[How To] Start Video Chat Inside Gmail

Google has introduced Gmail voice and video chat long back.But as I still see, some users who rarely use Gmail aren’t really aware of it, as they still stuck to the voice chat through Gtalk desktop version.It may be that they are not really aware of how to setup Gmail voice and video chat inside Gmail.So here I’ve decided to discuss about how to get this video chat feature inside your Gmail that lets you start a video chat directly from your inbox besides reading and sending Email messages through Gmail.

gmail voice and video chat

All you need to get Gmail voice and video chat inside your browser is to install this Gmail voice and video chat plug-in.Just download the plugin and install it.Close all your open browser windows while installing it and then restart your browser.Now you’ll see a small green camera icon right before your name in Gmail chat.That means that the plugin is successfully installed and running.

You can now start a video chat on Gmail, iGoogle or Orkut with anyone who has also installed this plugin (in which case you see the same green camera icon before their names in chat).

Gmail voice and video chat works well with all Firefox 2.0+, Internet Explorer 6.0+, Safari 3.0+ and Google Chrome.

Download Gmail voice and video chat plugin

Read: New File transfer feature launched in Orkut and iGoogle chat (soon to be launched in Gmail).

Google Webmaster Tools Now Shows Clickthrough Data

Google Webmaster Tools(GWT) “Top Search Queries” tool has got a complete makeover.The tool now shows complete data of impressions, clickthrough numbers on a daily basis in the form of charts much like the data in Google Analytics.

You can click on any given search query in the Top search queries report to see the number of impressions and the amount of clickthrough the site’s pages have generated for each position in search results (SERPs).

queries_chart-ds query-data-expanded-ds

To find this data for your sites, go to “Your site on the web” tab in Google Webmasters Tool and then click “Top search queries”.

This information is of huge importance to the webmasters as this insightful data is pretty much helpful for webmaster to optimize their title tags and meta descriptions to record higher clickthrough rates and also in other SEO factors.

Via Google Webmaster Central Blog

Google’s New Launches: Google Follow Finder & Twitter Replay

Google is clearly showing its love for Twitter nowadays.Yesterday (April 14, 2010) Google has made 2 announcements both relating to twitter related features launch in Google.

The first one which was announced earlier was called Google’s Twitter replay that lest you search.Twitter replay will allow you to recall what had happened on anyway in the past courtesy the twitter tweets.To use this feature, click on the “Show Options” when you search for anything in Google.Then choose “Updates” from the sidebar menu.You can see a horizontal graphic chart which represents the volume of the tweets tweeted within a particular period of time, you can always go back to the history by using the backward arrow link just below the chart.You can click on any date/period to see the tweets about that topic in the given period.To see how it actually works, follow this link.

google_twitter_replay

Google Follow Finder:

Google Follow Finder is yet another Twitter related feature that was announced by Google yesterday.Follow finder analyzes public social graph information on twitter to find people that you might want to follow on Twitter.To use this feature, enter Google Follow Finder site and enter your Twitter user name and search for Tweeps.

Google follow finder

Don’t forget to follow Techrena Dot Net at Twitter.

[Spotted] Google Testing New Colorful version

google official logo

For the past few weeks I have been spotting a brand new colorful version of Google in Google Chrome (working only with google.co.in but not with google.com).As I digged into find more about this, I came to know that only few people around the world are currently seeing this new version, luckily I am one amongst them.

The main improvement in the new version is the addition of colorful icons on the left hand side of the search window (enabled by default) which are only used to show up in current version only when you click “Show Options” link.Also as you can see in the following screenshots (Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh in my case), your current location is being added below the search box (which you can change anytime).

location in new google

Here are the screen shots that I have taken on my laptop.

Screen Shots:

google homepage new version

google new page navigation

google colorful version

I don’t know many number of people getting this, I personally like this new version.I would really like to hear from you about this, if you are also getting this Google’s new version.

Google Buzz Official Share Buttons Released

Google Buzz Logo

We had earlier posted about Google buzz counter buttons for websites.

Google has today announced the official Google Buzz share buttons for websites.The unofficial buttons that we have been using till now are created based on Google reader.As Google raises the point correctly, not every Buzz user uses Google Reader nor not every website owner is so tech savvy to implements hacks for using Buzz buttons.

Many sharing platforms including ShareThis , Meebo, Shareholic, AddThis and AddtoAny have added buzz in their sharing services list.

Get’em :

If you are a webmaster and want to get Buzz button widgets for your websites, visit this page and configure the buttons for use and copy-past the JavaScript in your site where you want them to  appear.

buzz buttons

Follow Techrena:

buzzStuffFollow

Google PageRank Updated on 3rd April, 2010

google_page_rank

Google PageRank has been updated on 3rd April, 2010. It was announced earlier that the next PageRank update after the January 2010 update will be in April, the update was seen yesterday. This is a happy news for all the bloggers.

techrena pagerank

Bloggers all over the world have a lot of concern for Google PageRank.As far as I am concerned, I believe that Google PageRank shows the quality of your posts, and also the reach and design of your blog. Techrena.net has got a PageRank of 3 this time which was 2 previoulsy. We are very happy with the update and consider it as a gift to techrena.net’s birthday which was on 27th March.

As far as we have observed most of the bloggers are satisfied with the page rank update and most of us take it as a catalyst to our hard work.

You  can check the PageRank of your blog using the Google Toolbar:

http://toolbar.google.com/

YouTube TEXTp : Google April Fools Day 2010 Pranks

google logo small

We have had many hilarious and innovative Google’s April Fool’s Day Pranks till now.And I have been so curious to know what Google will do for this Aril Fools Day 2010 and this time Google has planned it in YouTube as well as the new blog post in YouTube official blog suggests.

YouTube’s TEXTp (YouTube ASCII video filter) :

Yeah, TEXTp according to fellows at YouTube is similar to video quality mode (like 1080p HD), but the difference being it doesn’t contain any picture in the video other than text, lol Smile

TEXTp is the result of months of intense transcoding efforts by our engineers, who toiled for weeks to ensure that a large chunk of videos on the platform could be reduced to their most basic elements. By replacing the images in the video with a series of letters and numbers, the videos are far less taxing on our system — and have the added benefit of promoting literacy!

google prank April 1 youtube textp

If you want to see letters dancing in air like how Dyslexia patients see them dancing Smile, just head over to this page and select “TEXTp” from the pull down menu in the video.

And do remember always to use text-only mode because :

textp mode Youtube bandwidth

By using text-only mode, you are saving YouTube $1 a second in bandwidth costs.

[Hmm..Really ?? ]

To see how it looks like in action, watch this video

To fool your friends, append “&textp=fool” to the YouTube video URLs and share with them.

Ok then we will change YouTube’s name to TexTube from this time around, (of course fun :P)

This year’s other Google April Fools Day Hoaxes include :

 

  • Google Books available in Anachrome 3D
  • Store anything on Google Docs
  • Google Street View available in Anachrome 3D
  • Google Maps OCCA
  • Search results generated in different times
  • Animal Translator BETA
  • Topeka

Finally, this TEXTp is just ok Thumbs down, but didn’t reach my expectation though, something on the lines of Pigeon Rank (my favorite Google April Day Prank till now) would only have satisfied me Wink.And ya, Google fellows consider my advice: Textube sounds good Thumbs up, isn’t it??

Is this fun, what do you guys think ? Happy Fools Day, BTW Hot

Google India Launches New Shopping Tool In Google Search

nokia e71 price compare google india

Online shopping is yet to gain momentum in India.The high prices in online sites compared to open market  prices is a major barrier for the slow progress of online shopping particularly true in case of gadgets.

However, this is not the case with countries like US where online shopping has revolutionised the market, and the popularity automatically follows huge competition and thus lesser prices even compared to open market prices in such countries.

The reason behind mentioning about online shopping status in India is because Google has just launched a new feature “Shopping tool” in it’s Indian website.This can be accessed from the “Show options” menu when you search for any purchasable item in Google.

How To Use Google Shopping Tool To Find And Compare Prices Online?

Well, Google shopping tool will provide you with some basic information about the price of a particular item and also online price comparisons of the same item in different online shopping sites.

Just search for any item (ex: Nokia 5800) in Google.Click on the “Show options” link to expand the options.

show options in google search shopping

In the options menu click “Shopping” tab

shopping link Google Show options

Now you will have the price details of your item (Nokia 5800 here) according to various online shopping sites.Just review and compare the prices from different online shopping sites.

price compare Google india

You can also filter results by entering custom price range which you can find the in the options menu > Shopping > Prices tab

Google Crawling, Canonicalization and Indexing Explained

google logo

Have you ever noticed that your blog posts are indexed in blog search in few minutes but it doesn’t come so fast in the main index? Why some of the posts are indexed faster than some of the other posts? Are sitemaps really helpful for indexing? How can you get your posts indexed faster?

All the questions really hit us much of the time. The answers are explained here.

In this post we will see:
1. The Main Difference between Indexing and Crawling
2. Main Use of Sitemaps and pings
3. Which blog posts are indexed faster
4. Google Canonicalization of the Crawled Contents

1. Difference between Indexing and Crawling

When you post an new content in your blog, Google may crawl your post but may not index it in the main index. In case of blogs Google blog search may crawl your new URLs within few minutes but it may not to the main index.

Even though Google crawls your post it doesn’t mean that the post will be indexed. Google follows certain standardization process according to its policies that the crawled content is first analyzed for quality content and then sent to the main Index. You can read further how this standardization is done below. So crawling and Indexing in Google are different.

2. Main Use of Sitemaps and pings

If you think that by submitting your sitemap to Google or by pinging to Google your posts will be definitely indexed. Google uses the sitemaps submitted to it to crawl the content, new URLs and finds out the quality content to get them indexed in Google. Google does not guarantee that by submitting your sitemap your content will be indexed. Again the Canonicalization process comes in to index the contents.

3. Which blog posts are indexed faster

This is really a big question mark. Well explaining according to Google, posts or contents from well knows blogs(popular ones) and which have good quality contents will be indexed faster. Popular blogs with good contents will be will be frequently crawled and index. So if you want your posts to get indexed faster, then get your blog well known and post good content.

Now your question will be what is good content! You can find the answer below.

4. Google Canonicalization of the Crawled Contents

Google has its own set of rules and policies that are applied to the crawled contents and decides whether to index the content or not. This process is the Google Canonicalization process which is done to produce relevant and quality results. So any blog post with good content will pass this standardization process will be indexed in a short duration of time. As far as we have seen, good content is the one which has a unique style and which has more keywords that are searched frequently in Google. But the process of Canonicalization frequently changes as the policies change, so we cannot define which are Good posts permanently as far as Google is concerned.

So you have learnt that in order to get your contents indexed faster you need to:

  • Popularize your blog
  • Produce Good and Quality content
  • Use relevant Keywords
  • Have a Unique Style of your own (Do not Copy and Paste)

You can watch Google explaining the details of blog indexing below:

Disclaimer: The content above are the sole views of the author not of  www.techrena.net which is only the medium of communication.  www.techrena.net does not take any responsibility of any incident resulting from the information provided here.

File Transfer Feature Launched In Orkut and iGoogle Chat; To Be Available In Gmail Soon

orkut logo

Do you frequently use chat in Orkut and iGoogle rather than using standalone Google Talk desktop client? And feel for the missing “File sharing” option that is available in Google talk ? You may not have to compromise from now on since Google has announced the introduction of file sharing option right inside the Orkut and iGoogle chat.

How To Send A File In Orkut Chat ?

Start chat in Orkut, and click on the “Actions” drop down menu and click “Send a file..”

send file orkut chat

Select the file you want to share/send to your friend and click ok.Your chat buddy has to accept the file similar to how do it in Google Talk to receive the file.

orkut_filetransfer_send_file

You can virtually share any file like pictures, documents, and other files with your friends while chatting in Orkut and iGoogle.

Google also promises that this file transfer option would soon be introduced in Gmail chat as they are working on it.