Friday, August 27, 2010

Googland

Googland

[G] Improvements to Realtime Search

Posted: 27 Aug 2010 04:22 AM PDT

Blogger Buzz: Improvements to Realtime Search


The blogosphere is a dynamic environment that changes almost as quickly as the world that we live in. And as access to information becomes more widespread and more immediate, the blogosphere is steadily closing that gap. That's why the Blogger Team is excited to spread the word about Google's new improvements to Realtime Search, which provide richer and fresher results than ever before.

From the new Realtime Search homepage, you can search live updates, recently-published blog posts, and news from around the web in brand new ways. Now you can restrict your search to include just updates from a specific geographic region or just nearby you. You can also check out complete conversations from Twitter. You can also now set up custom alerts for Realtime updates to be sent directly to your inbox once a day or week, or as soon as the happen for instant blog post fodder.

For more information about Realtime's new features, please visit www.google.com/landing/realtime.
URL: http://buzz.blogger.com/2010/08/improvements-to-realtime-search.html

[G] Blogger's 11th Birthday Fiesta is Almost Here

Posted: 27 Aug 2010 04:22 AM PDT

Blogger Buzz: Blogger's 11th Birthday Fiesta is Almost Here

Posted by Seth Shamban, Blogger Consumer Operations

It's only five days away, and we hope that you're as excited as we are about the 200+ Meetups that are happening around the world. We're looking forward to your meetups, and seeing your photos, videos, and tweets from the event.

We don't want to leave the best parties empty-handed, so starting tomorrow we will be sending out some Blogger birthday presents to some of the largest Meetups around the world. We can only send presents to Meetups that have organizers, though, and there's still lots of fiestas that are organizer-less. It's super easy and any one can do it, so if you volunteer you may be able to secure presents for your local Meetup.

For those of you who haven't yet joined one of our Meetups, there's still time! As a reminder, here's the important details for the event:


If you have any questions about the Blogger Fiesta Meetups, head over to our official invitation.

We look forward to our first ever global meetups on the 31st!

URL: http://buzz.blogger.com/2010/08/bloggers-11th-birthday-fiesta-is-almost.html

[G] Work better across time zones with Google Calendar

Posted: 26 Aug 2010 07:31 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Work better across time zones with Google Calendar

Collaborating with colleagues from various teams in different offices is a daily facet of my work. I am based in Zurich, Switzerland, and many of the people I interact with are in California, USA, which is nine hours behind. Oftentimes I find myself invited to attend meetings that happen late in my evening, which proves that coordinating across time zones can be a challenge.

At Google we want to help you maintain a healthy work/life balance, so today we're launching a set of new features that will improve your experience whether you're scheduling across time zones or just across the hall.

Setting Up Working Hours
For Google Apps users, the new 'Working hours' setting allows you to configure the hours that suit your schedule, as you can see in the screenshot below:


Users setting up an event will be able to see your working hours clearly marked in your calendar in the event creation page. They will also be warned if they schedule an event outside your working hours. For example, when someone in California is scheduling an appointment with me for 11am their time, they will see a warning like this:


Find a Time, Make it Recurring
The new "Find a Time" tab on the event scheduling page lets you view your coworkers' schedules at-a-glance and choose the best time for a meeting. This is especially helpful for scheduling events with a large number of attendees, particularly if they are spread out geographically. Also in the event scheduling page, we've launched a simpler interface for setting recurring meetings with a small window that appears when you select the "Repeats" check box. For Google Apps customers with the administrative control panel option set to "enable new pre-release features" users will automatically see these new changes to the event editor.

We've also made a number of changes on the back-end that improve the performance, consistency, and extensibility of Calendar, which we've announced on our Gmail blog today. Enjoy your meetings, now with fewer time zone scheduling hassles!

Posted by Oana Florescu, Software Engineer, Calendar
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/08/work-better-across-time-zones-with.html

[G] JibJab helps visitors find their online funny bone with Google Site Search

Posted: 26 Aug 2010 07:31 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: JibJab helps visitors find their online funny bone with Google Site Search

Editor's note: Today's guest post comes from Chris Poe, Engineering Director at JibJab Media. JibJab.com is a digital entertainment studio that creates, produces and distributes humorous online content. From offbeat eCards to personalized videos and satirical viral videos, JibJab is on a mission to help more people share more laughs than any other company in the history of the world.

We could all use a good laugh from time to time. Which is why we're thrilled to announce that, as of today, search on JibJab.com is powered by Google Site Search, making it even easier for our visitors to explore and find their favorite funny items:



In evaluating a website search engine, we chose Google Site Search for its ability to help users find the perfect eCard or video, fast, while allowing our developers to control the look and feel of the results. We also appreciated the fact that Google Site Search provided XML results for full customization of each search query, and gave us a hands-free search solution that requires little-to-no custom maintenance.

This, hopefully, will allow our visitors to find more of what they're looking for on our site - good laughs!

Posted by: Rajat Mukherjee, Group Product Manager, Google Enterprise
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/08/jibjab-helps-visitors-find-their-online.html

[G] Go-Go (Gmail contextual) Gadgets - get more done right from your inbox

Posted: 26 Aug 2010 07:31 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Go-Go (Gmail contextual) Gadgets - get more done right from your inbox

The email inbox has become the hub for most people's business day. With Gmail contextual gadgets, available in the Google Apps Marketplace, instead of having to open additional applications to take action or get more information, these applications intelligently bring what you need right into your inbox. Gmail contextual gadgets scan for triggers, such as names or purchase order numbers, within a message and present relevant actions in-line with the email. Attend our webinar on Sept 8th to learn more about this feature. Here are a few examples of the wide range of applications that offer Gmail contextual gadgets in the Marketplace.

Customer management (CRM) solutions are one of the most sought after applications in the Marketplace. The newly launched Solve360 contextual gadget demonstrates the advantages of having access to CRM information within a message. Alongside each Gmail message, Solve360's gadget shows off a clean, at-a-glance view of everything your team knows about the person behind the message. Before taking further action, you can examine the customer's previous interactions and special considerations. Advanced customer management is now no more complicated than a few extra clicks inside an email exchange with a client.

Video Demonstration

Tracking time can be quite cumbersome for employees and businesses, so Harvest has developed a web-based solution for managing your timesheets. With Harvest for Google Apps, entering time is as simple as filling out a timesheet right within Gmail. Harvest sends automatic reminder emails to employees to fill out relevant timesheets. With contextual gadgets, these emails display the recipient's timesheet right below the body of the message so users can fill out and submit their timesheet without ever leaving their inbox. Bringing this crucial task right into your email takes out unnecessary steps and helps you save time and stay on track.

Video Demonstration

Smartsheet, a popular project management solution, offers integration across various Google Apps products. With their Gmail contextual gadget, any email that references a Smartsheet item allows task management right from your inbox. This functionality is interactive with your daily needs - as Smartsheet tracks project progress, if it detects a change in status based on your parameters, it will deliver an email to your inbox. Right from that email, you will be able to fully assess and edit each aspect of the project. The volatility of project management just got that much smoother.

Video Demonstration


Gist demonstrates how deeply rooted and useful social networks have become. This application delivers social media in a way that changes how you manage relationships. Gist removes the noise from individual email alerts, eliminates the hassle of going to multiple services for updates, and automates the delivery of the most important information about the contacts in your professional network. With their Gmail contextual gadget, you can better understand the context of each email without any extra work and better frame your actions. Valuable social information is available to you exactly where you need it - your inbox.

Video Demonstration

These are just four of the applications in the Google Apps Marketplace that have taken Gmail contextual gadgets to the next level. For more contextual gadgets, check out:

Remember to sign up for our webinar on Sept 8th to learn more about these great gadgets.

Webinar:
All about Gmail contextual gadgets: Learn how to access Line of Business data from your inbox
Wednesday, September 8th, 2010
11:00 a.m. PDT / 2:00 p.m. EDT
Register here


Posted by Harrison Shih, Google Apps Marketplace Team
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/08/go-go-gmail-contextual-gadgets-get-more.html

[G] Easier event scheduling in Google Calendar

Posted: 26 Aug 2010 05:49 PM PDT

Official Gmail Blog: Easier event scheduling in Google Calendar

Posted by Nassar Stoertz, Software Engineer

In the next day or so, you'll start to see some changes to the event page in Google Calendar which should make scheduling events easier. We've made the style more consistent with other Google apps, put information that's most commonly used at the top of the screen, simplified the layout, and added some functionality.

A new repeating event editor
The old interface for creating recurring events was clumsy and took up too much space on the screen. Now you'll see only a summary of your recurring event on the main event page; if you want to edit it, you can use a window that opens when you select the "Repeats" checkbox.


A new tool to help you find a time for your event
You'll notice a new tab on the event page that should make it easier to find a good time to schedule an event. When your friends or coworkers give you permission to see their calendars, you can click this tab to see a preview of their schedules and hover over their events to see what conflicts they might have. This should make scheduling a tad easier, especially for events with large numbers of guests. For Google Apps users, the new schedule preview can also show data from other calendar services using our Google Calendar Connectors API.


Changes under the hood
As browsers and other technologies both within and outside of Google have evolved, we've found it necessary to occasionally make structural code changes in order to keep up. These visible changes are only the surface; underneath we've added a new model for how we represent calendar events in the browser and a new mechanism for how we make sure those events get properly saved. We've paid special attention to performance, consistency, and extensibility. In the short term, you'll hopefully notice that the event page opens slightly faster than it did before.
URL: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/easier-event-scheduling-in-google.html

[G] In-cell dropdown and validation in spreadsheets

Posted: 26 Aug 2010 04:09 PM PDT

Official Google Docs Blog: In-cell dropdown and validation in spreadsheets

Today, we added in-cell dropdown and validation to spreadsheets. This makes it easy to constrain the values of an individual cell to a specific range or list. For example, if you are building a trip planning spreadsheet, you can now limit the options in the travel destination column to a select set of cities via dropdown lists.

In-cell dropdowns also make input easier by reducing unnecessary typing and errors in processing. You can create dropdown lists in individual cells through the data validation tool by validating against a range of cells in your sheet or by creating a custom list.


Follow these steps to create an in-cell dropdown list through validation against a range.
  1. Enter data into a range of cells.
    • For example, create a list of destinations on your spreadsheet.
  2. Select the cell(s) you would like to validate.
  3. Under the Tools menu, select Data validation...
  4. Change the Criteria to 'Items from a list.'
  5. Click the button next to the 'Create list from range' option and select the range of cells you entered data in during Step 1.
  6. Click Save and the cell you chose to validate will have a dropdown arrow in it with the data in your cell range as the potential input values. If you want, you can set a cell to allow invalid data.
You can also create a in-cell dropdown using a custom list.
  1. Under the Tools menu, select Data validation...
  2. Change the Criteria to 'Items from a list.'
  3. Click the button next to the 'Enter list items' option.
  4. Enter a set of custom values, separated by commas. For example, you could enter "San Francisco, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles."
  5. Click Save and the cell you selected will have a dropdown list with the values you entered as potential input values.
Let us know what you think in the comments.

Posted by: Li-Wei Lee, Software Engineer
URL: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/08/in-cell-dropdown-and-validation-in.html

[G] Google Realtime Search: a new home with new tools

Posted: 26 Aug 2010 10:21 AM PDT

Official Google Blog: Google Realtime Search: a new home with new tools

When we first introduced our real-time search features last December, we focused on bringing relevance to the freshest information on the web. Our goal was to provide real-time content from a comprehensive set of sources, integrated right into your usual search results. Today we're making our most significant enhancements to date, giving real-time information its own home and more powerful tools to help you find what you need. Now you can access Google Realtime Search at its own address, www.google.com/realtime.

On the new homepage you'll find some great tools to help you refine and understand your results. First, you can use geographic refinements to find updates and news near you, or in a region you specify. So if you're traveling to Los Angeles this summer, you can check out tweets from Angelenos to get ideas for activities happening right where you are.

In addition, we've added a conversations view, making it easy to follow a discussion on the real-time web. Often a single tweet sparks a larger conversation of re-tweets and other replies, but to put it together you have to click through a bunch of links and figure it out yourself. With the new "full conversation" feature, you can browse the entire conversation in a single glance. We organize the tweets from oldest to newest and indent so you quickly see how the conversation developed.

Finally, we've also added updates content to Google Alerts, making it easy to stay informed about a topic of your choosing. Now you can create an alert specifically for "updates" to get an email the moment your topic appears on Twitter or other short-form services. Or, if you want to manage your email volume, you can set alerts to email you once per day or week.

Check out our demo video of the new features and quick tips on how to use them:



You can access Realtime Search by typing www.google.com/realtime directly into your browser, or clicking the "Updates" link in the left-hand panel of your search results. Set up your Google Alerts at www.google.com/alerts. Realtime Search and updates in Google Alerts are available globally in 40 languages, and the geographic refinements and conversations views are available in English, Japanese, Russian and Spanish. The features are rolling out now, but you can use this link to see them right away.

Posted by Dylan Casey, Product Manager
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/google-realtime-search-new-home-with.html
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)