Gmail Labs, PDFs, Feedburner, and Yahoo

Gmail Labs was introduced last week with a lot of commotion. Experimental features are available for testing through the Settings tab in Gmail. The features may or not make it permanently into Gmail, but some of them are useful. Including new starring features and hiding Unread counts, this labs feature promises to help Gmail faster. For my suggestion, see my last post.

Google Docs introduced the ability to upload PDFs to your Docs account. The size is limited to 10 MB from your local computer and 2 MB from the web. They are stored with the rest of your documents or you can look at them all separately. The viewer has limited functionality, but it includes searching the text and the ability to share the document online. The viewer used here is the same as seen with Google Book Search and Google Patent Search.

Google is continuing their integration with Feedburner. They have started a new domain at feedburner.google.com. They must be close to merging Google Accounts with this service as well. The login is available, but is not valid. Most users speculate that Feedburner's current domain will be phased out and moved to the Google domain for tighter integration with Google products.

Yahoo announced a non-exclusive agreement with Google today for search and ads. Not much else to say here except that this was long overdue. Also, I am looking forward to the integration of Yahoo Messenger and Google Talk (Google Talk's lack of updates is another hot topic issue with me).

Gmail and Reader (Future)

Today is the the first post I am publishing about what I would like to see done with Google's products in the future. I will always make sure to distinguish my thoughts about Google products from actual news and updates from Google.

With Firefox, we have seen the integration of Google Reader into Gmail with the add-ons and extensions built from users around the world. What I would like to see done here is an official merge between the two applications. I will compare each section of the applications adding what I would like to see kept from each application, what should be dropped, and what could be done to make it even easier than they both are already to use.

Header




The top search bar (Gmail) is simple and shows the Advanced Options link. You also have the ability to search the web right from Gmail. I, as do most other users, rarely use the advanced options and just type and press enter. With the Reader search bar, we see a drop down to help us search our folders and subscriptons. I feel as though this unnecessary for most users. Usually a simple search will find what we are looking for. These could be integrated into the advanced search options. Another idea would be to separate results based on email or feed. There are many options here, but I would like to see the simplicity of the Gmail Header kept in the merge.

Sidebar

Starting from the top of Reader's sidebar, I will explain each link and where it should integrated into Gmail. The "Home" link can be dropped from the sidebar and moved elsewhere. Links that could be combined would be "All Mail" and "All items" and "Starred" and "Starred items". These would be condensed to Gmail. The "Trends" can be moved to a tab in the settings. Your shared items would be marked as sent mail, and your friends' shared items would appear as unread and marked as is normal in Google Reader and put into your Inbox. These two links could be removed from the merge to Gmail. The "Manage Friends" link would be nice addition to the Contacts manager of Gmail. A standard group of "Reader Friends" could easily be added. This would make an easy way to add contacts to your shared feeds. "Add Subscription" could be moved to the settings with a feed management tab. The folders of Reader would be made into labels in Gmail. Again, "Manage Subscriptions" could be moved to settings under feed management. Adding a tab in the settings for feed management and other options would be a cinch as the two applications are already similar in this department.

Adding a feeds tab to the left side of Gmail, would make it easier for users to switch to their feeds instead of switching to google.com/reader. This default view would be the "All items" view in Reader. One last feature in the sidebar of Reader that I would like to see moved to Gmail is the collapsing option. Sometimes, this makes feeds easier to read in Reader. This option in Gmail would open up space for reading emails and feeds.

Top and Tabs




For the most part, I like the features on the header of Gmail (top). The "Archive", "Report Spam", and "Delete" buttons would not possess any purpose within the confines of Reader. The label dropdown and links to select sets of messages or feeds would make it easier for feeds to be catergorized. The "newer" and "older" links in the upper right of Gmail would make scrolling through feeds easier and faster to read. This leads me to the list view tab and the expanded view tab. As some of you may note, this is already present in Gmail. We scroll through messages expanded all the time with the aforementioned links. I prefer to ease of use that Gmail provides for this. The list view is the standard inbox. The dropdown to sort feeds by date is handy, but could be moved to add in with the dropdown already in Gmail.


Other

The inbox of each of these products is nearly identical and very simple. I like this style and would like to see it kept. Another feature from Reader that needs to be ported is the Google Profile. This could be integrated with the Contacts Manager and your friends be shown in a group in your contacts. The last feature that I would like to mention is Gears. Adding offline accessibility to Gmail would give a more desktop feel to users who just aren't ready to make the jump.

If you have any other suggestions for either application that I haven't mentioned here, please leave me a comment.

Google Health

I have been staying quiet on the subject of this for a while. I am just letting it work its magic into the online world of personal health records. I am going to wait a while longer before I give my opinion about this recent release from Google Health. I want to have more of a chance to get to know this product.


As for Google, I look to see some big things here in the future. Check my blog later this week for a post about what I would like to see with two Google products.

Google Maps Adds Photos and Articles

Google Maps added a "More" tab to its ever-expanding top menu. The tab gives you access to photos from Panoramino and articles from Wikipedia. The geocoded photos are placed at their location on the map when selected. Wikipedia articles are also placed if there is a location given within the article.



Google Maps looks like it will be integrating more and more location information in the near future. Google Street View is also starting to blur faces in imagery.

Google Friend Connect

Google Friend Connect was released on Monday. As a web developer, I see this becoming very useful in the near future. The preview release only gives access to a select few. Friend Connect uses your friends on other social networks and social applications from OpenSocial to make a third party websites more social.

Google Maps Explore

Google Maps' new exploration feature shows geotagged photos, videos, and local user-created maps.

Google Talk Chatback Styles

Google Talk chatback released some new styles today. You can now show your status icon and message in a variety of ways with the hyperlink for visitors to chat with you. This offers a few better ways to embed the badge onto your personal web page and blog. You can find out more here.

New Google Reader Features

I have been waiting a while for some of the features in the latest update from Google Reader. Sometimes I find a blog that I am not subscribed to that I want to share with my Google Reader friends. This was not easy before as I had to send them individually a link to the article online. Now, through the new features, I can just add the article to my Google Reader from a bookmarking option. This makes it easy to share the article with my friends. Also, with the new features, they have added a way to send notes with your Reader friends. You can either share a note with your friends as a group, or you can share a post and attach a note with it saying why you have shared this particular article. Find it here on the notes page. Also, they have added a way to incorporate a theme into your shared items feed. This is interesting option maybe stemming from the recent release of artist themes for iGoogle. Lastly, they have implemented a way to distinguish from your own items and shared items within your All Items page on Reader. This will help when you find yourself wondering how you got the item in the first place.

All this is well enough for Google Reader. I use the service probably second most to Gmail. I would still like to see integration into Gmail as the services have similar schemes and style of use.

Google Ocean

Google Ocean is latest speculated release from Google. Reports show that this will have tons of data from the oceans including weather, currents, and tide information. Speculation shows this will probably be part of Google Earth's next release, but Google may also put this inside of the browser as they did with Google Sky.

Google Analytics and MeasureMap

Yesterday, some individuals received emails from Google about their MeasureMap accounts. We should soon see an integration with Google Analytics. MeasureMap seems to have gone by the wayside since Google bought them out a while ago. Google wants to bring the early MeasureMap users back into the picture by adding the features for blogs back into Google Analytics. We will see in the near future what Google holds in store.

Google Street View Directions

Google added directions with Street View today. This finally puts a purpose to the Street View pictures they have been taking for the last year or so. Visting Google Maps, searching for directions, and clicking on the camera next to each of the directions will bring up a popup with the street view of your point on the map. Clicking on the arrows inside the popup, you can follow your intended route as long as there is Street View imaging available in that area.