Google Friends Newsletter June 2006 Summertime greetings to Google Friends everywhere, and welcome to the June issue. We hope this monthly update on Google services and products is useful to you. ======= POWER TIP Reply by Chat Since February, you've been able to "chat" using your Google Mail account. And now, if you want to reply to an email message, but notice the sender is online and available, you can just "reply by chat." Best of all, these chat replies get grouped with the conversation just like email (after all, one of the best things about Google Mail is how it groups a message and its replies into the same conversation so that you can always read your messages in context). To use this new feature, look for a link to "Reply by chat" at the bottom of any message sent by someone on your buddy list, right next to where you'd click to "Reply" or "Forward." The link will show up if the sender is online, and clicking on it will open a chat window where you can start chatting right away. https://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=34539 ======= NEW PRODUCTS Google Earth 4 Celebrate the one-year anniversary of Google Earth becoming part of our family with the newest version, Google Earth 4. It's available for PC, Mac and Linux machines, is now offered in French, German, Italian and Spanish, as well as an enterprise edition. And there's a lot more high-resolution imagery in this version too. You can even try the new SketchUp and 3D Warehouse modeling tools yourself. http://earth.google.com http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/happy-birthday-google-earth.html Google Calendar If you have a work life, a home life, and a social life, you know the challenge of tracking all of it - and then there's coordinating with friends and family members too. The new Google Calendar can help. You can create a calendar, share it with anyone you invite, and send event invitations right from your calendar. It's also integrated with Google Mail so you can directly add events that are mentioned in your email messages. Perhaps most important, Google Calendar supports other popular calendar applications so you can easily import and export your scheduled info. http://calendar.google.com Government Search Just launched, Google U.S. Government Search offers a single location for finding U.S. government information, as well as state and local government websites. You can also use this site to keep up to date on government-related news from official government sources and the press. And finally, personalize the page by adding content feeds on government or other topics that you're interested in. http://usgov.google.com Picasa Web Album Picasa is Google's free desktop photo management software for organizing and editing your digital pictures. Now we're testing a new feature that makes it easy to share your photos online too. Just pick the photos you want to share from Picasa and upload them to the web in a couple of clicks. Once they're online, your friends can simply go to your gallery's URL to see your pictures. Picasa Web Albums and the new version of Picasa that supports web uploading are currently in limited tests and are available by invitation only. For more information, and to add your name to our waiting list, please visit: http://picasaweb.google.com Google Browser Sync If you have more than one computer and find it hard to keep your browser settings for all your computers in sync, you'll enjoy our new extension for Firefox. It unifies your bookmarks, history, saved passwords, and persistent cookies across all the computers on which you install it. Google Browser Sync also remembers which tabs and windows you had open when you last closed any of your browsers and gives you a chance to reopen them. We think you'll enjoy how it handles synching conflicts too, so that you can bring your browser with you everywhere. http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/browsersync/index.html Google Spreadsheets At Google we're avid about sharing information easily and in real time. That's what led us to develop web-based spreadsheet software so that you can share, collaborate and update them among a number of people online. Now there's Google Spreadsheets, available on Google Labs. http://spreadsheets.google.com Google Video Player for Macs Mac fanatics can now enjoy their own Google Video Player, which works with both PowerPC and the new Intel-based Mac lines. You too can download or buy premium shows like "CSI" or even classic "Star Trek" at your leisure. http://video.google.com/playerdownload_mac.html ======= MISCELLANY The book's the thing In this all too frantic media-saturated world of ours, sometimes it's good to ponder the eternal truths. Many words about timeless matters belong to the one and only William Shakespeare. We celebrate his considerable body of work with a special Google Book Search site that includes all of his plays - comedy, tragedy, romance, history. From here you can also download Google Earth to visit the Bard of Avon's own Globe Theatre and other landmarks from his works and times. We are proud to support New York City's annual Shakespeare in the Park festival, and wanted to extend its reach across the Internet. Take time to savor the language you see on the screen! http://www.google.com/shakespeare --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ The Google Blog offers frequent updates and insights about our technology and products, and the company at large. http://googleblog.blogspot.com -------------------------------------------------- Share Google Friends with a friend through Google Groups (includes subscribe/unsubscribe information). http://groups.google.com/group/google-friends -------------------------------------------------- Google Friends archive: http://www.google.com/googlefriends/archive.html To unsubscribe from the Google Friends Newsletter, send an empty message to: [email protected] Google, Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---

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 Google Mail 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 Google Mail too. Well, you were right: You can now choose your own pic to use as an icon in Google Mail. 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=38355 Suggest a picture: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=35528 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/trends 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 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ The Google Blog offers frequent updates and insights about our technology and products, and the company at large. http://googleblog.blogspot.com -------------------------------------------------- Share Google Friends with a friend through Google Groups (includes subscribe/unsubscribe information). http://groups.google.com/group/google-friends -------------------------------------------------- Google Friends archive: http://www.google.com/googlefriends/archive.html To unsubscribe from the Google Friends Newsletter, send an empty message to: [email protected] Google, Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---

Google Friends Newsletter April 2006 Hello, Google Friends, and welcome to the April edition of this newsletter. We hope you enjoy this update on our various services and new products, and find it useful. POWER TIP More ways to personalize the Google homepage Now it's easier than ever to personalize your Google homepage with more content ranging from local weather to custom Google logos, and headlines from sources like CNN and ESPN. If you're so inclined, it's easy to create your own modules using our API. Directory: http://www.google.com/ig/directory API: http://www.google.com/apis/homepage NEW PRODUCTS Google Calendar Here's a new web-based way to keep track of all the events in your life, coordinate schedules with others, and find new things to do via one online calendar. Google Calendar works with other calendar applications, is integrated with Google Mail, and you can even set up multiple calendars for work, leisure, and family activities. View your schedule by day, week or month and set up automatic reminders and find anything on your calendar with the built-in search tool. http://calendar.google.com Toolbar for Firefox v2 The new version of the Google Toolbar for the Firefox browser is now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. There's an enhanced search box, safe browsing, and several smarter browsing features including spelling corrections, search history and instant suggestions. http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/toolbar Share with Google Reader Google Reader, which helps you keep track of the latest content from websites you like to read regularly, just added the ability to share items you're labeling or starring with your friends, family and anyone else who's reading. Send a link to your starred items in Reader, or put a clip on your blog with recent items from your reading list. Friends can then subscribe to a feed of items you've selected (even if they don't use Google Reader) and visitors to your blog can see it in the sidebar, too. To get started with sharing, just click the "Share" link in Reader. http://reader.google.com Google Mail Mac Notifier Mac users will be pleased to know that a new version of the Google Mail Notifier - a small download that alerts you to new messages - is now available. It sports new icons, and runs on both PowerPC Macs and the new Intel-based Macs. Extra bonus: it will notify you when a new version is available and automatically upgrade itself. https://mail.google.com/mail/help/notifier/ Joga.com In partnership with Nike, Google has introduced Joga.com, an online community for people crazy about football, or soccer as it's known in the U.S. Joga combines Google technology with Nike's unique sports content and access to players and brings people all over the world together to celebrate their shared passion for the game. Joga members can build their own groups and clubs, share all kinds of football-related information, upload photos and video, and organize and give updates on local matches and events. Members keep current with Friend Requests, Alerts, and Messages. And in the coming months, Google and Nike will be bringing out more tools and features to help Joga members embrace their love of football in this global online setting. By the way, the name comes from the Portuguese phrase "Joga Bonito" or "play beautiful." http://www.joga.com MISCELLANY The Da Vinci Code Quest on Google Together with Sony Pictures Entertainment, Google is promoting the upcoming film "The Da Vinci Code" through a time-limited interactive contest on the Google personalized homepage. This began on April 17, and each day until May 11, Google will release one Da Vinci Code-style puzzle or riddle. Finalists then compete on May 19, the date of the film release. To enter the contest, sign in to your Google account and add the Da Vinci Code Quest module to your Google homepage. You will see a new puzzle to complete each day at 1 p.m. EDT. The first 10,000 participants who correctly solve all 24 daily puzzles and submit a completion form will win a replica of the cryptex described in Dan Brown's book, and use the tool to compete in the final phase of the contest (five more time-sensitive puzzles). The grand prize winners in the U.S., the U.K., and Australia will win trips to the film premiere. Go here to register and play: http://www.google.com/davincicode -------------------------------------------------- The Google Blog offers frequent updates and insights about our technology and products, and the company at large. http://googleblog.blogspot.com -------------------------------------------------- Google Friends archive: http://www.google.com/googlefriends/archive.html Google, Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043 ### --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ The Google Blog offers frequent updates and insights about our technology and products, and the company at large. http://googleblog.blogspot.com -------------------------------------------------- Share Google Friends with a friend through Google Groups (includes subscribe/unsubscribe information). http://groups.google.com/group/google-friends -------------------------------------------------- Google Friends archive: http://www.google.com/googlefriends/archive.html To unsubscribe from the Google Friends Newsletter, send an empty message to: [email protected] Google, Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---

Google Friends Newsletter March 2006 Vernal greetings from the Googleplex to all of our Google Friends. We hope you enjoy this update on various services and new products. At the bottom of this message, you'll find details on subscribing to or canceling this newsletter. POWER TIP Google Desktop Quick Search Box The newest version of Google Desktop adds another handy feature: the Quick Search Box. Hit your "Ctrl" key twice to bring it up on your computer screen, and start your search for web or local computer information even faster than before. When you're done, press "Ctrl" twice again to hide it. If you don't want to use the Quick Search Box at all, disable it on the Google Desktop preferences page. The Quick Search Box is also available in 16 languages. http://desktop.google.com/features.html#quicksearch NEW PRODUCTS Google Finance Here's a way to get quick and easy access to business and financial information about public and private companies and mutual funds. Google Finance includes interactive charts (with corresponding news stories); company search by name or ticker symbol; stories grouped by topic from Google News; timely blog posts delivered from Google Blog Search; on-topic discussion groups; and portfolios that are easy to use when tracking your financial information. http://finance.google.com Google News for mobile When you're on the go with your web-enabled phone, keep current on the news stories that matter to you. Google News for mobile devices enables you to access top headlines, browse through news categories, or search for exactly the stories you want - all in a phone-friendly format that's easy to read and navigate. http://mobile.google.com/news/index.html Google SMS Sports Scores Sports scores are among those "gotta have" bits of information mobile phones were surely made to deliver. Now U.S. mobile users can get up-to-the-minute scores and game schedules using Google SMS on your mobile device. Just text message a school or team name to 46645 (GOOGL) and get ready to cheer (or groan). http://www.google.com/sms/demo.html Google Widgets for your Mac Party on, Mac-heads: there are three new Mac Dashboard Widgets for OS X Tiger. The Blogger Widget enables quick and easy posting to your blog; the Google Mail Widget enables a quick check of your Google Mail inbox; use the Search History Widget to find that website you saw last week while searching Google. http://www.google.com/macwidgets Google Mars We admit a fascination with outer space, and now most definitely include the Red Planet. Two NASA researchers from Arizona State University worked with us to combine Google Maps technology with some of the most detailed scientific maps of Mars ever made. Now you can explore Mars three ways: an elevation map (shows color-coded peaks and valleys); a visible-imagery map (shows what your eyes would actually see), and an infrared-imagery map (shows the detail your eyes would miss). http://mars.google.com National Archives films on Google Video Over 70 years ago, the National Archives was founded to preserve American historical documents, as well as the moments and events that could be saved in still photos, films, and audio recordings. Today the Archives is home to everything from rare historical footage (newsreels and government documentaries from the 1930s) to the 1969 moon landing. Now Google is launching a pilot program to digitize its video content and offer it to everyone in the world for free, and you can watch a growing selection on Google Video. http://video.google.com/nara.html MISCELLANY The 'plex talks Folks who visit the Googleplex in Mountain View, California often compare it to a college campus - there are people engaged in group meetings, in solitary work, and when they can, they make time to eat, play or exercise. One of the most campus-like elements is a thriving program called "Tech Talks" - regularly scheduled presentations offered by Googlers or our guests on a wide variety of subjects. Any Googler can attend a talk on, say, "Collecting Meteorites in Antarctica" or "High End Computing and Scientific Visualization at NASA." Now you can also watch these talks, just by searching Google Video for [techtalks]. We obtain clearance from all speakers so Tech Talks can be posted publicly, and will continue to add them to Google Video. We hope you enjoy these sometimes obscure, always informative, insights into current events, research and ideas as much as we do. http://video.google.com --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ The Google Blog offers frequent updates and insights about our technology and products, and the company at large. http://googleblog.blogspot.com -------------------------------------------------- Share Google Friends with a friend through Google Groups (includes subscribe/unsubscribe information). http://groups.google.com/group/google-friends -------------------------------------------------- Google Friends archive: http://www.google.com/googlefriends/archive.html To unsubscribe from the Google Friends Newsletter, send an empty message to: [email protected] Google, Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---

Google Friends Newsletter February 2006 February salutations to Google Friends everywhere. We hope you enjoy this update on Google services and new products. At the bottom of this message, you'll find details on subscribing to or canceling this newsletter. POWER TIP Winter Games Enhanced We've updated Google Earth and Google Local with high resolution imagery of the area surrounding Torino, Italy, home of the 2006 Winter Games. With Google Earth installed, click on the KMZ file for Olympic Venues, which will load placemarks for all the major sites at the Games. To really appreciate the scenery, be sure to enable the Terrain layer and take advantage of the tilt view control in Google Earth: We've also generated street maps for Torino, which are available in the Google Maps API for those of you interested in creating Winter Games mashups. http://earth.google.com http://local.google.com (search on 'Turin' or 'Torino') This Google Blog post features even more Games-related news: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/02/gamesmanship.html NEW PRODUCTS Google Toolbar (beta) The latest Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer adds several features to help you customize your Toolbar. Add custom buttons to search your favorite websites -- choose from hundreds of buttons in our Button Gallery or make your own. Create and label bookmarks that you can access from any computer. Get instant search suggestions as you type in the search box. Share web pages with friends via email, blog, or SMS. Make your Toolbar as unique as you are. http://toolbar.google.com Google Desktop (beta) Google Desktop is a free application that now gives you easy access to information across your computers and from the web. The latest version allows you to undock Sidebar panels and place them anywhere your desktop. You can also easily share items from your Sidebar with a friend, including news, websites, games and more. Use the Search Across Computers feature to find documents and web pages you've seen on any of your computers. With Google Desktop, you get personalized information when you want it, right on your desktop. http://desktop.google.com Google Mail Chat Now Google Mail accounts are automatically enabled with chat features. The people you already talk to often are just a click away in Quick Contacts. You don't have to use another program or switch between email and IM -- it's all on the same Google Mail interface. And you don't need to build a new buddy list or do anything special either--it just works when you're signed in to Google Mail (you can also easily sign out of chat). See when your friends are online and decide for yourself how you want to get in touch. We've also made it easy for you to save your chats so you don't always have to remember whether something important was said over email or IM. Now you can search for your chats, or print them, or even reply to a chat using email. https://mail.google.com/mail/help/chat.html Froogle Personalized Search We recently integrated Froogle with Personalized Search so that you can view and manage your history of Froogle searches and the products you've looked at, just as you already can do with Web Search, Image Search, and News. Just sign up for Personalized Search and make sure you're signed in to your Google Account when searching on Froogle. http://www.google.com/psearch http://froogle.google.com Google Mail for your domain Attention schools, organizations and businesses - now you can try a special Google Mail beta test that brings Google Mail to every user on your domain. Since it's hosted by Google, there's no hardware or software for you to install or maintain. Each account has 2GB of storage and Google-quality search tools to help users find information fast. The administrative control panel lets you easily manage user accounts, aliases and mailing lists. To request being of this beta test, visit the home page and click "I'm Interested." https://www.google.com/hosted/Home MISCELLANY Google Current Current TV is a new cable and satellite channel available throughout the U.S. Through a partnership, we provide access to Google Zeitgeist information - up to the minute aggregated search query results - for the Current staff to use in creating new TV stories. The resulting program, "Google Current," airs every half hour on Current TV and provides a look at what the world is searching for on Google. From hybrid cars to human-animal hybrids, from Paris riots to Paris Hilton photos, your searches guide Current stories. http://www.current.tv/google -------------------------------------------------- The Google Blog offers frequent updates and insights from Googlers on technology, our products, and the company at large. http://googleblog.blogspot.com -------------------------------------------------- Share Google Friends with a friend through Google Groups (includes subscribe/unsubscribe information). http://groups.google.com/group/google-friends -------------------------------------------------- Google Friends archive: http://www.google.com/googlefriends/archive.html To unsubscribe from the Google Friends Newsletter, send an empty message to: [email protected] Google, Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043 ###