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Despite iPhone 3.0’s push notifications and previously mentioned Google Sync’s contacts and calendars syncing chops, push Gmail still hasn’t come to the iPhone. But with theProwl iPhone application, you can now push Gmail notifications—and then some—to your iPhone.

What Prowl Does

The $3 Prowl iPhone application [iTunes App Store Link] works in conjunction with Growl, the universal notification application for Macs, to push desktop notifications to your iPhone. (The current release of Growl for Windows doesn’t yet work with Prowl, but the latest unreleased version supposedly already does—meaning Windows users should be able to do this once Growl for Windows updates.)

How It Works

Whenever an application sends a notification to Growl, Growl sends that notification to Prowl’s servers, which in turn sends a push notification to your iPhone. So, for example, if you’ve got Growl set up to display new Gmail notifications (details below), Prowl can push those same notifications to your iPhone. The cool part about Prowl is that it doesn’t just work with Gmail—it works with anything that Growl does.

NOTE: What you’ll get after following these instructions isn’t true push email, but it’s a pretty solid approximation. In fact, in order for it to work consistently, you’ll need to have an always-on computer to push your Growl notifications to your iPhone. But until something better comes along, it’s a pretty strong alternative.

Set Up Prowl with Growl

If you haven’t already, go download and install Growl (it will install as a new preference pane in the System Preferences of your Mac).

Next, head over to the Prowl web site and register for an account (Prowl doesn’t even require an email address). Once registered, download the Prowl plug-in for Growl, unzip it, and double-click the Prowl.growlView file to install the Prowl plug-in to Growl.

Once you’ve done that, you’re ready to set up Prowl on your computer. Fire up the Growl preference pane (System Preference -> Growl), then click on the Display Options tab. Select Prowl in the Display Styles list on the left, then enter the Prowl username and password you registered with and click Verify to make sure Growl can properly talk to Prowl’s servers. (If everything’s copacetic, you’ll see a green checkmark next to the Password field.) If you want to use Prowl as the default for Growl (meaning you want the majority of your Growl notifications pushed to your iPhone), you can also set Prowl as the default from the Default Style drop-down.

When you set Prowl as your display notification type, you still get to choose what your Growl notifications will look like—you just do so through this Prowl display options menu. Make sure you’ve ticked the checkbox labeled Display notifications using style, then select the style you prefer (I’m a smoke person). You can also adjust what kind of Growl notifications Prowl will forward and when—for example, I’ve set Growl to only send notifications to Prowl when the priority is at least High, and I only send notifications when my computer has been idle for more than 5 minutes (presumably you don’t need push notifications if you’re already sitting at your computer).
If you’ve alreadydownloaded Prowl to your iPhone (and choked on the $3 price tag—yeah, we’re cheap) and logged into your Prowl account from your device, any new Growl notifications with Prowl set as the display type will push those notifications to your iPhone. Pretty cool, huh? That can potentially include anything from your IM client to your iTunes notifier and, yes, Gmail. Of course, Gmail requires a little more set up.

Set Up Gmail Notifier with Growl and Prowl

In order to get Gmail playing nice with Growl, you’ve got a few more steps to go. First, you need to download and install the Google Notifier for Mac—the official Gmail and Google Calendar notifier from Google. Next, download theGoogle+Growl plug-in for Google Notifier, unzip it, and install the Google+Growl Utility to your Applications folder. When you run it, this little utility keeps its eye on the Google Notifier and pushes any new email updates (and event alerts, if you wish) to Growl… which, if set up with Prowl, pushes the alert to your iPhone.

To make sure Google+Growl is set to work with Prowl, open up Growl one more time, click the Applications tab, and double-click on Google+Growl. Make sure Prowl is set as the default display style, then click the Notifications tab. On this tab, you’ll see a notifications drop-down with New Event and New Gmail selections. Make sure that both are set with Prowl as the display style. (If, like me, you’re setting Prowl only to push high priority Growl notifications, make sure you set the priority to High as well.

Keep in mind that you need to keep Google+Growl running in the background for the whole system to work, too. It all sounds fairly convoluted for something that should be so simple, but once you’ve got it set up, you shouldn’t have to do any fiddling after that

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A year or so ago I was using a third-party background app (required jailbreak) called iMapIDLE that simulated push for Gmail, and while it looks like something similar is undergoing review for the App Store, the Prowl approach seems like another very solid one. It doesn’t require you to hand over any usernames or passwords to a third party, since the notifications are all coming from your computer, and it can work with all sorts of notifications that Growl already supports (imagine getting a notification that your BitTorrent client just finished downloading that movie while you’re picking up dinner, for example).

As I said above, Windows support for using Prowl in conjunction with Growl for Windows isn’t quite there, but it should be very soon, making this a pretty solid solution for rolling notifications for just about anything from your desktop—and that, we like very much.

Got something clever you’d like to use Prowl for aside from Gmail push notifications? Have another, better method you’re already using? Let’s hear it in the comments.

Popularity: 11% [?]

With its market share-dominating search engine, the eggheads at Google have no doubt made it easier for new users to acclimate to the harsh tangling webs of the Internet. But Google’s not just about search. Within the laboratories of Google’s Mountain View campus, computer science wizards are busy brewing up innovative services that will enhance your Google experience. So far, they’ve given us a spam-killing email service, a collaborative work space for all of our time sensitive documents, and an image search engine that takes the time out of having to search individual pages for something as simple as a company logo. There are also plenty of functional Google Lab projects still in public beta; we pick nine of our favorites that you absolutely must try out.

Get Political with Google In-Quotes

An American’s most sacred right is the right to vote. While we have no intentions of proselytizing any political opinion, we would like to bring your attention to Google lab’s nifty service dubbed In Quotes, which displays a side-by-side comparison of your favorite mainstream politicians and their note worthy quotations on heavy political issues. Type in a search topic or choose a pre-determined political issue, select two politicians, and then choose a year; the generator offers speeches and opinions from Mitt Romney to Bob Barr, beginning from 2003 to present. There’s also a U.K., India, and Canada edition for International transplants.

Quotes are generated automatically depending on what topic you choose, though there are only a limited number of politicians to choose from. In Quotes proves to be a great tool for students preparing papers or debates, or as a resource for future elections. We hope to see that the selection of quotes will grow to include other key political players, as well as those in state and city governments.

Brainstorm Communally with Google Moderator

If you’re ever in need of an objective opinion on what kind of case mod you should attempt next, or you need a bit of advice on how to do something completely out of your sphere of knowledge, Google Moderator offers an open forum for users to pose questions, offer suggestions, and concoct ideas, as well as receive feedback from other anonymous Google users, disguised only by an optional alias. You can scour topics and vote on other people’s opinions, or contribute your own.

Each question has its own list of topics and there are even featured series that offer a lot more, like Take a Tip, Share a Tip, which is an open forum for suggestions on how to be frugal in all areas of your life, from finances to gardening. Google Moderator is a great alternative for the Internet user who needs to ask a question or wants to waste a little time, without having to deal with silly web Trolls or extensively involved social networking profiles.

Explore Sunny Sweden with Google City Tours

Traveling is already a pretty pricey endeavor, so why not save some money on travel books and outdated maps and invest some time in printing out your own walking tours with Google Lab’s City Tours. This great new service from Google generates a list of the most important monuments and must-see historical sites in a variety of cities and countries. All you need to do is type in a start address for your tour and indicate how many days you’ll be staying. Then, City Tours will generate various points of interest within the limits of the city that you specified and offer a personal itinerary. Type in Lund, Sweden and Google will suggest you visit Kulturen Lund, stay for an hour, and then walk about 8 minutes to your next sight-seeing point. Additionally, City Tours also lists the hours of operation for the location you’re visiting, so you won’t have to risk showing up right as doors close to visitors.

We should note that there are still a few bugs with City Tours, the most prevalent being that walking tours aren’t supposed to take 53 minutes, or have you walking across freeways and sky scraping buildings. In some instances, you may consider taking public transportation or paying for a taxi ride, or getting creative and using City Tours to map out an incredible road trip and see everything your destination has to offer.

We have to keep in mind that most Google Labs applications are a work in progress. Regardless, this is one feature we plan on using for all of our future traveling destinations.

Get Organized with Google Sets

Automatically generating a set from just a few examples may not seem like the most useful of applications, but Google Sets somehow makes it an integral and functional part of the Internet. A great way to use this application is to type in associating subjects and then generating a small set. This Is especially helpful for writers who frequently confront writers block.

Share Spreadsheets with Google Fusion Tables

The issue with placing large sets of data in an Excel or Open Office spreadsheet is that not everyone you wish to share your data with will possess the hardware or software capabilities required to view your tabular data. Thankfully, Google Labs has provided us with Fusion Tables. This is an extension of Google’s already popular Google Docs, which has allowed us to share important documents without the middle-man of memory-hogging office software.

Now, if you need to share an expense report across the board, upload the document from your desktop and it’s ready for review. The added bonus of Fusion Tables is that if you’re working on a project with several other people, they can add comments for each row as you update your data. Even though Fusion Tables is still in the Pre-Alpha stage, it works with both Microsoft Excel and Open Office Calc, and you can share your tabular data with other users.

Search Smarter with Google Squared

Google Squared organizes information into tabular form based on your search query. The upside to using this particular service is that it “squares in” and narrows down your search, especially if you’re looking for something a bit more specific. If you’re looking for, say, comic conventions, but doing a regular search in Google brings up very broad results, using Google Squared will actually return a list of popular conventions that have been on the radar. This could make it easier to retrieve specific data for hasty decision making. And even if your square isn’t perfect at the beginning, Google Squared can be tinkered with to ensure that you get a better answer.

Sift Through Video with Google Audio Indexing

Sifting through streaming video is as agonizing as rewinding and fast forwarding through VHS on a VCR. Whether it’s fast forward or rewind, you never know where you’re going to end up. That’s where Google Audio Indexing becomes a key player. It’s great when you need to sift through a variety of political videos seeking specific quotes or looking to catch up on recent news.

Audio Indexing works so that you type a popular subject into a search query and it returns a list of the most watched videos on the Internet, accompanied with bookmarks of each time your search word is mentioned. You can also post a video to a few of your social networking profiles should the video catch the interest of your followers. Either way, it seems that when it comes to dissecting politics, Google has managed to do it in a way that is both unbiased and informative.

Master Web Design with Google Code Search

For the web coder or computer programmer that has frequent bouts of amnesia, or is simply in need of a hint, Google Lab’s Code Search is a life saver. If you’re writing CSS and need a few examples of the <div> element, simply type it in and Code Search will bring up lines of code from various resources. This is a great way to figure out how to use a specific element in your code or check to see that the element has been correctly configured.

Find Look-a-Likes with Google Similar Images

Google Lab’s Similar Images is basically a harder-working version of Google’s already impeccably accurate Image search. If you’re looking for a specific image, say you want a picture of one particular shot of Golden Gate Bridge, Google’s Similar Images will search through the Internet for a picture that looks almost exactly like the one you’ve chosen.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Google has finally confirmed that it will be releasing an operating system - with the Google Chrome OS arriving to offer competition to Microsoft, Apple and a whole host of Linux distros. Although the public has been kept in the dark over Chrome OS, you can be sure that Google has been beavering away on its operating system for some time now, and perhaps the interest shown by netbook manufacturers in its Android mobile platform has indicated that the time is right. So we’ve taken the details that we have so far about Google Chrome OS and assembled them into a handy fact list for your consumption.

1. What exactly is Chrome OS? Google Chrome OS is the company’s first attempt at designing an operating system for more powerful computers. The Google partnered Android has done well for mobile platforms, and it now wants to take the work it has done there, tie it up with the work it is doing on its still-fresh Chrome browser and make the first ‘OS for the cloud’ – with most of the work being done on the net rather than on the computer. “Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS,” said Google’s statement. “We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. “The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web.”

2. When will we able to use Chrome OS? Google has confirmed that it will be making code available to developers later this year and predicts that we will be buying the first Chrome OS powered netbooks by the second half of next year. “Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010,” said Sundar Pichai, VP Product Management and Linus Upson, Engineering Director on the Google blog. “Because we’re already talking to partners about the project, and we’ll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.”

3. So Microsoft need not worry about competition for Windows 7 then? On the contrary; Google Chrome OS is a first foray from Google into a more powerful operating system, and by ‘initially’ targeting netbooks it is immediately going to be treading on Windows 7’s toes. Microsoft designed Windows 7 to be scaleable – useable on everything from netbooks and high end desktops – and Google not only has the financial clout to compete with the Redmond software giant, it is also likely to gain favour by its cloud approach. With people increasingly used to having their information and tools online, from webmail to docs, from calendars to chat, Google appears to be asking if we really need an OS that deals with our desktop, and not simply an interface for the web. Plus, should it prove to be a success, you can guarantee that more powerful computers will begin to look at Chrome OS as a viable alternative to Windows 7. By using the word ‘initially’, Google is making a statement of serious intent in the OS arena. On the plus side for Microsoft, it will have at least 9 months to get market share and persuade people that they don’t need an alternative to Windows 7.

4. Will it run on my computer? “Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year,” says Google. Compatibility is a big thing for Google, but by using a Linux kernel with a windowing system, and working with powerful partners, Chrome OS will be able to run on most PC platforms.

5. If it’s so heavily web integrated, will it be secure enough? Google certainly thinks so. Security is what many would term a ‘hygiene’ problem. You expect your computer to be secure and you notice, and notice hard, when it isn’t. “…as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work,” says Google.

6. So is this being done entirely in-house by Google? No. Google has already appealed to the open source community to get behind the project – which is built on the open Linux kernel. “We have a lot of work to do, and we’re definitely going to need a lot of help from the open source community to accomplish this vision.” By making the browser the central component to the OS, Google is extending an already huge platform - the web - meaning that anyone designing for web standards will be well catered for.

7. So how will this make my computing experience better? Google is hoping that ‘it just works’ which is probably the mantra being rolled out at Apple and Microsoft HQs about their operating systems as well. Chrome OS is heavily web based. It’s perhaps the most focused on bringing the web into the mix and offering a ‘cloud’ operating system from the ground up. “Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS,” says Google. “We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds.” So what is the functionality that Chrome hopes to bring? “People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up,” says Google. “They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them. They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files. “Even more importantly, they don’t want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates.”

8.What does this mean for Android? Android is the Google backed mobile phone platform, whereas Chrome OS is designed specifically for more traditional computers. Although Android netbooks are appearing, Chrome OS may well shunt Android back to the mobile phone when it arrives next year, although Google is hedging its bets somewhat. “Google Chrome OS is a new project, separate from Android.” explains Google. “Android was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of devices from phones to set-top boxes to netbooks. “Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web, and is being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems. “While there are areas where Google Chrome OS and Android overlap, we believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google.”

9. Will this sound the death knell for Ubuntu and Fedora? Google making its own Linux based OS will certainly be a major ‘competitor’ for other flavours of Linux, like Ubuntu, with the powerful company likely to attract a big swathe of developers into the Chrome OS camp. More importantly will be the reaction of the consumers; netbooks have helped fuel a boost for several Linux flavours – gaining entry into homes that may never have considered an open-source OS, but Chrome OS will, no doubt, capture a large share of that particular market on reputation alone. Saying that, the open source ethos of Linux will hopefully be retained in the Chrome OS project and that’s a good thing for everyone.

10. How much will it cost? It’s Linux based, it’s open-source; it will almost certainly be free. Of course Google may make money with corporate support, should it become competitive for enterprise.

Popularity: 4% [?]