31 March 2015

Play Pac-Man in Google Maps



Google Maps has a cool Easter Egg for April Fools' Day: a Pac-Man mode. Just click the Pac-Man icon at the bottom of the window. You can also search for a place you think Pac-Man might be.



"You can now play the classic arcade game PAC-MAN in Google Maps with streets as your maze. Avoid Blinky, Pinky, Inky, (and Clyde!) as you swerve the streets of some famous places around the world. But eat the pac-dots fast, because this game will only be around for a little while," explains Google.









{ Thanks, Ken Drori. }

Chrome Selfie: Share a Reaction



Angelo Giuffrida, a reader of this blog, noticed a new feature in Chrome for Android. There's a new menu item that lets you "share a reaction". You're supposed to take a selfie, Chrome adds a screenshot of the page you were reading and then you can share the resulting image with your friends.



This looks like a special feature for April Fools' Day. In fact, you can enable this feature by changing the date of your Android phone or table to April 1st.















{ Thanks, Angelo. }

Unified Inbox in Gmail for Android



Gmail's app for Android is actually a mail client and it lets you add all your email accounts, including those from Yahoo Mail and Outlook.com. The main benefits of integrating the stock Email app are that it can now be updated faster and you only need to use a single app instead of two apps. The latest version of the Gmail app for Android brings a lot of new features: unified inbox, conversation view for non-Gmail accounts, better search suggestions, larger attachment previews and more.






The "all inboxes" section shows the messages from all your accounts, so you can quickly read them and write replies without having to switch between your accounts. Threaded conversations are no longer limited to Gmail accounts: conversation view is available for all your email accounts.



"Today’s update also includes more responsive animations (like when you open and close a conversation), larger attachment previews to help you see what's inside, and the ability to save to Drive with a single tap," informs Google.





Chrome Data Saver



If you're using the compression proxy from Chrome for Android or iOS and you'd like to see a similar feature in Chrome for desktop, there's a Chrome extension from Google that adds this feature. Data Saver is still in beta, but it works well and it's pretty useful: it reduces data usage by using Google servers to optimize the pages you visit.






"When this extension is enabled, Chrome will use Google servers to compress pages you visit before downloading them. SSL and incognito pages will not be included," informs Google.



It's nice to see that Google Web Accelerator is brought back to life. Even if Data Saver only works in Chrome and it doesn't have all the features from Google Web Accelerator, it's less controversial than Google's Labs project.

Google Photos in Google Drive



For the past 4 years, Google+ was the place where you could find some of the most interesting and innovative Google features. From powerful photo editors to automatically enhanced photos and auto awesome effects, from video conferencing to live streaming, Google+ integrated and upgraded many standalone Google services. Google now wants to set free some of the Google+ features and make them available outside Google+.



Google Drive now lets you browse the photos and videos uploaded to Google+ Photos. There's a new Google Photos section inside Google Drive and it's interesting to point out that the name is Google Photos and not Google+ Photos.



"To get started, just look for the new Photos menu in Drive for Android, iOS and the web. From there you'll be able to manage your photos and videos alongside other types of files. For example, you can now add pictures of wedding venues and cakes to the same Drive folder as your guest list and budget," suggests Google.






You can add Google+ photos and videos to Google Drive folders, print, download, share, delete or rename them.



The new feature is gradually rolled out in Google Drive for the web and the mobile apps, so you may not see it yet.



{ Thanks, David King. }

30 March 2015

How to Fake your Location in Google Chrome



Some websites may request access to your location so that they can serve more relevant information. For instance, if you are looking for a gas station, a maps website may use your current geographic location to display stations that are near your place without you having to type your co-ordinates.


Share Location in Chrome

Google Chrome will only share your location if you click Allow.



How Browsers Determine your Location


Earlier, websites would use the IP address to determine your approximate location but with the HTML5 Geolocation API, web browsers can more accurately detect your location using data from GPS, Wi-Fi networks, cell towers, Bluetooth and the computer’s IP address. If you agree to share your location with the browser, it will send these details to Google Location Services for estimating your location which is then shared with the requesting website.


To give you an example, open the Where am I app in your browser, allow it to use your location information and the app should be able to display your latitude and longitude coordinates (it is more accurate on mobile browsers as those devices have built-in GPS).


How to Fake your Geolocation Coordinates


When you happen to visit a location-aware website, the browser will always ask for a confirmation before sharing your location. If you aren’t keen to share your geographic coordinates, you can always deny that request or, if you are using Google Chrome, you can even send a fake location to the website.


Here’s how. While in Google Chrome, press Ctrl+Shift+I on Windows, or Cmd+Opt+I on Mac, to open the Chrome Developer Tools. Now press the Esc (escape) key to open the Console window. Switch to the Emulation tab and choose the Sensors option in the left sidebar.


Here check the setting that says “Emulate Geolocation coordinates” and specify the exact latitude and longitude coordinates* that you want to share with that website. You can use the Postal Address finder to know the latitude and location of a place.


Now refresh the current web page and it will take your fake location. Make sure that the developer tools panel is visible always else Chrome will not override your geolocation.


Related tip: Geotag your Tweets with any Location


The option to fake your geolocation is not available in the DevTools of Mozilla Firefox but you can use the Geolocator addon to send any preferred location to the HTML5 Location API.


Geolocation Coordinates




The story, How to Fake your Location in Google Chrome , was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 29/03/2015 under Google Chrome, Location, Internet.

26 March 2015

Google Keep Labels



Google Keep now lets you add labels to your notes. Just click the 3-dot icon below the note and select "add label". There are 3 default labels (inspiration, personal, work), but you can add your own labels.







Google Keep's navigation menu shows your labels, so you can quickly find related notes.






You can now export notes to Google Docs: just click "copy to Google Doc" and Google will create a document from your note.






Reminders are more useful. Google Keep lets you create recurring reminders, just like in Google Calendar. You can create reminders that repeat daily, weekly, monthly, yearly or use the custom option for more complex reminders






The new features are available in Google Keep's web app, Chrome app and Android app (Google Keep 3.1).

23 March 2015

Colorful Knowledge Graph Cards



Last month, Google tested some colorful cards for mobile search results. Now Google's mobile site shows Knowledge Graph cards with colorful backgrounds, but only if you use an iPhone and you're not signed in.







It's not clear if Google uses random colors or they're related to the image search results.



{ Thanks, Shinohara Makoto. }

YouTube Autoplay, Enabled by Default



As previously anticipated, YouTube's autoplay feature is no longer an experiment and it's now a regular feature enabled by default. YouTube automatically plays related videos until you pause videos or you disable autoplay. "When autoplay is enabled, a suggested video will automatically play next," explains Google.






You can disable autoplay by unchecking "autoplay" in the right sidebar or in the player's settings menu. YouTube saves the setting in a cookie, so it will no longer play related videos automatically until you enable the feature again or clear YouTube cookies.



YouTube has a video and a help center article that offer more information about this feature:



"Once a video is over, you'll see a 10 second countdown that tells you what's going to play next. The next video that plays is determined by your viewing history. If you want more time before the next video starts, pause the countdown by scrolling down past the video player. You can also pause the countdown by typing, either a comment or something into the search box. Also, you can click 'Cancel' on the countdown screen to stop the next video from playing."








16 March 2015

Google Feud: Guess Google's Suggestions



Google's suggestions are sometimes surprising, weird, funny. Google tries to guess what you are about to type and uses other people's searches to autocomplete your query. "Apart from the Google+ profiles that may appear, all of the predictions that are shown in the drop-down list have been typed before by Google users or appear on the web," informs Google.



Have you ever tried to anticipate Google's suggestions? Google Feud is a simple game based on Family Feud that shows the first part of a query and asks you to guess how Google autocompletes it. "Google Feud is a web game based on the Google API. We select the questions, then the results are pulled directly from Google's autocomplete," informs the site, which is not affiliated with Google.



Google Feud uses the top 10 suggestions for a query. You can get more points if you guess a suggestion that is more popular and you can only make 3 mistakes. There are 4 categories of queries: culture, people, names, questions.









{ via Techcrunch }

YouTube Global Search



For some reason, when you search YouTube for [site:youtube.com], you're actually requesting a list of all the YouTube videos, playlists and channels. If you combine this query with YouTube's filters, you can obtain a lot of interesting results:



1. Most viewed videos of all time. Use these filters from the dropdown: type:video, sort by: view count.






To add a filter, click the Filters dropdown and select one of the filters from the 5 columns. You can add multiple filters, but you can only pick a single filter from a column. To remove a filter, click the "x" next to the filter. There's also an option that lets you "clear all filters".






2. Most viewed videos uploaded in the past 30 days. Use these filters: type:video, upload date: this month, sort by: view count.



3. Most viewed videos uploaded in the past 12 months. Use these filters: type:video, upload date: this year, sort by: view count.



4. Most viewed videos uploaded in the past 24 hours. Use these filters: type:video, upload date: today, sort by: view count.



5. Most viewed HD videos of all time. Use these filters: type:video, features: HD, sort by: view count.



6. Most viewed 4K videos of all time. Use these filters: type:video, features: 4K, sort by: view count.



7. Most viewed 3D videos of all time. Use these filters: type:video, features: 3D, sort by: view count.



8. Most viewed playlist. Use these filters: type:playlist, sort by: view count.



9. Random videos with no dislikes. Enable these filters: type:video, sort by: rating.



10. Random popular videos. Enable these filters: type:video, sort by: relevance.

15 March 2015

360-Degree YouTube Videos



YouTube added support for 360-degree spherical videos and they're impressive. "You could let viewers see the stage and the crowd of your concert, the sky and the ground as you wingsuit glide, or you could even have a choose-your-own-adventure video where people see a different story depending on where they look," suggests YouTube.



For now, 360-degree YouTube videos are only available in Chrome and the YouTube app for Android. In Chrome you can use your mouse to drag the point of view, while in the Android app you can move your device around or manually change the point of view.



Here's a playlist with 360-degree videos:






If you want to upload your own panoramic videos, there's a help center article that offers more information. YouTube supports 5 cameras: Bublcam, Giroptic 360cam, IC Real Tech Allie, Kodak SP360, Ricoh Theta. For now, you need to run a script to insert metadata, but YouTube will try to make it easier to upload videos in the future.





Shared With Me, Back in Google Drive



Google Drive has recently changed the name of the "Incoming" section, which is now called "Shared with me", just like in the old Google Drive interface.



"With the launch of the new Drive UI last year, we renamed the 'Shared with me' section to 'Incoming' and tweaked the functionality a bit. We've since heard feedback from people using the new UI that they miss the 'Shared with me' functionality, so today, we're bringing it back," informs Google.






"Incoming" was shorter, but "shared with me" is easier to understand. It's more obvious that the section includes the files and folders that other people have shared with you.

YouTube Caches Videos



I noticed that my Nexus 5 uses a lot of storage for cache and I wanted to see which Android app caches so much data. It turns out that YouTube used 269MB for cache. I didn't use YouTube's offline feature for music videos, so it seemed strange to see that YouTube suddenly caches a lot of data.






It turns out that YouTube's mobile app for Android now caches the videos you watch. If you watch a video again, YouTube no longer has to download the same chunked files: it uses the cache. After watching a video, I switched to the airplane mode and I could play the video offline, even if it's not supported by YouTube Music Key.






Even YouTube's desktop site started to cache videos again. Since switching to adaptive streams (DASH) in the HTML5 player, YouTube downloaded videos every time you watched them, wasting a lot of bandwidth.





12 March 2015

Google Inbox Links to Google Contacts



When Google Inbox launched, many people wondered why it doesn't have a contact manager. Now that Google Contacts has a new preview version powered by Material Design, Google Inbox's desktop site added a Contacts link to the sidebar. It only opens Google Contacts in a new tab, but it's still useful.






{ Thanks, Paolo Amoroso. }

Google Store



The Devices section from Google Play has moved to the new Google Store, "the new home for the latest products made with Google". You can buy Nexus phones and tablets, Chromebooks, Android Wear smartwatches, Chromecast and Nexus Player, Nest Thermostat and Nest Protect and a lot of accessories for Google products, including Google Glass.






"Need a hardware device? Think the Google Store. Need digital content to enjoy on your device? Think Google Play," explains Google. You can sign up for the Google Store newsletter to find the latest offers and updates.



Why would Google move the hardware section from Google Play? I think there are many reasons: Google now sells a lot of hardware products and not all of them have something to do with Android, the Devices section wasn't even included in the Google Play Store app for Android. Another reason could be that Google plans to have its own offline stores and maybe release mobile apps for Google Store.

09 March 2015

Quickly Save your Gmail Messages in Evernote with a Google Sheet



Your Evernote account has a secret email address and any email message forwarded to this address is automatically archived as a new note in one of your Evernote notebooks. You can forward PDFs, travel receipts, audio clips, images and other important emails to this email address and they will be archived forever in your Evernote account.


You can send emails from Gmail to your Evernote account manually or you can use services like Zapier or IFTTT to automate the task of creating notes in Evernote from your Gmail mailbox. For instance, you can star a message in Gmail and it is sent to Evernote. Or can you apply the label Evernote to a message inside Gmail and IFTTT will forward the message with attachments to Evernote.


While it is easy to integrate Gmail and Evernote with the help of external services, a downside is that you would need to grant full access to your Gmail mailbox to a third party service. If you are not happy doing that, there’s an alternate solution that uses Google Sheets and it can be implemented in less than a minute.


Let’s see how:


Gmail to Evernote


Send Gmail Messages to Evernote



  1. Click here to copy the Gmail to Evernote spreadsheet in your Google Drive.

  2. Put your Evernote email address (help) and other values in column D. Refer to the illustrated screenshot for details.

  3. Now click the Start button, authorize the script and it will run in the background. Close the sheet and any messages in Gmail with the label Evernote (cell D4) will be sent to your Evernote in specified notebook and tag.


That’s it. The script is open-source and no third-party has access to any of your Gmail or Google Drive data. You can also consider using the Bulk Auto Forward tool for automated sending to other email based workflows like Kindle, Instapaper, Salesforce, WordPress and so on.


Later, if you wish to stop the Google sheet from forwarding your Gmail messages to Evernote, simply click the Stop button. Also, please note that you should only specify tag and notebook names that already exist in your Evernote. If they do not existing, the email will get saved in your default Evernote notebook.


See more Evernote tips & tricks.




The story, Quickly Save your Gmail Messages in Evernote with a Google Sheet , was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 09/03/2015 under Evernote, GMail, Internet.