Google TV for Kids!

Peter Sherman, (Marketing Team) says

We all love the holidays, but it's always a challenge to entertain the kids, especially when the excitement of gift giving has died down. A popular way to keep them occupied is in front of the TV, but this often leads to endless channel surfing, the occasional cry of "I'm bored," and a high likelihood that your kid will end up watching "whatever's on."

While we can't guarantee that your kid will choose to watch the most educational content every time (we're partial to YouTube EDU), we are sure you'll find that Google TV helps in many ways.

The least that Google TV can do is to end the era of mindless channel surfing. Using Google's search functionality, your kid (or my nephews) can find the show or movie they are looking for immediately, whether it's on TV or the web. A search for "Santa" just brought up 24 movies and 30 episodes on TV and services such as Amazon Video On Demand or Netflix. Once my nephews are through with those, we can get started on all the great Santa-related web videos on YouTube, Vimeo, and the rest

If your kids want truly interactive TV (who can blame them?), then Google TV can really help out. There are great websites optimized for the TV suited for the kits in our Spotlight Gallery. Some of the most kid friendly sites are:

• MeeGenius: Read your kids beautifully illustrated books (a huge array of classics and more modern tales). You can customize some of the content to make it more personal and the app will then read the story out loud, with the relevant words highlighted on screen for you kids to follow along.
  
  
• Fraboom: There is so much going on at Fraboom (from educational videos to games) that they are right to describe it as a museum. Look out for the battle against Baron Von Boredom.
  
  
• PBSKids: A really simple interface means that kids can navigate around their favorite videos of PBS KIDS shows like Curious George and Dinosaur Train.
  
  
• Cartoon Network: Quickly and easily find all your favorite shows from Cartoon Network.

see also:
http://googletv.blogspot.com/2010/12/interactive-tv-for-kids-and-no-were-not.html
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/free-calling-in-gmail-extended-through.html
http://buzz.blogger.com/2010/12/take-survey-win-blogger-shirt-be.html

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Its easy to edit photos from orkut

Virginia Roman, (Picnik writer and orkut site editor) says

Orkut has an exciting new feature to share with you all: Now you can edit all the photos in your orkut albums with Picnik, the online photo editor. Picnik makes your photos fabulous! It's an award-winning photo editing application that lives online, in your browser, with nothing to download. It's fast, easy and fun.

And now it's right in orkut! Just open any photo in your orkut photo albums and click on the "Edit with Picnik" button above it:

Picnik will load right inside of orkut. You can do basic fixes with easy but powerful editing tools, tweak to your heart's content, then get creative with oodles of effects, fonts, shapes, frames and more:

When you're done turning your photo into your perfect picture, just click the "Save to my album" button in the top right-hand corner to add your new photo right back into the photo album it started in. It's never been easier!

The best part is, this is all happening right in time for the Holidays! Picnik has a whole suite of Holiday tools for cheerful costumes, wintery effects, and all the decorations your photos could ever need to ring in this merriest time of year. So even if you live in the southern hemisphere and you're on your summer vacation enjoying the beach, you can turn your photos into the perfect Winter Wonderland.

Everyone here on both orkut and Picnik teams wishes you all Happy Holidays and Happy Picniking!

see also: http://en.blog.orkut.com/2010/12/new-in-orkut-edit-your-photos-with.html / http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/free-calling-in-gmail-extended-through.html

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Free call option in gmail until newyear :)

Robin Schriebman, Software Engineer (from gmail blog) says

When we launched calling in Gmail back in August, we wanted it to be easy and affordable, so we made calls to the U.S. and Canada free for the rest of 2010. In the spirit of holiday giving and to help people keep in touch in the new year, we're extending free calling for all of 2011.

In case you haven't tried it yet, dialing a phone number works just like a regular phone. Look for "Call phone" at the top of your Gmail chat list and dial a number or enter a contact's name.

To learn more, visit gmail.com/call. Calling in Gmail is currently only available to U.S. based Gmail users.

Happy New Year and happy calling!

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Safer plug-ins. Fastest Chrome

Carlos Pizano, Software Engineer says (from chrome.blogspot.com)

Last week, we previewed several upcoming features that will be available to users on Chrome and Chrome OS. Today we’re excited to introduce a few of these new security, speed, and open web platform features into Chrome’s beta channel.

As one of the engineers working on Chrome’s sandbox, I’m happy to announce that we’re bringing Chrome’s existing sandboxing technology for web pages to the Flash Player plug-in in Chrome for Windows. The sandbox adds an additional layer of protection to further guard against malicious pages that try to hijack your computer or steal private information from your hard drive. Based on this groundwork in the beta, we’ll be bringing the sandboxed Flash Player to Chrome for Mac and Linux in future releases as well. For an explanation of how sandboxing technology makes Chrome safer, check out this animated video:



With the latest beta, you can turn on Chrome Instant (à la Google Instant), which lets you view web pages and search results faster than ever. With Instant enabled, web pages that you frequently visit will begin loading as soon as you start typing a URL in the omnibox, faster than you can say ‘Jack Robinson!’ (or in this case, faster than you can hit Enter). In addition, if supported by your default search engine, search results appear instantly as you type queries in the omnibox, and in-line predictions will also appear to help guide your search. Give it a whirl by enabling it on the Basics tab of Chrome’s options and see how you like it!

Finally, this beta will include WebGL, a new web technology for bringing hardware-accelerated 3D graphics to the browser. For more on WebGL in Chrome, check out the Chromium blog. If you’d like to learn more about 3D in the browser and what hardware-accelerated graphics, read on in ouronline guidebook to browsers and the web.

We hope you’ll enjoy this safer, faster, and more powerful version of the Chrome beta!

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