Gmail Increases Maximum Attachment Size to 25 MB

Now you can send bigger attachments in Gmail, as Google increased the maximum attachment size from 20 MB to 25 MB.

"With Gmail, you can send and receive messages up to 25 megabytes (MB) in size. Please note that you may not be able to send larger attachments to contacts who use other email services with smaller attachment limits. If your attachment bounces, you should invite them to Gmail," suggests Google.


For some reason, Gmail's Flash uploader doesn't allow me to upload files that are larger than 10 MB. The error message is "attachment failed" and Google's suggestions aren't very helpful. Switching to the basic uploader in the settings solves the problem, but it's more tedious to upload multiple files.

{ Thanks, Ben. }

Solving Linear Programming Problems Using Google Spreadsheets

Google Spreadsheets has a new feature that lets you solve linear programming problems. "Informally, linear programming determines the way to achieve the best outcome (such as maximum profit or lowest cost) in a given mathematical model and given some list of requirements represented as linear equations," explains Wikipedia.

Google's help center has an article that details how to use the new feature. You can test it using a template offered by Google, but it's not very intuitive and it didn't work for me. I got an error message when clicking on Tools / Solve: "The goal specified must be a cell containing a valid formula."

Google Voice, Available in the US

Two years after acquiring GrandCentral, Google is about to open an updated version of the service to all US users. Google Voice is a free service that provides one number for all your phones, so you can add some features that help you manage phone calls: blocking calls, recording calls, answering from any of your phones, transcribing voicemail and more.

NBC reports that the service will start to be publicly available today and Google confirms the news: "Invites to people on reservations list starting to go out today." In March, Google Voice was released as an upgrade to the existing GrandCentral users and you could request an invitation using a form from Google's site.


Network World found that Google reserved one million phone numbers from Level 3, preparing for the public launch of the service. A major hurdle slowing the adoption of Google Voice is getting a new phone number, but Google tests a feature that allows users to port their existing numbers to the service.

Update: Apparently, Google Voice won't be publicly available, but you'll get an invitation if you've previously requested one. "We are happy to share that Google Voice is beginning to open up beyond former GrandCentral users. If you requested an invitation on the Google Voice site or previously on GrandCentral, keep your eye out for an invite email," says Google's blog.

{ via Lifehacker }

Google Account Recovery via SMS

Google added a new password recovery option: you can now associate a mobile phone number with your Google Account and Google will send a recovery code by SMS.

"Since most people use cell phones these days, we decided text messaging would be an easy, convenient addition to our password recovery options. To set up password recovery via your mobile phone, just sign in to your account and click Change Password Recovery Options. Enter your mobile phone number and current password and then click Save. If you lose access to your account for any reason, you'll be able to regain access by entering a code we'll send in a text message."


For now, the options is only available in the US, so you need to use a US proxy to see it. Google also updated the password recovery settings page to include all the account-recovery options: secondary email addresses, text messages and the security question.

Update: the feature is now available everywhere.

{ via Blogoscoped Forum }

Google City Tours

Google Labs has a new experimental project that could become a part of Google Maps: City Tours. The service "helps you identify points of interest and plan multi-day trips to most major cities. You just specify the location of your hotel and the length of your trip and City Tours will map out an itinerary for you," explains Google.


For now, City Tours doesn't offer too many interesting features: it only lists popular sights and it suggests when you should visit them. You can edit the information about a place and you can add new sights, but the options are very limited.

It would be useful to show more details about sights from Wikipedia and from image hosting sites like Flickr or Panoramio. Google works on landmark recognition, a project that associates images from the web with landmarks, and City Tours is an obvious application.

{ Thanks, Dan. }

Tips for Making Websites Run Faster

Installing a fast browser is not always enough to have a good experience when you browse the web: many web pages aren't optimized for performance. To help webmasters improve their sites, Google launched a new section as part of Google Code: "Let's make the web faster", which includes useful articles, videos and downloadable tools.

You'll learn how to optimize CSS declarations, how to optimize JavaScript code and avoid memory leaks, how to use the best image format and prefetch resources.

Google also released a Firebug plug-in for Firefox that evaluates web pages and provides suggestions to improve them. Here are the suggestions provided for this blog's homepage:


* There is 58.8kB worth of JavaScript. Minifying could save 15.7kB (26.7% reduction). Google provides the minified versions of all the inline blocks and external files.

* The following cacheable resources have a short freshness lifetime. Specify an expiration at least one month in the future for the following resources: [list of resources].

* The following domains only serve one resource each. If possible, avoid the extra DNS lookups by serving these resources from existing domains.

* An inline script block was found in the head between an external CSS file and another resource. To allow parallel downloading, move the inline script before the external CSS file, or after the next resource.

* A width and height should be specified for all images in order to speed up page display.

* Serve the following static resources from a domain that doesn't set cookies: [list of resources].

New Options for Translating Web Pages

Google's translation service has more options when you translate web pages. You can now set a different destination language and translate a new web page by entering its address in the persistent input box. There's also a new interface that displays the translation in tooltips, so you can still read the original text.


Bing Translator, Microsoft's translation service, has an interesting option that shows the original page and the translation side by side, much like in Google Translator Toolkit. This interface is very useful for those who are familiar with multiple languages and Google should add it as an option.

{ via Blogoscoped Forum }

A Retro Plastic Box

Keith Coleman, Gmail's product manager, points to a product that can be bought from eBay: a full version of Microsoft Office Outlook 2007. If you think it's not very interesting, read the description:

It's brand new and never been opened. My boss bought it right before I moved the whole company over to Google Apps.

We never looked back, but here's your opportunity to live it up, 90's style, with this great, retro piece of Microsoft 2007 software.

Unique features include:

* Lengthy key you have to register with a company!
* Real, plastic disks known as "CD's".
* Huge files saved ON YOUR COMPUTER!
* The thrill of wondering if you've backed up your data recently after your on-site hard drive dies.
* Appeased paranoia that your contacts will never be extracted by an international organization bent on stealing your identity and submitting LOL cats to all your business contacts.

Throw off the Web2.0 zeitgeist, and know that your entire business can fit in a single plastic box that can easily be left under a train seat.

As a bonus, your software will be Platform Dependent, meaning it will only run on "Windows" (not included).

While mocking Microsoft Office is endearing, many businesses still need to use it and the transition to Google Apps is not always easy. That's probably the reason why Google started to offer a tool that synchronizes Google Apps with Outlook. "You get the cost savings, security and reliability of Google Apps, while employees can use the interface they prefer for email, contacts and calendar. Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook is a plug-in for Outlook 2003 or 2007 that lets you keep using your familiar Outlook interface after switching from Microsoft Exchange Server to Google Apps."

Chrome Tests an Updated New Tab Page

Chromium, the open source version of Google Chrome, includes a more customizable new tab page. You can easily pin, remove and reorder thumbnails without having to enter in the edit mode. Pinned items are always displayed in the new tab page, which now shows only 8 thumbnails, even if they're no longer frequently visited.

The list of search engines and the recent bookmarks have been removed and there's a new section of recent activities that includes recently-closed tabs and recent downloads. Another new section is called "recommendations", but it's still a work in progress.

You can hide the thumbnails, hide the list of recent activities and the recommendations if you don't find them useful.



The updated tab page is not yet ready to be released, but you can enable it if you have a recent Chromium build (Windows, Mac, Linux) by editing the desktop shortcut and adding the following flag in the target field:

--new-new-tab-page