Google Friends Newsletter - July 2009 We hope all our Google friends are having a great summer so far. Here is this month's update on our products and services. ------------ POWER TIP Calendar Labs Earlier this month, we launched Calendar Labs. Like Google Labs and Google Mail Labs, Calendar Labs is a place to try out early, experimental features as well as provide feedback to the team that built them. There are six experimental Calendar features so far, including "Next Meeting" which shows you how much time you have to procrastinate before your next appointment and "World clock", which lets you keep track of different timezones when you schedule meetings. You can test these features out by going to the Labs tab under Settings. http://calendar.google.com ------------ NEW PRODUCTS & UPDATES Moon in Google Earth Forty years ago on July 20, 1969, the crew of Apollo 11 took the first human steps on the surface of the Moon. In celebration of this historic occasion, we launched Moon in Google Earth, an interactive 3D atlas of the Moon. You can now explore a virtual Moonscape, follow guided tours from astronauts Buzz Aldrin (Apollo 11) and Jack Schmitt (Apollo 17), see the latest rover concepts by teams competing in the Google Lunar X PRIZE, view high-resolution "Street View"-style panoramic photos, watch previously unreleased video footage captured from the lunar surface and much more. Moon is viewable using Google Earth 5.0. http://earth.google.com/moon Favorite Places on Google Maps Ever wonder where culinary expert and chef Alice Waters goes for organic and sustainable food in the San Francisco Bay Area? Or where Iwona Blazwick, director of the Whitechapel Gallery in London, goes to experience art in that city? We've teamed up with a variety of experts around the world to share some of their favorite local places and businesses on Google Maps. We hope you enjoy exploring all of these favorite places. http://www.google.com/favoriteplaces Google Docs template gallery open to everyone We recently opened up the Google Docs template gallery to everyone. Now, people can share their own documents, spreadsheets, presentations and forms so that others may re-use them. The public template gallery makes it easy to sort and browse templates by category, usage, rating and document type. The template gallery is also available to Google Apps Premier and Education Edition customers, making it easy to privately share common document templates within companies and organizations. http://docs.google.com/templates Your world in 3D One of our favorite features of Google Earth is flying around the world's cities in 3D. If you turn on the "3D Buildings" layer in Google Earth you can access thousands of buildings as photo-realistic 3D models. Plus, if there's a building (or an entire town) that you'd like the whole world to see, you can build your own models using Google SketchUp and then add them to Google Earth. Not only is it a great way to benefit your community, we think it's pretty fun. http://sketchup.google.com/yourworldin3d ------------- MISCELLANY Sure, you get this newsletter every month with news from Google. And maybe you also read one or several of our official blogs. But what if you're craving more frequent updates from us? We have a variety of Twitter accounts that you can follow to get ongoing news, tips and more on a variety of Google products and services. Besides our official @google account, you might be interested in news from Australia or Brazil, the latest advances in computer science research, help with advertising or updates focused on a specific product like Google Earth. We're adding new accounts from time to time, too — you can see a list of all our official accounts on the Official Google Blog. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/google-accounts-on-twitter.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://groups.google.com/group/google-friends/topics Google Friends archive prior to May 2005: http://www.google.com/googlefriends/archive.html To unsubscribe from the Google Friends Newsletter, send an empty message to: google-friends-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com Google, Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---

Google Friends Newsletter - March 2009 Spring greetings to all of our Google friends. We hope you enjoy this month's update on our products and services. ------------ POWER TIP New features for Google Mobile App for BlackBerry Google Mobile App for BlackBerry now features search by voice, a faster search experience on GPRS, as well as location features — like suggesting local business listings as you type. To try this, do a Google search for "pizza" and watch the location of the nearest pizza place appear before you've hit the search button. You can also search for business names, and with just one click you can call the business or view it on a map. Note that this app does not support the BlackBerry Storm. http://www.google.com/mobile/blackberry/app ------------ NEW PRODUCTS & UPDATES Updates to Mars in Google Earth On March 14, we featured a doodle on the Google homepage that celebrated the birthday of Giovanni Schiaparelli, the Italian astronomer who invented the naming scheme we use to identify features on Mars today. We also launched some Google Earth updates including the "Live from Mars" layer, which lets you fly along with orbiting spacecraft and see imagery from NASA, sometimes just hours after NASA receives it. The layer also includes guided tours from Public Radio's Ira Flatow and Bill Nye, the Science Guy, who will show you the best spots on the Red Planet. http://earth.google.com/mars Google Health's new sharing feature Google Health, a product that lets you organize, store, and manage your medical records securely online, just announced a new sharing feature. Google Health users can now invite others they trust (family members, a trusted care provider, a friend or a doctor) to view their medical records and personal health information online. You can stop sharing at any time, and you will always be able to see who has access to your information. You can also print a wallet-sized version of your health profile to share with doctors or family members who are not online. http://www.google.com/health More Gmail Labs innovations Ever hit the send button a moment too soon and wish you had a few seconds to undo it? Well, now you can with the "Undo Send" button. Another new set of Gmail Labs features lets you preview YouTube, Flickr, Picasa and Yelp content right in your email. Gmail automatically detects links in emails from these sites and shows videos, photos, and ratings directly inside your messages. Turn on these experimental features and more from the "Labs" tab under "Settings." http://www.gmail.com Search for recent earthquake activity Now when you do a Google search in the U.S. for "earthquake," you'll get information on some of the most recent, significant earthquakes from around the world, right on the search results page. Type "earthquake" into the search box followed by the city and state or U.S. zip code. Or for recent earthquake activity in other parts of the world, just type in "earthquake." The data is provided by the US Geological Survey (USGS), and you can click through to the USGS Earthquake Center for more information, or visit the epicenter of any quake using Google Maps. http://www.google.com ------------- MISCELLANY Not long ago, finding the answer to something might involve a trip to the local library. Today, anyone can research a topic in seconds from the comfort of their own home or even from their mobile phone. And in the last ten years, search results have evolved from just web pages to images, videos, books, maps and lots more. As the scale of search has changed dramatically over the years, the presentation and quality of Google results have also undergone many changes. In the past year alone, we have made more than 300 improvements to the quality and speed of our search experience. Many of these are "under the hood" changes, but others are easy to spot, such as the recent rollout of longer snippets, the lines of text directly below each search result, and refinements to our related searches. If you're interested in learning more about how we approach the challenges of ongoing search quality, there's a series of posts on the Official Google Blog for your reading pleasure. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/search/label/search quality

Google Friends Newsletter - December 2008 Holiday greetings and our best wishes for a wonderful new year to all of our Google friends. We hope you enjoy this month's update on our products and services. ------------ POWER TIP College football in Sports OneBox Football fans can now search for game times and scores of their favorite college teams during the big bowl games coming up. For example, typing [ncaaf] or [texas football] into the search box will return game information at the top of the search results page. This is in addition to the major U.S. leagues for a variety of sports (NFL, NHL, MLB, MLS, and NBA) and six major European football (aka soccer) leagues we recently added. http://www.google.com ------------ NEW PRODUCTS & UPDATES Ask the President-elect questions with Google Moderator U.S. President-elect Obama's transition team is using Google Moderator to respond to questions on the Change.gov website. You too can get involved, either by asking a question or by voting on questions you'd like to have answered. http://www.change.gov/OpenForQuestions New Google Mail features View PDF attachments sent to your Google Mail account without waiting for them to download and open in another application. Just click the "View" link next to any .pdf attachments you receive to view them right in your browser. Recently we also rolled out Text Messaging (SMS) in Chat in Google Mail. Try both out in your own Google Mail account under the "Labs" tab in "Settings." http://www.Google Mail.com Updates to Picasa Picasa Web Albums offers a new "Sign-in required to view" setting, which lets you limit access to specific individuals who have a Picasa Web Albums account. Additionally, all user comments are now automatically translated into the viewer's native language using Google Translate. And if you use Picasa to organize your video content, you will also notice that most of your videos are now high quality. http://picasa.google.com Daily how-to tips Throughout the month of December, we published daily tips to make it easier to use a number of Google products. Visit our countdown site to learn about search tips and product features you can continue to use in 2009. http://www.google.com/countdownto2009 ------------- MISCELLANY As 2008 comes to a close, we invite you to see what was on the collective mind as demonstrated by the aggregation of billions of Google searches from around the globe. It was a wild year with many momentous events, to say the least, and through it all Google users kept pace with the U.S. elections, the Summer Games and social networks (online, at least). Of course, we also made time for superheroes and super-celebrity breakups, but even those diversions couldn't take our thoughts away from the world's changing political and economic landscapes. With so much at stake and so much uncertainty in the year ahead, it's comforting to know that we are collectively concerned and "in this together," search-wise. For more of the year's highlights, take a look at our Year-End Zeitgeist website. http://www.google.com/zeitgeist2008 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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://groups.google.com/group/google-friends/topics Google Friends archive prior to May 2005: http://www.google.com/googlefriends/archive.html To unsubscribe from the Google Friends Newsletter, send an empty message to: google-friends-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com Google, Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---

Google Friends Newsletter - October 2007 Autumnal greetings to all of our Google friends! We hope you enjoy this month's update on our products and services. ------------ POWER TIP Gmail with IMAP You now have the ability to use the IMAP protocol for Gmail (including Google Apps) free of charge. Unlike the POP protocol, IMAP enables you to keep your inbox synced across all devices, so that whatever you do in your email -- whether on your phone, desktop mail client, or web browser -- shows up everywhere you access your email. Reading, sending, deleting and other actions you take on your messages are reflected automatically and instantaneously any place you get Gmail. http://www.gmail.com ------------ NEW PRODUCTS & UPDATES YouTube layer now in Google Earth We're excited to announce the arrival of a YouTube video layer for Google Earth. It's not only a new way to explore and discover YouTube videos; using Google Earth as a navigation tool, you can zoom in on remote regions of the globe and watch videos tied to that specific location (for example, surfers in Hawaii). http://earth.google.com Google Desktop 5.5 beta New features in Google Desktop 5.5 (beta) include the ability to run Desktop gadgets in iGoogle, a better looking Quick Search Box, and improved Microsoft Outlook search functionality. You can use Desktop gadgets like the virtual flower pot, wireless signal meter, and media player remote on iGoogle. http://desktop.google.com Docs for mobile Now you can access your list of documents and spreadsheets, and view all of these Google Docs, on your BlackBerry, iPhone or Windows Mobile device; iPhone users can also view presentations. http://www.google.com/mobile/docs/ Google Maps Profile Pages When you come across a map someone created or a review someone wrote, the new Profile Pages in Google Maps let you hover over the person's name to see a snippet of information about the author. Click on the nickname to access his or her complete profile page, which aggregates all the public maps and all the review he or she has created on Google Maps. You can also customize your own profile picture and information by clicking on the "My Profile" link. http://maps.google.com Google Experimental We're always experimenting with new Google search features, and we've made it easier than ever for you to participate in our testing. Now you can temporarily add these experimental features to your Google searches: for example, see your search results on a timeline, navigate using keyboard shortcuts, change how your result snippets appear each time you do a search on Google, and a few other features. http://www.google.com/experimental ------------ MISCELLANY "I get by with a little help from my friends," as the song goes. It's always been true in the real world; these days the help of friends (some you know, many you don't) makes online experiences all the more powerful. Open source software, Wikipedia, movie, music, book, or travel recommendations from others -- all "get by" with input and participation from lots of people. One very real-world application of this kind of collaboration we're particularly excited about is the ability to "mash up," or integrate different open software tools, to create something new. Google Maps has really benefited from this approach, because people are able to add local annotations and even up- to-the-minute details. In October the value of this particular "mashup" became very apparent when many people put together details of the various Southern California fires. To be able to see evacuation routes, new danger zones, emergency housing sites, means a real lifeline in time of need. We're grateful that people are able to make use of these tools when it really counts. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/10/southern-california-fire-maps.html

Google Friends Newsletter - July 2007 Summer greetings to our Google friends! We hope you enjoy this month's update on our various products and services. ------------ POWER TIP Customize Google Maps with Mapplets You can now customize the content on your Google Maps using new features in the "My Maps" tab. The "Add content" link in this tab brings you to the Google Maps directory where you can choose from and add content and tools such as gas prices, weather, jogging trails, events, and more. These mini-applications for Google Maps are all built on our Mapplets platform. http://maps.google.com ------------ NEW PRODUCTS & UPDATES Google Checkout Gadget for iGoogle We've launched a new "Shop with Google Checkout" gadget for iGoogle featuring some fun Top 10 lists of products available through Google Checkout, such as "Super Hero Must Haves" and "How You Knew You Grew Up In the 80's". When you add the gadget to your iGoogle homepage, you'll see a scrollable showcase of the day's featured items. And soon, you'll be able to create your own lists. http://checkout.google.com Google Talk Gadget adds Group Chat There's something new on the Google Talk Gadget: when you're chatting with a friend on Google Talk, you can invite one or more friends to join the conversation by clicking the "Group Chat" button from any chat tab. This was a top user request, and we hope it will make chatting amongst your circle more useful and fun. http://www.google.com/talk Google Apps for Nonprofits Recently we extended Google Apps Education Edition to all registered nonprofits in the U.S. Our hosted suite of communication and collaboration tools -- email migration, 24/7 assistance and integration APIs, plus web-based email, calendaring and online document collaboration -- fits well with the vital need among nonprofits for easy-to-use, flexible technologies requiring little or no investment. After all, schools and organizations should worry less about technology and focus more on fulfilling their mission. http://www.google.com/a/npo Google Docs & Spreadsheets updates Now Google Docs & Spreadsheets is easier for spreadsheet editing and collaboration. Now you can do things like freeze header rows and sort your data more quickly with the sort bar, create a draggable, horizontal break between your column headers and your data, view a color-coded collaborator indicator to see who else is viewing the spreadsheet and which cells they are editing. And the Quick Sum feature gives a sum, average, count, minimum, or maximum of your currently selected cells in the bottom righthand corner. http://docs.google.com ------------ MISCELLANY It will come as no surprise to you to learn that we at Google are used to fast-moving communications. We make frequent announcements, we have a lot of products, and, well, things move quickly around here. This is one reason we publish quite a few blogs -- more than 50. And we want to reach those of you who follow Google directly -- a blog is a very easy way to do that. Most of our blogs focus on a single product, or country, or a specific audience. Here are a few of the most recent additions to our blog family which may interest you. (And might we suggest adding these to your Google Reader?) Public Policy Blog - Google views on government, policy, and politics. http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/ Gmail Blog - Tips and tricks on getting the most from Gmail. http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/ Google Lat Long Blog - News & notes from the Google Earth and Google Maps teams. http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/ You can find the entire list of our blogs on the righthand side of the original Google Blog. http://googleblog.blogspot.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://groups.google.com/group/google-friends/topics Google Friends archive prior to May 2005: http://www.google.com/googlefriends/archive.html To unsubscribe from the Google Friends Newsletter, send an empty message to: google-friends-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com Google, Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---

Google Friends Newsletter - August 2006 Late summer greetings to all of our Google Friends. We hope you enjoy this monthly update on Google services and products. ======= POWER TIP Saved locations in Google Maps We've gotten numerous requests to be able to store a list of personal addresses on Google Maps, and now you can with our new Saved Locations feature. To get started, just click on the "Saved Locations" link in the upper right corner of http://maps.google.com and sign in to your Google Account. If you're already signed in, this link will display your existing list of saved locations. By default, we'll automatically save every location you enter into Google Maps, but you can choose to disable the auto-saving from this screen. From here, you can also add, modify, or delete locations, or create a label such as "home" for any of your saved locations. The next time you start typing a location or label into any search box on Google Maps, we'll offer to auto-complete it for you. When a list of auto-completions is suggested, you can quickly select the first one by hitting the Tab key. http://maps.google.com/ ======= NEW PRODUCTS Map search gadgets for homepage If your personalized homepage doesn't yet have a map, how about adding the new Google Map Search Gadget? This is an easy way do local searches and then quickly scroll through the results on a map. http://www.google.com/ig/directory?url=mapsearch.xml Google Desktop 4 No matter where in the world you live, you should be able to find your own information on your computer. Google Desktop 4 is now out of beta and available in 26 languages. You'll find a batch of new and improved features, including an improved interface to find international Google Gadgets, a configurable "gadgets" button, and greater support for developers. Windows only. http://desktop.google.com Google Talk file and photo sharing We've released some new Google Talk features this month, including file and photo sharing. Now you can drag and drop one or more files directly onto a chat window. As soon as your friend on Google Talk clicks "Accept," the transfer begins, and when it's done, the recipient can open the file or find it on disk with a single click. As for photo sharing, when you drop up to 10 photos on Google Talk, smaller previews automatically appear right inside the chat window, so you can chat about them right away. The previews adjust to the size of your chat window, so just enlarge the window when you want to see more detail. To view the images at full size, or to save them for later, click the "Download Originals" link. If you've already downloaded Talk, these additions will auto-update. Or you can download the new version directly from the site. Windows only. http://talk.google.com Two new downloads for Mac users Share photos with friends and family using the Picasa Web Albums Uploaders for Mac. It comes with two handy tools for uploading photos: a plug-in that lives within iPhoto, and a stand-alone uploader for sharing the occasional picture. http://picasa.google.com/web/mac_tools.html Get your Google Mail and Calendar notifications on the Mac-only upgrade of the Google Mail Notifier, now called the Google Notifier. It offers built-in pop-up notifications for upcoming events and unread mail, custom sounds, and of course some fun new icons. http://mail.google.com/mail/help/notifier/notifier_mac.html And this isn't a download - but we just released Google Calendar support for Safari! http://calendar.google.com ======= MISCELLANY + Supporting women in technology + For several years, Google has honored the legacy of computer scientist Dr. Anita Borg with a scholarship program designed to encourage women to pursue careers in computer science and technology. The awards are $10,000 scholarships for outstanding female undergraduate and graduate students completing their degrees in computer science or related fields. Why are we doing this? Because we believe in what the Anita Borg Institute calls the "virtuous cycle." Through this scholarship program and other efforts, we hope more women can be encouraged to embrace engineering and technical professions and learn the skills of leadership. Then they can use those capabilities to influence how technology is designed and used, and focus on practical solutions to global issues - energy, food, illiteracy, environment, elder care, disease control - that confront us all. As the products and services resulting from their innovations permeate the global market, new generations of women will follow, in a profession that is increasingly more supportive of women. The Institute is named for a renowned computer scientist who spent her life inspiring and motivating women to become active participants and leaders in the technology revolution that can benefit all of us. For the 2006-2007 academic year, Google received 324 applications from students at 90 different universities across the country. We awarded scholarship support to 47 young women, and look forward to their successes in the coming years. http://www.anitaborg.org --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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: google-friends-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com Google, Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---

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. ======= 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 ======= 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 ======= 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 -------------------------------------------------- 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: google-friends-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com Google, Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---

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: google-friends-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com 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: google-friends-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com 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: google-friends-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com 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: google-friends-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com 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: google-friends-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com Google, Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043 ###