Gmail Updates Right-Click Menu

Angelo Giuffrida spotted a small Gmail update and I wanted to share it with you:

"Not really groundbreaking, but interesting to note that Google updated the Gmail right-click menu. The line between Delete and the other options is new as it was previously just a 3 option menu without any additional spacing near Delete (or a line to separate that functionality)."

The menu divider separates non-destructive actions like "archive", "move to inbox" and "mark as read" from "delete".

{ Thanks, Angelo. }

10 New Languages in Google Translate

Google Translate now supports 90 languages and there are 10 new languages: Chichewa, Malagasy, Sesotho, Malayalam, Myanmar (Burmese), Sinhala, Sundanese, Kazakh, Tajik and Uzbek. "These 10 new languages will allow more than 200 million additional people to translate text to and from their native languages," informs Google.

The Translate Community feature helped Google improve its algorithms for some of the new languages. Regular users can help Google translate words and phrases, evaluate translation quality, validate translations and choose a better translation. In fact, one of the indicators for adding a new language to Google Translate is: "Speakers of the languages are eager to partner with us and offer their language expertise through Community tasks".

{ Thanks, Emanuele Bartolomucci. }

Christmas Decorations in Google Search

Just like last year and many years before, Google shows some special decorations when searching for [Christmas], [Hanukkah], [Kwanzaa], [Festivus]. Christmas decorations are animated.

"A festivus miracle!" is added next to the number of search results when searching for the Seinfeld holiday. "Festivus, a well-celebrated parody, has become a secular holiday celebrated on December 23 that serves as an alternative to participating in the pressures and commercialism of the Christmas season."

Offline YouTube

One of YouTube Music Key's features lets you download music videos and watch them offline. Unfortunately, it doesn't even work for all music videos. If you're in India, Indonesia or Philippines, you'll be able to download other popular videos and you don't have to subscribe to YouTube Music Key.

"This feature lets you take videos offline to watch later during short periods of low or no internet connectivity. For videos where this feature is available, you can choose to add the video for offline viewing by tapping on the offline icon. Once taken offline, videos can be played back without an Internet connection for up to 48 hours, so you can enjoy YouTube videos without worrying about slow connections," informs YouTube.

But why limit this feature to 3 countries? "Asia has proven itself to be a mobile-first world in terms of smartphone adoption, but access to high-speed, affordable data remains a big challenge. Making these popular videos available for offline playback will help people move past the challenges of data connection, speed and cost to enjoy a smooth, buffer-free version of their favorite content," explains Jay Akkad, YouTube Product Manager.

The offline feature is available in the YouTube app for Android and iOS. For now, the catalog of offline-enabled videos is limited to some Hindi movies, music videos and some other popular videos. "To help monetize this initiative, this feature will be ad-supported, and ads will also show up in offline mode," informs BGR.

Google Maps Promotes Google's Santa Tracker

When opening Google Maps, Google shows a card that promotes its own Santa Tracker. There's also a countdown: "X days till Santa takes off".

"On Christmas Eve we'll be proudly showcasing a Santa's dashboard, the technology that powers his sleigh during his around-the-world journey. We've received this special preview from one of Santa's many developer elves, who are hard at work in the North Pole helping Santa prepare for his big day. Santa's dashboard - featuring the latest and greatest in Google Maps technology and sleigh engineering - will allow you to follow his progress around the world, and also learn a little about some of his stops along the way," informs Google.

Google Drops Support for Security Questions

This is not that new, but I thought it's worth sharing. Google no longer supports security questions and you can't use them to access your account if you forget your password.

The "security question" section of the Google Account settings page informs users that "We no longer support security questions as a way to access your account. Please consider adding a recovery phone or recovery email address to keep your account secure." You can only delete your security question.

Security questions weren't a great way to protect an account since many answers could be guessed or found using a Google search. For example, Sarah Palin had her Yahoo email account compromised by someone who found the answers to her secret questions. "The hacker simply reset Palin's password using her birthdate, ZIP code and information about where she met her spouse — the security question on her Yahoo account, which was answered (Wasilla High) by a simple Google search."

Google Takeout Lets You Export Tasks and Saved Places

Google Takeout added 2 new services: Google Tasks and Maps (your places). You can export your tasks from Gmail, your Google Maps reviews and the places you starred or saved in Google Maps.

Here are the JSON files that are saved:

One of the reasons why some Google products are added to Google Takeout is that they're about to be discontinued and Takeout provides an easy way to export data. I assume that Google Tasks will be discontinued and replaced by other services like Google Keep or Google Now.

New Interface for Google Account Settings

The settings page for Google Accounts has a new URL: myaccount.google.com and a new interface powered by Material Design. The page is now responsive, it no longer uses tabs and it shows more information at a glance.

Some of the sections have been updated to Material Design, while others still use the old interface.

{ via Florian Kiersch. }

My Maps in Google Drive

Custom maps created in Google My Maps are now saved in Google Drive. You can also create custom maps from Google Drive by clicking the "New" button, then picking "More" and "Google My Maps".

"Over the next week, all the maps you've created will also be accessible in Google Drive, so you can easily organize, manage and share them," informs Google. For now, I've only been able to find new maps, not the maps created before the Drive integration.

YouTube's Updated Autoplay Experiment

There's a new version of YouTube's autoplay experiment. Back in August, YouTube started to test an autoplay feature that automatically plays related videos. The feature is enabled by default and you can disable it.

The updated experiment has at least 3 improvements. YouTube now remembers when you disable autoplay and the feature is no longer enabled again when you play a new video. Another change is the "up next" screen that's displayed before the next video starts playing.

If you're not using the browser, autoplay is temporarily disabled and you'll see this message: "Busy? We've paused autoplay". When you switch to the YouTube tab, autoplay is enabled again.

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=R8LngOvykFw; path=/; domain=.youtube.com";window.location.reload();

4. press Enter and close the console.

Open a random video to see the autoplay feature. To disable the experiment, 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();