It only took five years, but it seems someone at Google’s Gmail finally learned about something called “drag and drop”.
As if it wasn’t odd enough that Google decided to call the orginizationl folders people are used to in mail programs by the name of “labels”, they had an archaic way of filing your emails by using drop down menus. Well, at long last not only did someone figured out the mystery of “drag and drop” functionality, they also decided to add a new feature that wasn’t part of Labs, meaning you had to activate it yourself! What a concept as of late for them.
Labels are now locked to the left side of the screen, and one merely need to click on an email and then drag it to the appropriate label to file it. You can also do the reverse by dragging the label name to the email.
This is something that Gmail has needed for years, and this is a very welcome addition to a service that we here at StarterTech already love.
At long last, more users are being allowed in to the new Google Voice product.
Back in March we reported that Grand Central, a little known Google product at that time, would be turning in to Google Voice, and it was expected that there would be a large push later on to get it out to more users. Well, for now, the Google Blog is reporting that any one who signed up for an invitation previously should be keeping an eye out in their emails for them any day now.
As someone who has been using Grand Central (the original name for the service) for some time now, I am thrilled to see this going wider now. Perhaps people won’t look at me any more like I’m crazy when I mention it!
Enjoy the video below which will demonstrate the key features of the service.
Street View, the feature that allows you to see addresses in Google Maps from street level, has always been useful, but a bit cumbersome to use. When you wanted to move down the street you had to click arrow after arrow until your finger was sore. Well, now thanks to new navigation items they are referring to as “pancakes”, you can zoom all over the map in a fraction of the time it used to take you.
All you need to do is point your cursor further down the map and you will see a circle, or “pancake” as Google is calling it. Double-click on that circle and the map automatically will zoom you to that location. If you want to look at something on a building, look for the square cursor and again double-click to go there.
So far this only works on the Web version of Google Maps, and not in Google Earth. It’s a definite first step to improving the product, though! You can watch the full explanation video below to quickly pick up on how it works.
It seems some people just can’t wait for Chrome to get their extension system up and running.
One thing that has stopped many people from switching to Google’s Chrome browser is the lack of support for extensions. Those handy little pieces of code that allow you to get your browser to do things it wasn’t built to do originally have been one of the staples for Firefox and its popularity. Amongst the most popular of the Firefox extensions is one named AdBlock Plus that allows you to browse Web sites without seeing their ads, so once the Chrome extension engine released, it was just assumed that an ad blocker would be one of the first extensions out there door.
Why wait?
AdSweep has come up with a way for you to run their extension in Chrome right now, athough it takes several steps and some work on your part. Even with all of that in consideration, it is an interesting commentary on how much some people really hate online ads that they would go through this much work to block them. Personally they’ve never bothered me, but it seems those that are bothered by them are REALLY bothered by them.
If you’ve got the guts, you can give AdSweep a try, but expect to put in some work.
Google may be changing the Internet as we know it again with their new product, Google Wave.
While it won’t be released widely until the end of the year, Google Wave still made an enormous splash when it was introduced to the world yesterday at a conference. Wave is taking aim to create a whole new communication experience that brings together email, chat, file transfer and a lot more.
First up, let’s take a look at how it will appear (click the image for a larger view):
As you can see it feels a lot like Gmail, but there is a lot more going on in it without making it feeling overwhelming. As you converse in email with your contact, your reply is added to any section you choose so that your comments always stay in context. Original sender replies again? Then their section is also put in context, so you are truly getting threaded conversations with this tool. If the conversation gets really long and you aren’t sure who added something and when, you click the playback button and the history will replay for you in the order people worked on it.
File transfer just got worlds easier also with drag-and-drop interface so you will no longer have to send an attachment and annoy people. You will drag the file in to the Wave folder and the file will begin transferring automatically.
Wave will be perfect for friends, families, work projects and just about anything you can think of. And the scariest part? It’s open source. This means that people will be able to change Wave any way they please to make it fit their own needs more specifically.
It’s hard to wrap your head around a product that barely any one has ever touched it yet, but my mind is already racing with the possibilities of what this tool will do for people. I can’t wait to get my hands on it.
Now, if you want to learn loads about it, you can watch the hour and 20 minute presentation below.
Google Earth is continuing to make the world that much smaller of a place.
While Google’s amazing satellite project, Google Earth, is already bringing us amazing photos of just about everywhere on the planet, one of the most fascinating side projectsis the buildings being rendered in 3D. While anyone is able to do build a rendering for them, it’s interesting to see corporations such as Disney doing it also.
The first of the world class theme parks to get the treatment was Walt Dinsey World in Florida, but now you can also tour Disneyland Paris. By turning on the 3D renderings, you are able to go as low as street level in the French theme park and tour the sights down to the umbrellas over the tables at outdoor cafes.
I am self professed Disney fanatic, but have only ever been to the two parks in the United States, so this is a wonderful treat for me as I doubt I will ever get to the Paris version of the park. Especially seeing as my favorite ride is the Haunted Mansion, and their version, Phantom Manor, is completely different, I can’t wait to see what the facade looks like in 3D!
It seems that Sir Paul McCartney is not a fan of Google.
According to the Sun, When Sir McCartney discovered his multi-million pound house was visible on Google Street View, he consulted with his security people, and they decided it was a security risk. They then contacted Google and asked that the house be removed from the images in the service.
Google is now saying that anyone can have their home remoed from the service by simply clicking a button, but I honestly don’t get the excitement over this. So long as Google did not go down a private lane, and stayed only on public roads, then they aren’t showing anything that an average person can see from the street. By removing your house, as Sir McCartney did, he actually draws more attention to himself and his property.
To each their own, but the amount of trauma having one’s home on Google Street View seems to cause some people amazes me.
If you check out Google Hot Trends today, apparently no one knew it was Mothers Day until they woke up this morning.
For those of you unfamiliar with Google Hot Trends, it is a tool provided by the search engine giant to see what the top 100 searched on terms are on their site at any given time. As a professional blogger it is an essential tool in my arsenal of finding topics to write about, but it was a bit of a story in and of itself today.
As most of you know (or, at least I hope you did before reading this), today is Mothers Day. Well, it would seem that a lot of people didn’t know this before today, so they turned to Google for help. At 12 PM EST today, these were just some of the top 100 items related to the special day that I found. (numbers are their rank position at that time… yes, I do know how to do sequential numbering)
1. free printable mothers day cards
3. happy mothers day poems
5. myspace mothers day comments
8. how to make french toast
12. ecards
13. free ecards.com
20. funny mothers day quotes
25. how to make scrambled eggs
27. blue mountain cards
28. e cards hallmark free
30. american greetings
31. crepe recipe
35. mothers day text messages
40. online cards
41. mother lover lyrics
42. mothers day clip art
43. free ecard
48. mothers day bible verse
49. mom quotes
51. mothers day coloring pages
55. how to make crepes
58. things to do on mothers day
63. grandmother poems
64. yahoo greetings
65. dear mama lyrics
67. eggs benedict recipe
68. mothers day site 123greetings.com
70. hallmark cards.com
74. free online greeting cards
77. bluemountain.com
81. quick mothers day gifts
82. mothers day breakfast recipes
83. make a card
94. how to make an omelet
95. gift certificate template
97. mom poems
98. mothers day sunday school lesson
My favorite had to be #25, how to make scrambled eggs. Seriously?
Anyway, just an amusing look into the collective mind of the Internet. I’ve included a screenshot you can click on below to see what the whole 100 were at that time. There are a few more that were probably related to Mothers Day, but I couldn’t be 100% sure, so I left them off. And kudos to those few people out there already searching for Fathers Day links… unless you’re only doing it because you got confused about which day today was…
Gmail is at it again with yet another update to their features.
Google announced today that there is a new feature in the Labs section (again with the blasted labs!) of Gmail that will allow you to do all of your Google searches from directly inside your inbox. While this may not seem like such a big deal on the surface, it will also show you the search results in a small window to the side, and then you can take any of those results and place them in an email, or send them to a friend by chat. This will save an immense amount of time when you have to switch windows or tabs to do the same job by hand.
To add Google Search to your Gmail inbox, go to “Settings”, click on the “Labs” tab, and scroll down until you find “Google Search”. Once you find that, click “Enable” and then scroll to the bottom and click on the “Save Changes” button.
Gmail just keeps getting better and better, and now they are trying to make sure you never have to download anything to your computer ever again.
Back in December, Google added the ability to view PDFs to Gmail so that you didn’t have to download them any more. This was a major moment in the history of the service, and one this writer couldn’t have been more thrilled about. To continue the fight against downloading files, they have now added the ability to view PowerPoint presentations and TIFF image files to their arsenal of features.
Unlike so many other new features of late, you don’t have to do anything to activate these new features, they are automatically in your inbox. This is a very welcome new set of tools for someone such as myself who is constantly sent presentations and hi-res images to view. No longer will I have to download them just to discover I have no real use for them, and then go through the trouble of getting them off my system. Also, the less items you have to download, the lower the risk of you getting any viruses.
Keep it up Google, you will soon make all of us forget email ever existed before you!
It only took five years, but it seems someone at Google’s Gmail finally learned about something called “drag and drop”.
At long last, more users are being allowed in to the new Google Voice product.
It seems some people just can’t wait for Chrome to get their extension system up and running.
Google may be changing the Internet as we know it again with their new product, 
It seems that Sir Paul McCartney is not a fan of Google.
If you check out 
