Google updates Maps with new aerial, satellite and 45-degree imagery for 160 locations

Jordan Kahn

As noted on the Google Maps blog, Google continues to update maps with new aerial, satellite, and 45-degree imagery for many cities in the U.S. and abroad. Google’s most recent addition to maps is a new collection of 45-degree imagery for 60 new cities—40 in the U.S. and 20 internationally— in places like Switzerland and Luxembourg. That brings the total number of cities with updated aerial and satellite imagery in Maps and Google Earth up to 164 cities in 108 countries. Google walked through a few of the recent updates, such as the Space Needle in Seattle and Bridges in the Sky art installation in Austria, but also provided a full list of cities with new high resolution imagery (below): Read more

Gmail users can now search for emails by size, flexible dates, and more

Jordan Kahn

Google just announced on the Official Gmail Blog that Gmail users would have new options when searching within their inbox starting today. Users can now find emails by size by searching for “size:5m” or “larger:5m”, for instance, to find emails larger than 5MB. Google is also rolling out new date search operators, including: “older_than”, “newer_than”, and exact match.

We’re always looking for ways to make it faster and easier for you to find your messages using search in Gmail. So starting today, you can now search emails by size, more flexible date options, exact match and more… These changes go hand in hand with other recent enhancements to search such as the improved autocomplete predictionsand a field trial for instant results from Gmail, Google Drive and more as you type.

Some Google services reportedly blocked in China

Jordan Kahn

Many reports are coming in that Chinese users are having trouble accessing a number of Google’s web products. There is no word on the exact cause of the service disruptions, but The Wall Street Journal noted Google’s Transpareny Report website shows “a precipitous drop in traffic in China starting more than eight hours ago,” although the site doesn’t list the services as completely inaccessible in the country. Google provided a statement to WSJ confirming the interruptions do not appear to be on its end:

“We’ve checked and there’s nothing wrong on our end,” a Google spokeswoman said in a prepared statement.

The Washington Post reported “Users with special VPN (virtual private network) services,” which many Chinese users take advantage of to access banned sites like Facebook, are still able to access Google’s services.  Read more

Google Apps Vault now open to Google Apps for Government customers

Jordan Kahn

Google announced on its Enterprise Blog today that it would officially make its Google Apps Vault service available to Google Apps for Government customers. Google head of eDiscovery Jack Halprin made the announcement, noting federal, state and local agencies in the United States can “now purchase Vault to help meet their compliance needs.”

Google Apps Vault helps protect organizations of all sizes from legal and compliance risks through advanced message archiving, retention and eDiscovery capabilities. It provides the ability to quickly search, identify, preserve and export information in response to litigation, investigation, compliance audits, or Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

Apps for Government users interested in finding out more can go here.  Read more

Google rolling out completely redesigned, pop up compose window in Gmail

Jordan Kahn

Today on the Official Gmail Blog, Google announced it is rolling out an all new compose and reply window that pops up in a small window similar to chats. As Google explained in its blog post, the new window will make it easier to view your inbox while composing drafts as well as providing the ability to compose multiple messages at once. New features that come with the redesigned compose window include “the ability to easily insert inline images” and profile pictures next to contacts in autocomplete. However, there are a few old, familiar features missing.

This makes it easy to reference any other emails without ever having to close your draft. You can even do a search or keep an eye on new mail as it comes in. And because the compose window works the same way as chats, you can write multiple messages at once and minimize a message to finish it later… You can also drag and drop the new address chips between to:, cc: and bcc:. When you’re done adding recipients, the address area collapses automatically to get out of your way.

Google also explained that the redesigned compose experience also applies when replying to messages:

The reply experience has been designed to fit better inline as part of your conversation — replies take up much less vertical height, intelligently expand to fit your content, and always keep the recipients and other controls in view no matter how long your message gets.

A preview of these new features started rolling out today, and Google said they will roll out to all users in the coming months. Instructions courtesy of Google for enabling/disabling the preview below: Read more

Google pushes massive Street View update with over 250K miles of worldwide roads

E. Betters

While still taking its sweet time building a Maps app for iOS, Google is making sure to take care of its own business today by launching the biggest update ever for Street View.

Street View is a five-year-old feature in Google Maps and Google Earth that provides panoramic views of many streets in the world, and its latest update adds over 250,000 miles of roads from around the globe. Google’s Street View team elaborated on the service’s expansion in a post on the official Lat Long blog:

We’re increasing Street View coverage in Macau, Singapore, Sweden, the U.S., Thailand, Taiwan, Italy, Great Britain, Denmark, Norway and Canada. And we’re launching special collections in South Africa, Japan, Spain, France, Brazil and Mexico, among others.

Read more