Find Images that Contain a Certain Color

Google Image Search has a new option that lets you restrict the results based on their color. For now, the option is not available in the user interface, but you can tweak the search results URL to try it.

Searching for [red bird] shows good results, but you can still find some unrelated images. What if you search for [bird] and restrict the results to red images? Here's the URL:

http://images.google.com/images?q=bird&imgcolor=red
(you can replace "red" with "blue", "green", "teal", "purple", "yellow", "orange", "pink", "white", "gray", "black" and "brown")



You can try the new feature using this simple drop-down:

Black Blue Brown Gray Green Orange Pink Purple Red Teal White Yellow

Web Search Tips for Internet Explorer 8

Internet Explorer 8 has many useful features that improve the way you search and browse the web. If you like to search from the address bar, you can now get suggestions from the default search engine if you prefix your query with "? ". IE8 also shows previously visited pages that match the text you typed, but it only searches titles and URLs.


One of my favorite features is that the new version of Internet Explorer knows when you're using a search engine directly, without typing the query in IE's search box. The browser detects the query and displays in the built-in search box so you can easily find results using a different search engine.


Another interesting integration lets you find the matches of your query in a search result. After clicking on the result, go to the browser's search box and click on "Find" to see the exact matches and navigate to them.

If you open search results in separate tabs, IE uses distinct colors to visually group the related tabs. Right-clicking on a tab you'll find the option to ungroup the tab and to close the entire group.


Some of the search provides that are available in IE's add-on gallery offer enhanced suggestions. For example, Wikipedia lets you navigate directly to one of its pages, Yahoo and Live Search show instant answers for weather, while Amazon includes product images.

All of the search engines are accessible from the contextual menu so you can search for a text you select. They're added to the list of accelerators, which can include any web service that provides useful information about the selected text or the web page you visit: mapping addresses, translating text or bookmarking the page.


Unlike other browsers, Internet Explorer 8 encourages users to use multiple search engines and makes it easy to switch between them. Sometimes you can even obtain instant answers while you type a query or when you select an accelerator that supports previews.

Google Tests Enhanced Suggestions for IE8

Internet Explorer 8 has been released today and there are many reasons to download it if you use a previous version of IE. Microsoft has finally released a standard-compliant browser, tabs run in separate processes, the annoying modal dialog for finding words in web pages has been replaced with a less intrusive bar, the search box includes suggestions, the browser is faster and more polished.

Speaking of search suggestions, Google tests two features that could save a few clicks: displaying the top result for navigation queries, which usually have a single best answer, and showing ads related to the query at the bottom of the list of suggestions. I don't see the two features, but Sterling, a reader of this blog, spotted them while testing IE8.


Google also tests enabling search suggestions in Image Search:


In other news, Google Maps Germany added a questionable feature that shows suggestions when you start to enter a location, after being tested in Google Maps China. If you are logged in, the first suggestions are from your list of saved locations.


{ Thanks, Sterling and Luke. }

Undo Sending a Gmail Message

If you ever send a Gmail message too early or you change your mind after you press "Send", there's a feature that will help you. It's called "Undo Send" and you can find in the crowded space of experimental features from Gmail Labs.

After enabling the feature, Gmail will show an "undo" link when you send a message. You have to react quickly because the link disappears in 5 seconds and there's no way to bring it back. If keyboard shortcuts are enabled in your Gmail account, a better option than clicking on "undo" is to press "z". When you undo sending a mail, Gmail saves it as a draft and you can continue editing the message or discard it.


"Sometimes I regret sending a message the morning after. Other times I send a message and then immediately notice a mistake. I forget to attach a file or email the birthday girl that I can't make her surprise party. I can rush to close my browser or unplug the Internet — but Gmail almost always wins that race. (...) I could undo just about any other action in Gmail — why couldn't I undo send? (...) My theory (which others shared) was that even just five seconds would be enough time to catch most of those regrettable emails," says Michael Leggett from Google.

I don't think that 5 seconds are enough to realize that sending the message was a mistake, but it's a good trade-off between functionality and the need to provide a reliable service. A simple improvement could be a configurable delay before sending messages.

{ Thanks, Niranjan. }

Alternative Answers for GoogleLookup

One of the most interesting functions available in Google Spreadsheets is GoogleLookup, which uses an automatically-generated database of facts to find answers for questions like "What's the population of Quebec?" or "How many employees does Google have?".

Unfortunately, the answers aren't always accurate and it would be useful to choose a different result or to edit the existing one. A recent Google Spreadsheet update added a way to change the answer: click on the cell you want to edit, select "More options" and choose one of the other two alternative answers. Maybe Google will go one step further and provide an interface for editing the facts or flagging the facts that are inaccurate.


To use GoogleLookup, create a Google Spreadsheet and type in a cell:
=GoogleLookup("name", "attribute")

Some examples:
=GoogleLookup("Quebec", "population")
=GoogleLookup("Google", "employees")

Google Spreadsheets has a special function that returns information related to the Men's and Women's NCAA Division I Basketball Championship in the US and there's also a function for stock market quotes.

Homework: Create a spreadsheet that displays facts about 20 people, companies or geographical locations by using the Google Sets-powered AutoFill feature to generate the list of entities and GoogleLookup to find the facts. You can make the spreadsheet public and share the address in the comments.

Google Street View for UK and Netherlands

Google Maps added street view imagery for many major cities in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Glasgow, Belfast, Amsterdam and Rotterdam are some of the cities added to Google Street View.

"Having checked my old house in Sheffield, which I moved out of last year, I can tell that the photo was taken in the last nine months, so it's much more up-to-date than the Google Maps imagery for the area," noticed Tony Ruscoe.



More interesting photos at Google Maps Mania blog.

Gmail Media Previews

Gmail launched four new experimental features in Gmail Labs that show previews for some of the links included in an email. For now, Google supports YouTube videos, images from Flickr and Picasa Web Albums and Yelp reviews.

Here's an example: if you receive a message that includes links to YouTube videos and Flickr images, you'll see a list of previews below the message.


"Gmail currently automatically detects package tracking information, addresses, and event information and shows quick links to delivery status, maps and directions, and Google Calendar. So why couldn't Gmail automatically detect links in emails and show videos, photos, and ratings right inside these messages as well?" asks the Gmail blog.

While the previews are useful, placing them below the message is unfortunate. A Firefox extension like Interclue does a better job at showing smart previews for many other kinds of content and it's not limited to Gmail.

First Google Chrome Extensions

A design document shows an example of Google Chrome extension. For now, extensions are just fancy wrappers for user scripts, but there are plans to make them more useful by exposing browser features and allowing developers to create interfaces.

Before trying to install the extension linked at the bottom of Google's tutorial, you need to have a recent developer build or Google Chrome 2.0 beta.

To enable the support for extensions, edit the target field of the shortcut you use to launch Google Chrome. Right-click on the shortcut, select "Properties" and append to the Target field a space followed by:

--enable-extensions --load-extension="c:\myextension"

Download the extension, extract the content to c:\myextension and launch Google Chrome. The only visible effect of the extension is that it replaces the logo from Google's homepage with a lolcat, but you can edit the file foo.js and enter a different URL for the image.

Google Chrome 2.0 Beta

Google fixed many of the bugs from Chrome 2.0, released as a developer preview in January, and you can now try a more refined beta version. I've been using the new version since January and it's very stable. Here are some reasons why you should try it:

* Chrome 2.0 uses more recent releases of WebKit and V8, so it has a better performance. "The best thing about this new beta is speed — it's 25% faster on our V8 benchmark and 35% faster on the Sunspider benchmark than the current stable channel version and almost twice as fast when compared to our original beta version," explains the new Chrome blog.

* Full-screen. It may not mean much, since Chrome already minimizes the space used for the interface, but it's sometimes useful.

* Full-page zoom. Chrome no longer resizes just the text from a web page, so the enhanced zoom adjusts the entire page proportionally. Too bad that text zoom hasn't been preserved as an option.

* Form autofill. The browser saves the text from input boxes and you only need to type the first letters of a previously entered text to select it. "The next time you fill out the same text boxes, Google Chrome automatically shows you what you've entered previously, if what you're typing matches what you've entered before. This text appears right below the field you're filling out. To auto-populate the text field with the saved info, simply select it with your mouse or arrows on your keyboard," mentions the help center.

* Sort the bookmarks by title. Open the bookmark manager, select a folder and click on Organize > Reorder by title.

* Scroll using the mouse wheel.

* Mouse gestures for resizing windows: you can drag a tab to various locations on the screen to place it in a docking position or to maximize it.

* Greasemonkey support, with some limitations. Not all the Greasemonkey extensions will work, there's no user interface for adding scripts, but it's a simple way to extend the limited features offered by Chrome.


The beta version has a special download page and it's the same as the version 2.0.169.1. For a complete list of release notes, check this page.

In other Chrome news, Ubuntu users can try a very early release of Chromium for Linux, a pre-alpha build that lacks basic features like tabs. I installed this version in Ubuntu Intrepid, but the web page view didn't display anything, even the browser appeared to load pages.

{ Thanks, Stefano. }

orkut Birthdays in Google Calendar

orkut, Google's social network, lets you keep track of the birthdays of your friends. There's a birthday reminders section that can be enabled in the settings and you can add a gadget to Google's personalized homepage.

orkut's blog announced that there's another way to view the birthdays: in Google Calendar. "Now, in conjunction with Google Calendar, you can see all of your orkut friend's birthdays for the whole year. If you've already used Google Calendar before, you will shortly see a link (right below the "upcoming birthdays" section) where you can add your orkut friends' birthdays to your Google calendar."

If you don't see the promotional link, use this URL to subscribe to the calendar. Google uses a special kind of calendar that requires authentication and doesn't support notifications. That means you won't be able to receive email or SMS notifications that remind you of the birthdays.


{ via orkut blog and ToThePC. }

Ads Next to Picasa Web Albums Search Results

Google started to display text ads above the search results from Picasa Web Albums. In the recent months, Google turned to the services that weren't yet monetized to improve its financial performances: Google Image Search, Google News, Google Finance and now Picasa Web Albums.


"We've been testing different advertising formats for years (some have been more successful than others), and over the next few months, you'll see us continuing to experiment with new ads in new places. (...) Whenever we make changes like these, we carefully evaluate users' reactions to ensure we're holding true to our basic principles: that ads by Google should always be relevant and useful. Of course, these experiments benefit Google because they generate revenue from new sources — but by ensuring that we show the right ads at the right time to the right people, we'll add value for users too," explained Google in November.

Now that the revenues from advertising grow much slower than in the past, Google will probably launch more paid services like the App Engine or Google Apps Premier Edition. Even Google Checkout, a service that has been subsidized by Google for years, will use the same processing fees as PayPal from May.

How to Sort Tables in Google Docs

The word processor from Google Docs lacks a sorting feature for tables, but Firefox users can try an extension that adds the missing feature. Install TableTools, the best extension for managing tables, restart the browser and open the document that includes tables.

To use the extension, you need to right-click on the table and select one of the available options: sorting, filtering, copying data as tab-delimited text or as HTML. Google Docs replaces Firefox's contextual menu, so it's necessary to press Shift + Right-click in order to bring back the original menu. Select from the menu "Sort table column as" and choose the appropriate data type.


If you want to copy a table from Google Docs to Google Spreadsheets, select the cells, choose from the contextual menu: "Other table operations < Copy as tab-delimited text", and paste the text in a spreadsheet using Ctrl+V. Unfortunately, the filtering feature from TableTools doesn't work in a rich-text editor, but it's very useful if you visit a web page that includes long tables.

Google's Market Share in Your Country

Hitwise reported that Google's market share in the US was 72.11% in February. "Yahoo Search, MSN Search and Ask.com received 17.04%, 5.56% and 3.74%, respectively, and are down year-over-year at -17%, -20%, and -10% respectively." comScore has different numbers and they show that Google's market share in the US is much lower: 63.3%.

A report from the AT Internet Institute shows that Google's market share in France was 91.23% for February 2009. The major search engines that trailed Google were Yahoo (2.43%) and Live Search (2.29%).

Most of the news articles that discuss Google's market share only include the US, but it's interesting to see how popular Google is around the world. That's why I created a Google Spreadsheet where you can enter Google's market share in your country. Make sure to provide a reliable source for your information and to include recent data. The spreadsheet can be edited by anyone and it's not necessary to log in using a Google account.



{ via Zorgloob }

Google, the Thinking Machine

"Google, la machine à penser" ("Google, the Thinking Machine") is a 50-minute documentary produced in 2007 that tries to explain Google's extraordinary success by analyzing its principles and idiosyncrasies. The documentary shows many of the things that define Google's corporate culture: from the colorful lava lamps, the hiring process to the recreation facilities and the internal debates.

Michael Malone, columnist at Wall Street Journal, describes Google as an "enormous predator" that manages to dominate almost any market it enters. In his opinion, Google is a huge organization that takes pragmatic and sometimes cynical decisions, while trying to portray a friendly image. At some point, a Google engineer says that Google Analytics is the most used analytics service because it's free and it works equally well for personal use and business use.

Unfortunately, the video is in French and I couldn't find an English subtitle, but there are many images from Googleplex that could be interesting even without a translation.

Google Voice, the New Version of GrandCentral

Google Voice is the name of the updated version of GrandCentral that runs on Google's infrastructure. At this time, the service is only available in the US to the existing GrandCentral users, but Google promises to extend its availability soon. The good news is that GrandCentral will continue to be free and you'll only have to pay for international calls.

"Google Voice gives you one number for all your phones -- a phone number that is tied to you, not to a device or a location. Use Google Voice to simplify the way you use phones, make using voicemail as easy as email, customize your callers' experience, and more. Google Voice isn't a phone service, but it lets you manage all of your phones. Google Voice works with mobile phones, desk phones, work phones, and VoIP lines. There's nothing to download, upload, or install, and you don't have to make or take calls using a computer," explains the new help center.

Google Voice Blog mentions that the service added many new features: "voicemail transcription, SMS support, conference calling, GOOG-411 integration, low cost international calling". Voicemails are now searchable, you can embed them in a web page and you can receive email notifications. Text messages sent to your Google number are automatically forwarded to your mobile phone and they are also available in the web account, where you can reply to the incoming messages.



The following videos show how to use Google's new voice service:



To request a notification when Google Voice becomes publicly available, use this form. "We expect to have the service ready for new users in a matter of weeks, and are focused on opening it as soon as possible," promises Google.

{ Thanks, Nathan. Via Blogoscoped. }

Optimize Web Pages for Google Image Search

Google Webmaster Central blog points to an interesting video about improving your ranking in Google Image Search.

Here are some insights:

* it's not important to get the top rankings, users often click on the next pages of results to find appropriate images. There are many "subjective" queries and users tend to explore instead of trying to find the perfect result.

* use images that are large enough.

* use high-quality images.

* include descriptive text next to the images.

* place the images so that it's not necessary to scroll too much in order to find them.

* Google Image Search clusters (almost) identical images and usually only one of them is displayed. If more than one page embeds the image, Google tries to find the most relevant page for that query.

* there are many new use cases for Image Search: inspiration, visual dictionary for foreign languages, shopping, research.

Behavioral Targeting in Google AdSense

As part of the integration with DoubleClick, Google announced last year that it would use DoubleClick's DART cookies to improve the way ads are displayed on the Google content network. The list of improvements included in-depths reports for advertisers and preventing ads from being displayed too frequently to the same user. "We are enabling this functionality by implementing a DoubleClick ad-serving cookie across the Google content network," mentioned Google at that time.


The integration will soon expand since Google intends to offer behavioral targeting or interest-based advertising, as Google likes to call it. "We think we can make online advertising even more relevant and useful by using additional information about the websites people visit. Today we are launching interest-based advertising as a beta test on our partner sites and on YouTube. These ads will associate categories of interest — say sports, gardening, cars, pets — with your browser, based on the types of sites you visit and the pages you view. We may then use those interest categories to show you more relevant text and display ads," explains a post from the Official Google Blog.

The DoubleClick cookie contains a unique ID that is associated with all your visited pages that include ads served by DoubleClick. If you're visiting a lot of pages related to music, Google will place you in one of the 600 predefined categories (most likely, music enthusiasts) and will use this information to show more ads about music. For now, Google will use interest-based targeting to show better ads when the content of a web page doesn't include enough information to serve contextual ads.

Google also launched a page where you can enter a list of categories that reflect your interests. If you don't likely the new targeting options, the same page offers two ways to opt-out: either by setting a special opt-out DoubleClick cookie or by installing an add-on that protects your cookie. Another option is to block all the cookies sent from doubleclick.net. Google promises to offer an option for AdSense publishers to disable interest-based targeting, but the publishers still need to change the privacy policy to reflect the new features.

While behavioral targeting is not new and many other companies are using it, Google tried to alleviate the worries about profiling users: it won't create sensitive interest categories like race or religion and it won't cross-correlate the data with other information saved in Google accounts.

Google tries to use the enormous reach of the content network (75% globally) to attract more display ads, but the risk could be too high: Google's ads were perceived as non-intrusive, relevant and complementary to the page where they were placed. Focusing more on display ads, using recently visited pages to target ads to users could change that perception and Google will lose its most important asset: user trust.

Google Noticeboard

Google Noticeboard is a new service from Google Labs India that intends to improve the way Indian communities share information online.

Google Noticeboard is an application that helps people access and share information over the Internet using public digital noticeboards. Using Google Noticeboard, communities can access a variety of relevant information. People can create text messages or record voice snippets and post them to one or more noticeboards. Typically each digital noticeboard carries publicly accessible messages. Compared to the notion of personal communication using email accounts, the Noticeboard metaphor allows user to engage in public communication with communities.

Communities with access to shared computers can use the Noticeboard for exchanging messages related to community announcements, social interactions, local buying and selling, and information that is of wider interest to the community. The Noticeboard may also be used for the community to engage in a dialog with benefactors, public servants, and other service providers who are geographically distant. For example, residents of an apartment complex can use the Noticeboard for posting announcements, or NGOs who own and operate computer centers in several villages can use the Noticeboard to enable village residents to communicate amongst themselves

Noticeboard uses a Firefox extension and requires to enable IMAP in Gmail to send messages. The service seems to be aimed at people that don't own computer and don't have an email address, but the interface is very basic and limiting. Google Noticeboard's user guide (PDF) has more information.

Google Video Upload, Powered by Gears

Google Video started to diminish the importance of the uploading feature by placing the "upload" link at the bottom of the homepage. What's surprising is that uploading videos to Google Video now requires Google Gears so you can upload huge files simultaneously (up to 1 GB) and see the progress.


In January, Google announced that it will discontinue support for uploads to Google Video in a few months. "We've always maintained that Google Video's strength is in the search technology that makes it possible for people to search videos from across the web, regardless of where they may be hosted. And this move will enable us to focus on developing these technologies further to the benefit of searchers worldwide."

Even though Google owns YouTube, a much more popular video hosting service, Google Video attracts a different audience that watches longer videos and doesn't like the extraneous social features from services like YouTube. Google could use the same back-end for both services and promote Google Video as the place where you can watch Charlie Rose's interviews, interviews from the archive of American Television or public domain movies.

Google Apps Status

Next time when you can't access Gmail, Google Calendar is down or Google Docs loads very slowly, visit the Google Apps Status Dashboard. Despite its the name, the page shows the latest status data not just for the Google services that are included in Google Apps, but for the corresponding consumer services as well.

"[The] page offers performance information for Google Apps services. Unless otherwise noted, this status information applies to consumer services as well as services for organizations using Google Apps."

Today's status for Gmail informs that "a small subset of users" couldn't access Gmail and that the service has been restored for most of the affected users in about 3 hours. "The rest of the users should be coming back online within the next 24-36 hours."

Looking back at the historical data, it's clear that the Google application which has the most issues is Gmail. Another Google service that shows a detailed status dashboard is Google App Engine and it would be nice to show similar information for other Google services.

Will Gmail Come Out of Beta?

Five years after its release, Gmail is still a beta application. Gmail continues to add significant features, but most of the interesting ideas are now in Gmail Labs: tasks, offline Gmail, sending SMS or adding iGoogle gadgets.

It makes sense to add experimental features in the Labs section and remove the "beta" label from Gmail's logo. Felipe Zamorano, a reader of this blog, noticed that the Gmail logos created for some of the themes have two versions: one that includes "beta" and another one without "beta".



Google has recently launched a Labs section for APIs and started to add deprecation policies for the APIs that graduated from Labs. "For these graduates, we're increasing our commitment with published deprecation policies and other critical support services. The Visualization API terms, Contacts Data API terms, and Picasa Web Albums Data API terms include good examples of transparent deprecation policies. They state that we'll support each version for at least 3 years from when it's deprecated or a newer version is introduced."

Maybe it's time to show the same commitment for popular applications like Gmail or Google Calendar and drop the "beta" label.

Sergey Brin on "To Tell the Truth"

2000 was the year when Google started to become really successful: it grew from 7 million searches a day to 100 million searches, Google was now the search provider for Yahoo and the initial version of AdWords was launched.

But not everyone knew about Google, its founders or even what's a search engine. Here's Sergey Brin on the game show "To Tell The Truth" in an episode originally aired on 21 February 2001:


{ via FriendFeed }

Translate PDF Files and Office Documents

This seems to be a recent change: Google Translate can now be used to translate PDF files and Microsoft Office documents. Google first converts the document to the HTML format and then it displays the translated HTML file.

The nice thing is that Google converts the documents on the fly even if they haven't been indexed by Google. Just paste the address of a document in Google Translate's textarea and wait until the translation shows up. Unfortunately, the service is not well-suited for long documents: it only translated the first 9 pages of a PDF file.

Google and Question Answering

Google's auto-complete feature is useful if you're not sure how to formulate your query, but it's very important how you start your search. A post from reddit compared the suggestions for queries that start with "when was" vs. "in which year was" or "why" vs. "for what reasons".


The suggestions for the formal question were fewer, more detailed and more fact-oriented. Compare "for what reason must seats in congress be reapportioned every 10 years" with "why men cheat".

In fact, most of the formal questions are copied from school assignments. As one of the reddit users noticed, "the stupid column suggests actual phrases most people will type into a Google search. The intelligent column suggests high school or college homework, mid term, finals and research questions typed verbatim as seen on the assignment."

Google has improved the way it handles questions, but it's still a better idea to reformulate your queries and replace "for what reasons" with "motivation" or "cause", "when does twilight come out on DVD" with "twilight DVD release date", "in what way did ernest rutherford contribute to our understanding of the atom and its parts" with "ernest rutherford contribution atom".

Google already rephrases some of the searches, like the examples listed below:


Whether you copy a question from a school assignment or you are really curious to find some information, type short keyword-rich queries in Google's search box.

{ via reddit }

Export Gmail Filters

I'm a big fan of Google's Data Liberation team and many of the posts from this blog showed how to export data from a Google account. The first notable project of the Data Liberation team was Google Blog Converters, a way to migrate the posts and comments from a blogging service to a different service ("the initial release provides Python libraries and runnable scripts that convert between the export formats of Blogger, LiveJournal, MovableType, and WordPress").

The most recent project is a Gmail Labs feature that lets you import and export filters. "Filter import/export, available today in Gmail Labs, helps you work with filters in bulk, rather than just one at a time. The basic function is simple: turn it on from the Labs tab under Settings, and from the Settings > Filters page you can download a file containing some or all of your filters or upload a file to create a set of filters all in one go."

You'll export an XML file that lists your filters. The file can be edited in a text editor like Notepad, using the format described here, with some changes. Hopefully, the Email Settings API will be available to all Gmail users, even as a simplified way of migrating Gmail's settings to a new Gmail or Google Apps account.


How to enable this feature?

Assuming that you have a supported browser, go to Gmail Labs, use your browser's find feature (Ctrl+F) to search for "filter import", enable the option and then click on "Save changes" at the bottom of the page. The new feature extends the Filters section from Settings by adding options to export some of the filters or import a file containing filters.

Google Chrome, Bundled with RealPlayer

If you try to install RealPlayer, a media player available at real.com, you'll notice that the setup downloads Google Chrome. The option to install Google's browser is enabled by default and I assume that most people will not bother to disable it.


RealPlayer seems to be first third-party application used to promote Google Chrome. The browser has replaced Firefox in Google Pack and it's installed along with Google Earth if you're not paying attention.


Despite being the most aggressively promoted Google product, Chrome's market share is still low: according to Net Applications, the global market share for Chrome was 1.15% in February, compared to 0.78% in September 2008. "The biggest challenge all [browsers] face is that most people don't even know what a browser is or that there's choice," told Wired.com Brian Rakowski, director of product management at Google.

{ Thanks, Jason. }

Offline Google Calendar, Available for Everyone

After being tested in Google Apps, the offline version of Google Calendar is now available for all Google accounts. To enable it, you should click on "Offline (beta)" in Google Calendar's header, install Gears if you don't already have it, allow Google Gears to store information on your computer and then wait until the data is downloaded.


In the Offline Settings page, you can select the calendars that are available offline (by default, only the main calendar is enabled). "You'll be able to view events scheduled on these calendars the next time you access Calendar offline. Please note that calendars containing web-content events will not display correctly while offline," explains the help page.

Unlike the offline version for Gmail, the offline Google Calendar has many limitations: you need to manually go offline/online, you can't add events, edit the existing events, search your events or change the settings. Another limitation is that Google doesn't download all the events - I noticed a warning: "Your offline calendar only contains events from Feb 4, 2009 to Jun 4, 2009".





The read-only offline version of Google Calendar is only useful to quickly check your agenda when you don't have an Internet connection. For more features, you should check Mozilla Sunbird, a cross-platform tool that can synchronize with Google Calendar using CalDav. Make sure to enable caching if you want to view the events from Google Calendar when you are offline (you still can't edit the events or create new ones).

Earthquake OneBox in Google Search

If you're in the US and you search for "earthquake" using Google, you'll notice an OneBox that shows a list of recent earthquakes. The data is provided by the US Geological Survey.


Ask.com has a similar direct answer that links to a very nice mashup. There's also a Google Maps mashup that highlights the most recent earthquakes.

{ Thanks, Adam. }

Google Spreadsheets to Add Macros, Drawings

Google Spreadsheets, probably the most impressive application from Google Docs, tests some interesting features that are currently experimental and limited to trusted testers.

One of the features lets you record macros for common tasks. Instead of repeatedly selecting the formatting for a cell or a group of cells, you can record the sequence of commands that perform the formatting and click on a button to use the macro.

Another feature, code-named "Sketchy", allows you to insert different drawings. Tony Ruscoe spotted some of the images that will be available in a library that resembles Microsoft Office's Clip Art.

Google Spreadsheets' code also references an option titled "Solver", which could be a tool for solving optimization problems, and an option to protect sheets and cell ranges.


Update: Tony points to a post from 2008 with more details about macros in Google Spreadsheets.

Gmail Brings Back the Web Search Button

Gmail's search lacks many useful features that are available in Google Web Search: the popular "did you mean" query suggestions, using synonyms to expand the query, searching inside PDF files or other documents, sorting the results by relevance.


It's one of the few areas that didn't evolve since Gmail's launch and I think it's embarrassing to place the "search mail" and "search the Web" buttons next to the same search box.

As you probably noticed, the web search button is now back in Gmail after a brief disappearance. A small number of vocal users complained and Google restored the button.

Here's how Gmail describes its search feature:

"You can use Gmail search the same way you'd use Google Search, by entering a word (or multiple words) that appears anywhere within the message you want to locate. If you're looking for a message that contains the word shopping, simply type shopping in the search field and press Search Mail. Your results will be displayed with your search terms highlighted in yellow. Gmail doesn't recognize special search characters like square brackets, parentheses, currency symbols, the ampersand, the pound sign, and asterisks. It also doesn't recognize partial or similar matches, so a search for travel will find travel, but not travels, traveler, or travle."

How would you improve Gmail search?

Get Faster Gmail, Google Toolbar and a New Homepage

Google seems to be concerned with improving the user experience in Gmail and sometimes upgrading your browser can really speed up web applications like Gmail, especially when you are using Internet Explorer.

I happened to open Gmail in Internet Explorer 6 and I noticed a message that invited me to "get faster Gmail".


Google didn't recommend to install Firefox or Chrome, like it did in other cases, but it suggested to install IE7. "We noticed that your current browser, Internet Explorer 6, is out of date. In order to improve your Gmail experience, we suggest that you upgrade your browser to a faster Gmail supported browser that works on Windows."


Upgrading to Internet Explorer 7 is a good tip, but I was surprised to see that Google sends users to a customized version of IE7 that includes Google Toolbar and changes your homepage to google.com. Downloading additional toolbars should be optional and it has nothing to do with Gmail's performance. What's more, the customized package includes outdated versions of IE7 and Google Toolbar from 2006.

A similar page from Gmail's help center explains that you can "make Gmail run an average of twice as fast" by installing IE7, Firefox 3 or Chrome. Google links to the official homepage of Mozilla Firefox, instead of recommending a customized version.

Standalone Offline Installer for Google Chrome

When you download the setup for Google Chrome's site, you're only downloading the installer for Google Updater. The updater downloads Google Chrome's full setup and then installs the software. Here's an excerpt from a Squid report:

12/29/2008-13:42:29 http://dl.google.com/update2/1.2.131.27/GoogleUpdateSetup.exe
12/29/2008-13:42:29 http://dl.google.com/update2/1.2.131.27/clickonce_bootstrap.exe
12/29/2008-13:42:35 http://cache.pack.google.com/chrome/install/154.36/chrome_installer.exe

But sometimes you can't install the auto-updating software or you need to perform an offline install of the software. To solve these issues, Google Chrome started to offer a standalone installer.

Google notes that "the version of Google Chrome available from the link below may not auto-update to future browser releases, meaning you could miss important security fixes and feature improvements. If you install Google Chrome using the link below, bookmark this page and check back periodically to manually download newer releases." When I installed Chrome using the offline setup, Google added the auto-updating service.