Google Friends Newsletter - July 2006
Greetings from the Googleplex to our esteemed readers. We
hope you
enjoy this monthly update on Google services and products.
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POWER TIP
Google Video
Now there are more ways to play with Google Video. You can
label and
rate videos, or make comments about them for others to see.
And now
it's easier for you to add the videos you like directly to
your blog,
using the new "Email - Blog - Post to MySpace"
button on the playback
page. A few clicks and your current favorite is directly
embedded into
the most popular blogging platforms like Blogger, TypePad,
MySpace and
LiveJournal.
http://video.google.com
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NEW PRODUCTS
Google Checkout
The new Google Checkout is a fast, easy way to shop online.
We often
hear people say, "Why do I have to re-enter the same
billing, shipping,
and credit card information every time I buy online?"
Now you don't.
You can buy from stores with a single Google sign-in - no
more entering
the same info over and over, and no more having to remember
different
usernames and passwords for each store. To help you find
places to
shop, you'll see a little shopping cart icon on the
Google.com ads of
stores offering Google Checkout. It's an easy way to
identify fast,
secure places to shop when you search. After you've placed
your order,
Google Checkout provides a purchase history where you can
track your
orders and shipping information in one place.
http://checkout.google.com
New features in Google Finance
We launched Google Finance a few months ago, and now we've
added some
new features to enhance your Finance experience. We've
included a
stock-market module on the business section of Google News
and Google
Finance now supports multiple portfolios. We've also added
an
auto-suggest feature to the Google Finance search box to
help you find
the companies and funds you're searching for more quickly.
There's also
an auto-refresh feature that keeps the data on your
portfolio page
current. Lastly, we've been impressed by Seeking Alpha, a
small company
that offers free transcripts on many earnings calls, so
we've added a
link to this service as well.
http://finance.google.com
Accessible Web Search
T.V. Raman, a senior research scientist here at Google, is
blind, and
he has just led an exciting project for us called Google
Accessible
Search. This new service (currently on Google Labs) adds a
small twist
to Google web search: in addition to finding the most
relevant results
from Google as usual, Accessible Search further prioritizes
results
based on the simplicity of their page layouts. When you
search from the
Accessible site, you'll get results that are prioritized
based on their
usability. This tends to favor pages with few visual
distractions, and
pages that are likely to render well with images turned off.
Google
Accessible Search is built on Google Co-op's technology,
which
emphasizes search results based on specialized interests.
http://labs.google.
com/accessible
Google Pack available internationally
Our one-stop (free) shop for useful software just got more
useful, as
Google Pack is now available in 17 regions around the world:
Australia,
Austria, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India,
Italy,
Japan, Korea, Mexico, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland,
Taiwan, and
the U.K. The Pack includes a batch of useful software like
Firefox (for
safer web browsing), Norton AntiVirus (to protect your PC),
and
RealPlayer (for playing popular media formats) plus a number
of Google
programs including Google Desktop, the Google Toolbar, and
Picasa. The
Google Updater keeps all the Pack programs current so you
don't have
to.
http://pack.google.com
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MISCELLANY
+ You are there +
The rise of real-world mapping and geographical information
online is
truly exciting to many people because it offers a "you
are there"
feeling that words, photos and even video can't provide.
Visual imagery
of the world that can be followed over distances helps to
deepen our
understanding of the physical world. For this reason we
really enjoyed
working on the special Google Earth overlays of a recent
real-time,
real world event, the 103rd Tour de France. (It ended in
Paris on July
23rd; the yellow jersey went to American Floyd Landis,
riding for the
Swiss team.) Now you can make sense of it all by flying
around the
route yourself. A KML file available on the official Tour de
France
website lets you see the entire course overlaid on satellite
imagery
for Google Earth. The tour is available in French, German,
and Spanish
as well as English. Pick your language on the Le Tour site,
and once
you've done that, look for the "Tour on Google
Earth" link in the
lefthand navigation under Route. Then you can watch the
starts, the
finishes, even information on each of the cities along the
way. Just
move the KML file into your "My Places" folder
on Google Earth and
revisit all 20 grueling stages.
http://www.letour.fr/
http://earth.google.com
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The Google Blog offers frequent updates and insights about
our
technology and products, and the company at large.
http://googleblog.blog
spot.com
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Google Friends archive:
http
://www.google.com/googlefriends/archive.html
Google, Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043
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The Google Blog offers frequent updates and insights about
our technology and products, and the company at large.
http://googleblog.blog
spot.com
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Google, Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043
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