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Gmail Adds Voice and Video Chat

Gmail is rolling out a new feature today: Voice and Video Chat. The bad news–for me, not you–is that it isn’t showing up for me yet when I log into Gmail. The good news? I happened to be visiting Google when the news broke, so I got an in-person demo. (They say that it’ll be available to all Gmail users by the end of the day.)

The feature looks cool, and it’s exceedingly straightforward. When you’re in Gmail, your contact list will show a little green camera icon next to any buddy who has a Webcam, is online, and has installed the Gmail Voice and Video Chat plug-in (which works with IE 7, some versions of IE 6, Firefox, Safari, and, of course, Chrome). Click the icon, and you get a chat window with video in the botton right-hand corner of the Gmail interface. (You can also blow it up to full-screen mode.)

Here’s Google’s demo:

I haven’t used Gmail for chat much; this is a reason to give it a try…assuming that I can get the folks I’d like to chat with to install Google’s plug-in, that is.

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Google adds Video and Voice chat to Gmail

Starting right now, Google is rolling out voice and video chat to all Gmail users. The audio-video chat feature is fairly simple and works straight from the browser. Unlike Skype and other VOIP services, you can’t make phone calls and scores of other features are missing, but still it’s a great add-on for Gmail.

Google decided to ditch flash, and build their proprietary add-on for the feature. The add-on weighs around 2 MB and supports IE, Firefox, Chrome in PC and Firefox-only for Mac users. Once the video feature is enabled in your account, you’ll see "Video & more." option in the lower left corner of the Gmail chat box. If you are trying to make a video call to someone, who has not installed the add-on, you’ll be able to invite them to do so. You have an option to go full-screen while video chatting.

(click to enlarge)

I’m quite disappointed that Google didn’t consider using the cross-platform Flash plugin. Since most people already have Flash plugin installed, users don’t need to install another browser add-on. Google Talk application has supported voice chat right from its early days. I’d like to see some of these new features added to the downloadable client as well.

Update: I’ve just confirmed that this works with Safari on OSX too, so the Apple people haven’t been left out.

Update: Here’s the announcement from Google

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Official Google Blog: Plug in to the latest release of Google Chrome

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Official Google Blog: Update to Google Chrome's terms of service

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Official Google Blog: Google Chrome now live

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Official Gmail Blog: Try Gmail in Google Chrome

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SMS Text Messaging for chat

Google had rolled out a new feature to Gmail Labs that lets you send SMS text messages right from Gmail. It combines the best parts of IM and texting: you chat from your computer and reach your friends no matter where they are.

But they found a glitch. When you'd try to turn it on, it wouldn't fully enable. So they've pulled SMS chat back to fix it. It will probably be back within 2 weeks, so stay tuned.

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SMS to update your Google Calendar

People request new features for Google Calendar all the time. They post to blogs, send email to our support team, call to me on the street, etc. One thing people always ask me about is better mobile access. You can already send a text message to "GOOGL" with a search query, and you'll get a text message reply with the top Google search result. Some folks want a similar service for Google Calendar, where they can send text messages to add events to their calendar or find out what events they have coming up. This is by far my favorite request -- not only because I think it's a great feature, but because it already exists.

Here's how it works: send a text message to "GVENT" (48368) with information about an event, like "3pm cappuccino at Borrone's," and this event will be added to your calendar. Just like the "Quick Add" feature in Google Calendar, GVENT will pop the event into your calendar in the right place. You'll get a text message back confirming the details of your event. Or, send the word "day" to "GVENT" to get a text message response containing all of your scheduled events for today, "next" for your next scheduled event, or "nday" for all your events scheduled for tomorrow. You can learn more about GVENT in the help center.

And now I'm off to get my cappuccino.

Link - from Official Gmail Blog

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Official Gmail Blog: Almost new in Labs: SMS Text Messaging for chat

Posted by Leo Dirac, Product Manager

Oh snap. Last night, we started rolling out a new feature to Gmail Labs that lets you send SMS text messages right from Gmail. It combines the best parts of IM and texting: you chat from your computer and reach your friends no matter where they are. Your friends who are away from their computers get your messages as texts and can peck out replies on their little keyboards. It was pretty cool for a few minutes last night when we were sitting around texting each other.

Then we found a glitch. When you'd try to turn it on, it wouldn't fully enable. We thought about keeping it out there -- bugs and all -- but the experience wasn't that great. So, in the spirit of Labs, we've pulled SMS chat back to fix it, and we'll get it back out to you as soon as it's ready -- probably within 2 weeks, so stay tuned.
Link - from Official Gmail Blog

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Official Gmail Blog: Tip: Your email, wherever you are on the web, with Toolbar

Posted by Aseem Sood, Product Manager, Google Toolbar

Are you addicted to email? Do you keep Gmail open on your browser, constantly hitting refresh to get your latest messages?

If you're using Google Toolbar 5 for Internet Explorer (or Toolbar's Firefox version), you can add the Gmail custom button to make your life easier. With the Gmail button, you can get new message alerts, see previews of your mail and use Toolbar's search box to find any message no matter what page you're on.

Google Toolbar also has a "Send to" feature: when you click on the "Send to" icon, a Gmail compose window opens that automatically includes a link to the page you're currently on and any text you have highlighted on that page. This makes it easy to email your friends interesting pages you come across as you browse the web.

Plus, you can also add Google gadgets to your Toolbar to bring your favorite websites and online services closer to you. One of my favorites is the Google Calendar gadget: by clicking on the calendar icon, I can check out my schedule for the next few days and even add events.

To try out these gadgets for yourself, check out Toolbar's gallery.
Link - from Official Gmail Blog

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Dev Release: 0.3.154.6

Google Chrome 0.3.154.6 has been released to the Dev channel ONLY. This is a bug fix update to 0.3.154.3.

About the Dev Channel
The Dev channel lets you test the latest fixes and get access to new features as they're being developed. You can learn more about the Dev channel and how to subscribe here: http://dev.chromium.org/getting-involved/dev-channel/

Reminder: please file (or update existing) issues at http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues.

Bugs Fixed

r3753 Fixes a crash with Adobe Acrobat 9 whenever you close a tab that was showing a PDF file.
r3710 Fixes a crash while dragging tabs on Windows Vista with pen input or tablet services.
r3803 [Issue 3183] Fixes a crash while dragging tabs.
r3528 [Issue 2069] Fixes problems with the downloaded files shelf not closing and becoming unresponsive.
r3570 [Issue 3539] Fixes not being able to save 'unconfirmed' file types with different names (Save As...).
r3481 [Issue 666] Fixes Silverlight video not playing on some sites.
r3810 [Issue 2929, Issue 3315] Fixes the page encoding menu to work properly again.
r3546, r3659 [Issue 3039] Fixes a crash in the spell checker.
r3621 [issue 2901] Fixes Ctrl+K to work again (focus the address bar and clear it for a new search).

--Mark Larson, Google Chrome Program Manager

Link - from Google Chrome Releases

Related:
Dev Release: 0.3.154.3
Dev release: 0.2.153.1
Beta release: 0.2.149.30
Beta release: 0.2.149.29

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New in Labs: Reply add-ons

Posted by Darick Tong, Gmail engineer

We Gmail developers are arguably among the most demanding of Gmail's users. So in addition to the feedback we get from all of you, a lot of the ideas for new features come from our own frustrations and experiences. We send and receive a lot of mail, and we've already started using these Labs features to make replying that much better.

Quote selected text, by Ryan A
Gmail makes it easy to manage long conversations or threads by hiding the text you've seen before. Unfortunately, this means that the people you're communicating with that aren't using Gmail sometimes get annoyed with you for leaving 25 pages of irrelevant conversation in the email. Also, sometimes you just want to reply to one small part of a conversation. Deleting lots of irrelevant text is rather annoying, so this Labs feature should make your life easier. Just highlight the text you want to include in your reply, hit the keyboard shortcut "r" to reply, and the compose template will be just what you selected! Note: This doesn't quite work in Chrome or Safari yet, but it will in a few weeks.

Default 'Reply to all,' by Mark K
When we're working on features for Gmail, the email etiquette on the team is to reply all so everyone involved is kept in the loop. Mark was an intern here this past summer who got frustrated when he'd reply to an email only to realize that he forgot to reply all and had to resend the message. Thus, this Labs feature, which makes reply all your default selection.

Vacation time, by Darick T
While planning my own vacation, I didn't want to worry about composing, starting and stopping my vacation auto-response while I was on vacation. Call me a purist, but that defeats the whole point of being on vacation! So, to make my vacation that much sweeter, I used a bit of my 20% time and whipped up Vacation Time, which lets you compose and schedule your vacation autoresponse while you're planning your vacation, rather than while you're on vacation. And scheduling is as easy as it is in Google Calendar.

So go on, try it, and have a great vacation.

Link - from Gmail Blog
Related:
A picture is worth a thousand words
More changes to Gmail contact manager
A new look for orkut emails
Gmail for mobile: faster, smoother, and now in more languages

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Use the Google Data JavaScript client library with Chrome and Safari

Posted by Austin Chau, Google Data APIs Team

The Google Data JavaScript client library has expanded its support to cover our latest browser Chrome as well as Safari 3.x.

Now you can start writing AJAX applications that use the Google Data JavaScript client library and have your apps be compatible with the following desktop browser environments:

Internet Explorer 6 & 7
Firefox 2.x & 3.x
Safari 3.x
Chrome

The Google Data JavaScript client library is a pure JavaScript library that allows you perform cross-domain AJAX read/write operations for several Google services - Google Calendar, Blogger, Google Contacts, and Google Finance.

Check out some of the creative applications that were written using the Google Data JavaScript client library--

Calendar Visualization using Google Calendar Data API:

Contacts Picker using Google Contacts Data API:

blog.gears using Blogger Data API and the Gears API:

Ready to get started building your own app? Click on the links to the individual services above to use the interactive developer's guides and drop by in the forums if you have any questions and want to chat with other developers.

Link - from Google Data APIs Blog
Related:
Bioneers, Day Three
New in Labs: Canned Responses
Make a date with data in Google Analytics
The case of the delayed data

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Introducing the Gears Geolocation API for all laptop WiFi users

By Charles Wiles, Product Manager, Google Mobile Team

I am thrilled to announce that today we have enhanced the Gears Geolocation API so that developers can now securely locate users to within 200m accuracy in major desktop browsers in hundreds of cities around the world. Whether your users are Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox or (soon) Opera users, you can now automatically deliver an experience that is tailored to their current location. For example, lastminute.com's new Radar application allows users to find nearby hotels, ITN's Google Earth mash up in Firefox allows users to see nearby news stories and Rummble's social discovery site allows users to automatically set their current location for friends to see.

When we originally proposed the Gears Geolocation API our goal was to make it easy for developers to deliver location enabled web sites on mobile phones. However we realized laptop users would benefit from location enabled web sites too. Today we are adding WiFi signals to the Geolocation API so that laptop users can benefit from location enabled web sites for the first time and mobile users from the increased accuracy. And because the Geolocation API is the same for developers in both desktop and mobile browsers you can even use the same code on both platforms!

In Chrome and Android, with Gears built in, you can deliver a location enabled web site without requiring your users to install a plug-in, but in other browsers they will need to go through a simple plug-in install process. We also submitted a simplified version of the Geolocation API as a WC3 specification and the upcoming Firefox 3.1 plans to support the W3C version directly. The Gears Geolocation API is completely free to developers and users through the default Google location provider.

To protect user privacy, the Gears Geolocation API server does not record user location. However, third party sites may do so, and we recommend that users only allow web sites they trust to access their location. Gears will always tell a user when your site wants to access their location for the first time and the user can either allow or deny your site permission. We recommend users check the privacy policy of your web site if they are in doubt as to how your site may use location information.

Link - from Google Code Blog
Related:
iGoogle launches canvas view
Gadgets and Google Code
Zoho Mail goes offline with Gears
Project Updates on Google Code

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Western Union launched in Panama

Following our announcement a few weeks ago, we're happy to announce that Western Union is now offered as a payment method for publishers located in Panama. To sign up for payments by Western Union, sign in to your account and follow these instructions. Please also keep in mind that we're only able to make Western Union payments to individual payee names, but not to businesses.

Not located in Panama? We've been reading your comments on our other recent payment-related posts, and understand that many of you are looking forward to new payment options in additional countries. Please know that we aren't able to provide details about when new options may become available, as setting them up can take time due to factors like compliance with local laws and tax regulations. However, we're working hard to find more convenient ways to send you your earnings, and we'll definitely announce any new options here. In the meantime, please feel free to keep leaving your feedback, and we appreciate your patience!

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

Link - from Inside AdSense
Related:
Don't get held up by expired check holds
Announcing Google Chrome
Your guide to the Inside AdSense blog
Get in the game with AdSense for Games

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Update to Google Suggest

There's been quite a bit of comment in the last few days about Google Suggest, particularly how it's used in Google Chrome. Google Suggest is actually built into a number of different products including Google Search, Google Toolbar, browsers like Google Chrome and Firefox, and the Google Search application on the iPhone.

But what is Google Suggest? It's a feature designed to make searching both faster and easier. Whether you are typing into the search box on Google Toolbar or Google.com, or the Omnibox in Google Chrome, Google Suggest guesses what you're typing and offers suggestions in real time. So for example, if you type "bass," Google Suggest might offer a list of refinements that include "bass fishing" or "bass guitar." Similarly, if you type in only part of a word, like "prog," Google Suggest might offer you refinements such as "programming," "programming languages," "progesterone," or "progressive." Again, these suggestions allow you to enter your searches faster, but also in a way that will more likely get you the results you're looking for.

That's what occurs on the surface of Google Suggest. Here's what happens under the hood. To provide its recommendations Google Suggest needs to know what you've already typed, so these partial queries are sent to Google. For 98% of these requests, we don't log any data at all and simply return the suggestions. For the remaining 2% of cases (which we select randomly), we do log data, like IP addresses, in order to monitor and improve the service.

However, given the concerns that have been raised about Google storing this information -- and its limited potential use -- we decided that we will anonymize it within about 24 hours (basically, as soon as we practically can) in the 2% of Google Suggest requests we use. This will take a little time to implement, but we expect it to be in place before the end of the month.

All data retention is a balance between user privacy and trust on the one hand, and security and innovation on the other. In the case of Google Suggest we decided it's possible to provide a great service while anonymizing data almost immediately. But in other cases - such as our core web search - storing data like IP addresses for a time is crucial to make improvements to search quality, improve security, fight fraud and reduce spam.

You can read more about our privacy policies on the Google Privacy Center, check out the Google Search Privacy: Plain and Simple video for more information about how our server logs work.

Posted by Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President, Operations
Link - from The Official Google Blog
Related:
Another step to protect user privacy
Bringing history online, one newspaper at a time
Making terms of service clearer
Google Chrome now live

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Workin' it on all browsers

To web surfers, Google Chrome is a quick, exciting new browser. As webmasters, it's a good reminder that regardless of the browser your visitors use to access your site—Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Safari, etc.—browser compatibility is often a high priority. When your site renders poorly or is difficult to use on many browsers you risk losing your visitors' interest, and, if you're running a monetized site, perhaps their business. Here's a quick list to make sure you're covering the basics:

Step 1: Ensure browser compatibility by focusing on accessibility
The same techniques that make your site more accessible to search engines, such as static HTML versus fancy features like AJAX, often help your site's compatibility on various browsers and numerous browser versions. Simpler HTML is often more easily cross-compatible than the latest techniques.

Step 2: Consider validating your code
If your code passes validation, you've eliminated one potential issue in browser compatibility. With validated code, you won't need to rely on each browsers' error handling technique. There's a greater chance that your code will function across different browsers, and it's easier to debug potential problems.

Step 3: Check that it's usable (not just properly rendered)
It's important that your site displays well; but equally important, make sure that users can actually use your site's features in their browser. Rather than just looking at a snapshot of your site, try navigating through your site on various browsers or adding items to your shopping cart. It's possible that the clickable area of a linked image or button may change from browser to browser. Additionally, if you use JavaScript for components like your shopping cart, it may work in one browser but not another.

Step 4: Straighten out the kinks
This step requires some trial and error, but there are several good places to help reduce the "trials" as your make your site cross-browser compatible. Doctype is an open source reference with test cases for cross-browser compatibility, as well as CSS tips and tricks.

For example, let's say you're wondering how to find the offset for an element on your page. You notice that your code works in Internet Explorer, but not Firefox and Safari. It turns out that certain browsers are a bit finicky when it comes to finding the offset—thankfully contributors to Doctype provide the code to work around the issue.

Step 5: Share your browser compatibility tips and resources!
We'd love to hear the steps you're taking to ensure your site works for the most visitors. We've written a more in-depth Help Center article on the topic which discusses such things as specifying a character encoding. If you have additional tips, please share. And, if you have browser compatibility questions regarding search, please ask!

Written by Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead
Link -from Google Webmaster Central Blog
Related:
High-powered search for Arabic-speaking engineers
What's new with iGoogle?
Information poverty
The Presidential debate: Expanding the town hall

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Running Hood to Coast

When I woke up at 4:00 AM in a dark field, after just a half hour of sleep, I wondered if I was crazy. When I put on my headlamp and running shoes for a six-mile run—my second of three runs that day—I knew that I was crazy. But I was happy about it because I knew that my teammates were just as crazy.

I was running Hood to Coast with the Google relay team. That's a 197-mile Oregon race that starts at Mount Hood, travels through Portland, and finishes on the beach in the town of Seaside. More than 1000 teams participate in the race, with 12 runners on each team running three legs each.

The 12 runners on our team were all Googlers from different parts of the company: AdSense, AdWords, Google.org, Engineering, Search and Analytics, Search Quality, and more. We had runners from a number of offices: Cambridge, Chicago, Mountain View, New York, San Francisco, and Seattle . Many of us had run Hood to Coast before and even won similar races for Google; some of us were rookies to all-night relay races. What brought us all together was a love of running and a desire to get Team Google to the finish line as fast as possible — even if that meant that we wouldn't get much sleep.

We started last Friday night with fresh legs, fresh clothes, and lots of enthusiasm. Over the next 197 miles we wore out our legs, made our running clothes and vans smell terrible, and generated even more enthusiasm by coming together as a team and cheering each other on.

We had a lot to cheer about, because everyone contributed great performances and because we ran faster than we expected. We finished in 19 hours and 45 minutes, which meant that we averaged 10 miles per hour for the race. That was good enough to finish in 9th place overall and in 3rd place in the corporate division—behind a couple of running shoe companies that you might have heard about.

We were more than happy with the result. As we gathered on the beach near the finish line, we enjoyed the sun, the sense of accomplishment, and the camaraderie of our teammates. I smiled and thought back to when I woke up at 4:00 AM in that dark field. Considering all that we had accomplished, maybe I wasn't so crazy after all.

Here's a picture of the Team Google runners and drivers, enjoying the beach at the finish.

Posted by Chris Holstrom, Technical Writer
Link - from The Official Google Blog
Related:
Update to Google Chrome's terms of service
Introducing Picasa 3.0 (and big changes for Picasa Web Albums)
Give your gadgets some space
Google Chrome now live

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Update to Google Chrome's terms of service

Whenever we release a product in beta as we just did with Google Chrome, we can always count on our users to come up with ways to improve it. This week's example: several eagle-eyed users and bloggers have expressed concern that Section 11 of Google Chrome's terms of service attempts to give us rights to any user-generated content "submitted, posted or displayed on or through" the browser.

You'll notice if you look at our other products that many of them are governed by Section 11 of our Universal Terms of Service. This section is included because, under copyright law, Google needs what's called a "license" to display or transmit content. So to show a blog, we ask the user to give us a license to the blog's content. (The same goes for any other service where users can create content.) But in all these cases, the license is limited to providing the service. In Gmail, for example, the terms specifically disclaim our ownership right to Gmail content.

So for Google Chrome, only the first sentence of Section 11 should have applied. We're sorry we overlooked this, but we've fixed it now, and you can read the updated Google Chrome terms of service. If you're into the fine print, here's the revised text of Section 11:

11. Content license from you
11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.

And that's all. Period. End of section. It will take a little time to propagate this change through the 40+ languages in which Google Chrome is available, and to remove the language in the download versions. But rest assured that we're working quickly to fix this.

The new terms will of course be retroactive, and will cover everyone who has downloaded Google Chrome since it was launched. Posted by Mike Yang, Senior Product Counsel

Link - from The Official Google Blog
Related:
Running Hood to Coast
Making terms of service clearer
Search findings from the third presidential debate
What's new with iGoogle?

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Don't get held up by expired check holds

Whether it's your high school yearbook, the ticket stub from a movie you saw with your first sweetheart, or the lock of hair from your child's first trim, we all have mementos that we like to keep around. However, we hope that your AdSense check isn't one of them!

As a friendly reminder, AdSense checks expire after 6 months, so once you get your check in the mail please don't forget to deposit it.

If you're holding onto to a check and it expires, your account will be placed on hold and you'll need to re-select a form of payment to resume payments the next time you've crossed the US $100 threshold. For many of you, you may consider trying EFT, Western Union, or local currency checks if they're available in your country. If you don't yet see your preferred payment option for your country yet, please know we're working hard to add additional forms of payment in the future.

So no lolly-gagging! Once you've got your payments, it's off to the bank with you to count all your ad-dollars and ad-cents!

Posted by Elizabeth Ferdon - AdSense Publisher Support

Link - from Inside AdSense
Related:
Announcing Google Chrome
Your guide to the Inside AdSense blog
Site maintenance rescheduled for October 18 at 10am PDT
The case of the delayed data

Read the rest of this entry »

Gmail Adds Voice and Video Chat

Google adds Video and Voice chat to Gmail

Official Google Blog: Plug in to the latest release of Google Chrome

Official Google Blog: Update to Google Chrome's terms of service

Official Google Blog: Google Chrome now live

Official Gmail Blog: Try Gmail in Google Chrome

SMS Text Messaging for chat

SMS to update your Google Calendar

Official Gmail Blog: Almost new in Labs: SMS Text Messaging for chat

Official Gmail Blog: Tip: Your email, wherever you are on the web, with Toolbar

Dev Release: 0.3.154.6

New in Labs: Reply add-ons

Use the Google Data JavaScript client library with Chrome and Safari

Introducing the Gears Geolocation API for all laptop WiFi users

Western Union launched in Panama

Update to Google Suggest

Workin' it on all browsers

Running Hood to Coast

Update to Google Chrome's terms of service

Don't get held up by expired check holds

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