Stars Stories March 1, 2016
Sky Map receives first update since 2012, but it’s still wildly outdated
During the early days of smartphones, one of the coolest apps you could show off was an augmented reality-like stargazing app. At the time, Google made a free version called Sky Map. The app is showing signs of life again and received its first update in four years.
Stars Stories June 15, 2015
Google Sheets web app updated with new features, filters, and more
Google is updating its Google Sheets spreadsheet app on the web today with a few new features and improvements. First up, the updated app now includes new customization options for charts including the ability to add data labels as well as shapes to denote data points including stars, triangles, and pentagons.
Some of the other new features arriving today include a preview for formula results in real-time when typing, the ability to filter rows and columns by “greater than” and “text contains”, and an option to add calculated fields “to pivot tables when you want to apply formulas to pivot table data.”
Google adds that you’ll also now be able to “Use the GETPIVOTDATA function to more easily retrieve data from your pivot table.”
Lastly, Google has a new option to present a customized warning message to collaborators that attempt to edit something they shouldn’t (pictured below):
You can check out the updated Google Sheets web app now.
Stars Stories June 14, 2015
In with the old and out with the new, that’s what I always say. Google seems to be thinking the same way, as the Chrome team this past week replaced its newer card-based, tiled bookmarks manager, pictured above, with the previous link-based one. You can access the now old bookmarks manager by visiting chrome://bookmarks.
Stars Stories November 19, 2014
Today, Google announced plans to bring its new Bookmark Manager to Chrome’s beta build. Mountain View says it will release this new content management feature over the next few weeks, so it might not show up right away. Based on the project referred to as “Stars,” Google quietly released this item last month as a Chrome extension, however this new direction suggests that it will eventually be baked into the company’s popular browser.
Stars Stories August 11, 2014
We’ve been hearing about Google Stars for months now and while the search giant hasn’t made any official announcements, that hasn’t stopped leaks from surfacing. In fact, at one point an extension for the software briefly hit the Chrome App Store, only to be removed shortly after. If you’re having trouble remembering what Stars is, it’s pretty much Mountain View’s new take on bookmarking and collecting things from around the web.
Stars Stories May 30, 2014
After weeks of screenshots a quick video walkthroughs, a working extension for Google Stars has been outed by Google sleuth Florian Kiersch. Once up and running, Stars resets your Chrome bookmarks page with a grid setup filled with sites that you’ve bookmarked. Users can add sites to their collection by clicking the star icon in the omnibox. This brings up a folder selection option that lets you decide where you wish to file your latest bookmark and for fast access the app displays a screenshot of the item selected before placing it in your display grid.
Stars Stories May 5, 2014
A couple of weeks ago, an ambitious software developer by the name of Florian Kiersch uncovered an unannounced Google platform known as Stars. From the looks of things, this new product is Google’s next-gen take on bookmarking content from the web. Up until now, we’ve only seen still shots of the forthcoming software, however thanks to a recent Javascript module update, Kiersch was able to gain access to parts of Stars’ web-based UI.
