Googleholic for May 3, 2008
In this edition:
- Google expands iPhod/iPod Touch interface and adds News
- Customize your Google Docs with CSS
- YouTube gets a new player
- Google launches private beta for Google Analytics for Blogger
Google expands iPhone/iPod Touch interface and adds News
Google has expanded their rollout of the Google interface for iPhone to 33 additional markets and 16 new languages.
Google has also launched a special edition of Google News, that is specifically designed to take advantage of the iPhone/iPod Touch's interface.
One more note, for iPhone users who use Google Apps to manage the mail on their personal or business domain, you can now access your mail with the same ease as regular GMail. Just bookmark http://www.google.com/m/a/YOURDOMAIN (replacing YOURDOMAIN with, you know, your actual domain) and instantly have access to constantly refreshing and updated e-mail.
[via Google Mobile Blog]Customize your Google Docs with CSS
Although Google Docs is pretty great, especially for collaborating or sharing documents with lots of different people, the styling leads a lot to be desired. Like, a WHOLE lot. In the past, if we've needed to print anything from Google Docs, we've always had to import the text into Word or Pages first -- just to make it look pretty.
We might not have to do that anymore. Google has introduced and custom styles for Google Docs via their 'Edit CSS' function.
Using CSS, you can customize the appearance of your documents and spreadsheets. The process is still kind of janky, but it is a nice start.
Google Blogoscoped has a great tutorial showing how to add a watermark to a Google Docs document. Google Operating System also details about how to use CSS to customize forms in a Docs spreadsheet.
[via Google Docs Blog]YouTube gets a new player
If you've used YouTube this week, you have probably noticed the beta for the new video player. We suppose it is a slight improvement over the old player, but frankly, we still think it looks pretty old in the tooth. Just looking at Vimeo, Viddler, or even the new Flickr Video player makes it clear that YouTube has a LOT of work to do if they want to catch-up on the UI front.
[via Googlefied]Google launches private beta for Google Analytics for Blogger
More than two years ago, Google acquired MeasureMap, an analytics tool designed specifically for blogs. In that time, Google has worked with the MeasureMap team to roll features of MeasureMap into Google Analytics. Last month, Google announced at SXSW that a new Google Analytics interface, designed specifically for Blogger, was on the way.
This week, Google announced that it has started the private beta for that service. Although Blogspot users can use Google Analytics to track their blog statistics, a more integrated approach would be much more elegant (and easier for new users to manage).
[via Google Analytics Blog]