Google Latitude and Knowledge Graph

Google Latitude was the name of a Google product. When you search for [google latitude], Google now shows the physical coordinates of its headquarters.

This is powered by Knowledge Graph and it's no limited to the Googleplex. It also works for [pentagon latitude], [tour eiffel coordinates] and more.

Rearrange Apps in Google's Navigation Menu

Google's navigation menu now lets you rearrange apps using drag and drop. You can now personalize the app launcher, just like you can drag and drop apps in Chrome's app launcher. You can also add other Google services.

You can drag apps from the second page of the launcher to the first one, drag apps from the first page of the launcher to the second one, increase or decrease the number of apps from the first page.

Here's an example:

And another one:

You can even drag all the apps to the second page:

Google now lets you add other Google services: just visit Google Keep, Google Sites, Google Groups, Google Play Music, Webmaster Tools, Patent Search, Google Voice, click the launcher icon and add shortcuts for those services.

For some reason, the changes aren't preserved. It's probably a bug.

Google Contextual Search

Chrome Beta for Android has a flag called "Enable contextual search". You can find it by opening a new tab, pasting this in the address bar: chrome://flags/#contextual-search and pressing Enter. If you click "Enable" and "Relaunch now" at the bottom of the page, you'll enable this new feature.

What happens after enabling the feature? Tap a word from a page and Google will display it at the bottom of the page next to other surrounding words and a Google logo. Tap the logo and Chrome sends you to an internal Google page you can't access. The URL starts with: https://layers.sandbox.google.com/contextualsearch and includes the word you've tapped, the context and the URL of the page.

It's not clear what's the goal of this feature, but I assume that Google might show some search results related to the words you've selected and the context.

{ Thanks, Jérôme Flipo. }

The Best of Gmail

Gmail shows an interesting ad for the mobile Gmail app. I spotted the promotional message in the Gmail sidebar: "The official Gmail app. The best of Gmail is only available in the official app. Try it now".

When clicking "Try it now", Gmail shows this inline box with 3 options to get the right Gmail app for your device: sending a link by SMS, scanning a QR code or visiting gmail.com/app on your mobile device.

Chrome Bandwidth Stats

Chrome has an internal page that shows the amount of data transferred this session and the total amount of data transferred ever since this feature was added or you first used Chrome. Just open a new tab, paste this in the address bar: chrome://net-internals/#bandwidth and then press Enter.

Check the Original (KB) row of the table, where you can find bandwidth consumption data in kilobytes. For example, I used 40,024.5 KB since launching Chrome. The Savings values are only useful in the mobile Chrome for Android and iOS if the data saving proxy is enabled.

Savings = Original - Received

Google Play Music Match

How to tell if a song from Google Play Music was uploaded from your computer or it was simply matched with a copy from Google's servers? Click the 3-dot icon next to the song's name in the desktop interface and see if you can find a menu item called "fix incorrect match". If so, you'll listen to Google's version of the song.

"In order to upload your music quickly, Google Play matches your music files with copies on our server. Occassionally we might match with the wrong song. Report the problem here and the song will be corrected to use your copy instead of the matched copy," mentions Google's dialog.

If you click "fix match", you'll get this message: "Please make sure that the computer where you keep this song is running Music Manager and is connected to the internet. The song will be uploaded again within the next day."

Google's copies have a bit rate of 320kbps, so many of your songs will be "upgraded". You can check this by clicking "edit info".

Google Play Music Mini Player and Browser Upload

There's a new experimental feature in Google Play Music Labs: it's called Google Play Music for Chrome and it lets you "control music playback with a new mini player, add your existing music collection, and download free and purchased songs without installing Music Manager."

The Labs feature only works in Chrome and it uses Native Client to bring many of the features of the Music Manager app to the browser (great news for Chrome OS users).

You first need to install the Play Music app from the Chrome Web Store.

You can enable a mini player that lets you control your music. The mini player doesn't work if you close the Play Music tab, so you still have to keep it open.

You can also upload your music directly from Chrome. Pick your folders or use the iTunes library. By default, Google will continue to monitor your folders and upload new music.

This is the "media file permissions" dialog:

I've picked my Music folder.

You can continue to use Play Music while the files are uploaded. Check the progress at the bottom of the window, in the left sidebar. Files are uploaded even if you close the Play Music tab.

If you don't have a lot of files to upload, use drag and drop. Just drag the files to the Play Music tab.

When downloading multiple files, Google used to create a ZIP archive. Now you can set a download folder and all the files are automatically downloaded to that folder.

"We built this lab using Chrome Apps and Native Client technology. Uploads, downloads and the mini player are just the start, and we are excited to push the boundaries of what's possible on the web," says Google.

{ via Google Play }