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Google has a lot of clever algorithms that detect so many things automatically. Some of these algorithms extract facts from webpages and add them to the Knowledge Graph.

Here's a baffling example which shows that Google's algorithms aren't always so smart. When you search for [Robert Greene], Google shows some information about an American author who was born in 1959 and died in... 1592. Google confused Robert Greene, the American author, with Robert Greene, a 16th-century English writer. The American author is alive and still writes books.


The good news is that you can tell Google when you found an error like this by clicking "Feedback/More info" and then "Wrong?" next to the information that's incorrect. Still, you'd expect Google to check if the date of death is more recent than the date of birth.


Related:
Google and Brandy: a sober mistake
What's the right answer?

{ Thanks, Roie Ambulo. }

Chrome has a lot of fascinating features you'll probably never use. Tony Hirst spotted one: open a new tab, type chrome://predictors in the omnibox and press Enter. This page shows some cool stats about the characters you've typed in the omnibox and the URLs you've selected.

For example, if you usually type "y", Chrome autocompletes the URL to youtube.com and you press Enter, you'll find this association in the table. There are also 3 values: hit count (how often you type those characters), miss count (how often you pick a different suggestion) and confidence score = hit_count/(hit_count+miss_count). Check "Filter zero confidences" to remove entries with a 0 confidence score. Green entries have a 1 confidence score, which means that the text is always associated with the URL.


You can find all the internal Chrome pages by going to chrome://chrome-urls/. For example, chrome://view-http-cache/ shows a list of all the URLs requested by the browser, chrome://plugins/ lets you see the plug-ins that are available in Chrome, chrome://components/ shows a list of components like Pepper Flash and Portable Native Client, which can be independently updated, chrome://flags/ shows a list of experimental features you can enable, while chrome://net-internals/ is a very advanced network logging and diagnostic tool.

{ Screenshot licensed as Creative Commons Attribution by Tony Hirst. }

After more than a week of waiting, I got the new interface for Gmail attachments and it's much better than I expected. Most of the features from the old interface are still available, but there are some new Google Drive features that improve the user experience.

Here are some of my favorite features:

1. Thumbnails - they're displayed for many files, not just for photos. They help you distinguish between attachments and they're especially useful for PDF files, presentations and photos.


2. Save to Drive - mouse over an attachments, click "save to drive" and you can select the Drive folder where to save the file. You no longer have to visit Google Drive to move the file. Please note that the file is automatically saved to Google Drive and selecting a folder is optional.


3. Save all to Drive - if a message has more than one attachment, you can save all the files to Google Drive with one click. You only need to find the Drive button placed next to the attachments. You can also click "download all" to download a ZIP file with all the attachments.


4. Show in Drive - Gmail is smart to remember when you save a file to Google Drive and replaces "save to Drive" with "show in Drive", which opens the file in Google Drive. "Save all to drive" is disabled after clicking the button once.

5. Quick preview - just click an attachment and you can preview the file inside Gmail. This works for photos, PDF files, documents, spreadsheets, presentations and more. To scroll down, use the mouse wheel, the down arrow key or Page Down. You can click the "pop out" icon next to "x" to open the preview in a new tab. To close the preview box, press Esc or click the "x" icon.


6. Slideshow - you can quickly go to the next attachment by clicking the arrow icon or by using keyboard shortcuts (right arrow key). Use the left arrow key to go back to the previous attachment. This is only a manual slideshow, there's no support for automatic slideshows.

7. Share photos on Google+ - click the attachment, then click the Google+ button at the bottom of the page. For multiple image attachments, click the Google+ button next to the list of attachments and you can share all the images on Google+.

8. Print files - click the attachment, then click the "print" button at the bottom of the page.

9. Zoom in/zoom out/zoom to fit - use the zoom buttons for a more in-depth look.

10. Edit files - for files you can import in Google's Drive apps, you'll also see a button like this when you mouse over the attachment: "Edit in Google Sheets", "Edit in Google Docs" or "Edit in Google Slides". Click the button to save the attachment as an editable file.

When you preview the file, you can click "Open with" and select an app that handles your file. This is not limited to Google's apps, so you can select apps like Zoho, DocuSign and more.

Oh, and one more thing: links to Google Drive files are treated as attachments.


While the new interface is great, I found a some annoyances. There's a cool feature that is no longer available in the new interface: it allowed to see all the image attachments on a single page. Another downside is that you need to mouse over an attachment to see the entire filename and its size.

{ Thanks, Stefan. }

I posted about Pegman's return to Google Maps two weeks ago, but I only got the update today. Sometimes it takes a few weeks until Google rolls out new features, sometimes it takes months (Gmail's pay button is an example).

While Pegman's return is a good news, the most striking thing about the latest Google Maps update is that the black bar has disappeared and the new navigation is placed on top of the map. The settings and help buttons have been moved to the bottom of the page.

Here are some screenshots from the "Welcome back, Pegman!" tour:










{ Thanks, Emanuele Bartolomucci. }

"Doge is a slang term for 'dog' that is primarily associated with pictures of Shiba Inus (nicknamed 'Shibe') and internal monologue captions on Tumblr. These photos may be photoshopped to change the dog's face or captioned with interior monologues in Comic Sans font," informs KnowYourMeme.

YouTube has an Easter Egg that changes the search results page for [doge meme]: colorful text, Comic Sans, much wow, so hip, help plz.



{ via Phandroid, thanks Sushubh }

Emanuele Bartolomucci spotted a new YouTube feature: when you're watching a video from a channel associated with a page that follows you in Google+, you get this message: "X added you on Google+. Follow back for exclusive updates!"


I wasn't able to trigger this feature, so it's probably an experiment. It's also a sign that YouTube will integrate more with Google+.

{ Thanks, Emanuele. }

Google+ notifications have a new interface: there's a "previously read" section, just like in the Google+ app for Android, and there are some new transitions that mimic scrolling down.

The previously read notifications are no longer displayed below the Jingles icon, so you need to click "previously read" to see them. The notifications box is less cluttered and you can still read all your notifications.



Here's a GIF that shows some of the new animations:


{ Thanks, Mukil. }

Google Wallet users in the US can now get a physical card from Google. It's free, but you need to verify your identity, which means you'll have to provide more information to Google: the last four digits of Social Security Number (SSN) or Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) and more.

"The Google Wallet Card is a physical prepaid debit card that allows you to access your Wallet Balance in the real world, at ATMs, banks, and wherever MasterCard® Debit is accepted. If you're in the US, and you have already verified your identity, you can request a Wallet Card from the desktop site at wallet.google.com, or from the mobile app. Once you receive and activate it, you'll be able to pay with the Wallet Card at online and physical stores that accept MasterCard® Debit, and make cash withdrawals at ATMs or banks."


Android Police reports that "Google says the card should be delivered to interested parties in 10-12 days". It's US-only, there are no fees to order or activate the card and the issuer of the card is The Bancorp Bank, which provides private label banking services.

Google provides a use case for the debit card: "Your roommate finally paid you back for dinner through Google Wallet, and you want to use that money right away to pay for groceries this week. Now, you can use the new Google Wallet Card to spend the money instantly, either by purchasing in stores or by withdrawing cash at ATMs, without having to wait for money to transfer from your Google Wallet Balance to your bank account."

Other advantages: free notifications on your mobile phone and no monthly/annual fees to use the card (there are some fees, though).

An important limitation: "you cannot use the Google Wallet Card outside the US right now".

Staying up on the news can be a daunting task. You have to go to a different website or app for each of your favorite magazines, newspapers and blogs. One place to read and discover all of this would be a lot simpler.




Today we’re launching Google Play Newsstand, a new app for your Android phone or tablet which brings together all of your favorite news sources in one experience. Newsstand puts the news you care about most front and center and presents stories that interest you based on your tastes. The more you read the better it will get. You can subscribe to magazines, newspapers, blogs and news sites and we’ll format and optimize them all for reading on your tablet or phone. With the swipe of a finger, you can browse full length articles, with beautiful images, audio and video right inside the app. You can access these articles even when you’re offline or bookmark them to read later.








Google Play Newsstand offers more than 1,900 free and paid, full length publications that you can subscribe to or follow. Some of these include:

• Newspaper Subscriptions: Full-length content from some of the world’s top newspapers including The Australian, The Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, The National Post, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. 


• Magazines: Hundreds of HD magazines like Better Homes & Gardens, The Economist, Esquire, Fast Company, Forbes, Game Informer, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Shape, TIME, Vanity Fair and WIRED, from publishers like American Media Inc., Condé Nast, Hearst, Meredith, TIME Inc., and more. 


• Blogs: Your favorite blogs like Apartment Therapy, Colossal, Cool Hunting, Flavorpill, Saveur Daily, TMZ and The Verge. 


• News sites: Leading news sites like ABC News, The Atlantic, CBS Sports, CNET, The Daily Beast, Huffington Post, The Guardian, NPR, Reuters, The Telegraph, and more.

If you’re in the US, Canada, UK or Australia, the Google Play Magazines app will be upgraded to Google Play Newsstand over the next few days. In all other countries, you can download the Play Newsstand app for your Android phone or tablet from Google Play. If you’re a Google Currents user, you can upgrade to Play Newsstand by downloading the new app. You’ll find all of your favorite news sources will be transferred and ready to read the minute you open it.




Google Play is all about bringing you great content on your phone and tablet. No matter what your interests, there’s something for everyone in Newsstand.



Posted by Mussie Shore, Product Manager for Google Play Newsstand

Google+ now shows the number of lines that are collapsed next to "read more", so you can see if the post is long. If the post has less than 10 lines, Google doesn't display the number of lines.


Here's an example of a long Google+ post: "read more (50 lines)".


Google+ shows a similar line counter for long comments:


These are only displayed in the stream and profile pages, not for the post pages.

It looks like Google started to show warnings if you use AdBlock or AdBlock Plus, the most popular ad blockers (they have more than 50 million users). A reader from Brazil noticed this message: "Oh no, it seems like you are blocking Google's ads. These ads pay for Google products that people use every day. It's easy to deactivate ad blocking just for Google. And it won't change your ad blocking settings or other settings".

The message links to a filter that includes a long list of exceptions like "@@||www.google.com^$document" and "@@||maps.google.com^$document".


Here's a screenshot of the Google whitelist filter (it actually includes more domains):


This is pretty weird, considering that the ads were not blocked, as you can see in the screenshot. Google ads are not blocked by default in AdBlock Plus, since they're considered "acceptable ads". Some sites have speculated that Google paid AdBlock Plus to whitelist its ads, but that's not very clear.

Google Discovery also reported about this back in May, so it looks like the experiment is limited to Google Brazil, at least for now.

{ Thanks, Marcos Alexandre. }

After adding music cards and testing cards for shows, YouTube experiments with cards for channels. They're displayed in the right sidebar of the search results page and show the latest videos from the channel and some of its playlists.

Here's an example for Google Chrome. The channel is still included in the list of search results.


Here's how you can enable the experimental feature. If you use Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari or Internet Explorer 8+:

1. open youtube.com in a new tab

2. load your browser's developer console:

* Chrome or Opera 15+ - press Ctrl+Shift+J for Windows/Linux/ChromeOS or Command-Option-J for Mac

* Firefox - press Ctrl+Shift+K for Windows/Linux or Command-Option-K for Mac

* Internet Explorer 8+ - press F12 and select the "Console" tab

* Safari 6 - if you haven't enabled the Develop menu, open Preferences from the Safari menu, go to the Advanced tab and check "Show Develop menu in menu bar". Close Preferences and then press Command-Option-C to show the console.

* Opera 12 - press Ctrl+Shift+I for Windows/Linux or Command-Option-I for Mac, then click "Console".

3. paste the following code which changes a YouTube cookie:

document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=2IS0PWox26Q; path=/; domain=.youtube.com";window.location.reload();

4. press Enter and close the console.

Some examples of searches: [google], [apple], [comedy central].

To go back to the regular interface, use the same instructions, but replace the code from step 3 with this one:

document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=; path=/; domain=.youtube.com";window.location.reload();

{ via Rubén. }

I like blue, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that YouTube made some UI elements blue (#2793e6): the like button and the line below the number of views. Maybe someone was unhappy that Android KitKat removed all the blue icons and decided to compensate in other ways or maybe it's an attempt to calm YouTube users and make them stop posting silly comments.

Chrome's latest Dev channel release lets you create folders in the app launcher. If you use Chrome 33 (Dev, Canary) or Chromium 33 for Windows, you can paste this in the address bar:

chrome://flags/#enable-app-list-folder

Then click "Enable" next to "Enable the app list folder" and then click the "Relaunch now" button at the bottom of the page to restart the browser and enable the experimental feature.


"If enabled, user will be able to create app list folder by drag-and-drop," informs Google. It works just like in Android: drag one app on top of another to create a folder, then drag other apps to the folder.


Here's the Google folder from the screenshot above:


It's a simple feature that lets you organize your apps and reduce clutter. Unfortunately, it doesn't work well, at least not for me. After creating the folders, Chrome quickly removed them. Maybe it has something to do with syncing or maybe there are other bugs. It's an experimental feature, so I can't complain.

"These experimental features may change, break, or disappear at any time. We make absolutely no guarantees about what may happen if you turn one of these experiments on, and your browser may even spontaneously combust. (...) Please proceed with caution."

{ Thanks, Silviu. }

A few years ago, many people complained that mobile sites and mobile apps are too limited. They couldn't include all the features from their desktop counterparts and some thought that was a bad thing.

Fast forward today and you'll notice that Google's desktop sites look more and more like Google's mobile apps. Most Google redesigns are all about taking mobile interfaces and adding them to the desktop. That's one of the reasons why many Google services drop advanced features and opt for simplified interfaces. This way, everything looks consistent and users can quickly switch from the mobile apps to the desktop apps.

Here are some examples:

1. The Google Maps redesign started with the iPhone app, continued with the desktop site and then the Android app.


2. The app launcher from the Google navigation bar was first available in the Google Search app for iOS.


3. Google Play's desktop interface had a lot of advanced features that were removed when Google updated the site to make it look more like the Android app.

4. The Google+ photo editor and Chrome Office editor are based on mobile apps that were ported to Native Client. You're now using the desktop to run mobile apps (only in Chrome).


5. Google Keep for Android has a lot more features than Google Keep for desktop. For example, you can't reorder notes or add more than one image in Google Keep for desktop.


Somehow, the most innovative and most interesting apps are now in the mobile space. That's where the users are moving and where things are constantly changing. Mobile is a flourishing testbed for new ideas.

Google updated the Gmail app for iOS and added a new interface for iPad. The sidebar that lets you go to a label or a different mail account is now persistent in the landscape mode and it's a lot smaller. It only shows your inbox tabs and the number of unread messages from each tab, but you can tap the arrow icon to find your labels. Unfortunately, you can't select some labels that are always displayed, like you can do in the desktop Gmail.


The sidebar that displays the messages from the current view is now hidden in the portrait mode, so you can better read your mail. You need to tap the three dot icon to see the list of messages, but you can also swipe from the left edge. The built-in mail client from iOS also hides the messages list in portrait mode.


There's also a full-screen compose box, so you get more room to write your messages.


Google mentions some other improvements: a better scrolling experience and some iOS7 features like the new keyboard.

The new Gmail for iPad has a lot in common with the updated Google Drive app for iPad. Google spends a lot of resources to make its UIs more consistent, so I wouldn't be surprised to see these interfaces added to the desktop.

{ via Gmail Blog }

One of the features that was removed in the current Google Image Search interface is snippets. Now Google only shows the title of the page, the domain and the size of the image in pixels. Snippets used to reveal more information about the photo or the page that includes the image, just like the snippets that are used for all the other search results.

Google considers bringing back snippets. Here's a screenshot from a Google experiment:


In this case, the snippet is quite useful, but very long: "the company's energy supply. This makes the Googleplex one of the USA's largest corporate solar installations. Unfortunately, I wasn't allowed to take photos on the roof, so here's one Google made earlier."

Google's regular interface doesn't show snippets:

Remember Gmail's ads that look like regular mail and are also displayed in the promotions tab? Google disabled many of the features that were available for regular messages, so you couldn't mark them as unread, flag them as spam, label them or add them to Google Tasks. The fake messages were only available in the web interface, so you couldn't find them if you used other email clients.

Now you can convert the fake messages to regular messages: just star the ads and they are saved to your inbox as messages received from mail-noreply@google.com. "New! Starring Ads. Starred ads will be saved to your Promotions inbox," informs Gmail. While the messages are added to the Promotions tab, you'll also see them in the Primary tab because all the starred inbox messages are added to the Primary tab by default. You can unstar the messages, delete them, archive them (just don't send a reply).


This screenshot allows you to see both the ad and the message created from the ad after starring it. The ad is removed after a few seconds, so you don't get duplicates.


Here's the ad:


... and the message created by Google:


All the sponsored promotions that are available for your account can be found at: https://mail.google.com/mail/#pinbox.