Best New Google Features that Don't Require Login

This post is for those who think Google is still a search engine and wonder why news sites constantly talk about new Google features while Google's homepage still looks the same. Here's a list of my favorite Google updates from this year that should be useful even if you don't use Gmail, Google Docs and you don't have a Google account.

1. Play videos from Google Search
Google lets you play videos from YouTube and Google Video directly from the search results pages. That means you can search for a song, an artist, a TV show and play videos just by clicking on "watch video". E.g.: Mika.


2. Better translations
This year, Google moved to its own statistical translation system, which provides better translations, improves faster and it's easier to scale to new languages. You can access the service if you click on "Language tools" at google.com, from translate.google.com or if you translate search results from foreign languages.

3. More recent web pages
Google indexes web pages faster so you can find them minutes after they're published. If you want to restrict your search to recent pages, there are more options in the advanced search that let you find pages first seen by Google in the past 24 hour, past week and other intervals.

4. Find geographical information
Google Maps is more than a search engine that finds local businesses, shows maps and directions. It's also useful to find content related to a certain place through mapplets or directly from the search box. Find photos, videos, books and maps from the web.


5. Free 411 in the US
GOOG-411 lets you find a local business and connect to it by calling to 1-800-GOOG-411. The service is free and doesn't have human operators.

6. Trends in search results
If you wonder what are the most interesting searches at the moment, try Google Hot Trends. The data is updated every hour and shows the queries that had the most spectacular evolution. For now, Google Hot Trends is only available for the US English version of Google.

7. Explore the sky
Google Earth 4.2 lets you switch to the sky mode and explore stars, constellations, galaxies, find information and high-resolution images.


8. Find faces in Google Image Search
You can restrict image results to faces by going to advanced search and selecting "faces" in the content types section. Google's face detection is really good and you can use this new option when searching for people.

9. Go mobile
Most Google's services have a mobile version and they should be available by going to google.com on your mobile phone (or google.com/m on your computer). There's a unified interface for iPhone, a great mobile version of Google Maps that finds your location even if you don't have GPS and a mobile YouTube.


10. Download StarOffice for free
Of course, you can always get OpenOffice, but Google lets you download for free a more business-oriented version that normally costs $70. The price is that you need to install Google Pack, collection of applications recommended by Google. You can still choose the software you want to install and it's easy to uninstall Google Pack while still keeping StarOffice.

Weave: Integrating Online Services with Firefox

While social bookmarking sites like del.ico.us have a lot of fans, most people aren't comfortable with publicly displaying their bookmarks. Even if many sites allow you save your bookmarks online, the integration between the services and browsers is still not very good, you have to install plug-ins and learn how to bookmark sites and manage your bookmarks.

This year, browsers started to realize that they have a great opportunity: to extend their local bookmarking services and add an online layer. The first browser that integrated this feature was the IE-based Maxthon, then Opera added a bookmark synchronization feature to its desktop and mobile clients. Now Mozilla tests a similar service called Weave, that's available as an extension for Firefox 3 Beta 2, but unlike Opera and Maxthon, Mozilla's product will be open to third-parties.

As the Web continues to evolve and more of our lives move online, we believe that Web browsers like Firefox can and should do more to broker rich experiences while increasing user control over their data and personal information. One important area for exploration is the blending of the desktop and the Web through deeper integration of the browser with online services. (...) Just like Mozilla enables massive innovation by making Firefox open on many levels, we will aim to do the same with Weave by developing an open extensible framework for services integration.

For now, Weave lets you synchronize your bookmarks and your history, but the service should be extended to other kinds of data: passwords, cookies, settings, sessions, extensions. In this limited test, the only service provider is Mozilla, but once the platform matures, we can expect to see important service providers like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft. Instead of using Google Toolbar, you'll be able to bookmark web pages to Google Bookmarks directly from Firefox.

And if other browsers support this platform, you should be able to access the same personal data in Firefox, Opera or other browsers, at home or at work, from your computer or your mobile phone.


Here are some use cases from Mozilla:

* Automatic backup and restore - Dan's hard drive has died. Like many folks, Dan had never gotten around to getting that backup solution he knew he needed. Dan feels miserable when he thinks of all the software he needs to install, the stuff he's lost, and all the account names and passwords he'll never remember. Then he realizes that his family photos, email and calendar are all hosted online, as well as all of the services he uses to manage his life: his banking, shopping, purchased music and more. With his replacement computer in hand, he installs Firefox, logs in to his Mozilla account and resumes his online life without skipping a beat.

* Personalization made portable - Myk likes to visit his Mom on weekends. He doesn't have a laptop, so he uses his mom's computer when he visits. He used to be annoyed because, though he installed Firefox on his Mom's PC, he missed having easy access to his favorite sites and RSS feeds, and having to remember all his account names and passwords. He logs into his Mozilla account and his personalized experience returns. And, just as importantly, when he logs out, all of the cookies, bookmarks and other information is cleared from his Mom's PC so that she doesn't accidentally log in to his email account or anything else he was browsing.

Hopefully, Mozilla's project will become a part of Firefox 4 and other browsers will work in a similar direction. This way, it will be easier to decide who stores your data and to have your data with you permanently.

For now, Weave is available as an experimental extension for Firefox 3 Beta 2. If you use Firefox 2 or an earlier version, you can install Firefox 3 without conflicting with your current version, but it's recommended to create a new profile. You can find more about Firefox 3 from Ars Technica, but one thing is for sure: Firefox 3 is really fast.