GDrive Is Coming

After many years of waiting, Google's online storage service will finally be available. It won't be called GDrive, as it will only be an updated version of Google Docs.

"Instead of emailing files to yourself, which is particularly difficult with large files, you can upload to Google Docs any file up to 250 MB. You'll have 1 GB of free storage for files you don't convert into one of the Google Docs formats (i.e. Google documents, spreadsheets, and presentations), and if you need more space, you can buy additional storage for $0.25 per GB per year," mentions Google Docs blog.

The update will be slowly rolled out in the coming days and it's the next step in the evolution of Google's online office suite. When Google added support for PDF files in 2008, it became clear that Google Docs will let you upload any kind of file.


Google says that the service will be able to open many common file formats. "You can search for document files you've uploaded or that have been shared with you just like you do with your Google documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and PDFs. And you'll be able to view many common document file types with the Google Docs viewer."

Google Docs has the potential to become a great service for online storage, but it won't succeed if it only includes 1 GB of free storage. Microsoft's SkyDrive offers 25 GB of free storage, while ADrive offers 50 GB of free storage. Even Gmail has more free storage than Google Docs and its main purpose is not storing files.





{ Thanks, Myron and Norman. }

Fast Flip in Google News

Google News homepage added a new section for Fast Flip, the innovative service from Google Labs that lets you quickly scan news articles. Scroll to the bottom of the page and you'll see a list of the most viewed articles and some articles about popular topics.


"So far we've found that the speed and visual nature of the service encourages readers to look at many articles and, for the ones that catch their interest, click through to the story publishers' websites," explains the Google News blog.

Unlike Google News, which only shows a small snippet from the article, Fast Flip displays a screenshot that includes the first paragraphs of the article. That means Google needs to get permission from each news site before adding it to Fast Flip. If the experiment is successful and Fast Flip makes news articles more discoverable, it could replace Google News image view.

Google's Sensitive Translation Service

Eric Baković from Language Log noticed a subtle feature of Google Translate. Google's machine translation system shows radically different results when you change the punctuation or the case of a text.

Here's an example of a small change in a text that improves Google's translation:

[Spanish] tu hija que te quiso tanto y no supo demostrarlo - perdoname.
[English] your daughter that you loved so much and she could not prove it - pardon me.

[Spanish] Tu hija que te quiso tanto y no supo demostrarlo - perdoname.
[English] Your daughter who loved you so much and failed to prove it - pardon me.

"I don't pretend to know anything about Google's translation algorithm(s), but I do find it interesting that what seem like very minor manipulations like those shown above can lead to both bizarrely different results as well as to subtle improvements," notices Eric.

Jim Regan offers a possible explanation: "Google uses statistical machine translation, so algorithms have little to do with it - the translation is created by matching all the translations available for the different parts of the sentence, and then ranked against an n-gram language model of the target language to see how likely it is that those particular phrases go together, to assemble the translation. As case can be significant - acronyms are usually all upper case, proper names use an initial capital, etc. - it makes sense that it affects the translation."

Google's Mobile Homepage Shows Nearby Places

Google's mobile homepage for iPhone and Android phones added a cool feature that shows a list of points of interest near you. The page can already find your location, so you only need to click on a category or to select "Explore right here".

"First, we wanted to make it fast and easy to find out more about a place in your immediate vicinity, whether you're standing right in front of a business or if it's just a short walk away. (...) Second, we wanted to make searching for popular categories of nearby places really simple," explains Google.


This is a good example of "queryless" search. Google can provide a list of relevant results just by knowing your location.

Apparently, this feature is available in the US for iPhone OS 3.0+ and Android 2.0.1+, but I managed to enable it outside of US by setting the region format to "United States" and by updating the location.

Nexus One, the Google Phone

Two years after announcing Android, Google answers the question "where's my GPhone?" by launching Nexus One. It's not the first Google-branded phone manufactured by HTC, but it's the first Android phone sold by Google.

Google set up an online store for Android phones and Nexus One is the first phone that's available for sale. Andy Rubin likes to call it a superphone because it's much more than a regular smartphone. Even if Nexus One is probably the best Android phone on the market, it's far from being revolutionary.

"Manufactured by HTC, the Nexus One features dynamic noise suppression from Audience, Inc., a large 3.7" OLED display for deep contrast and brilliant colors and a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset for blazing speeds. Running on Android 2.1, the newest version of Eclair, the software includes innovations like a voice-enabled keyboard so you can speak into any text field, fun Live Wallpapers, a 3D photo gallery for richer media experiences and lots more. Of course, it also comes with a host of popular Google applications, including Gmail, Google Voice and Google Maps Navigation," mentions Google.


The phone is available for purchase in the United States and can be shipped to the UK, Hong Kong, and Singapore. You can buy it unlocked for $529 or buy it for $179 with a T-Mobile plan. In the coming months, Google will ship the phone in many other countries and will add support for other carriers, including Verizon and Vodafone.

Why launch a phone and sell it only on Google's site? To create some excitement and to connect the phone with Google's brand. Nexus means "bond, link", so the phone is the link between Google's users and Google's mobile services.

Google's Animated Doodle

Google's US homepage uses an animation to celebrate Isaac Newton's birthday. After loading the page, an apple falls from the tree to illustrate Newton's theory of gravity.


It's the first time when Google uses an animated doodle on its homepage. Now that users got used to the fade-in animation that exposes Google's navigation links, Google will try new ways to make the homepage more interactive.

Google Docs Thumbnails

Google Docs generates thumbnails for documents, so you can quickly preview files. For now, this feature is only available if you share a folder and use the special view for shared folders.

Google stores the thumbnails using Picasa Web Albums. Here's an example of thumbnail:

http://lh5.ggpht.com/DsAScNyFZzs6EVjy0uN1F_Iwczykgoq0tEmmIu05WydKzIj0mBg-Znm-REMzvda8oWE=s32-c

You can replace s32 with other values: s64, s640 to see bigger versions of the thumbnails. It's likely that Google Docs will add a grid view for managing files in a more traditional way.