The next phase in our redesign

Six months ago we in progress rolling out a new look and feel for Search, News, Maps, Translate, Gmail and a bunch of other products. Our goal was to produce a beautifully simple and intuitive user skill across Google.

We’re now prepared for the next stage of our redesign—a new Google bar that will allow you to navigate quickly between our services, as well as share the right stuff with the right people easily on Google+.

Instead of the horizontal black bar at the top of the page, you’ll now find links to your services in a new drop-down Google menu nested beneath the Google logo. We’ll show you a list of links and you can access additional services by hovering over the “More” link at the bottom of the list. Click on what you want, and you’re off.

To find out extra about the new Google bar, take a look at this video or read our Help Center article. Making navigation and sharing super simple for people is a key part of our efforts to change the overall Google experience, which is why we’re very keyed up about this redesign. Enjoy!

Read Your Shared Items in Google Reader

The latest Google Reader update detached all the social features, including the section that allowed you to read the items you've joint. Fortunately, the shared items page is still obtainable at http://www.google.com/reader/shared/username (replace username with your Gmail username) and you can pledge to this page in Google Reader. Click "subscribe" and paste the URL of the shared items page. If you don't have a Gmail account, load the shared items feed in Reader, right-click "Your shared items" and copy the URL.

You can now use Google Reader's search box to find a post you've joint. Click the "All items" drop-down next to the search box, scroll down to the end of the list (or just press "End") and you'll discover the shared items feed.

To unsubscribe from this feed, you require to go to the settings page, click "Subscriptions", type "shared items" in the search box and click the "unsubscribe button".

New boundary for Google Docs Apps

Reliability is great, but not when it makes an application more hard to use. Google Docs tests new interfaces for the document editor and Google Spreadsheets. enthused by Google+, the new interfaces remove all the colors from the icons and other UI elements, remove the Google Docs logo, add new scrollbars and a "Collaborate" menu that includes all the features from the "Share" drop-down.

The new grayscale buttons from the toolbar make it more hard to find the right feature. They are less intuitive, harder to differentiate and look like disabled buttons. Compare the two versions of the "paint format" button (the fifth button):

Unlike the new interfaces for Gmail and Google Calendar, the efficient Google Docs apps don't use too much white space. You can toggle to the new interfaces by clicking "Try now" in a small message that announces the changes when you release a Google Docs document or spreadsheet. To go back to the old UI, choose "Use the standard look" from the "Help" menu. 

A New Look for Google Translate

Google Translate is the newest Google service with a new plan based on Google+. Since Google Translate's interface is simple, there aren't many changes: a new grey header, updated buttons and drop-downs.

"We're working on a project to bring you a new and enhanced Google experience, and over the next few months, you'll carry on to see more updates to our look and feel. The way people use and experience the web is developing, and our goal is to give you a more seamless and reliable online experience—one that works no matter which Google product you're using or what device you're using it on," explained Google last month.

After launching a new border for Google Search, Google created two themes that preview Gmail's new design and ongoing to test Google Calendar's new UI and Blogger's new UI. Up next: Google Docs, Google Sites, Picasa Web Albums, Google Reader and almost certainly other services.

No More Offline Gmail in Google Chrome

Chrome 12, the upcoming version of Google's browser which is likely to be free today, removes a useful feature: the built-in Gears plugin. While most Google services dropped support for Gears and detached offline way in, Gears is still being used in Gmail. Google no longer maintains Gears, which is now legacy software, and focuses on implementing offline hold up using HTML5.

But why remove Gears hold up without implementing the features using HTML5 first? Google says that you'll only need to wait for a few weeks or you can still older versions of Firefox, Internet Explorer and mail client such as Thunderbird or Outlook.

"The new Gmail Offline ability is targeted for delivery as a Chrome browser web app this summer. As we move the Gmail Offline capability to a Chrome web app, we will denounce the Google Gears-based Gmail Offline. This coincides with the version 12 release of the Google Chrome browser which no longer supports Gears. As a result, Google Gears-based Gmail Offline will no longer work with the Chrome browser as of Tuesday May 24, 2011. Google Gears-based Gmail Offline will carry on to work in Internet Explorer 8 and Mozilla Firefox 3.6," explains Google.

It's not the best thing to do after believable users to switch to Chrome and use Web apps, but it's just a temporary issue. If the HTML5 offline Gmail wasn't ready to be free, removing Gears from Chrome could have been delayed.

Gmail's New Ad System

I've previously reported about Gmail's experiments with image ads and modified ads, but it seems that these tests are two pieces from a puzzle: a new ad-matching system for Gmail.

New York Times reports that the new algorithms try to find better ads. "Alex Gawley, Google's senior product manager overseeing Gmail, (...) said Gmail's revamped ad-matching system, now in incomplete tests, analyzes context as well as the content of an person message. It looks at what he calls 'signals in your inbox,' like whether you open messages with particular keywords and don't open those with other keywords."

Gmail will also include static image ads. "For example, an e-mailed offer for a ski package showing a skier on the slopes could be accompanied by an ad on the right side of the screen, showing a rival offer, replete with another skier coming down another slope. Mr. Gawley said the image used in the ad would be static, not animated, and would be used only in cases where the e-mail message itself showed images."

Gmail's new ads will still be connected to your messages, but Google will add other signals that will make the ads an addition of your inbox. Just like Google shows small images ads next to images search results and uses your preferences to personalize ads, Gmail's contextual ads will get better using more data.

As long as the ads are relevant, reasonably useful and they aren't distracting, Google is still on the right track. It might take a while to get used to the image ads, but the ad displayed below the messages and the list of messages will be the most obnoxious. "Gmail presents a single text ad when you look at an inbox view and haven't chosen a particular message," according to the New York Times.

Patents look for in Google's Sidebar

Google added a new quality to the sidebar: patents search. You no longer have to visit Google Patents to search the full text of the U.S. patent corpus since you can just click "patents" in the upright navigation menu. Here's an example.

It may seem like a minor development, but this shows that Google's particular search engines will be available from the sidebar. At some point, you'll no longer have to visit Gmail to find a contact, Google Docs to find a file or Android Market to find an Android app.

Gmail Lets You Disable Auto-Adding Contacts

As beforehand announced, Gmail added a setting that lets you disable automatically saving email addresses to your contacts. Go to the Settings page, find the section "Create contacts for auto-complete" and you'll notice that the following option is enabled by default: "When I send a message to a new person, add them to additional Contacts so that I can auto-complete to them next time". Now you can stop this feature and select "I'll add contacts myself".

This is one of the features from a long changelog of small improvements. "Refresh" is now a button, the keyboard shortcuts guide is now obtainable even if keyboard shortcuts are disabled (just press Shift+?), Gmail shows more helpful warnings when you leave out the "." in ".com" from an email address and there are fewer warnings when you respond to a message in the Trash.

Google +1

Google +1 is yet another effort to make Google more social. It's Google's description of the Facebook "likes", a simple feature that's very powerful because it's part of a social network.

Google will show +1 buttons next to all look for results and ads, while encouraging other sites to include the buttons. All +1's are public and they're tied to Google Profiles. The goal is to use this data to personalize look for results and ads by recommending sites +1'd by your friends. Google Social Search already does this, but there's no hold up for Facebook likes, so Google had to come up with a substitute.

"+1 is the digital shorthand for 'this is pretty cool.' To advocate something, all you have to do is click +1 on a webpage or ad you find useful. These +1's will then start appearing in Google's search results," explains Google.

This feature is gradually rolled out to Google.com, but you can try it by enabling the +1 search experiment.

One thing is clear: Google won't have to translate "+1" when it will restrict the service, but it will have a hard time translating "+1's", "+1'd" and other cryptic constructs. Google +1's URLs previously look weird (here's the homepage: http://www.google.com/+1).

Your +1's are scheduled in a profile tab, where you can manage them. There's also a page that lets you disable personalizing Google ads using +1's and other in order from your Google profile.

Google now has the most significant pieces of a social network (profiles, activity stream, likes, apps), but there's still no social network, no magic "glue" that connects the existing pieces. As Danny Sullivan explains, the "+1 social network" is made up of your Google Talk friends, the people from Gmail's "My contacts" group and the people you go behind in Google Reader and Google Buzz, but you'll soon be able to attach other services like Twitter and Flickr. It's actually a meta social network, an artificial service that won't have too numerous enthusiastic users, just like Friend Connect.

Gmail Smart Labels

Gmail Labs has a new characteristic for organizing your messages: Smart Labels. Many people create filters that label messages from mailing lists, newsletters, so Google decided to use false intelligence algorithms to classify messages. Right now, there are only three smart labels: bulk (for newsletters), notifications (for confirmation messages, alerts) and forums (for mailing lists). By default, all the messages labeled as "bulk" are routinely archived, but you can change this setting.

"Smart Labels play nice with other labels and filters too. On the Filters tab under Settings, you'll find that these filters can be edited just like any others. From there, you can also edit your obtainable filters to avoid having them Smart Labeled or change whether mail in a Smart Label skips your inbox," explains Google.

In fact, when you create a filter, Google shows an extra option: category. You can choose from: bulk, forums, notifications, personal, promotions. The first three categories already have matching smart labels and all the messages classified as "promotions" are labeled "bulk". The "personal" group includes the rest of your messages.

Google's classification algorithms aren't perfect, so you may find messages that don't belong to one of three categories, but they're labeled as "notifications" or "bulk". Use the "labels" drop-down to remove the labels that are wrongly added and help Google improve its algorithms.

Many Gmail Users Can't Find Their Messages

Imagine loading Gmail and noticing that all your mail have been deleted. This is a real trouble for many Gmail users who thought that they lost all of their messages. Here's one of the many reports from Gmail's forum:

Yes, whatever the mistake is on Google's end (and it clearly is that, not a hack, unless it's some kind of inside hack) it's basically reset my account so it's like a brand-new Gmail account My friends are intact, but nothing else--the folders have reset to defaulting, my signature line is blank, the "theme" is changed back to the default and--of course--every single email from the last 7 years has misplaced completely.

The Google Apps position page mentions that "this issue affects less than 0.08% of the Google Mail userbase" and "Google engineers are operational to restore full access". The users that are affected "will be provisionally unable to sign in".

This is a really significant problem for Google and one of the biggest Gmail issues ever since Google's email check was released, back in 2004.

Update: A Google engineer says that the "accounts that are precious are currently fully disabled. We're in the process of altering this to be a Gmail only disable so you should regain access to other Google services soon. This will also mean email to these accounts stops lively and gets queued up for later delivery instead."

More File Formats inside Google Docs Viewer

Google Docs Viewer additional support for a lot of new file formats. You can now use it to open Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, Microsoft PowerPoint presentations from Office 2007 and Office 2010, Apple Pages files, PostScript documents, Microsoft XPS documents, TrueType fonts, graphics as of Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Autodesk AutoCad and SVG files.

"Not only does this round out support for the main Microsoft Office file types (we now support DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX, XLS and XLSX), but it also adds quick presentation capabilities for many of the most popular and highly-requested document and image types," informs Google.

Google Docs Viewer is included with Gmail and Google Docs, so you can now open many Gmail attachments and Google Docs files without installing additional software.

Gmail Opens PDF Attachments Using Chrome's Viewer

If you use Google Chrome and you haven't disabled the built-in PDF plugin, you can now open PDF attachments from Gmail using your browser's viewer. Just click "View" next to the attachment and you'll notice that the PDF file opens faster and it looks much better.

If you disable the plug-in or you use a dissimilar browser, Gmail continues to open PDF attachments with the Google Docs Viewer. Maybe Gmail ought to also detect Adobe Reader's plugin and use it instead of the online PDF viewer.

Google Apps blog informs that this feature will be obtainable in Google Apps next week. You can get it faster by enabling "pre-release features" in the Administrator Control Panel.

9 Things to Try in Google Chrome 9

Google Chrome 9 is now available, two months after the previous release and two weeks later than Google's self-imposed deadline. Here are 9 features you should try in this new version:

1. WebGL is now enabled by default in Google Chrome and you can try the 3D web apps from Google's gallery. Don't miss Body Browser, a Google Earth for the human body, and the WebGL Aquarium.

2. Google Instant is now integrated with Chrome's address bar, but this feature is not for everyone because it automatically loads web pages as you type. It's disabled by default, so you need to enable it by checking "Enable Instant for faster searching and browsing" in the Options dialog.

3. Cloud Print can be enabled from Options > Under the hood. This features lets you print from devices that can't communicate directly with printers. The first two applications that use Cloud Print are the mobile versions of Gmail and Google Docs.

4. Chrome supports WebP files. WebP is a new image format created by Google whose main advantage is that it offers better compression. "Our team focused on improving compression of the lossy images, which constitute the larger percentage of images on the web today. To improve on the compression that JPEG provides, we used an image compressor based on the VP8 codec that Google open-sourced in May 2010." Here's an example of WebP image.

5. Right-click on an extension button next to the address bar and select "Hide button". When you change your mind, go to Tools > Extensions and click on "Show button" next to the corresponding extension.

6. Create desktop shortcuts for your web apps: right-click on an app in the new tab page and select "create shortcut". You can also add shortcuts to the Start Menu and the Quick Launch Bar if you use Windows.

7. Launch web apps in a new window. Right-click on a web app and select "open as window".

8. Install extensions that add custom menu options to images. For example, install Clip It Good to upload any image from a web page to Picasa Web Albums.

9. Install extensions that use the Omnibox API to associate keywords with new search engines. For example, install the DOI Resolver extension and type doi 10.1205/096030802760309188 in the address bar. The extension added a new search engine and associated it with the keyword doi.

Google Apps highlights – 1/7/2011

This is part of a usual series of Google Apps updates that we post every couple of weeks. Look for the label Google Apps highlights and pledge to the series.

It’s a new year, and we have new reasons to rejoice what’s possible with Google Apps. Since our last update, we’ve made it easier to track spreadsheet revisions and work with videos in Google Docs, additional two new security features for organizations using Gmail and introduced new capabilities to make migrate to Google Apps even easier.

Revision history for spreadsheets

A few months ago we added better review history tools for documents in Google Docs, and we just added a similar alteration history tool for spreadsheets. Spreadsheet changes made by each co-author are marked by a different color, and you can easily see all of the changes made to your spreadsheet cell-by-cell.

Video player in the document list

Google Docs lets groups work together concurrently on documents, spreadsheets, presentations and drawings, but you can also use it to upload and share a wide range of file types. Previously, if you uploaded and shared a video file, people you shared with could only download the file. Yesterday we released an update which lets you play many videos right from Google Docs, no file download necessary.

A safer email environment for customers

Organizations using Google Apps typically provide unobstructed email access to their users, but some organizations—like K-12 schools—want to stop outsiders from interacting with a subset of their users over email. On Tuesday, we released a feature enabling an email walled garden, so organizations can meet this requirement. K-12 schools can help defend youngsters, and other types of organizations can provide incomplete email accounts to select employees, like contractors.

DKIM email authentication for improved email delivery

Yesterday we made it probable for customers to easily validate their outgoing email with DKIM digital signatures. DKIM allows many getting email systems to verify whether an incoming message truly originates from the domain in the message sent from field. Spam filters can then use the standing of the sender’s domain to help separate good mail from spam. For customers, using DKIM verification means their outgoing mail is less likely to get caught up in their recipients’ spam filters.


Chrome browser for organizations

Google Chrome is built for speed, security and the ability to run the most complicated web-based applications. Until recently, it was tough for businesses to deploy Chrome as a successor or alternative to traditional browsers, but last month we added capabilities to Chrome so IT administrators can professionally deploy and manage Chrome across their organizations. We’ve also made it likely for businesses to centrally deploy Chrome Frame to get better performance of Internet Explorer.

Improved tools for moving existing data to Google Apps

Customers are already moving data from legacy systems to Google Apps at an astonishing rate, and we’ve just made improvements to our data migration tools. Whether you’re touching from Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes or other IMAP-based email systems, it’s now even easier to move email, calendar and contacts data into Google’s cloud.

Who’s gone Google?

Tens of thousands of businesses, schools and other organization took advantage of the holiday break to move over to Google Apps. Some of the notable additions include Compositites One, Broadway Maylan and BI-LO. We also heard some great stories from Traffic Konzept + Film GmbH a team of explorers and filmmakers on a first-ever journey to sail both North Pole passages in a single season. You can learn more about their exploit and how they use Google Apps here:

I hope these product updates and customer stories help you and your organization get even more from Google Apps.

Top Google Apps in 2010

Here's a subjective list of Google services that were launched or were significantly improved in 2010:

10. Google Scribe - a examine that shows auto complete suggestions as you type. It will almost certainly become as accepted as Google Suggest and Google Translate once its included with other services.

9. Voice Actions for Android - an submission that lets you control your phone using your voice. You can call your contacts, send email, get instructions, listen to music, write notes and go to a website.

8. Gmail added lots of business-related features (Priority Inbox, email delegation, turning off conversation view), better Gmail Chat (calling phones, video chat for Linux), added a new contact manager, more ways to join files, Gmail for iPad, Buzz integration, search auto complete, You Tube previews and rich text signatures.

7. Google Buzz - in spite of the initial privacy brouhaha, Google Buzz is the most excellent Google service released in 2010. Even if it's less than one year old, Buzz already has an imposing set of features, a powerful API, it's included with many services and has a cool factor that's lost from other Google social products. unluckily for Google, Buzz is not yet very popular.

6. Blogger additional a lot of significant missing features: comment management, comment spam filtering, dynamic templates, a new post editor, better post preview, real-time stats, static pages and much more.

5. Google Docs - a new document editor, earlier Google Spreadsheets, a collaborative drawing editor, a new equation editor, mobile editing, a more consistent interface, uploading any kind of files.

4. Google Maps - vector-based maps for Android, Google Latitude for iPhone, a new local look for service (Google Places), social local business reccomendations, biking directions, walking navigation, Google Earth as a tab in Google Maps, search suggestions.

3. Chrome - 5 major versions released, support for Mac and Linux, a basic interface, faster browsing, autofill, sync, Google Translate integration, bundled sandboxed plugins for Flash and PDF files, Chrome Web Store.

2. Google Search has changed a lot this year and there were loads of user interface changes: from Google Instant to Instant Previews, from interactive doodles to custom backgrounds for the homepage, from perpendicular navigation menus to a consistent interface for most Google search services. Google also launched a completely new border for image search that lets you explore more images and a new search index with real-time updates.

1. Android - two significant releases (Froyo, Gingerbread), huge growth (from 1.4 million smartphones sold in the third quarter of 2009 to 20.5 million phones one year later - according to Gartner) and a lot of original devices, including tablets, TVs, consoles, media players and e-book readers. It's almost certainly the fastest growing product released by Google.

Gmail's Web Clips, Now With More Ads

I've never been a fan of Gmail's Web Clips, but I didn't disable this feature because it helped me keep up with news from popular sites without subscribing to them in Google Reader. The most annoying thing about Web Clips is that it mixes news headlines with contextual ads, but that still didn't make me disable this feature.

Gmail has recently started to only show ads in the Web Clips box if you don't click on the navigation arrows. If you only read your messages and don't interact with the Web Clips box, Gmail no longer shows headlines. Some of the ads are useful, but showing ads was just a way to monetize the box, not the main purpose of this feature.

Gmail's help center article explains that "Web Clips show you news headlines, blog posts, RSS and Atom feeds, and relevant sponsored links, right at the top of your inbox. Each clip displays the source from which it was received, how long ago the clip was published, and a link to access the entire story or page containing the clip. From your inbox, you can scroll through clips you've already seen by clicking the left arrow or see new clips by clicking the right arrow."

You can disable Web Clips from the settings page, but it's too bad that the feature is a lot less useful.

Gmail's Context-Sensitive Help Link

If you click on Gmail's "Help" link at the top of the page, you'll be sent to an appropriate section from the Gmail Help Center. Instead of always linking to the help center's homepage, Gmail links to the priority inbox section if you're using Gmail's smarter inbox, it shows the articles about filters if you're trying to create a filter and the articles about contacts if you're using Gmail's contact manager.

It's a small change that makes it easy to find useful information about the Gmail feature you're currently without having to type a query. Hopefully, Google will add this feature to other services, just like the interactive bug reporting tool, which is now available in Gmail, YouTube and AdSense.

New Gmail Themes

There are many Gmail themes to choose from, but few of them are actually usable. Gmail added 5 new themes: Basic Black, Basic White, Tree Tops, Marker and Android.

Even if you're not an Android fan or you don't have an Android phone, you should really try the Android theme. It's simple, stylish and you can still read your messages.

If you're looking for a minimalist theme, Basic White is a good alternative to Minimalist, an already existing theme. It looks a little bit unfinished, but Google says it's the Gmail interface stripped "to the bare bones".

Gmail Tests Call Recording

Andrew Banchich spotted a new Gmail feature that lets you record calls. I don't see the call record button in my account, so it's probably an experimental feature that's not yet widely available.

It's similar to the call recording feature from Google Voice. "In order to record your call, simply press 4. You can do it when you first accept a call, or any time after it's started. To stop the recording, press 4 again or hang up. Your recordings are saved online and you can access them just like you do with voicemail." Instead of pressing 4, you click the record button.