Up until now, if you wanted to use Google Voice, you needed to choose a new number (a "Google number"). Taking calls through your Google number allows us to offer features like call recording, call screening and getting text messages via email. But we know not everyone wants to switch to a new phone number, so it made sense for us to create a lighter version of Google Voice for people who are willing to trade some features for the ability to use their existing numbers.
We're excited to announce that you now have the choice to get Google Voice with your existing mobile number OR with a Google number.
If you sign up using your existing number, you'll still get many of Google Voice's features. Most notably, you'll get all the functionality of Google voicemail, as explained in this video:
If you already have a Google Voice account, you can add Google voicemail to any mobile phone you've linked to your account. If you're not yet using Google Voice, you can request an invite or ask a friend with a Google Voice account to send you an invitation. When you receive the invitation to sign up, you can choose to use Google Voice with your existing number — or to get a Google number for additional features.
Google Voice is about giving you more control over your communications. We hope this new option makes it easier for you to manage your messages and personalize your voicemail experience.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Use Google Voice with your existing number
Energy Secretary Chu visits Googleplex
Secretary of Energy Dr. Steven Chu joined us at the Google campus today to talk about how the U.S. can build a prosperous economy powered by clean energy.
During a fireside chat with Googlers and our CEO Eric Schmidt, Secretary Chu talked about what it will take to create a clean energy revolution. When it comes to clean tech investments, he said, the Department of Energy is trying to "hit home runs, not base hits." He noted that there are many proposed solutions to climate change out there, and we need to pursue all of them. "The scale of what we need to do is enormous," said Secretary Chu, and "putting the world on a carbon diet" and dramatically bringing down the cost of clean energy and should be top priorities. If we succeed, it will "drive a new industrial revolution."
Secretary Chu also heard from Googlers about some of our own clean energy projects including Google PowerMeter, which gives consumers access to their energy use information, developing renewable energy that is cheaper than coal (RE<C) and making our datacenters the most energy efficient in the world. "More companies need to get on board and make this part of their business plan," said the Secretary.
While in Mountain View, Secretary Chu announced $151 million in funding for 37 breakthrough energy projects in technologies like renewable power, energy efficiency and electric cars. The funding is being made available through the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), a newly-launched organization within the Department of Energy (DOE) created to support high-risk, high-reward research into innovative energy technologies. ARPA-E is modeled on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the agency that funded research that eventually led to the creation of the Internet.
Contextual search within Wikipedia
We are excited to announce that we've built a Custom Search Wikipedia skin that makes it easier for you to complete your research on Wikipedia. Wikipedia allows users to register and personalize their Wikipedia environment via the configuration of options and the use of styles or skins. Just log in to Wikipedia, enable the Custom Search skin and you'll have quick access to relevant Google Custom Search results from Wikipedia. With the Custom Search skin, your search results are conveniently placed inline on the page. After you've reviewed the results, you can dismiss them and return to the current article of interest without having to switch to a different tab on your browser; you can access the relevant Wikipedia articles right within the Wikipedia interface.
The Custom Search skin also features contextual search — searching across different sets of pages as you navigate Wikipedia. For Wikipedia pages with a lot of information and links, contextual search lets you limit your search to only those Wikipedia pages that are linked from the current article, focusing the results on the topic of the article. So, in addition to getting all matching Wikipedia articles, you can quickly drill down to contextually relevant results using the Linked Wikipedia Pages tab.
For example, searching for [sequence] from a Wikipedia page on DNA provides a list of relevant results about DNA sequences and DNA sequence alignment, instead of the many pages about sequences (in mathematics, poetry, music, games, etc.) that aren't relevant. Similarly, searching within the DNA page for [bonds] gives you results in chemistry and biochemistry, instead of other information about financial instruments and social sciences. This will help you perform more directed research, often with shorter queries, and get to relevant Wikipedia articles faster.
As you can see from the screenshot below, the Linked Wikipedia Pages tab helps you get quickly to the article about DNA sequence from a search for [sequence] on the DNA page.
To configure the new skin, follow the instructions on the Custom Search skin page on Wikipedia. It works with both Wikipedia's default Monobook style or the new Beta Vector style. You will need to log in to Wikipedia to customize your Wikipedia search.
For more information about the technology behind this application release, read our post on the Google Custom Search blog.
Wikipedia encourages technical innovation and tools to help you get improved access to knowledge, so please post your opinions about this contextual search experience at Wikimedia or give us feedback directly.
Last Friday was the third anniversary of the launch of Custom Search — we would like to take a moment to thank the millions of you who have implemented Custom Search on your sites. To celebrate our birthday we're releasing two new features that we hope will help you better customize your search results: Custom Search Themes and Structured Custom Search. Check out this post on the Google Custom Search blog to learn more about our third anniversary.
Liberate your Google Docs with Convert, Zip and Download
This past September, you may have heard about the launch of our Data Liberation site, a central place on the web detailing how you can easily move your data into or away from Google's cloud. Today, we're adding another product to our growing list of liberations: the "Convert, Zip and Download" feature in Google Docs, which allows you to download a bunch — or all — of your Docs simultaneously.
This new feature comes out of a collaboration between the Google Docs engineering team and Google's Data Liberation Front, a small team of engineers that aims to make it easy for you to transfer your personal data in and out of Google's services by building simple import and export functions.
"Convert, Zip and Download" now joins dozens of other liberation features across our product offerings, ranging from Blogger's full blog downloads to email export from Gmail using IMAP and POP3. The feature lets you bundle your Google Docs in a format of your choice (MS Office, Open Office, PDF, etc.) and download them as a zip file. No longer do you have to download each document individually, which can take a lot of time if you have hundreds of documents like I do! All you need to do is select the relevant Docs, click on "Export" from the "More Actions" menu and download them in one go. (Check out the Google Docs Blog for more details.)
We hope you find the new export feature useful. We strongly believe that you — not the products you use — should control your data, and be able to quickly and easily take that data out of any product without a hassle. We've already liberated more than half of our products, and are working hard to address the remaining challenges. Keep an eye out for more upcoming Data Liberations.
You can also take a deeper look into product liberation at dataliberation.org, follow us on Twitter @dataliberation or contribute suggestions for services that you think need to be liberated on our Data Liberation Moderator page.
Introducing Google Social Search: I finally found my friend's New York blog!
Your friends and contacts are a key part of your life online. Most people on the web today make social connections and publish web content in many different ways, including blogs, status updates and tweets. This translates to a public social web of content that has special relevance to each person. Unfortunately, that information isn't always very easy to find in one simple place. That's why today we're rolling out a new experiment on Google Labs called Google Social Search that helps you find more relevant public content from your broader social circle. It should be available for everyone to try by the end of the day, so be sure to check back.
A lot of people write about New York, so if I do a search for [new york] on Google, my best friend's New York blog probably isn't going to show up on the first page of my results. Probably what I'll find are some well-known and official sites. We've taken steps to improve the relevance of our search results with personalization, but today's launch takes that one step further. With Social Search, Google finds relevant public content from your friends and contacts and highlights it for you at the bottom of your search results. When I do a simple query for [new york], Google Social Search includes my friend's blog on the results page under the heading "Results from people in your social circle for New York." I can also filter my results to see only content from my social circle by clicking "Show options" on the results page and clicking "Social." Check out this video for a demo:
All the information that appears as part of Google Social Search is published publicly on the web — you can find it without Social Search if you really want to. What we've done is surface that content together in one single place to make your results more relevant. The way we do it is by building a social circle of your friends and contacts using the connections linked from your public Google profile, such as the people you're following on Twitter or FriendFeed. The results are specific to you, so you need to be signed in to your Google Account to use Social Search. If you use Gmail, we'll also include your chat buddies and contacts in your friends, family, and coworkers groups. And if you use Google Reader, we'll include some websites from your subscriptions as part of your social search results.
To learn more about how Social Search works behind the scenes, including the choices and control you have over the content you see and share, read our help center article or watch this video:
This feature is an experiment, but we've been using it at Google and the results have been exciting. We'd love to hear your feedback. Oh, and don't forget to create a public Google profile to expand your social circle and more easily find the information you're looking for (including that New York blog).