Gmail's New Loading Screen

Sometimes little things can make a difference. Gmail's updated loading screen makes Google's mail service look more like a native app and the transition to the actual interface is much smoother. The progress bar and the "loading" message are now centered and no longer look like an afterthought.


In the new Gmail interface you'll also see the loading page when you pick a different theme and that's annoying.

If you have a slow internet connection, you can enable the "inbox preview" lab feature to see a preview of the inbox while you wait for Gmail to load.

{ Thanks, Herin, James, John and Jonah. }

Google's Thank You Notes

Google sometimes displays some annotations below search snippets. Showing that one of the people you trust +1'd a page is useful and might help you decide to click a search result.

Now Google also adds a link that lets you send a thank you note to the person that +1'd page: "Your +1 helped me find this. Thank you!". It's a cute idea and this also helps Google find the recommendations that were really useful, but the links clutter Google's results pages. Maybe Google could show the "thank you" link when you +1 the page.



Another issue is that social annotations aren't necessary when it comes to the top result for a navigational query. Most people that search for [Yahoo] want to visit Yahoo's homepage or use services like Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, so the annotations for these results are unnecessary. It's probably a better idea to show the annotations less often and only for the results that deserve to be highlighted.

{ via Search Engine Roundtable }

The Google+ Upgrade

After a strong start, Google+ could have lost its momentum, at least if we are to believe ComScore's numbers. "According to comScore, Google+ users averaged only three minutes on the site during January, a pittance compared to Facebook's average of 405 minutes per visitor."

That's a really low number, but I'm not sure it's accurate. Google+ is not a separate service like Google Finance or Google Scholar, it's the social fabric from many Google products. Below Google's navigation bar, there's always a share box and a notification button that lets you read comments and post your replies without visiting Google+. Google's search results include pages shared by your Google+ circles, YouTube's homepages shows videos shared by the people you follow in Google+ and many pages have +1 buttons. You're using Google+ even you're not visiting plus.google.com and that's because Google+ is an upgrade, not a new product.

"This is just the next version of Google. Everything is being upgraded. We already have users. We're now upgrading them to what we consider Google 2.0," says Vic Gundotra, Google VP.

Google's bet is so significant that Google+ simply can't fail. Google+ is just a fancy name for a new Google that knows more about you, so that it can offer a more personalized experience. Upgrading to Google+ will offer better search results, better ads, simple ways to share content, collaborate and communicate with the people you care about. It's the same Google made more powerful by a social upgrade.

Audio Books in Google Play?

It looks like Google Play, the unified online store launched yesterday, could add a new type of digital content: audio books. The Google Play help center includes an empty page titled "Audio Books".


There are also two genres with a similar name: "audio books" and "audiobooks", but the ebook store doesn't include audio books. Genres could be automatically generated.


Google has recently registered a lot of domains like googleplaymovies.com, googleplaynewspapers.com, googleplaymagazines.com, googleplaytv.com and this suggests that Google Play could offer subscriptions for magazines, newspapers and TV shows.

{ Thanks, Joel. }

YouTube Preview

YouTube started to roll out a few features that will make it easier to preview videos and to quickly jump to a certain scene. Just mouse over the seek bar and you'll see a thumbnail of the frame you've selected. The thumbnail is updated almost instantly when you pick a different frame.


This feature is obvious and you'll certainly notice it. There's also a way to preview multiple frames: just drag the handle along the seek bar and YouTube will "show a filmstrip of thumbnails of previous and upcoming scenes".


For movies and other videos longer than 90 minutes YouTube added a more advanced feature: a second seek bar that lets you preview one and a half minutes of video one second at a time.


These features aren't available to everyone yet, they'll be slowly rolled out in the coming weeks. For now, they only work in the Flash player. If you want to try them, they're enabled for videos longer than 90 minutes. Here's one of them:

Bring Back Keyword Highlighting to Google Cache

For some reason, Google's caching feature is more and more difficult to use. The "cached" link is hidden inside the Instant Preview box and it's no longer available in the mobile interface.


Now the keywords from cached pages aren't highlighted if you are logged in. Search pages use encrypted connections (HTTPS) when you're logged in and this disables referrals, so that's probably the reason why Google no longer includes the query in the cached pages URLs. Google suggests to sign out and you can also use a different browser or the private browsing mode, but there's another way to bring back keyword highlighting:

- click the "similar" link in the Instant Preview box instead of clicking "cached"

- replace "related" with "cache" in the URL and press Enter.

If there's no "similar" link, you can copy the query, go to the cached page and paste the query in the address bar between "+" and "&cd=".


There's also a cool Chrome extension called MultiHighlighter, but you need to copy the query, visit the page, press Ctrl+Shift+A and paste the query. If you use Internet Explorer, Google Toolbar has a cool highlighting feature.

Google Play, Android Market's New Name

Google announced the launch of a new service called Google Play, "a digital entertainment destination where you can find, enjoy and share your favorite music, movies, books and apps". Google Play is the new name for the Android Market, an all-encompassing brand that also integrates Google Music and Google eBook Store. It's just like iTunes, except that it's born on the Web and you don't need special software to play music or read books.


"Our goal with Google Play is to bring together all your favorite content in one place that you can access across your devices. Specifically, digital content is fundamental to the mobile experience, so bringing all of this content together in one place for users makes the Android platform even more compelling. We're also simplifying digital content for Google users - you can go to the Google Play website on your desktop and purchase and experience the latest movies, music and books," explains Google.

The Android Market app will have a new name (Google Play Store) and this may confuse a lot of people. After all, Android Market is one of the few apps that are bundled with most Android devices. Google Play brings the same features that were available in Android Market and it's still targeted to the Android users, but the new brand no longer includes "Android". This allows Google to create a single destination for multiple platforms: iOS, Windows Phone, Google TV, Chrome / Chrome OS.


"On your Android phone or tablet, we'll be upgrading the Android Market app to the Google Play Store app over the coming days. Your videos, books and music apps (in countries where they are available) will also be upgraded to Google Play Movies, Google Play Books and Google Play Music apps," informs the Google Blog.



Google Play Music is only available in the US, Google Play Movies is available in the US, UK, Canada, and Japan, while Google Play Books only works in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. That means most Google Play users will only be able to install Android apps.


Google Play is a catchy name, it's platform-agnostic, flexible and could encourage more people to buy music and books even if they don't have an Android device. Android users will have to get used to the new name and the new visual identity.

{ Thanks, Andrew. }