Google Docs previews in Gmail

Starting today, you can preview Google documents, spreadsheets, or presentations right in your Gmail inbox by enabling a new Gmail Labs feature, Google Docs previews.


For more information on Google Docs previews in Gmail, check out the post on the Gmail blog.

Posted by: Steven Saviano, Software Engineer

New in Labs: Google Docs previews

Posted by Steven Saviano, Software Engineer

Being an avid Google Docs user, I receive a ton of emails with links to documents that my co-workers and friends share with me. From technical design documents at work to my roommate's expenses spreadsheet, my inbox is full of document links that I need to view as I reply to my mail.

Opening these links in another tab or window is kind of annoying, plus it can be tough to keep the context of the email in mind while viewing the document.

Starting today, you can preview the contents of a Google document, spreadsheet, or presentation right in your Gmail inbox — just like you've already been able to do with YouTube videos, Yelp reviews, and Picasa and Flickr albums. Gmail will automatically detect when you receive a document link and display the name and type of doc below the email.


Just click "Show preview" and the contents of the document will display right there — no need to switch back and forth between email response and document.

To enable Google Docs previews, go to the Labs tab under Settings. Let us know what you think and what else you'd like to see while viewing docs in Gmail.

Street View: We can trike wherever you like

[Cross-posted with the Official Google Blog]

With Street View on Google Maps, you can take a virtual drive over the Golden Gate Bridge or see the bustle of Times Square from the comfort of your own home. But some of the country's most interesting and fun places aren't accessible with our Street View car. What if you want to tour the campuses of prospective universities, scout a new running trial, or plan the most efficient route to your favorite roller coasters in a theme park?

I first started thinking about this question around two years ago. My day job is working as a mechanical engineer on the Street View team, but I do a lot of mountain biking in my spare time. One day, while exploring some roads less traveled, I realized that I could combine these two pursuits and build a bicycle-based camera system for Street View. The result? The Street View trike:

I've already had a chance to take the Street View trike out to photograph some hard to reach places for Google Maps, like the Arastradero Open Preserve and LEGOLAND California. When I'm out riding — and once people understand what exactly I'm up to — I'm often asked if we can come to their alma mater, local bike trail or favorite beach boardwalk. Now, we're giving everyone a chance to tell us exactly where in the U.S. they'd like the trike to go next.

At www.google.com/trike, you can suggest interesting and unique spots in six categories:

• Parks & Trails
• University Campuses
• Pedestrian Malls (e.g., outdoor shopping areas, boardwalks)
  
• Theme Parks & Zoos
• Landmarks
• Sports Venues (e.g., golf courses, racing tracks, stadium grounds)

Nominations will be open until October 28. We'll then comb through all of the suggestions and let all of you cast your final votes on a winner from each category for the Street View trike to visit. For any privately-owned or operated location, like a campus or theme park, we'll work directly with the relevant organization prior to collecting the imagery.

When we unveiled the Street View trike in the U.K., we received more than 10,000 nominations and 35,000 votes; Stonehenge and Warwick Castle were two of the top vote-getters. We can't wait to see what you'll come up with in the U.S. — head to www.google.com/trike to submit your most inspired ideas.

Posted by Dan Ratner, Senior Mechanical Engineer

Get your campus featured in Street View on Google Maps

From the comfort of your own dorm room, Street View on Google Maps lets you scope out a restaurant before heading out there for a date (oh look, there's a flower shop next door) or preview your spring break hotel to be sure it meets your strict requirements (oh look, the beach is right across the street). But wouldn't it be nice if you could see more places in Street View? Places like hiking or biking trails, sports stadiums, and maybe even your university campus!

Freshmen could easily study what all the campus buildings look like, and your family could get a better sense of your new home. Think back to when you were applying to schools - wouldn't it have been handy to be able to virtually tour college campuses? Or better yet, picture how nice a Street View walk down memory lane will be after you graduate and start to feels pangs of nostalgia for college life.

Good news: you can now nominate your campus to be photographed for Street View on Google Maps. We've created the Street View trike, a mechanical masterpiece made of 3 bicycle wheels and a mounted Street View camera, to take pictures of places like university campuses that cannot be reached by car. Visit www.google.com/trike to nominate your school for a visit from the Street View trike.

To get an idea of what Street View pictures taken by the trike look like, you can check out San Diego State University, the first university included in Google Maps:

View Larger Map

So far we've taken the trike to a few other campuses, including the University of Pennsylvania and Penn State, but all of you have a chance to nominate your school to be included next. Of course, we'll make sure to work directly with the administration at your school to get the necessary permissions and approvals before coming on campus - and, as with all Street View imagery, we'll blur identifiable faces.

We're also accepting nominations in 5 other categories for where to send the Street View trike next:

• Parks & Trails
• Pedestrian Malls (e.g., outdoor shopping areas, boardwalks)
  
• Theme Parks & Zoos
• Landmarks
• Sports Venues (e.g., golf courses, racing tracks, stadium grounds)

Head to www.google.com/trike by October 28 to submit your nomination. After we comb through the submissions and pick out the finalists, you will have the opportunity to vote on a winner from each category for the Street View trike to visit. May the best campus win!

Invite a friend to Google Voice

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)



Since the debut of Google Voice, our early users have shared lots of feedback that has led to some exciting new features, like the ability to receive SMS messages via email and the option to change your Google Voice number. But one of the most frequent requests we've received is for the ability to share Google Voice with friends and family.



Starting today, we're beginning to give out invitations to Google Voice users.  If you currently use Google Voice, over the next few weeks, you'll see an "Invite a friend" link appear on the left-hand side of your inbox.







We'll be rolling out these invitations gradually, so don't worry if you don't see your invitations immediately. We're initially giving out three invites to each account, but we're planning to provide more invitations in the future.



If you don't have an account yet, you can request a Google Voice invitation at google.com/voiceinvite.



Posted by Craig Walker and Vincent Paquet, Product Managers, Google Voice

A guided tour for new Google Chrome users

Did you, or someone you know, recently switch to Google Chrome and wonder, "Where's the file menu?" "What happened to the search box?" "How do I bookmark a page?" To address these initial questions and help people settle into the browser, we created the "New to Google Chrome?" guide.

The first section of the guide invites people to take a tour of the browser with a simple and interactive image map. The guide then walks through key browser settings and presents a few simple tasks that highlights the browser's main features.

Savvier users could go directly to the advanced section and pick up a few tricks like creating application shortcuts and doing site searches.

Check out the guide when you get the chance and pass it along to friends who are trying out Google Chrome.

Posted by Fiona Chong, Online Editor for the Google Chrome team

Preparing for the Holidays with Google Product Search

Over the past few months, Google Product Search released some great new features for shoppers and merchants. Heading into the holiday season, we want to make sure you have all the information you need to maximize the impact of your data feeds. Here's a checklist to make sure you're all set:

• Submit all recommended and optional attributes, wherever they're relevant: the more information shoppers have, the more they know about the products you offer. For example, make sure you're submitting the UPC, Brand, and Product Type attributes.

• Use the Google Local Business Center to send us your local store locations: Google Product Search is now showing local store locations in our search results, so make sure to send us this data. Also, if you have local stores, include the "online only" attribute for any items you only stock online.

• Send us the largest and highest-quality images you have. We're planning on experimenting with displays that use large images; products that have big, high-quality images will stand out. Please send us images that are at least 300 x 300 pixels, without resizing them.

• As the pace of shopping speeds up for the holidays, it's important to make sure you're submitting often enough to keep your listings fresh and accurate for stock status and pricing.

• Use Google Analytics or your favorite web analytics program to track your traffic.

Thanks for participating in Google Product Search, and we wish you all the best this holiday season.

Posted by Vivek Tata, Product Marketing Manager, Google Product Search

Invite a friend to Google Voice

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)



Since the debut of Google Voice, our early users have shared lots of feedback that has led to some exciting new features, like the ability to receive SMS messages via email and the option to change your Google Voice number. But one of the most frequent requests we've received is for the ability to share Google Voice with friends and family.



Starting today, we're beginning to give out invitations to Google Voice users.  If you currently use Google Voice, over the next few weeks, you'll see an "Invite a friend" link appear on the left-hand side of your inbox.







We'll be rolling out these invitations gradually, so don't worry if you don't see your invitations immediately. We're initially giving out three invites to each account, but we're planning to provide more invitations in the future.



If you don't have an account yet, you can request a Google Voice invitation at google.com/voiceinvite.



Posted by Craig Walker and Vincent Paquet, Product Managers, Google Voice

New in Labs: Got the wrong Bob?

Posted by Ari Leichtberg, Software Engineer and Yossi Matias, Head of Israel Engineering Center

When's the last time you got an email from a stranger asking, "Are you sure you meant to send this to me?" and promptly realized that you didn't? Sometimes these little mistakes are actually quite painful. Hate mail about your boss to your boss? Personal info to some random guy named Bob instead of Bob the HR rep? Doh!

"Got the wrong Bob?" is a new Labs feature aimed at sparing you this kind of embarrassment. Turn it on from the Labs tab under Gmail Settings, and based on the groups of people you email most often, Gmail will try to identify when you've accidentally included the wrong person — before it's too late.


If you normally email Bob Smith together with Tim and Angela, but this time you added Bob Jones instead, we'll warn you that it might be a mistake. Note that this only works if you're emailing more than two people at once.

While we were at it, we also changed the name of "Suggest more recipients" to "Don't forget Bob" — the two related Labs features just kind of went together better this way.

If you want to test "Got the wrong Bob?" out, try faking a mistake like this:
1) Think of three people you often email together.
2) Compose a message to two of them.
3) Start typing the third member of the group (for help you can use one of the people we suggest in "Don't forget Bob"), but then auto-complete on the wrong name.

If you have suggestions please let us know. And if "Got the wrong Bob?" happens to save you from making a really bad mistake, we want to hear about that too.

Go Mobile with Google Maps

It's "Go Mobile" week at Google, and across all of Google's blogs, we're giving insight into our philosophy about mobile versions of our products.  If there's one product amongst all of Google's that was destined to "go mobile", it is without a doubt Google Maps.



I still remember when I moved to San Francisco several years ago -- before the advent of smartphones -- and I didn't know may way around town.  Driving up and down the city's crazy hills was sometimes a fun adventure, but other times an exercise in frustration.  When I knew where I wanted to go before I left home, I'd usually print out driving directions beforehand.  But any time I left home without directions, or if I decided to go somewhere spur of the moment, all I had was a clumsy paper map.  It's not easy pulling over to the side of the road on a 40 degree hill to try to make out the tiny streets on a paper map.  And if you've spilled coffee on your map, or it's become tattered... forget it, it's much less useful. So I rarely looked at the map, and I got lost.  A lot.



When I think about these experiences, I realize why I remain so passionate about Google Maps for mobile.  You get all the power of Google Maps that you use at home, but you can carry it around like you can a paper map. Actually, easier than a paper map since there's no folding, and it connects you to more than just information about where the streets are. Now that I know the city a little better, I can be spontaneous not just when I take a wrong turn. Google Maps on my phone lets me decide to go somewhere spur of the moment, with no preparation and pre-printing directions. The addition of a business directory (remember those giant books?) is liberating as well. If I get a craving for something like "burgers" or "pizza", I just type my craving into Google Maps, which returns all relevant results nearby, and presto, hunger abated.  With features like transit and walking directions, I can now figure out how to get there without a car.  Street View even helps me recognize the place when I get there.



So if you still haven't got a smartphone, now is a great time to go out and get one.  We've got a lot of engineers building Google Maps for all the major mobile operating systems: Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, Palm, S60, and Windows.



Once you take the plunge into smartphones, then getting Google Maps for your phone is easy.  Just visit m.google.com/maps in your mobile browser, or go here to send a link to your phone. And if you have any questions for us on our mobile products, submit them here by 11:59pm Pacific time on Tuesday 10/13, and we'll answer some of the top questions on Wednesday on the Google Mobile blog.



Posted by Steve Lee, Product Manager for Google Maps for mobile

Introducing Google Building Maker

Ever found yourself being an armchair tourist looking at 3D buildings of your home town in Google Earth? Have you ever wanted to highlight that famous building in your city or on your campus, but not really been sure where to start?

Building Maker helps you put buildings on the 3D map.

Today we launched Google Building Maker, a fun and simple (and crazy addictive, it turns out) online tool for creating buildings for Google Earth. Basically, you pick a building and construct a model of it using aerial photos and simple 3D shapes – both of which we provide. When you're done, we take a look at your model. If it looks right, and if a better model doesn't already exist, we add it to the 3D Buildings layer in Google Earth.

Check out this video to see Building Maker in action:

For now, you can choose to make buildings in any of about 50 cities. We'll keep adding more cities, but don't feel left out if we don't have your hometown yet — modeling in a place you've never been is a fantastic way to discover more about it.

Simply, make sure you have the latest version of Google Earth installed on your computer. If you're on a Mac, you will need to download the Google Earth plug-in directly.

Building Maker is free and available in 14 languages. Go to www.google.com/buildingmaker to join the worldwide mapping community. Have fun!

Posted by Mark Limber, Product Manager and Matt Simpson, User Experience Designer

Shared folders and more in Google Docs

Today, we are happy to announce the updates to the Google Docs docs list that we promised in July. We're rolling out these update gradually, so they should be available to everyone soon. The biggest update is the introduction of shared folders -- far and away the most requested Google Docs feature. Shared folders work how you would expect them to and we hope they will make it easier for teams and groups to collaborate on documents together.

To share a group of items, all you have to do is put them all into a folder and share the folder. As you'd expect, if you add an item to a shared folder, it will automatically be shared and if you add someone to an existing shared folder, they will instantly get access to all of the folder's content.

We've also made it easy to upload multiple items to Google Docs. Instead of picking one file at a time, our new upload page lets you choose multiple files and upload them simultaneously, in just a couple of steps.

First click on "Select files to upload" and use "Shift" or "Ctrl" to pick multiple files. Then press "Start upload". We added progress bars so you'll be able to watch the upload as it progresses.

We've also brought back "Items not in folders" (under "More searches"), based on your feedback.

On the whole, "Items not in folders" works the same

• When you create an new item or an item is directly shared to you, it's in "Items not in folders".
• When an item is shared to you via a folder, it's not in "Items not in folders".
• When you add an item to a folder, it will no longer be in "Items not in folders".
• When you remove an item from all its folders, it will once again be in "Items not in folders".

Since many of you have been using this view as a workflow tool (perhaps you keep drafts and to-do's "not in folders" and then when they are done, move them to a folder), we've made one change to ensure the filter functions as expected in light of the new shared folders. If you share an item with me and I put it in a shared folder, it is still in your "Items not in folders" view. The reason is that I shouldn't be able to change your workflow. As a result, you'll occasionally see an item with a folder tag in your "Items not in folders" view. This is an item that someone else put in a shared folder, but you've never put in a folder.

And finally, we've also updated the look of the interface. For the most part, we changed colors, spacing and moved some buttons around, but we also improved the old "Move to" dialog. The new "Folders" dialog let's you completely control which folder or folders an item is in. And when you're in a folder, you also have the "Move to" dialog which lets you quickly move an item to a different folder.

Please try out the new features and let us know what you think.

Posted by: Vijay Bangaru, Product Manager, Google Docs

Shared folders and more in Google Docs

Today, we are happy to announce the updates to the Google Docs docs list that we promised in July. We're rolling out these update gradually, so they should be available to everyone soon. The biggest update is the introduction of shared folders -- far and away the most requested Google Docs feature. Shared folders work how you would expect them to and we hope they will make it easier for teams and groups to collaborate on documents together.

To share a group of items, all you have to do is put them all into a folder and share the folder. As you'd expect, if you add an item to a shared folder, it will automatically be shared and if you add someone to an existing shared folder, they will instantly get access to all of the folder's content.

We've also made it easy to upload multiple items to Google Docs. Instead of picking one file at a time, our new upload page lets you choose multiple files and upload them simultaneously, in just a couple of steps.

First click on "Select files to upload" and use "Shift" or "Ctrl" to pick multiple files. Then press "Start upload". We added progress bars so you'll be able to watch the upload as it progresses.

We've also brought back "Items not in folders" (under "More searches"), based on your feedback.

On the whole, "Items not in folders" works the same

• When you create an new item or an item is directly shared to you, it's in "Items not in folders".
• When an item is shared to you via a folder, it's not in "Items not in folders".
• When you add an item to a folder, it will no longer be in "Items not in folders".
• When you remove an item from all its folders, it will once again be in "Items not in folders".

Since many of you have been using this view as a workflow tool (perhaps you keep drafts and to-do's "not in folders" and then when they are done, move them to a folder), we've made one change to ensure the filter functions as expected in light of the new shared folders. If you share an item with me and I put it in a shared folder, it is still in your "Items not in folders" view. The reason is that I shouldn't be able to change your workflow. As a result, you'll occasionally see an item with a folder tag in your "Items not in folders" view. This is an item that someone else put in a shared folder, but you've never put in a folder.

And finally, we've also updated the look of the interface. For the most part, we changed colors, spacing and moved some buttons around, but we also improved the old "Move to" dialog. The new "Folders" dialog let's you completely control which folder or folders an item is in. And when you're in a folder, you also have the "Move to" dialog which lets you quickly move an item to a different folder.

Please try out the new features and let us know what you think.

Posted by: Vijay Bangaru, Product Manager, Google Docs

Random Hacks of Kindness

We've posted several blogs about the various ways Google geo tools have contributed to disaster relief efforts. Last year, Direct Relief created a KML of health centers in the wake of Cyclone Nargis. More recently, UNOSAT used Map Maker data during the western Africa floods.

Mapping technologies may be central to understanding and responding to disasters, but many other technologies--such data-feed mechanisms, people finders, and reporting & communication tools--are necessary as well. With this in mind, we're partnering with The World Bank to host the first-ever Random Hacks of Kindness codejam.

The ultimate goal of Random Hacks of Kindness is to save lives. Random Hacks of Kindness will bring technologists and relief workers together to develop technologies that enable disaster victims to help themselves and give first responders and aid workers the tools they need to better help victims--to reduce loss of life and to speed recovery.



Over the course of two and a half days, speakers like FEMA Chief Craig Fugate will expound on the mission, subject matter experts will brief self-organized teams on specific problems, a great deal of coffee will be consumed, and code will be written. Teams will have the opportunity to port their solutions down to Camp Roberts near Paso Robles, CA, where it will be tested in field simulations to provide real-time feedback for multiple iteration cycles.



We hope RHoK generates software solutions that help users predict, prevent, and respond to disasters—but, realistically, we know that coding over a single weekend is only a start. That’s why the codejam in November is the first RHoK, but not the last. In and effort to encourage the developer community to adopt disaster response as a mission, we’ll hold a RHoK event every six to twelve months—sharing learnings from actual events, building on ongoing efforts, and collaborating on promising new technologies.



Join us! The codejam will take place from November 12-14 at the Hacker Dojo, located in Mountain View, CA. Invitations to developers will go out shortly, so if you're interested in coding, serving as a subject matter expert, or sponsoring the event, please visit www.randomhacksofkindness.org.

Posted by Jeff Martin, Google Crisis Response Team