National Geographic magazine July 2011

National Geographic cover

In this issue:

• Not too late for polar bears
• Baghdad's new life
• The middle east: young, angry and wired
• How heirloom seeds can feed the world
• Portugal's only national park

Google Friends Newsletter - July 2009

POWER TIP

Calendar Labs

Earlier this month, we launched Calendar Labs. Like Google Labs and Gmail Labs, Calendar Labs is a place to try out early, experimental features as well as provide feedback to the team that built them. There are six experimental Calendar features so far, including "Next Meeting" which shows you how much time you have to procrastinate before your next appointment and "World clock", which lets you keep track of different timezones when you schedule meetings. You can test these features out by going to the Labs tab under Settings.
http://calendar.google.com

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NEW PRODUCTS & UPDATES

Moon in Google Earth

Forty years ago on July 20, 1969, the crew of Apollo 11 took the first human steps on the surface of the Moon. In celebration of this
historic occasion, we launched Moon in Google Earth, an interactive 3D atlas of the Moon. You can now explore a virtual Moonscape, follow guided tours from astronauts Buzz Aldrin (Apollo 11) and Jack Schmitt (Apollo 17), see the latest rover concepts by teams competing in the Google Lunar X PRIZE, view high-resolution "Street View"-style panoramic photos, watch previously unreleased video footage captured from the lunar surface and much more. Moon is viewable using Google Earth 5.0.
http://earth.google.com/moon

Favorite Places on Google Maps

Ever wonder where culinary expert and chef Alice Waters goes for organic and sustainable food in the San Francisco Bay Area? Or where Iwona Blazwick, director of the Whitechapel Gallery in London, goes to experience art in that city? We've teamed up with a variety of experts around the world to share some of their favorite local places and businesses on Google Maps. We hope you enjoy exploring all of these favorite places.
http://www.google.com/favoriteplaces

Google Docs template gallery open to everyone

We recently opened up the Google Docs template gallery to everyone. Now, people can share their own documents, spreadsheets, presentations and forms so that others may re-use them. The public template gallery makes it easy to sort and browse templates by category, usage, rating and document type. The template gallery is also available to Google Apps Premier and Education Edition customers, making it easy to privately share common document templates within companies and organizations.
http://docs.google.com/templates

Your world in 3D

One of our favorite features of Google Earth is flying around the world's cities in 3D. If you turn on the "3D Buildings" layer in Google Earth you can access thousands of buildings as photo-realistic 3D models. Plus, if there's a building (or an entire town) that you'd like the whole world to see, you can build your own models using Google SketchUp and then add them to Google Earth. Not only is it a great way to benefit your community, we think it's pretty fun.
http://sketchup.google.com/yourworldin3d

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MISCELLANY

Sure, you get this newsletter every month with news from Google. And maybe you also read one or several of our official blogs. But what if you're craving more frequent updates from us? We have a variety of Twitter accounts that you can follow to get ongoing news, tips and more on a variety of Google products and services. Besides our official @google account, you might be interested in news from Australia or Brazil, the latest advances in computer science research, help with advertising or updates focused on a specific product like Google Earth. We're adding new accounts from time to time, too — you can see a list of all our official accounts on the Official Google Blog.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/google-accounts-on-twitter.html

Google tribute to 4th of July logo

In the United States, Independence Day, known as, and more commonly referred to by the phrase "Fourth of July", is a federal holiday commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, declaring independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain.

Independence Day is commonly associated with fireworks, parades, barbecues, carnivals, fairs, picnics, concerts, baseball games, political speeches and ceremonies, and various other public and private events celebrating the history, government, and traditions of the United States.

Independence Day is the national day of the United States. (via wikipedia)

I hope that Google will make a logo for Malaysian Independence day on 31st of August too!

ROTTW V.149

Google Friends Newsletter - July 2008

POWER TIP

Mobile app for iPhone now available

If you have an iPhone, you can now use the Google Mobile App to search faster than ever - not only the web, but in your contacts as well. It also integrates Google Suggest, meaning some of the most popular queries will auto-complete. It's available through the App Store on your iPhone.
http://www.google.com/mobile/apple

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NEW PRODUCTS & UPDATES

Share and gain knowledge using Knol

This month we launched a new service called Knol that makes it much easier to author and share information on the web. You can write authoritative articles (a.k.a. knols) on a subject you know about, and then share your knowledge with everyone. Each knol identifies an author or group of authors, and readers can clearly see who wrote it and their credentials. You can also comment, rate, or review a knol. Using a new feature called "moderated collaboration," readers can even edit a knol directly. Then the author can decide whether to take the suggestions into account.
http://knol.google.com

Elections Video Search gadget

Using our own state-of-the-art speech recognition technologies, videos from politicians' YouTube channels are automatically transcribed from speech to text and indexed. Using the gadget, you can search not only the titles and descriptions of the videos, but also their spoken content. And since speech recognition tells us exactly *when* words are spoken in the video, you can jump right to the most relevant parts.
http://tinyurl.com/6rjakw

Chat in 3D using Lively

Lively by Google lets you design your own virtual rooms and chat and interact with your friends in 3D. You can also create and personalize your own chat avatar. Lively is a great new way for you to meet and connect with people who share your interests: when browsing your favorite blogs or websites, you can now join Lively rooms embedded into the sites.
http://www.lively.com

Get walking directions on Google Maps

You can now get walking directions on Google Maps that include the most direct, flat route, as well as the best use of pedestrian pathways. But you don't have to just be going on a walk to benefit from this new service; it's also helpful if you're using Google Maps for public transit directions and want the best way to get from one stop to another.
http://maps.google.com

Explore the Tour de France with Street View

You can now (virtually) ride in the Tour de France using Street View on Google Maps. If you're a sports fan, this is a great new way to experience the famous race. If you enjoy nature and the outdoors, you can explore France's scenic countryside. If you're curious about French cities and cafes, here's an opportunity for you to see them up close. Whatever your interest, this is guaranteed to be an exciting
ride!
http://google.com/tourdefrance2008

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MISCELLANY

We spend a lot of time thinking about, you guessed it, search. Over the last decade, search technologies have significantly improved, and user expectations have greatly increased along the way. We work hard to fulfill the expectations of each and every user, and to do that we're constantly pushing the technologies for understanding the pages, the queries, and our users further. But search is an ongoing challenge because there is *so* much out there. To give you an idea of the scope, a few hundreds of millions of times a day people will ask Google questions, and within a fraction of a second Google needs to decide which among the billions of pages on the web to show you - and in what order. We know we have to continue to work hard to meet the challenge, and for us that's half the fun. We've recently been posting about what's under the hood as we work to improve the quality and speed of our search experience. Visit the Official Google Blog to read more.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/search/label/search

Google Friends Newsletter - July 2007

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POWER TIP
Customize Google Maps with Mapplets
You can now customize the content on your Google Maps using new features in the "My Maps" tab. The "Add content" link in this tab brings you to the Google Maps directory where you can choose from and add content and tools such as gas prices, weather, jogging trails, events, and more. These mini-applications for Google Maps are all built on our Mapplets platform.
http://maps.google.com

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NEW PRODUCTS & UPDATES
Google Checkout Gadget for iGoogle
We've launched a new "Shop with Google Checkout" gadget for iGoogle featuring some fun Top 10 lists of products available through Google Checkout, such as "Super Hero Must Haves" and "How You Knew You Grew Up In the 80's". When you add the gadget to your iGoogle homepage, you'll see a scrollable showcase of the day's featured items. And soon, you'll be able to create your own lists.
http://checkout.google.com

Google Talk Gadget adds Group Chat
There's something new on the Google Talk Gadget: when you're chatting with a friend on Google Talk, you can invite one or more friends to join the conversation by clicking the "Group Chat" button from any chat tab. This was a top user request, and we hope it will make
chatting amongst your circle more useful and fun.
http://www.google.com/talk

Google Apps for Nonprofits
Recently we extended Google Apps Education Edition to all registered nonprofits in the U.S. Our hosted suite of communication and collaboration tools -- email migration, 24/7 assistance and integration APIs, plus web-based email, calendaring and online document collaboration -- fits well with the vital need among nonprofits for easy-to-use, flexible technologies requiring little or no investment. After all, schools and organizations should worry less about technology and focus more on fulfilling their mission.
http://www.google.com/a/npo

Google Docs & Spreadsheets updates
Now Google Docs & Spreadsheets is easier for spreadsheet editing and collaboration. Now you can do things like freeze header rows and sort your data more quickly with the sort bar, create a draggable, horizontal break between your column headers and your data, view a color-coded collaborator indicator to see who else is viewing the spreadsheet and which cells they are editing. And the Quick Sum feature gives a sum, average, count, minimum, or maximum of your currently selected cells in the bottom righthand corner.
http://docs.google.com

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MISCELLANY
It will come as no surprise to you to learn that we at Google are used to fast-moving communications. We make frequent nnouncements, we have a lot of products, and, well, things move quickly around here. This is one reason we publish quite a few blogs -- more than 50. And we want to reach those of you who follow Google directly -- a blog is a very easy way to do that. Most of our blogs focus on a single product, or country, or a specific audience. Here are a few of the most recent additions to our blog family which may interest you. (And might we suggest adding these to your Google Reader?)

Public Policy Blog - Google views on government, policy, and politics.
http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/

Gmail Blog - Tips and tricks on getting the most from Gmail.
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/

Google Lat Long Blog - News & notes from the Google Earth and Google Maps teams.
http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/

You can find the entire list of our blogs on the righthand side of the original Google Blog.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/



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