Over the last couple of weeks, lots of apps have debuted on Google Labs, a laboratory where Google's more adventurous users can try experimental products and offer feedback directly to the engineers who developed them. This month alone, Google has launched six new products on Google Labs. Here are the highlights of our recent releases.

App Inventor for Android

App Inventor for Android makes it easier for people to access the capabilities of their Android phones and create apps for their personal use. Until now, it was only available to a group of people who requested and received invitations. Last week, Google announced that App Inventor (beta) is now available to anyone with a Google account.

Body Browser

Body Browser is a demo app that allows users to visualize complex 3D graphics of the human body. It works in the latest beta version of Google Chrome and uses WebGL, a new standard that enables 3D experiences in the web browser without any plug-ins. Using Body Browser, users can explore different layers of human anatomy by moving the slider to rotate and zoom in on parts they are interested in. A search box is also available for all those who are not sure where something is. Users can also share the exact scene they?re viewing by copying and pasting the corresponding URL.



DataWiki

DataWiki is a wiki for structured data, extending the idea of a normal wiki to make it easy to create, edit, share and visualize structured data, and to interlink data formats to make them more understandable and useful. The project is inspired by the need to create customized data formats for crisis response, for example to quickly create a person-finder application after an earthquake, or share Internet and cellular phone connectivity maps from an affected area. DataWiki operates as a RESTful web-service, is built on AppEngine and is completely open source.

Google Books Ngram Viewer

Google Books Ngram Viewer graphs and compares the historical usage of phrases based on the datasets comprised of more than 500 billion words and their associated volumes over time in about 5.2 million books. Last week, Google released this visualization tool along with freely-downloadable phrase frequency datasets to help humanities research.

Google Earth Engine

Google Earth Engine, which we announced at the U.N. Climate Change Conference Cancun earlier this month, is a technology platform that enables scientists to do global-scale observation and measurement of changes in the earth's environment. It provides a huge amount of satellite imagery and data online for the first time, as well as Google's computing infrastructure ? the Google"cloud" - to analyze the imagery. The initial use of Google Earth Engine will support efforts to stop global deforestation, but the platform can be also used for a wide range of applications, from mapping water resources to ecosystem services.

Google Shared Spaces

Google Shared Spaces is an easy way for users to share mini-collaborative applications, like scheduling tools or games, with their friends or colleagues. By creating a Shared Space, users can share a gadget with whomever they want by simply sending the URL. Once their friends join the Shared Space, they can collaborate with them in real-time on the gadget, and they can chat with them, too. This product is built on some of the technology used in Google Wave.