Google Operating System

10 Gmail Gadgets you Might Want to try it

2011-06-30T15:54:00.000-07:00

There is a powerful but little known Gmail feature that lives in Labs called “Add any gadget by URL.” Once you turn it on, you can add iGoogle gadgets (or any gadget specified by an .xml file) to the side of your Gmail account. While most of these gadgets are built by third-parties and not owned or maintained by Google, they can be super handy.

To install any of these gadgets, follow those steps:
1) From your Gmail account, go to the Labs tab of Gmail Settings.
2) Look for the Lab “Add any gadget by URL.” Enable it, then click “Save changes.”
3) Go to the new “Gadgets” tab under “Settings” and add the relevant .xml address.

Here’s a list of a ten I’ve found worth trying out:

Wikipedia
Look for a specific query right from Gmail.
http://www.google.com/ig/modules/wikipedia.xml

Google Calculator
Make some quick calculations while typing an email.
http://calebegg.com/calc.xml

Note
Add a sticky note to the corner of your Gmail account.
http://www.google.com/ig/modules/sticky.xml

Remember the Milk
If you’re a fan of this task management system, accessing all your “Remember the milk” notes from right within Gmail can be super handy.
http://www.rememberthemilk.com/services/modules/gmail/rtm.xml

PolyClock
Gives you the time of day for any place in the world.
http://gad.getpla.net/poly/clock.xml

Currency Converter
A real time currency converter.
http://helloworld123---.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/currency-converter.xml

bit.ly URL shortener
Lets you shorten URLs in a single click.
http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/107368512201818821991/bitly-shortener.xml

Chuck Norris fact generator
Displays a different “Chuck Norris fact” every day of the year.http://marsupialmusic.net/stu/scripts/chucknorris.xml

Finally, you might be familiar with the last two gadgets, since they are also available as individual Gmail Labs:

Google Calendar
Displays your Google Calendar agenda right from Gmail.
http://www.google.com/ig/modules/calendar.xml

Google Docs
Gives you quick access to your most recent documents.
www.google.com/ig/modules/docs.xml

You can find lots of other gadgets optimized for iGoogle on this page, and many of them work well in Gmail, too.

Google Calendar's Design Refresh

2011-06-30T15:12:00.000-07:00

After Google Search and Google Maps, it's time for Google Calendar to switch to a Google+ interface. The new design is a lot cleaner, even if no important feature was removed. "Quick add" is now available if you click the arrow next to the "Create button" (not very intuitive), "Print" and "Refresh" are now buttons instead of links, the month view below the "Create" button can be collapsed, "Save" and "Discard" buttons are only displayed at the top of the page.

"Right now, the changes are just cosmetic and have not affected the way Calendar works. You can choose to turn off the new look by clicking the gear icon and choosingUse the classic look (you can turn it back on by going to the gear icon and choosing Try the new look)," explains Google. Obviously, at some point, Google Calendar will integrate with Google+ and we'll see even more changes.

The New "What do you love?" From Google

2011-06-30T08:56:00.000-07:00

What do you love?, is a new service from Google to search the things you love, and google would show you results from many different Google services like YouTube, Google News and Blogger, All in one page. Like if you searched for the word Khogali you'll find many results from many services like Picasa and Blogger.
Here's some screen shots :

Home Page

Some Search Results

Automatic mobile rendering for Google Sites

2011-06-30T06:35:00.000-07:00

As the dramatic growth of the mobile web changes the way people consume content, it’s becoming increasingly important for publishers to provide a good mobile experience. With this in mind, Google just added automatic mobile rendering in Google Sites for iOS 3.0+ and Android 2.2+ devices, and a mobile version of the Google
Sites lists.
By going to General settings under More actions > Manage site and clicking on Automatically adjust site for mobile phones, your Google site will be automatically adjusted whenever it’s viewed from an iOS or Android 2.2+ device:


Before	After

After you’ve enabled this feature, you can preview the page from your computer as a mobile viewer using More actions > Preview as viewer then select Mobile from the yellow Preview page as viewer (Mobile | Desktop) box at the top of the page.

You can also choose to hide some of the links in your site’s footer to save vertical space.

It’s also important for you to be able to access and search your own sites on the go, which is why we’ve also added mobile versions of the site list, sites search, and browse sites categories.

Just navigate to http://sites.google.com from any iOS 3.0+ or Android 2.2+ device for quick access to your sites.

As more people unplug from their desks and interact with content on the go, new doors are opening for everyone.

A New Interface for Google Search Results Pages

2011-06-30T06:15:00.000-07:00

The latest design updated not just in the home page, but also in search results. Google uses a new color scheme for the sidebar, adds grayscale icons next to the specialized search engines, replaces the standard search button with a label-less blue button, uses a smaller Google logo and adds a gray background color to the header.

Google says it has "muted the color of the tools and reserved the use of bolder colors to highlight key action buttons, tools and filters". Unfortunately, the change made the sidebar icons less useful and the search box too prominent. The new header could pave the way to a search results page that uses "infinite scrolling" instead of pagination.

Here's the old interface:

Can you find other changes?

Google's Gay Rainbow

2011-06-20T07:12:00.000-07:00

It's not the first June when Google changes the search results interface when you search for [gay] and other related terms. While in 2009 and 2010 Google added a colorful bar below the search box, this year there's a rainbow next to the search box.

June is the "Gay and Lesbian Pride Month" and there are many pride parades all over the world. Last year, Google's blog included an article about gay parades and the Google employees who participated.

"Google supports its LGBT employees in many ways: raising its voice in matters of policy, taking a moment to remember the plight of transgender people around the world and going the extra mile to ensure that its employees are treated fairly."

Know when your bus is late with live transit updates in Google Maps

2011-06-08T13:56:00.000-07:00

Often when I’m taking public transit, I arrive at my stop on time only to anxiously check my watch and look down the street for my bus, which is running late once again. Those extra minutes I’m forced to wait seem like an eternity, and the only information I can access on my phone is when the bus was supposed to arrive.
Starting now, Google Maps for mobile and desktop can tell you when your ride is actuallygoing to arrive with new live transit updates. Google partnered with transit agencies to integrate live transit data in four U.S. cities and two European cities: Boston, Portland, Ore., San Diego, San Francisco, Madrid and Turin.

When you click on a transit station or plan a transit route with Google Maps and there are delays or alerts related to your trip, you’ll now see “live departure times” (indicated with a special icon) and service alerts.

Live service alerts when receiving transit directions

Live departures and alerts on desktop

New Cool Features for Google Chrome

2011-06-08T13:44:00.000-07:00

Chrome 12 is now available in the stable channel and all the Chrome users can try the new features.

1. App search in the address bar.

2. Clear Flash cookies (or Local Shared Objects) using the "Clear browsing data" dialog, instead of visiting a webpage.

3. Chrome Sync no longer uses a modal dialog and it's now properly integrated with the tabbed settings page.

4. Safe Browsing borrowed a feature from Internet Explorer 8: checking downloaded files for malware. Right now, this feature only works for Windows executables and shows a small message in the download bar.

5. No more Gears in Google Chrome. You'll no longer be able to use any app that relies on Gears to provide features like offline storage or web workers. The only Google service that still used Gears was Gmail.

6. Hardware accelerated 3D CSS (or 3D transforms). Chrome's blog suggests to try "Shaun the Sheep", an experiment that uses WebM video and 3D CSS to create an immersive app.

7. Chrome for Mac asks for confirmation when using Cmd+Q to quit the application. "When you press Cmd+Q, it brings up the floaty panel telling you to hold the key combo. When you do, it quits after 1.5 seconds." That sounds annoying.

8. Print and Save buttons in the PDF viewer.

9. A better interface for adding start pages.

T-Mobile G-Slate the best android powered tablet

2011-06-07T15:09:00.000-07:00

As it's only the second tablet to use Google's Honeycomb OS, many will wonder how the T-Mobile G-Slate with Google distinguishes itself from the first Honeycomb tablet, the Motorola Xoom. For one, the G-Slate has a smaller form factor, including a screen that's an inch smaller. It also houses a 3D camera and includes T-Mobile 4G network support. Otherwise, the tablet functions very much like a smaller Xoom. The devil's in the details, however, so let's get to those.

Design and features

With its 8.9-inch screen, the T-Mobile G-Slate is noticeably smaller than both the 10.1-inch Xoom and the 9.8-inch iPad 2. The G-Slate is only slightly heavier than the iPad 2, but, like the Xoom, feels heftier, due to its odd weight distribution.

The G-Slate has a thickness of 0.49 inch, a little over one-third thicker than the iPad 2's 0.34-inch profile. In landscape mode, its screen is as wide as the iPad 2's, but is about an inch shorter in height. The G-Slate feels comfortable in our hands while typing, whether in landscape or portrait mode, and unlike the iPad 2 with its smooth-as-silk metal casing, the G-Slate isn't as likely to slip from our grip.

On its bottom side, the tablet has ports for Mini-USB and Mini-HDMI--although not Micro-HDMI as on the Xoom. On the top are a volume rocker and microphone pinhole. Two speakers can be found on the right side, with another on the left. Also on the left are the power/lock button, a headphone jack, and the power adapter slot input.

Accessing the G-Slate's SIM card is a little more involved than doing the same on the Xoom. There's a hidden panel on the back, requiring you to push down and slide it, revealing the SIM slot as well as the reset button underneath.

These days you can't have a tablet without a built-in camera, usually two. The G-Slate attempts to one-up the competition by including not only a front-facing 2-megapixel camera, but also a 5-megapixel 3D camera on the back. Technically, this is three cameras in all, although T-Mobile isn't really marketing it that way.

If you've seen pics of the back of the G-Slate, you may have noticed a narrow silver plate across it. You may have also assumed this stylish-looking plate doubled as a kickstand. It doesn't; its only function is to add a little design panache.

The G-Slate is the first Honeycomb tablet with out-of-the-box 4G support, courtesy of T-Mobile's network. The tablet also comes with T-Mobile streaming TV preinstalled as well as an on-demand service called T-Mobile TV, EA's Need for Speed Shift HD, Zinio Reader, and 3D camcorder and player software. Full Flash support is delivered via the Get Flash application, which will install Flash on the device within seconds.

The G-Slate also provides the usual tablet features, such as Bluetooth 2.1 support for audio and peripheral support (including Bluetooth keyboards). The Wi-Fi antenna supports bands up to 802.11n. Embedded sensors for screen brightness, accelerometer, and gyroscope are all included

A 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core mobile processor and 32MB of internal flash memory round out the specs.

Honeycomb:

The T-Mobile G-Slate is the second tablet to use Google's Android 3.0.1. operating system, aka Honeycomb.

Up until the Xoom, every Android tablet we've reviewed suffered from behaving too much like a smartphone. Google's mobile operating system, its apps, and its developer tools were all geared for the small screen, and it showed.

With the introduction of Android 3.0, Google is showing its commitment to tablets. With the exception of legacy support of existing Android apps, Honeycomb is a dramatic departure from the Android of smartphones.

Google Apps Opts to Support Newer Browsers as of August

2011-06-07T14:17:00.000-07:00

Google Apps will soon support newer browsers rather than the older versions. Come August 1, Google Apps will no longer support Firefox 3.5, Internet Explorer 7, and Safari 3 – and their predecessors, the company said in a recent blog post.
When using older browsers, you might find trouble with features in Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Docs and Google Sites, the blog post said. In fact, eventually the apps may stop working, the blog post adds.

In addition, Google Apps will support current and prior “major” releases of Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari on a “rolling basis,” the blog said. When a new version is released, Google Apps will support the updated version and stop supporting the third-oldest version, according to the blog post.
“For web applications to spring even farther ahead of traditional software, our teams need to make use of new capabilities available in modern browsers,” the blog post adds. “For example, desktop notifications for Gmail and drag-and-drop file upload in Google Docs require advanced browsers that support HTML5. Older browsers just don’t have the chops to provide you with the same high-quality experience.”
Also, Google Apps recommends that users get the latest version of a browser. These include: Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari.

Google Buys PostRank, Beefs Up to Fight Facebook

2011-06-07T14:02:00.000-07:00

Google today acquired PostRank, a company that monitors and aggregates social media data, as the search giant tries to revive its efforts in social networking.

PostRank measures tweets and Facebook status updates to see how far they spread across the web. These statistics help companies see what users and competitors are doing. Even more importantly, PostRank's service gives advertising and publishing agencies information on people's favorite brands, topics and other content, helping them plan their marketing strategies accordingly.

The Ontario-based company can give the Mountain View, Calif.-based search giant valuable analytics tools to sift through tweets and posts about certain brands like Coca-Cola or Nike. By eavesdropping on people's aggregate reactions to various products, advertisers can tailor their campaigns much more quickly and effectively than with traditional survey methods. PostRank is therefore like gold to Google, which depends on advertisements for most of its revenue.

The New Appointment Slots in Google Calendar

2011-06-06T19:47:00.000-07:00

Google Calendar has become indispensable for organizing your own time and sharing you schedule with friends and coworkers. But what about letting others know about your preferred availability? Likewise, when you look at your hairdresser's online calendar, You wonder why I can't just book the open slot instead of remembering to call during regular business hours. Now, with appointment slots in Google Calendar.

Every Google Calendar has its own personal appointments sign up page; you can embed it on your website or give the URL directly to friends and clients. You can find the URL for your appointment page at the top of the set-up page, which you can access via the Edit details link.

Google's IPv6 Test

2011-06-06T19:24:00.000-07:00

As promised in January, Google will test IPv6 on June 8. IPv6 is the new version of the Internet Protocol which allows a lot more devices to connect to the Internet.

"Google has been supporting IPv6 since early 2008, when we first began offering search over IPv6. Since then we've brought IPv6 support to YouTube and have been helping ISPs enable Google over IPv6 by default for their users. On World IPv6 Day, we'll be taking the next big step. Together with major web companies such as Facebook and Yahoo!, we will enable IPv6 on our main websites for 24 hours. This is a crucial phase in the transition, because while IPv6 is widely deployed in many networks, it's never been used at such a large scale before."

Google expects that less than 0.5% of the users will be affected by the test. There's evena page that tests your connection and detects IPv6 connectivity issues. Even if IPv6 will be enabled for 24 hours, IPv4 will continue to be available.

ooVoo, multi-party cross-platform HD video chat

2011-06-04T18:56:00.000-07:00

At Uplinq, while walking the floor of the Mobile Innovations Showcase we ran across the team from ooVoo giving live demos of their multi-party video chat capabilities (and doing so over LTE in a crowded conference hall, I might add). Not only did the app perform admirably on a mobile handset (we tested on a Samsung Droid Charge), but ooVoo also had a full desktop application on display, ala Skype. Combined with the fact that they just launched on iOS, it appears we might be looking at the new king of mobile video chat (or at least a prince).

Check the video below to hear the presentations direct from the show floor:

Currently ooVoo offers the ability to connect up to 6 users in a single chat session (though only 3 for free, check the pricing) and are planning to up that number to 12 soon. They’ve also just signed on Snoop Dogg as their celebrity spokesperson, which means nothing to the video chat really, except that they’ve got a hilariously awesome marketing department.
While ooVoo seems to be quickly picking up steam, the app is still only available to certain handsets. At the time of writing, the Market page lists official support for the following devices: HTC EVO 3G & 4G, Samsung Epic, Samsung Galaxy S GT-i9000, Samsung Galaxy Tab 3.0, T-Mobile MyTouch 4G, Dell Streak 5, Nexus S and the Galaxy S 4G. ooVoo launched first on Android and claims that Android is the flagship platform. They say they’ve got expanded tablet support coming soon.

schema.org, a new initiative from Google, Bing and Yahoo for webmasters and developers

2011-06-04T18:40:00.000-07:00

Working together Google, Bing and Yahoo!, they announced schema.org, a new initiative from Google, Bing and Yahoo! to create and support a common vocabulary for structured data markup on web pages. With schema.org, site owners and developers can learn about structured data and improve how their sites appear in major search engines. The site aims to be a one stop resource for webmasters looking to add markup to their pages.

Search engines have been working independently to support structured markup for a few years now. Google introduced rich snippets to Google search in 2009 to help people find better summaries of reviews and people, and since that time we’ve expanded to new kinds of rich snippets, including recipes and events. We’ve been thrilled to see content creators across the web—from stubhub.com to allrecipes.com—add markup to their pages, and now Google is able to show rich snippets in search results more than 10 times as
often as when Google started two years ago.

Find more big, beautiful images on Google

2011-06-04T18:26:00.000-07:00

When you type a query that's popular in Google Image Search, Google's Web search engine shows a list of the most relevant images in an OneBox result. If you add "pictures", "images" to your query, the OneBox now includes a lot more images.
"If we detect that your query has 'high image intent' (meaning, we're pretty sure you're looking for images) we'll start showing more images on the page. If you add words like 'photos', 'pictures', and 'images' to a query, that means you're probably not looking for a blog post or video. Showing more images on the main search results page makes it just that much faster to find the image you're looking for," informs Google.

Another change is that Google will show a larger thumbnail when you mouse an image from the OneBox, just like in Google Image Search. The OneBox result now looks like the first page of images search results, but it's interesting to notice that the ranking is slightly different.

[via Google system]

[RUMOR] T-Mobile G2x to receive Gingerbread update early next week?

2011-06-04T07:42:00.000-07:00

Great news for all of you (us) G2x owners out there! A few of our trusted tipsters have informed us that owners of the T-Mobile G2x may not have to wait much longer to get updated to Android 2.3 Gingerbread. We already knew straight from T-Mobile’s Twitter feed that the G2x Gingerbread update is due to come out before summer (read: sometime in June), but our ninjas are pointing us to a release as early as the first half of next week.

Once the Gingerbread update is released, G2x owners can expect various performance enhancements, as well as the overhauled Gingerbread UI. Hopefully LG is working hard to throw in bugfixes to the several ailments that have plagued T-Mobile’s beloved flagship, though whether those will be packaged as part of the Gingerbread update or as a separate OTA remains to be seen.
As a G2x owner, I’m stoked that the Gingerbread update is seemingly right around the corner, and I’m sure you guys are as well. As always, we’ll update you if we learn of any new information on the G2x update. Stay tuned, and let the excitement begin!

Creative Commons Videos on YouTube

2011-06-03T21:31:00.000-07:00

YouTube added a new feature that lets you change the standard video licensing and switch to the Creative Commons Attribution license, which allows other people to reuse your videos. "Others may copy, distribute and create derivative works from your video — but only if they give you credit."

The new feature is used in YouTube's video editor, which lets you search for Creative Commons videos and use them to create a new video. YouTube says that there are already more than 10,000 videos from organizations like C-SPAN and Al Jazeera, but that's just the beginning.

YouTube will certainly become the largest library of Creative Commons videos, but it's strange to see that it took so long to add a license that encourages creativity. The first Google service that integrated with Creative Commons was Google Web Search (2005) and it was followed by Picasa Web Albums (2008) and Google Image Search (2009).

If you want to find Creative Commons videos on YouTube, click "Filter & Explore" after performing a search and select "Creative Commons". You could also add ", creativecommons" to your query and search for [paris, creativecommons].

[via Google system]