Google Friends Newsletter - August 2010

Google logo on the wall.

POWER TIP

Phone calls from Gmail

Now you can call any phone right from within Gmail. Dialing a phone number works just like a normal phone—just click "Call phone" at the top of your chat list, and dial a number or enter a contact's name. At the moment, this feature is only for Gmail users in the U.S. Calls to the U.S. and Canada will be free for at least the rest of 2010, and calls to other countries will be billed at our very low rates.
http://www.gmail.com/call

NEW PRODUCTS & UPDATES

New design for Google Translate

Google Translate has a fresh look that makes it easier than ever to translate text, web pages and documents. The new design also highlights many of Google Translate's coolest features, including the ability to search across languages, translate incoming email in Gmail or take Google Translate with you on your phone.
http://translate.google.com

Homepage for Realtime Search

Google Realtime Search now has its own homepage, where you'll find tools to help you refine and understand your results. We've added geographic refinements to find updates and news in a region you specify, and a conversations view that makes it easy to follow a discussion on the real-time web. We also added "Updates" content to Google Alerts, making it easier to stay informed about the topics you choose.
http://www.google.com/realtime

Voice Actions for Android

These are a series of spoken commands that let you control your Android phone using your voice. You can send texts, listen to music, browse the web, send email and more—just by speaking into your phone. To use Voice Actions, tap the microphone button on the Google search box on your home screen, or press down for a few seconds on the physical search button on your phone to activate the "Speak Now" screen. Voice Actions are currently available for English speakers in the U.S., and require Froyo (Android 2.2).
http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/08/just-speak-it-introducing-voice-actions.html

Responding to the floods in Pakistan

Our Crisis Response team has been working to help relief efforts in Pakistan by making critical information more accessible. We launched a page in Urdu and English for finding information, resources and donation opportunities to help flood victims. Person Finder is available in English and Urdu, as is a tool called Resource Finder to help with disseminating information around medical facilities.
http://www.google.com/crisisresponse/pakistan_floods.html

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MISCELLANY

Earlier this month we shared a handful of stories from people who have used Google in interesting ways that helped them solve a problem large or small. Their stories range from the mundane—finding the manufacturer of a frying pan, or the composer of a song—to the sublime: finding a long-lost love, welcoming a brand-new family member into the world. Enjoy these stories, and if you have a Google story of your own, share it with us by clicking on the second link below.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/search/label/yourgooglestories
https://services.google.com/fb/forms/sharesuccess/

Google Friends Newsletter - August 2009

POWER TIP

Power Readers on Google Reader

Where do Arianna Huffington and Thomas Friedman go to get different perspectives on the news? Which economics sites does Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman read? What sites and blogs do the editors of Lifehacker, Boing Boing and Kottke read? In an effort to help people find great stuff to read in Google Reader, we approached leaders across a variety of fields and asked them what they read online. We got lots of great responses, which we've collected into our second edition of Power Readers. In this edition, we've expanded from Power Readers in Politics to include journalists, techies, fashion critics, foodies and more. We hope this will be a good place for you to find more great things to read, whether you're new to Google Reader or already have an extensive reading list.
www.google.com/powerreaders

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NEW PRODUCTS & UPDATES

OpenSocial gadgets in iGoogle

We've added new social gadgets and features to iGoogle. Not only can you play, collaborate and share with your friends using 20 social gadgets, you can also get a feed of updates about your friends' activities on iGoogle. There's a little something for everyone: You can compete with others in Who Has The Biggest Brain?, Chess or Scrabble; keep up on the latest buzz with media-sharing gadgets from NPR, The Huffington Post and YouTube; or check things off alongside your friends with the social To-Do list gadget. These gadgets and more are available for users in the U.S. and Australia.
http://www.google.com/igsocial

Collaborate on Picasa Web Albums

If you've used Google Docs, you know that it makes collaborating on documents easy. We've just introduced a similar idea for photo albums — now, every album on Picasa Web Albums is potentially collaborative, meaning multiple people can add photos to the same album. Contributors' photos will be attributed to them, and they can rotate, delete, and add captions to the pictures they've uploaded. To make an album collaborative, click the "Share" button in Picasa Web Albums, select the people you want to share with and make sure the "Let people I share with contribute photos" checkbox is selected. When contributors visit your collaborative album and sign in, they just need to click the "Add Photos" button to start uploading.
http://picasaweb.google.com

Improved health information in search results

Now there are new ways to search for health conditions on Google.com. If you type in a condition, such as [asthma], into the Google.com search box, it will show you a new Health search result snippet and image with a summary of the condition and links to popular health sites like Google Health, Mayo Clinc and WebMD. If you click the Google Health link, you'll find a combination of information on that specific condition (such as overview, symptoms, causes, tests, diagnosis and prognosis) as well as results from Google search properties such as Google News, Google Scholar and Google Trends. So start searching today to easily get info about the health conditions you or a loved one may want to know more about.
http://www.google.com

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MISCELLANY

As the summer comes to a close and schools start to reopen, we know some of our friends out there are dusting off their books and donning their backpacks. If you're a student, you're probably familiar with some of our tools that can help you excel in the classroom, including Google search, Google Books, Google Scholar and Google Docs — just to name a few. We're always thinking of new ways to use our products to help you study, research or just get more organized in your schoolwork. For ongoing Google tips and tricks tailored just for students, check out the Google Students blog. Even if you aren't a student, you might learn something new!
http://googleforstudents.blogspot.com/

Google Friends Newsletter - August 2008

POWER TIP

New personalized search features

This month we rolled out a new web search feature that gives you more clarity concerning how we use data to improve your search experience. Whenever we customize your search based on geographic location, another recent search you performed, or items from Web History, a message will appear in the top-right corner of the search results page, with a link to a page with more details about how and why we personalized your search.
http://www.google.com

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NEW PRODUCTS & UPDATES

Power Readers in Politics

If you're curious about which news sites and blogs John McCain or Barack Obama follow, now using Google Reader you can read the same material the candidates read. For the upcoming U.S. presidential election, we've launched Power Readers in Politics, a feed of shared articles for the presidential campaigns and leading political pundits. You can see which headlines are catching the attention of newsmakers and read their comments.
http://www.google.com/powerreaders

2008 Summer Games on Google

For this year's Summer Games in Beijing, we launched a global effort to bring some of the most important moments in sports history to more people than ever. If you missed any of the action, you can still track the results with Google News and explore the Olympic venues using Google Maps.
http://www.google.com/landing/summergames2008/

Updates to Google Maps

Google Maps has a fresh new look: besides sporting a single search box, the clean, straightforward design lets you more easily view full- screen maps. We've also improved the way to print directions, added the ability to print Street View images, and included an "Avoid tolls" option for driving directions.
http://maps.google.com

Google Translate for iPhone

There's a new interface for Google Translate on the Apple iPhone, covering 23 language pairs for users around the world. If you have an iPhone, you can get to the new interface by visiting Google.com and choosing "Translate" from the "More" tab, or by visiting the Google
Translate site directly.
http://translate.google.com

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MISCELLANY

The 2008 U.S. political conventions -- two weeks of party business that began with the Democrats in Denver on August 25 and continue with the Republicans in Minneapolis on September 1 -- mark the beginning of the general election season. This year is particularly exciting in part because of the groundbreaking role technology is playing in connecting candidates and voters. To help you stay informed and engaged, we're launching a one-stop shop for political information on our conventions site. You can view the latest news, videos, photos and blog posts. Use Elections Video Search to see what the candidates are saying about the issues that concern you, and interact with a wide variety of political mashups in the Google Maps Elections Gallery. If you're a teacher, use our Election Toolkit for Teachers to inform your students about the political process. And as election day grows closer, we're working on ways for you to find local voter registration sites or polling places on demand. As the momentum continues over the next few months, bookmark the page and check back regularly.
http://www.google.com/2008election

Luqman Aliff August 2008

luqman meniru aksi kungfu panda, last jd ultraman dyna pulak. baru lepas main bola dgn pak lang dia dan adik dia danial.

Google Friends Newsletter - August 2007

POWER TIP

Embed Google Maps on your website or blog

There's a new feature on Google Maps that enables you to easily embed an interactive map on your website or blog just by copying and pasting a snippet of HTML (much in the same way as embeddable YouTube videos work). On Google Maps, pull up the map you want to embed-- it can be a location, a business, a set of driving directions, search results, or a map you've created. Then copy the embed code by clicking "Link to this page," and paste the code into your blog or website. You can create a map using the map-making tools in the My Maps tab and display it on your website using this embed feature.
http://maps.google.com

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NEW PRODUCTS & UPDATES

Updates to Google Earth

With the new Google Earth (4.2), you can see a view of the night sky and explore the universe from home. Browse, zoom and click on the sky the same way you can with the Earth. Thanks to partners such as the Hubble Space Telescope, you'll see beautiful imagery of space and the objects in it, together with lots of additional data including constellations, the moon, planets, a user's guide to galaxies, and the life of a star. There are also updates to Google Earth layers, including new overlays. A Book Search layer includes placemarks of location names mentioned in books that are available in Google Book Search; a Traffic layer overlays live-traffic data for major cities that are already published in Maps. We've also included high- resolution photos from across the U.S., placed so that they line up with the terrain, letting you see the "real deal" superimposed on 3D imagery.
http://earth.google.com/

StarOffice now in Google Pack

A free office productivity suite for creating documents, spreadsheets, and presentations on the desktop, StarOffice, is now optional software within the Google Pack. And by using the Open Document Format, StarOffice is fully compatible with Google Docs & Spreadsheets so you can easily upload and share your work.
http://pack.google.com

Paid storage for Gmail and Picasa Web Albums

U.S.-based English-language users of Gmail and Picasa Web Albums can now purchase additional storage to be shared across these products. We want you to be able to live more of your life in "the cloud" -- where your data is available to you any time, from any PC. Eventually, we hope you can have one place to store you information - in whatever form - online. We've integrated this extra storage across Picasa Web Albums and Gmail for now, and plan to add more Google services soon.
http://www.google.com/accounts/PurchaseStorage

Web History now includes Google Book Search

Web History now includes Books, which means those of you who use Web History can see your searches on Google Book Search as part of your web history. it's easy to view and manage your past book searches, and get better personalized results too.
http://books.google.com

Google News now integrates videos

Now, in addition to articles and images from thousands of different publishers, Google News in the US, UK and Ireland integrates news video results with help from YouTube. Video partners include CBS, Reuters and others, and when available, clusters of news stories on the Google News page now feature embedded videos.
http://news.google.com

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MISCELLANY

As our lives move increasingly online, we all tend to take for granted the convenience of having websites know our shipping address, our preferred email format, the movies or music we're likely to enjoy, and of course our credit card or bank account numbers. Many news stories about what's called "online privacy" have delved into the implications of businesses (like ours) holding all of this personal information for you and every consumer. We encourage you to study the privacy policies of every company you do business with online, including us. Look for clearly-written explanations and reasonable terms. We're trying to go further than current industry standards, too, by being as transparent as we can possibly be in telling you about what data we keep, how long we keep it, and so on. If you're interested in these matters, you may enjoy the first video we've made to explain basic privacy concepts in an easy-to-watch 5 minute format. (We plan to produce more on this topic in the future). We hope you learn something and also let us know what you think.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLgJYBRzUXY

Feedback: http://tinyurl.com/2bpjad



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