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."

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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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.

Google Hides Country Redirection Bypass Link

Search Engine Land reports that Google made it more difficult for non-US users to switch from their local Google site to Google.com.



Until now, you could switch to Google.com by clicking "use Google.com" at the bottom of the homepage. Google made a change and it now shows the "use Google.com" link only when you're redirected from Google.com to your country's Google site.

This way, most people will no longer see the "use Google.com" link. One workaround is to visit Google.com to see the link. Another option is to go to www.google.com/ncr, the same URL that used to the displayed by Google. "NCR" means "no country redirection", so the URL can be used to bypass Google's redirection.



Why would Google hide the link? Danny Sullivan suggests that the latest change could have something to do with the "Right To Be Forgotten" feature. "Google’s come under increasing pressure from both Canada and the EU to censor its results on Google.com in addition to censorship demands on country-specific versions."



I use Google.com because it has the latest features and it's more up-to-date.

Hide Google+ Circles in the New Google Contacts

If you're using the new Google Contacts UI, you probably noticed that Google shows both your contacts and the people from your Google+ circles in one place. The "all contacts" section now also shows Google+ contacts and there's no option to only show non-Google+ contacts.



Fortunately, there's a way to hide the people from your Google+ circles. Google+ has a feature called "your circles" which lets you select which circles you share with. For example, you can add the "Friends" and "Family" circles and quickly share your posts with your favorite circles without having to select them all the time.



"When you share posts, photos, profile data, and other things with 'Your circles,' you're sharing with all of your circles, except the ones you're just following (they're unchecked in this list)," explains Google.

The good news is that Google Contacts only includes the people from "your circles", so you can customize "your circles" and uncheck all of them. This way, the "all contacts" section will only include your contacts. The downside is that the "your circles" option from Google+ will no longer be useful, but you can always manually select your circles.

Google Tests New Contacts Interface

Google released a preview of the new Google Contacts interface. Powered by Material Design, the new Google Contacts improves some of the existing features: finding duplicates, Google Profile integration, while adding some new features: a list of recent messages, Hangouts sidebar.

"The new Google Contacts comes with a fresh look and feel, and conveniently pools together all your contacts, circles, and the people you talk to most in Gmail," informs Google.



Google Contacts now finds duplicates automatically and offers to merge all of them. You can dismiss some of the suggestions and better assess if they are actually duplicates.

When you click a contact, Google now opens a card overlay with a bigger picture and more information from the Google Profile page. Google also shows the most recent email conversations and meetings with that person.

Some features aren't available yet in the new Google Contacts: importing/exporting connects, restoring contacts, printing contacts. You can still find them in the old version of Google Contacts.



For now, the new Google Contacts is not available for Google Apps users. The new interface can be found at http://ift.tt/1zFE2kb and it will be added to Gmail's contact manager over the next few weeks.



{ Thanks, Daniel Sadavoy. }

How to Remove Password from PDF Files with Google Chrome

The bank sends me monthly credit card statements as password-protected PDF files mostly because they contain personal information. I archive these PDFs into Google Drive but, because these files are protected with a password, the text isn’t searchable inside Drive. Also, each PDF file has a different password so it’s impossible to remember them and takes just too much to find these PDFs later.

Removing Password from a PDF File

Since the Google Drive is already protected with 2 layers of security – password and 2-factor authentication – it should be OK if we remove the password protection from PDF files before uploading them to Drive.

Is there any software program available that can remove password protection from PDF files? One that doesn’t cost a dime and works on both Mac and Windows? Well the answer is yes and that too is already installed on your computer. It’s called Google Chrome.

Google Chrome has a built-in PDF reader* and a PDF writer and we can combine the two features to remove the password from any PDF document. Let’s see how:

1. Drag any password protected PDF file into your Google Chrome browser. If you can’t find one, use this sample PDF file – the open password is “labnol” without the quotes.


2. Google Chrome will now prompt you to enter the password of the file. Enter the password and hit Enter to open the file.


3. Now go to the File menu in Google Chrome and choose Print (or press Ctrl+P on Windows or Cmd+P on Mac). Choose the destination printer as “Save as PDF” and click the Save button.

Google Chrome will now save the PDF to your desktop but without the password protection. If you re-open this PDF in Chrome, it would no longer require a password to open. Thank you Ivan Sunga for the tip.

Alternatively, if you have enabled Google Cloud Print, you can choose the destination as “Save to Google Drive” in the print dialog and the unprotected version of the PDF will be sent straight to your Google Drive from Chrome.

[*] Open the special page chrome://plugins and enable the option that says “Chrome PDF Viewer” to let Chrome natively handle PDF files.

Remove PDF Passwords without Chrome

If you are not a Google Chrome user, download this free Windows utility called BeCyPDFMetaEdit to remove passwords from PDF files.

First launch the program and it will ask your for the location of the PDF file. Before you select and open the PDF, change the mode to “Complete Rewrite,” then switch to the Security tab and set the “Security System” to “No encryption.” Click the Save button and your PDF will no longer require a password to open.

See more tools for editing PDF files.

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The story, How to Remove Password from PDF Files with Google Chrome , was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 01/03/2015 under Google Chrome, Google Drive, PDF, Software.

Google Docs Viewer Page, No Longer Available

Google had a page that allowed you to quickly view documents online right from your browser. The Google Docs Viewer page was available at http://ift.tt/g0ekyj and http://ift.tt/1Br584j. You could enter a document URL and Google generated a link to view it. This worked for a lot of file types: Microsoft Office files, PDFs, PostScript files and more.

While the page is no longer available as it redirects to Google Docs/Drive, you can still use the Google Docs Viewer. Paste this URL in a new tab:



http://ift.tt/OBbN70



and then paste the address of the document you want to view online. Here's an example:



http://ift.tt/1Br5acb



The "embedded" parameter is still available: just add &embedded=true to the URL and the viewer will use an embedded mode interface. This is useful for embedding documents (use the <iframe> tag).



{ Thanks, +Sushubh Mittal. }

7-Day Week View in Google Calendar for Android

The latest update to the Google Calendar app for Android brings a lot of new features. You can see more events with the new 7-day week view and pinch-to-zoom, add Google Drive files to events, hide Google+ birthdays from the settings, show week numbers and import .ics files from other apps. The new version is gradually rolling out over the next few days.

The feature that lets you hide Google+ birthdays will also be added to the web interface next week. All the other features are already available in the desktop site.

Different First Page Headers in Google Docs

Google Docs added a few features that make the product more useful, especially for students. You can now use different headers and footers on the first page of your documents, hide headers and footers on the first page and start page numbering on the second page.



When you add a header or footer, Google Docs now shows this option on the first page: "different first page header/footer". Click the checkbox and you can add a different header or footer.

The "page number" feature from the "Insert" menu lets you start page numbering on the second page.

"This means that you can follow academic formatting guidelines for first page headers and footers (e.g. MLA, CMS, APA)," says Brian Levee, Google Docs Product Manager.



{ Thanks, August Valera. }

Chrome's Warning for Sites With Unwanted Software

Last year, Chrome started to block downloads for applications that "make unexpected changes to your computer — for instance, switching your homepage or other browser settings to ones you don't want". Now Chrome shows a warning when you visit a site that "encourages downloads of unwanted software".



Here's the warning page: "The site ahead contains harmful programs. Attackers on example.com might attempt to trick you into installing programs that harm your browsing experience (for example, by changing your homepage or showing extra ads on sites you visit)". This is a new SafeBrowsing feature, just like malware and phishing warnings, and you can disable it from the settings.

In addition to displaying Chrome warnings, Google will also downrank search results and disable Google ads that lead to sites with unwanted software.



There's a Google page that provides more details about unwanted software. According to Google, unwanted software has at least one of these characteristics: it's deceptive, it affects the user's system in unexpected ways, it's difficult to remove, it collects or transmits private information without the user’s knowledge, it's bundled with other software and its presence is not disclosed.

Mobile Google Tests Colorful Cards

Google's mobile site experiments with a new card UI. There are a few changes: each search result has its own card and cards have colorful borders.



The screenshot below shows Google's Japanese interface, but I don't know if this is a global experiment or it's only for Google Japan. You can find more screenshots at Baka-Ke.com

{ Thanks, Shinohara Makoto. }