Bring Back Forum Search, Recipe Search and More

Google Search used to have an option that allowed you to restrict results to forum pages. You'll often find helpful discussions and it's nice to be able to exclude blogs, news sites, videos, shopping sites when searching for a software bug or other tech-related issues.

Fortunately, you can still restrict results to discussions: just add &tbm=dsc to a Google Search URL.

This also works for:

- recipe search: add &tbm=rcp
- local search: add &tbm=plcs
- blog search: add &tbm=blg
- patent search: add &tbm=pts

Here's a screenshot for recipe search:

Blog Search and Patent Search also have standalone sites, while Google Maps is a good place for local search.

You can also bookmark these URLs:

Google Forum Search - https://www.google.com/?tbm=dsc
Google Recipe Search - https://www.google.com/?tbm=rcp
Google Local Search - https://www.google.com/?tbm=plcs

Another option is to visit those pages, right click the search box and select "add as search engine" (Chrome), "add a keyword for this search" (Firefox) or "create search engine" (Opera). I added the keyword "forum" for Google Forum Search, so I can type "forum" in Chrome's Omnibox, press Tab and enter the query.

Crop Images in Google Slides and Google Drawings

Google Slides and Google Drawings now let you crop images. You can even crop them to fit a shape like a donut, a smiley face, a star, an arrow and more. This is called a mask and you can choose various shapes, arrows, callouts or equations.

Just select an image and click the "crop" button from the toolbar to crop an image. "Drag and drop the the blue handles until the image has been cropped the way you want. A shadow of the original image will be present to help you see how much you are cropping. Click Enter on your keyboard or click back onto your slide to save the cropped image," explains Google. To fit the image into a specific shape, select it, click the arrow next to the crop button and choose a shape.

You can also add a border to your image: click the line weight icon and change the line color.

Here's an example from Google Drawings that uses the double brace mask:

Chromecast Photowall

Photowall for Chromecast is a cool experiment that makes Chromecast more useful. It's a simple way to upload photos from multiple devices and display them in real time on the TV.

"Setting up a Photowall is easy. You'll need to have a Chromecast plugged into your TV, then you can create a Photowall from your laptop, phone or tablet. Once you're set up, you and your friends can start sending photos directly to the big screen. When you're finished, a YouTube video of your Photowall is automatically generated, which is perfect for sharing with everyone who took part," explains Google. Photowall works even if you don't have a Chromecast: it will use your computer screen.

Google also developed apps for Android and iOS. You can also upload photos from your favorite mobile browser by visiting g.co/photowall. Google even lets you tweak the photo before sending it to the TV: you can crop it, add captions and draw using the "doodle" feature.

Google Now for Almost All Desktop Chrome Users

Back in January, Google Now was available as an experiment feature in Chrome Canary. Then it was added to the other Chrome channels, but you had to manually enable it. Now this feature is rolling out to almost all Chrome users: Windows, Mac OS and Chrome OS are supported, while the support for other Linux distributions is coming later.

"Starting today and rolling out over the next few weeks, Google Now users in all languages will be able to get these notifications in all channels of Chrome. To enable this feature, simply sign in to Chrome with the same Google Account you're using for Google Now on Android or iOS," informs Google. "If you use Google Now on your mobile device, you can see certain Now cards on your desktop computer if you're signed into Chrome, including weather, sports scores, commute traffic, and event reminders cards. Some of these cards may be based on the location of your mobile device," mentions the help center article.

"If you'd rather avoid the wait, the option can be enabled immediately by visiting chrome://flags in your browser and toggling Google Now notifications to enabled," suggests The Verge. You can paste this:

chrome://flags/#enable-google-now

in the address bar, press Enter, select "Enabled" in the drop-down next to "Google Now" and click "Relaunch now" at the bottom of the window to restart the browser.

{ via +Chrome }

Rounded Google+ Notification Badge

After making profile pictures from the navigation bar round, Google+ tweaked the badge number displayed next to the bell icon. The counter is now in a red circle like in iOS, instead of a red square.

Here's a similar screenshot from July 2013:

As you can see there are many subtle changes: there's a "+" next to the name, the bell icon has a different color, the "share" button is smaller, the profile picture is circular, borders and the arrow icon are missing.

{ via Moritz }

Google's Voice Command for Playing Music

Google's voice search feature still has a long way to go. If you say "play music" or "play some music" in the Google Search app for Android, Google starts the Play Music app and opens the "I'm Feeling Lucky" radio, which is based on your listening history. I think it makes more sense to continue playing your music and use the current queue instead of creating a new playlist.

Google still doesn't support basic voice actions like "next song", "skip", "pause" or "stop the music". If you say "next song", Google only shows the search results and a list of songs from Next, an American R&B musical group.

You can say "play Alicia Keys" and Google will shuffle Alicia's songs:

You can also say "play blues" and Google will start the Blues radio. If you say "play hip hop", Google Play Music will show a list of search results for "hip hop".

That's what happens if Play Music is the default app that handles music voice actions. You can change it by saying "play Coldplay" or something similar, quickly tapping the icon next to the app's name, picking one of the music apps and tapping the selected app (I could choose between Google Play, Google Play Music, TuneIn Radio and Poweramp, but your list will be different, depending on the apps you've installed). The next time when you use a music-related voice action, the app you've picked will handle it. Most apps will show a list of search results or start playing music.

{ via +Google }

Konami Easter Egg in Google Voice Search

There's a cool Easter Egg in Google Voice Search: if you say "Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right", Google will answer: "Cheat mode unlocked, unlimited free Google searches". This is the Konami cheat code originally used for Nintendo games.

You can try this Easter Egg in the Google Search app for Android and iOS and in the Google Search site if you use Chrome for desktop.

The Konami code was also used as an Easter Egg in Google Reader, Google Docs (create a new document and press "Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right", then type ba and press Enter), Play Games and even for the Chromebook Pixel.

{ via Search Engine Land and Pierre Far }