Google Operating System Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:31:00 +0200 Google Tests a New Navigation Bar Google tests a tweaked user interface for the navigation bar. The experiment removes link underlining, changes the background color when you mouse over a link from the navigation bar and adds an icon for the settings menu. Thu, 02 Sep 2010 17:45:27 +0200 Chrome Extension for Google OS Blog Jay Wang developed a Google Chrome extension for this blog. The extension lets you read all the posts, it keeps track of the posts you've read and it notifies you when there's a new post. The search feature lets you find posts from this blog and from Google's official blogs. Jay Wang's extension is a great combination between Firefox's live bookmarks and Google Reader, so it might eventually be used to subscribe to any site. { Thanks, Jay. } Wed, 01 Sep 2010 12:43:56 +0200 Google Buys SocialDeck Google acquired yet another social gaming company: SocialDeck. The start-up had an interesting idea: creating a platform for playing games on any device. "SocialDeck was founded in 2008 with the vision of enabling 'anywhere, anytime, anyone' gaming. The company has launched several titles for the iPhone, Facebook, and BlackBerry using its social gaming platform technology, which enables simultaneous game play across multiple mobile devices and social networks," explains SocialDeck's site. It should be obvious that Google doesn't buy companies like SocialDeck to develop games. Most likely, Google wants to create a platform for social gaming that will enable users to play the same game on an Android device, on an iPhone, on a computer, on a Chrome OS tablet, in Google Me or any other social network that uses Google's platform. Here's an overview of SocialDeck's gaming platform: { via Inside Social Games } Tue, 31 Aug 2010 18:28:09 +0200 Gmail Priority Inbox Last year, I posted about a new Gmail feature that will prioritize important messages. This feature will be available soon and it's called Priority Inbox. "Priority Inbox is a new view of your inbox that automatically helps you focus on your most important messages. Gmail has always kept spam messages out of your inbox, and now we've improved Gmail's filter to help you see the emails that matter faster without requiring you to set up complex rules. Priority Inbox splits your inbox into three sections: Important and unread, Starred, and Everything else. Messages are automatically categorized as they arrive in your inbox. Gmail uses a variety of signals to predict which messages are important, including the people you email most and which messages you open and reply to (these are likely more important than the ones you skip over)." Gmail also adds two buttons that let you classify messages as important or unimportant, just like the "Mark as spam" and "Not spam" buttons. Unlike spam filtering, finding important messages is more difficult because you can't use information from other accounts to classify messages. Google has to build a personalized classifier for each Gmail user and it needs a lot of messages. "Email importance ranking works best for people who receive a lot of email," explains Google. Google takes into account implicit signals like: the messages from people you frequently email are important, if a message includes words frequently used in other messages you usually read then it's probably important, the messages you star are probably more important than the messages you archive without opening. There are also explicit signals: click on the important/unimportant buttons, create filters to mark messages as important. Priority Inbox will be available in Gmail and Google Apps over the next week, but you'll only see it in Google Apps if the administrator has enabled "pre-release features". Tidbit: Gmail uses the "important" label to classify messages, so that's the reason why you can't create a label named "important". { Thanks, Niranjan, Tillmann and Nikola. } Tue, 31 Aug 2010 11:46:10 +0200 Google Calendar's Event Scheduling Feature is Back Last year, Google Calendar tested a feature that made it easier to schedule events with guests. The "sneak preview" was only available for a few months, but now it's back. Google calls it "find a time" and you can use it when you create an event. "If you're able to view your guests' calendars (via sharing, Google Apps shared access, or because they've made their calendars public), you'll be able to compare schedules and pick a time that works for everyone," explains Google. Google Calendar redesigned the page that lets you create events and added a more intuitive dialog for repeating events. "The old interface for creating recurring events was clumsy and took up too much space on the screen," admits Google. "Now you'll see only a summary of your recurring event on the main event page; if you want to edit it, you can use a window that opens when you select the 'Repeats' checkbox." Sat, 28 Aug 2010 17:07:39 +0200

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