A flurry of features for feed readers

A flurry of features for feed readers: "Since our last big launch, we've been thinking about ways to help our users better share, discover, and consume content in Reader. Today, I'm happy to announce several new features that we hope will further improve the way you use Reader.

Send to...


We've made it easier to share posts you like to Blogger, Twitter, Facebook, and more, with our new 'Send to' feature. (Incidentally, Blogger is celebrating its tenth birthday this month, and we're hoping our friends there will like this little birthday present.)

Just head over to the settings page, and enable the services you want to use. If your favorite service isn't listed (and you're feeling extra geeky), you can create your own 'Send to' link with a URL template.

To share an item on one of your sites, simply click the 'Send to' button and choose your service. If you're into keyboard shortcuts, 'shift-t' will do the same.

Feeds from people you follow


When we added following, we tried to make it easier to find and follow people who share similar interests. Now we've gone even further, and made it possible for you to subscribe directly to the blogs, photos, or Twitter updates that anyone you're following has included on their Google profile.

To quickly subscribe to these sites, click the 'From people you follow' tab on the 'Browse for stuff' page.

More control for mark all as read

We know people can be overwhelmed by too many unread items, and sometimes only want to see recent posts. The 'Mark all as read' button now has a menu that lets you choose to only mark items as read if they're older than your specified time frame. A tip of the hat to Nick Bradbury who pioneered this 'panic button' feature.

Finally, a few small tweaks in this release:

• When you expand an item in comment view, you now get the full set of actions, enabling you to share, like, and star items without leaving comment view.
• We added a 'Feeds' start-page option for the iPhone/Android/Pre mobile interface, so you can see a list of your subscriptions when you sign in.
• There is now an option to show notes when embedding your shared items on other pages as clips.

As always, if you have feedback, please head over to our help group, Twitter, or Get Satisfaction.

"

Google Voice a Dissapointment

Well after a long wait, you can imagine my excitement and surprise when opening my email this morning to see my official invite to Google Voice.

All other mail paled into insignificance as I clicked the link in the email and logged on.

I was quickly brought down to earth by the following graphic. You would think that a company with technology this advanced, who clearly knows which country I'm in, (thus the message) would know not to offer it in the first place.

Google you've reached another first. You've succeeded in pissing me off for the first time.

Does Google have a secret weapon

Rumours are circulating the Google has a secret weapon.

The secret weapon is Chrome OS, a Google operating system. This rumour has been circulating for a few years now in one form or another, and now it seems it's close to a reality.

This undoubtedly, will place a dent in the coffers of Apple and Microsoft, and thats likely to be a good thing for pricing.

Google is famous for creating feature rich products so I'm hopeful that the new OS will not disappoint. The next thing would have to be a decent file system.

http://mashable.com/2009/07/07/google-chrome-os-2/

Google Calendar Gadgets

You've
seen them on iGoogle, in IBM WebSphere Portal, and now you can find
them in your favorite online calendar -- that's right, now we're
supporting Gadgets in Google Calendar! If you're a Scorpio like me, you
can add this gadget that lets you check your horoscope from your calendar (don't worry, all the signs of the zodiac are supported). And if astrology isn't your thing, how about games? This Sudoku gadget was created by Alex Komoroske, one of our interns on the Docs & Spreadsheets team. If you add the gadget, you'll see that the daily puzzles get harder throughout the week.

Finally, if you like to keep up on celebrity birthdays, the birthday reminder will show you who you are idolizing that day:



But you don't have to be a Googler to create a Calendar Gadget -- we have put together new documentation
to help you get your favorite Gadgets into Calendar. If you are itching
to write some code, then you can use GData or ICAL to add some fancy
Calendar Gadget events to your calendar. But if you're out of Red Bull
and don't have the time for a late-night hacking session, then you may
want to try our new "of-the-day" Calendar Gadget wizard,
which makes it easy to take an existing Google Gadget and have it show
up once a day, every day, just like the Horoscope and Sudoku Gadgets do.

Let us know how your experiences with Calendar Gadgets are going in the Google Calendar GData API developer forum.

Tags: google

Google Earth Outreach Conference

Google announces a new initiative called Google Earth Outreach at an event held at Google NYC. Features speeches from Elliot Schrage, Google Vice President for Global Communications & Public Affairs; John Hanke, Director of Google Earth & Maps; Jane Goodall, Founder, the Jane Goodall Institute; Kathy Bushkin Calvin, Executive Vice President, United Nations Foundation; and Edward Wilson, President and CEO, Earthwatch.

Author: google
Keywords: Google Earth Outreach Nonprofit Jane Goodall Institute United Nations Foundation Earthwatch
Added: June 27, 2007

Things you can do from here:

• Visit the original item
  on YouTube :: Videos by google
• Subscribe to YouTube :: Videos by google using Google Reader
• Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites

Google Maps + Digg = DiggMap

+ = DiggMap

The Digg Map:

I'm a big fan of real-time Google Maps mashups. A few of my favorites are Dave Troy's FlickrVision and TwitterVision. Each of these maps show you fresh new photos and Twitters being added in real-time and displayed for you by their location on a Google Map. Another Google Maps mashup has emerged courtesy of Alan Spark in this same category, displaying diggs from Digg.com to a live map! It combines the recently released Digg API, the Google Maps API and Google AJAX Search API to make this one mapping app called: The Digg Map. The map will center itself on the geo-location of a Digg user who is currently digging a particular story. It's a fun way to find new Digg stories and also to see what geographies "digg" what..

Things you can do from here:

• Visit the original item
  on Google Maps Mania
• Subscribe to Google Maps Mania using Google Reader
• Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites

Eric Schmidt speaks to the European Media

Eric Schmidt CEO of Google speaks about the company's plans, the future and the core values of the Google business. The classic understatement in this video was, when speaking about the eBay and Google stoush over Paypal vs Checkout, Schmidt said, "Checkout and Paypal are somewhat competitive". I laughed hard at that one.

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