Bringing the very best of what we do to the veteran community

We consider that technology can be a force for good; one that builds and binds community. As a Googler, my proudest moments are when we take that technology and put it in the hands of people who can use it to communicate, collaborate, build and explore.

Today, on Veterans Day, I am conceited to share a few Google tools and platforms for the military veteran community. They can be accessed on our website, Google for Veterans and Families, which was created by veterans and their family and friends, who work at Google. This single border brings together Google products and platforms for service members and their families. We believe it will be useful to all veterans, whether still in the service, transitioning out, or on a new path in their civilian lives. Here are some examples of what you’ll find on the site:

* Vet Connect - This tool helps service members connect, communicate and share their experiences with others who have served using the Google+ platform.

* Google Veterans Channel - A YouTube channel for discussion concerning military service for veterans, their families and the public. Veterans can share their experiences with each other as well as with civilians to help shed light on the significance and complexity of service. If you have not served, this is a great place to offer your thanks by uploading a compliment video.

* Resume Builder powered by Google Docs - We originate that Docs can be a particularly helpful tool to transitioning service members seeking employment. Resume Builder generates an auto-formatted resume that can be simply edited, saved and downloaded to share with potential employers.

* Tour Builder powered by Google Earth (coming soon). A new way to tell your military story, Today, you can view some sample “tours”— 3D maps of veterans’ service histories, complete with photos and videos. Stay tuned for more facts and updates on the Google Lat Long Blog.

It’s been a proud month for those of us here at Google who are veterans or family of veterans.

In October, 100 Googlers visited the Soldier and Family Assistance Center at West Point to conduct resume writing workshops for members of the Warrior Transition Unit. And, just two weeks ago, we traveled to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to teach wounded, ill and injured service members how to use Google tools to continue in touch with their loved ones while in recovery.

Finally, this week, we introduced the Veterans Job Bank in partnership with the Department of Veterans Affairs. The Veterans Job Bank is a modified job search engine in the National Resource Directory (NRD), which is powered by Google Custom Search technology and crawls the web for Job Posting markup from Schema.org to recognize veteran-committed job openings.

Even playing a little part to serve those who have served has been an honor.

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. 

Google Docs Tests New Interface

Google Docs has a new boundary inspired by Google+ and you can try it here. The interface is cleaner and there's a bunch of white space. You'll also find the familiar red buttons, the gray buttons, the new scrollbars and the label less search button.

The new boundary looks better, but there's a lot of white space that could be used to show more information about the files. The details view is no longer obtainable from the interface, but you can enable it in the old UI and the setting is preserved.

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.

Box.net Integrates with Google Docs

Box.net, a popular online storage service, added an alternative that allows its users to create and edit documents and spreadsheets by Google Docs, but without leaving Box.net. The files are stored by Box.net, but they can be shortened using the regular Google Docs interface.

"Beginning today, Box's 6 million users can simply create and work together on Google Docs and Spreadsheets from within Box, as well as edit the existing 50M+ Word and Excel files previously stored on our platform. Google Docs allow entirely new forms of collaboration – like concurrent editing – that are not possible within desktop applications, and now these capabilities are easily obtainable to Box users. We believe that the mixture of Google Docs' collaborative restriction and Box's content management will transform the way people work," suggests Box's blog.

The addition has a lot of quirks: Google Docs still displays the navigational bar and some options that only makes intelligence for Google's services. When you edit a text from Box.net, the file is provisionally added to the Google Docs list, but it's quickly removed after the restriction window is closed. At some point, Google Docs will also add hold up for third-party apps, so it will be interesting to see if this feature will be better implemented.

How Google Docs Killed GDrive

"In The Plex", Steven Levy's recently launched book about Google, has an attractive story about GDrive, an online storage service urbanized by Google. People first found about GDrive from a leaked Google document, back in 2006. GDrive (or Platypus) turned out to be a service used by Google employees that offered many imposing features: syncing files, viewing files on the Web, shared spaces for collaborating on a document, offline access, local IO speeds. But Google required to launch GDrive for everyone.

At the time [2008], Google was about to launch a project it had been mounting for more than a year, a free cloud-based storage service called GDrive. But Sundar [Pichai] had finished that it was an artifact of the style of computing that Google was about to usher out the door. He went to Bradley Horowitz, the executive in charge of the project, and said, "I don't think we need GDrive anymore." Horowitz asked why not. "Files are so 1990," said Pichai. "I don't think we need files anymore."

Horowitz was stunned. "Not need files anymore?"

"Think about it," said Pichai. "You just want to get in order into the cloud. When people use our Google Docs, there are no more files. You just start restriction in the cloud, and there's never a file."

When Pichai first proposed this concept to Google's top executives at a GPS—no files!—the reaction was, he says, "skeptical." [Linus] Upson had one more characterization: "It was a withering assault." But finally they won people over by a logical argument—that it could be done, that it was the cloudlike thing to do, that it was the Google thing to do. That was the end of GDrive: shuttered as a relic of obsolete thinking even before Google released it. The engineers operational on it went to the Chrome team.

In 2009, Google Docs in progress to store PDF files and one year later you could store any type of file in Google Docs. The service still doesn't offer a way to sync files. Even if GDrive was never released, Google Docs inherits most of its features. The main difference is that you no longer have to be troubled about file formats because you can open and edit documents in Google Docs.

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.

Google Docs Discussions

Google Docs enhanced the commenting system, by addition support for conversations.

"To start, we've enhanced the discussion flow by adding ownership and edit rights to personality comments. Each observation now has a timestamp and profile picture. Google Docs doesn't force you to delete comments. Instead, you can resolve comments to remove them from the visible text and view them later by clicking the deliberations button at the top of any document," mentions Google.

One of the most useful new features is the support for notifications, which works just like in Google Buzz. Reply to a comment and the author of that comment will get an email announcement. He'll be able to answer to your reply from the email interface, without having to visit Google Docs. Google also sends notifications if you're mentioned in a thread.

Unfortunately, deliberations are only available for new documents. Google says that the explanation is that the new feature includes "a number of important improvements".

Chrome 12 Will Drop Support for Google Gears

While the majority Chrome users have been upgraded to Chrome 10, Google is fitting the bugs from Chrome 11 and working on Chrome 12. A recent Chromium build made a significant change: Gears is no longer incorporated in Google Chrome.

Gears is a browser plugin free by Google back in 2007, The initial goal was to add hold up for offline web apps, but the plugin added many other HTML5 features at a time when HTML5 wasn't a main concern for most browsers. Google discontinued Gears last year to center on "bringing all of the Gears capabilities into web standards like HTML5" and to apply them in Google Chrome. Features like geolocation, notifications, web workers, application caches are previously available in Google Chrome, so it's almost certainly the right time to stop bundling the Gears plugin.

"With all this now available in HTML5, it's lastly time to say goodbye to Gears. There will be no new Gears releases, and newer browsers such as Firefox 4 and Internet Explorer 9 will not be supported. We will also be removing Gears from Chrome in Chrome 12," informs Google.

What's astonishing is that important services like Gmail and Google Calendar still use Gears to work offline. Other services like Google Docs and Google Reader dropped offline support last year. Google promised that they will use HTML5 features implemented in browsers like Chrome or Firefox, but that hasn't materialized yet.

Google Docs Brings Back facts View

The latest design revive of the Google Docs homepage extra many useful features, but also made some contentious changes. Google decided to hide helpful information like the last modified date and the list of collaborators from the list view because it was obtainable in the sidebar.

If you missed the old boundary, you can now switch to the particulars view and see some additional in sequence next to the filename.

There's also a little icon that lets you for the moment hide the sidebar. For some reason, Google Docs doesn't enduringly hide the sidebar when you click on the arrows.

Open Gmail's PDF Attachments in Google Docs Viewer

A recent Gmail update distorted the "View" links for PDF attachments, but only if you use Google Chrome. Instead of gap PDF files using Google Docs Viewer, Gmail now uses the PDF plugin incorporated in Google Chrome. Unfortunately, this makes it more hard to save PDF files to Google Docs.

Here's a simple ploy that lets you open a PDF attachment in Google Docs Viewer. Click "View" next to the addition and edit the URL: replace "view=att" with "view=gvatt" in the address bar. Another alternative is to right-click "View", copy the URL, paste in the address bar and replace "view=att" with "view=gvatt".

Obviously, you can also stop the built-in PDF plugin. Just type about:plugins in the address bar and click "Disable" next to "Chrome PDF Viewer".

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.

More “I do”s, less “to-do”s: wedding planning simplified

For many, your wedding day is one of the biggest, most important days of your life. The perfect dress, the right tuxedo, the correct shade of blue, the three-tier cake with chocolate fondant, and all of your closest family and friends—these are just a few of the many things you might think about for your special day. Although there’s much to believe and a lot of work to do, the payoff is great: it’s one of the happiest days of your life.

To help you plan this significant day we’ve created wedding-specific templates in Google Sites, Google Docs and Picnik, and gathered tips and tricks for using these and other Google products at google.com/weddings. From wedding websites to save-the-date cards, these tools make simpler wedding planning, letting you focus your time on the fun things—like tasting cakes!

We teamed up with famous wedding planner Michelle Rago, who provided her insight and originality to guide the designs you’ll find on this new site. Michelle also shared her experience to provide tips and suggestion to keep your guests comfortable and you sane.

We’re also hosting a wedding sweepstakes, so if you’re getting married in the next year you can enter for a chance to win $25,000 towards your dream wedding (see Official Rules). Plus, Michelle Rago and her team will counsel the winning couple on location, flowers, food and other design fundamentals to create a day that is exclusively their own.

Visit google.com/weddings to start planning, or share the site with your favorite engaged couple and help them on their way to wedded bliss.

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.

A New Google Docs Homepage

As previously anticipated, Google Docs has a new homepage that's better matched for managing files, not just editable documents.

 There's a sidebar that shows a small thumbnail and some helpful information about the selected file. Google added new filters for images and videos, for public and private files, but dropped the higher search form, which was more difficult to use. The drawback is that there are many search features that are no longer obtainable in the border and you need to use operators to get them back.

The slideshow feature rented from Google Wave is one of the most useful additions:

For some reason, Google Docs has a new name for folders: they're now called collections. "Collections are designed to unite the best features of labels and folders. A file can live in multiple collections, just like with Gmail labels. Collections can also be stored hierarchically, just like folders on your desktop. And of course, collections can be shared, just like you can share docs," explains Google. Technically speaking, none of these features is new, but it's much easier to add a file to multiple folders collections. Unfortunately, Google's new terms will probably confuse users and many people won't understand that clicking "Organize" lets you add a file to a collection.

Google also dropped checkboxes, so now it's much more difficult to select multiple files: you need to use Shift for adjacent selections or Control for scattered files (Cmd if you're using a Mac).

Another new feature is priority sorting, which orders files based on importance. For example, a starred document that has been last rationalized 5 hours ago is likely to rank higher than a more recent document that hasn't been starred. Google says that it's like Gmail's Priority Inbox, but there's an important difference: Gmail always sorts conversations by date.

Overall, the new Google Docs homepage is a mixed bag. Google tries to morph Google Docs into an online storage service, while moving away from the initial goal of the service: editing documents online. Suddenly Google Docs is no longer an suitable name for the service, 1 GB of free storage is not enough, the APIs are no longer useful because they're limited to editable documents and Google's applications seem incomplete because they can't handle all the files that can be uploaded. The new homepage can't address these issues, but it manages to make the interface more complicated: now it's a lot easier to open a file when you want to select it and to select the file when you want to open it.

Tip: If you don't like the new interface, there's an option at the top of the page that lets you temporarily switch to the old version.

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.

Google Docs Plays Videos

Google Docs lets you upload any type of files, but not a lot of of them can be previewed in Google Docs. You can unlock Microsoft Office documents and presentations, PDF files and some images. Now you can also play videos.

Uploaded video files can be up to 1 GB. These are the majority common video formats that you can upload and play:

* WebM files (Vp8 video codec and Vorbis Audio codec)
* MPEG4, 3GPP and MOV files - (h264 and mpeg4 video codecs and AAC audio codec)
* AVI (many cameras use this format - typically the video codec is MJPEG and audio is PCM)
* MPEGPS (MPEG2 video codec and MP2 audio)
* WMV * .FLV (Adobe - FLV1 video codec, MP3 audio)

Since Google uses YouTube's player, it's understandable that these are the formats supported by YouTube. After uploading a video to Google Docs, you'll have to stay until it's processed.

Why would someone upload videos to Google Docs as a substitute of using YouTube? When Google adds more free storage to Google Docs and makes it simple to sync all your files, you'll upload documents, photos, music files and videos. Google Docs lets you sort out files into folders, share multiple files with your friends and still keep old versions of your files.

Predictions for Google's 2011

1. More free storage in Google Docs: at least 20 GB.

2. A new HTML5 interface for Gmail that loads faster, stores email offline and integrates with other Google apps like Google Calendar and Google Docs.

3. An updated Android keyboard that uses Google Scribd data to provide useful suggestions.

4. Google Earth as a WebGL web app and vector-based maps in Google Maps for desktop.

5. A database of things, where you can store important names, book titles, products, concepts and useful information about them.

6. Data sync for Google Chrome extensions.

7. Chrome for Android, with data sync, web apps, session restore, Cloud Print, built-in Flash and smarter address bar.

8. Google's search engine will answer complex questions using inferences.

9. Google Personal Alerts will notify on your mobile phone if there's something interesting around (one of your friends, a store that offers a discount for one your favorite products, a museum you wanted to visit, a shop recommended by one of your friends).

10. Google will learn to embrace Facebook and will start using Facebook Connect.

11. Google Online Store: the place where you can download Chrome/Android apps and games, e-books, buy magazine subscriptions, music and movies.

12. Android's growth will slow down, but it will be the most popular mobile operating system because many companies will use it to create smart media players, digital cameras, TVs, game consoles and even home appliances.

13. Picasa Web Albums will become a Google Docs app and Picnik will switch to HTML5.

14. Google will acquire Disqus to make it easier to manage your comments and to improve Blogger's commenting system.

15. Google Profiles will no longer be optional: when you create a Google/Gmail account, you'll also create a profile.

16. Voice search and visual search for desktop.

17. Google will buy LastPass and offer an online password manager.

18. Google Wave will be resurrected, but it will have a simplified interface.

19. An online music player that will let you listen music from the Google Store or Google Docs, podcasts from Google Reader, online radios and more.

20. Google Fast Flip for web search powered by Google Instant Previews.

Coming Soon in Google Docs: Third Party Apps, Cloud Printing and Sync

Google Docs' source code includes a message that reveals some important upcoming features: "Coming soon: Third party applications, cloud printers, and sync devices".

Cloud printing is a project that will enable applications on any device to print documents. "This goal is accomplished through the use of a cloud print service. Apps no longer rely on the local operating system (and drivers) to print. Instead, apps (whether they be a native desktop/mobile app or a web app) use Google Cloud Print to submit and manage print jobs." Google says that printers "are treated in much the same way as documents are in Google Docs". Cloud Print will be implemented in Google Chrome and Google Chrome OS, so it will probably launched in the coming weeks.

If you can synchronize your calendar, your contacts or your mail, why not synchronize the documents stored in Google Docs? That's one of the most important missing features from Google Docs. Google already offers some APIs for uploading and downloading files, but they're limited to documents, spreadsheets and presentations if you don't use Google Apps Premier Edition.

Google Docs has applications for editing documents, spreadsheets, presentations and for viewing PDF files, but what about other file types? There's no photo editor, no video editor, no application for editing PDF files or for extracting files from archives. Third party applications could solve some of these issues and make Google Docs even more useful.