Introducing Google Brain Search for mobile

Ever had a word on the tip of your tongue but just couldn't remember it? Or perhaps blanked on a person's name in a socially awkward situation? Or even suffered memory deterioration due to ordinary aging or questionable life choices? If so, Brain Search for mobile may be for you. Using our new CADIE technology, we can now index the content of your brain to make it searchable, thus bringing you aided retrieval of memories. Check out this video to see how it works:



Your phone already has an antenna, which can pick up wireless signals. CADIE technology modifies the input wavelengths so it can read brain waves. Go to the Brain Search App (here on a computer or here on a phone.) If you bring your phone to your forehead, your phone can index your brain, making it searchable. 

Since your phone is now modified to read brainwaves, you don't even have to type your search. Put your phone to your forehead and think your query, then click on "Search me". This is helpful in situations where you don't want onlookers to know what you're searching for, so you can feel comfortable asking personal things such as "What did I eat that's making me so gassy?" or "Did I ever go out with that girl? She looks vaguely familiar." And, since CADIE's artificial neural networks run faster than those of a human being, it is faster for her to search through your thoughts and memories than for you to do it yourself.

Brain Search is available for the US, UK, France, Germany, and Italy, and on a number of different devices.

• On Android and iPhone devices, Brain Search runs in the browser, taking advantage of HTML5 and Gears technologies.
  
• On Windows Mobile devices, make sure you download and install the latest version of Google Mobile App. Click the Panda icon (CADIE's choice, don't ask us) to get to Brain Search.  
• On Blackberry devices (US and UK only), make sure you download and install the latest version of Google Mobile App. Type "Brain Search" in the search box. You'll get a link to Brain Search in the search suggestions below. 
  

To get started on any of these, go to google.com on your mobile device, and click the Brain Search link.

Don't forget. Brain Search.


Posted by Effie Seiberg, CADIE team

Themes for your Gmail inbox

You can now apply a theme to your Gmail inbox to personalize it's look and feel.

Editions included:
Standard, Premier, Education and Partner Editions

Languages included:
All languages supported by Gmail

How to access what's new:
Themes in Gmail have started rolling out, but will be available to all domains over the next few days. In order to enable Themes for end-users, administrators should sign into the administrative control panel, go to 'Domain settings' and select the 'Turn on new features' checkbox.

Once themes have been enabled by the adminstrator, end-users can apply a theme to their Gmail inbox by clicking 'Settings' and selecting 'Themes'.

For more information:
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2009/03/theme-scheme-in-google-apps.html

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Mobile internet usage and useful mobile ads

Last December, those of you who responded to our 100th mobile blog post said that you wanted more editorial content and mobile industry insight. Here are a couple of recent mobile-related articles that you might find interesting from Google executives.

The first article went out yesterday on TechCrunch from Vic Gundotra, our VP of engineering for Google's mobile and developer products. Vic talks about the nature and prerequisites of surging mobile internet usage. Straight-forward and flat-rate data plans, modern mobile web browsers, and easy access to mobile apps -- that's what you want, right? This chart, for instance, compares mobile search traffic from one carrier (MetroPCS) that offers a simple, flat-rate data plan with a larger carrier that does not offer a comparable plan.

The second article was published today on MediaPost from Doug Garland, our VP of product management for mobile advertising. Doug offers suggestions on how to make mobile advertising work and describes the benefits of experimenting with new opportunities.

As always, feel free to leave questions and comments below or in our forum.

Posted by Lawrence Chang, Product Marketing Manager, Google mobile team

New standalone contact manager

The new standalone contact manager allows you to manage your contacts within Google Apps without enabling Gmail.

Editions included:
Standard, Premier, Education, Team and Partner Editions

Languages included:
All languages supported by Gmail

How to access what's new:
Administrators can enable the contact manager by signing in to the administrative control panel, then selecting 'Add more services' and clicking '+Add it now' under 'Contacts'.

To manage their contacts, end-users can go to http://www.google.com/contacts/a/your-domain.com. Be sure to replace 'your-domain.com' with your actual domain name.

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New Drawing feature in Google Docs

You can now create and insert rich, colorful drawings into documents, presentations and spreadsheets in Google Docs.

Editions included:
Standard, Premier, Education, Team and Partner Editions

Languages included:
All languages supported by Google Docs

How to access what's new:
To add a drawing to a document, spreadsheet or presentation, select 'Insert' from the menu bar and choose 'Drawing'.

For more information:
http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2009/03/drawing-on-your-creativity-in-docs.html

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New 'Find and replace' toolbar in Google Docs

You can now use the 'Find and replace' toolbar in Google Docs to more easily search for text and replace it. The 'Find and replace' toolbar also supports additional options for controlling your search such as case-sensitive matching and regular expressions.

Editions included:
Standard, Premier, Education, Team and Partner Editions

Languages included:
All languages supported by Google Docs

How to access what's new:
To use 'Find and replace', click 'Edit' from the menu bar and choose 'Find and replace...'. The 'Find and replace' toolbar will appear at the top of your document. Additional search options are available by clicking the down arrow next to the 'Find what:' search box.

For more information:
http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2009/03/find-and-replace-my-favourite-colour.html

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Look Ma, No Hands - Google Mobile App for Blackberry now with Search by voice and My Location

Remember the last time you tried to search for "Marks & Spencers London SW1W" on your Blackberry and ended up with 10 extra characters in the spelling of "Spencers" before you gave up on the "London" bit? If you're like us and hate typing on that tiny keyboard, you'll be glad to hear that Google Mobile App on your Blackberry will let you search with your voice and with My Location. Give it a try by visiting http://m.google.com on your Blackberry. (Blackberry Storm is not supported at this time.) Your fingers will thank you for it.

Get the latest version of Google Mobile App at http://m.google.com

Suppose you're vacationing in London, and you have a craving for fish and chips. With the My Location feature enabled, you can just enter "fish n chips" into Google Mobile App, and it will return the fish and chips restaurants closest to you. No need to type in "fish and chips near SW1W". And since Google Mobile App displays search suggestions as you type, you may only need to type part of the query before "Best Fish n Chips in London" pops up as a suggestion. We're a fan of anything that saves keystrokes on the way to deep-fried British goodness.

Search suggestions appear as you type, saving you keystrokes and time

Now on your vacation, you could have sworn your friend said to meet in "Lester Square". Unfortunately, "Lester Square" is nowhere to be found on the Tube Map. A quick voice search on Google Mobile App (just press and hold the green button) for "Lester Square" reveals the true spelling. Leicester Square is actually only two stops away on the Picadilly Line. Problem solved! And as always, local results have a link to open Google Maps for mobile to guide you there. Searching by voice can be used in combination with the My Location feature, and it works well with standard Google searches, such as currency conversion and weather. So keystrokes have been reduced... to a single press of the green button in Google Mobile App.

Who knew 'Lester Square' had an extra 'ice' in its spelling.

And if you happen to speak with a British accent, you'll be happy to know that we now support British English as well. Google Mobile App is now available on all versions of Blackberry running on O/S 4.1+ and with Search by voice on O/S 4.2 and above, although the Blackberry Storm is not supported at this time. 

Posted by Luca Zanolin, Google Mobile App engineer

Usage reporting in Google Apps

Administrators can now view charts on active users and disk space utilization from the control panel.

Editions included:
Premier, Education and Partner Editions

Languages included:
US English

How to access what's new:
Sign in to the administrative control panel, go to the 'Advanced Tools' tab, click 'View Usage and Reports' in 'Reporting'.

For more information:
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2009/03/charts-charts-charts.html

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Non-unique email addresses now allowed in Gmail contacts

You can now associate an email address with more than one contact in Gmail's contact manager.

Editions included:
Standard, Premier, Education, Team and Partner Editions

Languages included:
All languages supported by Gmail

How to access what's new:
Click 'Contacts' from your Gmail inbox, and select '+' to create a new contact. Enter your contact's information and click 'Save'. It is now possible to create another contact with a different 'Name', but same 'Email'.

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Security enhancement for gadgets in Google Sites

Now encryption for gadgets matches the encryption of the site itself. If a Google Site is encrypted, then your embedded gadget data will be encrypted from the source code to the browser.

Editions included:
Standard, Premier, Education, Team and Partner Editions

Languages included:
All languages supported by Google Sites

How to access what's new:
No action is required by administrators.

For more information:
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2009/03/go-go-gadgetsin-google-sites.html

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New YouTube App for Windows Mobile and Nokia S60 phones

We've been working hard to support more devices and to offer better speed, quality, and robustness in the YouTube app. So we're excited to announce a new version of our mobile YouTube application that's optimized for most Window Mobile and Symbian Series 60 devices. Visit m.youtube.com from your phone to download the app.

• More phones: Supports most Windows Mobile and Nokia S60 devices (a list of supported Nokia S60 devices is available here).
• Speed: Faster application start-up, searching, and video loading. For even quicker access, add the application icon to your phone's home screen.
  
• Video quality: The application automatically detects your device and network capabilities, and selects the highest available stream quality based on those. Videos will look sharper and sound clearer than ever.
• WiFi: Improved streaming over WiFi to support a wider range of networks.
• More robust streaming: Improved buffering ensures that videos will play even in weak coverage areas.
• Easy video viewing: Once installed, no configuration is required outside of the application. We've worked really hard to make video playback "just work".
  

The application will alert you as more improvements become available, so keep an eye out for updates. In the meantime, visit our Community Help Forums to leave feedback for us.

For more info, check out the YouTube Blog.



Posted by Andreas Tuerk, Product Manager and Stephen Spence, Software Engineer, Mobile Team

Two new features for gadgets in Google Sites

The following new features are available in Google Sites to make gadgets more useful:
– The new 'User Start Page' page type allows users to add and organize their own collection of gadgets to create a personalized start page experience for themselves.
– Private gadgets now allow administrators to upload gadgets to Google Apps that only members of their domain are able to see and add to their Google Sites. These private gadgets will be in a directory with your company's domain name in the gadgets directory.

Editions included:
Premier Edition

Languages included:
All languages supported by Google Sites

How to access what's new:
To access the 'User Start Page' page type, anyone with site editing permission can click 'Create new page' and select 'User Start Page' in the page type menu. Enter a name for the page and click 'Create page'. The editor can add content that they want everyone to see to the top of the page. Each user (even people without site editing rights) can then customize the page to see their own personal collection of gadgets.

To create and access private gadgets, administrators should follow the steps provided in the Private Gadget Administrator's Guide to configure their domain and make private gadgets accessible:
http://code.google.com/p/google-feedserver/wiki/PrivateGadgetAdministratorsGuide

For more information:
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2009/03/go-go-gadgetsin-google-sites.html

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Update to name format in Gmail

Google Apps Administrators can now choose how users' names will be displayed in Gmail. Administrators can select whether to display names either as: First Last (example: John Smith) or Last, First (example: Smith, John). Administrators can also choose whether to allow users to customize this setting.

Editions included:
Standard, Premier, Education and Partner Editions

Languages included:
US English

How to access what's new:
Sign in to the administrative control panel, go to 'Email' under the 'Service settings'. The 'Name format' options are available in the 'General' tab.

For more information:
http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/messaging.html


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Analytics for Gmail usage

Premier and Education administrators can now view statistics about how their organizations are using Gmail (like users' locations, languages, length of visit, etc.) in Google Analytics. This extends the Analytics statistics currently available for the control panel, Google Docs and Google Sites.

Editions included:
Premier and Education Editions

Languages included:
US English

How to access what's new:
Sign in to the administrative control panel, go to the 'Advanced Tools' tab, click 'Setup Google Analytics' and enter the Web Property ID number from your Google Analytics account to begin collecting usage data. Sign in to Google Analytics to view and analyze the data.

For more information:
http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=113173

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Update to List View in Google Docs

List View, which provides filtering, sorting and row-by-row editing of Google Spreadsheets is now available from your computer's browser.

Editions included:
Standard, Premier, Education, Team and Partner Editions

Languages included:
All languages supported by Google Docs

How to access what's new:
To use List View, click 'View' from the spreadsheet menu bar and choose 'List view'.

For more information:
http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2009/03/custom-views-give-you-more-control-of.html

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Collect username in Google Docs

You can now automatically collect a respondent's username when they submit a form in Google Docs.

Editions included:
Standard, Premier, Education, Team and Partner Editions

Languages included:
All languages supported by Google Docs

How to access what's new:
To automatically collect a respondent's username in a form on your domain, check the 'Automatically collect respondent's username' checkbox at the top of your form. When the form is saved, a new column called "Username" will be added to your form's spreadsheet. Respondents' usernames will appear there.

For more information:
http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=87809

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Gmail 'Mark as unread' update

Now if you're reading a conversation that had unread messages when you opened it, when you mark it as unread, Gmail will only mark as unread the messages in that conversation that were unread when you first opened the message.

Editions included:
Standard, Premier, Education and Partner Editions

Languages included:
All languages supported by Gmail

How to access what's new:
After selecting a message in Gmail, click 'More actions' then select 'Mark as unread'. Only the unread messages when the conversation was opened will be marked as unread.

For more information:
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/small-but-helpful-change-to-mark-as.html

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More Google Video storage in Education Edition

10GB of Google Video storage is now included on an ongoing basis for each school with Education Edition. Before, video storage was included at no charge for schools on a trial basis.

Businesses with Premier Edition still get 10GB plus an additional 500MB for each user account.

Editions included:
Premier and Education Editions

Languages included:
US English

How to access what's new:
Sign in to Google Video to upload and share videos at http://video.google.com/a/example.com, but remember to replace "example.com" in this address with your actual domain name.

For more information:
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2009/03/10-gigs-of-virtual-class-or-virtual.html

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Here comes Google Voice

We've got good news for GrandCentral users -- now you can begin previewing Google Voice, an application that helps you centralize all your telephony needs. Some features of Google Voice include voicemail transcription, the ability to search and store SMS messages and low-priced international dialing. The original functionality of GrandCentral, such as a centralized number and web accessible voicemail inbox, live on within Google Voice. You can read more about this release on the Official Google Blog.

Posted by Deng-Kai Chen, Mobile Team

New Image Search Results for Android and iPhone

Today we launched a new Image Search results page for Android, iPhone, and iPod touch in the US, the UK, and Japan.

With the new Image Search results, you can easily scan up to 20 images on a single results page and get the details for images that interest you. From the details page, you can view a larger thumbnail, visit the web page containing the image, or view the image by itself in full size. The new results page also supports "search-by-style" filters, which allow you to restrict your search results to people's faces, clip art, line drawings, or photo content. This feature was previously launched on Google Image Search in December 2008, and we are excited to now bring this feature to mobile.

To try it yourself, go to google.com on your Android-powered device , iPhone, or iPod touch, and click on "Images" before doing your search.

How to use Image Search:

1. To begin image search, go to google.com and click on “Images.”


2. The results page shows related images. Clicking on an image loads the details page.



3. On results page, the “filter” option on the blue bar allows selection of image style and SafeSearch settings.


4. The image details page shows a larger thumbnail and links to the original website and image.



Posted by Leo Ting, Software Engineer, Google Mobile Search

Two new features in Google Video

The following new features are available in Google Video:
– The ability to add captions to your videos
– The ability to upload videos up to 1 GB in size (increased from the 300 MB previous limit)

Editions included:
Premier and Education Editions

Languages included:
US English

How to access what's new:
To add captions, create a timed text file for your video. Go to your video's play page and click 'Closed Captions', select your language and browse to your timed text file. Click 'Upload captions' to upload your text file.

To play a video with captions, click the 'CC' on the player. If more than one caption track language is available, select the appropriate one from the menu that appears.

For more information:
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2009/03/google-video-for-business-now-featuring.html

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Finance for Android App

Just over a year ago, during a user experience research trip for Google Finance, we were at the home of a stay-at-home mom / day trader. She was frustrated that there were "personal blackout periods" in the trading day when she was entirely disconnected from the stock market -- for example, while she was ferrying kids around or at lunch with friends. Her situation wasn't unique. During our research visits, we had been hearing similar concerns from people who need to stay connected to the market. With the hope of resolving this dilemma, we started to design and build a finance application for the Android platform in our Google 20% time.

As the Finance for Android application took shape, and the team of 20% engineers grew, we added more features with the aim of allowing users to get stock quotes, market data, and news as fast as possible. If you are following the markets throughout the day, check out the real-time streaming quotes in your portfolio, fast stock look-ups with search auto-suggestion, and 'recent quotes' to make it even easier receive quotes on-the-go. For each stock, you can see detailed quotes, charts and news, and any change you make to your portfolio automatically syncs up with the Google Finance website. So now you don't have to worry about setting up a separate portfolio on your phone.

If you're in the US, you can now download Finance for Android from Android Market.











Posted by Arun Mathew, Lead engineer, and Nick Fey, User experience designer