What's new at Google

How to Capture Screen on Android Phone

noreply@blogger.com (Amith GC) — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 05:49:00 +0000

How to Capture Screen on Android Phone: "How to Capture Screen on Android Phone

Android phone is becoming an ideal of more and more people. Today we would like to show you how to capture screen over Android phone. You don't need to install any third party apps on your Android. All things you need is just the Android SDK and a few steps as following.

How to take a screenshot of Android

1. Download and install Android SDK

Unzip the file and click SDK setup.exe. Here comes a small window asking you for add-ons installation and upgrade for your first time when opening the SDK. If you just want to take screenshot of Android, choose 'USB driver package'and click update. I suggest to update all packages. It won't take long.

2. Hook up your Android to computer via the USB cable

3. Open DDMS (the Dalvik Debug Monitor) and start to capture screen

You will find more folders under SDK file folder when the update is finished. Go to tools folder and click ddms.dat. There will be a DOS window. Don't close it and wait for seconds, the system will detect your Android and give a list of Android devices connected.

Select your Android phone, choose Menu Device | Screen Capture and you will have you screenshot. It can be rotated, saved or copied.

Recording screen video of Android Phone?

Till now there is no third party application that allows you to record Android screen as a screencast video, but here are still some possibilities to make screen video of Android. Follow the method mentioned above, lauch a desktop recorder like DemoCreator and select the Android screen as the recording area to begin your full motion recording. You can operate your phone while refreshing the screenshot of Android screen frequently. Anyway, this is a really awkward way to record a display video of Android Phone. With the rapid development of mobile phone software, application that can be used to record display of Android Phone may come out soon!
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Buzz Google page

noreply@blogger.com (Amith GC) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 05:55:00 +0000

Go beyond status messages

Share updates, photos, videos, and more.
Start conversations about the things you find interesting.

Try Buzz in Gmail

No setup needed

Automatically follow the people you email and chat with the most in Gmail.

Share publicly or privately

Publish your ideas to the world or just to your closest friends.

Inbox integration

Comments get sent right to your inbox so it's easy to keep the conversation going.

Photo friendly

See thumbnails with each post, and browse full-screen photos from popular sites.

Connect sites you already use

Import your stuff from Twitter, Picasa, Flickr, and Google Reader.

See updates in real time

New posts and comments pop in as they happen. No refresh required.

Just the good stuff

Buzz recommends interesting posts and weeds out ones you're likely to skip.

Buzz from your phone

See buzz around you and tag posts with your location.

Point your phone's browser to:buzz.google.com

Get Buzz on your phone

Google Buzz

noreply@blogger.com (Amith GC) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 05:50:00 +0000

Google has never managed to create a successful social network. Orkut's success is limited to Brazil and India,iGoogle's latest update was a let down and Google Friend Connect is still in its infancy.
In 2007, Gmail's code included some details about a feature that showed updates from your contacts. Google intended to create activity streams and share them with your friends. That feature wasn't ready to be launched, but Google unveiled the first piece of the puzzle: unified profiles.
Interestingly, in 2007 four ex-Googlers launched FriendFeed, a service that allowed you to share interesting pages with your friends and use them as the starting point for a meaningful conversation. FriendFeed was acquired by Facebook last year.

It took Google more than two years to launch a product for sharing and discussing ideas with your friends. It's called Google Buzz and it's integrated with many Google services, including Gmail and Google Maps.
"Buzz lets you share updates, photos, links, and pretty much anything else you'd like with your Gmail contacts; it's an easy way to follow your friends, too. When you click Buzz in your Gmail account, you'll see the stream of posts from people you're following, and a box for you to post your updates," explains a help article.
Much like FriendFeed, Google Buzz lets you import content from sites like Twitter, Flickr or Google Reader. You can follow interesting people, flag the items you like, add comments and get notifications in your inbox.

"There's a FriendFeed in my Gmail," commented Paul Buchheit, the ex-Googler who created Gmail and co-founded FriendFeed.
Google Buzz will be added to your Gmail account in the coming days, but Gmail is just one of the interfaces that will integrate Google Buzz. You can already try Google Buzz on your mobile phone by visiting buzz.google.comif you have an iPhone or an Android phone.

"We focused on making the sharing experience really rich by integrating photos, videos, and links. No more fuzzy little pictures: Buzz makes it easy to quickly flip through photos and experience them the way they were meant to be seen: big and full-resolution. And videos play inline so you can watch them without opening a new window. You can choose to share publicly with the world or privately to a small group of friends each time you post," informs Gmail's blog.

Google Goggles

noreply@blogger.com (Amith GC) — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 05:10:00 +0000

Use pictures to search the web.

A picture is worth a thousand words.No need to type your search anymore. Just take a picture.

Find out what businesses are nearby.Just point your phone at a store.

This is just the beginning - it's not quite perfect yet.Works well for some things, but not for all.

Your pictures, your control.Turn on 'visual search history' to view or share your pictures at any time. Turn it off to discard them once the search is done.

Go to Android market from your phone and search for "Google Goggles".

Available on phones that run Android 1.6+. Learn more

Google Goggles in Action

Welcome to People Hopper from Google Labs

noreply@blogger.com (Amith GC) — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 04:45:00 +0000

People Hopper is a new application for Orkut that lets you take your profile image and 'morph' it into your friend's–using publicly available images from other Orkut users along the way. It is a fun app that also allows you to make new connections–since the images that show in your Hopper all come from people who have chosen to make their profiles public, you can click through to learn more about them and reach out to them. You can also morph one friend into another. No computer graphics are used to generate the path.

How can I access the People Hopper gadget?

To be able to use People Hopper, one needs to have an Orkut account. If you don't already have one, create a new account here. Then, you can add the gadget by clicking on "add apps" under the "more" menu, or simply click here to:

Use People Hopper

How to use?

The gadget starts with loading and displaying your friends images on the page. It shows two target boxes displaying "drag a friend here". One can drag a friend's picture in any of these two targets. Once there is an image in each of these boxes, the gadget returns the best path which transitions one face into another smoothly. Each face along the path comes from a Orkut user's public profile image. One can click on any of these path images and go to the profile of that person.

How does it work?

To generate a 'morph', People Hopper uses image matching technology. First, faces are automatically detected in public profile images and normalized for improved contrast and size. Then, for each image, we find other publicly available profile images that are similar to one another. Then, when you pick a friend you want to be your end match, we just hop along similar public images, step-by-step, until the connection is made! You can think of it as an image graph between friends, similar to the friendship graph already on Orkut. We don't use any face-specific features or metrics during this process. It is just a simple matching to find similar pictures.

Will the path between a pair of images remain the same forever?

No. We plan to update our database of user profiles every few days which will likely result in a new path between the same pair of input images. So, visit frequently!

Do you do face recognition in this work?

No. The similarity matching does not use any face recognition technology. In other words, it can say how similar two faces are but not who they are.

Why is the gadget not showing all my friends?

Before loading a friend's profile image, the gadget tries to make sure there is a person with visible face in that image. Only those friends for which such a check passes are shown in the gadget. Since it is an automatic process, the algorithm may make mistakes. We make efforts to continually improve the detection algorithms.

Why is it taking too much time in returning the paths?

The time taken in returning the best path depends on several factors. Typical path computations may take anywhere from one to twenty seconds depending on how far two profile images are in the space of all Orkut images that are public. Other issues like network speed also affect the performance. If you see it running for more than a minute, perhaps it is time to hit 'reload'.

Why is the transition in my path not that smooth?

The quality of the path depends on two main factors: the appearance of faces in profile images of Orkut users and the similarity measure used for image matching. Since we cannot control the appearance of profile images, it may happen that for a particular image there exists no visually similar image in the database. Developing better similarity measures is a topic of continuing research.

Are my generated paths stored once I leave the app?

Currently they are discarded when you leave the app. If you want, you can store them under My Updates by clicking on the button 'Show Path in My Updates'.

What if I do not want my face to appear in any path?

You can opt-out by following the instructions given at Opt-Out Settings.

Chrome - Form Factors Exploration

noreply@blogger.com (Amith GC) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 05:08:00 +0000

While its primary focus is netbooks, Chrome OS could eventually scale to a wide variety of devices. Each would have vastly different input methods, available screen space, and processing power. Below is an illustration of the forms we are considering along with notes for each:

Netbook 10-12"

Because of their small screen resolution, the netbook ui is tailored to one web page on the screen at a time. Interaction is primarily via mouse and keyboard, and the UI is adapted to this, with primary targets distributed along the screen edges. Panels would dock against the bottom of the screen and could be moved to the sides as well.

Full Screen, Compact/Classic/Sidebar UI
Omnibox may autohide on devices with limited vertical height
Docking panels
Tabs and Windows

Tablet 5-10"

On tablets, the UI would be adjusted to handle larger touch targets. Initial explorations have maintained the same basic chrome layout, but enlarged the controls. Icons could be placed above tabs to provide larger, square targets. Panels would be placed along the bottom edge and could be opened with upward dragging motions.

Full screen, Touch UI
Docking panels
Touch panel UI
Tabs only
High-res display
Visual explorations

Laptop 15-17"

On laptop-sized devices, full screen mode is not suitable for most web pages. At this point we would re-introduce multiple windows on screen, using either overlapping or tiling windowing systems. Panels would now be able to dock to edges or float freely on the screen.

Windowed, Classic UI
Overlapping or tiled window management
Floating or docking panels

Desktop 24-30"

The desktop UI is similar to the laptop UI, but benefits more from freely positioned windows and access points near the cursor. Other potential enhancements include magnetic windows/panels that can be moved around with each other to create workspaces.

Windowed, Classic UI
Overlapping window management
Floating or docking panels

Display 40-60"

On large displays or projector screens, the design needs are very similar to those of the netbook: full screen content, autohiding chrome, large targets. Complex window management is even less important, and it may be sufficient to have no windows, only zoomable tabs.

Full screen display
Auto-hiding Omnibox
Docking panels
Split screen
Tabs only

Chrome OS Tablet Mockups

noreply@blogger.com (Amith GC) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 05:03:00 +0000

Hot on the heels of the Apple iPad announcement, Google released some mockups for Chrome OS tablets.
"On tablets, the UI would be adjusted to handle larger touch targets. Initial explorations have maintained the same basic chrome layout, but enlarged the controls. Icons could be placed above tabs to provide larger, square targets. Panels would be placed along the bottom edge and could be opened with upward dragging motions,"explains Google.

Even if Chrome OS was initially designed for netbooks, Google hopes to create an operating system that works on tablets, laptops and desktop computers. "Each would have vastly different input methods, available screen space, and processing power".

Chrome OS has the advantage of a simple interface optimized for web applications. This may seem too restrictive, but Chrome, Safari, Firefox and other browsers are quickly evolving and many popular apps are migrating to the web.

Google Docs Grid View

noreply@blogger.com (Amith GC) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 04:48:00 +0000

Now that you can use Google Docs to store files, you'll upload a lot of files from your computer and treat Google Docs as an online version of Windows Explorer (or any other file manager). Unlike Windows Explorer, Google Docs had a single view for displaying files: the details view.
If you don't like to see the date when a file was last modified or the number of collaborators, you can switch to the new thumbnail view. Google Docs generates thumbnails for documents, spreadsheets, presentations, photos and PDF files, while showing standard icons for other file types.

"We recently finished rolling out the upload and store any file feature, so everyone should now be able to upload, store, and share any file in Google Docs. We also increased the maximum file size based on your feedback, so you can now uploads files up to 1 GB in size," mentions Google Docs Blog.
Of course, there are many other improvements that would make Google Docs more useful: increasing the free quota to at least 10 GB, adding support for any file type to the API and making it easier to access your files by mapping Google Docs as a network drive.

10 Must-Have Google Chrome Extensions

noreply@blogger.com (Amith GC) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 04:46:00 +0000

The Windows version of Google Chrome 4 is out of beta and you can finally try the features that were previously available in Chrome's beta and dev channels. Google will automatically update the browser to the latest version (4.0.249.78), but you can also click on the wrench button, select "About" and manually update the browser.
The most important feature released in Google Chrome 4 is the support for extensions. Chrome extensions are easier to create than Firefox extensions because they're nothing more than web pages that use Chrome's APIs. That's why you can install or disable extensions without having to restart the browser, that's why extensions use separate processes and this is one of the reasons why Chrome extensions are more limited and don't have a consistent interface.
Google Chrome has built-in support for user scripts, so you don't need to install an extension like Greasemonkey. Chrome can convert user scripts into extensions, so many Chrome extensions are just glorified Greasemonkey scripts.
To install an extension, visit Google Chrome's extension gallery and pick one of the 1,861 extensions that are currently available. Here are some of the most useful extensions that add missing features to Google Chrome:
1. RSS Subscription Extension. Detecting and previewing feeds is a standard feature in most browser, but not in Google Chrome. This extension shows an orange icon in the Omnibox when it detects feeds and lets you subscribe to one of the feeds using your favorite feed reader. You can select one of the popular feed reader that are available by default (Google Reader, iGoogle, Bloglines and My Yahoo) or you can add another feed reader.

2. Email this page. Firefox's contextual menu has an option called "send link" that lets you send a link to the current page using your favorite mail client. This extension has a similar functionality, but it only lets you pick the default mail client and Gmail.
3. Google Dictionary shows the definition of a word when you double-click on it. It only support monolingual dictionaries and a small number of languages, but it's useful if you want to find the definition of a word without opening a new page.

4. Docs PDF/PowerPoint Viewer - a simple extension that detects the links to PDF, PPT and TIFF files and opens the files in Google Docs, so you can view them without installing additional software.
5. Slideshow - a great way to view the images from sites like Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, Facebook, and Google Images in a slideshow.

6. Empty New Tab Page - a simple extension that replaces Chrome's new tab page with a blank page.
7. FlashBlock disables Flash content for all web pages and replaces it with a placeholder. Click on the placeholder and you'll enable the Flash element. This way, you'll no longer see Flash ads, annoying Flash animations and other unnecessary objects that slow down your browser.
8. AdBlock hides ads using frequently-updated filter lists. You can whitelist domains and subdomains using Ctrl+Shift+L.
9. Secure Login Helper redirects you to the HTTPS login pages for sites like Twitter, Facebook and Twitter.
10. Smooth gestures - use mouse gesture to perform actions like going back one page, going to the top of a page or opening the last close tab. Mouse gestures are intuitive and you can customize them.

If you found other great Chrome extensions, mention them in a comment.

Track Page Changes Using Google Reader

noreply@blogger.com (Amith GC) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 04:45:00 +0000

Not all web pages offer feeds and sometimes it's useful to monitor web pages and find the latest information. A great service that offer this feature is Page2Rss, which provides a feed for each monitored web page.
A similar feature is now available in Google Reader and it's cleverly integrated: click on "Add subscription", type the address of a web page and Google Reader will automatically generate a feed if it can't detect one.

"We provide short snippets of page changes to help you quickly decide if the page is worth revisiting and we're working on improving the quality of these snippets," says Brian Shih.
"Reader may not always detect updates to your content. Currently, only English-language content in HTML format is supported. In addition, updates to content in frames are not detected; nor are updates to content that requires sign-in to view," mentions a help center article, which also informs that webmasters can prevent Google from monitoring web pages by using the features that block Googlebot from crawling or caching web pages. This suggests that Google Reader's page monitoring uses data from Google's search index and the changes may not be detected quickly if the web page is not popular or it doesn't change often.
Since I rarely visit Google's homepage, generating a feed for google.com or for other international Google homepages is a great way to track all the doodles and the promotional messages.

For now, Page2RSS offers more features (posts have better titles, you can view a cached version of the page), but Google Reader is more reliable. For example, Page2RSS doesn't show the latest changes for google.com.
Tip: to find the URL of the feed generated by Google, click on "show details" and you'll find a URL like:
http://www.google.com/notificationservice/webchanges/webfeeds/11009120664050806769

Follow changes to any website

noreply@blogger.com (Amith GC) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 04:44:00 +0000

At Google we're always looking for ways to take advantage of work being done in other parts of the organization. So when a team approached us with a way to follow changes from websites without feeds, we jumped at the opportunity. Post by Liza Ma, Product Manager.

Feeds make it easy to follow updates to all kinds of webpages, from blogs to news sites to Craigslist queries, but unfortunately not all pages on the web have feeds. Today we're rolling out a change in Google Reader that lets you create a custom feed to track changes on pages that don't have their own feed.

These custom feeds are most useful if you want to be alerted whenever a specific page has been updated. For example, if you wanted to follow Google.org's latest products, just type "http://www.google.org/products.html" into Reader's "Add a subscription" field. Click "create a feed", and Reader will periodically visit the page and publish any significant changes it finds as items in a custom feed created just for that page.

Seeing more from GeoEye

noreply@blogger.com (Amith GC) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 04:43:00 +0000

Since the launch of GeoEye's GeoEye-1 satellite, we've added many gigabytes of high-resolution GeoEye-1 imagery to Google Earth and Google Maps, including a scene from the 2009 Presidential Inauguration, views of the pyramids in Egypt, and images showing urban expansion in China. While we're constantly adding such great imagery, what we've published to date represents only a subset of the available imagery from GeoEye-1, which is capable of collecting hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of imagery every day.

From this stream of GeoEye-1 imagery, we regularly receive images that we think would be of special interest to Google Earth users; some of these images are of interesting places, like Mt. Kilimanjaro or Las Vegas, and others relate to current events, like preparations for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. However, it can take a bit of time for these images to be fully integrated into Google Earth and Google Maps given the processing time required, which includes image orthorectification and blending.

To highlight some of these broadly-interesting GeoEye-1 images before they can be fully integrated into Maps and Earth, we're excited to announce the new 'GeoEye Featured Imagery' layer in Google Earth. Included within this layer are 20-30 Featured Imagery placemarks, including a thumbnail of the image, a link to view the image in full-resolution, and a wealth of information about the scene, including resolution, collection date, and a narrative about the location. Additionally, you'll find links to other images in the collection, and links to social networking sites, including Twitter, which allow you to share favorite scenes with others.

To view all this great imagery, select the 'GeoEye Featured Imagery' button located in the Google Earth 'More' folder:

You can also download it here. Before you get started, here's a sneak preview of some of our favorite images:

Las Vegas, Nevada

Vancouver, British Columbia

Mt. Kilimanjaro

Burning Man Festival, Black Rock Desert, Nevada

New Google Voice extension for Chrome

noreply@blogger.com (Amith GC) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 04:42:00 +0000

With today's official release of Google Chrome extensions comes a new & improved Google Voice extension that gives you easier access to many Google Voice features:

- See how many new messages you have. Think of it as a message waiting light for your computer that lets you know when you have new voicemail or text messages waiting for you.

- View the most recent messages in your inbox. Clicking on the extension button gives you access to your most recent voicemail and text messages. You can read your voicemail transcripts and will soon be able to play messages right from that window.

- Quickly call or text any number. Click on the "Call" or "SMS" buttons to easily call or text for free anyone by just typing their name or phone number. Since the extension is connected to your Google address book, you can just type any name from your address book, without having to remember their number. You can also benefit from Google Voice's low rates when calling any international number.

- Click any phone number on a web page to start a call. If you're looking for a phone number online, nothing is more annoying than having to physically type it on the phone to place the call. With the Google Voice Chrome extension installed, you can just click on any phone number on any web page and select the phone you want to dial from and you will be connected right away.

To try it out, install the Google Voice extension. If you don't already use Google Chrome, you can download it here.

Extensions, bookmark sync and more for Google Chrome

noreply@blogger.com (Amith GC) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 04:37:00 +0000

Today we're excited to introduce a new stable release of Google Chrome for Windows, which includes two of the browser's most frequently requested features: extensions and bookmark sync.
Extensions let you add new features and functions to your browser. Some provide one-click access to some of your favorite web applications like eBay and digg, or news and information sources such as NPR and Time.com. Others are useful tweaks for performing common online tasks such as browsing photos, getting directions or shopping.
We previously launched extensions on the beta channel, and many new extensions have since been contributed by developers from all over the world. Now you can browse over 1,500 in our extensions gallery and install them on the stable version of Google Chrome.

Bookmark sync is a handy feature for those of you who use several computers — say, a laptop at work and a desktop at home. You can enable bookmark sync to synchronize your bookmarks on all of your computers so that when you create a bookmark on one computer, it's automatically added across all your computers. This means that you won't need to manually recreate the bookmark each time you switch computers.
You can read more about today's stable release — including performance improvements — on the Google Chrome Blog. Or if you want a look under the hood at what this update means for web developers (including new HTML and Javascript APIs), check out the Chromium blog.
To those using Google Chrome on Linux, extensions are enabled on the beta channel. And for those using Google Chrome for Mac, hang tight — we're working on bringing extensions, bookmark sync and more to the beta soon. Those currently using the stable version for Windows will be automatically updated within the next week (or you can check for updates manually).
If you're on a PC and haven't tried Google Chrome yet, you can download Google Chrome and give all these new features a whirl.

Avast Added to Google Pack

noreply@blogger.com (Amith GC) — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 04:41:00 +0000

Google added a new antivirus software to Google Pack and this time the program doesn't try to convince you to buy a paid version. Google Pack added the free version of the Avast antivirus, but only for the following languages: French, German, Italian, Czech, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, and Polish. I installed the software using the Italian interface, but both Google Pack and Avast were installed in English.
For some reason, the English version of Google Pack lets you install a different security software: Spyware Doctor with Anti-Virus, which replaced Norton Security Scan. Both Spyware Doctor and Norton Security Scan offered limited or no real-time protection and Spyware Doctor used an outdated signature database.

"The Avast Free Antivirus included in the Google Pack is the same as our regular Avast Free Antivirus. Following the philosophy of Google and Avast, the product is fully featured and does not constantly try to up-sell users to a premium product," explains Vincent Steckler.
The most recent tests from AV-Comparatives.org show that Avast, Avira and Microsoft Security Essentials are the best free antivirus software. "This year, avast! showed big improvements in its detection rates (esp. in the second half of 2009) and reduced its number of false alarms. Its on-demand scanning speed is one of the fastest. The recently released avast! v5 includes further enhancements (like a new graphical user interface) and new protection features."
In December, Avast's blog announced that the software will offer users the option to install Google Chrome. Some may call it software bundling, but it's not as disingenuous as the Google Earth promotion. "Starting in mid-November, we will be giving our new users an option to install Google Chrome when installing Avast. We are not forcing Chrome on users. It is entirely up to the user–to download/install and nothing is hidden."

Upload and store your files in the cloud with Google Docs

noreply@blogger.com (Amith GC) — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 04:51:00 +0000

We're happy to announce that over the next few weeks we will be rolling out the ability to upload, store and organize any type of file in Google Docs. With this change, you'll be able to upload and access your files from any computer -- all you need is an Internet connection.
Instead of emailing files to yourself, which is particularly difficult with large files, you can upload to Google Docs any file up to 250 MB. You'll have 1 GB of free storage for files you don't convert into one of the Google Docs formats (i.e. Google documents, spreadsheets, and presentations), and if you need more space, you can buyadditional storage for $0.25 per GB per year. This makes it easy to backup more of your key files online, from large graphics and raw photos to unedited home videos taken on your smartphone. You might even be able to replace the USB drive you reserved for those files that are too big to send over email.
Combined with shared folders, you can store, organize, and collaborate on files more easily using Google Docs. For example, if you are in a club or PTA working on large graphic files for posters or a newsletter, you can upload them to a shared folder for collaborators to view, download, and print.
You can also search for document files you've uploaded or that have been shared with you just like you do with your Google documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and PDFs. And you'll be able to view many common document file types with the Google Docs viewer.
To learn how businesses can take advantage of this new functionality, check out the post on the Enterprise Blog.
As always, we’d love your feedback and if you have any questions, please check out our help page. This feature will be enabled for your account over the next couple of weeks — look for the bubble notification when you sign in to Google Docs.

GDrive Is Coming

noreply@blogger.com (Amith GC) — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 04:50:00 +0000

After many years of waiting, Google's online storage service will finally be available. It won't be called GDrive, as it will only be an updated version of Google Docs.
"Instead of emailing files to yourself, which is particularly difficult with large files, you can upload to Google Docs any file up to 250 MB. You'll have 1 GB of free storage for files you don't convert into one of the Google Docs formats (i.e. Google documents, spreadsheets, and presentations), and if you need more space, you can buy additional storage for $0.25 per GB per year," mentions Google Docs blog.
The update will be slowly rolled out in the coming days and it's the next step in the evolution of Google's online office suite. When Google added support for PDF files in 2008, it became clear that Google Docs will let you upload any kind of file.

Google says that the service will be able to open many common file formats. "You can search for document files you've uploaded or that have been shared with you just like you do with your Google documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and PDFs. And you'll be able to view many common document file types with the Google Docs viewer."
Google Docs has the potential to become a great service for online storage, but it won't succeed if it only includes 1 GB of free storage. Microsoft's SkyDrive offers 25 GB of free storage, while ADrive offers 50 GB of free storage. Even Gmail has more free storage than Google Docs and its main purpose is not storing files.

Gmail on Nexus One

noreply@blogger.com (Amith GC) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 05:37:00 +0000

Not only does the just-announced Nexus One have a beautiful display, snappy processor, and five megapixel camera complete with flash and geotagging, but you can also buy it online with or without a service plan. Plus, it runs Android 2.1, which adds a couple of new features to the native Gmail application:

Quick contact badge: Press the contact status icon within Gmail, and a handy box shows all of the ways you can reply to a contact — including email, chat, SMS, and Facebook.
Voice input: Swipe the keyboard, then just speak to select contacts or write an email, complete with punctuation. Period!

Nexus One also features the Gmail updates of Android 2.0, including:

Multiple Gmail accounts: Sync multiple accounts to the same device and switch between them without leaving the app.
Undo: A handy 'undo' link makes it easier to retrieve messages when you hit archive or delete by mistake. (Note: you can't yet undo send as you can with the desktop version of Gmail).

Nexus One, the Google Phone

noreply@blogger.com (Amith GC) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 05:36:00 +0000

Two years after announcing Android, Google answers the question "where's my GPhone?" by launching Nexus One. It's not the first Google-branded phone manufactured by HTC, but it's the first Android phone sold by Google.
Google set up an online store for Android phones and Nexus One is the first phone that's available for sale. Andy Rubin likes to call it a superphone because it's much more than a regular smartphone. Even if Nexus One is probably the best Android phone on the market, it's far from being revolutionary.
"Manufactured by HTC, the Nexus One features dynamic noise suppression from Audience, Inc., a large 3.7" OLED display for deep contrast and brilliant colors and a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset for blazing speeds. Running on Android 2.1, the newest version of Eclair, the software includes innovations like a voice-enabled keyboard so you can speak into any text field, fun Live Wallpapers, a 3D photo gallery for richer media experiences and lots more. Of course, it also comes with a host of popular Google applications, including Gmail, Google Voice and Google Maps Navigation," mentions Google.

The phone is available for purchase in the United States and can be shipped to the UK, Hong Kong, and Singapore. You can buy it unlocked for $529 or buy it for $179 with a T-Mobile plan. In the coming months, Google will ship the phone in many other countries and will add support for other carriers, including Verizon and Vodafone.
Why launch a phone and sell it only on Google's site? To create some excitement and to connect the phone with Google's brand. Nexus means "bond, link", so the phone is the link between Google's users and Google's mobile services.

A new year, new mobile features, and more!

noreply@blogger.com (Amith GC) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 05:33:00 +0000

We know that many of you like to take Reader with you wherever you go, so today we are updating our mobile interface by adding a few new features along with a new streamlined look.

New mobile features include support for "liking", tagging, and sorting feeds by oldest/newest. These are all features that were previously only available on the web interface, and we’ve worked to get them into the mobile version as quickly as possible.

As far as streamlining goes, we’ve made a few improvements to give you more features with less clutter. First, we redesigned the bottom action bar to include a “More” link, revealing additional options (with the most common actions selected by default).

We’ve also updated the main header to be consistent with other Google mobile applications, specifically Gmail, Calendar, and Latitude. And we’ve added an option drop-down in place of the old secondary tool bar, to give you a little more space for your feed items. We hope this also reduces those accidental “mark as read” accidents that happen on occasion.

On Reader's web interface, we've made it easier to find people who are sharing stuff similar to you. Take a peek at the new people recommendations (in the “Recomended sources” section on the web interface) to find folks with shared items we think you’ll enjoy. It's a nifty way to discover new feeds and people that you might not have discovered otherwise.

As always, we listen to your feedback and use it to improve Reader. If there are specific features you miss on the mobile version of Google Reader, head over to our Product Ideas page and leave us a note. We love all kinds of feedback through our official help forums and our Twitter account.

Using Google Apps to make the most of group work

noreply@blogger.com (Amith GC) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 05:32:00 +0000

Taylor Bell is a Google Campus Ambassador at Boise State University and a pro at utilizing Google tools to make group projects a breeze. He's here to share some things he's learned along the way.

Ah, the dreaded group project... Luckily, I've found during my tenure at college that this oft-feared mainstay of the college experience can be easily managed with Gmail and the rest of the Google Apps suite. To help you out, I wanted to share my plan of attack for making a group process go smoothly.
First, create a new contact group. Click on "Contacts" on the left sidebar, then click the "New Group" button.

You will be prompted to name your new contact group, so I'd go with the name of the class or project you're going to be working on. Add your teammates by using the "Add Contact" button, and they will be listed under the group you created.

Now that your contact group has been created, you can compose a message, and type the first few letters of your group name to automatically populate the alias in the "To" field.

Now that your contact group is created, the next step is to create a filter for emails from these group members. Copy the list of address from the "To" field to your clipboard, then click the "Create a filter" link near the Gmail search box.
In the "From" field on the new filter creation, paste the addresses of the members of your group between two curly brackets ( { } ):

Click the Next Step button, which will prompt you for the action to perform for the filter you just created. Apply a new label, and name it the same as your contact group.

Now that your filter and labels have been created, you'll be able to quickly find your emails from your group members by clicking the Small Group label on the left side of the screen under the Gmail logo.
If you want to stop now, that's cool, but you can do so much more! The next step I take is to use the Multiple Inboxes feature in Gmail Labs (Click on Settings-->Labs). Other Labs you may want to enable are Google Docs previews in mail, Superstars, Quote Selected Text, Forgotten attachment detector (though you won't need this with Docs!), Send & Archive, Undo send, Search autocomplete, and the Google Docs and Calendar gadgets.
After applying your changes, go back to your Settings and click the newly arrived Multiple Inboxes option. Here is a screenshot of my preferred settings:

Now whenever you receive mail from any member of your group, it will be automatically assigned a label, and Gmail will show (in this case) the last 9 conversations with your group members, directly in line underneath your regular inbox.
With the email addresses of your classmates still on your clipboard, head over to Google Calendar by clicking the link to Calendar above the Gmail logo.
To create a new calendar, click the "Create" link in the "My Calendars" box on the left Nav Bar. The fields to create a calendar are self explanatory – you probably don't need to make your group's calendar public. In the "Share with specific people" heading, paste your contacts into the provided box. After everyone shows up, give them all access to make changes to events, and (if desired) to manage sharing.

Click the Create Calendar button on the bottom of the screen, and your group's events will now show on your Calendar! The first step I take is to copy any important dates from the syllabus to the calendar, and then add any meetings as they are decided on by the group. From here, you can edit the event details to send you a reminder email before the event, or even an SMS message if your phone number is registered with your account. For more info on Google Calendar, see the help page.
Now that your group's Calendar is set up, it's time for the last piece of the puzzle. Click Documents above the Google Calendar logo to head over to Docs. Create a new Folder by clicking the Create New dropbox.

When the new folder page loads, you can rename "New Folder" to "Small Group" by hovering your mouse over the folder name. Click on "Share this folder" and, once again, paste in your group's email addresses, and give them permission to edit.

Once you've sent the invitation, you are free from USB sticks! Everyone will be able to share documents by uploading them into the Small Group folder. If you enabled the Calendar and Docs gadgets in Gmail, you will be able to see your upcoming events and recently changed Docs.

Hopefully this guide will help you to get the most out of group work!

Export the Locations Saved in Google Maps

noreply@blogger.com (Amith GC) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 03:34:00 +0000

Google Maps saves the most recent 100 locations typed in the search box so you can easily retrieve them. If you want to migrate to a different Google account or you'd like to view the locations in Google Earth, Bing Maps or another mapping service, you can now export the saved locations to a KML file.
In addition to exporting the locations, Google Maps also lets you import a KML file that includes a list of placemarks.

This is just one of the many Google features that prevent data "lock-in". Google has a Data Liberation team"whose singular goal is to make it easier for users to move their data in and out of Google products". It's a great initiative from a company that has always encouraged competition. If Blogger is no longer your platform of choice, you can migrate your data to WordPress or a different service. If Gmail is frequently down, has a poor spam filter or it's no longer your favorite webmail service, you can auto-forward your mail to a different service and fetch the existing messages using POP or IMAP.
"Many web services make it difficult to leave their services - you have to pay them for exporting your data, or jump through all sorts of technical hoops -- for example, exporting your photos one by one, versus all at once. We believe that users - not products - own their data, and should be able to quickly and easily take that data out of any product without a hassle," explains Google's public policy blog.

Bing Visual Search

noreply@blogger.com (Amith GC) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 03:33:00 +0000

Gone are the days when search engines provided mostly textual information, a list of 10 blue links that invite you to find the answers on your own. Search engines are now focused on extracting useful information from web pages and surfacing data in interesting ways.
In June, Google launched Squared, a Labs project that generates lists of entities related to your query and finds values for the associated attributes. Search for [dog breeds] and you'll find a list of breeds, suggestive images, information about the average weight and the country of origin.
Bing, Microsoft's search engine, has just launched a similar feature: visual search. It's just an early demo and it requires Siverlight, but it looks more impressive than Google Squared. Probably because Microsoft built the interface around images and used the attributes to refine the results.
"Visual Search allows you to quickly scroll through the galleries or do a one-click refinement using the quick tabs on the left, which are specifically relevant to the type of results you are browsing through," mentions Bing's blog.

Bing's visual galleries are more polished than the results generated by Google Squared, but Bing only shows galleries for a small number of queries like "popular TV shows" or "world leaders" and the information is obtained from structured data sources.
It remains to be seen if Microsoft manages to extend the visual search engine and dynamically generate results for any query. For now, you can play with the demo galleries.

Google Calendar makes it easier to root for your teams

noreply@blogger.com (Amith GC) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 03:32:00 +0000

Born into a lineage of former UCLA Bruins, I was born wearing baby blue and gold, and thrilled to become a part of the tradition when, as a student, I trekked out to the Rose Bowl to support my favorite football team. I still like to keep up with the games -- even if I'm no longer sitting in the student section -- which is why the recently launched Sports Calendar is my new favorite feature in Google Calendar.
In addition to pro sports, there is now a way an easy to keep up with NCAA game schedules. For all you Bruins fans like me, this schedule really comes in handy.

Even better, the Calendar team has also launched a trend chart indicating the popularity of team calendars, which might help ignite some of that competitive spirit. (I, for one, cannot bear to see the Trojans ranked above my Bruins!)
To subscribe to your team's calendar - or other teams you'd like to keep up with - log in to your Calendar and Click "Add" to browse some of the interesting calendars that you can follow. And make sure to spread the word on campus so that your school team has a better ranking than your rival's, regardless of the scoreboard.

Upload Multiple Files to Google Docs

noreply@blogger.com (Amith GC) — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 05:26:00 +0000

If you want to upload a lot of documents to Google Docs, it's difficult to upload them one by one. You can send the documents by email, but this option is not very reliable and not all the formats are supported.
Google Docs has an API that lets you upload, download and edit documents, but there aren't many applications that use it. One of these applications is Google Docs Batch Upload, developed by Anton Beloglazov. It's a command-line Java application, so it should work in Windows, Mac, Linux, as long as you have JRE 1.6.
Google Docs Batch Upload lets you upload all the files supported by Google Docs from one of your folders. Use the following command to upload all the files from a folder and all its subfolders (unfortunately, the application doesn't recreate the folder structure in Google Docs):
java -jar google-docs-upload-1.0.jar <path> --recursive
(replace <path> with the path to the folder you want to upload)

In other news, documents will not be editable from 12:00 to 1:30 pm PST, according to the Google Apps Status Dashboard.