Google Friends Newsletter
May 2006
As we work our way slowly but surely into the season of
baseball and
barbecues, it's our pleasure to welcome you, Google
Friends, to the May
edition of this newsletter. We hope you'll enjoy reading
about what
we've been up to in the last month, and find the updates
useful.
POWER TIP
Adding pictures to Gmail
Most of you probably already know that Google Talk lets you
add your
own pictures to your icon slot, and were probably expecting
that we'd
eventually add that functionality to Gmail too. Well, you
were right:
You can now choose your own pic to use as an icon in Gmail.
But you may
not have heard that you can also display your own pictures
of the
people on your contacts list, and send them picture
suggestions if you
find something that would make a good icon.
Assign a picture:
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=383
55
Suggest a picture:
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=355
28
NEW PRODUCTS
Google Co-op
Google Co-op improves search for everyone by allowing people
to label
web pages relevant to their areas of expertise and create
specialized
links users can subscribe to. So, for example, if a you're
a doctor who
knows a lot about arthritis, you can label web pages related
to the
disease, and other Google Co-op users who subscribe to your
information
will receive new search refinement options (such as
"treatment,"
"symptoms," or "for health
professionals") at the top of their results
page when they enter a relevant query.
http://www.google.com/coop
Google Desktop
Google Desktop 4 lets you personalize your desktop with a
variety of
Google Gadgets. These gadgets are mini-applications that
reside on your
desktop and deliver a variety of services and information,
including
games, media players, news updates, and weather info. We've
also added
several other features, including a new Google Desktop
Gadgets API that
will let you create your own gadgets and share them with
others.
http://desktop.google.com
Google Notebook
Google Notebook is a free browser tool that makes web
research of all
kinds-from planning a vacation to comparison shopping to
purchasing a
car-easier and more efficient. It allows you to send
clippings of
text, images, and links to an online notebook without ever
leaving the
page you're on. You can also add your own notes, organize
notebooks
into sections, and make your notebooks public for others to
view.
http://www.google.com/
notebook
Google Trends
Google Trends enables you to compare the world's interest
in your
favorite topics. You can enter up to five topics and see how
often
they've been searched for on Google over time. Google
Trends also
displays how frequently your topics have appeared in Google
News
stories, and which geographic regions have searched for them
most
often.
http://www.google.com/tr
ends
Google Page Creator
The name says it all, really--Google Page Creator is a new
Labs product
we're testing that lets you easily create web pages that
are both
functional and stylish. Google Page Creator removes the
usual headaches
of designing a web page (like learning HTML or hiring
someone who
already has), so you can get your ideas up on the web
faster.
http://pages.google.com
MISCELLANY
Avoiding RSI
If you're like a lot of people who work with computers,
your desk
chair molds perfectly to your body, and your mouse and
keyboard are as
broken-in as an old baseball glove. And if that is the case,
then you
might be as interested as we were to read the latest blog
post from our
staff doctor, Taraneh Razavi. In the post, Dr. Razavi weighs
in on
repetitive stress injury, or RSI, giving us a sense of just
how
widespread a problem it is and sharing some useful tips on
how we can
avoid it.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/04/avoiding-rsi.html
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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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