Google Earth API

Bring the power of Google Earth in your website. Go to code.google.com/apis/earth
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earthplug-in maps api plugin 3d browser webapplication googlearth technology developer mashup I/O code

Google Docs in Plain English

Create and share online documents, spreadsheets and presentations. It's free. You can:

1) Access your documents online from any computer with an internet connection.

2) Add collaborators to your document and Docs will send them a link to access the doc online (no need to send email attachments back and forth)

3) Decide who can view and edit each document (only you, some people, or everyone)

For a quick product tour, check out: http://www.google.com/google-d-s/tour...

Or to get started, visit: http://docs.google.com

Gmail: Google Enables SMS Text Messaging in Chat

Google first launched this feature in October, but was quickly removed due to bugs. Now you can use this feature in your Gmail Chat. You can send SMS Messages to anyone right from the chat window. Just enter the phone number to which you want to send SMS Message, then the recipient can reply you by simply selecting reply option from his phone.

According to the Gmail Blog, the service is currently applied for the US numbers only, you can send SMS Messages from anywhere in the world to the US numbers only.

what Google says about this feature..

Text Messaging in Chat
Send SMS text messages right from Gmail. You chat from your comfy computer and reach your friends on the go; they get your messages as texts and can peck out replies on their little keyboards.

To activate this feature in your Gmail account, simply click on Settings, and then click on Labs tab. Here, scroll through the list and find the option "Text Messaging (SMS) in Chat" and select Enable and Save Changes.

Download Google’s Help Files

No doubt, Google has the best free services with best user interface, but when it comes to help then it becomes little bit complicated. Google has help centers for each services, these help centers provides you information about features, tutorials, troubleshooting guides, but you have to go through some complicated hierarchy of topics or use the search box.

Unofficial blog Google Operating System found a trick to get all the information related to Google Service on a single page. With the help of this trick you can then save the page for your offline use and then you can get the rid of all your problems related to that service. All you have to just append ?fulldump=1 to the address of a Google Help Center. This trick may not work for all Google services. Here is the short list of addresses that dump all the information from a help center.

Gmail Help http://mail.google.com/support/?fulldump=1

Google Calendar Help http://www.google.com/support/calendar/?fulldump=1

YouTube Help http://help.youtube.com/support/youtube/?fulldump=1

AdSense Help https://www.google.com/adsense/support/?fulldump=1

Webmasters Help http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/?fulldump=1

Analytics Help http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics?fulldump=1

Picasa Help http://picasa.google.com/support/?fulldump=1

Google Earth (PDF) http://earth.google.com/userguide/v4/google_earth_user_guide.pdf

This is just a short list, you can get more from Google Operating System or go to Google Help Center and add ?fulldump=1 to the url of the service you want. After downloading the HTML help file, if you want to convert it into PDF then this Wikipedia article has the list of converters.

How the Browser Sees Google

“Reflow is the process by which the geometry of the layout engine’s formatting objects are computed,” Doug T. explains. Above Mozilla reflow visualization shows how the browser calculates the geometry of the Google Japan homepage, and Doug has more visualizations at his blog. [Via Blogoscoped.]

Gmail is now even more Faster.

Great performance has always been attraction of the Gmail and the Gmail team is working everyday to make it faster. Recently the Gmail team decided to take a closer look at some other key parts of Gmail to see if they could speed things up, so you could get even better experience.

The team found that the initial loading sequence of Gmail can be improved. The loading sequence is everything that happens behind the scenes between the time you press the "Sign In" button on the login page and the moment you land in your inbox. They made some improvements to this area by reducing the HTTP request required to load an inbox and display it.

The team claims that they have reduced the overall load time up to 20%. Here's what they say about improvements.

We spent hours poring over these traces to see exactly what was happening between the browser and Gmail during the sign-in sequence, and we found that there were between fourteen and twenty-four HTTP requests required to load an inbox and display it. To put these numbers in perspective, a popular network news site's home page required about a 180 requests to fully load when I checked it yesterday. But when we examined our requests, we realized that we could do better. We decided to attack the problem from several directions at once: reduce the number of overall requests, make more of the requests cacheable by the browser, and reduce the overhead of each request.

I found little improvements loading the Gmail page. Have you felt some changes or improvements?

Edit your Gmail contacts directly from your Chat List

It happens sometimes that when you add a new friend to the Gmail chat, email address is added as their contact name, such as hikingfan@gmail.com. Everyone wants to display names of their friends in the chat list so you will never be confused as to who's who. The only way to change this, people used to go to contacts, select contact profile, add the name of the friend, and then save it.

Now with the new version of Gmail (launched for Firefox 2 and IE7) you can correct the above problem by editing your Gmail contacts directly from the chat list. You just need to hover your mouse pointer over one of the contact, you will get a pop-up with the contacts details. If you click on the contact name, it will automatically become an editable field. Now simply type the desired name and hit "enter". Your changes will save the name in your chat list as well as in your contacts.

[Gmail Blog]

Apple like interface for Google Image Search

Everyone likes the Apple's interface for scrolling through albums visually with a scrollbar. You will find the same interface for scrolling through websites on SearchMe.

Now you can browse Google Images like scrolling through albums on Apple. An Austrian developer named Franz Enzenhofer has built his own interface to Google Image Search named CreativeSpace. This interface is built with Ajax. You can also set the safe search to on/off.

TechCrunch

9 Reasons to Archive your Gmail

Google has a Report which says that many Gmail users don't archive their email. I think many Gmail users don't know What is the use of Archive button in Gmail. Here is a short description of Archive in Gmail.

Archiving moves messages out of your inbox and into All Mail, letting you tidy up your inbox without deleting anything. Messages you archive can be found in All Mail, in any labels you've applied, and by searching Gmail. When someone responds to a message you've archived, the conversation containing that message will reappear in your inbox.

Here are 9 Reasons you should use Archive in Gmail.

9. Phone numbers and addresses
You never know when you'll need a phone number someone emailed you or an address that was in a signature.

8. Procrastination
Sometimes you want to get a message out of your inbox, but you don't want to deal with organization, and you don't want to trash it.

7. Posterity
Just because you’re not famous now doesn’t mean that in forty years (or fifteen minutes) you won’t want to write your memoir.

6. Winning arguments
“But on May 5, 2005 at 8:43pm EDT you said….”

5. Mailing lists
Do you really need to know what Clintobamccain is doing every day? Auto-archive* their messages until you want to donate again.

4. Birthdays
Search for “grandma birthday” and voila, find the message you sent her last April. Aren't you glad you archived instead of deleted?

3. That guy
Remember that guy you thought you’d never need to get in touch with ever again?

2. Because you can
May as well use the free storage space. Plus, clean inbox = clean mind.

1. Fate-tempting is bad. You just never know
Thirty-one days after you send that message to the Trash and it gets permanently deleted, you're going to need it. Don't tempt the fates.

Impressed? Want to start using Archive feature.

To Archive your email select the email and click on Archive button.

To move your email back from Archive click and go to All Mail, select the email and click Move to Inbox.

All reasons are provided by Official Gmail Blog.

Also Read: 9 reasons not to archive messages

Picasa 2.7 Released for Linux, Download Now

Here is Picasa 2.7 a new version of Picasa for Linux and is now available to Download for Linux users.

"Picasa is software that helps you instantly find, edit and share all the pictures on your computer. Every time you open Picasa, it automatically locates all your pictures (even ones you forgot you had) and sorts them into visual albums organized by date with folder names you will recognize. You can drag and drop to arrange your albums and make labels to create new groups. Picasa makes sure your pictures are always organized. "

This release includes the same feature as in Picasa 2.7 for Windows.

Web album upload and download, folder hierarchy views, better raw support, localization in many languages. For those interested in open source aspect of Picasa 2.7, This software uses these open source technologies: WINE, Mozilla.

New Features:

• Upload to Picasa Web Albums
  Use the new "Web Album" button to post your best photos online to share with friends and family.
• Download from Picasa Web Albums
  Download albums from Picasa Web Albums directly into Picasa using Firefox.
• Save edits to disk
  Save edits, undo saves, and revert to the original file with ease. We've got batch saving too! Picasa will even match the jpeg quality of the original. Right-click on your saved files to try the new "locate original" feature.
• Folder hierarchy views
  Browse through folders Explorer-style. Use the button at the top of your Albums List to try them out.
• Improvements to Import
  Import into an existing folder- we know you've wanted this feature for a long time! We've made importing photos from your camera faster too.
• Better RAW support
  Now you can work with RAW files from the Canon 30D, the Nikon D200, Adobe DNG files, and more.
• Internationalization Improvements
  Enable support for non-english languages.
• Many other enhancements
  Larger thumbnails, better caption editing, ability to configure the row of buttons, special "Starred Photos" album, search by ISO and focal length.

With these all new features Picasa 2.7 also has some known issues. To see the knows issues goto Linux Download Page.

Download Picasa 2.7

Google Earth 4.3 Available with a Whole New World

Today Google released the latest version 4.3 of Google Earth. Google added lot more feature in this latest version and with all of the great user-created buildings in the 3D Warehouse. With the Redesigned Navigation system you can fly very smoothly from the heavens down to the streets of your town. The most important feature I like is, you can view the exact date of a particular satellite image.

Here are some of the Feature available in Google Earth 4.3

• New navigation - We've improved the zoom control so you can swoop down from outer space to street level in a single seamless motion. And with the addition of the "look" joystick, you can look up at buildings or across a mountain range.

• More, faster 3D buildings - It's more fun to navigate through a lot of new 3D content. Besides adding thousands of buildings contributed by people around the world, we've added dozens of photo-textured cities and towns in the U.S. and elsewhere.

• Street View - The popular Google Maps feature makes its Google Earth debut.

• Sunlight feature - Never seen the sunrise over the Alps? Now you can.

• New languages - There are 12 new languages, including Danish, English (UK), Spanish (Latin American), Finnish, Hebrew, Indonesian, Norwegian, Portuguese (PT), Romanian, Swedish, Thai, and Turkish.
• Imagery Dates - As I said above, You will be able to see the dates of a particular satellite image.

Here is a Video Tour of Google Earth 4.3 from gearthblog.com.

Download - Google Earth 4.3

Now use Google Earth to Browse Latest News Geographically

In collaboration wih The New York Times Google developed a new layer for Google Earth which will provide users the ability to browse the day's New York Times Headlines  Geographically. This feature is just like the Yahoo NewsGlobe where you can Visualize Breaking News on a Rotating 3D Globe.

"The New York Times offers geo-coded news, and Google Earth offers the platform for reading that news in a 3D browser. This is the first time we've endeavored to show news updated in real time, and we're very excited to work with this first-class publication to bring you the latest and greatest news." - The Lat Long Blog

To use this feature you must have the latest version of Google Earth. To Enable this feature just make sure the "Geographic Web" folder is turned on. Click on a New York Times placemark and you will see the latest news and features pertaining to that geographic region.

Now just go to the regions from which you want your daily dose of News. If the region has any news then you will find New York Times placemarks. Click on that placemark and you will get all news from that region.

This layer is updated every 15 minutes to offer the latest headlines for those with a big news appetite.

Google India launched Voice Search in Hyderabad

Google India launched a Voice Based Search Engine in Hyderabad. In this phone based service you can call a toll free number 1 800 41 99 99 99 to get information on local businesses, Shopping Malls, Restaurants, Movie Halls etc.

For instance, You make a call to Google on this free number to get information about restaurants in a particular area and Google will SMS you a list of all restaurants available in that  area.

This service is suppose to be available across all networks, but currently Vodafone users are not able to use this free service as the vodafone network does not allow calls to 1 800 numbers.

inThemes - Unofficial iGoogle Themes Directory

Google has its own official iGoogle Themes Directory so that you can get themes of your choice for your Personalized Google homepage easily. But the problem was, you need to browse all the directory to find the best theme. Recently Google launched Search for the iGoogle theme directory which made the task little easier. Still there is no way to browse themes by category, if you want themes on Nature, Sports, Entertainment you have to either search the whole directory or keep entering search terms until you find what you're looking for.

inThemes.com is a unofficial directory for iGoogle themes that you can use onto Google's Personalized homepage. This gallery is created by Sterling Udell, one of the top developers working with the Google Themes API.

Themes are divided up into categories and subcategories. User will find themes of their choices easily now. Since each theme submitted to inThemes is reviewed before it's added to the gallery, you will get only high quality themes.

[via Download Squad]

Search more than 360 iGoogle Themes using New Search Box

Two months ago, by lunching the iGoogle Themes API Google increased the iGoogle themes. With the help of this API anyone can Now design iGoogle theme.

The Themes API lets you create custom designs for iGoogle. Themes are visual designs that personalize iGoogle pages for millions of users. Themes are not just static designs--they can change throughout the day to reveal a visual storyline, message, or anything else.

Now over 360 iGoogle themes are available to users. Now you can actually find some beautiful themes using the new search box: for example, searching for [dynamic], you'll find themes that change throughout the day.

[via: GOS]

Newest Gmail features for Google Apps users

Google announced one new update which is now rolling out to Google Apps users who haven't already opted in to get the latest improvements. Employees, students and other Google Apps users will soon start seeing useful features like -

• even faster interface
• group chat from the browser
• streamlined contact manager
• colored message labels
• improved keyboard shortcuts
• bookmarkable messages and searches

Google's new RSS feed will help users to stay up-to-date to latest Google Apps Improvements, so you can learn about changes to Google Apps as they happen.

"If you're a Google Apps administrator and you'd rather start getting new features right away instead of waiting, you can change a setting in the control panel to automatically get future features as they're released."

Add your business to Local Search on Google India

Here is a simple and free way to promote your business on Google India Local Search. Google is inviting business owners from India to add their business listing in Google India Local Search. By adding your business free to Google India Local Search you will get noticed all over the country and will help your business to boost as it will help people to find you easily.

- Do you own a restaurant in Delhi and wish more people knew about your delicacies?
- Are you an insurance agent seeking new clientele?
- Would you like more tourists for your travel agency in Goa?
- Are you a custom apparel merchandiser in Bangalore seeking to expand your customer base?

There are three ways, Google provided to the business owners to add their business listing in Local Search.

1) You can call Google at 1-800-419-4444 (in India only, for your Indian-based business)

2) You can SMS "register" to 09900800000

3) You can add your listing yourself by filling a form.

Save Your Google Calendar as PDF

Those people who use Google Calendar sometimes want to send their schedule to others. Google Calendar itself provides this facility with print option, but many people ignore this option.

Following are the simple steps to Convert your Google Calendar to PDF

1. Just Login to Your Google Calendar Account
2. Go to the view you wish to share, whether it is a given day, week or full month.
3. Click the Print link (on the left side of the top, see the screenshot above)
4. When the Calendar Print Preview window appears, use the dropdowns to adjust the Font Size and Orientation. If you want the calendar to not be in color, check the Black & White checkbox. When you are finished, click the Save As button.
5. Save the created file to your computer and email the file to those you wish to share the calendar with.

So, now sending schedule to people's is just a Email away with this PDF file attachment.

Thanks to Digital Streets for unveiling this Save Google Calendar to PDF trick.

The Gmail Soap

Its quite funny!

2 Secret ways to get more from your Gmail Address

After revealing the use and benefits of Personal Level Indicators in Gmail nearly two days ago. Robby Stein, Associate Product Marketing Manager of Gmail recently discovered some little-known ways to use your Gmail address that can give you greater control over your inbox and save you some time and headache.

Below tips will teach you how to make use of your gmail address beyond you@gmail.com.

Here are the two secret ways you can modify your Gmail Address and still get emails.

1. Append a plus ("+") sign and any combination of words or numbers after your email address. suppose you are having gmail address you@gmail.com, you could send or receive emails on you+friends@gmail.com or you+business@gmail.com.
2. Insert one or several dots (".") anywhere in your email address. Gmail doesn't recognize periods as characters in addresses -- it just ignore them. Again suppose you have gmail address you@gmail.com, you could tell people your address as y.o.u@gmail.com or y.ou@gmail.com you can add wherever you want the dot in your username.

You will receive all emails sent to your modified gmail address at your original email address.

The most useful feature of this is to filter out emails very easily and quickly. Robby Stein explains it as

For me, the real value in being able to manipulate your email address is that it makes it really easy to filter on those variants. For example you could use hikingfan+bank@gmail.com when you sign up for online banking and then set up a filter to automatically star, archive or label emails addressed to hikingfan+bank. You can also use this when you register for a service and think they might share your information. For example, I added "+donation" when I gave money to a political organization once, and now when I see emails from other groups to that address, I know how they got it. Solution: filtered to auto-delete.