Attach Images in the New Gmail Compose Interface

Gmail's new compose interface has many useful features, but there are also some annoyances. The old interface had two ways to upload images using drag and drop: as attachments or as inline images. The new interface only lets you embed an image inside the message when you drag and drop it. There are many reasons why you might find this feature annoying: it's more difficult to compose a message after adding a bunch of images, the images could be distracting,...

Read More

Context-Sensitive Spell Checking in Google Chrome

Chrome is the first browser that has a smart spell-checking feature powered by a web service. Originally, Chrome only relied on a local dictionary. Then Chrome's team started to add suggestions from a Google service to the contextual menu and improve the list of suggestions from the local dictionary.Chrome 26 dramatically improves spell checking by bringing the Google Docs and Google Search spell checker to the browser. "We're now rolling out support...

Read More

Google Translate Mistakes

The Google Translate app for Android has some text files that include translation mistakes (/sdcard/Android/data/com.google.android.apps.translate/files/ol/v3r1/c_p). Some of them have been reported by users, blogs, news sites, while others are new. It's not clear why the application needs these lists since Google has fixed these translation errors.Here are some examples:German to English: Stuttgart -> London, tischen -> Nazi, Sheraton ->...

Read More

Offline Google Translate for Android

Google Translate is useful, but you need an Internet connection to translate some text. Google's servers process your request, so language models are always up-to-date, you can translate long texts instantly and you don't need to download huge databases. Unfortunately, Google Translate is especially useful when you visit foreign countries and you may want to avoid the high data roaming fees.Now you can use Google Translate offline if you have an...

Read More

Mobile Gmail Navigation: Replacing Buttons With Gestures

There's a new version of the Gmail app for iOS that brings a very useful feature: swipe left or right to move to the previous or next conversation.What's old is new again. The first version of the Gmail app for iOS included this feature, but it used arrow buttons instead of gestures, just like the desktop Gmail and the mobile site.For some reason, the buttons have been removed in Gmail 2.0, released in December. Gmail 2.1 uses swipes for navigating...

Read More

Google Shows Results for Similar Searches

Google has a new feature that shows results for different versions of your query. Usually Google removes one or two keywords from your query or replaces them with similar keywords if there aren't many relevant search results for your original query. For example, when you search for [google maps flash html5 api v4], Google also shows results for searches like: [google maps flash html5 api], [google maps html5 api v4], [google maps flash api], [google...

Read More

Google+ Search Filter for Photos

If you want to restrict Google+ search results to posts that include photos, you can now do that. After performing a search, click the "Everything" dropdown and select "Photos"."You can find any photo post (...) from items shared only with you, to public photos shared by some of the great photographers on Google+. Here are some searches that I enjoy: [Long exposure], [Steel wool], [Cartoons]," says Google's Dave Cohen.Unfortunately, Google shows...

Read More

Google Discontinues Blocked Sites Feature

Google had a powerful feature that allowed you to block all search results from a domain. The feature was quickly removed from the interface, but Google still included it in the search preferences page. Last year, the feature disappeared and it came back after a few weeks, but not everyone could use it.Now Google officially discontinued Blocked Sites. "To block particular sites from your search results, we recommend the Personal Blocklist Chrome...

Read More

New Gmail Shortcuts for Composing Messages

Gmail's new interface for composing messages has some cool keyboard shortcuts:* Shift+Esc - focus the main window* Esc - focus the latest chat or compose box* Ctrl+. - advance to the next chat or compose box* Ctrl+, - advance to the previous chat or compose box* Ctrl+Enter - send message* Ctrl+Shift+c - add CC recipients* Ctrl+Shift+b - add BCC recipients* Ctrl+Shift+f - add custom fromThese shortcuts are displayed when you mouse over some buttons...

Read More

YouTube Search Trends

You can now restrict Google Trends results to YouTube. Just like web search, image search, news search and product search, YouTube is a great way to measure people's interest over time."Google Trends enables you to take popular search queries and explore traffic patterns over time and geography. Now we've added YouTube search data going back to 2008, making it another great tool to look at video trends. Visit Google Trends and enter any search you'd...

Read More

Google Keep, Now Available

Google Keep has been launched: it's Google's latest attempt to create a service for taking notes. Unlike Google Notebook, Keep is a Google Drive app (the Drive integration is not yet ready for public release), it doesn't have a rich-text editor and it's optimized for mobile.There's an Android app and a desktop site. Both use the sticky notes metaphor and you can choose the color for each note, add text, images, lists and voice recordings that are...

Read More

Google Keep—Save what’s on your mind

(Cross-posted from the Android Blog)Every day we all see, hear or think of things we need to remember. Usually we grab a pad of sticky-notes, scribble a reminder and put it on the desk, the fridge or the relevant page of a magazine. Unfortunately, if you’re like me you probably often discover that the desk, fridge or magazine wasn’t such a clever place to leave the note after all...it’s rarely where you need it when you need it.To solve this problem...

Read More

Google Image Search to Add Filters For Animations and Transparent Images

Google tests a new version of the advanced image search page that lets you restrict the results to transparent images and animated images. The most popular image file formats that support transparency are GIF and PNG, while most animated images are GIF files. Animated GIFs made a comeback and they're popular again. "Just as the LP has enjoyed a second spin among retro-minded music fans, animated GIFs — the choppy, crude snippets of video loops that...

Read More

Google Keep, a New Service for Taking Notes

Carlos Jeurissen found some interesting hints about a new Google Drive app called Keep. There are multiple references to Google Keep in the GDrive code, including some URLs like: https://drive.google.com/keep/?note. In fact, the codename for Google Keep is "memento" and the MIME type for Google Keep files is "application/vnd.google-apps.note". Obviously, Google Keep is a replacement for Google Notebook, a service that has been discontinued back in...

Read More

Chrome for Android Shows Update Notifications

One of the greatest Chrome features is that it's always up-to-date. You don't have to worry about checking for updates and installing a new version, at least when it comes to the desktop Chrome.iOS doesn't update apps automatically. The App Store shows notifications when the apps you've installed are updated and you need to install updates manually. Google's Play Store for Android has an option for updating apps automatically, but it's not enabled...

Read More

Chromebook Pixel's Raison d'Être

I was still trying to figure out why Google released Chromebook Pixel, when I realized that I wrote a post last year which answered this question "avant la lettre". It's weird to quote an old post, but here it is:The trouble with Chromebooks is that Google can't come up with a powerful ultrabook that costs $700 or $800 because people would think it's too expensive. Why not get an ultrabook that runs a full-fledged operating system and install Chrome?...

Read More

Google's RSS Subscription Extension, Removed From Chrome Web Store

Update (March 19): The extension is back, but Google Reader and iGoogle have been removed from the list of default feed readers. Apparently, the extension was removed by mistake. {via François}Three years ago I tried to convince the Chrome team that it makes sense to add native support to feeds. At that time, Google built an extension that showed feed previews and allowed you to subscribe to feeds. The explanation for building an extension instead...

Read More

Chrome Web Store and Unsupported Operating Systems

If you use a phone or a tablet and click a link that sends you to a Chrome Web Store page, you'll see this message: "Sorry, your operating system is not supported just yet. The Chrome Web Store is available on Windows (except RT), Mac and Linux. Why don't you send yourself a reminder to try it later?"What if you open the same page in Firefox, Internet Explorer or any other desktop browser? The page loads and you only see a short message informing...

Read More

Chrome's Integration With Google Search

I've recently updated my Chromebook to the latest dev channel release of the Chrome OS and I've noticed a lot of intriguing new features that are likely to be added to all platforms. All the features are still experimental, so they could change before they make it to the stable channel.The new tab page is now Google's homepage without the navigation, the footer and the search buttons. The only thing that's kept from the old version of the new tab...

Read More

A Google Experiment Hides the Navigation Bar

There's an interesting Google experiment that seems to be limited to Chrome 27 (dev/canary channel). The experiment removes Google's navigation bar from both the homepage and the search results pages.To confirm that the experiment is limited to Chrome 27, I opened Firefox, changed the user agent to "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1) AppleWebKit/537.33 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/27.0.1441.2 Safari/537.33" using this extension and the navigation bar was...

Read More

Google Tests Instant Site Search

Google shows a search box below the top search result, especially for navigational queries like [nytimes], [youtube] or [engadget]. The search box allows you to type a new query and restrict the results to that site. Obviously, you can still use the site: operator, but most people don't know about it.Now Google tests a similar feature as part of Google Instant. After typing a query that has a dominant search result, Google shows a new option: "search...

Read More

Find the Best Translation and Improve Google Translate

Google Translate shows a new message at the bottom of the page: "Would you mind answering some questions to help improve translation quality?" It's not a boring survey, it's actually a great way to test your foreign language skills by picking the best translation. Here's the link, just in case you can't find it. The URL parameters are only for English to French translations, but you can replace "fr" with "es", "de", "it" or other language code.{...

Read More

Google Translate Phrasebook

As previously anticipated, Google Translate added a new feature called "phrasebook". It's just a fancy name for bookmarking translations and saving them to a list. You can display the "phrasebook" by clicking the "show phrasebook" button. The list of translations is searchable and can be grouped by language pair. The feature requires to sign in to Google Account so that Google can save the phrasebook."Phrasebook for Google Translate jumpstarts this...

Read More

Larger URLs for Google Search Results

Google emphasizes web addresses displayed below the links to the search results. URLs are a lot larger and are harder to ignore. The "share" link for Google+ is also more visible, although it's still displayed when you mouse over a search result.Here's a side-by-side comparison with the old interfa...

Read More

Google Reader Data Points

It's hard to estimate the number of Google Reader users, but here are some data points:- the most popular feed has more than 24 million subscribers (CNN):- the second most popular feed has 6.6 million subscribers (Engadget):- the third most popular feed has 1.7 million subscribers (NY Times)- Google's official blog had 100,000 subscribers in 2007 and now it has about 353,000 subscribers- JoelOnSoftware.com had 42,000 subscribers in 2008 and now it...

Read More