A Feed for YouTube Subscriptions

Last year I wrote about some feeds offered by YouTube that weren't available in the interface. Since then YouTube added feeds for search results, videos from a channel and even from your subscriptions: just click on the orange icon from the address bar and you should see the feeds.

That means you no longer have to visit YouTube's homepage to find new videos from your subscriptions. You can subscribe to the following feed in Google Reader or another feed reader:

http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/base/users/username/newsubscriptionvideos
(replace "username" with your YouTube username)

The great thing is that you can subscribe to other users' feeds. For example, you'll find a lot of interesting videos in Google's subscriptions, which include channels like: Webmaster Help, Google Talks, Google Developers etc.


If not all the videos are interesting to you, use the query parameter to show only the videos that include certain keywords in their titles or descriptions. For example:

http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/base/users/google/newsubscriptionvideos?q=mobile

Read more about YouTube's feeds in the Data API reference guide.

Share Collections of Feeds in Google Reader

Google Reader has always allowed you to share collections of feeds: you can add the feeds you want to share to a folder, make the folder public and get a public page that shows the latest items from the feeds. Other people could subscribe to your public page in any feed reader or they could download the OPML file and import it in a feed reader. The problem with this approach is that it's not very easy to find, the OPML file is there only if you know how to obtain the address and you need to keep the folder even it's no longer useful to you.

Bundles are a more transparent way to create collections of feeds: you'll find them if you click on "Browse for stuff" in the sidebar. Google Reader already offers 447 themed bundles for "Mindmapping", "Pop-culture", "Startups", "Food blogs", "Architecture" and other topics. The nice thing about bundles is that you can subscribe to a list of hand-picked blogs with one click.

Now you can create your own bundle from the same page: just select a name and drag 5-10 feeds from your subscriptions. They don't have to be perfect, since you'll be able to add more feeds later.



After creating the bundle, Google Reader will generate a page that looks like the shared items page, but it has a explanatory description, the list of feeds that are mixed and the most recent items from the feeds. You can subscribe to the bundle by clicking on the "Subscribe" button if you use Google Reader or by exporting the bundle as OPML and importing the file in a feed reader. The bundle's name will become a folder and all the feeds will be added to that folder, an improvement over the public folder approach, where the collection is mixed in a single feed.


Here are two examples of bundles: Apple and Google blogs.

{ via Google Reader blog }

Google Reader Gets More Social

The "What's popular" iGoogle gadget, launched last month as a simple way to discover interesting web pages, has been improved and you can now automatically add the shared items from Google Reader.

The option is disabled by default, but you can enable it in the new settings page. "Automatically submit items you share via Google Reader into the What's Popular gadget. These shares will be attributed to you. Changing this setting will only affect new shared items from Google Reader."


Google's gadget includes web pages from different sources: user-contributed pages, popular posts from Google Reader and popular videos from YouTube. You can rate the pages that you like or dislike by clicking the voting buttons displayed next to each item, much like in Digg, Reddit or Yahoo Buzz.


The gadget can be added to your personalized Google homepage, but you can also bookmark this URL. "What's popular" has less than 17,000 users, but that's probably because Google hasn't officially launched it yet.

Google Reader has an enormous amount of attention data (starred items, shared items, pages that are read or emailed), but it didn't use it to recommend popular posts, except for the "What's cool in Google Reader" feed.

{ via Blogoscoped Forum }

Bookmark Google Maps Search Results

If you find an interesting local business in Google Maps, you can add it to a custom map for future reference. The process has been simplified and Google Maps added the option to bookmark search results. You'll find stars next to local search results, locations, user-created maps:



To find the list of bookmarks, click on "My Maps" and scroll to "Starred items". For now, the bookmarks aren't public and you won't find them in a user's profile.

The starred items are also added to Google Bookmarks, without any label or annotation. If you remove the pages from Google Bookmarks, the corresponding items from Google Maps are deleted.

{ Thanks, Imma. }

Chrome 2.0 - Better, Faster, Stronger

Google Chrome 2, now out of beta, is less about exciting new features and more about better performance. There's nothing impressive about adding full screen support, form filling or full-page zoom, since all of these features are already available in most browsers.

"Making the web faster continues to be our main area of focus. Thanks to a new version of WebKit and an update to our JavaScript engine, V8, interactive web pages will run even faster. We've also made sure that JavaScript keeps running fast even when you have lots of tabs open," reveals Google Chrome's blog.

Google's own benchmark shows that the new version runs 30% faster than Chrome 1.0, but it's probably a better idea to test the application for yourself.


Version numbers are not important and you don't even need to know that the browser has been updated: since it always runs the most current version, the new features are enabled gradually as they're developed, like in a web application. "A note on version numbers: we're referring to this as Chrome 2, but that's mainly a metric to help us keep track of changes internally. We don't give too much weight to version numbers and will continue to roll out useful updates as often as possible."

Google Maps Shows Suggested Routes

If you don't like the driving directions offered by Google Maps, you can now choose between 3 suggested routes and compare them on the map. Of course, you can still add multiple destinations to restrict the routes generated by Google Maps.


Here are some tips to get better directions:

• Add multiple stops on a single route by clicking Add destination in the left panel.
• To reorder segments of your trip, drag and drop the destinations in the left panel.
• To customize your route, click and drag any point on the purple directions line to any location on the map. Google Maps immediately re-creates the directions on both the map and left panel, and also updates the estimated travel time and distance.

{ via Benjamin Golub }

Shared SearchWiki Notes

Google tests a feature that allows you to share results voted or annotated using SearchWiki. Sharing your customized search results page could be useful when you want to help other people solve a problem. Instead of linking to "Let me Google that for you", send them to a page with hand-picked search results and comments.


Here's an example of shared SearchWiki page. You'll probably notice the "pov" parameter which stands for "point of view". In the future, Google could link the SearchWiki pages to Google Profiles or even suggest relevant collections in a special OneBox.

{ Thanks, Brian. }

Import iGoogle Feeds into Google Reader

Google Reader added an option to import the feeds from iGoogle, but you'll be able to use it only the first time you load the feed reader or by opening the welcome page. I assume that Google Reader wanted to help iGoogle users who need a more powerful feed reader.

The process of importing feeds is extremely painful, since Google Reader subscribes to each feed one by one. If you only have 5-10 feeds in iGoogle, it will import the feeds quickly, but you'll need to wait a lot longer if you have more than 50 subscriptions.

You can select the feeds that should be imported and Google Reader will convert iGoogle's tabs into folders.


Last year, I wrote a script that exports iGoogle feeds to OPML, so you can import them in other feed readers. It's more difficult to use than Google Reader's feature, but at least it's efficient.

Gmail Magic Inbox

Gmail's code reveals an upcoming feature called "magic inbox" or "icebox inbox", which is likely to prioritize the messages sent by your friends and other contacts you email frequently.


In 2007, RarePlay reported about the social features that would be included in email services. "E-mail providers like Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and others are now incorporating social networking functionality in their email offerings in mapping out the relationships between people and how are they related (social graph). An interesting experiment Yahoo (and similarly Google) is undertaking internally is called "Friend Finder". Friend Finder analyzes a user’s email traffic and indicates the friends with whom a user has strong email connections based on incoming/outgoing traffic and the frequency and speed in which two parties respond to each other." While Yahoo has already released an early version of the social application, Google has yet to make an announcement.

Some other messages from Gmail's code suggest that we'll be able to sort messages by priority and save messages in an outbox to be sent at a later time.


Gmail still have important features to be released before removing the "beta" tag:

Google Image Search Refining Experiment

Cameron Beyer spotted a Google Image Search experiment that shows suggestions next to some of the search results. When searching for "flower", Google displayed suggestions like "rose flower", "yellow flower", "murakami" next to some of the images.

This seems to be a quick and dirty to refine search results until the similar images experiment from Google Labs is integrated in Google Image Search.


{ Thanks, Cameron. }

Ads in Google Suggest

Google Suggest has been recently updated to include top search results and search buttons, but the most surprising additions are sponsored links. Here's how Google explains why you'll sometimes see ads below the suggestions:

"Similar to the navigational suggestions, sometimes we detect that the most relevant completion for what you're typing is an ad. When an ad is shown, we mark it with the text "Sponsored Link" and a colored background, as on the results page."


The updated Google Suggest will have an interesting side-effect: you'll see the search results pages less often. Google saves you a few clicks by suggesting search results directly from the homepage, much like Google Chrome's omnibox, but monetizing the suggestions seems out of place. The ads draw attention from the list of suggestions, they're unnecessarily large and they clutter the interface.

Hopefully, Google won't show sponsored links in the list of suggestions very often and Google will focus on adding useful suggestions like: unit conversions, results from Google Calculator, facts etc.

Side notes:
* I don't see the ads in Google Suggest, so maybe the feature hasn't been publicly launched yet.
* Is this the first time when Google shows third-party ads on the homepage?

Google Suggest Improves

Google has been testing many enhancements for Google Suggest and the latest update includes some of the best ideas used in the experiments:

* showing recent searches from your search history if you're logged in and Web History is enabled
* being able to remove suggestions from your search history

In this example, "mailinator" is a suggestion from my search history.

* adding the top search result to the list of suggestion for navigational searches
* displaying the "Google Search" and "I'm feeling lucky" buttons below the list of suggestions

"MSN" is a navigational query, since users want to navigate to MSN's homepage. Google saves you one click by sending you directly to MSN.com.

It's not necessary to enter the full query to get navigational suggestions. Typing "quickt" is enough to display the top result: QuickTime's homepage.

* showing suggestions not just on the homepage, but also on search results pages
* removing the number of results for each suggested query

Suggestions aren't useful just on the homepage.

If you don't see the new interface yet, here's how to enable it: go to Google's homepage, copy this JavaScript code in the address bar:

javascript:document.cookie= "PREF=ID=175eb54605c0202d:U=a14f58424228a2a5:LD=en:NR=10:CR=2:TM=1240146048:LM=1242596928:DV=AA:GM=1:IG=1:S=zW53HscJwnEL89bQ;path=/;domain=.google.com";void(0);

and press Enter. Refresh Google's homepage and you should see the new interface.

Gmail Added Message Translation

As previously anticipated, Gmail Labs added a feature that translates messages written in a foreign language. After enabling "Message translation" in Gmail Labs, you'll be able to translate any messages written in other languages by clicking on "Translate message to: English".



"When Gmail detects one of your messages is in a language other than your default language, you'll see a header at the top of the message. Click the link that says Translate message to.... Your message will be translated inline (no need to open a new tab or window). Or if you want to translate the message and print it too, you can click the down arrow next to the Reply button and select Translate and print. You can also translate an entire conversation. Just click the globe icon on the right side of the conversation and you're good to go," informs the help center.

To find messages written in other languages use the lang: operator and search for lang:fr, lang:es, lang:chinese or something similar. Now you're finally able to understand the strange messages from your spam folder.


{ Thanks, Niranjan and Meghan. }

Google Sites Design Refresh

Google Sites, the service that lets you create collaborative sites, has been updated to look more consistent with Google Docs. The rich-text editor borrowed the old-fashioned menu and the toolbar from Google Docs.


Google Sites has been added to the navigational menu, next to Gmail, Google Docs and Google Reader, so you no longer have to click on "More" to switch from Google Docs to Google Sites. Other changes are more subtle: hierarchical navigation, the sections are more customizable and there's a new "Pages" view that lists all the pages, information about their creator and the number of revisions.

"We switched the site settings area to use vertical navigation, to make room for some upcoming features like AdSense integration. We've also started to add some collaborator tools to the site management area. Less visibly, we made some major changes to our rendering infrastructure to improve performance and in preparation for new upcoming themes. This is meant to remain compatible with the layout customizations site owners have made, but it might have minor impacts on how your site looks."

Speaking of consistency, Picasa Web Albums' settings page has a new design similar to the one from Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Reader.


In the 2008 Founders' Letter, Sergey Brin wrote: "There are a number of things we could improve about these web services. For example, since they have arisen from different groups and acquisitions, there is less uniformity across them than there should be. For example, they can have different sharing models and chat capabilities. We are working to shift all of our applications to a common infrastructure. I believe we will achieve this soon, creating greater uniformity and capability across all of them."

{ Thanks, Stefano. }

OffiSync - Integrate Google Docs with Microsoft Office

OffiSync is a plug-in for Microsoft Office 2003/2007 that integrates the office suite with Google Docs. You can open documents, spreadsheets and presentations already saved in Google Docs, edit them in Microsoft Office and save the files in Google Docs. The add-on creates a new revision of the document when you save it, but there's no option to automatically save the document periodically.


You can view the files from multiple Google accounts and Google Apps accounts, so the add-on is a good option to virtually merge your accounts. Since the plug-in doesn't offer all the features available in Google Docs, you'll still need to open the online interface to publish a document, to use gadgets in Google Spreadsheets or to collaborate with other users. While you can manage the collaborators in Microsoft Office, you can't collaborate in real-time and your changes will overwrite the changes made by your collaborators.


Despite its name, OffiSync doesn't actually sync Google Docs with your computer and it doesn't even show the most current version of a document, assuming that other people edited it after you opened the document in Microsoft Office.

It could be an option for those who aren't comfortable with using an online office application, but they want to backup the documents online. It's probably not a good idea to use it this way since Google Docs doesn't have all the features that are available in Microsoft Office and the documents won't look the same. In its current incarnation, the plug-in isn't very useful for those who use the collaboration features from Google Docs.

Here are some potential uses:

* create a document in Microsoft Word and quickly import it in Google Docs, without using the online interface
* open a document created in Google Docs to improve the layout before printing it
* use some functions from Microsoft Excel that aren't available in Google Spreadsheets

How to Use Google Docs Folders as Labels

Google Docs has a flexible system of organizing documents. While initially Google Docs used a labeling system similar to the one from Gmail, the current version combines the benefits of labels with the simplicity of folders. The interface names them folders, but they're actually hierarchical labels.

You can add a document to multiple folders without creating copies. Just go to "all items" and drag the document to more than one folder. Since the sidebar doesn't show subfolders, you can't drag the document to a subfolder.

What if you want to remove one of the labels? There's no interface option for this, but you can use this workaround: click on the label you want to remove in the sidebar and drag the document to one of the other labels. To remove all the labels, drag the document to "Items not in folders".


Google's hybrid between folders and labels still needs some improvement: subfolders are not displayed in the sidebar, you can't add multiple labels in a single step and it's not obvious that folders are actually labels.