Chrome Font Finder

You're reading a web page and you're suddenly wondering: what font is that?You can check the source code or select some text, right-click and pick "inspect element". You'll probably find a list of fonts and you won't be able to tell which one is actually used.Chrome added a feature that tells you the name of the font that's used. This feature is available in Chrome 31+, so you can try it if you've switched to the Dev Channel or you use Chrome Canary....

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Google's Music Carousel

Remember the post about Google's new music video results? They're used by a Knowledge Graph carousel that shows a long list of songs when you search for things like [Moby songs], [Michael Jackson music], [Nina Simone list of songs], [Beatles track list].Click one of the songs and you'll see the search results for that song's name. The top result is a music video from YouTube, which has a huge thumbnail. The video doesn't play inline, the thumbnail...

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Content & Color: An updated look for Docs, Sheets & Slides

Starting today, things are about to get cleaner—and more colorful—in Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, Forms and Apps Script. First, you’ll notice each editor’s product icon displayed in the header, which doubles as a quick link back to all your files in Drive. Next, you’ll see that the header is more streamlined and compact, helping you to focus on what matters most—your content. We hope these updates make your creation and collaboration experience...

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Google Mobile Image Search Regression

Google has a great mobile interface for image search. It was launched in 2010 and improved multiple times since then. You can use swipes to go to the next image result or to the previous one. It looks like Google changed the image search UI for smartphones and tablets and now sends you to a landing page that shows the image and loads the corresponding page in the background. Intuitive gestures are gone and now you have to use the back button.This...

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Force YouTube to Use the HTML5 Player

YouTube's HTML5 player is great, but it's not enabled for all the videos. Even if you go to youtube.com/html5 and join the HTML5 trial, you'll find a lot of videos that use the Flash player. "Some videos with ads are not yet supported (they will play in the Flash player)," mentions the site.There's a simple Greasemonkey script that forces YouTube to use the HTML5 player for almost all the videos you watch at youtube.com. You need to install Greasemonkey...

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Card-Style Interface for Google Mobile Search

As previously anticipated, Google's mobile site has a new layout that uses cards, just like Google Now, Google Maps, Google+ and an increasingly long list of Google services and apps."A new look and feel for Google Search and ads on your phones and tablets. It's cleaner and simpler, optimized for touch, with results clustered on cards so you can focus on the answers you're looking for," informs Google's search blog.Ads stand out a lot more and, depending...

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Google's 15th Birthday Doodle

This year, Google's birthday doodle is interactive: it's a game that asks you to get as many candies as you can from a piñata. "A piñata is a container often made of papier-mâché, pottery, or cloth; it is decorated, and filled with small toys or candy, or both, and then broken as part of a ceremony or celebration."The game uses HTML5 and you can also try it on your smartphone or tablet. You can share your score on Google+ and generate URLs that remember...

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Filter and Compare Knowledge Graph Results

Google's Knowledge Graph feature gets smarter every day. You've probably noticed the carousel that's displayed when you search for things like [dog breeds], [asian rivers], [swedish bands], [science fiction books], [surrealist painters]. For some queries, you'll now see a drop-down that lets you select other similar categories. If you search for [surrealist painters], you'll see a long list of genres: abstract, cubist, impressionist, rococo, romantic.Until...

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Google+ Celebrates 15 Years of Google

Mr. Jingles, the Google+ notification mascot, celebrates Google's 15th birthday with a pixelated animation. Just click the bell icon, read all your notifications or click "mark all as read" to see it."Friends of mine here at work found this old photo of me from back in 1998, the same year Google started up. Yes, I know I was a bit awkward back then – but so was Google (check out this link for proof). Anyways, enjoy this retro version of me in your...

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Google's 15th Birthday Easter Egg

Search Google for [Google in 1998] and you'll see a search results page from 1998, the year when Google was incorporated as a privately held company. It's an Easter Egg that reminds you how much Google has evolved, while preserving a simple user interface.The old search results includes the original Google logo that had an exclamation mark just like Yahoo!, GoogleScout - another name for the feature that returns similar pages, a drop-down that lets...

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A Google Experiment Asks Users to Rank Results

Google has its own search quality raters, but it doesn't hurt asking regular users to improve search results. A recent Google experiment highlights 2 search results and asks users which one is better.Users don't have the read the search quality guidelines first, they only need to visit the 2 pages and tell Google which one they prefer. There are 4 choices: the first result, the second result, both results are equally good, neither result is good...

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Chrome's New Tab Synergy

Chrome shows a new version of the welcome screen for the updated new tab page. Instead of "changes to the new tab page", you'll see "Chrome has updated". It looks like Google wanted to synchronize 4 important changes:1. the new Google navigation interface2. the updated new tab page3. Chrome's app launcher4. the new Chrome appsThere's an interesting synergy that deserves some explanations. Google's new drop-down menu from the homepage and search results...

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Google Encrypted Search for Everyone

It started as an experiment in 2010, then Google encrypted searches for logged-in users, then Firefox, Chrome and Safari switched to Google SSL and now almost all Google search URLs use HTTPS."In the past month, Google quietly made a change aimed at encrypting all search activity — except for clicks on ads. Google says this has been done to provide 'extra protection' for searchers," reports Danny Sullivan.For example, if you type google.com in your...

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Remotely Lock Android Devices

Android Device Manager now lets you lock your Android devices remotely, in addition to ringing devices and erasing data. It's a clever feature: click "Lock" and Google asks you to enter a new password for locking your device. No matter which screen lock feature you use, Google will switch it to "password" and lock your devices using the password you've entered. This only works if your phone or tablet is online and you've checked "Allow remote lock...

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YouTube Comments Powered by Google+

Just like Blogger, YouTube will switch to Google+ comments, but it won't be optional. YouTube already asks users to connect their channels with Google+."When it comes to the conversations happening on YouTube, recent does not necessarily mean relevant. So, comments will soon become conversations that matter to you. In the coming months, comments from people you care about will rise up where you can see them, while new tools will help video creators...

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YouTube Fans

If you have a popular YouTube channels with more than 5,000 subscribers, you'll be able to find more about the people who love your videos. "The Fans page shows a list of some of your most engaged and most influential fans, based on their public interaction with your YouTube channel. By default, the list is sorted by a combination of subscriber count and engagement level, but you can also sort by either factor on its own," informs YouTube."For each...

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Chrome to Gradually Drop Support for NPAPI Plug-ins

10 years ago, browsers were a lot less powerful and you had to install plug-ins to watch videos, play games, open PDF files. Applications like QuickTime, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, Adobe Reader, Java installed plug-ins that added missing features. Now browsers can play audio files and video files without plug-ins, some of them include PDF viewers, many of them render interactive 3D graphics natively. NPAPI plug-ins are no longer that necessary,...

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Free Quickoffice for Android and iOS

Google announced a new Quickoffice app for Android and iOS that's free and it's optimized for both phones and tablets. The previous paid Quickoffice apps are no longer available, but not all the features from the paid apps are included in the free app. The new Quickoffice application supports a single cloud storage provider (Google Drive) and it requires to log in using a Google account.Google acquired Quickoffice because it did a better job at handling...

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Freeing Quickoffice for everyone

Everyone likes free stuff, which is why starting today we’re making Quickoffice available for free, for everyone. With Quickoffice, you can edit Microsoft® Office documents across your devices, giving you the freedom to work with anyone no matter what hardware or software they’re using. Quickoffice also integrates seamlessly with Google Drive storage so you can safely access your files from anywhere. And while the easiest thing to do is simply convert...

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Google Wallet App for iPhone

When Google released a new version of the Wallet app for Android, it was clear that the features that were available to every Android device in the US didn't require NFC or carriers' approval. The new features are now available for iPhone users."The response from users has been great, and we want iOS users to enjoy all of the benefits too. So, today we're introducing the first Google Wallet app for iPhone (iOS v6.0+), which means even more people...

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Google Tests New Interface for Music Video Results

Google tests a new interface for top search results, but only for music videos. The experimental interface adds a huge 480x360 thumbnail and shows the name of the artist, the album and the year when it was released.Here's the regular version:I think the thumbnail is way too big and the top result shouldn't dominate the entire page, especially when it comes to videos.{ Thanks, Yvo....

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Try Google's New Logo and Navigation Menu

So many iOS developers had to change app icons and make them flat for iOS7. Flat is now fashionable, so you should expect to see some changes even if you don't use Apple's devices.I've mentioned in a previous post that Google tests a new logo that's flat, minimalist and reduced to its essence, but someone from Google denied that this will replace the traditional logo. This is obviously not true: it's a Google experiment, the logo is hosted on Google's...

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