Google's Zerg Rush Easter Egg

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Google has a new Easter Egg: search for [zerg rush] and you'll notice that search results will start to disappear, destroyed by zerglings. Your mission is to save the search results and kill the zerglings using your clicks, but it's not easy.

According to KnowYourMeme, "Zerg Rush is a popular online gaming term used to describe an overwhelming scale of attack carried out by one player against another in real time strategy (RTS) games. The term originates from the popular RTS game Starcraft, in which the Zerg race is notoriously known for its ability to mass-produce offensive units within a short time frame, thus allowing the player to overpower the opponent by sheer number."




When the game is over, Google lets you post your results to Google+ and shows the message "GG", a cryptic way to say "Good Game".



{ Thanks, Mati. }

Google Image Search's Maximized Mode for Tablets

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This seems to be a recent addition to Google Image Search's tablet interface. When you tap an image, Google maximizes it and hides the details placed at the bottom of the page. The nice thing is that you can continue to check the other image search results using the maximized mode.





I've only tested this feature on an iPad, but it should also work on an Android tablet. Hopefully, Google will add this great interface to the desktop. Speaking of feature requests, Google should let you open image search results in a new tab when you use the tablet interface.

Google Music Trash

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Google Music now has a trash page that includes all the songs you've deleted. You can find the page by clicking the "options" icon and selecting "Music trash" from the menu. The songs are permanently deleted after 28 days (why not 30 days like in Gmail?), but you can also manually do that. There's also an "undelete" button for restoring music files.



It's interesting to notice that the deleted music files are no longer synced with Google Music Manager. As Google explains, "once you permanently delete [a song], the content and related data (e.g., stored play counts) will be disassociated from your account. There may be some delay before our systems fully process your removal request. In addition, if this content was purchased from Google Play, the only way to retrieve it is to repurchase the content."

Google Maps App for iOS?

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Now that Apple's iOS 6 has a maps app that no longer uses Google Maps, many people wonder if Google will release its own app. After all, the built-in maps app has been developed by Apple and it didn't include many Google Maps features. Maybe Google wanted to keep features like navigation Android-only, maybe Apple focused on the new app and ignored the old app. One thing is clear: the Android app for Google Maps was a lot better than Apple's app.

The Next Web reports that Jeff Huber, Senior VP at Google, said that Google "looks forward to providing amazing Google Maps experiences on iOS." Google will compete with the built-in maps app so it will have to include features that used to be limited to Android like vectorial maps, offline maps, navigation, integration with Google Places and new features like the "fly-over" maps. Google says that it will add "3D models to entire metropolitan areas to Google Earth on mobile devices," but an app that combines Google Maps, Google Earth and Google Local would be more useful. Upgrading the Google Earth app is much easier than building a new app and the existing users won't have to install another application. Google Earth is the second most popular Google app for iOS, after Google Search.

Chrome and Google Drive's Third-Party Apps

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One of the most important Google Drive features is the support for third-party apps. Now you're no longer limited to Google's word processor, spreadsheet editor, presentation app and you can use web apps developed by other companies.

Google released a SDK for Google Drive apps and there are already 18 apps that use it. Users are required to install a Chrome app from the Chrome Web Store for each Google Drive app, but they don't have to use Chrome. Google's dev blog informs that "Drive apps are distributed from the Chrome Web Store and can be used with any modern browser." I've managed to install apps in Firefox and Opera, but not in IE9.


To integrate a third-party app with Google Drive, the app sends you to a page that asks for your permission. The authorization process fails if you load the page without installing the Chrome Web Store app. As Google says, "apps will not have any API access to files unless the app has been installed in Chrome Web Store." Chrome apps are only used to allow the third-party apps to use the Drive API, but they can be uninstalled immediately after they're installed and all the features will work in Chrome and any other browser.



At the moment, Drive apps don't integrate with Chrome, but that's likely to happen in the future. Chromebooks would be a lot more useful if you could sync files with Google Drive and open them using web apps.

Google's Zerg Rush Easter Egg

To contact us Click HERE
Google has a new Easter Egg: search for [zerg rush] and you'll notice that search results will start to disappear, destroyed by zerglings. Your mission is to save the search results and kill the zerglings using your clicks, but it's not easy.

According to KnowYourMeme, "Zerg Rush is a popular online gaming term used to describe an overwhelming scale of attack carried out by one player against another in real time strategy (RTS) games. The term originates from the popular RTS game Starcraft, in which the Zerg race is notoriously known for its ability to mass-produce offensive units within a short time frame, thus allowing the player to overpower the opponent by sheer number."




When the game is over, Google lets you post your results to Google+ and shows the message "GG", a cryptic way to say "Good Game".



{ Thanks, Mati. }

Gmail's New Custom Themes

To contact us Click HERE
When Google released the new Gmail interface, one of the missing features was custom themes. Now you can create your own themes, but they're very limited as you can only choose between a light or dark interface and pick a background image.

To try the new feature, click the "settings" button, choose "themes" (or use this URL), scroll down to "custom themes", click "light" or "dark" and select an image. You can pick one of the great featured images from Picasa Web, choose one of your photos, use the search feature, upload an image or paste a URL. A similar interface is used for Google homepage's custom background feature.









You'll probably notice that custom themes are just like Gmail's HD themes launched last year, except that you can choose your own image. "Themes are now implemented as semitransparent layers on top of a large background image. Each theme uses either a dark or light variant of most UI elements to balance legibility and visibility of the background image, allowing the background image to peek through and provide color and personality," explained Google at that time.

Gmail's new themes are more adaptable and show the entire image, but you can't customize colors, fonts and all the other details of the interface. The old custom themes feature allowed you to "select colors for everything from the background of your inbox to link text".

{ via Gmail Blog. Thanks, Sterling. }

Google Image Search's Maximized Mode for Tablets

To contact us Click HERE
This seems to be a recent addition to Google Image Search's tablet interface. When you tap an image, Google maximizes it and hides the details placed at the bottom of the page. The nice thing is that you can continue to check the other image search results using the maximized mode.





I've only tested this feature on an iPad, but it should also work on an Android tablet. Hopefully, Google will add this great interface to the desktop. Speaking of feature requests, Google should let you open image search results in a new tab when you use the tablet interface.

Default Upload Settings for YouTube Videos

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If you frequently upload videos to YouTube and make them private, if you use the "Creative Commons Attribution" license for most of your videos, if many of your videos have the same tags, similar descriptions or you're picking the same category, now you can adjust the default upload settings from this page. You can also find the page by clicking "Defaults" in the left sidebar of the settings page.



When you're uploading new videos, your custom settings show up. As YouTube informs, "these settings can be overridden on individual videos."



{ Thanks, Sterling. }

Google's Zerg Rush Easter Egg

To contact us Click HERE
Google has a new Easter Egg: search for [zerg rush] and you'll notice that search results will start to disappear, destroyed by zerglings. Your mission is to save the search results and kill the zerglings using your clicks, but it's not easy.

According to KnowYourMeme, "Zerg Rush is a popular online gaming term used to describe an overwhelming scale of attack carried out by one player against another in real time strategy (RTS) games. The term originates from the popular RTS game Starcraft, in which the Zerg race is notoriously known for its ability to mass-produce offensive units within a short time frame, thus allowing the player to overpower the opponent by sheer number."




When the game is over, Google lets you post your results to Google+ and shows the message "GG", a cryptic way to say "Good Game".



{ Thanks, Mati. }

Gmail's New Custom Themes

To contact us Click HERE
When Google released the new Gmail interface, one of the missing features was custom themes. Now you can create your own themes, but they're very limited as you can only choose between a light or dark interface and pick a background image.

To try the new feature, click the "settings" button, choose "themes" (or use this URL), scroll down to "custom themes", click "light" or "dark" and select an image. You can pick one of the great featured images from Picasa Web, choose one of your photos, use the search feature, upload an image or paste a URL. A similar interface is used for Google homepage's custom background feature.









You'll probably notice that custom themes are just like Gmail's HD themes launched last year, except that you can choose your own image. "Themes are now implemented as semitransparent layers on top of a large background image. Each theme uses either a dark or light variant of most UI elements to balance legibility and visibility of the background image, allowing the background image to peek through and provide color and personality," explained Google at that time.

Gmail's new themes are more adaptable and show the entire image, but you can't customize colors, fonts and all the other details of the interface. The old custom themes feature allowed you to "select colors for everything from the background of your inbox to link text".

{ via Gmail Blog. Thanks, Sterling. }

A New Experimental Interface for Google Search

To contact us Click HERE
Google tests a new search interface that replaces the left sidebar with a horizontal menu. Search tools are hidden by default, just like in the existing interface. It's interesting to notice that the experimental UI is inspired by the tablet UI.

The list of specialized search engines is placed below the search box, so it's likely that more people will notice it.


{ via Techno-Net }

Google Image Search's Maximized Mode for Tablets

To contact us Click HERE
This seems to be a recent addition to Google Image Search's tablet interface. When you tap an image, Google maximizes it and hides the details placed at the bottom of the page. The nice thing is that you can continue to check the other image search results using the maximized mode.





I've only tested this feature on an iPad, but it should also work on an Android tablet. Hopefully, Google will add this great interface to the desktop. Speaking of feature requests, Google should let you open image search results in a new tab when you use the tablet interface.