Google Wallet Card

Google Wallet users in the US can now get a physical card from Google. It's free, but you need to verify your identity, which means you'll have to provide more information to Google: the last four digits of Social Security Number (SSN) or Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) and more.

"The Google Wallet Card is a physical prepaid debit card that allows you to access your Wallet Balance in the real world, at ATMs, banks, and wherever MasterCard® Debit is accepted. If you're in the US, and you have already verified your identity, you can request a Wallet Card from the desktop site at wallet.google.com, or from the mobile app. Once you receive and activate it, you'll be able to pay with the Wallet Card at online and physical stores that accept MasterCard® Debit, and make cash withdrawals at ATMs or banks."

Android Police reports that "Google says the card should be delivered to interested parties in 10-12 days". It's US-only, there are no fees to order or activate the card and the issuer of the card is The Bancorp Bank, which provides private label banking services.

Google provides a use case for the debit card: "Your roommate finally paid you back for dinner through Google Wallet, and you want to use that money right away to pay for groceries this week. Now, you can use the new Google Wallet Card to spend the money instantly, either by purchasing in stores or by withdrawing cash at ATMs, without having to wait for money to transfer from your Google Wallet Balance to your bank account."

Other advantages: free notifications on your mobile phone and no monthly/annual fees to use the card (there are some fees, though).

An important limitation: "you cannot use the Google Wallet Card outside the US right now".

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Google+ Shows Line Counter for Long Posts

Google+ now shows the number of lines that are collapsed next to "read more", so you can see if the post is long. If the post has less than 10 lines, Google doesn't display the number of lines.

Here's an example of a long Google+ post: "read more (50 lines)".

Google+ shows a similar line counter for long comments:

These are only displayed in the stream and profile pages, not for the post pages.

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Google Asks Users to Disable Ad Blocking for Its Sites

It looks like Google started to show warnings if you use AdBlock or AdBlock Plus, the most popular ad blockers (they have more than 50 million users). A reader from Brazil noticed this message: "Oh no, it seems like you are blocking Google's ads. These ads pay for Google products that people use every day. It's easy to deactivate ad blocking just for Google. And it won't change your ad blocking settings or other settings".

The message links to a filter that includes a long list of exceptions like "@@||www.google.com^$document" and "@@||maps.google.com^$document".

Here's a screenshot of the Google whitelist filter (it actually includes more domains):

This is pretty weird, considering that the ads were not blocked, as you can see in the screenshot. Google ads are not blocked by default in AdBlock Plus, since they're considered "acceptable ads". Some sites have speculated that Google paid AdBlock Plus to whitelist its ads, but that's not very clear.

Google Discovery also reported about this back in May, so it looks like the experiment is limited to Google Brazil, at least for now.

{ Thanks, Marcos Alexandre. }

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YouTube Tests Channel Cards

After adding music cards and testing cards for shows, YouTube experiments with cards for channels. They're displayed in the right sidebar of the search results page and show the latest videos from the channel and some of its playlists.

Here's an example for Google Chrome. The channel is still included in the list of search results.

Here's how you can enable the experimental feature. If you use Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari or Internet Explorer 8+:

1. open youtube.com in a new tab

2. load your browser's developer console:

* Chrome or Opera 15+ - press Ctrl+Shift+J for Windows/Linux/ChromeOS or Command-Option-J for Mac

* Firefox - press Ctrl+Shift+K for Windows/Linux or Command-Option-K for Mac

* Internet Explorer 8+ - press F12 and select the "Console" tab

* Safari 6 - if you haven't enabled the Develop menu, open Preferences from the Safari menu, go to the Advanced tab and check "Show Develop menu in menu bar". Close Preferences and then press Command-Option-C to show the console.

* Opera 12 - press Ctrl+Shift+I for Windows/Linux or Command-Option-I for Mac, then click "Console".

3. paste the following code which changes a YouTube cookie:

document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=2IS0PWox26Q; path=/; domain=.youtube.com";window.location.reload();

4. press Enter and close the console.

Some examples of searches: [google], [apple], [comedy central].

To go back to the regular interface, use the same instructions, but replace the code from step 3 with this one:

document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=; path=/; domain=.youtube.com";window.location.reload();

{ via Rubén. }

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Blue YouTube

I like blue, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that YouTube made some UI elements blue (#2793e6): the like button and the line below the number of views. Maybe someone was unhappy that Android KitKat removed all the blue icons and decided to compensate in other ways or maybe it's an attempt to calm YouTube users and make them stop posting silly comments.

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Folders in Chrome's App Launcher

Chrome's latest Dev channel release lets you create folders in the app launcher. If you use Chrome 33 (Dev, Canary) or Chromium 33 for Windows, you can paste this in the address bar:

chrome://flags/#enable-app-list-folder

Then click "Enable" next to "Enable the app list folder" and then click the "Relaunch now" button at the bottom of the page to restart the browser and enable the experimental feature.

"If enabled, user will be able to create app list folder by drag-and-drop," informs Google. It works just like in Android: drag one app on top of another to create a folder, then drag other apps to the folder.

Here's the Google folder from the screenshot above:

It's a simple feature that lets you organize your apps and reduce clutter. Unfortunately, it doesn't work well, at least not for me. After creating the folders, Chrome quickly removed them. Maybe it has something to do with syncing or maybe there are other bugs. It's an experimental feature, so I can't complain.

"These experimental features may change, break, or disappear at any time. We make absolutely no guarantees about what may happen if you turn one of these experiments on, and your browser may even spontaneously combust. (...) Please proceed with caution."

{ Thanks, Silviu. }

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Mobile First

A few years ago, many people complained that mobile sites and mobile apps are too limited. They couldn't include all the features from their desktop counterparts and some thought that was a bad thing.

Fast forward today and you'll notice that Google's desktop sites look more and more like Google's mobile apps. Most Google redesigns are all about taking mobile interfaces and adding them to the desktop. That's one of the reasons why many Google services drop advanced features and opt for simplified interfaces. This way, everything looks consistent and users can quickly switch from the mobile apps to the desktop apps.

Here are some examples:

1. The Google Maps redesign started with the iPhone app, continued with the desktop site and then the Android app.

2. The app launcher from the Google navigation bar was first available in the Google Search app for iOS.

3. Google Play's desktop interface had a lot of advanced features that were removed when Google updated the site to make it look more like the Android app.

4. The Google+ photo editor and Chrome Office editor are based on mobile apps that were ported to Native Client. You're now using the desktop to run mobile apps (only in Chrome).

5. Google Keep for Android has a lot more features than Google Keep for desktop. For example, you can't reorder notes or add more than one image in Google Keep for desktop.

Somehow, the most innovative and most interesting apps are now in the mobile space. That's where the users are moving and where things are constantly changing. Mobile is a flourishing testbed for new ideas.

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New Gmail Interface for iPad

Google updated the Gmail app for iOS and added a new interface for iPad. The sidebar that lets you go to a label or a different mail account is now persistent in the landscape mode and it's a lot smaller. It only shows your inbox tabs and the number of unread messages from each tab, but you can tap the arrow icon to find your labels. Unfortunately, you can't select some labels that are always displayed, like you can do in the desktop Gmail.

The sidebar that displays the messages from the current view is now hidden in the portrait mode, so you can better read your mail. You need to tap the three dot icon to see the list of messages, but you can also swipe from the left edge. The built-in mail client from iOS also hides the messages list in portrait mode.

There's also a full-screen compose box, so you get more room to write your messages.

Google mentions some other improvements: a better scrolling experience and some iOS7 features like the new keyboard.

The new Gmail for iPad has a lot in common with the updated Google Drive app for iPad. Google spends a lot of resources to make its UIs more consistent, so I wouldn't be surprised to see these interfaces added to the desktop.

{ via Gmail Blog }

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Google Image Search Tests Snippets

One of the features that was removed in the current Google Image Search interface is snippets. Now Google only shows the title of the page, the domain and the size of the image in pixels. Snippets used to reveal more information about the photo or the page that includes the image, just like the snippets that are used for all the other search results.

Google considers bringing back snippets. Here's a screenshot from a Google experiment:

In this case, the snippet is quite useful, but very long: "the company's energy supply. This makes the Googleplex one of the USA's largest corporate solar installations. Unfortunately, I wasn't allowed to take photos on the roof, so here's one Google made earlier."

Google's regular interface doesn't show snippets:

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Star Gmail Ads

Remember Gmail's ads that look like regular mail and are also displayed in the promotions tab? Google disabled many of the features that were available for regular messages, so you couldn't mark them as unread, flag them as spam, label them or add them to Google Tasks. The fake messages were only available in the web interface, so you couldn't find them if you used other email clients.

Now you can convert the fake messages to regular messages: just star the ads and they are saved to your inbox as messages received from mail-noreply@google.com. "New! Starring Ads. Starred ads will be saved to your Promotions inbox," informs Gmail. While the messages are added to the Promotions tab, you'll also see them in the Primary tab because all the starred inbox messages are added to the Primary tab by default. You can unstar the messages, delete them, archive them (just don't send a reply).

This screenshot allows you to see both the ad and the message created from the ad after starring it. The ad is removed after a few seconds, so you don't get duplicates.

Here's the ad:

... and the message created by Google:

All the sponsored promotions that are available for your account can be found at: https://mail.google.com/mail/#pinbox.

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Gmail's New Attachment UI, Powered by Google Drive

An hour after posting about Gmail's new attachment UI, Gmail's blog announced the new feature:

"With today's update to Gmail, (...) you can view attachments and save files directly to Google Drive without ever leaving Gmail, making it easy to access them later from whatever device you're on - computer, phone or tablet. The next time you open an email with attachments, you'll see new previews of the files at the bottom of the email, from photos and videos to spreadsheets and PDFs."

Gmail now shows thumbnails for many file formats. Mouse over an attachment to download it or save it to Google Drive.

Gmail shows a list of Google Drive folders, so you can save the file to the right folder directly from Gmail. You can also download all the attachments or save all of them to Google Drive.

Click the attachments to preview files inline using Google Drive. The nice thing is that Google Drive Preview opens inside Gmail.

"This new attachment experience is available on desktop and will be rolling out over the next week," informs Google, which also mentions that Google Drive has 120 million active users.

{ via Gmail's blog }

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