Schema.org, a new initiative from Google, Bing and Yahoo! to create and support a common vocabulary for structured data markup on web pages. With schema.org, site owners and developers can learn about structured data and improve how their sites appear in major search engines.
Google dropped the need for a command line switch to activate the internal PDF plug-in, enabling it by default for users of the dev channel build. However, another update was pushed and the plug-in has once again been switched off.
You can still enable the plug-in if you wish -- just visit chrome://plugins and click enable underneath the Chrome PDF Viewer.
Source: Download Squad
Social Translate is a new open source extension for Google's Chrome browser that translates updates on social networking sites into your native language using Google Translate.
You can choose between "reliable," which appears to attempt fewer translations, or "aggressive," which is less accurate but attempts to guess at more words.
It detects languages correctly on Twitter and translates acceptably. On Facebook, the extension is measurably less useful. It only translates status updates as they appear in your News Feed - not in comments on updates, in profiles or on users' walls.
Source: ReadWriteWeb
Google has decided that they're going to update Chrome twice as often. Apparently the longer release schedule put too much pressure on developers to get new features ready on time, because if they didn't, they'd have to wait three months before the next update.
Now, they're going to release a new stable version every six weeks, meaning we get to see those features sooner.
Source: Google Blog
The battle between Adobe Flash and HTML5 will extend into YouTube video players embedded around the web, now that Google has announced a developer preview of video iFrames that use HTML5 when viewed in a browser that supports it.
Google began experimenting with HTML5 players on the YouTube site itself in January, but offering HTML5 for the embedded players all over the web is a big step.
Source: Youtube Blog
Following YouTube’s acquisition by Google in 2006, new YouTube signups were given the choice between two different account systems to power their YouTube experience: the original YouTube account system (built in 2005) or the Google Account system.
In May 2009, google started requiring all new YouTube usernames to be powered by Google Accounts. Now, we’re gradually asking all remaining pre-May 2009 users still using the older YouTube account system to connect a Google Account to their YouTube username. For now, it’s an optional step, but eventually it’ll be required in order to continue using your YouTube username.
Before we go any further, we should clarify three important facts:
So what’s the point of asking people to connect a Google Account to their older YouTube account? Here are the main reasons:
Create a drawing in google drawings to check out new features and shortcuts that will help you refine.
Zoom improvements
Google added several new and simple ways to zoom in and out within a drawing: a zoom tool on the toolbar; the ability to draw a rectangle around an area to zoom; zoom levels to the View menu; and keyboard shortcuts to zoom in (Ctrl Shift → or Cmd Shift → on a Mac) and zoom out (Ctrl Shift ← or Cmd Shift ← on a Mac).
Pie and arc drawing improvements
Once you’ve selected the pie or arc shape, drag from the center point, then release to set the radius, move your mouse along the circumference to set the angle, then click when you’re done. Hint - you can hold shift during step 2 to constrain your arc to 15 degree increments.
You can also select Edit > Change Shape to toggle between a pie shape and arc shape.
Duplicate while rotating and resizing
Google Team have extended the Control/Command modifier to duplicate objects while you resize and rotate objects too, which makes it easy to make both concentric and radial diagrams.
Hint: duplicating while resizing works better if you resize from large to small, since each new object gets placed on top.
New line decoration controls
Now you can change the style of the cap used at the end of your lines from the default butt cap to use square caps or round caps.
You can also change the appearance of line joins within your polylines and shapes from the default round join to use miter joins or bevel joins. These options are available via Format > Line decorations.
Let us know what you think in Comments.
In an effort to encourage more business owners to take advantage of its Tags advertising program, Google Places is offering a 30-day trial to users who sign up by July 23.
The Tags program was one of a handful of features rolled out in April when Google
fixed its Local Business Center and re-branded it as Google Places.
Tags offer local businesses an opportunity to enhance their Google Maps listings with a note about special offers, coupons or just a link back to their website.
Over time google improved search by deepening their understanding of queries and web pages. The web isn’t merely words—it’s information about things in the real world, and understanding the relationships between real-world entities will help in delivering relevant information more quickly.
Google have acquired Metaweb, a company that maintains an open database of things in the world. This will help in improving search and make the web richer and more meaningful for everyone. With efforts like rich snippets and the search answers feature, google beginning to understand the the web to make search better.
Type [Barack Obama birthday] in the search box and see the answer right at the top of the page. Or search for [events in San Jose] and see a list of specific events and dates. Google is offering this kind of experience because they understand facts about real people and real events out in the world.
In addition to Google's ideas for search, google team also excited about the possibilities for Freebase, Metaweb’s free and open database of over 12 million things, including movies, books, TV shows, celebrities, locations, companies and more.
Google and Metaweb plan to maintain Freebase as a free and open database for the world. Better yet, They plan to contribute to and further develop Freebase and would be delighted if other web companies use and contribute to the data. It will be a tremendous resource to make the web richer for everyone. And to the extent the web becomes a better place, this is good for webmasters and good for users.
By: Google Team
Google announced a major acquisition in the Semantic Web space.
The Semantic Web is all about structuring data so that humans and computers can more easily interpret the Web and discover relevant data for a wide variety of purposes.
Freebase is a massive open-structured database of information about almost anything, including books, movies and music.
Google's Place have begun appearing at the top of Google search results.
Google first launched Place Pages as a part of its “Local Business Center” before combining the center with several other services and launching Google Places.
The service offers businesses a way to control their presence on the search engine and take advantage of a number of features, from analytics to business information and online coupons.
Google created a Getting Started Guide for drawings. This guide covers the basics about Google drawings and gives you all the information you need to start creating, editing, formatting, and sharing your drawings. It also includes some tips and tricks about features you may not know too much about.
Now Google is offering a do-it-yourself mobile app tool. The tool, which is available now in Google Labs, is called App Inventor.
To use App Inventor, you do not need to be a developer. App Inventor requires NO programming knowledge. This is because instead of writing code, you visually design the way the app looks and use blocks to specify the app’s behavior.
Google is launching the ability to write your own rich text signatures right in Gmail. 
The next time you log in and visit the Settings page, you'll see a rich text editor in the signature section. Here, you can customize your signature by adding pretty formatting, links, and images.
Gmail also now supports a unique signature for each email address associated with your account. So, if you send mail using a custom "From:" address, you can use a different signature for that address. From the Settings page, you can edit the signature for each account by changing the email address that appears in the dropdown menu.
Android continues to grab a section of the smartphone market and is just about ready to jump into the number three spot, behind RIM and Apple. In addition to Android, mobile Web usage itself is also on the rise, with numbers increasing across the board.
For the three-month period leading up to last December, Google's Android platform accounted for just 5.2% of smartphone devices. By last Februrary, it had nearly doubled to 9% and now it has grown again to 13%, gaining around 4% of the smartphone market every three months.
Google released a mobile version of the Google Docs viewer for Android, iPhone and iPad to help you view PDFs, .ppt, .doc and .docx files you’ve uploaded to your documents list, without needing to download the file.
With our mobile viewer you can switch quickly between pages and pan/zoom within a page. On your iPhone and iPad, you can pinch to zoom in or out. You can try it out by going to docs.google.com on your Android-powered device, iPad or iPhone and select any document in these formats that you've previously uploaded.
