Video Chat on Your Android Phone

Video Chat on Your Android Phone: "Sometimes, the expressions on a person's face can mean much more than what they say. To help you stay in touch with your friends and family, we’re launching Google Talk with video and voice chat for Android phones.



You can now video or voice chat with your friends, family and colleagues right from your Android phone, whether they’re on their compatible Android tablet or phone, or using Gmail with Google Talk on their computer. You can make calls over a 3G or 4G data network (if your carrier supports it) or over Wi-Fi.

  

In your Google Talk friends list, a video or voice chat button will appear next to your contacts and you can simply touch the button to connect with them. Any text chats from the person you’re talking with will be overlaid on your phone’s screen so you can read them without having to leave the video. And, if you need to check something else, the video pauses automatically so you can go back to your phone’s home screen or another app. The audio will keep going even though the video has paused. Check out how this works:









Google Talk with video and voice chat will gradually roll out to Nexus S devices in the next few weeks as part of the Android 2.3.4 over-the-air update and will launch on other Android 2.3+ devices in the future. To learn more about using video and voice chat, check out our Help Center.





Post content Posted by Colin Gibbs, Product Manager and Wei Huang, Tech Lead

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Upload images in Google Spreadsheets

Upload images in Google Spreadsheets: "(Cross-posted to the Google Enterprise Blog)

We’re excited to announce that you can now upload images to Google spreadsheets. From the Insert menu, select Image... Then, choose an image file to upload into your spreadsheet.


With this feature, you can upload an image already stored on your computer, search for an image online, or add personal photos directly from one of your Picasa Web Albums.


Let us know what you think in the Google spreadsheets forum!

Posted by: Nick Santos, Staff Software Engineer

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5 Things to Try in Google Chrome 11

5 Things to Try in Google Chrome 11: "Google Chrome 11 has been released and there are many interesting features to try:

1. Use the Speech Input API by visiting Google Translate and selecting 'English' from the list of input languages. 'With this API, developers can give web apps the ability to transcribe your voice to text. When a web page uses this feature, you simply click on an icon and then speak into your computer's microphone. The recorded audio is sent to speech servers for transcription, after which the text is typed out for you.'


Google tests a similar feature for Web search:



2. A new interface that notifies users when popup windows are blocked. Here's a site that lets you test Chrome's popup blocker.


3. Type chrome://crashes in the address bar to see a list of the most recent crashes.


4. Delete multiple search engines from the tabbed settings page. Press Ctrl while clicking the search engines you want to delete.


5. A new Chrome icon. 'Since Chrome is all about making your web experience as easy and clutter-free as possible, we refreshed the Chrome icon to better represent these sentiments. A simpler icon embodies the Chrome spirit — to make the web quicker, lighter, and easier for all,' explained Google last month.

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Patents Search in Google's Sidebar

Patents Search in Google's Sidebar: "Google added a new feature to the sidebar: patents search. You no longer have to visit Google Patents to search the full text of the U.S. patent corpus since you can just click 'patents' in the vertical navigation menu. Here's an example.


It may seem like a minor improvement, but this shows that Google's specialized search engines will be available from the sidebar. At some point, you'll no longer have to visit Gmail to find a contact, Google Docs to find a file or Android Market to find an Android app.

{ Thanks, François, Andrew and Herin. }.

"

Ladies and gentlemen, start your editors! Registration now open for Google Code Jam 2011

Ladies and gentlemen, start your editors! Registration now open for Google Code Jam 2011: "Imagine you’re a ninja, trying to master your deadly grappling hook. Or perhaps you’re a chess grand master, outsmarting your opponent’s every move. Or even a Taoist philosopher, explaining the deep truths of the world to your followers.



It’s situations like these that you’ll face in Google Code Jam, our annual coding contest in which some of the best coders from around the world write programs to solve tough algorithmic problems. We believe that one of the best ways to sharpen your coding skills and stretch them creatively is through healthy competition. The intense experience of confronting a problem, conveying your solution to your computer and seeing the results emerge is a thrill unlike any other.



Today we’re opening registration for Google Code Jam 2011. Coding will begin on May 6 with our qualification round, where competitors will have as much as a day to plan their approach to our first few problems. From there, the contest heats up quickly: the remaining contestants will engage in several two-and-a-half hour rounds, wrangling each time with three to four algorithmic problems that range in difficulty from simple to fiendish. For each problem, you’ll wield the programming language of your choice, crafting the perfect algorithm to pit against the gauntlet of our test data. Construct your code flawlessly and you’ll be on to the next problem; solve enough problems, and you’ll make your way to the next round. If you continue to succeed, you might find yourself sitting on a flight to the finals.



The challenge begins in just over a month. If you’re a killer coder and you’re ready to compete, sign up on our website; while you’re there, make sure to check out the puzzles of the past few years to get a sense of what’s to come, and to hone your skills. If you’re one of the top 25 competitors, we’ll bring you to our Tokyo office to spar against your fellow coders. In the end, only one person will bring home the $10,000 top prize—and the title of Code Jam Champion.



Posted by Bartholomew Furrow, Software Engineer, Google Code Jam

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Fixing the little things

Fixing the little things: "Posted by Sara Goetz, Consumer Experience Specialist

Ever since I joined the Gmail team, my friends have been eager to tell me, 'I love Gmail! Except for this one thing...' And every day, Gmail users share their 'one thing' that would make Gmail better for them through our suggestions page. While we enjoy creating new solutions to old problems with features like Priority Inbox, those little annoyances and missing pieces are important, too. Recently, we've rolled out several small tweaks to Gmail to show it a little extra love.


Here’s a rundown:

• Auto-save contacts setting: Most people like that Gmail automatically saves every email address you send messages to; it can help recover forgotten addresses of former teachers, bosses, and people you contacted once but never thought you'd need to contact again. For some people, though, this feature can cause too much contacts clutter. Today, we're rolling out a new setting to let you turn off the auto-save option. You’ll see it on the General tab of Gmail Settings.


• Better warnings for typos in email addresses: We all make typos, even when addressing email. In the old days, when you accidentally left out the '.' in your '.com', Gmail would tell you there was an error but not point it out. Now, it’ll let you know which address has the problem -- much easier when sorting through a long “To:” list.


• Fewer annoying error pop-ups: Gmail's filters are really useful for organizing your messages automatically, but sometimes those filters can have unintended consequences, like sending mail you'd like to keep to the trash. When you replied to a message in the Trash, Gmail would show an error message you'd have to click through to continue working. Now, you’ll still see the error, but it's no longer a pop up and it gives you an easy way to move the conversation out of Trash right from there.


• Easier transitions between certain actions: You can create filters quickly from the 'Filter messages like this' option that shows up on some messages. Now, after you've saved your filter, Gmail will send you right back to the message you were reading so you can go right back to what you were doing before.


• Keyboard shortcut guide for everyone: Keyboard shortcuts can be a huge productivity boosters. If you've never tried them, try hitting Shift+? -- that's one keyboard shortcut that's now automatically turned on and gives you a peek into the rest of them and a quick link to enable from there.


• Refresh button: For a long time, people have pointed out the inconsistency of having 'Refresh' as a link in the menu bar, next to all of the buttons. We changed it to a button to match.

If any of these small fixes were your 'one thing,' we hope you've noticed the changes as they rolled out. When you find the next little tweak that would make you love Gmail even more, let us know.

"

Browsing Sessions

Browsing Sessions: "

We recently provided some simple insights we’ve gleaned from how people use private browsing. In this post we’ll take a higher view, and examine behavior regarding when people generally use their browser.

The tl;dr version: users who have more “sessions” (defined below) tend to browse longer, more diversely, and over a broader swath of the day than more casual users.

Preliminaries

Before we begin, the unit of analysis is the “browser session.” Here is our working definition: a browser session is a continuous period of user activity in the browser, where successive events are separated by no more than 30 minutes.

Despite its rudimentary nature, this definition of a session is still fairly common in the web analytics literature.

The median browser session, median number of sessions

As the graph indicates, the median session is only about 30 minutes long, with a very long tail. The first quartile is about 9 minutes long, while the third is about an hour.

The median number of sessions per user, on the other hand, is about 2 a day. Approximately 25% of users actively use the browser only once a day, while the 75th percentile has around 3 sessions a day.

More sessions ↔ longer sessions

Those users with a larger amount of sessions (say, 20 over the week-long study) tend to spend about 10 minutes more per session than those with around 10 sessions.

More sessions ↔ more varied session lengths

Users with more sessions also tend to have much larger variation in the lengths of their sessions, which suggests that for more frequent users, the use case of the browser is in general much more diverse.

More sessions ↔ wider range of use over the day

More frequent users tend to use the browser over a wider swath of the day as well. This is fairly intuitive – more and longer sessions should span a larger part of the day. It is striking, however, how large the range is for users with many sessions. This might be a consequence of the sample bias inherent in the Beta population. Most of our Test Pilot users are tech-savvy young men, so the wide range in which they browse is a little more understandable.

As you can tell there is a lot we can do with just analyzing sessions. We’ll be rolling out more simple insights like these soon – stick around.

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Browsing Sessions II: Extensions, Time of Day, Number of Sessions, and Session Length

Browsing Sessions II: Extensions, Time of Day, Number of Sessions, and Session Length: "

In our last post we delved into the rudimentary dynamics of the “browser session,” defined as a continuous period of user activity in the browser, where successive events are separated by no more than 30 minutes.

In this short post we’ll discuss another way of cutting the data. Below is the plot. For reference, each crossbar contains the 1st and 3rd quartile, along with the median.

A few insights regarding the plot:

• Users with more extensions have longer and more varied session times than those with fewer.


• Extensions in general do a better job of discriminating user behavior than the number of sessions.


• These trends tend to hold over the course of the day, with only minor fluctuations.

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Browsing Sessions III: Do Users Overestimate How Long They Browse?

Browsing Sessions III: Do Users Overestimate How Long They Browse?: "

In our last post, we found that the number of installed extensions was a good discriminant of heavier users. In this short follow-up, we’ll delve into the survey data associated with the Beta Interface study.  Here is a snapshot of some of the research we’ve been conducting.

Users overshoot their estimated browsing time

The graph above demonstrates that users tend to simply overestimate how long they use Firefox. Those that typically use the browser less have a more accurate assessment of how long they are browsing. But for users who state a longer browsing time per day, the actual browser usage is lower than their own estimate.

First, a note about the methodology behind this graphic. We estimate the average daily browsing time by aggregating the session lengths of Test Pilot users over the course of the study. Previously we have defined a browser session as a continuous period of user activity in the browser, where successive events are separated by no more than 30 minutes. We subset on the users that state they only use Firefox, to avoid the problem of a different primary browser. 

We thought of a few possible explanations as to why, for heavier users, the estimated time is lower than the stated time. Those users might, for instance, be online and using their computers quite a bit during the day, but have integrated their online workflow with their offline ones. Software engineers are a good example of this – we might expect a programmer to be working on a computer all day, leaving the browser open, and using it every once in a while.  So there may be the perception of constant browser usage.  This certainly rings true from the experience of the Metrics team – we’re on our computers almost all day, with Firefox open, despite working.  This is, however, only speculative at this point, since we don’t have data about when users are on their computers.

There are still some obvious methodological issues with this approach: a user might, for instance, use Firefox on a work computer (with test pilot installed), and a different one for home use, which could account for the difference. As such, we hope to include a survey question asking “How much time a day do you spend on this computer?” in the next version of the study.  At that point, we can update this research.

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