Google Friends Newsletter - July 2009 We hope all our Google friends are having a great summer so far. Here is this month's update on our products and services. ------------ POWER TIP Calendar Labs Earlier this month, we launched Calendar Labs. Like Google Labs and Google Mail Labs, Calendar Labs is a place to try out early, experimental features as well as provide feedback to the team that built them. There are six experimental Calendar features so far, including "Next Meeting" which shows you how much time you have to procrastinate before your next appointment and "World clock", which lets you keep track of different timezones when you schedule meetings. You can test these features out by going to the Labs tab under Settings. http://calendar.google.com ------------ NEW PRODUCTS & UPDATES Moon in Google Earth Forty years ago on July 20, 1969, the crew of Apollo 11 took the first human steps on the surface of the Moon. In celebration of this historic occasion, we launched Moon in Google Earth, an interactive 3D atlas of the Moon. You can now explore a virtual Moonscape, follow guided tours from astronauts Buzz Aldrin (Apollo 11) and Jack Schmitt (Apollo 17), see the latest rover concepts by teams competing in the Google Lunar X PRIZE, view high-resolution "Street View"-style panoramic photos, watch previously unreleased video footage captured from the lunar surface and much more. Moon is viewable using Google Earth 5.0. http://earth.google.com/moon Favorite Places on Google Maps Ever wonder where culinary expert and chef Alice Waters goes for organic and sustainable food in the San Francisco Bay Area? Or where Iwona Blazwick, director of the Whitechapel Gallery in London, goes to experience art in that city? We've teamed up with a variety of experts around the world to share some of their favorite local places and businesses on Google Maps. We hope you enjoy exploring all of these favorite places. http://www.google.com/favoriteplaces Google Docs template gallery open to everyone We recently opened up the Google Docs template gallery to everyone. Now, people can share their own documents, spreadsheets, presentations and forms so that others may re-use them. The public template gallery makes it easy to sort and browse templates by category, usage, rating and document type. The template gallery is also available to Google Apps Premier and Education Edition customers, making it easy to privately share common document templates within companies and organizations. http://docs.google.com/templates Your world in 3D One of our favorite features of Google Earth is flying around the world's cities in 3D. If you turn on the "3D Buildings" layer in Google Earth you can access thousands of buildings as photo-realistic 3D models. Plus, if there's a building (or an entire town) that you'd like the whole world to see, you can build your own models using Google SketchUp and then add them to Google Earth. Not only is it a great way to benefit your community, we think it's pretty fun. http://sketchup.google.com/yourworldin3d ------------- MISCELLANY Sure, you get this newsletter every month with news from Google. And maybe you also read one or several of our official blogs. But what if you're craving more frequent updates from us? We have a variety of Twitter accounts that you can follow to get ongoing news, tips and more on a variety of Google products and services. Besides our official @google account, you might be interested in news from Australia or Brazil, the latest advances in computer science research, help with advertising or updates focused on a specific product like Google Earth. We're adding new accounts from time to time, too — you can see a list of all our official accounts on the Official Google Blog. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/google-accounts-on-twitter.html --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ The Google Blog offers frequent updates and insights about our technology and products, and the company at large. http://googleblog.blogspot.com -------------------------------------------------- Share Google Friends with a friend through Google Groups (includes subscribe/unsubscribe information). http://groups.google.com/group/google-friends -------------------------------------------------- Google Friends archive: http://groups.google.com/group/google-friends/topics Google Friends archive prior to May 2005: http://www.google.com/googlefriends/archive.html To unsubscribe from the Google Friends Newsletter, send an empty message to: [email protected] Google, Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---