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Google tests some new design enhancements in the personalized homepage:* rounded corners for tabs* no search box (you can enable by clicking on the “Search” link at the top)* no @gmail.com in your username* “Add stuff” at the top.Here’s how it looks by default:… and after clicking on the “Search” link (that nobody will notice):{ Thank you, James. }
It wouldn’t be the first time when Google tests new designs for the (classic) homepage or the search results pages, but this time someone saw a radical change. The links to Google’s services were detached from the search box and were moved in the top left corner. Because there’s no visible connection between the links and the search box, this move allowed Google to add non-search services: Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Docs. Now that anyone c
Sometimes, the sound of your friend’s voice or the sight of a favorite smiley may not be enough; you might need to connect by sending along your writing portfolio, or a recording of duck calls, or a video of a guy throwing silly putty from the roof of a parking structure.In the heat of the moment, we can’t anticipate what files you may need to send. That’s why you can send any file of any size and type, any time. For more on sending files through Google Talk, watch this.Peter AdamsOnline Operations Coordinator
Posted by Min Zeng, Google Maps teamLast week, I was trying to buy blue lightbulbs for a party at my house, and I ended up calling ten different stores before I found one that carried them. Now with the new calling feature on Google Maps, I can do this quickly and easily, and never have to lift a finger to dial
Today we launched a new feature of Google Calendar: “Search public events.” It lets you search over public events added by others using Calendar and also events we’ve added by working with partners to provide movie listings, concerts, and all sorts of other fun events
Every once in a while, our products go through a change that we just can’t wait to get out to you. That’s the case with Google Desktop 4.5, which introduces a visual refresh of the Sidebar and some Google Gadgets
When was the last time you visited a website where you couldn’t find what you wanted? Happens way too often, doesn’t it? Or perhaps you’ve recently had a bad experience with another piece of technology — a mobile phone, DVD player, or household appliance that you just couldn’t figure out how to use
Very recently we’ve had some updates to Gmail, including:
Now we have the mute button (Adam calls it the murder button). Actually I take that back. It’s not a button, it’s an option and a shortcut key. [Continue Reading >>]
Your very own personalized search history can be turned on or off for regular search history, and it now includes your Google Maps visits. Via Googlified.
Ed Oswald of Betanews writes that Yahoo is planning to integrate a AJAX-powered version of Yahoo! chat into the web-based Yahoo mail application. The new client is expected to debut in early 2007, and will be a direct competitor to Google’s Gmail / Talk integration.
Gmail has updated the user interface over the last 15 minutes. There is now a reply button and a drop down box with various options in the right-hand top corner of each message in a “thread”. There is also a updated “reply to” link at the bottom of each message. If you don’t see what I’m seeing, try logging out and back in to see the changes.
UPDATE: Another new feature almost slipped past me. You can now forward an entire conversation or “thread” by using the “forward all” option.
I’ll exemplify with some spam that’s sitting in my inbox.
I really like the new reader feature where you can add a new feed and then immediately add the feed to a folder, without having to go to the “manage feeds” page.
I found a small bug browser problem with that feature.
I added 1938media’s feed, and their most current post has an embedded video (naturally). Google reader displays videos/images in posts and the drop-down box for choosing a folder to put the feed into is hidden by the embedded video. Changing the CSS z-index of the drop-down div should take care of it. As Mihai pointed out in the comments, the bug is actually in the browsers, due to the fact that pluging content is rendered separately from other content and doesn’t work well with the concept of layers.
If it matters, this was in Opera 9 on Win XP.
UPDATE: After reading Mihai’s comment, I started thinking about lots of crazy possibilities such as detecting if there was an embedded object in the first post, and if so, have the drop-down list actually drop up instead of down, or artificially sliding the embedded content down, or even making the drop-down list shorter so you could still scroll to see all the options.
Other possibilities might be to use an old-fashioned select element instead of a div. With that you sacrifice the *cool* “create-a-new-folder-right-within-the-drop-down-box” feature. Also I’m not 100% that the select element would be immune to this layer problem.
I’ve done some remodeling around here and scrubbed down Gstories. The bathwater turned out to be pretty dirty, so now what you’re looking at should be a bit cleaner.
What we had before:
The good-looking site you’re now browsing:
Except for a few hacks that need to be figured out to make this look beautiful in IE 5.5/6.0, Gstories is a proud new blog, shiny as a quarter and slick as a whistle.
Google video has just released some new searching and sorting features.
For example, if I was searching for “funny commercials”, I’d see a screen like what you see below, and to the right there are some new options to help sort the videos in the most relevant way for you. There are two drop down boxes, one to choose the length of video you’d like to find- Short (4 min or less), Medium (4 to 20 min) and Long (more than 20 min). Next to that there are some more options for sorting the results. You can sort by Relevance, Rating, Date or Title to help you zero in on the video you were looking for. Title & date can really help when you’re looking for a video you’ve already seen and rating can be a good way to find “better” videos.
I complained almost a month ago that Google Reader should allow me to drag and drop my feeds in the left pane to rearrange them and move them among categories/folders. Google has done something about it.
There is now an option to move a feed to a folder right after you add it. This not quite as good as what I wanted, but it’s better than nothing. Now all they need to do is add this functionality to all feeds, not just a new feed right after you add it. If I’m looking at a feed and reading it, that’s the perfect time to make a judgment call as to what folder(s) it should go in. Why can’t I have a tiny drop-down box at the top to add the current feed to a different folder and optionally remove it from current folders?
The Google reader team rolled this feature out over a week ago and I finally caught on- Thanks Google.
They should probably make this part of the official Gmail interface, but for now we’ll have to use this greasemonkey script to add the ability to have multiple signatures in Gmail.
With all the hype people are giving Google over Writely, Google spreadsheets, google calendar etc, people are forgetting about the other people who where there first. For example, Oddpost was there before Gmail with a really cool AJAX user interface in some ways nicer than Gmail, before getting bought by Yahoo!
I just want to draw attention to 37 signals and their great products. Go check them out. They’re not all free, but they’re really cool.
Google employee and blogger Mihai Parprita has created a greasemonkey script that runs in Firefox and will integrate Google Reader with Gmail. You can download it and give it a try.
If you want it spelled out:
Did I go way overboard on the links in this post or what?
Peter Welson and Jen Fitzpatrick (who runs Google’s user experience team), talk about “The Science and Art of User Experience at Google” it’s almost a half hour long, but it’s got some good tidbits, including talking about the utter simplicity of Google’s homepage and why there aren’t all kinds of links to all of Google’s products. Sometimes we need the discipline to leave things out.
According to the official Google reader blog, Google has just released a few more upgrades to the Google reader interface. This comes one week after their big improvements to their reader. Here’s a quick summary of the new features:
So there you have it. Google keeps listening to users’ input and continues to improve the product. Now all I’m waiting for is drag-and-drop rearrangement for feeds/categories so I don’t have to go to the “Manage Categories” page, which I think is not the most intuitive page.
Danny Sullivan just published his top 25 list of rants about what Google is doing wrong. I have to agree with him on some points. I think he’s hit the nail on the head for the following points:
6. Google.com doesn’t show the same results regardless of country. You have country-specific editions. They allow people to choose if they want a country skew. Given this, don’t automatically skew if someone has chosen to search the entire Web. It’s confusing when people in different countries compare results.
I have to agree that it gets really annoying for those of us who travel alot to get sent to different “country-specific” Google sites that have different results. My advice, don’t automatically redirect the user based on IP/Geolocation information. Instead, give the user a link to the appropriate country-specific site, but if I go to www.google.com that’s where i want to go.
18. Gmail’s “custom from” is a problem. If you’re going to let me send things as if I have my own mail server, then ensure people believe I have my own mail server. Your “Custom From” problem is causing people to think they have to now send to both my “real” domain and my Gmail address. I have my own SMTP (define) server. I use yours because I want to archive my outgoing mail. But I can’t do this if you don’t fulfill the promise that I’d have my own domain in the sender field. Charge me if you have to, but fix it.
19. Gmail doesn’t display more than 100 items. After archiving 50,000 messages 100 items at a time, I really wished for the ability to view more than 100 items per page. I still want that when I’m having to review about 300 spam items per day. This can’t be that hard. Can’t we have it?
Now I really like Gmail, but there are a few areas where it can be improved. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again- I can’t empasize this enough- Before Gmail becomes a “real” email client, I need the ability to change my from address. Period. Until this happens I just can’t use gmail for business. Danny’s suggestion about displaying more than 100 emails per page makes a lot of sense especially these days with bandwidth getting cheaper and cheaper, just send it on over. And I will pay too- anything that’s going to automate the things I do and save me time and frustration, is worth the investment.
Anyways, if you want to read the rest of Danny’s rants, be my guest. 
A relatively new web application, Writely, created by the California upstart “Upstartle” has been bought by Google. Writely allows you to create, edit, share and store your documents on the web and have them accessible whenever and wherever you want- and it does it all within your browser. Links Writely - Writely’s blog post - Google’s blog post.
You know how Google often has a special logo for the holidays etc? Well, if there’s no special Google logo up right now and you want to see them anyway, you can browse past ones right at Google.
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