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Google Tutor

Your how-to guide for Google with Google tutorials, tips for using Google and advice.

How to Embed Google Maps into your WebsiteYesterday

Google Maps are without question one of the most useful Google applications. Recently, I’ve not only used it to find addresses, but also to scope out neighborhoods for a potential future move. In Canada it can get pretty cold in January, and if I can use Street View in Google Maps to take a quick look at a street or neighborhood, instead of going out into the icy cold, I’ll gladly do it. When trying to help people find my location, I used to send a screen shot of a Google Map by email, or post a screen shot of a map on my website.

However, a screen shot isn’t like looking at an actual map, where you can zoom in and out, enable Street View, and get directions. When you are thinking of adding a screen shot of a Google Map to your blog or website, consider adding an actually functional map instead. Here is how it’s done.

Adding Google Maps to your website with gMap

gMap is a handy little plugin that you can use to add dynamic Google Maps to your website. gMap is a small, flexible, jQuery plugin you can downloa

How to Use Picasa Web to do Camera ResearchFebruary 4

Are you thinking of buying a camera, but getting confused about the conflicting reviews and ratings on the models you’re interested in? Picasa Web Albums can be used for more than just sharing pictures. Ultimately, you can also search publicly available pictures on Picasa Web Albums as well, and if only you could select for shots taken by your potential new camera, you would have a huge selection of pictures to compare quality and range of function across models.

Search by camera in Picasa Web Albums

Picasa Web Albums has a new search function: you can now narrow down your picture search by camera model used.

Here’s how you do it:

Say, for example, you are interested in buying a Nikon D90. First, you’ve read some reviews but you really want to see what the camera is capable of by looking at some test shots. Picasa Web Albums has millions of public pictures you can sift through, and you can come up with an endless array of pictures taken with this camera.

1. Surf to Picasa Web Albums.
2. Enter a search query. To maximize results, I just typed in “.jpg”, because I am just interested in the type of camera taking the pictures, not what it in the pictures.

How to Benefit from Google Social SearchFebruary 2

Last year, Google brought out Social Search in Google Labs. Just a few days ago it graduated to Beta in Google. That’s all nice and dandy, but what is Google Social Search, and how can you benefit from it? Here’s what you need to know.

What is Google Social Search

Google Social Search pulls together information from blogs and social networking sites about the topic you are searching on. What’s special about it, is that it pulls together information on that topics, posted by your contacts and friends. The purpose for this is that you are accessing information posted by people you already know, and trust.

How do you use Social Search?

To use Google Social Search you need to put in a tiny bit of effort first, before any related search results posted by your friends pop up. Next time you type something into the Google search bar, first make sure you’ve done the following to benefit from any know-how your contacts have posted online:

1. Create your Google profile from Google.com/Profiles.
2. Once you’re at Google Profiles, click on the blue button that says “create my profile”.
3. Fill in the information requested, and link your profile to social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter.
4. At the bottom of the page, you can complete the process.

Now that you have set up your Google Profile, you can view information posted by your friends next time you perform a Google search. What will show up depends on what you have added to your Google Profile.

Be a Gmail Ninja: Catapult Your Gmail Productivity in High GearJanuary 16

Gmail has a large number of functions to make our life easier, help us get more done, and get our Gmail inbox more organized. Just looking at the GT archive for Gmail, it’s obvious that Gmail is more than just a generic email account. You can use it to organize your tasks, and as a universal address book. Google wants you to get more out of your Gmail account, and has very specific tutorials to help you achieve this, based on how much email you receive.

Become a Gmail Ninja

Gmail has organized their tips based on how much email you receive, and named the different usage ‘levels’ based on the Gmail ninja theme. Gmail users are nicknamed, and your usage level starts off at ‘white belt’ for the light user, to Gmail Master for the heavy user.

Highlight from the White Belt Tips

If you are just receiving a few messages each day, perhaps your success doesn’t depend on being able to organize your inbox, but there are still a few things you can do to propel your productivity into the next level:

• Use stars to differentiate messages that need immediate attention or are important.
• Search, don’t sort messages.
• If the sender of a message is online, you can reply by chat instead of a regular message.
• Use labels to organize and categorize your messages.
• Import email messages and contact information from your previous email account.

Highlights from Gmail’s Green Belt Tips

A more intermediate user, categorized by Gmail as receiving a dozen or so messages a day, can benefit from the following tips:

• Use video chat to talk face to face, and finish up the conversation faster (to get back to your task list).
• Gmail has a built in to-do list, called ‘tasks’. Use it to strike off completed tasks and get through your day faster.
  
  

The Google Phone (Nexus One) Is HereJanuary 7

Unless you were hiding behind a rock for the last 2 days, I am sure by now you would have heard about Google’s own smartphone called Nexus One.

Nexus One, which was long rumored and anticipated, was finally announced by Google the other day in a detailed blog post. What’s interesting is that they started off by announcing a Web store for buying and purchasing Android based devices, and as Ars Technica notes, that was a huge announcement too.

The phone is manufactured by HTC and based on Andriod 2.1. It has already got some rave reviews and many consider it a serious threat to iPhone. Om Malik from Gigaom has called it the best Android Phone yet.

Take a look at the technical specifications of the phone :-