Google's New Campus in Kirkland

Google's New Campus in Kirkland

Donal Trung 1:48 PM Add Comment
TechFlash posted a tour of Google's new campus from Kirkland. "The company has 400 employees at the campus, brought together from two previous locations in the city. Among the features of the campus: a puzzle embedded in the carpet of one room; a very Googley indoor climbing wall; a high-tech wellness center and gym; conference rooms named after UNIX commands and mountain ranges; and tons of inside jokes for geeks, including the FooBar fruit bar as part of the Sudo Cafe."

"The three-building, LEED-certified complex, two buildings of which Google currently occupies, includes an employee gym, locker rooms, massage room, massage chairs, cafeteria, rock-climbing wall, doctor's office, foosball tables, pool tables – oh yeah, and offices. Google Kirkland, along with the smaller Google Seattle office in Fremont, is entirely responsible for Google Talk and Talk Video, and has its hand in a long list of products such as Maps, Chrome, Gmail, YouTube, Analytics, AdPlanner, AdWords and more," informs SeattlePi.


{ via Justin Uberti }

Google Sidewiki Bookmarklet

Donal Trung 12:42 PM Add Comment
If you don't want to install Google Toolbar to use Sidewiki or if Google Toolbar is not available for your favorite browser (Opera, Safari, Chrome), you can now use a bookmarklet. It doesn't notify you when the current page is annotated and it doesn't open in a persistent sidebar, but it's a decent alternative.

"The bookmarklet is clever, but still I think it's too inconvenient to become very popular," comments Ryan Morehart. The worst thing is that you need to click on the bookmarklet whenever you visit a new page and every time you click on the bookmarklet, it opens a new pop-up window.


Google Sidewiki's team says that it works on a Chrome extension that will add more features and it will be better integrated with the browser.

{ Updated to correct an error. Thanks, Peter. }
Google Music OneBox 2.0

Google Music OneBox 2.0

Donal Trung 2:31 AM Add Comment
Google updated the music search OneBox, which used to include song titles, album names and some other information licensed from AllMusic. The new music search OneBox is only focused on finding music, previewing songs and easily buying them.

Search for an artist, an album name or even some lyrics and Google returns a list of songs that can be played with one click. Full music previews are provided by iLike and Lala, but Google also links to other music sites: Pandora, Rhapsody and imeem. When you click on a music result, Google opens a player in a pop-up window, which isn't very user-friendly.

"With Lala, you can hear one full length preview per song. Each subsequent play will be a 0:30 clip," explains Lala. This limitation is very easy to bypass: just clear the cookies for lala.com.

The OneBox is limited to the US, probably because the music sites that partnered with Google can provide full previews only in the US. I didn't manage to trigger the OneBox, not even using a US proxy. The sample searches provided by Google include some additional parameters that need to be added to a Google URL:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Bob+Dylan&esrch=MusicOneboxDemoOptin::LaunchDemoOptIn

Google says it will be "rolling this feature out gradually to users across the U.S. over the next day".




Not wanting to feel left out, Yahoo reminds users that it launched a similar feature last year. "Since launching a partnership with Rhapsody in September 2008 and launching the FoxyPlayer last year, music has been an integral part of the Yahoo! Search experience as well. We have found that nearly 6 percent of all Yahoo! searches are music-related."

Visual Refinements in Google Image Search

Donal Trung 3:10 PM Add Comment
Similar images, the feature launched in Google Labs half a year ago, is now included in Google Image Search. It's a quick way to refine the results by selecting one of the results and finding similar images.

You'll find different versions of the same image, images from the same location or images that closely resemble the initial result. Google doesn't find more than 1000 similar images and only the top results are usually relevant.

A help center page lists two use cases for this feature: finding results for ambiguous queries like [jaguar] and refining broad queries. If you search for [Greece], it's not clear if you want to see a map or photos from Greece.



Bing has a similar feature, but the results are less consistent.

Google Maps Navigation for Android

Donal Trung 7:51 AM Add Comment
One of the most requested features for Google Maps Mobile was to add turn-by-turn navigation. In the past, this wasn't possible because of the licensing fees that had to be paid for each user of the navigation system. Now that Google no longer uses data from TeleAtlas in the US, turn-by-turn navigation can be added for free.

Google's blog announces that Google Maps Navigation will be available in Android 2.0. The first mobile phone that comes with Android 2.0 is Motorola Droid. "This new feature comes with everything you'd expect to find in a GPS navigation system, like 3D views, turn-by-turn voice guidance and automatic rerouting. But unlike most navigation systems, Google Maps Navigation was built from the ground up to take advantage of your phone's Internet connection." And unlike other navigation systems, it's free.

For now, Google Maps Navigation is only available for the US, but it will certainly be available in other countries when Google collects enough mapping data.




Companies that provide navigation solutions aren't afraid that they'll lose their customers. "There's a lot of content included in our applications that gets updated on an ongoing basis--and that costs money. Millions of customers use our service because of its reliability, ease of use and additional features. People are willing to pay a premium to have something work all the time on their phones," said a TeleNav spokesperson.

Announcing Google Maps Navigation for Android 2.0

Donal Trung 7:00 AM Add Comment
(cross-posted on the Official Google Blog)

Since 2005, millions of people have relied on Google Maps for mobile to get directions on the go. However, there's always been one problem: Once you're behind the wheel, a list of driving directions just isn't that easy to use. It doesn't tell you when your turn is coming up. And if you miss a turn? Forget it, you're on your own.

Today we're excited to announce the next step for Google Maps for mobile: Google Maps Navigation (Beta) for Android 2.0 devices.

This new feature comes with everything you'd expect to find in a GPS navigation system, like 3D views, turn-by-turn voice guidance and automatic rerouting. But unlike most navigation systems, Google Maps Navigation was built from the ground up to take advantage of your phone's Internet connection.

Here are seven features that are possible because Google Maps Navigation is connected to the Internet:

The most recent map and business data
When you use Google Maps Navigation, your phone automatically gets the most up-to-date maps and business listings from Google Maps — you never need to buy map upgrades or update your device. And this data is continuously improving, thanks to users who report maps issues and businesses who activate their listings with Google Local Business Center.

Search in plain English
Google Maps Navigation brings the speed, power and simplicity of Google search to your car. If you don't know the address you're looking for, don't worry. Simply enter the name of a business, a landmark or just about anything into the search box, and Google will find it for you. Then press "Navigate", and you're on your way.

Search by voice
Typing on a phone can be difficult, especially in the car, so with Google Maps Navigation, you can say your destination instead. Hold down the search button to activate voice search, then tell your phone what you want to do (like "Navigate to Pike Place in Seattle"), and navigation will start automatically.

Traffic view
Google Maps Navigation gets live traffic data over the Internet. A traffic indicator light in the corner of the screen glows green, yellow or red, depending on the current traffic conditions along your route. If there's a jam ahead of you, you'll know. To get more details, tap the light to zoom out to an aerial view showing traffic speeds and incidents ahead. And if the traffic doesn't look good, you can choose an alternate route.

Search along route
For those times when you're already on the road and need to find a business, Google Maps Navigation searches along your route to give you results that won't take you far from your path. You can search for a specific business by name or by type, or you can turn on popular layers, such as gas stations, restaurants or parking.

Satellite view
Google Maps Navigation uses the same satellite imagery as Google Maps on the desktop to help you get to your destination. Turn on the satellite layer for a high-resolution, 3D view of your upcoming route. Besides looking cool, satellite view can help you make sense of complicated maneuvers.

Street View
If you want to know what your next turn looks like, double-tap the map to zoom into Street View, which shows the turn as you'll see it, with your route overlaid. And since locating an address can sometimes be tricky, we'll show you a picture of your destination as you approach the end of your route, so you'll know exactly what to look for.

Since there's nothing quite like seeing the product in action, we made this video to demonstrate a real-life example:




The first phone to have Google Maps Navigation and Android 2.0 is the Droid from Verizon. Google Maps Navigation is initially available in the United States. And like other Google Maps features, Navigation is free.

Click here to learn more and browse a gallery of product screenshots. Take Google Maps Navigation for a spin, and bring Internet-connected GPS navigation with you in your car.

More interface consistency launched in Google Docs

More interface consistency launched in Google Docs

Donal Trung 10:05 AM Add Comment
Google Docs editors are now more consistent across each product. The links, title area, menus, menu terminology, and toolbar are now nearly uniform across documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

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

Languages included:
All languages supported by Google Docs

For more information:
http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2009/10/google-docs-now-more-consistent.html

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New export options and more launched in Google Docs

New export options and more launched in Google Docs

Donal Trung 2:08 AM Add Comment
We've added some new features to the Docs list:

- New export features which allow you to select multiple documents, convert them into your chosen format and download them as a zip file.
- Indicators to show if a document has been viewed already or not.
- A 'New!' indicator that shows you when a new document has been shared with you.

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

Languages included:
All languages supported by Google Docs

How to access what's new:
-Select one or more files and then click on "Export" from the "More Actions" menu. Next, pick the format (e.g. PDF, Microsoft Word, etc) you want for your exported files. Finally, click "Continue" and it will create a zip file to download that has all your content. You can "export" up to 500 MB of content in a single zip file. It can sometimes take a few minutes to download so you also have an "email when ready" option to notify you when the zip file is ready.

- "Unviewed" files are in bold, while "viewed" files are not. You can toggle this setting by selecting the item and clicking on "mark as (Un)Viewed" in the "More Actions" menu.

- When an item is first shared to you, it will be bold ("Unviewed") and marked as "New!". Once you view this item, it's listed normally. If the item is updated by someone else, then it will be marked as "Unviewed" again.

For more information:
http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2009/10/data-liberation-mark-as-viewed-and-new.html


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11 Years of Google in 2 Minutes

11 Years of Google in 2 Minutes

Donal Trung 11:09 AM Add Comment
Google UK's YouTube channel posted a video that highlights some of the most interesting events from Google's history. "From Stanford to Mountain View and around the world, featuring many different products, starting with BackRub (Search) up to Google Wave, StreetView and Chrome."

If you look closely, you'll spot at least one error in the video. Can you find it?


For those who want to learn more about Google's history, check this interactive timeline, the list of milestones and John Battelle's "The Search".

{ via Blogoscoped Forum }
More features in administrator Chat settings

More features in administrator Chat settings

Donal Trung 10:44 AM Add Comment
Administrators now have more control over how their users use Chat and can:
- Enable/disable their user's ability to chat outside the domain.
- Enable a setting to automatically accept chat invitations between users in their domain.

Editions included:
Premier and Education Editions

Languages included:
US English

How to access what's new:
Go to Chat settings in the control panel, and enable/disable the checkbox 'Users can chat with other users outside this domain'. This will also affect the ability to chat within the Google Network.

To set automatic acceptance of invitations to chat, enable/disable the checkbox 'Automatically accept chat invitations between users in this domain'. Please note that your users will be able to override this setting and it's a default setting only.


For more information:
http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=60767

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The Iterative Web App: Auto-expanding Compose Boxes

Donal Trung 8:45 AM Add Comment
On April 7th, we announced a new version of Gmail for mobile for iPhone and Android-powered devices. Among the improvements was a complete redesign of the web application's underlying code which allows us to more rapidly develop and release new features that users have been asking for, as explained in our first post. We'd like to introduce The Iterative Webapp, a series where we will continue to release features for Gmail for mobile. Today: Auto-expanding compose boxes

When composing a message on my phone, I really want to see as much of my draft as possible and make use of all the available screen space. One of my biggest gripes is a fixed-size compose box that restricts me to only a couple lines of visible text when my screen still has room to display more lines.

Today we launched auto-expanding compose boxes in Gmail for iPhone. This makes composing longer messages much easier since you're able to see more of the text you've typed. Just keep typing until you get near the bottom and then the compose box will magically expand by a few lines! As an added bonus, for all those iPhone users out there, auto-expanding compose boxes take away the need to press and hold to scroll with the magnifying glass! Instead, you can flick to scroll, much like you would normally do to scroll up and down a webpage. (On Android-powered devices, this hasn't been much of a problem, thanks to the trackball.)



















While we're on the subject of making it easier to view content in Gmail, one more bit of news. We've been working on ways to make inline images show up in your messages, and you can now get some of those images to display by following these steps.

To try out, visit gmail.com on your iPhone/iPod touch (OS 2.2.1 or above, US English only) and create a home screen link for easy access.



by Casey Ho, Software Engineer, Google Mobile

Google Social Search

Donal Trung 7:39 AM Add Comment
Last week, Marissa Mayer announced at the Web 2.0 Summit a new experimental feature that will improve search results with web pages created by your social connections.

"Due to the ever-increasing popularity of social networks, we've been thinking about how your social network could influence and improve your search results. Social Search does just that by surfacing content in your search results that is written by your friends or people you follow. That way, you get the best resources from the web overall, plus the best results (blogs, reviews, travelogues) that are relevant to you, since they were written by people you know. Social Search will be launching soon on Google Experimental and Google Labs," explained Marissa Mayer.

The feature is opt-in and it's strongly connected to Google Profiles and Gmail. For example, if you add a link to your Twitter page to your Google profile, Google will find the people you follow and the content they produce: blogs, photo albums, videos, reviews. If your query returns useful results from your social connections, Google will display the results at the bottom of the search results pages.


In an interview from 2008, Marissa Mayer said that social search is very important. "We believe social search is any search aided by a social interaction or a social connection… Social search happens every day. When you ask a friend "what movies are good to go see?" or "where should we go to dinner?", you are doing a verbal social search. You're trying to leverage that social connection to try and get a piece of information that would be better than what you'd come up with on your own. (...) I think one way Google will be better is in understanding more about you and understanding more about your social context: Who your friends are, what you like to do, where you are. Given how things have transitioned online – everything from travel planning to purchasing books — my belief is that a lot of those physical questions we ask now will ultimately begin to transition to the online medium and that social context will be leveraged there."

Update: Google Social Search is now available in Google Labs. Join the first experiment and then type your query at google.com. If you don't see an OneBox at the bottom of the search results pages, click on "Search Options" and select "Social" to restrict the results to your social circle.



A help center page explains who is in your social circle:

* People you're connected to through social services, such as Twitter and FriendFeed, that you've listed in your Google profile.
* People in your Gmail (or Google Talk) chat list.
* People in your Friends, Family, and Coworkers contact groups for Google.

For some reason, Google decided to arbitrarily expand your social circle to people you don't even know. "If someone you don't know shows up in your social search results, it's likely that they're connected to someone you do know. Social Search includes results from public connections of your immediate social circle, since there's a high likelihood that you know them as well. For example, if you're following someone on Twitter, and that person is following five other people, those five other people are also included in your social circle."

Social Search also includes your Google Reader subscriptions, so it's now easier to search Google Reader.


{ via Search Engine Roundtable and Google Blog }

Google Docs Batch Export

Donal Trung 1:26 AM Add Comment
Now you can export all your documents, spreadsheets, presentations and PDFs from Google Docs in a ZIP archive.

The most difficult part is to select all your files: you need to go to the "All items" section, scroll down to the bottom of the documents list, click on the checkbox button from the toolbar and then on "select all visible". Google Docs uses "infinite scrolling", but it's not smart enough to select all the documents from a view.


After selecting all your files (or only some of them), right-click and choose "export". A dialog lets you choose the download format for each kind of file: Microsoft Office formats, OpenOffice formats, PDF or some other formats.


Click on "continue" and Google starts to compress your files and create an archive. If you have a lot of documents, Google can send you an email when the files are zipped.


{ Thanks, StareClips.com }

Portable Google Chrome

Donal Trung 6:28 AM Add Comment
PortableApps.com started to offer a portable version of Google Chrome for Windows. Due to the licensing terms of Google Chrome, the site offers a small application that downloads Google Chrome's installer, extract its files and installs a portable launcher. Copy the resulting folder to a USB drive and you can launch Chrome on multiple computers without leaving traces.


A much better idea would be to run Chrome using "roaming" profiles and save your settings and data online. Hopefully, Google Browser Sync will return in Google Chrome. There's already an experimental feature that synchronizes bookmarks with a Google account.

{ via PortableApps }

Even More Results from a Site

Donal Trung 3:29 AM Add Comment
Like most search engines, Google doesn't show too many results from a domain on a single search results pages. Until recently, Google displayed at most 2 consecutive results from a site, followed by a link that restricted the results to that site.

Some recent results show that Google adjusted this policy and it now allows 3 or even 4 consecutive results from the same site.



Google also displays 4 additional results bellow some forum threads and it makes it easier to find more results from a site without opening a new page.

Google Reader's Personalized Ranking

Donal Trung 3:10 AM Add Comment
Google Reader added a feature that tries to sort the posts from your subscriptions based on your interests. The option is called "sort by magic" and it's available in any Google Reader view, but it's not enabled by default. "Your personalized ranking is automatically generated. It takes into account your past reading behavior (including liking and starring), and global signals. This process is completely automated and anonymous," mentions an article from Google Reader's help center.

The ranking algorithm was designed to prioritize the posts from subscriptions you frequently read and the posts that are popular among your friends and other Google Reader users. "Try clicking the like button on things you think are important or enjoy reading, and we'll learn to put items like that first," suggests Google.


Another change is that the list of recommended feeds and the "popular items" feeds have been consolidated in the new "Explore" section. "We use algorithms to find top-rising images, videos and pages from anywhere (not just your subscriptions), collect them in the new Popular items section and order them by what we think you'll like best," explains Google.


Google Reader is now more clever, as it uses attention data to personalize your reading list based on your past behavior.

Google Custom Search for mobile

Donal Trung 4:07 PM Add Comment
Google Custom Search makes it easy for web site owners to add Google-powered search boxes to their sites. Since a rapidly growing percentage of web search traffic originates from smartphones, we're pleased to announce that Google Custom Search now formats search results for mobile phones.

If you own a web site and add a Google Custom Search box to it, when your users access the site on an Android-powered phone, iPhone, iPod Touch, or Palm Pre, they will can see optimized search results formatted for these devices. When they search on your web site, they are can be redirected to a Google-hosted Custom Search mobile results page created specifically for your Custom Search engine. If you'd like to serve these mobile results from your own web site, you can host your own version of the mobile Custom Search home page.



You can test this out on your phone right now. Here are a few samples: search for user-generated content (e.g., search for "zakumi") from sites like Wikipedia or Knol, or look for more information on Custom Search (e.g., search for "promotion"). As you can see, Custom Mobile Search results can match the look and feel of your own website, and we've enabled interactive features, such as label tabs for navigation, as well as promotions. Look for more features coming soon, too. For more information on Custom Search, and more details on the mobile configuration, visit the Custom Search blog.

Let us know how this works on your favorite smartphone.

Update on 10/23 @ 9:06 AM: Note that some configuration is required for the mobile-formatted results to be shown.

YouTube Subscribes You to Activity Feeds

Donal Trung 12:52 PM Add Comment
When you subscribe to a YouTube channel, you're no longer notified only when someone uploads new videos. Now YouTube subscribes you to "all videos uploaded, rated, favorited, and commented on" by a certain YouTube user.

You can change the default option by clicking on "edit subscription", selecting "Only videos uploaded by ..." and "Default to this for all future subscriptions", but not many people will find those options. This feature has been added last month, but I only found about it today.


YouTube's help center has more information: "A YouTube subscription means subscribing to a user's videos and their public activity (their favorites, their ratings, etc). By subscribing to a user, you'll receive updates and stay informed when something new occurs."

YouTube's options page lets you disable your activity feed. "If you'd like to change which of your actions are publicly available on your channel and Recent Activity Feed you'll need to make updates on the Sharing Settings page. There, you'll see many actions, and boxes next to these actions. When you select a box, it will appear on your channel, and users subscribed to you will be notified when you perform this action. For example, if you have "Favorite a video" selected, other users will see a subscription update when you add a new video to your Favorites."

It seems that YouTube is promoting its social component more aggressively by suggesting potential friends from the list of Google contacts, by enabling activity feeds and engaging interactivity.

Google Calendar Snooze

Donal Trung 9:21 AM Add Comment
Google Calendar implemented a basic snooze feature for pop-up notifications. You can click on "remind me again in 5 minutes" in Google Calendar's web interface.

"When alerted to an event via a pop-up notification and dismissing it, the calendar interface will show you an option to remind you again shortly. Click on that link if you want to be reminded of the event again," explains Google.


Another implementation is available in Google Talk Labs Edition, a Windows client for Google Talk that shows Google Calendar notifications.

Enhanced Google Music Search

Donal Trung 5:42 AM Add Comment
Google has a small music search engine that shows information about artists, albums and songs. You can use the music: operator in Google's search box to access the service. Unfortunately, the information is outdated, the links to reviews are broken and there's not much to see.

After many years of decay, Google decided to improve the service. CNet reports that Google will launch the new version of Google Music Search next week, in partnership with Lala and iLike. "The way One Box will work is that a person who keys in the names U2 or Coldplay, for example, will find a thumbnail photo of the artists, background information, as well as a listing of the music that they can preview."

"The new Google music offering will allow users to stream an entire song via a link from La La Media Inc.'s Lala.com, or a sample from MySpace's music site iLike.com. The Lala link on the Google page will let users listen to a song once free of charge. In addition to offering a free streaming link, the new arrangement will offer options to pay 10 cents for an online-only version or about $1 to download an MP3," says the Wall Street Journal.

TechCrunch has some screenshots of the OneBox and the interface resembles Yahoo's music artist shortcut. Last year, Yahoo partnered with Rhapsody to allow users to play up to 25 full songs a month.

Here are some screenshots of Google Music Search as it looks today:




Google's most popular music-related service is YouTube and it's surprising that YouTube doesn't offer a better experience for watching music videos. YouTube could easily add information about music artists, lyrics, album arts, music charts. Later this year, YouTube will launch Vevo, a site that will feature Universal's music videos.

Better Twitter Results in Google Search

Donal Trung 11:31 PM Add Comment
I posted in June that Google prepares a search engine for microblogging services like Twiiter. A Google blog post announces that Google has "reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in the search results". Real-time results from Twitter will probably included in a special OneBox triggered by keywords that are suddenly popular in Twitter.

"We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months. That way, the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you'll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information," explains Marissa Mayer.

The most difficult problem that Google has to solve is ranking tweets, as most microblogging search engines sort the results by date and aren't able to filter spam and irrelevant results.

Twitter's blog explains why the company co-founded by two ex-Googlers partnered with Google. "Our friends down in Mountain View want to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. A fast growing amount of information is coursing through Twitter very quickly, and we want there to be many ways to access that information. As part of that effort, we've partnered with Google to index the entire world of public tweets as fast as possible and present them to their users in an organized and relevant fashion."

In the meantime, Bing has released a Twitter search engine that sorts the results by date and highlights the top links shared by Twitter users.

New features added to Google Calendar

New features added to Google Calendar

Donal Trung 10:29 AM Add Comment
Some enhancements to Google Calendar have been released:
- Snooze alerts: Ability to be reminded again after a pop-up notification.
- Hide calendar from the list: Ability to hide unwanted calendars from your list of calendars.
- Your primary calendar timezone is now synced to your display timezone.


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

Languages included:
All languages supported by Google Calendar

How to access what's new:
- When alerted to an event via a pop-up notification and dismissing it, the calendar interface will show you an option to remind you again shortly. Click on that link if you want to be reminded of the event again.
- If you want to hide a particular calendar from your list of calendars, click on the drop down arrow to the right of the calendar name, then select 'Hide this calendar from the list'.
- You can adjust your display timezone in 'calendar settings' then in the 'general' section.


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Layers come to Google Maps for BlackBerry

Donal Trung 8:13 AM Add Comment
We're excited to announce that version 3.2 of Google Maps for mobile is now available for BlackBerry. This release contains many of the same features we recently launched on Windows Mobile and S60, including Layers.

Layers make it easy to view various types of information on your map and are especially helpful in situations when you're traveling somewhere new. For example, you can turn on the Wikipedia layer to read entries about nearby places, then use the transit lines layer to help map out a route. Or you can use the My Maps feature of Google Maps to create a collection of places you're planning to visit on your trip and then use Google Maps for mobile to access it from the road. You can also turn on the Google Latitude layer to see your friends' locations.

My coworker Mat is a big fan of Layers and made the below video to show you how he uses the feature. Check out the video, and get the latest version of Google Maps for your phone by visiting m.google.com/maps from your phone's browser.



Fullscreen Google Tasks

Donal Trung 3:18 AM Add Comment
It's not clear why Google doesn't treat Google Tasks as a standalone service: it's integrated with Gmail, Google Calendar, there's an iGoogle gadget and a mobile version, but no standalone interface. The most recent update is that the iGoogle gadget has a canvas view that's displayed when you maximize the gadget.

The gadget lets you create multiple lists, use the toolbar to clear completed tasks or to reorder tasks, sort the tasks by due date and view a list of the completed tasks.


If you don't want to use iGoogle, the URL of the canvas view is https://mail.google.com/tasks/canvas. Bookmark the page and pretend it's the standalone version of Google Tasks.

Here's the full list of Google Tasks interfaces:

https://mail.google.com/tasks/m - mobile version
https://mail.google.com/tasks/android - Android version
https://mail.google.com/tasks/iphone - iPhone version
https://mail.google.com/tasks/ig - iGoogle gadget
https://mail.google.com/tasks/canvas - iGoogle gadget in canvas view
(replace /tasks/ with /tasks/a/your_domain/ for the Google Apps versions).

Upload photos to Panoramio straight from your iPhone!

Donal Trung 3:33 PM Add Comment
Panoramio is a community of people who enjoy sharing photos of places with the rest of the world. These photos are surfaced in Google Earth and Google Maps as photo layers, where millions of users can see them.

Panoramio has just launched an application that makes it easy to upload photos to Panoramio straight from your iPhone. Read about it on the Panoramio Blog. Also, we're working hard on the Android version, so keep an eye out for it!






Posted by Fernando Delgado, Product Manager, Panoramio Team

Google Map Maker Layer

Donal Trung 3:28 PM Add Comment
If Google Maps doesn't offer high-quality maps for your country, you can improve them using Google Map Maker. "Google Map Maker allows you to create a map by adding or editing features such as roads, businesses, parks, schools and more. Using Google Map Maker tools, you can visually mark locations and add detailed information about them. Once you have submitted content, this information may be edited by other users or moderators. Your mapping contributions on Map Maker are eventually also made available on Google Maps," explains Google.

Google constantly updates Google Maps with data from Map Maker, but the changes aren't reflected immediately. To see the latest data from Google Map Maker, add this layer to Google Maps.


Google Map Maker lets you edit the maps for 174 countries because the maps licensed by Google aren't detailed enough.

Google's Homepage, a Canvas for Google Doodles

Donal Trung 12:55 PM Add Comment

Michael Lopez, Web Design Lead at Google, answered a few questions about Google's doodles. He says that it usually takes 1-2 days to design a doodle and that Google's homepage is "the biggest little canvas an artist can display their artwork on".
The doodle selection process aims to celebrate interesting events and anniversaries around the world that reflect Google's personality and love of innovation. We know that our list of doodles is not exhaustive, but we try to select doodles that show creativity and innovation in a fun, quirky way. Generally, we choose doodles from a variety of categories, such as those that celebrate holidays, anniversaries, and the lives of artists and inventors.

To see a gallery of Google doodles, check this page. Many of the doodles are only displayed in certain countries, so you should subscribe to Google's feed if you don't want to miss some doodles.
Make your web pages and applications Go Mobile too

Make your web pages and applications Go Mobile too

Donal Trung 3:23 PM Add Comment
We wouldn't be Google if we had a whole week of tips and tricks about all things mobile without giving a nod to the technical crowd. To conclude our week, we're asking you to "Go Mobile!" by making the mobile web faster. Read our article for a collection of best practices, tips, and resources for mobile web developers, part of our initiative at code.google.com/speed.

Following a marathon-and-a-half with Latitude

Donal Trung 8:22 PM Add Comment
A few months ago, I started something crazy. Like a lot of Googlers, I work in Mountain View, CA but live in San Francisco, 37 miles away. When I moved to SF, I got hooked on the local cycling craze, and I fell in with a group that cycles to commute. Early on, biking to work was something audacious. Eventually, I decided that I wanted to do something that felt audacious again. So I decided to run to work to raise money for Teach for America.

Now 37 miles is a lot -- about a marathon and a half. I'm thinking it'll take me about 6 hours. For the past 4 months I've been training, and now finally, tomorrow is the big day! Throughout the training, lots of people have said they'd love to see the run, but oddly, none of them were up for coming along. So, I decided to do the next best thing. I'm going to take my Latitude-enabled phone with me, and let people follow along from home. I've been blogging about my training and I've embedded the Google public location badge on my blog for the big day. This badge lets me make my Latitude location public and share my progress on the run with anyone who views my blog, even if we're not Latitude friends.

So, if you're up tomorrow, October 16, at 2:30 AM Pacific Daylight Time (or anytime over the next 6 hours or so), check out my progress and see if I make it into work on time. I could use the virtual encouragement!



Updated: I made it! 6 hours, 90 ounces of water, 3 energy gels and 1 banana later. Well, time to get back to work. Hope you all get our and run today!

Posted by Matt Ghering, Googler

Preview Google Documents Inside Gmail

Donal Trung 2:25 PM Add Comment
Gmail Labs has a new experiment that lets you preview documents, spreadsheets and presentations created using Google Docs. If you receive a message that links to a Google Docs file, you'll be able to preview the document inside Gmail.

"Opening these links in another tab or window is kind of annoying, plus it can be tough to keep the context of the email in mind while viewing the document," mentions the Gmail Blog. Previews are displayed at the bottom of the message, so I don't think you can maintain the context.


Gmail has 5 other experimental features that let you preview YouTube videos, Picasa Web and Flickr photos, Yelp reviews and voicemails from Google Voice, but I think these previews would be more useful if they were displayed inline, like Yahoo Mail's shortcuts or Interclue's tooltips.

Chrome OS, an Extended Google Chrome

Donal Trung 12:16 PM Add Comment
As previously anticipated, Chrome OS is a Linux distribution that includes a custom version of Chrome as the default browser. Google has recently posted a build of the custom Chrome and some people installed the .deb package (it's no longer available officially, but you can download it from other sources).

Chrome for Chrome OS is not very different from the browser you can already install in Windows, Linux or Mac. The main difference is that the browser includes UI elements from a traditional operating system: clock, battery status, network settings.



Since Google Chrome will include most of the features that are necessary to use an operating system, it's obvious that the browser is the only visible component of Chrome OS, a lightweight browser-centric operating system.

There's no reason to anxiously wait for Chrome OS, when you can already use Chrome in your favorite operating system and get the same features. A metaphor has become reality, but the result fails to impress.
Want to reach customers? Go Mobile!

Want to reach customers? Go Mobile!

Donal Trung 11:48 AM Add Comment
As we continue our week of all things mobile, we wanted to offer some tips and tricks to any marketers, advertisers, agencies, or businesses who want to use mobile as a platform to reach their customers. For ideas on how to work mobile into marketing campaigns, check out our post on the Agency blog.

You Ask, We Answer. Go Mobile!

You Ask, We Answer. Go Mobile!

Donal Trung 10:19 PM Add Comment
This week, as part of our celebration of all things mobile, we posed you this question - what do you want to know? And you told us! After two days, 519 people submitted 133 questions and cast 4,607 votes. We saw some common themes in your questions, so we grouped several together to address some of the most popular topics.

Google Voice
We received an overwhelming number of Google Voice questions - 3 out of the top 5 questions were about Google Voice - and we're happy you're so enthusiastic about and interested in this new product! As far as making Voice available to more users, we began giving current users the ability to invite friends and family on Tuesday. We will continue sending out invitations to people who have requested them on our website, and we plan to make additional friends and family invitations available in the future. For those of you outside the US, we plan to make Google Voice available internationally; however, we don't have specifics to share at this time. As for new features, we're certainly evaluating which highly requested features we can add to improve Google Voice, such as number portability, though we don't have anything to announce quite yet. Keep up on the latest with Google Voice by following their blog at http://googlevoiceblog.blogspot.com/.

Googlers' favorite phones
You asked us which phones are the most favored here on the Google mobile team. The answer's not particularly juicy, but it's honest: every phone! You'll see Googlers walking around campus carrying just about every phone under the stars, including multiple Android-powered devices, iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Nokia, etc. And the Mobile team takes it up a notch. It's quite common for us to carry multiple phones at any given time, and as we sit down in a meeting, we often see someone unload five different phones from their pockets onto the table. Don't have the right one handy? We just head to our "Sky Lab" and grab one of the over 800 phones available. By using lots of different devices, we can make sure we're designing products that work well for you, no matter which device YOU are using. We understand that the phone someone chooses to use everyday varies with personal preference, but we generally prefer phones with great browsers and fast performance. Of course, it never hurts to have the newest toy on the block.

Google Wave for mobile
We're still early in Wave's preview, but you can currently access Google Wave on both Android-powered devices and the iPhone by pointing the phone's browser to wave.google.com. Please note that we're still in preview phase, and as we've mentioned before, you may experience occasional downtime or run into some bugs with Wave on your mobile phone, similar to when you access Google Wave from your computer.

Web vs. App
We're often asked why certain products, such as Google Reader, are available as a web application, accessible through the browser, and not a native, downloadable application. At Google, we believe in the power of the web to give us the flexibility to build one app that can run in the browser on multiple phones, rather than developing a different app for every platform. With more capable mobile browsers and technologies like HTML5 and Gears, web apps deliver a great experience because they closely mirror the desktop web in overall look, feel and functionality. They also let us iterate fast and add lots of cool features quickly without having to build from scratch each feature for various devices and platforms. Of course in some cases, investing in native applications for multiple platforms make sense. For example, with Google Maps for mobile, the native app lets us get your location or quickly process lots of data, such as map tiles. That said, new browsers and faster phones are allowing for more powerful web apps - such as Google Maps on Palm Pre or Google Latitude on iPhone - that can also get your location and that are almost as fast as native apps. In the end, there are a lot of users out there on a lot of phones, and we develop our products to put the best experience possible in your hands and your pockets.

In some cases, such as Gmail for certain phones, we offer both a native and web app because we want users to have choice in deciding how they access their information. We believe that both methods - web apps and native apps - offer a rich mobile experience, and we are committed to providing the best possible experience to users, regardless of the underlying development technology.

Mobile Product Roadmap
You also asked lots of great questions around product and feature development and availability. As we mentioned on the original Q & A page, we aren't able to provide forward-looking information on features or products, but we love your enthusiasm for ideas around how we can make existing Google Mobile products more useful or just make more Google Mobile products period. We're always working to improve all of our mobile products and will continue to do so with our eyes and ears open for your ideas and feedback. So keep it coming in the Google Mobile Blog, the Help Forum, and especially the Product Ideas page!

Go Mobile!


Use Google's Document Viewer to Read PDF Files Online

Donal Trung 2:09 PM Add Comment
Google Docs Viewer is a handy way to view PDF, PPT and TIFF files online, without having to install plug-ins or additional applications. Unfortunately, Google didn't make it easy to use the viewer without having to manually generate URLs.

A Greasemonkey script automates the process by replacing all the links to PDF, PPT and TIFF files from a page with links to Google's document viewer. To use the script, you need to install Greasemonkey in Firefox or use a dev build of Google Chrome. It should also work in Opera, Safari + GreaseKit and Internet Explorer + IE7Pro.


Hopefully, the future versions of Firefox, Chrome and other browsers will allow users to associate content types with web services, so that you can open KML files in Google Maps, iCal files in Google Calendar or Microsoft Office files in Google Docs.

Integrated Interface for Google's Services

Donal Trung 12:54 PM Add Comment
Integrated Gmail is a Firefox extension that adds Google Calendar and Google Reader to Gmail's interface. It's a simple way to switch between the three Google services without opening multiple tabs.

The extension is customizable, so you can add other Google services, reorder them and delete the ones you don't use. The interface for each service loads in a collapsible box and it's preloaded when you open Gmail.


You can add events or check your agenda while composing messages, read your feeds and chat with your friends from the same interface or copy some text from an email to a notebook.

The extension is not perfect, it might slow down browsing, but it's an interesting experiment and a good starting point for an official unified interface for Google's services. iGoogle, Google's iPhone interface and the support for gadgets in Gmail show that this idea has a great potential.

How Google Uses the Toolbar Data

Donal Trung 1:18 AM Add Comment

Google Toolbar has a feature that lets you see the PageRank for all the pages you visit. It's not enabled by default, but Google Toolbar asks you if you want to enable the feature when you install the plug-in.

To show you the PageRank for any web page you visit, Google Toolbar sends the URL of the page to Google's servers. In other words, you're sending your entire browsing history to Google. If you don't enable the Web History service, the data is not connected to a Google account, but it's still useful.

Google Public Policy Blog mentions two uses of this data. "By getting a better sense of the most visited sites on the web, we're able to focus Google's automated malware scanners on the most popular URLs that users are currently visiting. Another example of the usefulness of this data is around measuring page load times. (...) For example, when your browser sends out a request to fetch Google Maps, we start the timer. When the page is finished loading, we stop the timer and send the elapsed time back to Google along with the Google Maps URL request."

As you can see from the screenshot above, Google Toolbar sends all kind of information to Google servers, including a parameter called querytime, that could be related to measuring page load times.

Google not only knows which are the most visited pages, but it can also track their loading times in a variety of hardware configurations.

orkut's New Conversational Interface

Donal Trung 11:42 PM Add Comment
Google Chrome's homepage for Brazil has a screenshot that shows a new orkut interface. Google decided to use some ideas from services like Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook and make it easy to post messages and to see the messages posted by your friends.


Google's social network is popular in Brazil and India, but other social networks are trying to steal the crown. A ComScore report shows that "in August, Orkut's unique visitors in India dipped by 800,000 within a month, from 16 million visitors in July to 15.2 million visitors in August. On the other hand, Facebook grew its unique visitors in India by 700,000, from 7.5 million visitors in July to 8.2 million visitors in August."

orkut has never been an innovative service: many of its features were copied from other social networks. orkut's popularity in Brazil and India is probably the only reason why Google didn't discontinue the service.

Update (October 29): The new version of orkut, built using Google Web Toolkit, is now available via invitation. "We've concentrated orkut's principal actions onto your homepage, making it a one-stop-shop for nearly everything that you'd like to do. Now you can chat, watch videos, and browse and search within your full friends and communities lists without ever having to open a new page." Check orkut's blog for more information.

{ Thanks, Carlos. }
Update - Go Mobile!

Update - Go Mobile!

Donal Trung 3:13 PM Add Comment
We've published some tips, tricks, and stories on various blogs about our mobile products, including Search, YouTube, Maps, and Gmail. We've also started tweeting - check out the YouTube and Google Maps Twitter accounts for tips about those mobile products. And as a reminder, you have until 11:59pm Pacific time today to submit and vote on questions for the Google Mobile team. We'll be answering some of the top questions on this blog tomorrow.

Shared folders and more in Google Docs

Shared folders and more in Google Docs

Donal Trung 9:43 AM Add Comment
The following enhancements have been made to Google Docs:

- Shared folders: You now have the ability to share entire folders with other collaborators.
- Upload multiple files: You can now upload multiple files to Docs simultaneously instead of uploading individually.
- Return of 'Items not in folders' section.

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

Languages included:
All languages supported by Google Docs

How to access what's new:
Shared folders: Select the folder in your docs list, then select 'share this folder' beside the folder name. The sharing dialog is just like sharing an individual document.

Upload multiple files: Click on 'Upload', then click on 'Select files to upload' and use 'Shift' or 'Ctrl' to pick multiple files. Then press 'Start upload' to upload and convert the files to Google Docs all in one go.

Items not in folders: In the navigation on the left of the Docs list, Click 'More searches' and then 'Items not in folders'.

For more information:
http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2009/10/shared-folders-and-more-in-google-docs.html

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Share Folders in Google Docs

Donal Trung 11:47 AM Add Comment
Google Docs has a new interface and an important new feature: sharing folders. You can now share folders with your contacts and even make some of your folders public. If you allow anyone to view or edit a folder, Google generates a publicly accessible URL for a page that lists all the files from your folder.

"When you share a folder, the new permissions are pushed to all sub-folders and docs within the folder. Normally this happens quickly, but occasionally, it could take a couple of minutes," explains Google.




Another change is that Google Docs has a Flash uploader that lets you upload multiple files at a time and to place the files in a folder.


{ Thanks, Albert. }
Captain's Log

Captain's Log

Donal Trung 9:11 AM Add Comment
This week marks the anniversary of Star Trek's original pilot episode "The Cage", and with it, the first appearance of the iconic Communicator. As one of the inspirations for today's mobile devices, the Communicator did more than just long-range voice calls; in fact, many of its locator and universal translation services still outpace today's state of the art. What's more, the Communicator was so critical to the daily workings of Starfleet that cadets' 4-year curriculum included mandatory courses in communications engineering.

Today's brand of mobile user doesn't need four years to figure out their phone. But this week, and with a tip of the hat to the USS Enterprise for the Communicator's anniversary, we did want to celebrate all things mobile by sharing some of Google's favorite mobile tips and tricks. All week long, we're going to be tweeting and blogging our top tips for using Google Search, Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, and more on your phone. We want to help every cadet go mobile, and get more out of their existing phone. Cadets with questions can ask them here until 11:59 PM Pacific Time, Tuesday night. Keep an eye on the Google Mobile Blog for answers to some of your questions on Wednesday, and tips for advertisers and developers later in the week. Everyone can boldly go... mobile!



Enhancements to Google Sites

Enhancements to Google Sites

Donal Trung 10:35 AM Add Comment
The following updates have been made in Google Sites:
- Page Templates: Lets you define default content as well as settings, like layout, that other collaborators can use when they create a new page.
- Ability to subscribe to an RSS feed from an 'announcements' page.

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

Languages included:
All languages supported by Google Sites

How to access what's new:
- To create a page template, create a new page with your template design and content, then from the 'More Actions' menu, select 'save as a page template'. This page template will now be an option when you create a new page or can change the page template type.
- To subscribe to an RSS feed from an announcements page, click on the 'subscribe to posts' link on that page.

For more information:
Read about these changes here

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New features for drawings in Google Docs

New features for drawings in Google Docs

Donal Trung 10:21 AM Add Comment
You now have additional drawing features 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:
In any document, spreadsheet or presentation, choose 'Insert Drawing' to see the drawing tools. The new features are:

  • Custom shapes and lines: Use the new 'Polyline' tool to create custom shapes, close shapes, fill them and reposition points.
  • Snap to Guides: Helps you align shapes with the canvas and other shapes when dragging and resizing.
  • Draw multiple lines: Start drawing a new line immediately after finishing a line, without having to re-select the line type.
For more information:
http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2009/10/new-features-for-drawings-in-google.html

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YouTube Shows Video Info

Donal Trung 7:43 AM Add Comment
If you visit youtube.com, right-click on a YouTube video and you'll find a new option: "show video info". YouTube displays a lot of information about the current video: resolution, bitrate, frame rate, file size, the number of dropped frames, volume. There's also an option to copy information useful for debugging.


In other YouTube news, Chad Hurley posts that the site serves more than one billion videos a day. "Three years after the acquisition, our platform and our business continue to grow and evolve. We are still committed to the same principles that informed the site early on, but we know things have changed. As bandwidth has increased, so has our video quality. (...) We're working hard to keep up with the fast pace of technology to bring you everything you would expect from the world's largest video site: better quality; a full spectrum of choices and tools for users, partners and advertisers; and ways to make the YouTube experience your own anywhere, anytime."

Quick Search Box for Android: Search your phone and the web

Donal Trung 11:38 AM Add Comment
I'm happy to announce Quick Search Box (QSB) for Android, a fast and versatile new system-wide search experience, available right from your phone's home screen. Since keystrokes are at a premium when you're typing on your phone, Quick Search Box provides suggestions as you type, making it easy to access whatever you're looking for by typing just a few characters.


Rather than giving you one search box for the web and another for your phone, QSB provides one single search box to let you search content on your phone, including apps, contacts, and browser history, as well as content from the web, like personalized search suggestions, local business listings, stock quotes, weather, and flight status, all without opening the browser. QSB even learns from your habits and provides faster access to the items you search for and use most often (by, for example, moving them higher on the suggestions list).



You can now also tap the microphone button next to the search box to search the web and call contacts by voice. The next time you want to search the web or call a friend, try speaking your query, like "pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge at sunset", or the name of a contact, like "Call Dave Burke, mobile phone", to save even more time. Note that voice search currently only works in English.



Finally, one of the coolest things about QSB is that it's not limited to searching what we think is useful - third party apps can also include suggestions in the list, making it faster to access the content you want from those apps, too. Look on Android Market for apps that support QSB, and enable their suggestions from the system search settings. (And if you're an app developer, check out our developer blog for more on how to leverage QSB for your app.)

We hope Quick Search Box will change the way you use your Android-powered phone by shortening the time and effort it takes to get the information you want while you're on the go. It's available in Android 1.6, so check it out and enjoy!