YouTube Music Key

YouTube is the most important online music library and Google wants to make it easier to use. Until now, YouTube was optimized for playing videos, not for playing music. This was especially obvious when you used YouTube's mobile apps, which didn't offer features like playing videos in the background or caching videos.



YouTube wants to change all this. "Starting today, you'll see a new home just for music on your YouTube app for Android, iOS and on YouTube.com that shows your favorite music videos, recommended music playlists based on what you're into and playlists of trending music across YouTube," informs the YouTube blog. "In the coming days, you'll be able to see an artist's discography on YouTube, and play a full album with both their official music videos and high-quality songs our music partners added to YouTube."

The most important announcement is YouTube Music Key, a subscription service that lets you play YouTube music videos without ads, in the background and offline when using your mobile device. For a limited time, it costs $7.99/month (discounted from $9.99/month) and it also includes Google Play Music All Access. YouTube Music Key is invitation-only and you can try it 6 months for free. Apparently, YouTube will send email invitations to their "biggest music fans first." Billboard.com reports that the service will be launched on November 17 in the U.S., U.K., Ireland, Spain, Italy, Finland and Portugal.



It's not clear if Google Play Music subscribers have to pay extra for YouTube Music Key, but I don't think they should. YouTube Music Key looks like a great opportunity for Google to enhance the Play Music catalog with all the remixes, covers and indie music uploaded to YouTube.

{ Thanks, Theo. }

Add the Same File to Multiple Folders in Google Drive without Copying

Gmail works around tags (or labels) and any email message can belong to one or more tags. Google Drive however uses folders instead of tags and thus any file, or folder, can have exactly one parent folder. For instance, if you have uploaded a presentation file in FolderA, it can’t simultaneously exist in FolderB. Right?

Not really. You will be pleasantly surprised to know, at least I was, that Google Drive does allow you to place any file inside one or more folders without you having to create multiple copies of that file. This makes organization easier and if you edit this file inside one folder, all the other instances are updated as well since they are essentially pointing to the same file.

You can put the same file in multiple folders in Google Drive

Add Files to Multiple Folders in Drive

Here’s how you can place existing files or folders inside different multiple folders.

Open Google Drive in the browser and select one or more files or folders. You can use the Control key on Windows, or Command key on Mac, to select non-consecutive files and folders. Now press Shift + Z and you’ll see an “Add to Folder” pop-up. Select the folder where you wish to place the selected files and click OK.

That’s it. You have neither copied nor moved the files to that folder, you’ve merely created references to them inside the other folder. You can repeat the Shift+Z shortcut to add the selected files to any other folders in your Drive.

This little feature should come handy. For instance, if you have a folder of pictures inside Google Drive, you can Shift+Z a bunch of these pictures into another shared folder. You are saved from creating duplicate files on your Drive and if you remove a picture from the parent folder, the file is gone from other folders too.

And if you are into Google Scripts, you can also put the current folder into multiple folders programmatically as well. [H/t David Scotts]

function organizeFolders() {
  
  // Parent Folders
  var parentA = DriveApp.createFolder("Dad");  
  var parentB = DriveApp.createFolder("Mom");
  
  // Child folder inside Parent Folder A
  var child   = parentA.createFolder("Child");
  
  // Place Child Folder inside another Parent Folder B  
  parentB.addFolder(child);
  
}

---

This story, Add the Same File to Multiple Folders in Google Drive without Copying, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 10/11/2014 under Google Drive, Internet

New Google Calendar Favicon

Google Calendar has a new favicon and it looks just like the icon of the new Google Calendar app for Android, except that it changes every day.

The new icon is also added to the landing page that introduces the updated Google Calendar app. Here's a bigger version.

{ Thanks, Hamish. }

Google Calendar Permalinks

Google Calendar for desktop has recently been updated. The changes may seem minor, but they add some features that were already available in Gmail and make Google Calendar a better app.



Google Calendar now uses permalinks for all views, sections and events. You can quickly bookmark them, as the URL changes in the address bar when you switch to a different view, open an event or use the search feature. An important side effect is that you can now uses the browser's back and forward buttons in Google Calendar.

Another new feature is that Google Calendar updates automatically. You no longer need to click the refresh button to make sure that all the events are updated and you're not missing some new events.



The calendars from the "other calendars" section that are currently displayed are now placed at the top of the list. This is useful if you've added a lot of calendars.



{ via +Gmail }

A Smarter Google Calendar

If you wanted a Google Calendar that works more like Google Inbox, that's what you'll get in the new version of Google Calendar for Android.



The new Google Calendar is designed to be "a helpful assistant", so it creates events automatically using information from your Gmail messages. If you book a flight, buy concert tickets or make a hotel reservation, you'll usually get an email conformation and Google Calendar now creates events by extracting relevant data from your email. The nice thing is that the events are updated if you change your reservations or your flights are delayed and you get email updates.

Google Calendar now offers suggestions when you create events and the suggestions are based on the events you've previously created. "With Assists, Calendar can suggest titles, people and places as you type, as well as adapt to your preferences over time. For example, if you often go running with Peter in Central Park, Calendar can quickly suggest that entire event when you type 'r-u-n.'"

Google uses data from Google Maps and other Google services to make the calendar look better. The new Schedule View "includes photos and maps of the places you're going, cityscapes of travel destinations, and illustrations of everyday events like dinner, drinks and yoga".

The new version of the Google Calendar app for Android requires Android 4.1 or later and it will be available in the coming weeks on Google Play Store. Google also promises to release a Google Calendar app for iOS. Hopefully, Google will also update the desktop version and the mobile web app.

Gmail 5.0 for Android

Gmail's app for Android has a new interface based on Material Design. The application is now an email client, as it supports adding email accounts from Outlook, Yahoo Mail and other email services that use POP3 or IMAP, but it adds them separately from your Gmail accounts.

Gmail 5.0 for Android makes it easy to switch between accounts, find the number of unread messages and reply to an email.

The compose button is now at the bottom and it's a lot bigger.

It's a cleaner, more modern interface that uses some ideas from Google Inbox.

Google says that the new version of the Gmail app will support all Android 4.0+ devices and it will be available on Google Play over the next few days. If you don't want to wait, you can manually install the APK file from Android Police.

Google's PDF Reader for Android

The latest version of Google Drive for Android added a lot of new features: a new interface based on Material Design, a better search feature that shows results as you type, custom message for sharing files. "You can also turn on link sharing to make the file public and set access to view, comment, or edit. This automatically copies the link to the clipboard and allows you to paste it wherever you want."

Google Drive for Android now also includes a PDF reader. The application still uses the default PDF reader installed on your device, but you can now select Drive PDF Viewer. It works offline and it can be used from any other Android application, not just from Google Drive.

Google's PDF viewer is pretty basic: it has a search feature, it lets you select and copy text, upload files to Google Drive, print files and share them.

Google Tests Material Design Mobile Search Interface

Opera Mini had a cool feature: when disabling images, the browser still displayed some placeholders with the dominant colors of the images. Google tests a similar feature for mobile image search: while waiting for the search results to load, placeholders are no longer gray, they use colors from the images.

Google also tests a Material Design mobile search interface with fluid animations and smoother interactions.

{ via Nedas }

Google's Pac-Man Card

I'm not sure if this is new, but I thought it's worth mentioning. When searching for [pac man], Google shows a card that links to the doodle from 2010 that celebrated 30 years of Pac-Man.



Google doesn't have a card for doodles, so this was manually added. The card has two calls-to-action: "Play PAC-MAN Doodle" and "Click to Play", it includes the source of the doodle: "Google homepage, May 21, 2010", a large promotional image and some copyright information: "PAC-MAN™ & ©1980 NAMCO BANDAI Games Inc."

The game plays inline and there's a permalink for the game.

Knowledge Graph Cards for Video Games

Google's Knowledge Graph cards now include information about video games. You can find all about Pac-Man, Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, Candy Crush Saga, Grand Theft Auto, Need for Speed, Minecraft, Halo, Counter-Strike or any other game for mobile devices, desktop computers or consoles.



Google shows links to app stores and gaming sites. Cards also include ratings, screenshots, initial release date, developer information, supported platforms, publishers, awards and more.

{ via +Google }

How to Schedule your Gmail Messages with a Google Sheet

Have you ever wanted to write an email now but send it a later date and time? Maybe you are sending birthday greetings and would like the email message to be delivered on the exact day. Or you have written the reply to an email but would like to schedule delivery in the recipient’s time zone when the message is more likely to get read.

Microsoft Outlook has a built-in scheduler to help you delay the delivery of email messages. After you are finished writing an email message and hit the Send button, the message isn’t delivered immediately — it stays in your outbox and is sent at the specified time automatically.

Gmail doesn’t let you schedule a later delivery of email messages but there are browser extensions — like Boomerang and Right Inbox — that let you specify a future send date for your outgoing email messages.

These are however subscription based services that allow you to send only a limited number of scheduled email messages for free per month. The other concern is privacy – you will have to grant read and write access to your entire Gmail account to a third-party to use scheduling inside Gmail.

How to Schedule & Send Gmail Messages Later with Google Sheets

If you are reluctant to provide access to your Gmail account to another service, there’s an alternative – Google Sheets.

What you can do is compose all your emails that you would like to be delivered later in Gmail and then specify the exact delivery date and time for these messages in the Google sheet. The messages would be delivered automatically at the time chosen by you. Internally, there’s a little Google Script that takes care of sending the messages at the appropriate date and time.

Schedule your Gmail – Step by Step

Go to your Gmail mailbox and compose a few test messages that you would like to be delivered later. Your draft messages can have rich formatting, you can add attachments, signatures and even inline images. Make sure that you have included the recipient’s email address in the TO field of the drafts.

1. Click here to make a copy of the Gmail Scheduler sheet (v2.0) in your Google Drive.


2. Change the default timezone of your Google spreadsheet. The emails will get scheduled in this timezone.


3. Inside the sheet, choose Authorize under the Gmail Scheduler menu and grant the necessary permissions. This script is running in your own Google Drive and none of your data is accessible to anyone else.


4. Choose Gmail Scheduler -> Fetch Messages to import all the draft messages from your Gmail account into the Google Sheet.


5. Set the scheduled date and time for individual messages in column D of the sheet. You can double-click a cell and use the date picker or you can manually enter the date and time as m/dd/yyyy h:mm:ss in 24 hour format.


6. Go to Gmail Scheduler -> Schedule Messages and run the scheduler. You can close the spreadsheet and it will send messages at the specified time automatically.

Video Tutorial – Schedule Gmail Messages

Here’s a detailed video tutorial (download) that will walk you through the steps.

Scheduling Gmail messages with Google sheets is easy. Please do note that once a message has been scheduled, you should not edit the corresponding Gmail draft message else that particular message would be removed from the queue.

If you wish to edit the draft or need to change the delivery time once the messages have been scheduled, you can repeat the steps #3 to #5 and reinitialize the queue.

Awesome Google Scripts → Custom Google Scripts →

How to Change the Spreadsheet Timezone

The scheduled date and time that you specify in the cells use the default timezone of the spreadsheet. If you wish to send mails in a different timezone, open the spreadsheet and pick a different timezone under File -> Spreadsheet Settings menu.

---

This story, How to Schedule your Gmail Messages with a Google Sheet, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 24/10/2014 under GMail, Internet

Inbox by Gmail

Reinventing email is not an easy task, especially when you have a successful service like Gmail. 10 years after creating Gmail, Google is back at work to bring "an inbox that works for you". The new service is called Inbox by Gmail and it's not just a new interface for Gmail, it's a productivity service that helps you get things done.

"We get more email now than ever, important information is buried inside messages, and our most important tasks can slip through the cracks — especially when we're working on our phones. For many of us, dealing with email has become a daily chore that distracts from what we really need to do — rather than helping us get those things done," says Sundar Pichai.



Inbox syncs with your Gmail account and uses all your labels and filters, but adds some new labels that automatically categorize mail: travel, finance, purchases. Google groups messages from the same category into bundles, so you can quickly review them.



There are some new concepts: pinning messages, marking them as done, sweeping messages, highlights, snoozing messages.



* Pin emails you need to get back to: Google moves them to your inbox and they'll stay there even when you mark all the emails as done.



* When you're done with an email, mark it done to move it out of your inbox.



* Sweep marks all unpinned emails in a section as done.



* Snooze emails to remove them from the inbox until later: you can pick a time when they'll be added back to the inbox or you can snooze emails until you you arrive at a place (for example: home).



* Highlights show important content from emails directly in your inbox: images, documents, events, flight information.

In many ways, pinning replaces starring, mark as done replaces archiving, but they're something new. They're the building blocks of a smarter inbox. You can create reminders and Google adds them to your inbox and sync them with Google Now.



Inbox by Gmail is a work in progress. There's a desktop web app and there are mobile apps for Android and iOS/iPhone. You need an invitation to use Inbox, but you can get one by sending an email to inbox@google.com. "Starting today, we're sending out the first round of invitations to give Inbox a try, and each new user will be able to invite their friends," informs Google.

Inbox doesn't replace Gmail yet, it's more like a new take on email for power users. Mobile optimized, context aware and task oriented.

New Google+ Share Button

The share button from Google's navigation bar looks different: it now uses an icon instead of text and it's more compact. It's interesting to notice that Google used a text label only in the English interface.

Here's the old Share button:

Google Play Music Adds Songza Radio Stations

Google bought Songza and now it brings its features to Play Music, but only for All Access subscribers. The Listen Now section recommends radios based on moon, time of the day or activity. You can play music for working out, unwinding, having friends over, spending time with your family and more. "Each station has been handcrafted—song by song—by our team of music experts (dozens of DJs, musicians, music critics and ethnomusicologists) to give you the exact right song for the moment," informs Google.

I picked Unwinding and then Electronic Chillout and Bedroom Chillout.

Google creates a regular radio station and you can remove songs, reorder them, create playlist or listen offline.

"As part of this update, we’ve also redesigned the 'Listen Now' page so you can more easily discover new music. Now you’ll see cards for all of your recently played music, new releases you might be interested in, and radio stations based on what you like to listen to. You'll also notice that the new app uses Google’s material design, with bigger images, bolder colors and slick transitions," explains Google.

Songza-powered radio stations are only available in the US and Canada, probably because Songza is restricted to these countries. You can find the new radio stations in Google Play Music's web interface and the mobile apps for Android and iOS.



{ Thanks, Theo Winter. }