New Google Profile Search

Google has a new specialized search engine for searching Google Profiles. It has a better interface than the regular Google Profiles search feature, it's integrated with Google Search and it shows additional links from people's profiles.

This feature is not yet enabled in the interface, but you can search Google Profiles by adding &tbs=prfl:1 to a Google Search URL. Here's an example.

Google could use the data from user profiles to provide advanced search features like restricting profiles to people who lived in Chicago, attended Long Island University and are interested in sports.


{ spotted by François Beaufort }

Store More Photos and Videos in Picasa Web Albums

You've probably noticed that Picasa Web's storage counter shows that you have more free space than a couple of days ago. It turns out that this is not a bug.

"We recently made a change whereby any pictures 800 pixels and under don't count towards used PWA storage. The new GB numbers you're seeing are the result of quota recalculations that were made," informs a Google employee.

The new feature encourages users to upload smaller images. If you use Picasa to upload your photos, there's a setting that lets you pick the dimensions of the photos that are uploaded. The "small" option is recommended "for publishing images on blogs and webpages". Blogger users who resize their photos before uploading them will no longer have to buy extra storage if they're prolific.

Another important change is that "all videos under 15 minutes also don't count towards used PWA storage". That means you can now upload short videos to Picasa Web Albums without worrying about the file size.

Update: "Photos less than 800 pixels x 800 pixels and video less than 15 minutes long that are uploaded to Picasa Web Album, Blogger, or Buzz don't count towards your storage quota." (Picasa Web's help center)

Google Video's Strange Disclaimer

Google Video's homepage shows a strange message below the list of query suggestions: "In accordance with local laws and regulations, some results were removed from this list." The message is displayed for every query you enter, so it's unlikely that some of the suggestions are removed.


Update: Google says that "the appearance of the message on every search was in fact a bug and has since been corrected."

Visualizing Android Activations

This video from Google lets you visualize the evolution of Android activations from October 2008 to January 2011. HTC Dream/G1, the first Android device, was launched in the US and the UK in October 2008 and it became available in other countries in 2009, but it wasn't until the launch of Motorola Droid in November 2009 that Android became popular.


Android Central says that this is "a staggering reminder of just how far Android has come in a relatively short amount of time". Eric Schmidt has recently mentioned that the average number of daily Android activations is now 350,000, up from 300,000 in December, 200,000 in August and 60,000 in April 2010.

Google Docs, Image Search and Copyright

Google Docs lets you pick Image Search results and add them to your documents. That's a good thing, but this feature could have been better thought out.

Google restricts the results to images licensed as Creative Commons that can be used commercially and that can also be modified. These restrictions aren't always necessary, since not all documents are used for business purposes. Google also recommends to "only select images that you have confirmed that you have the license to use", but it doesn't link to the pages that included the images. Google doesn't even include a small caption next to the image with links to the Creative Commons license and the original web page.


While this feature makes it easy to add image search results to your documents, it doesn't encourage users to visit the web pages that embedded the images or to give credit to the image creators because it's quite difficult to find these pages. You need to visit Google Image Search, type your query, restrict the results to images "labeled for commercial reuse with modification" and find the image you've previously picked. That's a lot of unnecessary work.

Picasa Web's Multiple File Uploader

Picasa Web Albums has finally improved the uploading feature. You can now select multiple images from a folder and upload all of them. After uploading images, you can add captions and delete the images you don't like. It's a long overdue improvement that's especially important if you don't use Picasa.

Another change is that you can now upload videos without installing Picasa.


Picasa Web's new uploader uses HTML5 APIs, so it's not available in Internet Explorer, where you still have to install an ActiveX control.

{ Thanks, Přemysl Brýl. }

HTTPS YouTube

After Google enabled by default encrypted connections to Picasa Web Albums, it started to become obvious that all Google services will soon switch to HTTPS. Probably the most unlikely candidate for this change is YouTube, Google's biggest bandwidth hog, but the unexpected happened: go to a random video and you'll notice that all the resources use HTTPS.


YouTube API's blog has recently announced HTTPS support for embedded videos. "We're planning a gradual expansion of HTTPS across other aspects of the site. The first place you may see HTTPS YouTube URLs is in our various embed codes, all of which currently support HTTPS in addition to the standard HTTP. Anyone can try HTTPS with YouTube embeds today—simply change the protocol portion of the URL from http to https." You can also enable "use HTTPS" when you generate the embedding code.


The performance doesn't seem to be affected and, if everything goes well, YouTube will probably switch to HTTPS in the coming months.

Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office

After three months of beta testing, Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office is available for everyone. The rebranded version of DocVerse, a software developed by the homonymous company acquired by Google last year, integrates with Google Docs and provides a bridge for Microsoft Office users who want to use online collaboration features without upgrading to Office 2010.

"Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office brings collaborative multi-person editing to the familiar Microsoft Office experience. You can share, backup, and simultaneously edit Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents with coworkers," explains Google. The software works with Microsoft Office 2003, Office 2007 and Office 2010.




By default, the plugin automatically saves online and syncs all the files you edit in Microsoft Office, but you can change this setting.


I created a new document in Word 2010, but Google saved it as a read-only Word file in Google Docs. Apparently, the document can only be edited using Microsoft Office and not using Google's online word processor. Since you can't even open existing files from Google Docs, this software seems to be too limited. It's useful if you and all your collaborators only use Microsoft Office and Google's plugin.

Google Recipe Search

Google Japan started to offer a recipe search feature last year. Now this feature is available in the US and for everyone who uses Google without country redirects.

"Recipe View lets you narrow your search results to show only recipes, and helps you choose the right recipe amongst the search results by showing clearly marked ratings, ingredients and pictures. To get to Recipe View, click on the Recipes link in the left-hand panel when searching for a recipe. You can search for specific recipes like [chocolate chip cookies], or more open-ended topics—like [strawberry] to find recipes that feature strawberries, or even a holiday or event, like [cinco de mayo]," explains Google.

Google finds recipes by detecting the pages that use markup like microdata, RDFa, and microformats for recipes. You've probably noticed that Google shows rich snippets for some recipe pages and sometimes includes thumbnails, total cooking time, the number of calories and user ratings.


The same structured data can now be used for filtering search results. For example, you can select certain ingredients, add restrictions for cooking time and the number of calories.


Recipe Search is one of the most obscure specialized search engines offered by Google and it's quite surprising to see it in the vertical navigation menu next to Book Search, Blog Search or Image Search. Google could create similar search engines for event search, people search and reviews search.

Google's landing page offers more information about this feature and suggests to "select Recipes in the left-hand panel on the search results page". Unfortunately, the option is not yet available for everyone.

Android Gingerbread for Nexus One

Two months after Android Gingerbread was released, Nexus One users can finally update their phones to the latest Android version. "Gingerbread (Android 2.3.3) update now rolling out to Nexus S and Nexus One. Be patient, may take a few weeks for OTA to complete," informs Google. Ry Guy explains that Google "sends out OTA updates (...) incrementally to ensure that everything is going smoothly".

The good news is that Nexus One is the second Android phone updated to Gingerbread and it's likely that the feedback from Nexus S users helped Google fix the most important bugs. Unfortunately, Google is caught between releasing the Android version for tablets, continuing to improve Gingerbread, developing new Android apps and services, improving the Android Market, so the delays are inevitable.


{ via Android Spin }

Open Gmail's PDF Attachments in Google Docs Viewer

A recent Gmail update changed the "View" links for PDF attachments, but only if you use Google Chrome. Instead of opening PDF files using Google Docs Viewer, Gmail now uses the PDF plugin included in Google Chrome. Unfortunately, this makes it more difficult to save PDF files to Google Docs.

Here's a simple trick that lets you open a PDF attachment in Google Docs Viewer. Click "View" next to the attachment and edit the URL: replace "view=att" with "view=gvatt" in the address bar. Another option is to right-click "View", copy the URL, paste in the address bar and replace "view=att" with "view=gvatt".


Obviously, you can also disable the built-in PDF plugin. Just type about:plugins in the address bar and click "Disable" next to "Chrome PDF Viewer".

7 Chrome Annoyances and How to Fix Them

Guest post by Shankar Ganesh

Google Chrome was released more than two years ago and it's the browser of choice for many people. Despite having won hearts for its speed and elegance, Google Chrome does have some minor flaws that you might want to fix. Here are some of them:

1. No confirmation when closing multiple tabs

Google Chrome does't show a warning when you close a window with multiple tabs. If you accidentally close Chrome windows, you can install Chrome Toolbox. The next time you close many tabs, you'll at least get a warning.


2. Basic history page

Google Chrome's history page is pretty basic and you can't restrict the list to a certain time interval.

The History 2 extension comes to the rescue by allowing you to sort web pages based on the day/week you visited them. History 2 allows you to delete multiple items from your history page at the click of a button – something that's not possible by default.


3. Missing image properties

There's no way to quickly examine an image when you're in Chrome. Fortunately, you can install Image Properties Context Menu, an extension that lets you right-click on an image and find information about the image size, location, dimensions and more.


4. No support for feeds

Chrome simply doesn't recognize RSS feeds and all you get is a page with gibberish text. If you install the RSS Subscription extension developed by Google, you can quickly subscribe to any feed using Google Reader, iGoogle, Bloglines or My Yahoo.


5. You can't send a web page by email

While other popular browsers allow you to quickly send any web page you're viewing by email, such an option is nowhere to be found in Google Chrome.

Worry not, because you can create a simple Javascript bookmarklet to open your default email program with the current URL. If Gmail is what you use, you can alternatively install the Send from Gmail extension to send the web page to Gmail.

6. No session manger

Closing Google Chrome and reopening it does not restore previously opened tabs. In order to do that, go to the Options dialog and enable Reopen tabs that were open last.

If you want advanced session saving options like the ability to create multiple sessions, try the Session Buddy addon for Google Chrome.

7. You can't switch to a tab from the Omnibox

Firefox 4 lets you switch to any open tab by typing relevant words into the address bar. If you'd like to see a similar feature in Chrome, install the Switch To Tab extension.

The next time you have too many open tabs, just type sw <TAB> followed by some words from the page. Hitting Enter switches to the tab that's listed as the first match.



Have you ever wanted to switch from Chrome to another browser because of a missing feature? Did you mange to find a workaround or an extension that adds the missing feature?

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Shankar is a blogger and an engineering student from India who writes tech tips at KillerTechTips.com. His latest articles helped users block Facebook and improve productivity in Google Chrome. This post was inspired by an article written by Amit Agarwal.