Google Talk to Add Video Conferencing

Gmail Chat, the web-based version of Google Talk, added last year voice and video chat. The feature is now available in iGoogle and orkut, but it will probably be added to other Google services, as well.

SFGate reports that Google will improve the service significantly in the coming months.

Gmail's voice and video chats are now limited to one-to-one communications, but Google wants to broaden that capability to more than two participants and make it more robust all around for Apps.

"This [current Gmail capability] is the first step in a much broader set of features we hope to roll out over the next six to 12 months around video [and voice] chat capabilities," said Rishi Chandra, a Google Apps product manager. "It's a great opportunity for us to push that space along."

It's not clear whether Google plans to integrate Marratech's video conferencing software, acquired in 2007.

Other features that will be added to Google's services: "intelligent meeting scheduling in Google calendar", "intelligent workflow in the [Google Docs] applications", "lots of new functionality being developed especially around formatting" in Google Docs.

{ via Justin Uberti }

Google Toolbar's Features in Google Chrome?

Google received many complaints that Google Toolbar is not available for Chrome, so it created a page meant to convince users that "many Toolbar features are already built right into Google Chrome".

The page explains that Google Chrome already includes a search box, a pop-up blocker, a new tab page, a spell checker and it offers a list of bookmarklets that let you create bookmarks, translate web pages or view Sidewiki annotations. Some of the explanations are plain wrong:

"Like Toolbar's 'AutoFill' button, Google Chrome shows you text you've previously entered on websites, to save you time and typing."

Obviosly, Google Toolbar's autofill feature doesn't have anything in common in Google Chrome's autofill, other than the name. Like most browsers, Google Chrome auto-populates the text field with information you've entered when you visited the same pages before. Google Toolbar lets you save personal information (name, email, address, credit card information) and complete web forms with one click.

"Google Chrome's built-in spell-checker, similar to Toolbar's 'Spell check' button, automatically checks your spelling whenever you fill out a web form."

That's true, but Google Toolbar uses an online service for spell-checking and the results are much better. Try typing "Engsh" in Chrome and you'll see that the suggestions are "Eng sh" and "Eng-sh", which Google Toolbar's first suggestion is "English".

"The find bar feature in Google Chrome works like the Toolbar 'Word find' button. Matches to your search term are automatically highlighted on the page. Plus, you can use the yellow markers on the scrollbar to quickly see where all the matches are located on the page."

Google Chrome's find bar doesn't work like the Toolbar's highlighting feature: the keywords don't show up automatically when you perform a search and you can't find the occurrences of the individual keywords.

I think it's a bad idea to claim that Google Chrome has many features from Google Toolbar and to list some features that are available in many browsers, including Internet Explorer.

The reason why Google Toolbar is not available for Google Chrome is that Google's browser doesn't have an extension API, at least not in the stable builds. The extension API is still a work in progress.

"We're working with the Google Chrome team to develop a Toolbar extension, as well as bring some of our most popular features to Google Chrome," says Brian Rose, who works on the Google Toolbar team.

Google Dashboard

Google Dashboard is a new service that shows a summary of the data stored with a Google account. You'll soon find a link to Google Dashboard in the "personal settings" of the "my account" page.


The dashboard lists some of the information associated with the Google services you use: your name, your email address, the number of contacts, the number of conversations in your Gmail inbox, your Google profile, the most recent entries from the web history etc. It's a long answer to the question: "What does Google know about me?".



More information about the new service in a YouTube video that was supposed to be "embargoed until 2am PT, November 5th".

Update: Google Dashboard is now available at http://www.google.com/dashboard.



{ Thanks, Tom. }

Custom Sections Directory for Google News

Google News added a directory for custom sections and an easy way to create your own custom sections. Until now, the only way to add a section to Google News was to perform a search and click on "create custom section" at the bottom of the search results page.

Now you can click on "Add a section", find your favorite sections or create new ones.


Google doesn't offer too many options when you create a section: type a list of keywords, restrict the results to a national edition or to the sources from a certain location.

For example, you can create a section for Google-related news by entering [google, gmail, chrome, android] or any other combination of keywords related to Google. You could also create a section about web browsers by entering [browser, chrome, safari, opera browser, firefox, internet explorer].


"Personalized News enables you to get news tailored specifically to your interests. You can personalize your own Google News homepage by creating Custom Sections from your favorite searches and mixing and matching existing standard sections from the regional and language editions of Google News. After defining your Custom Section, you have the option to "Publish this section to the directory" by checking the box provided. This will add your Custom Section to the Custom Section Directory, where other users can add it to their Personalized News page, as well as rate your section," explains Google.

{ via Blogoscoped Forum }

Google Chrome Converts User Scripts into Extensions

A recent Chromium build added a feature that converts user scripts into extensions. Until now, Google's browser didn't provide an interface for adding and managing user scripts, so you had to manually copy the scripts to a folder.

"Lots of users still complain that Chrome does not support Greasemonkey user scripts. Even though we have had the infrastructure in place to handle user scripts for some time now, it has never been clear how the feature would relate to full extensions, and so it has remained incomplete," explains Aaron Boodman, a Google Chrome developer who created the Greasemonkey extension.

Now you can visit userscripts.org and any other site that links to Greasemonkey scripts and other flavors of user scripts, click on the link to a *.user.js file and install it in one click.



Like any other extensions, user scripts can be disabled or uninstalled by visiting chrome://extensions/ or selecting "Extensions" from the Tools menu.

This feature is only available in the latest Chromium builds, but it will soon be added to Google Chrome's dev channel, which already enables the support for extensions.

This week, Google released the first beta version of Chrome 4 for Windows, so the stable version should be available in the coming weeks. Chrome 4's major selling points should be the support for extensions and the long-awaited Mac & Linux ports.

Google Related Links, Second Edition

Google Related Links is a new Google Labs service that lets you add a list of related web pages and searches to your site. Unlike the homonymous service released by Google in 2006, the new Related Links restricts the results to your site.

"Related Links is a tool to help webmasters increase page views on their sites. Given a page on your site, Related Links can choose the most related pages from your site and show them in a gadget. You can embed this gadget in your page to help your users reach other pages easily. Related Links also suggests searches that users can run within your site to find even more related pages."

The service is not publicly available, but you can try a demo and ask for an invitation. "To apply for an invitation, please send an email to relatedlinks@google.com stating your Gmail address, website domains and approximate pageviews per day."

Once you get the invitation, log in using your Google account and click on "Manage Related Links". You'll be able to configure the gadget, customize the look and feel and enable some advanced features: highlighting the keywords from the page for visitors that come from a search engine, blacklisting web pages from the list of related links and removing prefixes or suffixes from titles.


After configuring the gadget, paste the code in one of your sites and test if it works well. If you edit the gadget's configuration, the changes are reflected instantly and you don't need to change the code.

Here's a screenshot that shows the related links and searches for a post about Google Voice.


The results are relevant, but there are some issues which show that the service is still in an early phase: there's an encoding bug when displaying page titles and links are only opened in a new window.

Preview Google's Search Results

Google added a new option to the web search toolbelt: page previews. If you click on "Show options" and select "Page previews" after performing a search, Google will show a longer snippet and a thumbnail for each search result.

Google's thumbnails include a small part of the page, so they aren't always helpful. Another issue is that all the thumbnails from a search results pages are merged and the resulting image doesn't load instantly.



Example: search results for [maps].

Google Tests a Clutter-Free Homepage

Google has been testing a new version of its homepage that hides the navigation links and the search buttons until you move your cursor. The page appears to load faster, it's less cluttered and better suited for searching, but it might confuse some users.

Search Engine Roundtable noticed an experiment that displayed "This space intentionally left blank" below the search box. Most likely, it's an attempt to explain that the page is already loaded.



Google's idea is interesting, but I don't think that it's really necessary to remove the navigational elements from a homepage that's already simple.

Some feedback for Google's help forum:

"The fade in thing is pointless, and I really would like my search buttons back. Yes, I can indeed hit return, but when I'm copying and pasting text into the search box using my mouse, I want to then move my mouse to click a button, and not have to put the mouse down to use the keyboard to hit return before going back to mousing. Small thing but *really* frustrating. Why take the buttons away? Some people like to click them, other people like to hit return, I tend to do both depending on whether I'm copy/pasting with the mouse or typing text in with the keyboard."

"Google's main page will no longer by my default browser homepage if they don't get rid of the fade. I hate it. Half the time I want to go to Gmail, and I have to move the mouse cursor over the window and wait a few seconds before I can click to go to Gmail. This is a loss of functionality in my mind. I love minimalism, but this just makes things worse."

"After considering for a week - I think I like it. The novelty is gone, but the simplicity of the interface ensures that I'm not distracted before I type my search term. I actually often use the box, type my query and press enter without ever moving my mouse. The interface is seamless and does everything I want it to do - getting me to results as quickly as possible. If I do need any other Google feature, they are still available just as quickly (perhaps the fade in on mouse movement should be just a touch faster). I appreciate this might not be a feature for the mainstream - but I would encourage you to at least keep it as an option. It embodies everything that keeps me using Google, simplicity with functionality."

{ The first image is licensed as Creative Commons by Barry Schwartz. }

Google Voice Stats

BusinessWeek found some information about Google Voice in a response to an inquiry from the Federal Communications Commission, an independent agency of the United States government:

"Google Voice, which provides people with a single phone number that can be used to reach them on their work, home, or cell phones, has 1.419 million users, according to the letter. Of those, 570,000 use it seven days a week, Google says."

The service is still limited to the US and it's available by invitation. Google Voice users can invite other users from the web interface.

Google now offers an additional version of the service for those who want to use their existing phone numbers. This version is more limited and it only offers voicemail-related features and international calling.

"Google Voice charges only for outbound calls to international locations; at present, fewer than 4% of all Google Voice users place outbound international calls," explains Google.

Google emphasizes that Google Voice is not a phone service, it's a Web-based software application. "Google Voice works with mobile phones, desk phones, work phones, and VoIP lines. There's nothing to download, upload, or install, and you don't have to make or take calls using a computer."

Why It's a Bad Idea to Send Huge Files by Email

Gmail has increased the maximum attachment size to 25 MB in June, but some people want to send larger files. Daniel wrote a thoughtful comment that explains why it's a bad idea to send huge files by email:

People who demand large message size limits rarely understand the limitations of the email transmission.

Because of the MIME encoding used when sending binary attachments, your files expand 33% when sent via email. In other words, a 15MB attachment requires 20MB plus the message text, plus message headers.

When you carbon copy 20 of your friends & coworkers, a separate message is sent to each. 20MB x 20 = 400MB. That's half a freaking CD.

If 5 of those friends are on the same small company email server, downloading those messages saturates the entire bandwidth of their T1 data line for nearly 9 minutes. Because each message has separate headers, it isn't easily cached and gets completely downloaded by each recipient.

Compare this to uploading the same attachment to a web server, FTP server, file transmission service like YouSendIt, or video streaming site like YouTube. One copy is uploaded. The download is typically 8-bit so minimal expansion factor. The small business' network can cache the content, so it's only downloaded once then fetched locally from the web caching server.

Bottom line, sending a large attachment via email is relocating using the U.S. Postal Service as your moving company. It is painful, limited, and expensive.

Link to a Page in Google's Document Viewer

Google's Document Viewer lets you preview PDF files, PowerPoint presentations and TIFF files without installing additional software. It's great for linking to documents available online and for embedding them in a site.

If you want to link to a certain page from your document, adjust the URL. This is the link generated by Google for a PDF file:

http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Finfolab.stanford.edu%2Fpub%2Fpapers%2Fgoogle.pdf

To load a specific page in the document, you need to add a hash to the end of the URL. Page IDs are numbered sequentially like this: :0.page.0, :0.page.1, :0.page.2...

So to load page #15 of the document, use this link:

http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Finfolab.stanford.edu%2Fpub%2Fpapers%2Fgoogle.pdf#:0.page.14

The same trick works for the embedded viewer:

http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Finfolab.stanford.edu%2Fpub%2Fpapers%2Fgoogle.pdf&embedded=true#:0.page.14

{ Thanks, Andy. }