Google Books has undergone a major update today as it released new features. These features will help improve the link between readers and online books. The features include:
Improved Search within books: This would enable users perform searches within the book. Whenever a reader performs a search, users see an image of the part of the page where the word is present, upon clicking, the user is taken directly to the page.
Gmail has got another useful update which makes importing contacts much easy as well as support for additional fields. Previously Gmail only allowed the import of a few fields when a user imported contacts from other applications like Outlook, etc but that’s no more the case. Users can add additional fields to their contacts like their website, birthday, etc, giving you a chance to get all the information about each contact.
YouTube has taken a step towards making it easier for users to share their recently uploaded videos with friends, though it comes quite late. With this users will be able to syndicate their recent videos to numerous other services on the web which include, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Presently this is confined to sharing new videos alone, but might very soon let users immediately share their favorites as well over these networks. This would automate the entire process of sharing content and follows the numerous steps it has taken to make experience at YouTube better, which includes YouTube Real Time.
Chrome, Google’s browser hasn’t really ticked off the way as many had anticipated and which is why Google is asking people to help it with its publicity. Google is asking people to create an icon for Chrome using their creativity. Each person can submit a video demonstrating the icon till 22′nd of July. Now many Google haters would call it a cheap marketing tactic, but seriously to me it sounds way better than Microsoft‘s $100 million ad campaign for Bing.
Google Street View just keeps getting better and has recently become more navigate-able. Google has introduced a new navigation method, which is being termed the pancake. This eliminates one thing that I found extremely irritating and that drove anyone sitting next to me, mad: the countless clicks. Users can simply point any place or object and get closer to it by simply double clicking. What’s best with the update is that double clicking the pancake, users are displayed the best panorama available in that particular position. You can also zoom in and out of the image you have selected in case you don’t feel like getting closer to the selected location. You might also notice that the zoom has improved a lot.
Google has the speed, whether its search, mail (of course at times it fails). The main reason for this is primarily the simple design that Google keeps for each of its site not to mention the powerful servers it has. Presently the search engine has decided to make its tool behind its fast accessibility; Page Speed, open. The tool is available as a Firefox plugin and works along with Firebug, informing users on how they can boost speeds on sites. For example the plugin automatically compresses images for optimum performance, reducing the time taken to load each page.
There is another web service hit by phishers after their attempts at Twitter and Facebook. The current target is YouTube as reports state that many of its partners are getting emails that appear to have been sent by Google and YouTube teams. The email asks them to enter their login credentials and other personal information. While it’s pretty easy to pick out these phishing mails, the one sent from YouTube appears quite professional and neat. Just be careful if you are a YouTube partner and receive the following in your inbox.
Electronics device manufacturer, Acer yesterday confirmed becoming a part of the Open Handset Alliance. This means that Acer will step into manufacturing an array of handsets that will be based upon Google‘s Android Platform. We also witnessed an Acer netbook featuring the next generation of LCDs; Pixel Qi and the revealing of Aspire One netbook earlier this week. The device is the first in line of the many that is based on the Android platform. It appears that we will be seeing quite a number of Android based devices in the coming months (this includes ones from Samsung too).
