Photo Tours in Google Maps

Google Maps has a great new feature that shows 3D photo tours for more than 15,000 landmarks using the images submitted by Panoramio and Picasa Web users. Google displays an image preview next to the local search results that have photo tours, so it's easy to find them. Here are some examples: La Sagrada Familia, La Tour Eiffel, Santiago Bernabéu Stadium, Hungarian State Opera House, Trevi Fountain. The feature uses WebGL, so it only works in Chrome, Firefox and Safari (where it's disabled by default).

"To produce these photo tours, we use advanced computer vision techniques to create a 3D experience from public, user-contributed Picasa and Panaromio photos. We start by finding clusters of overlapping photos around major landmarks. From the photos, our system derives the 3D shape of each landmark and computes the location and orientation of each photo. Google Maps then selects a path through the best images, and adds 3D transitions to seamlessly guide you from photo to photo as if you're literally flying around the landmark and viewing it from different perspectives," explains Google.

Google's Zerg Rush Easter Egg

Google has a new Easter Egg: search for [zerg rush] and you'll notice that search results will start to disappear, destroyed by zerglings. Your mission is to save the search results and kill the zerglings using your clicks, but it's not easy.

According to KnowYourMeme, "Zerg Rush is a popular online gaming term used to describe an overwhelming scale of attack carried out by one player against another in real time strategy (RTS) games. The term originates from the popular RTS game Starcraft, in which the Zerg race is notoriously known for its ability to mass-produce offensive units within a short time frame, thus allowing the player to overpower the opponent by sheer number."

When the game is over, Google lets you post your results to Google+ and shows the message "GG", a cryptic way to say "Good Game".

{ Thanks, Mati. }

Google Drive Goggles

Google Drive has the most powerful image search technology you can find in an online storage service. It uses Google Goggles technology to recognize objects, logos, landmarks, text and much more, so you can find an image even if the filename is a.jpg. The most impressive thing is that the processing happens as soon as you upload the images and there's no setting to enable.

For example, Google Drive found an image of the Android statue from the Googleplex when searching for [Android].

It also found a screenshot of Google's homepage and a Chrome logo when searching for [Google], this time using OCR technology.

"Let's say you upload a scanned image of an old newspaper clipping. You can search for a word from the text of the actual article. We also use image recognition so that if you drag and drop photos from your Grand Canyon trip into Drive, you can later search for [grand canyon] and photos of its gorges should pop up. This technology is still in its early stages, and we expect it to get better over time," explains Google.

Chrome and Google Drive's Third-Party Apps

One of the most important Google Drive features is the support for third-party apps. Now you're no longer limited to Google's word processor, spreadsheet editor, presentation app and you can use web apps developed by other companies.

Google released a SDK for Google Drive apps and there are already 18 apps that use it. Users are required to install a Chrome app from the Chrome Web Store for each Google Drive app, but they don't have to use Chrome. Google's dev blog informs that "Drive apps are distributed from the Chrome Web Store and can be used with any modern browser." I've managed to install apps in Firefox and Opera, but not in IE9.

To integrate a third-party app with Google Drive, the app sends you to a page that asks for your permission. The authorization process fails if you load the page without installing the Chrome Web Store app. As Google says, "apps will not have any API access to files unless the app has been installed in Chrome Web Store." Chrome apps are only used to allow the third-party apps to use the Drive API, but they can be uninstalled immediately after they're installed and all the features will work in Chrome and any other browser.

At the moment, Drive apps don't integrate with Chrome, but that's likely to happen in the future. Chromebooks would be a lot more useful if you could sync files with Google Drive and open them using web apps.

Google Docs Experiments With a Font Manager

Google Docs tests another great feature: a font manager that will help you customize the list of fonts and add new fonts from the Google Web Fonts project. You can sort the fonts by popularity, by name or the date added and restrict the fonts to serif, sans serif, display and handwriting.

There's also a search box that lets you find a font. For example, you can use the advanced search tool from the Web Fonts project, find your favorite font, then quickly add it to the Google Docs font list.

You can try the new feature using this template (update: the document has been removed). Just click "use this template" and you'll create a new document that opens in an updated version of the Google Docs editor. To access the font manager, click the font dropdown from the toolbar and select "add fonts" at the bottom of the list.

{ Thanks, abarjames1. }

Google Drive's Folder View

Google Drive added a new way to view the files from a folder. Just right-click the folder, select "open folder" and you'll be able to preview and edit files, while still seeing the list of files. The nice thing is that the files are cached and you can quickly switch between them without reloading the files.

You can use this feature to compare documents, edit two documents simultaneously or preview the files from a folder shared with you. The sidebar can be minimized by clicking the small arrow icon and you'll still be able to click file icons.

{ Thanks, Jérôme. }

Google Docs Tests Quick Apply Feature

There's a really cool feature that could be available soon in Google Docs. Just press Alt+/ or click the "?" icon from the toolbar and you can type a few letter from the name of a Google Docs command and select it. For example, you can type "in" and select "increase indent" or "insert row above". It's much faster than finding the command in the Google Docs menus.

You can try the new feature using this template (update: the document has been removed). Just click "use this template" and you'll create a new document that opens in an updated version of the Google Docs editor.

{ Thanks, Jediah. }