Google Friends Newsletter - August 2007

Google Friends Newsletter - August 2007

Late summer greetings to all of our Google friends! We hope
you enjoy
this update on a number of products and services.

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POWER TIP

Embed Google Maps on your website or blog

There's a new feature on Google Maps that enables you to
easily embed
an interactive map on your website or blog just by copying
and pasting
a snippet of HTML (much in the same way as embeddable
YouTube videos
work). On Google Maps, pull up the map you want to embed--
it can be a
location, a business, a set of driving directions, search
results, or
a map you've created. Then copy the embed code by clicking
"Link to
this page," and paste the code into your blog or
website. You can
create a map using the map-making tools in the My Maps tab
and display
it on your website using this embed feature.
http://maps.google.com

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NEW PRODUCTS & UPDATES

Updates to Google Earth

With the new Google Earth (4.2), you can see a view of the
night sky
and explore the universe from home. Browse, zoom and click
on the sky
the same way you can with the Earth. Thanks to partners such
as the
Hubble Space Telescope, you'll see beautiful imagery of
space and the
objects in it, together with lots of additional data
including
constellations, the moon, planets, a user's guide to
galaxies, and the
life of a star. There are also updates to Google Earth
layers,
including new overlays. A Book Search layer includes
placemarks of
location names mentioned in books that are available in
Google Book
Search; a Traffic layer overlays live-traffic data for major
cities
that are already published in Maps. We've also included
high-
resolution photos from across the U.S., placed so that they
line up
with the terrain, letting you see the "real deal"
superimposed on 3D
imagery.
http://earth.google.com/


StarOffice now in Google Pack

A free office productivity suite for creating documents,
spreadsheets,
and presentations on the desktop, StarOffice, is now
optional software
within the Google Pack. And by using the Open Document
Format,
StarOffice is fully compatible with Google Docs &
Spreadsheets so you
can easily upload and share your work.
http://pack.google.com

Paid storage for Gmail and Picasa Web Albums

U.S.-based English-language users of Gmail and Picasa Web
Albums can
now purchase additional storage to be shared across these
products. We
want you to be able to live more of your life in "the
cloud" -- where
your data is available to you any time, from any PC.
Eventually, we
hope you can have one place to store you information - in
whatever
form - online. We've integrated this extra storage across
Picasa Web
Albums and Gmail for now, and plan to add more Google
services soon.
http:/
/www.google.com/accounts/PurchaseStorage

Web History now includes Google Book Search

Web History now includes Books, which means those of you who
use Web
History can see your searches on Google Book Search as part
of your
web history. it's easy to view and manage your past book
searches, and
get better personalized results too.
http://books.google.com

Google News now integrates videos

Now, in addition to articles and images from thousands of
different
publishers, Google News in the US, UK and Ireland integrates
news
video results with help from YouTube. Video partners include
CBS,
Reuters and others, and when available, clusters of news
stories on
the Google News page now feature embedded videos.
http://news.google.com

------------

MISCELLANY

As our lives move increasingly online, we all tend to take
for granted
the convenience of having websites know our shipping
address, our
preferred email format, the movies or music we're likely to
enjoy, and
of course our credit card or bank account numbers. Many news
stories
about what's called "online privacy" have delved
into the implications
of businesses (like ours) holding all of this personal
information for
you and every consumer. We encourage you to study the
privacy policies
of every company you do business with online, including us.
Look for
clearly-written explanations and reasonable terms. We're
trying to go
further than current industry standards, too, by being as
transparent
as we can possibly be in telling you about what data we
keep, how long
we keep it, and so on. If you're interested in these
matters, you may
enjoy the first video we've made to explain basic privacy
concepts in
an easy-to-watch 5 minute format. (We plan to produce more
on this
topic in the future). We hope you learn something and also
let us know
what you think.

Video: http://www
.youtube.com/watch?v=kLgJYBRzUXY

Feedback: http://tinyurl.com/2bpjad


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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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