Google Hangouts On Air

Google Hangouts On Air is a rich, feature-filled video meeting environment.  You can communicate via audio or video, share your screen, share a document residing on Google Drive, take control of another participant's computer screen (with their permission of course), and even stream your meeting live on YouTube.

Here's how it works.  All participants need to have a Google account (if you have a gmail address you have a Google account).  Sign in and click your name at the upper right (screenshot at right).  This will take you to your Google+ dashboard.

 At the upper left of the new page you will see a pulldown menu.  Choose Hangouts.

Choose Hangouts on Air, then Choose Start a Hangout On Air (screenshot below).

The dialogue box that appears (screenshot below) allows you to name the session and give it a description.  You can start the session immediately by selecting Now, or choose Later and select a meeting time.  Under Audience, you can type in individual gmail addresses or circles of friends, and even choose Public if you like, where the meeting will be publicly broadcast on YouTube.

 

Click the big blue Start button. Once the meeting begins, there are an array of options available to you from the toolbars to the left and at the top (screenshot below).  You can communicate audio only, or with video and audio (all participants will have those options as well).  You also have options to open a chat window share your screen, share a document through Google Drive, share a YouTube video, invite new participants on the fly, take control of another computer, and much more.  

We'll present a much more detailed webinar on how to use Hangouts On Air this Fall. 

YouTube Video Editing

Following on the heels of my last post about image stabilization, here is another cool feature of YouTube: you can easily trim the start and end points of any video you upload to YouTube on the fly.

First step: upload the video to YouTube. After it has processed, bring the video up and click Edit. Click Enhancements.



Click Trim.



You'll then get a preview screen, and an area just below it where you can drag the Start and End bars to trim the beginning and end of your video (see below). Play the preview to see your video with the new edits, and fine-tune them until you are happy with the result. Click Done. And that's it. Because the entire video has been uploaded, you can go back and change these edit points, including adding cut portions back into your video, anytime you like.

YouTube Image Stablization

YouTube has added several new user-friendly editing features to its user interface lately, from automatic transcription to editing. Today's post deals with image stabilization.

You can have YouTube automatically stabilize a shaky video. First step: upload the video to YouTube. After it has processed, bring the video up and click Edit.



Next, choose Enhancements at the top of the page.



Click Stabilize. That's it! Be aware the stabilization process will take some time; in my test it took about 20 minutes.

Winter-Spring 2012 Connect Sessions

Below is the schedule for Web Development Connect sessions in the first half of 2012. Notice the emphasis on two areas: Google tools (Analytics, Docs, Forms, etc.) and slightly more advanced Working With Websites techniques (tables, multimedia, calenders). Those just starting to work with the CSU Extension Webpage Template are highly encouraged to attend these Working With Websites sessions.

Also included is a session on Prezi, a browser-based, non-linear alternative to death by PowerPoint!

2012 Connect Sessions:

Jan 18: Google Analytics
Feb 1: Using tables for web design (Working With Websites 6)
Feb 15: Prezi (an excellent alternative to PowerPoint)
March 7: Embedding Google Calenders on a web page (Working With Websites 7)
March 21: Google Docs
April 4: Multimedia on the web (Working With Websites 8)
April 18: Google Forms

Previous Connect sessions can be found at: http://www.coopext.colostate.edu/comptrain/co.shtml.

Previous Connect sessions relating to Working With Websites and the CSU Extension Webpage Template can be found here: http://www.coopext.colostate.edu/comptrain/co.shtml#wor

Google Books Ngram Viewer

The Google Books Ngram Viewer, which Google created with the Encyclopedia Britannica and scientists from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, takes 500 billion words from 5.2 million digitized books and allows you to track their usage over time. The result is a database that shows when certain phrases, people, ideas and trends faded in and out of fashion, and gives the results in an easy to interpret graph. Best of all, the database has been licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license, meaning the results are free for you to use, as long as you include an attribution to Google. The datasets Google uses can also be downloaded and used under the same CC license.

The ngram viewer is here: http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/

Here's how it works: you type in one or more words or phrases, separating them with commas, hit Enter, and the viewer returns a color-keyed graph of the number of mentions of those words or phrases from Google Books entire database of text.

Here's a screenshot of the number of occurrences of two words - "religion" in blue, and "television" in red - over the Google books database of all English text works between 1800 and 2010. The results are not scientific, in that you have little control over which books Google has or hasn't indexed. But they're pretty interesting.



More information about the ngram viewer is available at http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/info

Gmail Priority Inbox

Google is rolling out a new feature in its Gmail accounts this week: Priority Inbox. If you choose the option (available in the upper right corner of the screen; see the screenshot at upper left), Gmail will create a "Priority Inbox" for you that will pull out what it sees as your most important email messages, based on keywords, who the email is from, and whether it is sent directly to you or to a group. Think of it as the opposite of a spam filter. This feature attempts to figure out what emails are most important to you.

Your other emails aren't disposed of, simply placed into two other folders: "Starred" and "Everything Else." In addition, you can train the Inbox to regard a specific email sender or subject as important or unimportant by clicking plus or minus buttons at the top of the inbox (below). Or go to Settings>Filters>Create a Filter to give Gmail specific rules (e.g. an email has an attachment) to decide whether an email gets priority.



To give it a try, click the Priority Inbox link in the upper right of the Gmail dashboard to get started. To see a short video explaining the feature, view Google's short video tutorial at http://mail.google.com/mail/help/priority-inbox.html

Sharing Google Docs

There are two strategies you can use to share Google Docs you have uploaded.

The first is to allow access to specific people, via email address, and then invite them to view or edit.

The second way is to choose the "Anyone with the link" option, which allows anyone you email the link to to view/edit the document without the confusion of having to sign in. This is the easiest method, and relatively secure, as you have some control over who is sent the link (you can also reset the link at any time, if you are worried about security).

Both methods start out the same. Upload the document, then click the Share button on the upper right, and choose Sharing Settings.



A new dialogue box will appear (below). If you choose Anyone With the Link you will see the option of allowing them to edit the document at the bottom of the box. Leaving this box unchecked will only give them permission to view the document.



A final dialogue box will appear (shown below) with the link. Cut and paste it into an email and you are good to go. Note the Reset Link option just below and to the right of the link. If you do reset the link, make sure you alert everyone involved of the new link.



To keep the document private, choose Private.



This will bring up a new dialogue box. You allow access to the document with an email address. To the right of the email text box you can choose whether they can edit or merely view the document.



Checking the Send Email Notifications box will automatically send emails to all those who have been allowed access.

If you would like to learn more about Google Docs, my own video tutorials are available on the Video Tutorials page, and Lynda.com tutorials available at lynda.colostate.edu. Sign in and choose Google on the Vendor drop-down menu.

Google Maps Widget

Google Code has an easy to use Google Maps Widget wizard to allow you to embed a Google map of your workplace location (or any other location) into a webpage. The result can be searched and the end user can zoom and pan the embedded map.

Go to the Google Maps Widget site (www.google.com/uds/solutions/wizards/mapsearch.html). Choose a size, a zoom level, and the name, location and URL where you want the map to center on.



Give Google the URL associated with your Google account, and they will generate the code. Cut and paste it into your webpage, and that's it! A screenshot of the result is below.

Google Voice

eXtension has a great occasional series called 30 Minute sessions, usually at noon MST, that quickly provide an overview of various Tech topics. And it's during lunch, so you can watch and listen while you eat! If you aren't on their mailing list, go to https://www.extension.org/people/lists/learn to sign up. You'll need an account with eXtension. I strongly suggest you do so. It's a great asset.

This week's topic was Google Voice, yet another very cool (and free!) new gadget from Google. You can sign up, or simply learn more about it, at http://www.google.com/googlevoice/about.html.

Google Voice lets you consolidate and manage all your various phone services from one online service: cell, home, and work numbers. Google Voice provides a powerful suite of communications tools, including the ability to:

• Forward calls from one or more phones, or directly to voicemail. Based on who's calling, you can select which of your phones will ring.
• Consolidate all voicemail messages from various phones into one place, and allow you to listen to those messages online.
• Receive text/email alerts when you get a call.
• Transcribe voicemails, which Google Voice will send as email and/or text messages to your cell phone.
• Share voicemails or transcriptions of voicemails via email.
  
• Screen callers by asking for and recording their names.
• Block annoying callers.
• Vary personalized greetings by caller.
• Record phone conversations and listen to them in your Google Voice inbox.

This really is a great tool, and my fast synopsis does not do it justice. Give it a look.

Using Google Analytics

Google Analytics can tell you how many people come to your website, where they are coming from, where they go once they get there, how long they stay, and much more. You can chart these numbers over any given time period. It is an incredibly useful tool.

Here's how to set it up for your own website.

You need a Google account to start (you just need to provide them with an email address and a password). Then go to Google Analytics (https://www.google.com/analytics/). Click "Add An Account" (shown below, the link is circled).



Next, copy-and-paste in the URL of your site, give it a name, and provide your time zone (below).



You'll go through a couple more screens, asking for your name, and agreeing to their terms of service. Google will then give you a snippet of code (shown below) in a box. Click inside the box, and hit Ctrl+C to copy the code.



Open the code of your index page using Dreamweaver or Notepad. Go to the very bottom of the code and paste (Ctrl+V) the Google code just above the closing body tag. Save the page. Do this to EVERY Page page on your website.



And that's it! In 24 hours you'll have a snapshot of web activity on your site. It'll update every 24 hours. Go to the same analytics page (https://www.google.com/analytics/) to see it. The graph and numbers below it will give you a basic overview. The lefthand navigation allows you to look at specific metrics: traffic sources, browser capabilities, etc. A screenshot is provided below; click to enlarge it.

Using Filters in Google Analytics

If you use Google Analytics to monitor traffic to your website, it might be wise to exclude visits to the site by yourself and other site developers. You can do this easily, by adding a filter, so that certain IP addresses or domain names are not included in the metrics.

Log in to Google Analytics and select the site you want to add the filter to. Click Edit, toward the right side of the screen (see below, click to enlarge).



Go to the section Filters applied to profile and select +Add Filter (see below, click to enlarge).



This will take you to the filter dialogue box. Choose whether you want to exclude traffic from a domain, an IP address, or traffic to certain subdirectories, and then enter the domain, address, or subdirectory. In the example below we've used an IP address. Click Save Changes and you are done (see below, click to enlarge).



You can use the site What is My IP Address (http://whatismyipaddress.com/) to find your IP address.

To see a Connect tutorial on setting up Google Analytics for your site, go to the Connect tutorial page on Google Analytics (http://connect.extension.iastate.edu/p28806841/)

Google Search Tip

It can be overwhelming to filter through the results of a Google search link by link. There is a new feature now, where you can sort the links by time, and thus find the most recent posts quickly. Click the "“Show options” link (the one with the little plus sign in front of it) below the search box. Lots of filtering options will appear on the left-hand side of your screen, so you can limit results to posts made in the last hour, the last week, or the last year. Lots of other options appear as well (shown at the left), including "Fewer shopping sites" to help ween out the folks trying to sell you something, and the "Wonder Wheel" to give you a graphic representation of related subjects.

There will be an all day Google Tools workshop in Pueblo on December 4th, where we will explore how to use on many of the amazing free Google tools available to you. Email me at Jeffrey.Wood@Colostate.edu for more details.

Thanks to Loretta Lohman for the tip.

Google Doc Forms

This is an incredibly useful tool I use so often, and suggest to others so frequently, I was actually surprised to realize I hadn't written about this already.

You can easily build an online form and have it write the resulting data to an online Excel document housed at a Google Docs account. The form can handle many kinds of questions: multiple choice, multiple answer, text, paragraph text, grids, and scales.

To create a Google Docs form, go to your Google Docs home page. Choose Create New, then Form.



Simply type your question text into the Question Title box, choose your question type, and type in your answer options.



If you like, you can add a customized confirmation message. The resultant poll can be emailed, published as a stand alone web page, or embedded in an existing webpage or blog (as I've done below). The data will be automatically written to an Excel form at the Google Docs site.

Here's a sample form embedded into this blog. It's a live, functioning form, so feel free to fill it out. I promise to read your answers!

Google Translate

Yet another amazing tool from the folks at Google. You can, with three or four clicks of a mouse, translate your webpage into over 40 languages. Go to the Google Translate site (http://translate.google.com/), enter the URL of your website, the language the site is in, and the language you wish to translate it to, and hit the "translate" button. It reutrns a URL that has your ENTIRE website transtated, not just the home page. You can use the returned URL to provide a translated version of your site.

Other cool features: look over to the right and you'll see the Google Translate button for this blog. Choose a language, and the blog will be instantly translated for you. Go ahead. Try it. I'll wait.

Cool, huh? All that was invloved was copying and pasting one line of embedded code, provided by the Google Translate site. It also has tools to translate plain text to any of 40-ish languages, and has drag and drop buttons for your browser toolbar, to allow you to tranlate any webpage you encounter to another language with just one click.

Here are before and after shots of my own website, first in English, then Spanish. Note that text incorporated into graphics will not be translated.

Google Groups

I got a phone call yesterday asking how to create email groups online, so that an email address could be created that would automatically send emails to all group members. Think of it as an ad hoc Listserv.

As always, Google seems to have a tool for everything (though some work better than others; ever try Google Knol?). Google Groups is a nice solution for creating email groups. One of the better aspects of it is that it doesn't require you to use G-Mail (Google's email service).

Creating a group is a simple process. The administrator of the group needs to register with Google, which requires an email address and a password. Then go to http://groups.google.com/, or find the groups link on the "My Accounts" page. Give the group a name, a description, and add all the email addresses you would like to be part of the group. The members of the group will each receive an email from Google Groups, asking them if they'd like to join the group. There is a link they need to click to accept the invitation. That's pretty much it. The email address Google assigns will be name-of-group@googlegroups.com, though this can be customized. The screen shot below shows how a specific title is made part of the email address by Google.



Again, no one needs to use G-Mail; you can simply email the group from your own email client (e.g. Thunderbird, Outlook).

There are several options that make this an attractive solution. You can add a customized prefix to all email titles in brackets so that, for example, emails from a water issues group would look something like this: "[Water Issues Group] Meeting tonight at 4 p.m.". A customized footer option is available as well, to give specific instructions to all members of the group. Finally, you can assign permissions, so that only designated members (or all members, if that is what you decide) can add others to the group.

Other options are available as well: a group page, a document "drop." Play around on your own to discover all the possibilities here.

One caveat: Outlook has a tendency to dump Google Group email into the "Junk" folder. So make sure each group member knows to go to the "Junk" folder, and move the originating email to their inbox. From then on, email will go to the Inbox.

Reader Feedback

Several short tech tidbits today.

First, Qik (http://qik.com/), an odd and very interesting little application sent to me by Steve Newman, where you can send a live feed through your cellphone, and then post on the Qik site. Looking through the posted videos, there are lots of family videos (babies, cute kids, sports, etc.) and quite a few folks just talking into their cell phone cameras. But there clearly are useful purposes for this, documenting events as they happen, like speeches, natural disasters, breaking news, auto accidents.

Videos can be easily emailed from the site. It plays well with MySpace, Orkut, and other social networking sites.

---

From a NY Times article sent to me by Diana Laughlin, three cool features I didn't know about the Google Search box.

One, it functions as a calculator. Type in 2+2, 2*5, 1021/21, etc, and it will spit out the answer. * performs multiplication, / performs division, "sqrt" calculates square roots, etc.

Two, it functions as a dictionary. Type in "define:" and the word you want to define after the colon, and it will deliver definitions from multiple sources.

Three, it does metric conversion. Type in, say, "13 gallons," and it will return a value of "11.3562354 liters"

---

Finally, from Loretta Lohman, a cautionary website called Photoshop Disasters (http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/), an amusing website with a serious mission: documenting obvious Photoshop errors in real life advertisements and photos. Lots of missing limbs and misplaced shadows. My favorite is of Kate Winslet and her husband, where his arm is wearing a sportscoat but the rest of him is not. The educational value here is to increase your awareness of easy mistakes you can make in photo manipulation.

Embedding PowerPoints

You can easily embed PowerPoint presentations into a blog or website using Google Docs. Upload the document to Google Docs, open it, and then click the "Share" button in the upper righthand corner and choose "Publish/Embed." Cut and paste the supplied code into the body of your website or blog and you're done! A simple four slide example is shown below.

For a step-by-step demonstration of the process, as well as a live demonstration of setting up a site in Google Sites, please feel free to join our Connect session from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. this Wednesday, February 18th. For more information, check the email sent out Monday about the session (entitled "Connect session: Google Docs and Google Sites") or email me at jeffrey.wood@colostate.edu.

Feedback

I thought I'd post three items recently referred to me by readers of this blog.

---

File Replicator
Loretta Lohman brings the File Replicator to our attention. It's free, fast, and does just what it says it will: find and update multiple versions of the same file. You pick the file you want to be the "master," and File Replicator looks for other versions of the document and changes them to replicate the version you pick. File Replicator includes safeguards to keep you from accidentally deleting the wrong thing: you choose a root folder for the search, you can choose to search only and not replace, and before you replace, you're shown a list of the files to be replaced. It's a good tool to to make sure that all copies of an important document are up-to-date.

To download it from PC World, go to http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,75897-order,3/description.html

---

Google and the Dangers of Monoculture
Perry Brewer sent me an article about the dangers of monoculture. With our increasing reliance on various Google tools--G-mail, Google Docs, Google maps, Google Reader--the article poses the question "What would happen if Google went away?" The deeper issue is the problem created by near-complete reliance on a single vendor for a solution to a problem, and is equally applicable to Microsoft as well.

The whole article can be viewed at ZDNet.

---

Remember the Milk
Finally, Mary Snow sent me a link to a nifty little on-line gadget called Remember the Milk, which is reminder list, quite similar to the task list on Outlook, but with the added benefit of being on-line, and thus accessible from anywhere. Plus, it's free! In it's most basic form it's a simple to-do list, but it can also send you daily or one-time reminders on task status and future appointments. Tasks and task lists can be shared with other Remember the Milk users. You can use it for tasks ranging from grocery lists to project management.

Register for Remember the Milk at http://www.rememberthemilk.com/

3 Ways to Increase Your Google Juice

"Google Juice" is that magical substance that allows your site to show up high in the Google rankings when people use the Google search engine to search for a specific subject. The higher your ranking, the more likely people are to visit your site. Here are three basic tips on how to increase the Google Juice, and thus increase website traffic, on your site.

1) Use keywords that are often used in the text of your site. In particular, use keywords that show up in heading tags and links. Use keyword phrases, not just keywords. Be sure and include colloquial expressions ("lameness" in addition to "laminitus") and common misspellings ("foriegn" in addition to "foreign").

2) Embrace the hyperlink! Link to other sites. Not only does this increase your ability to show up higher in Google rankings, it also allows you to put a great deal of information in a very small space, by allowing the end-user the option to pursure a particular subject or keyword in more detail. The NASA Astronokmy Picture of the Day is an excellent example of this: a short explanatory paragraph provides a wealth of information simply by using hyperlinks liberally.

Other sites linking to you will also increase your Google rankings, so get to know sites that write about related topics. Link to them, and suggest they link to you. This is an excellent strategy to increase website traffic.

3) Optimize your keywords. There is a great tool called the Google Keyword tool that allows you to search and sort actual Google word and phrase searches, and choose keywords based on those listings. You input either your URL or a list of keywords, and it gives you the monthly traffic rate and advertiser competition for those keywords. The goal is to find keywords and keyword phrases with relatively a relatively high number of searches (3rd cloumn in the illustration below), but low advertiser competition (2nd column). This will often involve "long tailed" keyword phrases, meaning very specific - and often longer - keyword phrases not as commonly used on webpages. For more information, visit the recorded Connect session on Google Search engines and Keyword optimization. The session is about 45 minutes long.