Google Friends Newsletter - May 2007

POWER TIP

Create and send your own message on iGoogle

A new feature of iGoogle enables anyone to send and update personal messages through gadgets on the iGoogle homepage. You can choose from seven gadget types: Photo Album, Google Gram, The Daily Me, Free Form, YouTube Channel, Personal List, and Countdown. Either send your gadgets to selected friends and family, or share them with everyone on the public directory of iGoogle gadgets.
Create your iGoogle gadget: http://www.google.com/ig/gmchoices
Create your iGoogle homepage: http://www.google.com/ig

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NEW PRODUCTS & UPDATES

Search across all content with new universal search effort

In striving to give you the best results to your search queries, we've found that the best information can take many different forms. For this reason, we have taken the beginning steps towards a new universal search effort that provides a more holistic search experience on Google. Until recently, you could find the best results for your searches within the separate and distinct Google properties ( e.g., web, images, maps, videos, books) by clicking a link above the search box. Using a universal search approach, Google technology searches across all of the content sources, integrates, and then ranks the results for the best answers. So depending on your search query, you may see results from news, images, videos, local, or books integrated with the web search results. We also introduced new contextual navigational links so that you can click to see more results from a suggested type of content. And we've added a new Google navigation bar to the top of the page to provide easier navigation to Google's products.
http://www.google.com

Sneak a peek with Street View

Street View gives you navigable 360-degree street-level imagery in Google Maps for selected cities. You can see images for a spot and take virtual walks along that street. So when you're trying to find the perfect outdoor cafe for lunch with friends or want a glimpse of the neighborhood you're considering moving to, use Google Maps to see what the spot actually looks like, as if you were right there in person. Currently Street View imagery is available for the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, Las Vegas, Miami, and Denver; and we expect to launch this feature in many more cities soon. Click on the "Street View" tab at the top of the Google Maps page or follow the demo link in the left panel.
http://maps.google.com

Check out Google's latest search ideas

Google Experimental showcases our latest ideas for improving the search experience - for example, viewing search results on a timeline or a map, navigating results with keyboard shortcuts, or refining your search with left-/right-hand navigation. Take a tour of these experiments, and tell us what you think by clicking "Send Feedback" from the page you're on.
http://www.google.com/experimental

New tools in Google Finance

Stay on top of your investments with recent upgrades to Google Finance. View and download historical end-of-day prices for any US or Canadian company; download the latest performance, returns and transactions from your portfolio; stay on top of news from your favorite companies using feed applications like Google Reader; view events such as earnings calls and analyst meetings on company or portfolio pages.
http://finance.google.com

Search across more books

In addition to the searching the full text of more than a million book titles, you can now find information on even more books using Google Book Search. Millions of metadata records have been added to the index, which means you can find images of book covers, summaries and references for even more titles in Google book results. We've also added new information to the "About this book" page so that now, in addition to basic information about the book like title and author, you'll also see reviews and references to the book from web pages as well as other books.
http://books.google.com

Find your next appointment on your phone

Google Calendar is now available for mobile devices. Just point your phone's browser to calendar.google.com, and you'll immediately access your day's agenda, complete with details like date, time, location, description, and guest list.
http://calendar.google.com

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MISCELLANY

The Google Channel on YouTube

Much has been made of the 'YouTube' phenomenon, which has emerged thanks to relatively inexpensive and easy to operate video cameras, faster computers with more storage space (to hold all that footage) and easy uploading. The creativity and fun factor are worth celebrating -- but don't lose sight of online video's ability to show, tell, teach, and share information quickly. Increasingly, businesses are showcasing their products, promoting their initiatives and exposing their employees via video. You may learn something or you may dislike the marketing messages, but either way, better get used to it - corporate use of popular online video channels is here to stay. In Google's case, we've chosen to share quite a few talks by technology gurus and popular authors, conversations with presidential candidates (all of whom we've invited to visit our Mountain View campus), and other presentations and product demonstrations -- and we're adding more material all the time. Enjoy the view.
http://www.youtube.com/google




Related post: google, friends, newsletter, may, 2007