1. Drag attachments in
Simply drag files from your desktop right into the message you’re composing and they’ll upload from there. (Make sure you’re using Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox 3.6 for this to work.)
A good chart can take an elusive concept and clarify it in a visually appealing manner. This ingenious XKCD strip uses a pie chart, a bar chart and a recursive scatter plot, to demonstrate the concept of self description.
People keep track of lots of things in their Google Calendars — meetings, business trips, due dates and conference calls. But when I started my summer internship at Google, I wondered why it wasn’t easier to add calendar events for the fun stuff in life, like birthdays and sports schedules.
Now, when you look under “Other Calendars,” click “Add,” then “Browse Interesting Calendars” (or use this link to the Calendar directory), you’ll find calendars for hundreds of teams in dozens of sports leagues — everything from the National Football League to the Korean FA Cup.
When you subscribe to your favorite team’s calendar, you’ll see every game listed, updated in real time with the score as the game progresses.
You can also subscribe to a “Contacts’ Birthdays and Events” calendar, which will add all of your contacts’ birthdays to Google Calendar. Data is pulled from your Gmail contacts and your friends’ Google profiles.
Finally, we also have two new Calendar Labs features for you to check out: “Dim future repeating events” makes recurring meetings more transparent over time, helping more important meetings pop out, and “Add any gadget by URL” gives you the flexibility put any gadget you’d like in your calendar.
A picture is worth a thousand words.No need to type your search anymore. Just take a picture.
Find out what businesses are nearby.Just point your phone at a store.
This is just the beginning – it’s not quite perfect yet.Works well for some things, but not for all.
Your pictures, your control.Turn on ‘visual search history’ to view or share your pictures at any time. Turn it off to discard them once the search is done.
O3D is an open-source web API for creating rich, interactive 3D applications in the browser. This API is shared at an early stage as part of a conversation with the broader developer community about establishing an open web standard for 3D graphics.
O3D is an open-source JavaScript API for creating interactive 3D graphics applications that run in a browser window—games, ads, 3D model viewers, product demos, virtual worlds. O3D extends the client-side software of a web application by providing features at the following levels:
Easily turn existing Atom and RSS feeds into real-time streams.
PubSubHubbub is a simple, open, server-to-server publish/subscribe protocol as an extension to Atom and RSS. Parties speaking the PubSubHubbub protocol can get near-instant notifications via WebHook callbacks when a feed they are interested in is updated.
The protocol is decentralized and free. No company is at the center of this controlling it. Anybody can run a hub, or anybody can publish or subscribe using open hubs. Below is the list of products at Google that have already adopted PubSubHubub– and more are on the way!
The Closure Compiler compiles JavaScript into compact, high-performance code. The compiler removes dead code and rewrites and minimizes what’s left so that it downloads and runs quickly. It also also checks syntax, variable references, and types, and warns about common JavaScript pitfalls. These checks and optimizations help you write apps that are less buggy and easier to maintain. You can use the compiler with Closure Inspector, a Firebug extension that makes debugging the obfuscated code almost as easy as debugging the human-readable source.
The Closure Library is a broad, well-tested, modular, and cross-browser JavaScript library. You can pull just what you need from a large set of reusable UI widgets and controls, and from lower-level utilities for DOM manipulation, server communication, animation, data structures, unit testing, rich-text editing, and more.
The Closure Library is server-agnostic, and is intended for use with the Closure Compile
Closure Templates simplify the task of dynamically generating HTML. They have a simple syntax that is natural for programmers. In contrast to traditional templating systems, in which you use one big template per page, you can think of Closure Templates as small components that you compose to form your user interface.
Closure Templates are implemented for both JavaScript and Java, so that you can use the same templates on both the server and client side. For the client side, Closure Templates are precompiled into efficient JavaScript.
Enlist in BootCamp for Google I/O
This year, we’re introducing I/O BootCamp, a new event happening the day before Google I/O. BootCamp is an opportunity for attendees to get a crash course in our major development platforms and tools before they head into Google I/O. BootCamp will feature introductory “101″ content, hands-on lab sessions, and community-led discussions.
BootCamp is only available to those who are registered to attend Google I/O. Since space is limited, we ask that interested Google I/O attendees please register at our BootCamp site.
To register for Google I/O, please visit code.google.com/io.
Scott noticed that when you create a label named “buzz” in Gmail, the app will tell you:
“Sorry, you can’t create a label named ’buzz’ (it’s a reserved system label). Please try another name”
Does anyone know what this could be? The label wasn’t always reserved, according to Scott, who says he had used the name buzz before.
Looking up the word “buzz” in Google, we get several definitions, like the following: “If a place is buzzing with activity or conversation, there is a lot of activity or conversation there, especially because something important or exciting is about to happen.” Other definitions include “a long continuous sound” and “a word, idea, or activity which has recently become extremely popular” and “If you buzz someone, you call them, usually using an internal telephone line or a buzzer.”
Hot on the heels of the Apple iPad announcement, Google released some mockups for Chrome OS tablets.
“On tablets, the UI would be adjusted to handle larger touch targets. Initial explorations have maintained the same basic chrome layout, but enlarged the controls. Icons could be placed above tabs to provide larger, square targets. Panels would be placed along the bottom edge and could be opened with upward dragging motions,”explains Google.
