Video chat tips

Hi all, we wanted to share some thoughts, tricks and tips around our Gmail video chat feature. Our first video chat tip is around making the call window bigger on your screen. When a video chat first starts, it is in the small chat window, and you see more of your email inbox than the person you wanted to talk to.

Did you know you could use the "pop-out" arrow on the top of a chat window to make a video chat bigger? This will separate the video chat into its own window that you can resize and move around as you like.

If you want to make the video chat as large as possible and block everything else out, simply use the Full Screen button in the top left corner of the video area. This will fill up your screen and make your conversation much more immersive. Based on the feedback you've given us, we have added the ability to mute your microphone while in full screen mode. To do this, simply hit the space bar!

Feel free to reach us by linking to this blog and by using twitter. We monitor "Gmail video chat", Gmail video chat", "Google video chat", or #googlevideochat in your tweets.

Posted by Fredrik Oja,
Software Engineer

Shipping Costs in Product Search for Germany

Shopping online lets you find great deals, but it's important to know the full cost of what you're planning to buy. That's why we're happy to announce that we've started displaying shipping costs in Google Product Search results for Germany. So that users get the most accurate price information, we strongly encourage you to start including shipping data for all your products submitted for Germany if you haven't done so already. Please make sure that both your item price and shipping price are VAT inclusive, and ensure that your display name conforms to our editorial guidelines by removing any tax and shipping information.

Posted by Paul Lee, Business Product Manager, Google Product Search

Back-to-School with Google Code University

The fall semester is around the corner, meaning you're probably starting to think about what new subjects and topics you'll tackle. If you are studying CS or considering taking a Computer Science course we thought you might be interested in Google Code University.

Here you'll find a repository of educational material, including tutorials, lecture slides, and videos focused entirely on computer science. The content - developed by the best schools around the country - is cutting edge. Since all of it is Creative Commons licensed, you can even download it and reuse it in your class. With freshly created content by the University of Southern California, California Polytechnic State University and the University of Washington, there's lots to check out, so give it a whirl and learn something new!

By Andrea Held, Google Code University Team

Mail and contact import for everyone

Posted by Marcin Brodziak, Software Engineer

A few months ago, we added the ability to import your old mail and contacts to Gmail. We made this feature available for all newly-created Gmail accounts first, since people new to Gmail benefit most from being able to move their stuff with them. Friends who wanted to use Gmail but kept telling us how painful it would be finally made the switch!

But many old time Gmail users (including us) also have old accounts lurking. Often, these accounts predate Gmail, and occasionally we have to log into them to look at some old confirmation email or find the email address for someone with whom we've lost touch.

Now, with just a few clicks anyone can copy all of that to your Gmail account. It's easy — just go to the Settings > Accounts & Import page and click "Import mail and contacts." A window will pop out to lead you through the short import process. If you want us to continue to forward any new mail your other account gets for 30 days, we can do that too.

Copying mail over usually takes a couple days, occasionally up to a week — but eventually it all arrives. And once it's done, you can forget your old account and enjoy having everything in one place.

Map Maker goes west

Google Map Maker (mapmaker.google.com) is now open for editing in Mexico. Mexico joins an impressive list of Latin American countries spanning much of South America, Central America, and the Caribbean. Combined with the launch in Eastern Europe earlier this week, this launch constitutes a substantial expansion in the western hemisphere, wherein these two launches have doubled the number of users who can map their country on Map Maker.

In the last year, mappers from around the world have contributed local knowledge with everything from mapping entire countries to adding details like one-way streets to make maps drivable. We're very excited to see these new communities around the globe embrace the ability to maps their countries, such as these users, former Peace Corps volunteers now mapping in Guyana.

Posted by Lior Ron, Product lead; Lalitesh Katragadda, Tech Lead

Jumpstart your school year with Google

Salone is a rising senior at Stanford University and has spent her summer interning with the Search Marketing team in Mountain View.

As summer jobs wrap up and stores abound with "Back to School" sales, the end of summer vacation is imminent. For me, the end of August means registering for classes, endless packing sessions, shopping trips to buy a growing list of "essentials," and the inevitable jitters that accompany the start of a new academic year.

Whether you've been dying to get back to school or suffering from the end of summer blues, we at Google put together some study tips to help you jumpstart your school year. From getting a head start on your reading and research interests with Google Books and Google Scholar to slicing and dicing your research with timeline or wonderwheel, we hope these tips help you stay on top of your classes and get the most out of Google. But don't fret - we know that back to school is also about catching up with your friends after a long summer. So take some time out of your busy class schedule and plan some downtime with Google, too.

Good luck and here's to a great first semester!

Posted by Salone Kapur, Associate Product Marketing Manager Intern, Search Marketing Team

Calls to Canada are free again

In addition to making free long distance calls within the continental US, you can now call Canada for free through Google Voice. We offered this feature in GrandCentral previously, and in an effort to provide as many useful features as we can for free, we're happy to bring those free calls to Canada to Google Voice users as well.

You can initiate calls from your inbox online, from our new mobile apps, or by dialing your own Google Voice number from one of your phones and selecting option 2 to place a call.

Please note that Google Voice is only available in the US, and you'll need a working US phone to setup a Google Voice account.

Posted by Brian Peterson
Software Engineer

50 Chrome Experiments and counting!

When we launched Chrome Experiments in March, we wanted to create a showcase for innovative uses of web browsers and JavaScript. It was also our hope that artists and programmers from around the world would be inspired to submit their own experiments. Today, we're excited to announce that Chrome Experiments -- which started out as nineteen experiments at launch -- now points to fifty very impressive JavaScript experiments.

We'd like to send a huge thank you to the community for submitting such great work over the last five months. And we're thrilled to see many new submissions by developers from around the world, from Lithuania to Brazil to Australia. As the new generation of JavaScript engines make the web faster, we hope that you're enjoying the creative possibilities as much as we are. Some of our favorite new experiments include Depth of Field, Wavy Scrollbars, JavaScript Canvas Raytracer, and Bomomo.

The 50th Chrome Experiment, Sebastian Deutsch's 100 Tweets, shows a hint of the future by using the HTML5 canvas and audio tags. The audio tag, which is supported in Google Chrome Beta, allows audio playback without a plug-in.

We're very excited about HTML5 becoming standard in modern browsers. If you're thinking about submitting an experiment to Chrome Experiments, we'd love to see some innovative uses of this new standard. We're especially psyched about the video and audio tags.

If you haven't checked out Chrome Experiments recently, we hope that you take some time and explore all the latest experiments. Please keep the experiments coming, and, hopefully, we'll see you again at 100.

Posted by Aaron Koblin, Google Creative Lab

Shipping Attribute now available for Germany

In response to the July 16th German Supreme Court ruling concerning shipping costs in comparison shopping engines, and to provide consumer with more accurate price information, we're pleased to announce that we've launched the "shipping" attribute in Germany. The "shipping" attribute allows you to specify shipping values for your items on Google Product Search. For more details on formatting the "shipping" attribute, please visit this German Help Center article.

We'll provide an update on this blog once we begin displaying shipping information in Google Product Search results. In the meantime, we strongly encourage all merchants submitting items for Germany to include shipping information in the new "shipping" attribute as soon as possible. Please make sure to include VAT, both in the item price and the shipping price.

Posted by Andrea Gotschin, Google Base Support

Bringing Street View to an attraction near you

Along with the new countries added to Street View, I'm particularly excited to be launching some imagery from our Street View Partner Program. It's been a blast to work with a wide range of exciting partners so it's great to now showcase some of their locations in Street View. You'll now find imagery of Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca,Thunderhill Raceway Park, San Diego State University and LEGOLAND California featured in Street View.

View Larger Map

Everything that you've seen on Street View so far has been from public places. But with our new Partner Program, we've been working directly with various partners and are able to collect imagery of private destinations like race tracks, universities and amusement parks.

For some of these spots, like a race track, our Street View cars are a perfect fit. But to be able to explore more pedestrian-focused areas, such as a campus, we're using a new platform called the trike, a bicycle-based version of a Street View system. With the trike, it gets us almost anywhere the car doesn't fit. You can see that the trikes resemble an ice cream cart a bit:

It uses the same camera system we have on our cars, but we've transplanted it onto the trike. It's built onto a 3-wheeled bicycle base and we've added a few of our own tweaks. We've gone through a few versions to get to where we are now; the first one came in at 500lbs, and the newest version has slimmed down to 300lbs. Believe me, our riders are very happy about that.

I think one of the most memorable experiences from working with this first batch was getting to go around the track at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca with the GT and Le Mans prototypes from the Monterey Sports Car Championships last year.

View Larger Map

Grab the pegman and check out all these cool spots. If you happen to work at a location that you think would be a great fit for the Partner Program, be sure to visit the Content Central Blog to find out more about how you too can be featured in Street View.

Posted by Wendy Wang, Operations Program Manager

Calls to Canada are free again

In addition to making free long distance calls within the continental US, you can now call Canada for free through Google Voice. We offered this feature in GrandCentral previously, and in an effort to provide as many useful features as we can for free, we're happy to bring those free calls to Canada to Google Voice users as well.

You can initiate calls from your inbox online, from our new mobile apps, or by dialing your own Google Voice number from one of your phones and selecting option 2 to place a call.

Please note that Google Voice is only available in the US, and you'll need a working US phone to setup a Google Voice account.

Posted by Brian Peterson
Software Engineer

Bringing Street View to an attraction near you

Along with the new countries added to Street View, I'm particularly excited to be launching some imagery from our Street View Partner Program. It's been a blast to work with a wide range of exciting partners so it's great to now showcase some of their locations in Street View. You'll now find imagery of Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca,Thunderhill Raceway Park, San Diego State University and LEGOLAND California featured in Street View.

View Larger Map

Everything that you've seen on Street View so far has been from public places. But with our new Partner Program, we've been working directly with various partners and are able to collect imagery of private destinations like race tracks, universities and amusement parks.

For some of these spots, like a race track, our Street View cars are a perfect fit. But to be able to explore more pedestrian-focused areas, such as a campus, we're using a new platform called the trike, a bicycle-based version of a Street View system. With the trike, it gets us almost anywhere the car doesn't fit. You can see that the trikes resemble an ice cream cart a bit:

It uses the same camera system we have on our cars, but we've transplanted it onto the trike. It's built onto a 3-wheeled bicycle base and we've added a few of our own tweaks. We've gone through a few versions to get to where we are now; the first one came in at 500lbs, and the newest version has slimmed down to 300lbs. Believe me, our riders are very happy about that.

I think one of the most memorable experiences from working with this first batch was getting to go around the track at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca with the GT and Le Mans prototypes from the Monterey Sports Car Championships last year.

View Larger Map

Grab the pegman and check out all these cool spots. If you happen to work at a location that you think would be a great fit for the Partner Program, be sure to visit the Content Central Blog to find out more about how you too can be featured in Street View.

Posted by Wendy Wang, Operations Program Manager

Download Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince torrent

Download Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince torrent ( Coming soon)

Download G-Force torrent

Download G-Force torrent ( Coming soon)

Download The Time Traveler's Wife torrent

Download The Time Traveler's Wife torrent ( Coming soon)

Shipping Attribute now available for Germany

In response to the July 16th German Supreme Court ruling concerning shipping costs in comparison shopping engines, and to provide consumer with more accurate price information, we're pleased to announce that we've launched the "shipping" attribute in Germany. The "shipping" attribute allows you to specify shipping values for your items on Google Product Search. For more details on formatting the "shipping" attribute, please visit this German Help Center article.

We'll provide an update on this blog once we begin displaying shipping information in Google Product Search results. In the meantime, we strongly encourage all merchants submitting items for Germany to include shipping information in the new "shipping" attribute as soon as possible. Please make sure to include VAT, both in the item price and the shipping price.

Posted by Andrea Gotschin, Google Base Support

Getting your ducks in a row with snap to grid

Today, we're launching snap to grid in Google Docs presentations. Snap to grid makes it easy to auto-align text, images, shapes, and tables within your slides. This option is on by default, so you may have already used it without noticing anything, apart from a mild sense of euphoria.

But, there's more than meets the eye with snap to grid. Try out these handy keyboard modifiers:

[ALT] while dragging turns off the grid and gives you smooth drag (use [OPTION] on a mac)
[SHIFT] while dragging enables vertical and horizontal dragging guides
[SHIFT] while moving an object with arrow keys enables 1 pixel nudge
[SHIFT] while resizing preserves the aspect ratio of the object
[CTRL] while moving leaves the original object and drops a duplicate in the new location



You can disable and re-enable snap to grid through the slide context menu or the arrange menu.

Please let us know what you think on the Google Docs user forum.

Posted by: Andy Perelson, Software Engineer

Launched: Email retention policies and email delegation

A few weeks back, we let you know that Google Apps Premier Edition would soon support two new business-focused features: email retention policies and email delegation. Today we're happy to share the news that both features have been rolled out to Google Apps Premier Edition customers.

Email retention policies help companies comply with industry and government regulations by allowing their admins to determine how long an email should remain in the system before being automatically deleted. Email delegation allows employees to specify other users allowed to manage email for them – especially useful to executives and administrative assistants.

Premier Edition administrators can enable these features from the administrative control panel under the 'Email Settings' tab.

Posted by Rajen Sheth, Google Apps Product Manager

Find customer stories and research product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes/Domino.