Using Google Realtime Search
Google’s Realtime Search brings search results to life with a dynamic stream of realtime content from across the web, all live and automatically updating before your eyes.
Realtime search collects various news stories, blog posts, and updates from popular social networks and presents them in a constantly refreshing stream. You can learn the latest news and updates before it hits major headlines by searching or getting Google alerts with realtime updates. You can also look back in time using replay to see what people were saying about a topic in the past.
Using Realtime Search is very easy. You can access Realtime search from the left hand navigation tool or search directly from the Realtime home page at google.com/realtime. One of Realtime’s new features is the ability to sort results by geography. Example, you are interested about the “US Open” and you want to know or see what others are saying about this exciting sports tournament. You can also use Realtime link to search for updates just near your location or in a specific location. You can do this by clicking “Nearby” or set the location you are interested in using the custom search box. You can also restrict your search to a specific area by clicking the location tag in the search results.
Now, you can also use realtime to see not just the individual updates, but the entire conversation threads from the initial comment through latest replies. From within your search results, just click on the conversation snippets to see all comments related to the update. From here, if there are multiple pages of comments, you can browse through the pages to see the conversation from start to this very moment.
Another great thing is that you can now get Realtime alerts sent directly to your inbox for any topic you are interested in. Just visit google.com/alerts, enter the terms you like, and select Updates as the Type. Realtime search will bundle updates and email them to you once a day or week or send them to your inbox instantly.
Gmail’s Call Phone
Are you missing your friends and loved ones? Do you want to call them but worry about expensive phone bills? Well, not anymore… Gmail’s Call Phone feature is here to help you.
All of you will agree that some things are better communicated face to face. With the integration of Gmail voice and video chat into Gmail, staying in touch with friends and family is now easier. Before, you need to be signed in to your Gmail account to communicate. Now, you can call people directly on their phones.
To do this, just dial a phone number like you would do in an ordinary phone. Click “Call phone” at the top of the chat list and dial the number or enter a contact’s name. If you have a Google Voice number, calls made from Gmail will display this number as the outbound caller ID. You can also receive calls made to this number right inside Gmail.
This is really a great and helpful application. You can now call anywhere in the US and Canada for free for at least the rest of the year as well as make cheap international calls. It is very easy to use and best of all, it is free.
Chrome’s Great Extensions
Adding extensions is pretty much like creating your own browser that suits you best. Each user has its own likes and dislikes, and you can try and see which ones are applicable to your diverse needs and distinctive taste.
Extensions let users customize Google Chrome with features and functionality that they like the most and are helpful to them. They also make various applications useful by providing quick access directly from the browser toolbar. There are different types of extensions that you can find in the extensions gallery.
But, choosing extensions is a bit of a challenge. How do you choose from a huge variety of Chrome’s extensions available right now? If you are not very familiar with Chrome or not that internet savvy, you will simply be lost about what extensions to install. Should you choose the featured, popular or top-rated ones found in the gallery?
Listed below are some of the favorite extensions of the Chrome team. If you are still confused and overwhelmed by the great number of extensions to choose from, read this list and start using Chrome as a pro.
- Opinion Cloud: Summarizes comments on YouTube videos and Flickr photos to provide an overview of the crowd’s overall opinion.
- Google Voice: All sorts of helpful Voice features directly from the browser. See how many messages you have, initiate calls and texts, or call numbers on a site by clicking on them.
- AutoPager: Automatically loads the next page of a site. You can just scroll down instead of having to click to the next page.
- Turn Off the Lights: Fades the page to improve the video-watching experience.
- Google Dictionary: Double-click any word to see its definition, or click on the icon in the address bar to look up any word.
- After the Deadline: Checks spelling, style, and grammar on your emails, blog, tweets, etc.
- Invisible Hand: Does a quick price check and lets you know if the product you are looking at is available at a lower price elsewhere.
- Secbrowsing: Checks that your plug-ins (e.g. Java, Flash) are up to date.
- Tineye: Image search utility to find exact matches (including cropped, edited, or re-sized images).
- Slideshow: Turns photo sites such as Flickr, Picasa, Facebook, and Google Images into slideshows.
- Google Docs/PDF Viewer: Automatically previews pdfs, powerpoint presentations, and other documents in Google Docs Viewer.
- Readability: Reformat the page into a single column of text.
- Chromed Bird: A nice Twitter viewing extension.
- Feedsquares: Cool way of viewing your feeds via Google Reader.
- ScribeFire: Full-featured blog editor that lets you easily post to any of your blogs.
- Note Anywhere: Digital post-it notes that can be pasted and saved on any webpage.
- Instant Messaging Notifier: IM on multiple clients.
- Remember the Milk: The popular to-do app.
- Extension.fm: Turns the web into a music library.
What’s New with Google News?
Google News is a great tool that’s been introduced in 2002 to help you find important and interesting articles and features all around the web. Google News has a new look and feel these days. You can see the Google News homepage with some updates to make the news more relevant to you. Google has found a way to better showcased interesting stories you did not know existed and to make it easier for you to share great stories and news with other people or through the different social networks.
Here are the changes:
- You can customize your Google News homepage. You can add your own categories and you can even update your preferences later on. The stories that interest you the most is called “News for You” on Google News. You can view them grouped by topic by selecting the Sections view. You can now choose which news sources you would rather not see by going to News Settings. Now, it is so much easier to explore the top stories that many outlets are covering.
- Also, Google News is now reflecting your interests while providing topics and stories you did not know existed. Recent news, local weather, and local news are now in the right-hand column. You can also see the Spotlight section there, which features stories of more lasting interest.
- Finally, Google News is letting you more easily share groups of similar stories with other people through different social networks such as Twitter, Buzz, Facebook, and Reader. Just select the drop-down menu marked by an arrow on the top-right of each story cluster. In the drop-down, you can also choose to see more or less of the first news source.
Exploring the news is so much fun and can now be automatically tailored to fit each user’s interests. By incorporating these amazing changes, users and news enthusiasts will greatly find Google News beneficial.
Find Facts Instantly With Google Squared
Searching for information and details of a particular item or subject is pretty easy. You just type in the search box what you are looking for and you will see a list of relevant websites which can help answer your query. But, not all of your questions can be found on one site which can be pretty frustrating. You have to visit several websites to complete your research for complex questions. Then along came Google Squared…
Google Squared is an experimental search tool that collects facts and information from the web and presents them in an organized collection, similar to a spreadsheet. For example, if you search for the term “laptops”, Google Squared builds a square with rows for each of several specific brands of laptops and columns for corresponding facts, such as description, processor, multi-core tech, chipset type, images, data bus speed, and other details.
What’s great about Google Squared is that you can customize the search results. You can add rows and columns for other information that you would like to find out. For our laptop example, if you want to search and compare selected brands and models, you can definitely do it. Try adding weight, width, or video card into the columns section and you will definitely improve your search results. As you remove rows and columns you don’t like, Google Squared will get a fresh idea of what you are interested in and suggest new rows and columns to be added.
Google Squared is a fun, simple, and quick means to gather facts from the internet. Got anything to research and discover? You can now begin SQUARING it!
Innovations on Google Commerce Search 2.0
Google Commerce Search has just been launched six months ago. It is an enterprise-grade website search solution hosted in Google’s cloud and designed specifically for online retailers.
With the second release of Google Commerce Search, a powerful customization options for retailers and important improvements to the overall shopping experience of consumers has been added. Google Commerce Search brings the speed, relevance, and user-friendly search capabilities of Google.com to your retail site, so shoppers find exactly what they are looking for quickly and easily.
Today, a merchandising dashboard is being introduced which allows site administrators, marketers, or merchandising experts to manage and control the appearance and ranking rules of search results. The facet rules help you control how the left-hand navigation panel appears on your ecommerce site. With this, you can specify exactly which attribute groups like category, brand and price are shown to the user and in what order they become visible.
Also, Google Commerce Search 2.0 delivers search innovations directly to the end user. Query autocompletion is now easy to execute with Google Commerce Search without the need of any custom code. With this new feature, shoppers can simply type the first few letters of their search term and immediately see query options in real time.
Another improvement with regards to Google Commerce Search is improved browsing and navigation. There are shoppers who want to browse and discover new products and you can do this because Google Commerce search now allows visitors to shop by browsing and searching directly for products around your site.
What’s great about this is that these new features are very accessible to online retailers because pricing is now available starting at $25,000/year depending on number of queries and SKUs.
With this fast and intuitive technology, Google Commerce Search 2.0 can definitely improve your consumers’ shopping experience.
Google Calendar and Its Uses
Google Calendar is a free time-management and event tracking tool by Google. It easily lets you organize your schedule and share events with your friends and loved ones.
With so many things to do 24/7, Google Calendar is a great web application tool to have. But, what are the various uses of Calendar?
1. Remembering important events and happenings
Google Calendar is a great help to remember birthdays, anniversaries, children’s school activities, and other important occasions. You can set and customized reminders to notify you in advance so that you can prepare without hassle and stress.
2. Easy sharing of calendars
Google Calendar allows several calendars to be created and viewed easily by your friends, family or co-workers. Schedules can be shared with specified people or everyone via public calendars. You can also add other people to calendars you create, allowing them to add items. Use this to have a collaborative work calendar for your team.
3. Send invitations and track RSVPs
Having a party? Well, with Google Calendar you can invite other people to gatherings and events on your calendar. Guests can RSVP via email or respond through Google Calendar also.
4. Reliable Task Gadget
You can also accomplish your to-do list using the task widget to easily manage daily tasks.
5. Can be integrated with various Google services
Gmail: If you see words such as dates, times, or meetings in your email, an “add to calendar” button is displayed that lets you add the date, time and event to your Google Calendar.
iGoogle: The calendar is shown as a module on your Google homepage. This tool offers you to edit how time can be displayed, what date, and a link to “Add Event”.
Google Desktop: The mini-calendar gadget lets you view your schedule without opening your browser.
Discover and Use AdWords Editor
What is AdWords Editor? What does it offers?
AdWords Editor is a free, downloadable Google application that is used for managing your Google AdWords ad campaigns. It allows you to download your account, edit campaigns offline and then upload changes any changes you have to your AdWords account.
But, why use AdWords Editor? For one thing, this application enables you to make changes to your account easily and quickly. Among the various benefits that you can reap are:
* You can work offline on your computer.
* Uploading changes to AdWords can be done easily.
* You can store and navigate one or more accounts.
* You can add, edit, and delete campaigns, ad groups, ads, keywords, and placements.
* Making large-scale changes can be done quickly.
* You can perform advanced searches and edits.
* You can also add comments for your changes.
* Another great thing is that you can sort and view performance statistics.
* Copying or moving items between campaigns, ad groups, and accounts is very simple.
* You can export a snapshot of your account for archiving or sharing.
* You can easily import an archive or share file and review the proposed changes.
AdWords Editor is available in almost 4o languages. Any Google AdWords advertiser with any size account can use it, but it is particularly useful for advertisers with multiple campaigns and long lists of keywords. However, you can download AdWords Editor if you don’t have an existing AdWords account. Once you have made your AdWords campaigns, you can use AdWords Editor to make some changes, circulate proposed changes, and get feedback from other users to your account any time.
Experience Google TV
We can’t deny the fact that television has become a big part of people’s lives. It’s a form of daily entertainment that can help people relax and enjoy after a hard and busy day at work or school. But, these days watching TV shows is not the only source of joy and entertainment that people got to enjoy on a daily basis. Now, there are various gadgets like computers and cell phones that captivate a lot of people worldwide.
Introducing Google TV….
Google TV brings everything you want and adore about the internet to your television. You can either avail yourselves of a new television model that combines TV with the power of the internet, or if you don’t want to spend for a new TV you can just buy a separate gadget or box for this.
The way that this application works is very simple. You can type in what you are searching for on your TV screen and then Google TV will find it for you. It’s an entertainment hub that looks for all of your channels, recorded shows, YouTube, and other cool websites. You can then add anything you like to your home screen, where you will always see your favorite channels, shows, websites, videos, music playlists and even photo albums. You can just choose among the saved shows or channels on your list any time, any day very easily and quickly.
With Google TV, your viewing experience will never be the same again. You can now experience watching your favorite shows on TV with the freedom and power of the web in one screen.
The New Face of Google Search
Have you noticed the new look and feel of Google Search? Well, brace yourselves because at Google each day is a continuous process of bringing the best to support the expanding needs of millions of users worldwide. Now, it is easier to access powerful tools for faster and cool searching experience.
So what are these latest updates to Search? Google added a left panel with quick access to relevant options and tools. Let’s face it some of the results are not useful or relevant to what users actually need. But with this update, it narrows the results to contents that are valuable and specific. With just one click to “Images”, you can see all the images related to what you are searching for. You can also click “News” to view relevant contents and reports. Also, you can click the “Everything” option to get back to the best results overall. This is the most essential search experience with different types of results integrated into the main results.
Another cool update to Google Search is its new look. Notice the new color palette, the logo’s location as well as the minimalist vibe of the page? Its simplicity and modern feel is what users are actually looking for.
Well, I hope that the majority of Google fans are happy and satisfied about the new face of Search. I must admit that at first, I was not comfortable with the changes, but as time passes by, I now appreciate the new design and functionality of Google Search. What more can I say…it’s simple yet powerful!
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