YouTube Toolbar for Playlists

YouTube Toolbar for Playlists:
YouTube shows a small toolbar at the bottom of the page that lets you manage the videos from a playlist, more like the controls from a media player. The toolbar has options for pausing and muting the active video, buttons for playing the next video from the playlist and for automatically playing videos. All of these options were already available in the sidebar, but the new toolbar makes them more visible and it follows you in any YouTube page.

The excellent music sites The Hype Machine and thesixtyone have similar toolbars, but I'm not sure if the concept works well for videos. I can only see the new feature in Firefox, so I assume this is yet another experimental feature.

Google Suggest, Enabled by Default:

Google Suggest, Enabled by Default:
As anticipated, Google Suggest will be finally available at google.com. "Today we're excited because Google Suggest will be graduating from Labs and available by default on the Google.com homepage. Over the next week, we'll be rolling this out so that more and more of you will start seeing a list of query suggestions when you start typing into the search box," says Jennifer Liu from Google.

Launched in 2004 as part of the Labs, Google Suggest is an innovative feature that auto-completes a query using a dynamic list of popular queries. "As you type into the search box, Google Suggest guesses what you're typing and offers suggestions in real time. This is similar to Google's Did you mean? feature that offers alternative spellings for your query after you search, except that it works in real time. For example, if you type bass, Google Suggest might offer a list of refinements that include bass fishing or bass guitar. Similarly, if you type in only part of a word, like prog, Google Suggest might offer you refinements like programming, programming languages, progesterone, or progressive. You can choose one by scrolling up or down the list with the arrow keys or mouse."

The feature has been added to many Google services: Google Toolbar, YouTube, Google homepages for high-end mobile phones and for languages that use a non-Latin alphabet. Firefox users already have Google Suggest in the search box.

Other search engines tested similar features. After Ask.com introduced search suggestions last year, Yahoo refined the idea and launched the best interface for suggestions: Search Assist. Unlike Google Suggest, Yahoo's interface is more subtle and it's not limited to prefix-based suggestions.

Google Blog suggests three reasons why auto-complete can be useful: it helps you formulate queries, the feature shows alternative spellings for your query and it saves keystrokes. Despite the advantages, some users will find it annoying because it disables the auto-complete feature from their browsers and it might interfere with their typing. To permanently disable Google Suggest, you'll find an option at the bottom of the preferences page.

YouTube Uploader Powered by Gears

YouTube Uploader Powered by Gears:
You can now upload videos larger than 100 MB to YouTube without installing a dedicated software. YouTube started to use Gears to upload videos.

The latest version of Gears introduces some new features that make manipulating large files so much easier.

Gears now makes uploading large and multiple files on the web much easier,
giving you the primitives to roll a resumable uploader, which means hopefully we
can see custom desktop uploaders go away soon. (...) Another cool new feature is
the Blob API. Unlike strings, blobs let you reference arbitrary binary data — a
first for JavaScript! Therefore, blobs can more naturally represent things like
files and images, and they can be passed around efficiently. (...) We have also
extended the Desktop API with a new method, openFiles(), which allows users to
select multiple files of a particular content type, and then returns them as
blobs for easy uploading or worker processing.

The multi-video uploader is useful if you want to upload more than one video from a single video and if some of your videos have more than 100 MB. "Each video can be up to 10 minutes in length and up to 1GB in size. These videos will be available in My Videos after they have finished processing. It may take 30 minutes or more for extremely large files to appear on your My Videos page."
{ Thanks, Hebbet. }

Google Translate OneBox

Google Translate OneBox:
Google has a new OneBox for quick translations. You can just search for "translate", followed by a word or an expression and the optional "into English". For example, you can search for [translate désormais] and Google shows the entry from an automatically-generated bilingual dictionary.

Unfortunately, you can't use the search box as a shortcut for Google Translate because full texts aren't yet translated. The bilingual dictionary is only available for the following language pairs: English <-> French/Italian/Spanish/Portuguese/German/Russian/Chinese/Korean/Hindi. It's interesting that Google shows results from Google Image Search next to the translations.

{ Merci, TomHTML. }

Google Calendar Agenda in Gmail

Google Calendar Agenda in Gmail:
GmailAgenda is a Greasemonkey script that shows your Google Calendar agenda as a sidebar in Gmail. The script uses Google Calendar's embedded view and it includes an option to add events to the main calendar. The sidebar can't be minimized, so it remains visible even when you don't need it.

An alternative way to keep an eye on the Google Calendar agenda is to add the iGoogle gadget in the sidebar, as explained in this post. The advantages are that you don't need the Greasemonkey extension, the sidebar is visible even when you don't visit Gmail and it can be closed.

Google Launches AdSense for Feeds

Google Launches AdSense for Feeds:
I noticed a new option in my AdSense account: AdSense for feeds, a program that displays contextual and placement-targeted ads in FeedBurner feeds. FeedBurner announced in May that AdSense for Feeds will be available to a small number of publishers and now it seems that everyone can use it.

FeedBurner has recently closed FAN, its advertising network. "No new applications for FAN publishers are being accepted and we expect the broad variety of options provided through AdSense (including the new AdSense for Feeds product, powered with FeedBurner feeds) will give publishers valuable new revenue-earning potential," says a FeedBurner/Google employee.

The new AdSense for Feeds option lets you create a new ad unit that has a format automatically selected from 468x60 and 300x250. "Generally, the 300x250 size will display when there's more content and when your feed is being viewed in a device with a larger display," explains Google. You can choose if you want image ads, the ad frequency, the position (top or bottom of the post), the colors and a channel that tracks the ad performance.

For the moment, there's no connection between your AdSense account and the FeedBurner account, so Google automatically adds the FeedBurner service to your AdSense account. Unfortunately, your feeds are still connected to the old FeedBurner account and you need to migrate them first. The migration process is manual: just send an email at adsense-support-aff@google.com and mention your FeedBurner username and the AdSense account email address.

From AdSense, you can easily burn a new feed by entering the address of your blog and selecting some tracking options. The feeds can be managed at the new FeedBurner site, but there's no visible change other than the integration with Google Accounts and the new URLs for feeds: http://feedproxy.google.com/NAME.

Here's an ad from a feed of a FeedBurner/Google employee:

I doubt that these ads are an effective way to monetize feeds, since people use feed readers to get timely updates from a lot of sites and spend less time for each item. Besides, feed readers are mostly used by tech-savvy readers that are less likely to click on ads.

At some point, I may experiment with some infrequent ads in Google Operating System's feed and I'll post my findings.

Photo Albums in Google Docs

Photo Albums in Google Docs:
Google Docs will expand beyond documents. After adding support for storing PDFs, Google Docs will provide ways to create photo albums. It's not very clear if you'll be able to access the photos stored in Picasa Web Albums or create different photo albums, but GDrive is certainly here and its name is Google Docs.

The first screenshot has been created using information from Google's code, which already includes an icon of the photo section. The other screenshots show an empty list of photo albums and a new image search feature.



I suspect Google Docs will become the place where you can upload, share and manage any kinds of files. It's also likely that all the files that are uploaded to other Google services will be accessible in Google Docs in much the same way as the photos uploaded to Blogger blogs can be found in Picasa Web Albums.

Update: Radu noticed that if you go to docs.google.com/#photos and type the first letters from the titles of your Picasa Web Albums, Google shows the full titles as suggestions. It seems that it only works for public albums.

Easier Way to Create Forms in Google Docs

Easier Way to Create Forms in Google Docs:
You can now create forms directly from the New menu of Google Docs homepage.

After selecting the Form option, Google opens a wizard that lets you add questions, email or embed the form.

The form saves all the changes automatically and you can now reorder the questions using drag-and-drop.

What I don't like is that Google doesn't link to the spreadsheet which includes the form, so you have to find the spreadsheet by going back to the documents list. The relation between forms and spreadsheet is confusing and it would be nice to detach the forms from spreadsheets and use the forms as one of the many possible data sources, along with feeds, CSV files published on the web, financial data etc.

Export Files from Google Page Creator

Export Files from Google Page Creator:
You probably heard that Google intends to close Google Page Creator and migrate the users to Google Sites, a service that seems to be targeted to a different audience and that lacks many features available in Page Creator. Google Sites will add some of the missing features by the time Google closes Page Creator, but those who want to move to a different service or maybe to buy a domain can already export the files.


Requirement #1. There are three kinds of files that are trapped inside Page Creator: uploaded files and web pages created using the editor which can be public or unpublished. The following exporting tool can only work for uploaded files and the public web pages. If you have pages that are unpublished and you want to export them, click on "Publish all changes" in the sidebar. You can undo this action later.

Requirement #2. Another prerequisite for the exporting tool is a software that downloads all the files linked from a page. For Internet Explorer, try the excellent download manager FlashGet (I use the classic version). For Firefox, there's an extension called DownThemAll that has some of the features from FlashGet. In both cases, you'll have to restart the browser before continuing. As usually, Opera users don't need third-party software for advanced features: there's a sidebar panel that shows all the links from a page.

Requirement #3. If you read this in a feed reader, visit the site to view the exporting form.


How to export the files.
All sites from Google Page Creator have a sitemap that lists all the public files from a site: it's available at SITENAME.googlepages.com/sitemap.xml. Just go to your site's homepage and add /sitemap.xml in the address bar. To copy the content of the XML file in the box below, you could right-click, select "view source" and copy the code (for Firefox, Opera) or open the file http://SITENAME.googlepages.com/sitemap.xml in Notepad.

After clicking on "Obtain URLs", you should see a pop-up window that lists all the files from your Page Creator site. Right-click inside the page and select "Download all by Flashget" or "DownThemAll!", depending on your browser. Make sure to check "All files" in DownThemAll and to choose a folder where the files will be copied. In Opera, press F4, click on the "Links" panel, select all the links using Ctrl-A and click on "Save to Download Folder".


Unfortunately, there's still some manual editing you need to do for the pages created using the editor: replace <img src="name.gif/name-full.jpg" style="border: 0pt none ;">

and similar code with <img src="name.gif" style="border: 0pt none ;">.

Two free alternatives to Page Creator are Weebly and Synthasite. Wall Street Journal has an article that explains how to buy a domain and host a site without paying too much.


{ Inspired by Peter Dawson. }

Automate File Upload in Google Docs

Automate File Upload in Google Docs:
Google Docs has an option to upload files from web addresses, but it's not very convenient if you want to load many documents or you want to add a link for uploading a document. Here's the direct link that can be used to open a document from the web in Google Docs:

http://docs.google.com/?action=updoc&formsubmitted=true&uploadURL=DOCUMENTURL

This works for documents (.doc/.txt/.html/.rtf/.odt), spreadsheets (.xls/.csv/.ods), presentations (.ppt) and PDF files.

In Windows, you can easily create a batch file that automates the upload of multiple files to Google Docs, assuming that the browser is open and you are already logged in to a Google Account. For example, the following text can be copied in Notepad and saved as a .bat file. After executing the .bat, the two PDF files will upload to Google Docs in separate Firefox tabs.

start /d "%PROGRAMFILES%\Mozilla Firefox" firefox http://docs.google.com/?action=updoc&formsubmitted=true&uploadURL=http://www.fireworksafety.com/pdfs/FireworkSafetyTest.pdf

start /d "%PROGRAMFILES%\Mozilla Firefox" firefox http://docs.google.com/?action=updoc&formsubmitted=true&uploadURL=www.fs.fed.us/fire/safety/wct/2002/brochure_2002.pdf

A similar option is available in Google Toolbar for Firefox, which lets you open documents from the web in Google Docs.

Google Calendar Agenda in Gmail

Google Calendar Agenda in Gmail:
GmailAgenda is a Greasemonkey script that shows your Google Calendar agenda as a sidebar in Gmail. The script uses Google Calendar's embedded view and it includes an option to add events to the main calendar. The sidebar can't be minimized, so it remains visible even when you don't need it.

An alternative way to keep an eye on the Google Calendar agenda is to add the iGoogle gadget in the sidebar, as explained in this post. The advantages are that you don't need the Greasemonkey extension, the sidebar is visible even when you don't visit Gmail and it can be closed.