Google Helps You Understand Recursion

Google uses the "did you mean" feature, which normally corrects misspellings, to illustrate a nerdy joke: defining the word "recursion" using "see recursion" and pointing to the same definition.


"A recursive process is one in which objects are defined in terms of other objects of the same type. Using some sort of recurrence relation, the entire class of objects can then be built up from a few initial values and a small number of rules," explains MathWorld.

For more information, search Google for [recursion].

{ via Google Blogoscoped }

Gmail Displays the Images Sent by Your Contacts

Gmail has recently improved the way it displays external photos. Until now, you had to manually whitelist email addresses and this was tedious.

"When you receive an email that contains externally linked images, Gmail usually doesn't display the images automatically. This behavior is designed to help protect your privacy; if we displayed the images automatically, it could potentially allow the sender of the email to see that the images are being fetched, and therefore know when you've read their message," explained Google.

Gmail changed this system so that you no longer have to whitelist contacts if you've sent them at least two messages. "We'll only show images in messages that are authenticated, so you won't have to worry about seeing images in messages where the sender's name or address is spoofed."

This means you'll see the message "Images are not displayed. Display images below" less often. If you don't like the new feature, you can always disable it in the Settings by checking "Ask before displaying external content".

It would be nice if Gmail added more features that let you manage the messages sent by your contacts: search options that restrict the messages to a certain group or all your contacts, filters that label the messages sent by your friends.

Google Docs, Slowly Morphing into Google Drive

The new interface of Google Docs, which is slowly rolled out to all users, brings the service one step closer to an online storage service. The "items by type" menu replaced "PDFs" with "Files", suggesting that Google Docs will allow users to upload any type of files.


Google Docs also added the advanced search options that are available in Gmail:

* exact phrase matching ("todo list")
* negative matching (summer -trip)
* disjunctive matching (budget OR invoice)
* built-in labels (is:starred, is:hidden)
* collaborators: to find the documents shared by Michael Robinson, you need to search for: from:michaelr@gmail.com, assuming that's his email address. The problem is that you need to know the email address, since the operator doesn't support (partial) names.

At some point in the near future, Google Docs will allow you to upload any type of files. Some of the files can be edited, other files can be previewed online, while the rest of them are only stored online. For example, PDF files can't be edited online, but you can view them and share them.


It will be interesting to see how Google Drive integrates with other Google services that store files (Gmail, Picasa Web Albums, YouTube) and to find the free quota limits.

Tony Ruscoe found in January an internal Google document about Cosmo, described as an upgrade from GDrive, a service that was only available to Google's employees. "We're in the process of migrating all Google Doc accounts to Cosmo," mentioned the document.

Update: Kevin Mohr found an interesting image referenced in Google Docs' code: . It's a folder icon that includes Google Chrome's logo, so it could be related to Google Chrome OS, a browser-centric operating system that will probably use Google Drive to store files online. There's also an icon for videos which suggests that videos will be uploaded to YouTube.

Add Tables to Google Presentations

The presentation editor from Google Docs has a new option that lets you insert tables. It may not seem too much, but Google's implementation is great and I hope that the table editor will be added the word processor, as well.

Instead of asking you the number of columns and rows, Google Presentations borrowed the simple cell selection menu from PowerPoint and made it better. Try to insert a 15 x 15 table and you'll see how Google Docs expands the table dynamically.


If you want to add more rows, you don't need to use the Table menu: just click on the "+" button next to one of the rows. Google Presentations added a similar button for selecting rows and columns.


"Once you've inserted a table into your presentation, you can easily add, select, and resize rows and columns with a single click , format and align text across the table, and set background colors for your cells and borders. Your rows will grow to fit content as you type it. Collaborators can even make edits to the same table simultaneously. Now, when you import tables from Microsoft Office PowerPoint they'll show up as editable tables in Google Docs," explains Google.

Another cool new feature is a play button for embedded presentations. If you click on the button, the presentation advances automatically to the next slide every 3 seconds. You can customize the number of seconds and there's also an option that starts the presentation after the player loads. All the options are available after you publish a presentation.

YouTube 3D

YouTube test a stereoscopic player for watching videos in 3D. If you go to this video, you'll notice a drop-down that includes some options for red/cyan and amber/blue 3D glasses and some options that don't require glasses.

"Stereoscopy, stereoscopic imaging or 3-D (three-dimensional) imaging is any technique capable of recording three-dimensional visual information or creating the illusion of depth in an image. The illusion of depth in a photograph, movie, or other two-dimensional image is created by presenting a slightly different image to each eye," explains Wikipedia.


To enable the 3D player, you need to add the following tag to one of your videos: yt3d:enable=true. Pete, a Google employee, has more information about this experimental feature:

I'm the developer working on the stereoscopic player as a 20% project. It's currently very early, hence the silly bugs like swapping the eyes for the anaglyph modes. A fix for this is in the works.

The current tags are provisional and may change or expand. They are:

yt3d:enable=true Enables the view mode.
yt3d:aspect=3:4 Sets the aspect of the encoded video.
yt3d:swap=true Swaps the left and right sources. You may need to add this to videos when the player with fixed anaglyph modes ships.

You can try the new feature by searching for yt3d:enable=true.

{ via Search Engine Roundtable }

Explore the Moon in Google Earth

After adding the ocean, the sky, Mars, Google Earth now has imagery from the Moon. Forty years after the Moon landing, you can explore the Earth's natural satellite in 3D.


"Each of the Apollo landing missions is chronicled in detail through pictures and stories. We've even embedded video footage from Spacecraft Films that covers the most well-known moments on the surface. There are also immersive lunar surface panoramas, composed of photos taken by the astronauts themselves, presented for the first time in a 3D Street View style interface," explains Google.


To see the Moon, you need a recent version of Google Earth: after installing the software, click on the planet button from the toolbar and select "Moon".