Google Friends Newsletter - December 2008 Holiday greetings and our best wishes for a wonderful new year to all of our Google friends. We hope you enjoy this month's update on our products and services. ------------ POWER TIP College football in Sports OneBox Football fans can now search for game times and scores of their favorite college teams during the big bowl games coming up. For example, typing [ncaaf] or [texas football] into the search box will return game information at the top of the search results page. This is in addition to the major U.S. leagues for a variety of sports (NFL, NHL, MLB, MLS, and NBA) and six major European football (aka soccer) leagues we recently added. http://www.google.com ------------ NEW PRODUCTS & UPDATES Ask the President-elect questions with Google Moderator U.S. President-elect Obama's transition team is using Google Moderator to respond to questions on the Change.gov website. You too can get involved, either by asking a question or by voting on questions you'd like to have answered. http://www.change.gov/OpenForQuestions New Google Mail features View PDF attachments sent to your Google Mail account without waiting for them to download and open in another application. Just click the "View" link next to any .pdf attachments you receive to view them right in your browser. Recently we also rolled out Text Messaging (SMS) in Chat in Google Mail. Try both out in your own Google Mail account under the "Labs" tab in "Settings." http://www.Google Mail.com Updates to Picasa Picasa Web Albums offers a new "Sign-in required to view" setting, which lets you limit access to specific individuals who have a Picasa Web Albums account. Additionally, all user comments are now automatically translated into the viewer's native language using Google Translate. And if you use Picasa to organize your video content, you will also notice that most of your videos are now high quality. http://picasa.google.com Daily how-to tips Throughout the month of December, we published daily tips to make it easier to use a number of Google products. Visit our countdown site to learn about search tips and product features you can continue to use in 2009. http://www.google.com/countdownto2009 ------------- MISCELLANY As 2008 comes to a close, we invite you to see what was on the collective mind as demonstrated by the aggregation of billions of Google searches from around the globe. It was a wild year with many momentous events, to say the least, and through it all Google users kept pace with the U.S. elections, the Summer Games and social networks (online, at least). Of course, we also made time for superheroes and super-celebrity breakups, but even those diversions couldn't take our thoughts away from the world's changing political and economic landscapes. With so much at stake and so much uncertainty in the year ahead, it's comforting to know that we are collectively concerned and "in this together," search-wise. For more of the year's highlights, take a look at our Year-End Zeitgeist website. http://www.google.com/zeitgeist2008 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---