Google Search

Despite today's wide use of computers, tablets and smartphones, handwritten notes, memos and letters are still commonplace. While taking photos of them or scanning them is a great way to document and keep track of such items, actually converting them to digital text files makes them much easier to edit and search through. There are several apps like Pen to Print and Evernote that can accomplish this using OCR (optical character recognition) technology, but they aren't free.

Searching the web or finding the definition of a word on the iPhone most often involves opening Safari. Another way to find information fast is to ask Siri for help. Like many jailbreak tweaks, TextSearchPro seeks to streamline things using an Activator action. Once installed, searching for a word or term can be initiated at any time, from anywhere within iOS.

Google has updated the iOS Google Search app to version 3.0. The biggest change adds Google Now capabilities to the app, providing information on the go in customized cards that are automatically generated. Instead of performing multiple searches for specific information throughout the day, Google Now can feed you the information you need at the right time or place.

22 cards are now available on iOS, including traffic, weather, sports scores, appointments, flight schedules, transit schedules and more. Swiping up in the Google Search app is all it takes to bring up current cards to find information. Although Google Now on iOS does not feature push alerts at the current time, these are under development for a future version of Google Search.

I've recently noticed that my iPhone is starting to look like a Google billboard, and I'm starting to wonder if other iPhone owners are feeling the same way.

YouTube beat out Instagram as the most downloaded free app of the year, and Google Maps shot to the top of the charts after being downloaded over 10 million times in less than two days. Granted, YouTube and Google Maps were already popular apps people were used to using, and iPhone owners just wanted them back after Apple removed them with iOS 6. But if you're like me, and have traded in Siri for Google Search, and Safari for Google Chrome, you might feel like you're betraying Apple a little.

Then there are Gmail users and the social networking addicts who use Google+ along with Facebook and Twitter, and now Google is taking over our iPhone cameras with YouTube Capture. At this rate iPhone users are going to find themselves with more Google apps on their devices than stock Apple apps, or any other third party apps.

Google Search is getting rave reviews, and side-by-side comparisons have shown Google's voice assistant is much faster and sometimes more accurate than Apple's Siri. Jalbreakers who would like to kick Siri to the curb can do so by downloading the NowNow jailbreak utility from the BigBoss repo in Cydia. NowNow allows you to replace Siri by launching the Google Search app with an Activator function. To do so, just download the utility, locate the NowNow option under Settings and tap Activation Methods. You can then select the function you would like to use to activate the Google Search app. To replace Siri select "Short Hold" under the Home Button options. Holding the Home Button will now bring up the Google Search app instead of the Siri screen.