Thursday 10 September 2009

Play voicemails right from Gmail

I spend a lot of time in Gmail and love how Google Voice email notifications let me see voicemails in my email inbox. I can scan the transcript quickly, and when I want to hear the voicemail, it is just a click away on my computer.

However, something always seemed a little off when I clicked "Play message" and it opened up a new browser window. Wouldn’t it be better if the voicemail just played in the email? Now that is possible in Gmail. You have to turn on the Google Voice player in the Gmail Labs tab under Settings, but after that you are good to go. When voicemails come in, click on the play button, and you can listen to the whole message, adjust volume and everything right inside the Gmail message. To read more check out the post on the Gmail blog.









We hope you like this new feature. Let us know what you think by leaving a comment in our forum.

Posted by Robert Dong,
Software Engineer

Tip: Even more control over opening links

In the previous tip, we covered middle-clicking and ctrl-clicking to open links in new tabs. There are even more shortcuts you can use to take total control over where links open. Feel free to try these:



Shift-click: Opens a link in a new window (just like right-clicking and selecting "Open link in new window")





Shift-middle-click (or shift-ctrl-click): Opens a link in a new tab, and switches to that tab immediately





Alt-click: Saves the contents of a link to your computer





With these shortcuts, you can quickly handle links no matter how you wish to use them. Enjoy!



Posted by Peter Kasting, Software Engineer

Lights, Camera, Action!: YouTube Videos in Google Product Search

Video product reviews are getting a lot of buzz right now, as shoppers increasingly turn to the web to help them figure out what to buy. We're excited to announce that we are including relevant and high quality YouTube video reviews on a number of our product pages in Google Product Search. Videos include reviews from sources like USA Today, Wired, and Digital Trends, and they appear above the "Similar Items" section of the page. For example, see the product page for this Nikon D90 camera.

We'll be periodically reviewing content for inclusion in this feature. While we can't guarantee that submitted videos will be selected, please do the following if you'd like a video to be considered:
  • Add the "youtube" attribute to your data feed. In this attribute include the YouTube video ID for each one of your products with a related YouTube video review. Video IDs are the values that follow the 'v=' in the YouTube URL of the video.

  • Include UPC, ISBN, brand, and MPN information in the tag of your YouTube video review.
So grab some popcorn and pull up a comfy chair - it's time to go shopping!

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


Using Google Docs to manage a website redesign

Guest post: Michelle Madhok, the founder and CEO of SheFinds Media, a New York, NY company that publishes editorial websites that help women shop online, recently used Google Docs spreadsheets to manage her site's relaunch. Here's what she told us about her experience:

The five employees at SheFinds Media write, manage and promote all of the content on SheFinds.com and MomFinds.com, which keeps us pretty busy - so we outsource a lot of the tech work to other firms.

We recently re-launched our flagship site, SheFinds.com, and the process was bumpy to say the least. All three parties working on the re-launch - the SheFinds staffers, our SEO firm, and our design and development agency - were finding random bugs, broken links, and failed redirects on the new site. After a few days of incessant back-and-forth e-mails about fixing one-off issues, our inboxes were stuffed and the whole team was confused about who was assigned what responsibilities.

Switching the process over to Google Docs streamlined the whole thing. We listed all the bugs and errant links in a spreadsheet, color-coded the status of each issue, and added comment columns so everyone could see the nitty gritty of each problem without doing a dozen inbox searches.



Our Google Doc also made managing the whole process a lot less stressful, since I knew all the items were accounted for and nothing would be overlooked.

We're re-launching MomFinds.com in a few weeks, and I can say right now, there will be a Google Doc up and waiting when the site goes live - I anticipate some of the same re-direct and broken link issues, and I'm glad to be prepared to solve them in an organized way from the outset. The tool makes coordinating information from three different companies in three different locations logistically simple - we're happy to have discovered it the first time around.

Michelle Madhok, Founder and CEO, SheFinds Media


Google Sites, now in Hebrew and Arabic

We would like to welcome Hebrew and Arabic speakers to Google Sites. With the addition of Hebrew and Arabic, Google Sites now supports a total of 40 languages. As a reminder, site owners can change the site language using More actions -> Manage site -> General. Site collaborators can change the interface language via the user settings page available from the My sites list. If no language is set, we use the browser language setting.









Posted by Michael Cheng, Software Engineer

Google Earth 5.1: Think fast


When we released Google Earth 5 earlier this year, we packed it full of amazing new features. We opened up two-thirds of the planet to exploration by letting you dive into the oceans; with historical imagery, we added the ability to go back in time to see how our planet has changed over the years; with touring, we made it easy for anyone to create and share guided, narrated stories; and with 3D Mars, we made it easy to leave Earth's orbit and explore the Red Planet.

But here at Google, we've realized that one of the most important features of all is speed. One of our key design principles is "fast is better than slow." So for the newest version of Google Earth, we've been hard at work making it faster.

We've made a lot of adjustments under the hood, like improving memory utilization so we can show more buildings, layers, and user content. We improved our shaders (that's graphics-speak for small programs that run inside your graphics processor) to make the atmosphere draw faster. We also worked to reduce stuttering (known as frame drops) to provide an even smoother experience as you fly around the globe. When we draw imagery, we now use compression technology to use less memory and graphics resources. We know that waiting for a program to start-up can be really frustrating, so we improved our start-up time by 25%. In our Google Earth API (which allows developers to include Google Earth right in their websites), we have made API calls significantly faster, which means that our developers can now do even more.

What does all of this mean to you? A faster, smoother experience when you're flying around the globe. Download the latest version (Google Earth 5.1), head on over to Paris, and turn on the road layer without fear of slowing things down. Or turn on one of the Rumsey Map layers from our gallery and see the world as it was drawn by Cassini in 1790 without missing a beat.


We've also made another exciting change with the release: our browser plug-in is automatically included when you install Google Earth (PC-only for now.) This means that once you've downloaded Google Earth 5.1, you can explore all of the exciting Google Earth sites that our developers have made without having to mess around with another installation. You can learn about endangered marine species, or perhaps practice landing a lunar rover before your next big expedition. Now these and many more Google Earth web applications are just a click away.

Download the latest version of Google Earth at http://earth.google.com, and fly around the globe faster than ever before.



Wednesday 9 September 2009

Receive and reply to SMS messages by email

With Google Voice, you receive SMS messages on your phones AND in your Google Voice inbox, which means you can send SMS replies from either from your mobile phone or your computer. Today, we're going one step further by allowing you to get text messages by email. After enabling SMS-to-email forwarding, every time you receive a new SMS on your Google Voice number, we will send you an email notification. Some of the benefits of this new feature include:
  • Unified messaging - You can get SMS together with email and voicemail notifications, all in one place in your email inbox, where you can easily search and reply to these messages.
  • SMS savings - If you spend your time in front of your computer, or if you get email on your mobile phone, you can turn off SMS notification to your phone in Google Voice and receive and reply to your SMS by email, saving on SMS costs.
  • SMS threading - If you use Gmail, you also get the extra benefit of threading all SMS between you and one contact into one conversation, so it is easy to see the whole discussion.
This feature can be easily turned on or off from the call settings page:






As always feedback is welcomed and we hope you like this feature.

Posted by Vincent Paquet

Google Voice for Newbies: Scheduling your rings

A few days ago, I decided to spend some quality time poking around the Google Voice Settings page. I'm glad I did, because I found a Voice feature I never knew existed! It's the "ring schedule" feature. I'd never thought about setting up a preset schedule for phone calls and was pleasantly surprised to find out this was actually a popular requested feature by users.

This help center article describes how to set up your ring schedule. So then the question is: why would you want to do this?

There are many possible reasons, but two examples came to my mind immediately. Say you have unreliable cell phone reception at home, and you want to be able to take your calls from your home phone on evenings and weekends. However, you don't want the home line to ring and bother your roommate during work hours when you're not there. You can do this. Or if you don't want any calls interrupting your dinner from 6pm-7:30pm every night, go ahead and set your ring schedule so calls to your Google number never ring your phones during dinner time. During those hours, callers will be able to leave you voicemail so you can catch up after you're done eating.

Whether you're new to Voice or didn't know this feature existed, give it a try! If you have questions about this or any other features, visit the Google Voice Help Forum. We also welcome stories and comments regarding interesting ways you're using Voice. Share these in the "Tips and Tricks" category of the Google Voice Help Forum.

Posted by Carol and Heather
Googlers

Sometimes the Teachers are the Students

Throughout the summer we've had the chance to meet with several K-12 teachers as they prepare to go back to school with Google Apps. Once again we were amazed by the creative and inspiring way teachers use Google Docs, Google Sites and other apps to teach their students. One teacher we met integrated Docs so deeply into his curriculum that he now has a "paperless" classroom!

Many teachers are also starting to use Google Sites. We heard sighs of relief when we told teachers they didn't need to know how to code in order to create class websites. In fact, we wanted to make creating sites even easier. Just in time for back to school, we've created Google Sites Set-up Guides. These guides will help teachers create class sites, class project sites, and administrative sites. The guides will also show you how simple it is to embed student presentations, research paper templates, and even pop quizzes.

You can create a class site with a class calendar, embedded forms for pop quizzes, and list student assignments so students never forget their homework and parents can help their children more easily. A class site is also a great way to showcase student work throughout the school year.


Google Sites can also be used to create a school project site. We have lots of great examples of teacher-submitted project sites on our Sites for Teachers Page and the set-up guides will help teachers create project sites of their own. Project sites let students keep track of all their research materials, collaborate on reports, and even track their progress using spreadsheets.


The Sites Set-up Guides can also help teachers set up school administrative sites to help teachers work together to organize school events, share resources and post policies, and track student progress and behavior using Google spreadsheets.


We hope all you teachers out there find these guides useful and we look forward to seeing all the creative ways you use Docs and Sites this school year.

Posted by Ashley Chandler, User Operations, Google Docs and Google Sites

Five million students going back to school are "Going Google"

It's always tough to bid farewell to summer and hit the books again, but for a few million students this back-to-school season, things are looking up. As of this fall, over five million students at thousands of schools in more than 145 countries have "gone Google" and are actively using Google Apps Education Edition on campus. Since this time last year the number of students using Google Apps on campus has increased by 400%. Because more schools sign up for Apps everyday, we wanted to celebrate the start of the 2009 school year by launching a new site that shows off some of these schools, provides product tips and tricks, introduces a community discussion forum and more.


A snapshot of some of the thousands of schools going Google this Fall. Every location in green indicates Apps users.

When you visit the site, you'll also find an interactive map packed with interesting trivia. For example, in addition to the 70,000 students using Apps at Temple University, their 5,000 staff and faculty were given a choice between Gmail and alternative vendor, and over 90% chose to go Google. Or when Kent State first deployed, they saw more than 700 students migrating each hour. And a single admin at Montana State successfully deployed over 30,000 accounts in less than 90 days. Or as we learned in the recent webinar from another school on the map — Notre Dame — they saved $1.5 million by switching to Apps. You can hear their full story in this video:



We hope more schools will continue to go Google and bring Apps to their campuses in an effort to improve communication and collaboration while cutting costs and resources. In the meantime, check out our site and find out what Apps has done for other schools and what Apps can do for your school — and if you're already a part of the movement, add yourself to the map!

Posted by Jason Cook and Miriam Schneider, Apps Education Edition team

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