A few Notes about cards
Okay, i played around with Now last night and i noticed a few things for the cards that haven't been mentioned here yet. So i'm sharing this.
First off, we have to be clear about what we're talking. There're two type of cards: 1.) The Now-Cards (which are shown on the Google Now Main View (below the search)) and 2.) the Search-Result Cards.
Now-Cards
These cards are depending on your location and there's no way you can "cheat" on that. I tried to change all location settings for my Google Account and when this didn't worked i even created a fresh Google Account using a U.S. proxy. However, when i did a factory reset for my ROM, logged in to my new Google Account from the Setup Wizard and started Google Now, it immediately showed me the weather card for my real location. Now there's a feature called Account Activity. When i gathered the report via web interface, it showed me my "Login Locations", which were U.S. and Germany. That was because i didn't used a proxy when logging in via Android.
The bottom line, no matter what you change, as long you don't proxy your requests Google knows where you are and will provide you with locale information
only.
The "Weather" card should be available world-wide.
The "Next appointment" cards show up as you have events in your synced calendar.
But other cards really depend on your location.
For the "Places" cards, it will only show you places if those places are available via the normal Latitude service (Google does not use yellow pages data here, only latitude data!). So if you're living in New York City you will probably see tons of cards when walking down a street (though i didn't jumped on a bike and ride over to verify this). For me, in a big city in Germany, it shows just a few locations. And if you're living in the middle of nowhere, you'll probably get no places cards at all.
For the "Public transit" cards it seems like Google doesn't have any schedule of arrivals and departures for outside of the U.S. at all.
I did not tested the other Now-Cards (Sports, Flights etc), but it's much likely that Google just don't have data for outside the U.S. for those as well.
So, unlike the OP says, it has more to do with what data Google can provide, than that Google would need to get to know you first. We have to keep in mind that Google just launched this service and oonly in the U.S.. However, Bara said at the I/O that they will roll out the service for other countries soon. So especially for the Places cards i'm expecting more and more input data soon.
Search-Result Cards
Now this seems to be a bit tricky for a couple of users and (and so it was for me). When i did the first searches i was upset i just got a basic Google SERP page. Now there's a tip in OP which says you would need to activate the "Search on Google.com" option and to deactivate the "Location and Google search" option. Unfortunately this didn't worked for me. So i played around with the system settings and recognized that there's one more thing you need to do to get the search-result cards. Here's the secret
You must not only type a question in english language, but you must also set your system language to English (United States). Yep, that's the trick. Some examples:
I tried this with dozens of request. When having the system language set to German i did not get a single result with cards. When it was English I always got the cards results whenever i did a search for something that is recognized by Google Now - for a list of commands, check
this post. However this list is by far not completed.
One more thing. Just because you have to type in english language and you have to set your system language to be english, that doesn't mean you can not ask questions related to your location at all. Indeed you can. For example there's a famous cathedral in my city. I wanted to know the height (well actuall i knew it, but wanted to test it
) and i got the correct answer:
Conclusion
For the Now-Cards you can't do anything but wait.
For Search-Result cards, activate the "Search on Google.com" option, deactivate the "Location and Google search" option
AND set your system language to
English (United States).
Edit: For those who are interested in getting some more information about Google Now and the new Search, i recommend this video footage from I/O Keynote Day 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuC0i4xTyrI#t=20m37s
UPDATE
After i posted this, it turned out that for example the Public transit Now Cards are working for outside the U.S. But therefore you would need to activate the "Location & Google search" option (what makes sense
).
So the dilemma seems to be that only the search result cards are the one that require the system language to be english (US) whereas the Now-Cards need the "Location & Google search" option to be enabled.
Finally
theos0o uploaded a modified version of the APK that that forces US locale. I tested it and the great result: I can leave the system language to be my prefered (eg German) and can even activate the "Location & Google search" option. With that option enabled the Now-Cards are fully working (whereever Google can provide content). And as long as i leave the "Search on Google.com" activated, i'll get also the Search-Result cards.
Thank theos0o and download his APK here:
http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=28316794&postcount=744
UPDATE 2
i created a new flashable Zip containing the latest version from theos0o:
http://d-h.st/Ko7
This version also deletes old versions of the app, deletes data and dalvik-cache. So you just need to download the zip and install via recovery.
UPDATE 3
theos0o's latest version with Notification support (and mior fixes):
http://www.mediafire.com/?ln5g4bub91kgaa4