee how useful

Google Now can become in the future.

We will cover most these cards in thecoming chapters Hang on and enjoy theride!

The Google Now Voice Commands and Reference

Guide

Since Google Now has the ability tolisten to your natural speech andintelligently deliver the desiredresponse, why not take advantage of itinstead of having to type the search intothe search box The voice commands aremuch faster and are very easy to use.And the voice commands are not just

used for searching the web They can beused to send email, create appointmentsand reminders, as well as opening apps

on your smartphone

In the list below, I have collected some

of the most common voice commandsthat are currently available on GoogleNow These are just some guidelines toget you started You can often usevariations of these commands and stillproduce the same result It reallydepends on what is most comfortable toyou

Initiate the Google Now voice interface

by first saying “OK Google” followed

by the commands below

[Google, Apple, IBM]”

“Who discovered [gravity,America, chickenpox]”

“How old is [WilliamShatner, Leonard Nimoy,Hugh Hefner]”

“What is the definition of[antagonize, philanthropy,internet]”

“How big is [the earth,Texas, the Pacific Ocean]”

“Where is my package”Open [app name]

Notes & Reminders

“Remind me to [buy] [beer]

“Set alarm for [7 PM]”

“Note to self: [I am sitting insection G]”

“Set timer [2 hours]”

Time & Date

“What time is it in [Zagreb,Bogota, Hong Kong]”

“When is the sunrise in

[Honolulu, Taipei City,

“What time is it”

“What does my schedule looklike”

“When is [Labor Day]”

Communication

“Call [Mike, Sean, Scott]”

“Send [email] to [Mike],[Subject: Meeting],

[Message: I will be thereshortly]”

“Send [SMS] to [Tiffanie][home, or mobile], [bring thesnacks]”

“Send [Text] to [Tiffanie],[bring home bread]”

“Contact [Mike, Tiffanie,Sean, etc]”

Post to [Twitter], [message]

“Navigate to [New York] incar”

“Navigate to [Destin] onfoot”

“How far is it [New York]from [Dallas]”