Google Voice automatically transcribes voicemail messages so you can get a sense of what messages are about without needing to listen to them. The automated process sometimes works great, sometimes not so well. But we're committed to making it better. After all, my friends don't call me "ten cent" in real life!
There are many variables that influence the quality of transcripts, from background noise, to caller accent, to connection quality, and more. Having a pool of messages that can be used to gauge accuracy is very useful in that respect.
And this is where you can help by "donating" some of your voicemail messages. Until now, the only feedback you could give was to let us know if the quality of the transcript was good enough to be useful or not, by checking the corresponding box next to the message. You can now go one step further by letting us figure out why it was good or bad. When you rate a transcript, you will be asked whether you would like to donate the message. You have three options:
The messages you donate may be listened to, manually transcribed by us and/or used to gauge transcription improvements over time, but they will never be made public or used for any other purpose than improving the transcription quality.
And if you're feeling generous, you can go back to old messages you previously rated and donate those, too!
At Google, we've found that users are more likely to click on short URLs in the search results than on longer ones. However, if your site is like most, there are multiple URLs that will take users to the same product page, including some that are longer because they include tracking information, category navigation, or other parameters. For example, both
might lead to the same product page. When Googlebot crawls a site, it's not unusual for it to find several URLs for the same page. And it's not always clear which of those should be displayed in the search results on Google.com.
There's actually a way for you to tell search engines which URL you'd prefer they use. Your webmaster can do this with a tag. For example, if you wanted to specify the shorter URL above, you could just have the following added to the section at the top of your page:
For more information on how to specify your canonical, check out our canonical URLs post on the Webmaster Central Blog.
The canonical URL you specify will indicate your preference for Google.com search results, but for Product Search, Product Listing Ads, and AdWords product extensions we'll continue to use the URLs you specify in your feeds or through the API. That means that if you're submitting URLs with tracking parameters, they will continue to work.
As always, send any questions our way in the help forum.
Posted by Robin Zueger, Product Manager, Google Merchant Center
The Google Chrome team launched beta support for extensions on Tuesday. We didn't want to miss the extension party, so we created a Google Docs extension. The Google Docs PDF/Powerpoint Viewer makes it easy to preview PDFs, Powerpoint presentations, and other documents you find across the web in the Google Docs viewer, instead of downloading them.
Let us know how you like the extension and what you like to see us add by posting a review on our extension's page.
Note that extensions are currently available only for the beta channel of Google Chrome for Windows and Linux.
Happy viewing!
Posted by: Wes Carr and Jesse Kinkead, Software Engineers, Google Docs
The Google Chrome team launched beta support for extensions on Tuesday. We didn't want to miss the extension party, so we created a Google Docs extension. The Google Docs PDF/Powerpoint Viewer makes it easy to preview PDFs, Powerpoint presentations, and other documents you find across the web in the Google Docs viewer, instead of downloading them.
Let us know how you like the extension and what you like to see us add by posting a review on our extension's page.
Note that extensions are currently available only for the beta channel of Google Chrome for Windows and Linux.
Happy viewing!
Posted by: Wes Carr and Jesse Kinkead, Software Engineers, Google Docs
We just launched new imagery and terrain for Mars in Google Earth! If you have the Google Earth plugin installed, you can view the updated areas highlighted in red (imagery) and white (terrain) below. Alternatively, you can download this KML, for viewing while using Mars in Google Earth.
The updates are from the High Resolution Stereo Camera aboard the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter. With these updates, nearly half of the martian surface is covered by imagery having a nominal resolution of 25 meters per pixel. As such, there are many exciting, newly-visible surface features to see. We've indicated some of these sights with color-coded arrows on the globe below:
Red arrow: Layered deposits on the floor of Hebes Chasma.
White arrow: Voluminuous lava flow fields adjacent to, and associated with, the Tharsis volcanoes Ascraeus and Pavonis Mons.
Blue arrow: New imagery of Olympus Mons' Aureole and the huge glacier-like structures along its north-west flank.
Yellow arrow: New images of the Shalabanta Valles (a deep canyon) section north of Orson Welles Crater showing huge landslides that occurred with such force that the debris (having an area the size of Chicago) flowed half-way up the other side of the canyon.
Green arrow: Dust and ice layers that comprise one of the Mars' most active geologic features, the ice cap of the north polar plateau, Planum Boreum.
Imagery and terrain updates are noted with a red and white frame, respectively
As a reminder, you can view Mars in Google Earth by clicking the 'planets' button on the toolbar:
Click here to find out more about Mars (and Moon!) in Google Earth.
You can also share your cool new imagery finds with us using Twitter! After looking at the updates in the viewer above, tweet your cool finds and add the #GEarthIMG hashtag to your tweets.
Starting today, more colorful emails might be waiting in your friends' and colleagues' inboxes if you've shared Google documents with them. Check out the difference:
Old Email New Email In addition to the visual update, the new emails showcase your custom message rather than placing it at the bottom. Your buddy won't miss that important note about your shared document being a work of fiction (sound familiar?), because it's now prominently featured.
No more hunting for links either, just click the header:
Or, if multiple docs are shared, peruse a simple list:
The email's color and icon indicate the type of document at-a-glance:
Spreadsheets Presentations We know you're mighty busy, so we're always looking for ways to make Google Docs quicker and easier to use and share. Let us know what you think on the forums.
Posted by: Vance Vagell, User Interface Software Engineer
Starting today, more colorful emails might be waiting in your friends' and colleagues' inboxes if you've shared Google documents with them. Check out the difference:
Old Email New Email In addition to the visual update, the new emails showcase your custom message rather than placing it at the bottom. Your buddy won't miss that important note about your shared document being a work of fiction (sound familiar?), because it's now prominently featured.
No more hunting for links either, just click the header:
Or, if multiple docs are shared, peruse a simple list:
The email's color and icon indicate the type of document at-a-glance:
Spreadsheets Presentations We know you're mighty busy, so we're always looking for ways to make Google Docs quicker and easier to use and share. Let us know what you think on the forums.
Posted by: Vance Vagell, User Interface Software Engineer
There was nothing more excruciating for me as a kid than seeing the presents pile up under the Christmas tree but knowing that I couldn't open them until Christmas morning. On the Google Chrome team, we've had the same feeling as we've been working to get betas ready for Mac, Linux and extensions. It's been a long time coming, but today we can check the top three items off our users' wish lists.
Google Chrome for Mac (Beta) We've been working hard to deliver a first-class browser for the Mac — it took longer than we expected, but we hope the wait was worth it! We wanted Google Chrome to feel at home on the Mac, so we've focused on uniting our clean, simple design with subtle animations and effects to create a snappy and satisfying browsing experience on OS X. As you might expect, the speed of Google Chrome for Mac is something we're very proud of. If you have a Mac, try installing the beta and see how fast it launches — there's hardly even time for the icon in the dock to bounce!
For more details on this beta release of Google Chrome for Mac, read on in the Google Mac blog or watch this video from one of our engineers, Mike Pinkerton:
Google Chrome for Linux (Beta) At Google, most engineers use Linux machines, so we certainly heard loud and clear how much they wanted Google Chrome for Linux. Just like Google Chrome for Windows and Mac, we focused on speed, stability and security, but we also wanted a high-performance browser that integrated well with the Linux ecosystem. This includes tight integration with native GTK themes, updates that are managed by the standard system package manager, and many other features that fit in natively with the operating system where possible.
Google Chrome for Linux in various GTK themes
Just as important, we've had quite a bit of help from the open source community. More than 50 open source contributors have worked on Chromium and they've been especially helpful on delivering our Linux version of Google Chrome. For more details on the beta release of Google Chrome for Linux, check out the Chromium blog.
Extensions in Google Chrome for Windows and Linux (Beta) When we first launched Google Chrome in September 2008, we knew that we wanted to make it easy for you to customize the browser with extensions. We also wanted to make extensions easy to create and maintain, while preserving Google Chrome's speed and stability. Extensions on Google Chrome accomplishes all these goals: they are as easy to create as web pages, easy to install, and each extension runs in its own process to avoid crashing or significantly slowing down the browser.
Extensions installed on Google Chrome (for PC or Linux)
If you're on a PC or a Linux machine, you can check out more than 300 extensions in the gallery, including a few cool, useful and cute extensions . Extensions aren't quite beta-quality on Mac yet, but you will be able to preview them on a developer channel soon. And if you're a web developer, you can learn more about writing extensions for Google Chrome on the Chromium blog.
We hope the betas for Mac, Linux and extensions were some of the things on your wish list this year. We'd like to say thanks to Mac and Linux users who gave our early developer versions of Google Chrome a test drive on these platforms, as well as developers who wrote great extensions for Google Chrome. And in case you're wondering what we'd like for the holidays, we're always eager for feedback — and I wouldn't mind a brand new extension that makes it snow on demand!
Over the next few days, we will be enabling several new features in your Docs list.
Sort by relevance
The first is the addition of relevance ranking in your Docs list search results. Until now, anytime you searched for a document, the results were sorted by "last modified date".
Now, your search results will display the items most relevant to your search at the top of the list. We also added a new menu on the right side of the toolbar, which lets you decide whether you'd like to sort your Docs list by "Relevance," "Starred" or "Last Modified".
This improvement to search within Docs also includes automatic stemming and synonyms. So if you search for "check account", we'll also include results for a few variations of those words, including "checking account" (which is what you probably meant to type). Or if you search for "mac book", we'll also include results for "macbook".
Export all your files
There's also more good news from the Data Liberation Front. A few weeks ago we launched the new "Export..." functionality. Today, we added an "Export all" option, which lets you export all your docs (up to 2GB at a time) with one click. This is the equivalent of almost 100,000 Google Docs.
You can also export a single file and email it to anyone you'd like in a single step. Once you select an item, click "Share" and select "Email as attachment...". Then pick which format (PDF, MS Office, etc.) you want to use to send the item, compose your email, and hit send.
Sunsetting Email-In Your Documents and Files
Lastly, a change that we aren't excited about. We're removing the existing "email-in" feature. As you may know, it's been a bit buggy recently and only supports a small subset of document types compared to the Docs list. In order to address this, we'll be taking down the feature and working on a bringing it back in the future with more functionality and better integration.
In the meantime, you can use the multi-file upload in your Docs list or the GData API to programatically upload docs. You can also take attachments from GMail and open them in Google Docs.
If you have any questions, please let us know over on the forum.
Posted by: Vijay Bangaru, Product Manager, Google Docs
Picture this: you're working on a new project with your team. You ask your IT admin to create a new group that includes all of your team members, keeping in mind that you must ask them to update the group every time people join or leave the group. Maybe you're even wishing that (a) you had a secure, central place to manage this group and communicate with it, and (b) you could easily search group archives for information somewhere other than your inbox.
That's when your admin gives you the good news: creating, managing and sharing with groups just got a whole lot easier. Today, Google Apps is giving business and school IT administrators the ability to let users create, manage and collaborate in groups without needing IT help. This launch is a major expansion to the mailing list functionality and content sharing we released earlier this year.
The following Google Groups features are now included in Google Apps Premier and Education Editions:
Fast set-up. Employees and students can now create collaborative groups instantly without burdening IT, and manage the group settings to fit their needs.
Searchable archives. Group discussions are archived by default, allowing users to easily search and view past and present discussions via the web.
Sharing with a group. Once a group is set up, employees and students can easily share a document, spreadsheet, presentation, shared folder, site, calendar, or video with that group. No need to type in individual email address manually, or remember who joined or left the group. Plus, the shared items will only be accessible by the appropriate people, even as people join and leave the group.
Reply on behalf of a group. In addition to communicating via email or the web interface, the new functionality lets group managers send a message on behalf of a group.
IT capabilities. IT administrators still manage if and how users can create groups from the administrative control panel.
Google Apps Premier and Education Edition administrators can now enable the new groups functionality from the control panel by enabling the "user-managed groups" service. You can read more about this announcement on the Official Google Blog. Google Groups will be rolling out to Google Apps Premier and Education Edition domains over the next day, so if you don't notice these features right now, you should see them soon.
We're always developing new features to help you get your job done faster and more efficiently with Google Apps. Stay tuned to this blog for the latest updates as new features continue to come your way, or subscribe to our Google Apps update feed and get the news as it happens.
When I'm exploring my neighborhood or planning a trip, I often find places I want to know more about. That's why I love usingPlace Pages for Google Mapsto see lots of great information about a place on a single page. I can browse photos of theRoyal Botanic Gardensin Sydney, write a review of afavorite restaurantin my neighborhood, or learn about popular places inLucerne, Switzerland.
Starting today, you can see the same rich Place Page content inGoogle Earth, while browsing the world in 3D. You can see a summary whenever you click on a business or place of interest, and then click theView more information »link if you'd like to see more. Today, I explored some of the landmarks in Dubai: You can also expand individual sections to see more reviews, photos, web pages, or user content. When I noticed a beautiful user-contributed 3D model of the Florence Cathedral, I wanted to see photos of the interior so I browsed through the photos section of the Place Page:
If you're a business owner, you can update your details in ourLocal Business Center, to ensure we're showing the most accurate information to people searching for your business in both Google Maps and Google Earth. We hope you enjoy exploring the new Place Pages in Google Earth and find them to be a helpful way to learn more about all the interesting places you see during your virtual browsing
Posted by Matt Holden, Associate Product Manager, Google Earth Team
