Google Editions to Be Released This Month

Google Editions to Be Released This Month: "The Wall Street Journal reports that Google will launch this month Google Editions, the service that will allow users to read copyrighted books from Google Book Search.

The long-delayed venture — Google executives had said they hoped to launch this summer — recently has cleared several technical and legal hurdles, people close to the company say. It is set to debut in the U.S. by the end of the year and internationally in the first quarter of next year, said Scott Dougall, a Google product management director. (...)

Google Editions hopes to upend the existing e-book market by offering an open, 'read anywhere' model that is different from many competitors. Users will be able to buy books directly from Google or from multiple online retailers — including independent bookstores — and add them to an online library tied to a Google account. They will be able to access their Google accounts on most devices with a Web browser, including personal computers, smartphones and tablets.

This will finally answer the question 'How can I read an entire book in Google Book Search?'. Right now, you can only read books in the public domain and some books from the Partner Program. 'Many of the books in Google Books come from authors and publishers who participate in our Partner Program. For these books, our partners decide how much of the book is browsable - anywhere from a few sample pages to the whole book,' explains Google. Google's partners will now have an incentive to allow full access to the books: users will actually pay to read the books.

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Badges on orkut! Can you collect them all?

Badges on orkut! Can you collect them all?: "

You might have noticed something new in orkut. Some of your friends may have little icons on their profile pages, and you may start seeing some updates from friends as well. These are our new orkut badges!

Badges are another way for you to express yourself on orkut, with different sets of badges for users that engage with orkut in different ways. For example, if you've been on orkut for a long time, you might get an Early User badge! Or, if you created a popular promotion, you might get a Promoter badge. Once you win a badge, it's up to you if you want to display it on your profile or not.




There will be lots of badges available for you to collect, based on your interactions with orkut. Here's an initial list of badges that we plan to make available over the coming weeks. Can you collect them all?

Also, keep an eye out for more, because who knows what other badges might show up around here? Imagination is the limit! :)




Posted by Igor Cananea and Ranveer Kunal, software engineers

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New in Labs: Recently used emoji

New in Labs: Recently used emoji: "Posted by Darren Lewis, Software Engineer

When we added emoticons in Gmail, you responded with a nice big smile , but then you asked for more. So we added hundreds more emoticons through Gmail Labs. “But alas!” you cried. “How can I ever keep up with so many different choices? I am overwhelmed by the sheer immensity of emotion , amusement , and cute animals that Gmail has to offer.' Well, don’t despair, fine purveyor of emoticons. There is now a solution: “Recently Used Emoji” in Gmail Labs, which keeps track of the ten most recent emoticons you’ve used, and saves them for easy access. To turn it on, just visit the Labs tab of Gmail Settings.


No more searching through dozens of cat faces for the one that says, “I miss you, but I’m still ambivalent about our weekend plans.” You can now triumph over the plethora of emoticons, and easily add a pile of emotion to any email that you choose — let us know how it goes.

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Tips and Tricks: Images in cells

Tips and Tricks: Images in cells: "As we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, you can now insert images into a cell. With the image() formula you can link to a publicly accessible image and control how it will look with optional parameters. This is useful for bringing a visual element to your spreadsheets for things such as a product catalog listing.



For example the formula

=image('http://www.google.com/intl/en_ALL/images/srpr/logo1w.png', 1) will scale the image down in the current cell. With other parameters you can choose from a variety of sizing options including size to fit, stretch, original size, and even specify a custom size.

Try them all out using this template and let us know what you think in the comments.



Posted by: Li-Wei Lee, Senior Software Engineer

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Drag and Drop Upload in Google Docs

Drag and Drop Upload in Google Docs: "Google Docs added support for drag and drop uploads, a feature that's already available in Gmail. The main advantage is that the new feature doesn't use Flash or another plug-in, so it should be more reliable.

'If you're using Chrome, Safari, or Firefox, you'll be able to quickly drag files into the drop area and shoot them up to the cloud,' informs the Google Docs blog.


In the near future, this option could be used to upload folders, not just multiple files. Google Chrome already supports directory upload using the input tag.

Google Docs also added a menu option that lets you hide the title bar: View > Compact Controls. It's only available in the new document editor and it's probably more useful than the 'hide controls' feature from the previous version of the editor.

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Google Hotpot: Local Recommendations from Friends

Google Hotpot: Local Recommendations from Friends: "Google launched a new service called Hotpot that promises to improve local search results using recommendations from your friends. 'With Hotpot, we're making local search results for places on Google more personal, relevant and trustworthy,' explains Google.

To get useful recommendations, you first need to share your ratings with your friends, but Hotpot's main problem is that it's not connected to any social network. When you first visit the service, Google asks you to enter a nickname for Google Places and to send invitations to some of your Gmail contacts. You're creating a new contacts group in a standalone application, instead of using an existing list of friends.



Google Hotpot is mostly useful when you try to find a place using Google's local search engine. Google personalizes the results by promoting the local businesses recommended by your friends.


Unfortunately, Hotpot is a completely unnecessary service, considering that you could already review places and that the reviews were already public. Google Maps was one of the first Google services that integrated with Google Profiles, so sharing your ratings with your friends was the obvious next step. Google Reader did that in 2007, but many users were unhappy because their favorite posts were automatically shared with Google Talk contacts and some of those contacts were automatically added by Google. Two years later, Google Buzz made the same mistake by automatically subscribing users to the list of Google Talk friends.

Google will never develop successful social services until users are able to create a list of friends that could be used in multiple services. To avoid the backslash from the Google Buzz launch, Google Hotpot asks you to manually add friends, but maintaining separate lists of friends is cumbersome.

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Google Docs AutoCorrect

Google Docs AutoCorrect: "If you frequently make a mistake when you type a word in Google Docs, you can now ask Google to automatically correct the mistake for you. Right-click on the word, select 'AutoCorrect' and pick the most appropriate correction.


By default, Google Docs automatically converts (c) to the copyright sign ©, 1/2 to ½, but you can add other rules to the 'Text substitution' section of the preferences dialog.


Google Docs also added LaTeX shortcuts to the equation editor and you can now insert images inside of a cell in a spreadsheet.

{ via Google Docs Blog }

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