Tech Parade: August 2010

29 August 2010

Chart Wizard - Google Chart Tools / Image Charts (aka Chart API) - Google Code

Chart Wizard
Use the wizard below to generate image charts.

Official Gmail Blog

Call phones from Gmail

Wednesday, August 25, 2010 | 9:40 AM

Posted by Robin Schriebman, Software Engineer
Gmail voice and video chat makes it easy to stay in touch with friends and family using your computer’s microphone and speakers. But until now, this required both people to be at their computers, signed into Gmail at the same time. Given that most of us don’t spend all day in front of our computers, we thought, “wouldn’t it be nice if you could call people directly on their phones?”
Starting today, you can call any phone right from Gmail.
Calls to the U.S. and Canada will be free for at least the rest of the year and calls to other countries will be billed at our very low rates. We worked hard to make these rates really cheap (see comparison table) with calls to the U.K., France, Germany, China, Japan—and many more countries—for as little as $0.02 per minute.
Dialing a phone number works just like a normal phone. Just click “Call phone” at the top of your chat list and dial a number or enter a contact’s name.
We’ve been testing this feature internally and have found it to be useful in a lot of situations, ranging from making a quick call to a restaurant to placing a call when you’re in an area with bad reception.
If you have a Google Voice phone number, calls made from Gmail will display this number as the outbound caller ID. And if you decide to, you can receive calls made to this number right inside Gmail (see instructions).
We’re rolling out this feature to U.S. based Gmail users over the next few days, so you’ll be ready to get started once “Call Phones” shows up in your chat list (you will need to install the voice and video plug-in if you haven’t already). If you’re using Google Apps for your school or business, then you won’t see it quite yet. We’re working on making this available more broadly - so stay tuned!
For more information, visit gmail.com/call.
Update (8/26): This has now been rolled out to everyone in the U.S. If you don't see the feature yet, try logging out of Gmail and signing back in.

Permalink Links to this post

via gmailblog.blogspot.com

Is this useful, or what? Google continues to make me more productive than any other company, except Levi Strauss.

27 August 2010

shopkick

via shopkick.com

So far there is Foursquare, Mobile Spinach, Yelp, and now shopkick.

25 August 2010

People and Terminology - The Redheaded Skeptic

via redheadedskeptic.com

Been invited you to a wave?

Image via Wikipedia

Google	wave
	preview

Thomas Beek has invited you to a wave.

Read the full wave →
Google Wave lets you communicate and collaborate in real time.

Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043
www.google.com

Amplify Update: Amplifying the conversation… major upgrades!

Amplify Update: Amplifying the conversation… major upgrades today!

Hi Thomas Beek,

Amplify's mission has always been to give people a place to engage in good old fashioned conversation around news, thoughts, ideas or anything else that's on their mind. From the start we have been committed to developing a way for users to easily keep up with the conversation without having to rely on email notifications. Today, we are excited to introduce the following new features that take the conversation on Amplify to a whole level. To hear more, check out this interview I did with Robert Scoble this morning. To experience all the upgrades yourself, just visit amplify.com

1. Live Feeds: The Amplify Newsfeed now updates in real-time so that new posts stream in without you ever having to refresh the page (all other feeds mentioned below also defaulting to playing live).

2. Mentions: One of the most important ways to keep up with a conversation is to know when you are being spoken to or about. With this in mind, every user now has a "Mentions" feed that displays the latest mentions of their twitter @username on Amplify. So, if you'd like to make sure someone sees one of your comments or posts on Amplify, just be sure to include their Twitter @username.

3. Conversations feed: This is the place to see all the latest comments on Amps you've posted, previously commented on or are "eavesdropping on" (described below). So, if you don't want to receive emails from Amplify telling you about new comments, just turn them off and keep an eye on your Conversations feed.

4. Eavesdropping: An "Eavesdrop" link has been added to the bottom of every Amp that lets you add it to your Conversations feed. This way, you can keep up with the latest conversation on Amps you haven't yet commented on just as easily as one's you have.

5. Action Feed: When you want to quickly check the latest comments and recommends of your Amps, the new Action feed is the place to go.

6. Managing emails: To help you become less dependent on email notifications, in addition to a global setting that lets you turn off all email notifications for new comments, you will now see a check box on the Amplify save page and below every comment form that lets you opt out of email notifications on a per post basis. This way, you can turn on email notifications for some conversations without having to leave them on for all.

7. Permalinks: The changes described above apply to conversations that take place from within one of the various main feeds on amplify.com. But sometimes, you might open a specific post in a new tab and want to keep up with new comments on it right from there. Now, all permalinks will automatically let you know when new comments have come in, so you don't have to keep refreshing the page to find out.

8. Microblogging and Direct Messaging: The limit on microblog posts and direct messages has been increased from 500 to 1,000 characters, giving you more room to say what you need to say in those instances.

We hope you find these upgrades as exciting as we do… enjoy the conversation!

Eric Goldstein
CEO
egoldstein.amplify.com

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