New Google Calendar Controls for Android

Google Calendar's app for Android has been updated with new controls for selecting time, date, timezones, colors and editing repeating events. I wonder if the next Android version will use these controls instead of the existing pickers.Selecting the time is a 2-part process: you first select the hour and then the number of minutes. The time picker is based on a real 24-hour clock.Selecting the date is straightforward: Google uses a scrolling calendar...

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Google's Unified Storage Plans

As previously anticipated, Google's 25GB plan will no longer be available for new users. It was the most affordable storage plan: $2.49/month. Now the cheapest plan offers 100GB for $4.99/month, but it's shared storage that can be used in Google Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos.OLD:NEW:"Store up to 15GB in Google Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos, and then pay for additional storage as your account grows," informs Google. Paid storage no longer increases...

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HTC One, Nexus Edition

After Samsung Galaxy S4, it's time for HTC One to get a Nexus Edition. It will be available on June 26 from Google Play US for $599, $50 less than Samsung's flagship."The unlocked device will run on both AT&T and T-Mobile in the United States with support for high-speed LTE data on both networks. This 'Nexus user experience' version will contain 32GB of built-in storage. Much like the special edition Samsung Galaxy S4 unveiled during I/O, Google...

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Tips for Gmail's Tabs and Categories

Some of you have already seen this screen in Gmail, which shows that the new inbox tabs have been enabled for your account. If not, click the gears button and see if you can find "Configure inbox". Click this menu item and you can use the new feature. If you can't find "Configure inbox", check back later.There are 5 tabs:- social messages from sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Google+- promotions: newsletters, offers and other bulk messages-...

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No More Gmail Sneak Peek

Gmail had a cool Labs feature that allowed you to read messages without opening them. Message Sneak Peek displayed the first sentences from a message when you right-clicked it. You could use keyboard shortcuts to navigate to the previous or to the next message, so this was a great to quickly read messages.Here's a screenshot from 2010, when this feature was launched:The Labs experiment is no longer available and now Gmail has a contextual menu that...

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New Gmail Favicon

Gmail has a new favicon that looks like the icon used by Gmail's Chrome app. It's also close to the iOS app's icon.In this screenshot, the first tab shows new the new favicon, while the second one shows the old favicon. There's also a bigger version of the new favicon.A similar screenshot for Internet Explorer:Here's the same icon in Chrome's new tab page. The Gmail app for Chrome is installed by default.If you don't see the new favicon, reload Gmail...

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Chrome for iOS, Not a Fast Browser

Chrome for iOS doesn't have a lot of things in common with the desktop Chrome or Chrome for Android. It doesn't use the latest WebKit rendering engine and can't switch to Blink, it doesn't use the V8 JavaScript engine, it doesn't have a multi-process architecture. These are iOS limitations and all third-party iOS browsers are built using UIWebView, so they use the same rendering engine and the same JavaScript engine, which is slower than Safari's...

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Google's Bigger App Launcher

I've previously posted about Google's experimental app launcher that replaces the black navigation bar. It's the perfect fit for the Chrome integration with Google search, which also removes the search box from Google SERPs.Google tests a new version of the app launcher in Chrome: it's huge and you can click "more" to see other Google services. I've managed to get the new interface using this URL in Chrome.If you think "huge" is an exaggeration,...

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Gmail's Inbox Tabs

Gmail has a lot of cool features that let you organize mail, but not many people use them. Creating filters is complicated and manually labelling messages is time consuming. That's why Google added features that automatically classify messages: Priority Inbox finds important messages, Smart Labels categorizes messages and lets you find notifications, bulk messages or automatically archive them. Gmail also has different inbox styles that prioritize...

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YouTube's Feeling Lucky

YouTube has a cool feature that generates a playlist of 10 recommended videos. Make sure you are logged in and visit this page.There's even an experiment that places a "play" button next to the YouTube logo, so you can quickly generate the "I'm Feeling Lucky" serendipitous playlist. If you don't like the playlist, click "play" again.Here's how you can enable the experimental button. If you use Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari or Internet Explorer 8+:1....

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Spam From Gmail Contacts?

Gmail shows this message when you mark as spam a mail from your contacts: "Did your contact actually write this message? You marked this message as spam, but the sender is in your contact list. If this message seems suspicious, let us know then tell your contact that their email account might have been compromised and used to send fraudulent messages."As you probably know, adding someone to your contacts is the best way to make sure that the messages...

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Find Gmail Receipts

Here's a way to find your receipt messages from Gmail: search for label:^smartlabel_receipt. This feature is powered by the Smart Label experiment from Gmail Labs, but you don't need to enable that experiment.I've found receipts from PayPal, Google Play and Google Checkout, order confirmations from eBay, Amazon and other shopping sites. Gmail automatically detects receipts, just like it finds notifications, social updates, forum messages and other...

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Google+ Photo Search With Image Recognition

Last year, Google Drive added an advanced image search feature powered by Goggles that recognizes objects and uses OCR technology to extract text. The same feature is now available in Google+: search for [sunflower], click "More", restrict the results to "Photos" and select "Most recent". You'll find sunflower images from Google+ posts that don't even include "sunflower", not even in the image filename. This also works for the images you've uploaded...

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Google Trends Charts

Google Trends has a new section that shows monthly popularity charts for topics like scientists, cars, movies, songs, people, animals, chemical elements and more. Charts are limited to the US for now and they show the most popular things, not the "movers and shakers". Google uses the Knowledge Graph to restrict the charts to real-world things and "measures interest in a broader topic, so it might also count different searches with the same meaning"."Top...

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A smoother Drive app for Android

The process of creating and accessing your stuff shouldn’t be, well...a process. Today, the Drive app for Android is getting several improvements to make creating and accessing your stuff on-the-go even easier.To help you find the content you care about, Drive files will now be displayed in a clean, simple card-style. You can swipe between files to see large previews that let you quickly review and discover the information you’re looking...

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YouTube Search Experiments

YouTube experiments with some new search features. When you click a video from the list of YouTube search results, there's a red progress bar displayed at the top of the page until the video page loads. YouTube loads pages using AJAX and uses HTML5 history.pushState to change the browser URL without reloading the page. Here's the new feature in action:The search box still includes your query when you watch the video. Another experimental feature shows a list of search suggestions when you watch a video and click the search box. The list of suggestions...

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Create Google Now Reminders in Google Search

Reminders are a new feature in the latest version of the Google Search app for Android. You can create reminders using voice search and Google Now will show notifications.Now you can also create reminders from the desktop Google Search when you search for events. Use queries like [when is bonnaroo 2013?], [when is the first day of summer?], [halloween day] and Google shows a link that says: "Remind me on Google Now".Click the link and "Google Now...

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Google Cross-Language Search, No Longer Available

Google removed yet another advanced search tool: cross-language search. It was available in the "Search tools" menu as "translated foreign pages" and it allowed you to find pages written in other languages. Google automatically suggested a few languages for your query, but you could manually add other languages. Your query was translated into all these languages, Google performed multiple searches for the translations, compiled a list of results...

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