With today's official release of Google Chrome extensions comes a new & improved Google Voice extension that gives you easier access to many Google Voice features: - See how many new messages you have. Think of it as a message waiting light for your computer that lets you know when you have new voicemail or text messages waiting for you.
- View the most recent messagesin your inbox. Clicking on the extension button gives you access to your most recent voicemail and text messages. You can read your voicemail transcripts and will soon be able to play messages right from that window.
- Quickly call or text any number. Click on the "Call" or "SMS" buttons to easily call or text for free anyone by just typing their name or phone number. Since the extension is connected to your Google address book, you can just type any name from your address book, without having to remember their number. You can also benefit from Google Voice's low rates when calling any international number.
- Click any phone number on a web page to start a call. If you're looking for a phone number online, nothing is more annoying than having to physically type it on the phone to place the call. With the Google Voice Chrome extension installed, you can just click on any phone number on any web page and select the phone you want to dial from and you will be connected right away.
We're excited to usher in the new year with a bundle of browser goodness for the stable version of Google Chrome. With today's new stable release, all Google Chrome users on PCs can access over 1,500 new features, through our new extension system.
Extensions are little programs, created by developers, which add useful functionality to the browser and to the websites you visit. Some provide you with alerts and notifications, others let you easily access your favorite web services from icons next to your address bar, and there are lots more.
In the video below, I walk through how to install an extension as well as a few that I find useful:
You can find extensions for Google Chrome in our extension gallery, and install the ones that interest you. Extensions on Google Chrome take only seconds to install, and can be uninstalled just as easily. You can view and manage the settings for your extensions by clicking on the Tools menu and selecting "Extensions."
In addition to extensions, another feature that's moving from our beta to the stable channel on the Windows version of Google Chrome is bookmark sync. For those of you who use several computers -- for example, a laptop at work and a desktop at home -- you can now keep your Google Chrome bookmarks synchronized and up-to-date across computers, without needing to manually recreate your bookmarks every time you switch computers. To read more on bookmark sync, check out this handy guide.
For web developers and designers, we're excited to integrate a number of new HTML5 APIs in this stable release, including LocalStorage, Database API, WebSockets, and more. To dive into these features, read on in the Chromium Blog.
Lastly but certainly not the least, we've improved performance (as measured by Mozilla's Dromaeo DOM Core Tests) by 42% over our last stable release and 400% since our first stable release last year.
To those using Google Chrome on Linux, extensions are enabled on the beta channel. And for those using Google Chrome for Mac, hang tight — we're working on bringing extensions, bookmark sync and more to the beta soon. Those currently using the stable version for Windows will be automatically updated within the next week (or you can check for updates manually).
If you're on a PC and haven't tried Google Chrome yet, you can download Google Chrome and give all these new features a whirl.
We recently launched the Google Docs for students page which highlights how various student populations can use Google Docs in their daily life. For example, Marie, a resident assistant, plans fun trips for her whole dorm using forms, while Christine, a math major, powers through her Probabilistic Systems Analysis class using the equation editor in Google Docs to collaborate with classmates.
These characters use Docs to enhance and manage their academic and social lives. We hope their stories will help our student readers discover what's possible with Google Docs.
To read more about these and other characters – and to keep up with news especially for students – check out the Official Google Students blog.
Posted by: Joelle Fornengo, Google Docs User Operations
Since the launch of GeoEye's GeoEye-1 satellite, we've added many gigabytes of high-resolution GeoEye-1 imagery to Google Earth and Google Maps, including a scene from the 2009 Presidential Inauguration, views of the pyramids in Egypt, and images showing urban expansion in China. While we're constantly adding such great imagery, what we've published to date represents only a subset of the available imagery from GeoEye-1, which is capable of collecting hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of imagery every day.
From this stream of GeoEye-1 imagery, we regularly receive images that we think would be of special interest to Google Earth users; some of these images are of interesting places, like Mt. Kilimanjaro or Las Vegas, and others relate to current events, like preparations for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. However, it can take a bit of time for these images to be fully integrated into Google Earth and Google Maps given the processing time required, which includes image orthorectification and blending.
To highlight some of these broadly-interesting GeoEye-1 images before they can be fully integrated into Maps and Earth, we're excited to announce the new 'GeoEye Featured Imagery' layer in Google Earth. Included within this layer are 20-30 Featured Imagery placemarks, including a thumbnail of the image, a link to view the image in full-resolution, and a wealth of information about the scene, including resolution, collection date, and a narrative about the location. Additionally, you'll find links to other images in the collection, and links to social networking sites, including Twitter, which allow you to share favorite scenes with others.
To view all this great imagery, select the 'GeoEye Featured Imagery' button located in the Google Earth 'More' folder:
You can also download it here. Before you get started, here's a sneak preview of some of our favorite images:
Las Vegas, Nevada
Vancouver, British Columbia
Mt. Kilimanjaro
Burning Man Festival, Black Rock Desert, Nevada
Posted by Pete Giencke, GIS Data Engineer and Dylan Lorimer, Strategic Partner Manager
Restaurant weeks, when restaurants across a city host prix fixe menus, are starting in various parts of the world so we wanted to share a few tips whether you're looking for restaurants or you manage a restaurant.
For interested diners, finding the top restaurants has never been easier. We have continually updated our business pages with more reviews, feature ratings to measure aspects of the restaurant that might interest you, and even the ability to see updates from the owner.
We've recently partnered with the San Francisco Convention & Visitors Bureau, to help drive new patrons to Dine About Town's participating restaurants. Since many of their potential customers begin their search on Google, we wanted to share some simple steps for them to enhance their exposure on Google as a participating restaurant - and we hope these will help any other interested restaurateurs.
First, if you haven't already signed up for Google's Local Business Center, it's a free service that allows you to add menus, photos, and videos to your Google local business listing while making sure basic address & contact information is correct on the search engine.
Second, once you're signed up, within the "Coupon" section, you can add in details regarding your participation. For example, your offer could read:
Vinny's Restaurant Dine About Town 2010 3-Course Dinner for $34.95
Third, use the new updates feature in Local Business Center to post real-time messages about your participation in your local restaurant week, including menu items, specials of the day and more. Learn more here.
Why is this important? If a potential customer is searching on Google for a type of restaurant that matches your restaurant description, your listing will be up-to-date with news that you are participating in Dine About Town or any other events you are participating in. Afterwards, a personalized report allows you to see how often your listing was found on Google, and how people got there. For more information or to answer questions, please go here.
We hope restaurant weeks go well all over the country and happy dining. If you are involved in a resturant week and would like to see how we can partner up, click on this form and we can contact you.
And if you're in San Francisco or looking for an excuse to visit, you can see all participating Dine About Town restaurants for San Francisco now on a Google Map:
We recently launched the docs for students page which highlights how various student populations can use Google Docs in their daily life. We wanted to take a chance to highlight this page for all of you students as we're pretty sure you'll relate to one or more of them:
If you are an RA, you'll identify with Marie. She plans really fun trips for her whole dorm using forms.
For all you math majors out there, you may be interested in how Christine uses the equation editor in Google Docs to collaborate with others and power through her Probabilistic Systems Analysis class.
For any of you working towards your PhD as Chandler is in International Relations, you'll find the footnotes and revision history features invaluable.
English majors may really identify with Steve, as he uses a lot of the editing tools such as comments, strikethrough and double space to perfect his English papers.
Finally, for those of you who are foreign language majors, you'll most likely enjoy using the translate document feature that Lisa uses in her studies.
We hope these characters and their stories really enlighten you to what's possible with Google docs as a student. These characters use Docs to enhance and manage their academic and social lives and we hope you will too.
