Google Apps highlights – 7/30/2010

This is part of a regular series of Google Apps updates that we post every couple of weeks. Look for the label “Google Apps highlights" and subscribe to the series. - Ed.

Over the last couple of weeks, we introduced several new capabilities in Google Docs for documents and drawings, and added the ability for organizations to tailor Google Apps to meet the needs of different groups within their organizations. We also launched a new version of Google Apps to meet the security and policy needs of government agencies in the U.S.

Document translation and undo smartquotes in Google Docs
On Tuesday we introduced automatic document translation to the new document editor in Google Docs. This allows you to instantly convert your document into any one of the 53 languages, powered by the technology behind Google Translate. And while we were at it, we added the ability for you to change smartquotes—angled quotation marks—back to straight quotation marks by pressing Ctrl-Z (Cmd-Z on a Mac).


Zoom and more in drawings
Last Monday, we also made improvements to the drawing editor in Google Docs, too. You can zoom in several different ways now: with the toolbar zoom icon, by drawing a rectangle around the area to zoom, zoom options in the “View” menu and with zoom keyboard shortcuts. We also introduced several changes to the shape-drawing tools, including pie and arc drawing improvements, the ability to duplicate shapes while resizing and rotating, new line ending decoration controls and new style options for the corners of shapes.




User policy management
One of the top requests from businesses, organizations and schools using Google Apps has been the ability to enable different applications for different groups within the organization. For example, a K-12 school may choose not to give Chat to students, but still allow faculty and staff to instant message with each other. Last Tuesday we launched user policy management, which lets administrators divide their users in to organizational units, and give each group access to different sets of services.


Google Apps for Government now available
On Monday we announced Google Apps for Government, a new version of Google Apps specifically tailored to the policy and security needs of federal, state and local governments in the United States. In addition to the applications and administrative controls available in the business edition of Google Apps, the service for government agencies has received Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) certification and accreditation from the U.S. General Services Administration, the first such certification for any cloud computing messaging and collaboration suite.

Who’s gone Google?
To go along with the launch of Google Apps for Government, we’re excited to share stories from two government organizations who are now using Google Apps. The U.S. Navy InRelief program is using Google Apps to improve coordination in disaster relief efforts, and the Berkeley Lab, a member of the National Laboratory system supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, is using Google Docs and Sites to support better collaboration among scientists and researchers.



We’re also thrilled to welcome another new crop of schools to Google Apps. Haverford College, Wayne County Community College District and Westwood College are all going Google!

I hope you're making the most of these new features, whether you're using Google Apps with friends, family, coworkers or classmates. For more details and updates from the Apps team, head on over to the Google Apps Blog.

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

Upcoming Gmail Features

How many changes can you spot in this screenshot of an internal version of Gmail from the Chromium OS bug tracker?



Here's what I noticed: there are three links for "mail", "contacts" and "tasks" below Gmail's logo, there's a new button for composing messages, a "call phone" option in Gmail Chat, a drop-down for switching between Google accounts and the options that let you select unread or starred messages use less space.

{ Thanks, Mateo. }

YouTube Increases Video Length Limit to 15 Minutes

YouTube decided to increase the video length limit from 10 minutes to 15 minutes. It may seem like a small change, but YouTube is testing the waters before dropping this limitation.

"Without question, the number one requested feature by our creators is to upload videos longer than 10 minutes. We've heard you, and today we're pleased to announce that we've increased the upload limit to 15 minutes," informs YouTube's blog.


The main reason why YouTube added a 10 minutes limitation back in 2006 was that a lot of users uploaded full-length movies and TV shows. Now that YouTube uses a content identification software and Viacom lost the case against YouTube, Google's video site can safely remove this arbitrary limitation. YouTube is cautious, so it will release incremental improvements.

"We've spent significant resources on creating and improving our state-of-the-art Content ID system and many other powerful tools for copyright owners. Now, all of the major U.S. movie studios, music labels and over 1,000 other global partners use Content ID to manage their content on YouTube. Because of the success of these ongoing technological efforts, we are able to increase the upload limit today," explains YouTube.

Find Blogs Using Google Blog Search

I remember that someone asked Matt Cutts if Google could restrict search results to homepages. He answered that it's a good suggestion, but adding [-inurl:html -inurl:htm] to your query works pretty well.

Now you can restrict Google results to homepages, but only if you're looking for blogs. Google Blog Search has always highlighted a small number of blogs related to your query and now you can find even more blogs by clicking on the "homepages" filter from Google's sidebar. Google's definitions of blogs is vague and it's likely that any site that offers feeds is included in Google Blog Search's index.

"We've updated Google Blogsearch to make it easier to find blogs that match your query, instead of just finding blog posts. The blogs tool on Google search results filters your results so you see only blog posts. We've added a homepages option that shows a full set of blogs related to your query," informs Jeremy Hylton in a Buzz post. Here are some examples: [tesla car], [google], [android].


{ spotted by François Beaufort. }

YouTube's Playlist Bar

YouTube started to show a persistent bar at the bottom of the page that shows the videos from the active playlist. For example, if you click on a video from your subscriptions, the bar lists other recent videos uploaded by your favorite users. Click on one of your favorite videos and the bar is populated with the rest of the videos. The bar is also useful if you add videos to the queue, a temporary playlist built dynamically.


Sterling, a reader of this blog who noticed the new bar, found an annoyance: "Even if the cursor isn't over the bar, it still pops up, so if you go rate a video, favorite or share it, as soon as you move near the bar, it pops up, blocking those settings, so you have to either scroll down or click on the bar to collapse it. It looks like the spot where the bar is triggered is just above where the video player ends when it's in shrink mode."

Once you collapse the bar, it no longer auto-expands, at least until you watch a new video. I couldn't find a setting that disables the bar or moves it to its original position.

{ Thanks, Sterling. }

Alex Trebek, teachers and Googlers unite at the Google Geo Teachers Institute

(Cross-posted from the Lat Long Blog)

What do Alex Trebek, teachers and Googlers have in common? Last week, these individuals and groups all came together at the Googleplex in Mountain View, CA to celebrate exploration and learning.

Google hosted its first Geo Teachers Institute, an intensive two-day workshop in which 150 educators received hands-on training and experience with Google Maps, Google SketchUp and Google Earth, including features like Mars, Moon and SkyMaps. Attendees from around the globe not only learned how these products work, but also discovered tips and resources for introducing these tools to students and using them to conceptualize, visualize, share and communicate about the world around them. Through this event, teachers were hopefully inspired to bring the world's geographic information to students in compelling, fresh and fun ways.

John Hanke, VP of Product Management, addressing the audience of educators

As part of our continued effort to collaborate with teachers and help students get a better sense of places across the globe, we also announced that Google Earth Pro is now available to educators for free through the Google Earth for Educators site. Educators from higher educational and academic institutions who demonstrate a need for the Pro features in their classrooms can now apply for single licenses for themselves or site licenses for their computer labs. A similar program exists for SketchUp Pro through the Google SketchUp Pro Statewide License Grant, which is currently being provided via grants to 11 states, and available to all others at the K-12 level at no cost.

In conjunction with these exciting Geo-related events and announcements, the Geo Education team also thought it’d be timely and fun to test Googlers’ geographic knowledge by hosting the company’s first-ever Google Geo Bee. With help from National Geographic, 68 teams relived their school years and took a written geography exam, competing for a spot on stage with Alex Trebek, who hosted the main event. The competition was based on the group version of the National Geographic Bee for students, which Google has sponsored for the past two years. Questions included those like “Which country contains most of the Balkan Mountains, which mark the boundary between the historical regions of Thrace and Moesia?” and “Ben Nevis, the highest peak in the United Kingdom, is located in which mountain chain?”

The winners of our Google Geo Bee: Ian Sharp, Marcus Thorpe and Rob Harford

The final three Google teams (the Tea-Drinking Imperialists, the Geoids and the Titans) all showed off their geographic literacy and answered a plethora of diverse and complex questions. In the end, it was the Tea-Drinkers who emerged the winners when they figured out that Mecca was the answer to the clue, “Due to this city’s location on a desert trading route, many residents were merchants, the most famous of whom was born around A.D. 570.” And they didn’t just walk away with bragging rights; thanks to Sven Linblad from Linblad Expeditions, they also won an amazing adventure trip to either the Arctic, the Galapagos or Antarctica.

Through all of these education efforts — for teachers, students and grown-up Googlers alike — we hope people of all ages never stop exploring.

Posted by Tina Ornduff, Geo Education Team

What to search when you’re expecting

This is part of our summer series of new Search Stories. Look for the label Search Stories and subscribe to the series. -Ed.

Having been a new dad for six months now, I’ve quickly come to learn two valuable parenting lessons. First, being a father is truly a full-time job—and second, sleep is completely overrated. Whether buying the latest bottles, binkies, blankets and bibs, or just blogging about the whole magical journey, becoming a father has been the most invigorating and moving experience of my lifetime.

This week, I’m excited to help introduce our latest search story, New Baby. The video really captures the joys (and costs!) of becoming a new parent. I’d like to share my heart-felt compassion with new dads everywhere (and of course, my wife and the other mothers out there who are the true heroes.) We will all rest when they head off to college—in the meantime, enjoy!



Posted by Murali Viswanathan, Product Manager

More About Google's Experiments

A new Google paper gives more information about Google's experiments. Google tests many new features on a subset of users and that's the reason why you may see a different Google search interface, a new background color for Google ads or more Google search results.

At Google, experimentation is practically a mantra; we evaluate almost every change that potentially affects what our users experience. Such changes include not only obvious user-visible changes such as modifications to a user interface, but also more subtle changes such as different machine learning algorithms that might affect ranking or content selection. (...)

An experiment in web search diverts some subset of the incoming queries to an alternate processing path and potentially changes what is served to the user. (...) In addition to specifying how serving is changed via alternate parameter values, experiments must also specify what subset of traffic is diverted. One easy way to do experiment diversion is random traffic, which is effectively flipping a coin on every incoming query. One issue with random traffic experiment diversion is that if the experiment is a user-visible change (e.g., changing the background color), the queries from a single user may pop in and pop out of the experiment (e.g., toggle between yellow and pink), which can be disorienting. Thus, a common mechanism used in web experimentation is to use the cookie as the basis of diversion; cookies are used by web sites to track unique users. In reality, cookies are machine/browser specific and easily cleared; thus, while a cookie does not correspond to a user, it can be used to provide a consistent user experience over successive queries. For experiment diversion, we do not divert on individual cookies, but rather a cookie mod: given a numeric representation of a cookie, take that number modulo 1000, and all cookies whose mod equals 42, for example, would be grouped together for experiment diversion. Assuming cookie assignment is random, any cookie mod should be equivalent to any other cookie mod.

That's probably the reason why you can "opt-out" from an experiment by clearing Google cookies.

{ via SEO by the Sea }

A New Social Google Service?

There's a lot of speculation about a new Google service called "Google Me" that is supposed to compete with Facebook. Most likely, the service will expand the already existing profiles and activity streams, while adding support for social apps.

Wall Street Journal reports that Google has been in discussion with companies that develop social games for Facebook. "Google is in talks with several makers of popular online games as it seeks to develop a broader social-networking service that could compete with Facebook, according to people familiar with the matter."

Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, said that "the world doesn't need a copy of the same thing", suggesting that Google won't try to imitate Facebook. It's clear that Google hasn't anticipated Facebook's success, placed losing bets and efforts like OpenSocial couldn't save Facebook's competitors from extinction.

Now that people spend a lot of time online using Facebook and find information filtered by their friends, even Google's search engine can become less useful. A lot of information is trapped inside Facebook: social connections, status messages, discussions and Google can't use most of the data to improve the relevance of search results.

Google has been more concerned with creating open standards for building social apps, for delivering real-time notifications, for public preferences, aggregating social graph data, but it didn't manage to build a coherent user experience that links all these pieces.

Translation and undo smartquotes in documents

Google Docs now supports automatic translation into 53 different languages. It is also now possible to change smartquotes into standard straight quotes.

Editions included:
Standard, Premier, Education, Team, Partner Edition and Google Apps for Government

Languages included:
All languages supported by Google Docs

How to access what's new:
To translate a document, select 'Tools', then 'Translate document'.

To change smartquotes into standard straight quotes, press Ctrl-Z after smartquotes are created.

For more information:
http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/07/translation-and-undo-smartquotes-in.html

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iGoogle now replacing the Start Page

The Start Page is being automatically be converted to iGoogle. The Start Page gadgets your users have configured will be migrated to iGoogle pages, after which users can modify their iGoogle gadgets, tabs and themes. Your Start Page web address will automatically redirect your users to iGoogle.

Editions included:
Standard, Premier, Education and Partner Editions

Languages included:
All languages supported by the Start Page

How to access what's new:
To reach iGoogle, visit http://partnerpage.google.com/yourdomain.com. Be sure to replace "yourdomain.com" with your actual domain name.

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Stargazing in Pittsburgh

Humans have always been fascinated by the night sky. And Googlers are no exception. Over the years, Google engineers have used their 20 percent time to create Google Sky, Moon, Mars and most recently Google Sky Map for Android. This handy app, built by engineers in our Pittsburgh office, turns your Android-powered phone into a live map of the night sky. You just point your phone to the sky and it gives you information about the stars and planets that you’re looking at. Since we introduced the app a year ago, Sky Map has been downloaded more than 5 million times.

On Sunday night we had a wonderful opportunity to share our passion for astronomy with our community in Pittsburgh at the Deep Sky Urban Star Party, held in the abandoned swimming pool at Leslie Park in Lawrenceville. We loaded up a bunch of Android phones with Sky Map and joined the Amateur Astronomers Association of Pittsburgh—who brought along their telescopes—and several hundred local residents for a night of stargazing.

As a Sky Map engineer the biggest thrill I get is when we get emails from people who have used our app to show a planet to their children for the first time. At the Star Party we were delighted to have the chance to show people around the night sky in person. It was great to meet so many people who were both excited by astronomy and interested in Google’s technology. Thanks for all of your ideas for new features, and a big thank you to the Leslie Park Pool Collective and all involved for organizing such a fun event.


Photos by Jason Parker-Burlingham

Posted by John Taylor, Software Engineer

Light summer reading: entertaining legal opinions

Last November, we added legal opinions to Google Scholar. Legal opinions consider serious issues and help refine the laws that govern our country—but they can also be surprisingly entertaining. We’ve shared some of these for your summer reading pleasure on the Google Scholar blog.

Rimes v. Curb Records, Inc., 2001 the opinion is written as a series of songs to be sung to tunes by LeAnn Rimes. It starts:

LeAnn Rimes
A very rich and famous star
Wasn't so rich in times afar
But what a talent she had!

Read the rest on the Google Scholar blog.

Posted by Anurag Acharya, Distinguished Engineer

Google Punch

A video posted by Google shows the name of a new Google Docs feature: Google Punch. A "punch" is a Google Docs filetype, just like a document, a spreadsheet or a presentation.


Here's the video:



One of the definitions of the word "punch" is "an iced mixed drink usually containing alcohol and prepared for multiple servings; normally served in a punch bowl". Maybe Google Punch is a free-form document that lets you combine data from other documents, spreadsheets, presentations and forms. What do you think?

{ Thanks, Jeremy and Mark. }

Google Apps for Government now available

To meet the security and policy requirements of federal, state and local government agencies in the U.S., we have introduced Google Apps for Government. In addition to the applications and administrative controls available in the business edition of Google Apps, the service for government agencies has received Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) certification and accreditation from the U.S. General Services Administration.

Editions included:
Google Apps for Government

Languages included:
US English

For more information:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/introducing-google-apps-for-government.html

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Introducing Google Apps for Government

Today we’re excited to announce a new edition of Google Apps. Designed with guidance from customers like the federal government, the City of Los Angeles and the City of Orlando, Google Apps for Government includes the same great Google applications that people know and love, with specific measures to address the policy and security needs of the public sector.

We’re also pleased to announce that Google Apps is the first suite of cloud computing messaging and collaboration applications to receive Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) certification and accreditation from the U.S. General Services Administration. The FISMA law applies to all information systems in use by U.S. federal government agencies to help ensure they’re secure. The federal government’s General Services Administration has reviewed the documentation of our security controls and issued an authorization to operate, the official confirmation of our FISMA certification and accreditation. This review makes it easier for federal agencies to compare our security features to those of their existing systems; most agencies we have worked with have found that Google Apps provides at least equivalent, if not better, security than they have today. This means government customers can move to the cloud with confidence.

Take Berkeley Lab, a member of the national laboratory system supported by the U.S. Department of Energy. It’s managed by the University of California and conducts unclassified research across a wide range of scientific disciplines. Berkeley researchers collaborate with scientists around the world, so emailing version upon version of documents among collaborators and trying to juggle disparate files is difficult. Berkeley Lab researchers have been using Google Apps to share documents that live in the cloud, and can view and edit documents and spreadsheets simultaneously knowing they are always working from the latest information. (Read more from Berkeley Lab’s Chief Information Officer on the Enterprise blog.)

And we’re not stopping with FISMA certification. Google Apps for Government will continue to evolve to meet unique government requirements. Google Apps for Government stores Gmail and Calendar data in a segregated system located in the continental United States, exclusively for our government customers. Other applications will follow in the near future. The suite is a “community cloud”—as defined by the National Institute for Science and Technology—to support the needs of our government customers. Google Apps for Government is available now to any federal, state or local government in the United States.

With reviews of our security controls in place, government agencies can more easily take advantage of all the benefits of one of the world’s best cloud computing systems. Google’s cloud offers higher reliability, best-in-class disaster recovery and access to a steady stream of innovation—all of which can provide substantial improvements over existing systems in addition to significant cost savings. And with no hardware or software to install and maintain, Google Apps for Government allows agencies to redeploy resources to technology projects core to their mission of serving the public. This new edition should give governments an even stronger case for making the move to the cloud.

Update July 27: Clarified details regarding the source of our certification and accreditation.

Posted by Kripa Krishnan, Technical Program Manager, Google Apps for Government

An Even Better Way to Find Places Nearby

With six updates in six months, Google Maps for Android has been getting plenty of new features, both big and small. A continued focus with each update has been on giving you better ways to find places nearby. In the most recent updates, Maps has gotten features like swiping between search results and info like photos, reviews, and more helpful content on the result pages. With today’s launch of Google Maps for mobile 4.4, we’re introducing an even easier way to find places around you: a dedicated Places icon that lets you quickly look up nearby places and pick a place to go using updated Place Pages, just like on your computer.

On Android-powered phones with Google Maps 4.4, you’ll find the new Places icon in the app launcher with the rest of your apps. Press and drag it right onto your home screen to use it when you’re looking for a restaurant, shoe store, movie theater or any other type of local business. You'll get a detailed list of all the nearest places and can choose one to learn more about it on its Place Page.

Search for several convenient types of places with the default categories or add your own for your most frequent searches. You can also use the search bar at the top to type or speak any query. I tend to use the “coffee” search a lot, but I’ve also looked for “gas stations” on the road, “ice cream shops” in my neighborhood, and even specific places like “Chelsea Market” on a recent trip to New York.

Of course, you’ll often want to learn more before deciding where to go. With updated Place Pages, you should be able to find all you need to know about a place, whether you’re wandering into a new restaurant or deciding from your couch. In addition to photos and reviews, Place Pages now have a bunch of new details, such as prices, parking and menu links to inform your quest for the perfect steak. You'll also notice that the search results list now highlights business opening hours in addition to compass direction and distance -- consider it your late night caffeine radar.

Google Maps for mobile 4.4 is available now for Android 1.6 and above. Just search for Google Maps in Market or tap here from your phone. The Place Page and search result updates are coming soon for BlackBerry users so keep an eye out for an update at m.google.com/maps (from your BlackBerry Browser) or on our Twitter and Facebook pages.

Visit our Help Center to learn more, ask questions in our Help Forum, or give us suggestions and vote on other people’s on the Mobile Product Ideas page.

Update: Google Maps for BlackBerry version 4.4 is now available with the new search results view and Place Page details. From your BlackBerry's Browser, go to m.google.com/maps to install it now.

Posted by Michael Siliski, Product Manager, Google Mobile Team

Honoring the 20th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act

[Cross-posted on Google Public Policy Blog] 

Bending, walking, breathing, hearing, seeing and sleeping are simple things that are often taken for granted, as are thinking, learning, and communicating.

Twenty years ago today, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed into law. This milestone legislation bans persons or companies from discriminating against anyone with limited abilities. It’s hard to imagine a world in which the right to participate in activities commonly enjoyed by the bulk of the population are denied or inadequately accommodated, but that was the case before ADA.

The efforts of the advocates who came to Washington two decades ago to rally for their civil rights has transformed so much of the modern world around us. As someone who’s worn hearing aids since I was 13, for example, I very much appreciate that most television programs and DVDs or Blu-Ray disks are captioned. On my way home, I might pass through a door that I know is wide enough for a wheelchair -- because the ADA set the building codes that require it. I see service animals on the DC Metro, accessible checkout aisles at my grocery store, ramps on sidewalks, and designated parking in movie theater lots: all there because of the important provisions included in the ADA.

Whereas the ADA set legal standards for ensuring equal rights for Americans with disabilities, Google is keenly aware that technology can help all users better enjoy the world around them. From opening millions of titles of printed content to persons with visual impairments through Google Book Search, to providing ready and easy-to-use captions on YouTube, to including a built-in screenreader and text-to-speech engine in Android, to introducing new extensions on Chrome to make online text easier to read, we’re serious about honoring our mission to make the world’s information universally accessible and useful. You can keep up with our progress at google.com/accessibility.

Congratulations to all those who work to make the ADA a living, breathing reality. For all the years I’ve been working on policy in Washington, it’s still rare to see a law that has had as positive and fundamental an influence on our lives as this Act. There still is work to be done to meet the goals of ADA, and we are committed to doing our part.

Posted by Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist

Google's New Dictionary OneBox

Google added a new OneBox result for definitions. The OneBox uses data from Google Dictionary, shows pronunciation information, short definitions and links to other reference sites like Dictionary.com and Answers.com. Google shows the definition of an English word only if it's likely to be useful, so you'll usually see the OneBox when you search for obscure words or technical terms.


"We added implicit triggering, which means you can simply search for [flummox] and find the definition, you don't have to search for [define flummox] or [what is flummox]. We've also improved the definition result snippet to show more details such as parts of speech and pronunciation," explains Google.

Unfortunately, Google's new OneBox is redundant and inconsistent. If you type [salient] in Google's search box, Google Suggest already shows a definition of the word from Princeton's WordNet.


Search for [define salient] and Google shows a definition from WordNet, not from Google Dictionary.


Tip: to trigger the new OneBox when it's not displayed by default, add en:en to your query. For example, search for [en:en emulsion].

This week in search 7/25/10

This is one of a regular series of posts on search experience updates. Look for the label This week in search and subscribe to the series. - Ed.

As we seek to expand the most comprehensive search experience on the web, we've made a number of recent enhancements to your search results. Ultimately, what you're looking for isn't limited to text websites; you may be looking for a tweet, a video or a place—and we want to make sure you can find all of it. This week, we've made it easier to find definitions and images.

Dictionary search feature enhancements
When it comes to dictionary-related searches, both content and precision are vital. Recently, we expanded our dictionary search feature to all global English users, giving you quick and easy access to even more useful dictionary information. We added implicit triggering, which means you can simply search for [flummox] and find the definition, you don't have to search for [define flummox] or [what is flummox]. We've also improved the definition result snippet to show more details such as parts of speech and pronunciation. Stay tuned for more enhancements here, including an expanded mobile experience.

Example search: [stupendous]


Our biggest redesign yet for Google Images
Our focus on comprehensiveness extends itself to our other search properties, including Google Images. Over time, Google Images has become a very popular source of visual information. For many of you, Google Images has become a great tool for inspiration, learning, and even shopping. And, today, we've indexed more than 10 billion images -- so you can imagine the depth.

With this in mind, we have introduced a new design for Google Images. You'll now see a dense, tiled layout that makes it easy to view many images—up to 1,000—on a single scrollable page. In addition, we made the thumbnail previews on the results page larger, so all you have to do is hover over an image to get an even larger view. You'll also find more information about the image, and other image-specific features in the thumbnail preview. Once you click an image, you'll be taken to a new landing page that displays a large image directly over the website that hosts the image—so you can instantly learn more about the source and context.

Example search: [sunflowers] or [new york]

We hope you enjoyed this week's changes making your web experience even more comprehensive. Stay tuned for more search enhancements next week.

Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience

A Strange Gmail Bug

Steven Schofield noticed a strange Gmail bug: attachments use more storage than they should.

For example, one of my Gmail accounts used 1567 MB of storage. I composed a new message, attached a file that had about 8.42 MB and saved it as a draft. Gmail's footer message was: "You are currently using 1590 MB (21%) of your 7479 MB." Gmail used 3 times more storage for my message and MIME encoding couldn't add so much overhead. I discarded the message and Gmail informed me I was using 1579 MB. After composing a message and deleting it, I lost about 12 MB.

I composed another message, attached the same file and sent it to an email address. Gmail used 23 MB to send a file that only had 8.42 MB. After deleting the message, I lost once again 12 MB of storage.

The most likely explanation is that Gmail's Flash uploader creates hidden messages for each file you upload. When Gmail launched the Flash uploader, these temporary messages were sent to the trash. Now they're probably no longer displayed.

Update (a day later): it's fixed. Google now shows the temporary messages from the trash.

Life in a Day: thank you for filming

(Cross-posted from the YouTube Blog)

On behalf of Ridley Scott, Kevin Macdonald, LG, the Sundance Film Festival and all of us at YouTube, thank you to everyone who took part in “Life in a Day.” Using the footage you shot, Kevin will now begin to build the world’s largest user-generated documentary, capturing what it was like to be alive on July 24, 2010.



Remember that even though filming day is over, you have until July 31 at 11:59 p.m. PST to upload your video to the Life in a Day channel. Be sure to subscribe as well, so you can receive directorial updates from the cutting room floor. If your video is selected for inclusion in the final film, you'll be hearing from Life in a Day Films, so be on the lookout for an email.

We'll be in touch again in early January with more details on the film's premiere at Sundance.

Congratulations to everyone.

Posted by Nate Weinstein, Entertainment Marketing Associate

Play Snake in YouTube's Player

YouTube's player has a clever Easter egg: make sure the player has focus (try pausing and resuming the video), hold the left key for about 2 seconds and press the up key, while still holding the left key. You can now play Snake while watching the video.



This trick only works in YouTube's new player, which is only available for videos that don't include annotations or ads. It's limited to the videos played on YouTube's site and it doesn't work for embedded videos. Here's an example of video you can use to play Snake.

YouTube is not the only Google product that lets you play games. Gmail has a Labs feature called "old Snakey" that adds a Snake game inside Gmail.

{ via TheNextWeb. Thanks, Kevin. }

Google Chrome Canary Build

Google Chrome's team added a new releases channel for early adopters and developers: Canary builds. Unlike the beta channel and the dev channel, Canary builds can be installed without overwriting a regular Chrome build. That means you can install both a Canary build and a regular build that could be on the stable, beta or dev channel.

The Canary build is only available for Windows, it's "installed to a different path, gets updated separately, and runs side by side with an existing stable/beta/dev installation". Google says that the Canary build will usually be the same as the dev build. "Sometimes if necessary, we may push additional updates on Canary build so its version is higher than dev."


"The canary usually updates more frequently than the Dev channel (higher risk
of bustage), and we're working on making it update as often as we have
successful nightly builds. When something doesn't work on the canary, I can
just fall back to my Beta Google Chrome," says Mark Larson, from the Chrome team.

Now that Google Chrome synchronizes bookmarks, settings and it will also synchronize extensions, passwords, browser history, it doesn't even matter that the two builds use separate profiles. Unfortunately, you can't make Chrome Canary your default browser. Google's explanation that it's "a secondary installation of Google Chrome" doesn't make any sense.

Lee Mathews from DownloadSquad thinks that having four flavors of Chrome is "Vista-esque". Google probably noticed that there are many people who install random Chromium builds and decided to offer a channel that updates even faster than once a week, while allowing users to install a stable version of Chrome, just in case the "bleeding edge" builds have major bugs or they're unstable.

Google Chrome Canary builds - Windows-only, for now.

{ Thanks, Tim. }

Life in a Day: Cameras, set, action...today!

(Cross-posted from the YouTube Blog)

What are you doing today? Something routine like cooking breakfast or taking the dog for a walk? Or is it something extraordinary like your child's first soccer game or your wedding day?

Whatever it is, big or small, we hope you’ll capture it on video and take part in "Life in a Day", a user-generated documentary that will tell the story of a single day on Earth, as seen through your eyes. You have until 11:59 p.m. local time to film something, so get going. For more information, visit the Life in a Day channel.

Get out those cameras and let's make film history.

Posted by Nate Weinstein, Entertainment Marketing Associate

A New Chrome Release Every 6 Weeks

Chromium Blog informs us that Google will release stable Chrome versions more often. "Running under ideal conditions, we will be looking to release a new stable version about once every six weeks, roughly twice as often as we do today. (...) Since we are going to continue to increment our major versions with every new release (i.e. 6.0, 7.0, 8.0, 9.0) those numbers will start to move a little faster than before. Please don't read too much into the pace of version number changes - they just mean we are moving through release cycles and we are geared up to get fresher releases into your hands!"

Anthony Laforge says that it takes too long to release new features and users have to wait for months to use them. Google Chrome 4.1 was an interesting experiment: the first Chrome release that added a very small number of features. Instead of waiting until May, when Chrome 5 was released, users could try inline translation and content filtering in March.

Here's a list of the major Chrome releases:

Chrome 1 - December 11, 2008 (first stable release)
.. 161 days ..
Chrome 2 - May 21, 2009 (full-page zoom, autofill)
.. 117 days ..
Chrome 3 - September 15, 2009 (HTML5 video, themes)
.. 132 days ..
Chrome 4 - January 25, 2010 (extensions, bookmark sync)
.. 57 days ..
Chrome 4.1 - March 23, 2010 (translation, content filtering)
.. 63 days ..
Chrome 5 - May 25, 2010 (better HTML5 support, tabbed bookmark manager, built-in Flash)

It's clear that Google wants to decrease the interval between two releases from about 100 days to about 50 days. That means each release will include less new features and will be less important.

Screen Capture Extension for Google Chrome

Google repackaged some of the code from the Feedback extension as a screen capturing Chrome extension. Google's tool lets you save the content of a tab as a PNG image, annotate the screenshot and highlight interesting parts of the image. The extension is able to capture the visible content of a tab, a region or the whole page, but it needs to scroll the page to capture the content that's not visible.


Google's extension has a better interface than Webpage Screenshot, but it has less annotation options than Awesome Screenshot. Another advantage of Google's extension is that it scrolls the page horizontally if it's necessary.

{ Thanks, Arpit. }

YouTube's New Embedding Code

Ever since YouTube started testing an HTML5 interface I wondered why YouTube's embedding code is not future proof. YouTube's code creates a Flash object and can't take advantage of the native support for videos in modern browsers. YouTube will always have to support the existing Flash player, but it's strange to see that the embedding code isn't more flexible.

YouTube API Blog announces that YouTube will switch to a new embedding code that uses an iframe. "If you use the new embed code style, your viewers will be able to view your embedded video in one of our Flash or HTML5 players, depending on their viewing environment and preferences. In instances where HTML5 isn't supported (e.g. our HTML5 player can't play videos with ads), we use Flash."

Here's an example of embed code:

<iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/VIDEO_ID" frameborder="0">
</iframe>

YouTube says that "an additional benefit of the new embed style is that it will eventually allow embeds to work on mobile devices, which typically use a built-in player instead of Flash or HTML5." iPhone, Android phones and other mobile devices use a special application for YouTube, while mobile browsers use plug-ins that detect YouTube's embedding code and replace it with some code that can be handled by the built-in YouTube app. The new embedding code will allow YouTube to use the HTML5 video tag in browsers that support this feature.

In a previous post, YouTube's Kuan Yong said that "Flash Player's ability to combine application code and resources into a secure, efficient package has been instrumental in allowing YouTube videos to be embedded in other web sites. Web site owners need to ensure that embedded content is not able to access private user information on the containing page, and we need to ensure that our video player logic travels with the video (for features like captions, annotations, and advertising). While HTML5 adds sandboxing and message-passing functionality, Flash is the only mechanism most web sites allow for embedded content from other sites."

Announcing the winners of the Google Online Marketing Challenge 2010

This year we held the third edition of the Google Online Marketing Challenge — a global university competition that gives students hands-on exposure to online marketing. Each team receives the equivalent of $200 to work with a local company and create an online marketing campaign. Teams have three weeks to mastermind a strategy before submitting a campaign report to an international judging panel of professors.

We’re delighted that 3,034 teams from 60 countries participated in the 2010 Challenge, representing an increase of 39 percent from last year and making the Challenge one of the world’s largest university competitions.

The global winners of the Challenge are Lauren Williams, Ganesh Chaudhari, Jeeana Atmarow, Allison Miller, Mohammed Assiri and Hui Min Chua from the University of Western Australia, who promoted the kids’ novel The Adventures of Charlie & Moon. Over the three week campaign, the novel’s website saw a huge jump in visits—nearly 800 percent. The team will visit the Googleplex in Mountain View, California and each of the members will receive a laptop for their great performance in the Challenge.

We also had three regional winners: for the Americas, the winning team comes from Carnegie Mellon University in the U.S. and a team from the Warsaw School of Economics in Poland won in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa). In the Asia Pacific region, the winners come from the Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia. Find more details about our winners here.

Since we first held it in 2008, the Google Online Marketing Challenge has grown each year, allowing thousands of students globally to learn about online advertising and help small businesses to improve their online presence. The education they’ve already received becomes real in the Challenge: real money, real campaigns, real businesses and real results. And the hands-on experience with online marketing gives them real skills they can use in their careers.

If you’re interested in competing in the 2011 Challenge, register now. We’ll open the sign-up period in the fall.

Posted by Alex Gibelalde, Product Marketing Manager

YouTube Play jury selected and ready to view your work

(Cross-posted from the YouTube Blog)

For artists, YouTube is a 21st century canvas. Since the YouTube Play project was announced last month, more than 6,000 videos ranging in genres, topics and budget have been submitted from 69 countries, and the YouTube Play channel has received over 2 million views.

Today, we’re unveiling the jury for YouTube Play, which includes some of the world’s leading artists, from international film festival winners and renowned photographers to performance and video artists on the cutting edge of art.

YouTube Play jurors include musician and performance artist Laurie Anderson; musical group Animal Collective; visual artists Douglas Gordon, Ryan McGinley, Marilyn Minter and Takashi Murakami; artists and filmmakers Shirin Neshat, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Darren Aronofsky; and graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister, with Guggenheim Chief Curator and Deputy Director Nancy Spector serving as jury chairperson.

Over the course of the next few months, these jurors will watch countless hours of videos submitted by the international YouTube community and select the most creative and inspiring work to showcase at the Guggenheim museums in October.

Already, this campaign has drawn some remarkable talent, and we’re looking forward to seeing more of your submissions in our quest to find the most creative video art in the world and showcase it alongside van Gogh and Picasso. The deadline for getting your videos in is July 31. For more information about the jurors and to learn more about how to participate, check out youtube.com/play.

Posted by Ed Sanders, Senior Marketing Manager

Apply template themes to existing sites in Google Sites

Google Sites now supports the ability to apply a site template’s theme to any existing site. This does not apply the entire template to your existing site, just the template's theme.

Editions included:
Standard, Premier, Education, Team, Partner Edition and Google Apps for Government

Languages included:
All languages supported by Google Sites

How to access what's new:
Click 'More actions', then 'Manage site'. Go to 'Themes', then select 'Browse the theme gallery' to choose a template's theme.

For more information:
http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/07/apply-template-themes-to-existing-sites.html

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Faster dialing with Google Voice on Android and Blackberry devices

(Cross-posted with the Google Voice Blog)

At Google we are obsessed with speed. Our mantra is faster = better. This is true for our Google Voice mobile apps as well. When you want to make a call, your phone should connect you as quickly as possible, whether you’re calling via Google Voice or not.

Today we are launching an enhancement to the Google Voice mobile app on Android and Blackberry phones, which makes placing calls much faster. We call this feature “direct access numbers.” Here’s how it works:

Until today, the Google Voice app had to make a request to the Google Voice server every time you wanted to make a call to send us the phone number you wanted to dial. Then the call would be connected via a Google Voice access number. With direct access numbers, we assign a unique phone number to every person you call. This means that we no longer need to use your data network to access the server each time you make a call, so calls will be placed much faster.

The updated Android app is available from Android Market starting today. For Blackberry users, you can download the app by visiting http://m.google.com/voice from your mobile device. You will need a valid Google Voice account to use the app, and at this time, Google Voice is available in the US only.

Posted by Flavio Lerda, Software Engineer

2010 EMEA Scholars’ Retreat: top CS students share their impressions

Back in June, our Zurich engineering headquarters welcomed 100 of EMEA’s brightest computer science students to our annual Europe, Middle East and Africa Scholars’ Retreat. Recipients of the Google Europe Scholarship for Students with Disabilities joined Anita Borg Memorial Scholars and Finalists for three days of workshops, technical talks, poster sessions, networking events and, of course, lots of fun! Check out our video below to hear from scholars and speakers in their own words:



Our academic scholarships are designed to support a new generation of talented, diverse computer scientists from all backgrounds. If you want to learn more, visit www.google.com/university/emea for a complete list of scholarships, grants and other opportunities available to students and academics.

Posted by Caitlin Pantos, University Programs Specialist

He said, she said: a sibling search story

This is part of our summer series of new Search Stories. Look for the label Search Stories and subscribe to the series. -Ed.

My sister is my best friend in the world. But that wasn’t always the case. When we were young, my sister and I always had our sibling rivalries. Quarrels over who got more (or fewer) birthday presents, ongoing debates around whose week it was to walk the dog and your average diary lock-picking weren’t uncommon. But now that we've grown older, it's become clear that those moments have brought us closer together, and today my sister is my best friend.

Our search story this week really struck a chord with me, and I’m excited to help introduce our latest video, “Brother and Sister.” It’s a fun, playful snapshot of an evolving sibling friendship. I hope you enjoy this week’s video as much as I did.




Posted by Bernardo Hernandez, Head of Consumer Marketing

Google Image Search Bugs

The most significant Google Image Search redesign comes with many useful features and a lot of bugs.

If you type a query in Google Image Search, click on the search button, scroll the page, click on the Google logo, type another query and select the "images" option, Google scrolls to a random part of the page. For example, it could scroll to the page 57.


Another issue is that Google's large thumbnails for PNG files are sometimes pixelated JPEGs.


Clicking on the "more" link in Google's sidebar refreshes the page and doesn't show additional Google services. When you go back to the results page after clicking on the results, you need to wait until Google scrolls to the right position and some of the images are loaded again. Scroll the results page, resize the browser's window and you'll notice that Google readjusts the images and jumps to the top of the page.

The new interface has too many bugs and should have been tested more thoroughly before being released. Google offers an option to switch to the previous version at the bottom of the page, but it's not persistent.

{ Thanks, François Beaufort. }

User policy management now in Google Apps Control Panel

Google Apps administrators can now segment their users into different organizations and control which Google services are enabled/disabled for each of those different sets of users.

- Allows creation of organizations in a tree-like hierarchy
- Manage membership of users into one organization
- Specify policies for which services are on/off by organization

Updates have also been made to the Google Apps Directory Sync Tool and the Provisioning API to take this new functionality into account.

Editions included:
Premier and Education Editions

Languages included:
US English only

How to access what's new:
The Control Panel tab ‘Users and groups’ now becomes ‘Organization & users’. Click on this new tab to create a new organization.

To create organizational units:
1. In the organizational tree, highlight the organizational unit to which you want to add a child.
2. Click the ‘Add suborganization’ button..
3. Enter a name and description for the new organization.
4. Click the ‘Add organization’ button.
5. The new organizational unit appears as a child of the organizational unit you selected at step 1.

To enable/disable services for specific users:
1. Services that are disabled on the main dashboard will be disabled for all users.
2. Click the ‘Organizations & users’ tab.
3. Select the appropriate organization.
4. Click the ‘Services’ sub-tab.
5. Click ‘On/Off’ to change service settings or if it's a sub-organization, click 'Override this setting' or 'Use inherited' links to change settings.

- This feature is only available to domains using the ‘Next Generation’ version of the control panel. To enable this version in the control panel, click ‘Domain settings’, then ‘General’ and ensure the checkbox ‘Next generation (US English only)’ is enabled.
- This feature is being rolled out gradually.
- A user can exist in only a single node in the hierarchy tree.

For more information:
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/07/introducing-user-policy-management-for.html
Help Center: http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?answer=182426

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Google Image Search Adds Infinite Scrolling and Shows Less Clutter

Google launched a new interface for Google Image Search which replaces pagination with infinite scrolling, hides the information about the results until you mouse over an image, shows bigger images and uses space more efficiently. When you click on a results, Google shows a larger thumbnail on top of the web page that included the image.



Google says that the new layout is more dense, you can get up to 1,000 images when you scroll and you can scroll using keyboard shortcuts like Page Down and Page Up. Google still shows page numbers "so you don't lose track of where you are".

Another new feature is image search ads that will replace the text ads that are displayed at the moment in Google Image Search. "This ad format combines an image with text, offering richer, more relevant advertising on Google Images search results pages."

It's interesting to see that Google reintroduces two features previously tested without success: image ads and a simplified interface that hides useful information about images. Infinite scrolling was one of the distinctive features of Bing Image Search and Windows Live Image Search.

Google Image Search's new interface makes it easier to scroll through results, but I don't think a regular user will look at hundreds of images. Google's goal is to find relevant results, so showing too many images is overwhelming and a lot of the images aren't useful. Hiding information about the image's size, the domain that includes the image and no longer showing a snippet from the page is a purely aesthetic decision. Sometimes it's useful to know if an image is large, if it's included by a site you trust and even the filename could offer relevant information. Google offers a "show sizes" option in the sidebar, but it's not enough.

Old interface:


New interface:


Bing:


If you don't see the new interface yet, try a different browser. Google says that only 10% of the users can see the new UI and it will be available for everyone in the coming days.

Ooh! Ahh! Google Images presents a nicer way to surf the visual web

When you think about “information,” what probably comes to mind are streams of words and numbers. Google’s pretty good at organizing these types of information, but consider all the things you can’t express with words: what does it look like in the middle of a sandstorm? What are some great examples of Art Nouveau architecture? Should I consider wedding cupcakes instead of a traditional cake?

This is why we built Google Images in 2001. We realized that for many searches, the best answer wasn’t text—it was an image or a set of images. The service has grown quite a bit since then. In 2001, we indexed around 250 million images. By 2005, we had indexed over 1 billion. And today, we have an index of over 10 billion images.

It’s not just about quantity, though. Over the past decade we’ve been baking deep computer science into Google Images to make it even faster and easier for you to find precisely the right images. We not only find images for pretty much anything you type in; we can also instantly pull out images of clip art, line drawings, faces and even colors.

There’s even more sophisticated computer vision technology powering our “Similar images” tool. For example, did you know there are nine subspecies of leopards, each with a distinct pattern of spots? Google Images can recognize the difference, returning just leopards of a particular subspecies. It can tell you the name of the subspecies in a particular image—even if that image isn’t labeled—because other similar leopard images on the web are labeled with that subspecies’s name.

And our “Similar colors” refinement doesn’t just return images based on the overall color of an image. If it did, lots of images would simply be classified as “white.” If you’re looking for [tulips] and you refine results to “white,” you really want images in which the tulips themselves are white—not the surrounding image. It takes some heavy-duty algorithmic wizardry and processing power for a search engine to understand what the items of interest are in all the images out there.

Those are just a few of the technologies we’ve built to make Google Images more useful. Meanwhile, the quantity and variety of images on the web has ballooned since 2001, and images have become one of the most popular types of content people search for. So over the next few days we’re rolling out an update to Google Images to match the scope and beauty of this fast-growing visual web, and to bring to the surface some of the powerful technology behind Images.

Here’s what’s new in this refreshed design of Google Images:

• Dense tiled layout designed to make it easy to look at lots of images at once. We want to get the app out of the way so you can find what you’re really looking for.
• Instant scrolling between pages, without letting you get lost in the images. You can now get up to 1,000 images, all in one scrolling page. And we’ll show small, unobtrusive page numbers so you don’t lose track of where you are.
• Larger thumbnail previews on the results page, designed for modern browsers and high-res screens.
• A hover pane that appears when you mouse over a given thumbnail image, giving you a larger preview, more info about the image and other image-specific features such as “Similar images.”
• Once you click on an image, you’re taken to a new landing page that displays a large image in context, with the website it’s hosted on visible right behind it. Click anywhere outside the image, and you’re right in the original page where you can learn more about the source and context.
• Optimized keyboard navigation for faster scrolling through many pages, taking advantage of standard web keyboard shortcuts such as Page Up / Page Down. It’s all about getting you to the info you need quickly, so you can get on with actually building that treehouse or buying those flowers.

And for our advertisers, we’re launching a new ad format called Image Search Ads. These ads appear only on Google Images, and they let you include a thumbnail image alongside your lines of text. Check out our Help Center for more info on how try them out; we hope they’re a useful way to reach folks who are specifically looking for images.

These upgrades are rolling out in most of our local interfaces worldwide over the next few days. We hope they not only make it easier to search for images, but also contribute to a better aesthetic experience. We see images as a major source of inspiration, a way of connecting the world—and their growth is showing no signs of slowing down. We’ll work to make sure Google Images continues to evolve to keep up.

Posted by Nate Smith, Product Manager, Google Images

Google Font Previewer

Google added an option to preview the fonts from the Google Font Directory. Before embedding the code, you can edit the sample text, change text size and spacing, capitalize the text, add underlines and shadows.

"The Google Font Directory lets you browse all the fonts available via the Google Font API. All fonts in the directory are available for use on your website under an open source license and are served by Google servers," explains Google.


Google offers a lot of tools for web developers and the nice thing is that Google hosts the required files. Google has an impressive API for charts, Google hosts many popular JavaScript libraries and open-source fonts, Google offers APIs for processing feeds, displaying maps, adding search features and more.

{ via tobestobs }

Google Chrome Frame's Brief Description

Google Chrome Frame is a plug-in for Internet Explorer that uses Chrome's rendering engine to display web pages. It's especially useful for those who can't install other browsers, but want to run web applications that use HTML5 features and need a powerful JavaScript engine.

Google's description is really beautiful: "Chrome Frame renders the Web of the future in the browsers of the past. It's like strapping a rocket engine to a minivan." Google thinks that Internet Explorer is a "browser of the past" that can't handle "the Web of the future", so it needs a plug-in to make it faster and bring it up to date.

Fortunately, Internet Explorer 9 addresses these issues and it will finally make Internet Explorer a modern browser.

Chrome experiment in Internet Explorer 6, using Chrome Frame. Screenshot licensed as Creative Commons.