Umair's Blog: 14/03/2010

Easier chat controls

When Google Chat first launched, it only supported text chat. Now, it supports voice, video and group chat. Lately, we've been hard at work making video chat work even better, and the reception has been so good that we're giving voice, video and group chat a new and improved home at the top of the chat window in iGoogle and orkut. While this isn't a major change, we hope it makes using all of our features easier.

If you’ve never used voice or video chat in iGoogle or orkut, it’s easy to get started. You'll just need a webcam and a microphone. If you already have a webcam and a microphone, you’ll just need to download a small plugin for video chat, available for free at www.google.com/chat/video.

With the plugin installed and your camera enabled, your friends will see a small green camera icon like this

next to your name in their chat lists. Then, to start a voice or video chat, simply click either the voice or video icon in the toolbar and talk away to your heart's content - all for free.

If you primarily use chat in Gmail, don't worry, we haven't forgotten you! It'll be coming soon to Gmail as well.

Posted by Bruce Leban

Software Engineer

Google Voice turns 1!

It's hard to believe, but it's a year to the day since we first launched Google Voice!

One of the best things about this past year has been receiving tons of helpful feedback and ideas from our users. We wanted to thank you for letting us know what you think, and we hope you like the improvements we've made since then. Some of the most popular features that debuted during our first year included:

Mobile apps (both native and web-based)
SMS-to-email integration
A Chrome extension
An embedded voicemail player in Gmail
The ability to use Google Voice with your existing number

We're happy with the work so far, and we appreciate your support, but there's still a lot to be done, so enough cake. Time to get back to work!

Posted by Craig Walker & Vincent Paquet, Product Managers

Tip: Always restoring tabs

When reading the last tip about restoring closed tabs, you might have wondered if you can just get the browser to always start up where you left off. This would save you the trouble of re-opening your windows and tabs manually.

It turns out you can do this easily. Open the Tools menu and select "Options" (or, if you're using a Mac, open "Preferences") and go to the "Basics" tab. The first section on the first page of options is called "On startup:", and in there you'll see an option to "Reopen the pages that were open last". Once you select this, Google Chrome will start up showing the same pages that were open when you shut down.

There is one caveat here. Normally, only the most recent window you were using is restored when you restart. If you have more than one window you want to restore, make sure you use the "Exit" choice in the Tools menu (on Mac: "Chrome" > "Quit Google Chrome") to shut down all your windows at once, instead of closing them one at a time. (Of course, as covered in the last tip, you can always restore the other window(s) manually if you forget to exit!)

Finally, if the browser ever crashes, the next time you start up you'll have the option at the top of your window to restore your previous windows and tabs, even if you haven't changed what appears on startup.

Posted by Peter Kasting, Software Engineer

In stock nearby? Look for the blue dots.

(Cross posted from the Google Mobile Blog)

Vic Gundotra, VP of Engineering, demonstrated last December a preview version of Product Search for mobile with local inventory, which lets you see right in your search results whether items are in stock at nearby stores. We're happy to announce that as of today, if you're searching for a product that is sold by participating retailers, including Best Buy, Sears, Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, or West Elm, you can just look for the blue dots in the search results to see if it's available in a local store. If you see a blue dot, you can tap on the adjacent "In stock nearby" link, and you'll be taken to the seller's page where you'll see whether the item is "In Stock" or has "Limited Availability" near you. You'll also see how far away the stores are from you -- as long as you've enabled My Location or manually specified your location.

If you have an iPhone, Palm WebOS phone, or any Android-powered device, and you're in the US, just go to Google.com in your mobile browser, tap on the "more" link, and then select "Shopping." Or look for the "Shopping results" section in Universal Search results when you search on Google.com.

Finally, if you're a retailer and you'd like to participate in this program, we want to hear from you. Please fill out this brief form to let us know that you'd like to be considered. In the meantime, you can get prepared by making sure your Local Business Center data is up to date, and ensuring that your Product Search data is in great shape.

Posted by Paul Lee and Yury Pinsky, Product Managers

Better controls for buzz in your inbox

Posted by Bruce DiBello, Software Engineer

When you participate in a conversation in Google Buzz, we bring that post to your inbox to make it easy to keep up with the discussion. But we’ve heard loud and clear that buzz in your inbox can get noisy — we feel it too, so today we're launching two features to help with this:

1) Settings to control what gets sent to your inbox
From the Buzz tab of Gmail Settings, you’ll be able to choose whether the following buzz items get sent to your inbox:

Comments on your posts
Comments on posts after you comment on them
Comments on posts after you are @replied on them

2) Explanations for why posts get sent to your inbox and an easy-to-find “Mute” link
You'll see a new message at the top of each post in your inbox that explains why it’s there: someone commented on your post, you were @replied, etc. We’ve also added an easy-to-find “mute” link that will stop subsequent comments from bringing the conversation back to your inbox.

These are just the first in series of features designed to help control the noise level in Google Buzz, so stay tuned for more. If you have ideas for Google Buzz you'd like to share with the team, you can post your ideas and vote for others on our official Product Ideas page.

Find us at SXSW

Along with many other Googlers, the Geo team is descending upon Austin for South by Southwest! You can find us in a few different places:

At the Google booth, we’ll be doing demos of Google Maps, as well as plenty of other Google products.
In the Google Teaching Theater, you can meet engineers who built biking directions and hear all about how it was created (see the schedule here).
On Saturday, we’ll be hopping on our bikes to take part in Bike Hugger’s Mobile Social. Along the way we’ll be handing out some fun bike-related schwag, dishing more about how we built biking directions, and getting feedback directly from the cyclists.

For those who aren’t able to make it to SXSW, remember to check out our contest to win a new custom bike: simply tweet with the hashtag #bikewithgoogle -- maybe share your favorite trail or a new route you want to try taking to the office -- and you’ll be entered to win!

You can read more about all of the Google happenings on our SXSW website, and follow @googlesxsw on Twitter for last-minute updates and news from Austin. We can’t wait to hit the ground running (or biking), and we look forward to seeing you there!

Posted by Kate Hurowitz, Lat Long Blog Team

Earn money online from your passions

Got a popular blog? Run an online business? Own a special interest website? Well, here's some good news: you can earn some extra money from doing the things you already enjoy doing.

Every day, students like you spend hours creating content on the web. You blog. You post photos, artwork, DIY projects, and videos. Some of you even run your own successful online business. Why not earn some extra spending money to pay for hosting fees, books, tuition, or non-dorm food with Google AdSense?

Simply paste an HTML snippet on your blog or website to begin serving targeted Google ads and earn money when people click on or view the ads.

If you don't own a blog or know anything about web page design, set up a blog for free with Blogger and before you know it, your page will be online and ready to go. Best of all, Blogger can automatically set Google AdSense up for you, so you can get started faster without worrying about coding your site.

Learn more about how serving Google ads can help you earn money on the web: google.com/ads/calstudents

Posted by Deborah Chang, AdSense Team