Google Drive Blog
The latest news and updates from the Google Drive team.
Here, there and everywhere—Google Keep reminds you at the right time
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
(Cross-posted from the
Android Blog
)
Notes are a good way to keep track of all you have to do, but most of us need a little nudge now and then. Google Keep can remind you of important tasks and errands at just the right time and place. For example, Keep works with Google Now to remind you of your grocery list when you walk into your favorite grocery store, and nudges you on Thursday night to take out the trash.
To get started, select the “Remind me” button from the bottom of any note and choose the type of reminder you want to add. You can add time-based reminders for a specific date and time, or a more general time of day, like tomorrow morning. Adding a location reminder is incredibly easy too – as soon as you start typing Google Keep suggests places nearby.
Of course, sometimes plans change. If you get a reminder you’re not ready to deal with, simply snooze it to a time or place that’s better for you. It’s now even easier to get to all of your notes using the new navigation drawer, which includes a way to view all of your upcoming reminders in one place. And for people who want more separation between their home and work lives, the drawer also lets you easily switch between your accounts.
And finally, we’ve made it easier to add your existing photos to a Google Keep note on Android. When you tap the camera icon you can choose between taking a new photo or adding one you already have from Gallery.
The new update is gradually rolling out in
Google Play
, and available now on the web at
http://drive.google.com/keep
and in the
Chrome App
.
Posted by Erin Rosenthal, Product Manager
Head back to school with Drive: Teacher Edition
Monday, August 19, 2013
Posted by guest blogger Wendy Gorton
Wendy Gorton is an education consultant for organizations around the world. She’s a former classroom teacher, Google Certified Teacher and Trainer, and is passionate about creating learner-centered environments using tools like
Google Apps for Education
.
Follow the
Drive Google+ page
this and next week for daily tips and suggestions for using Drive in the classroom.
Google Drive
is the all-in-one tool I wish I had my first year of teaching. It not only keeps all of your lesson plans, activities, and research organized, but it's an outstanding way to engage your students, give them feedback, and give their writing a real audience—like their peers or classrooms around the world.
Here are 3 tips to help teachers prepare for going back to school with
Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms
.
1. Use Slides to get to know your students
A great first-week introductory activity is to create a single slide deck, and then invite each of your students to share a bit about themselves on their own personal slide. It’s a fantastic get-to-know-you activity for the first week of school and you’ll be amazed by the creativity that comes out of your students!
The screenshot below shows how Google Student Ambassadors from 9 different countries used
Slides
to introduce themselves before gathering to meet each other at an event in Indonesia this summer.
Want to get this going with your students? Easy—
create a new Slides deck
on the first week of school, click the blue Share button to invite your students, and give them a little direction for their individual slide by
adding comments
.
2. Use Docs to create a classroom “Bill of Rights”
The first week of class is that precious transition from the “honeymoon” period of angelic children to learning the norms of your classroom culture. Help start the year off right by inviting students to co-create their ideas of citizenship and a happy learning environment,
Docs
style.
Start by
creating a copy of this template
and then invite students to join in with you to add their ideas, ratify by adding a comment, and use their editing prowess to come up with a final copy to live by for the coming year.
3. Use Forms to get to know your students (and their prior knowledge!)
Get to know your classroom as soon as possible, using
Forms
to gather information about their needs, interests, and abilities beforehand. Consider creating a simple Form for a survey for your students (and for your parents!) and have fun showing the data on your projector and learning about your class as a whole.
Forms can be used as a very quick getting started activity before any lesson as well—take this example from a social studies classroom before talking about population. By
placing a quick Form
on your classroom site or emailing your students the Form, you can quickly grasp your students' prior knowledge—before you start teaching.
In this case, our team was a bit off, but helped us not only talk about population but estimation and numbers in general (answer? 7.1 billion
and counting
. My favorite answer? One ‘goggle.’)
One last tip: Google Apps for Education
You know this is way easier when your school has its own
Google Apps for education
set up, right? It’s free, and no technical expertise is needed to
get started
.
I hope you give one of these ideas a try and let me know how it goes on my
Google+ page
.
18 New Languages for Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Google Drive lets you store and access your files anywhere -- on the web, your computer, your phone, or on the go. Whether you’re presenting slides in a boardroom in São Paulo or negotiating a Japanese contract in Tokyo, Google Drive speaks your language:
65 of them
, to be exact, with the addition of 18 new ones today:
Afrikaans, Amharic, Basque, Chinese (Hong Kong), Estonian, French (Canada), Galician, Icelandic, Khmer, Lao, Malaysian, Nepali, Persian, Sinhalese, Spanish (Latin America), Swahili, Urdu, Zulu
You can
switch
back and forth as often as you like, and many of these languages are also supported by Drive’s spellchecker.
Love to collaborate? No matter which Drive app you’re using --
Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms
-- you can work in real time in any language you choose while your fellow collaborators use another language.
To try Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides in another language, you can switch by:
Clicking the
gear icon
in the upper right, then select
Settings
.
Under
General
, select a language from the drop-down menu in the Language section.
Click
Save
. You’re done!
To change the language for Google Drive for mobile, go to your device’s language settings. If you don’t yet have Drive for mobile, you can visit the
Google Play
or
Apple App Store
to get the Google Drive app.
Posted by Ian Hill, Project Manager, Google Localization
A smoother Drive app for Android
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
The process of creating and accessing your stuff shouldn’t be, well...a process. Today, the
Drive app for Android
is getting several improvements to make creating and accessing your stuff on-the-go even easier.
To help you find the content you care about, Drive files will now be displayed in a clean, simple card-style. You can swipe between files to see large previews that let you quickly review and discover the information you’re looking for. And if you want to keep some Drive files on your Android device, you’ll now be able to “download a copy” from the actions menu inside settings.
The updated Drive for Android app also gives you to a way to keep track of important paper documents like receipts, letters, and billing statements. Simply click “Scan” from the Add New menu, snap a photo of your document, and Drive will turn the document into a PDF that’s stored for safekeeping. And because Drive can recognize text in scanned documents using
Optical Character Recognition
(OCR) technology, a simple search will retrieve the scanned document later. No more frantic scrambling through drawers looking for a receipt or digging through your pockets to find that business card -- just scan, upload and search in Drive.
The
editing experience
in Google Sheets has also gotten some improvements: now you can adjust font types and sizes for a spreadsheet and tweak the cell text colors and cell alignment right from the app. Plus, the Drive app comes with Cloud Print support so you can print anything from Drive with a
Cloud Ready printer
-- perfect if you need to, say, print that extra resume right before a job interview.
Get the Google Drive app today on
Google Play
and circle us on
Google+
for continued updates.
Posted by Denis Teplyashin, Software Engineer
Bringing it all together: 15 GB now shared between Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos
Monday, May 13, 2013
Life gets a bit easier when your Google products work well together—whether that’s inserting a Drive file into an email or sharing a photo from Drive on Google+. As this experience becomes more seamless, separate storage doesn’t make as much sense anymore. So instead of having 10 GB for Gmail and another 5 GB for Drive and Google+ Photos, you’ll now get 15 GB of unified storage for free to use as you like between Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos.
With this new combined storage space, you won’t have to worry about how much you’re storing and where. For example, maybe you’re a heavy Gmail user but light on photos, or perhaps you were bumping up against your Drive storage limit but were only using 2 GB in Gmail. Now it doesn’t matter, because you can use your storage the way you want.
We’ll also be making updates to the
Google Drive storage page
, so you can better understand how you’re using storage space. Simply hover over the pie chart to see a breakdown of your storage use across Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos. And if you need more storage, this is your place to upgrade, with plans starting at $4.99/month for 100 GB.
Pro tip: This change means you’re no longer limited to a 25 GB upgrade in Gmail—any additional storage you purchase now applies there, too.
These changes to Google Drive storage will roll out over the next couple of weeks. Google Apps users will also be getting shared storage, so visit the
enterprise blog
to learn more.
Posted by Clay Bavor, Director of Product Management
Access Google Keep with the new Chrome app
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Last month, Google Keep
launched
to help you quickly jot down ideas and keep track of things while on the go with your
Android
device or
on the web
. Today, with the launch of a new
Chrome app
, Google Keep is even easier to access on your computer using Chrome.
The Google Keep Chrome app launches in its own window, so you can create notes, cross out your to-do lists, and attach photos to tasks while you work on other things. And if you don’t have an internet connection, don’t fret: the Chrome app works offline because we all know that ideas (big and small) can be sparked at any time.
You can visit the
Chrome Web Store
to add the app today (use the link, you won’t find it in search)!
Happy note taking!
Posted by Eddy Mead, Software Engineer
Bringing people together in Drive
Thursday, April 25, 2013
More often than not, you need to work with others to get things done. Today, working together in Drive is getting even easier with new profile pictures and one-click group chat.
Now when you open a file in Drive, you’ll see the profile pictures of other viewers at the top instead of just their names, making it easy for you to do a quick scan of who else is in the file. You can hover over a photo to see details about the viewer and add them to your circles on Google+ — all without ever leaving Drive.
In addition, you can now start a group chat with just one click. Simply select the new chat button at the top right and a chat box will appear, making it easy for you to quickly message everyone in the file.
These new features will roll out over the next day or two, and we’ll be adding support for more file types (like Google Sheets) soon, so stay tuned. In the meantime, visit our
Google+ page
and let us know what your favorite anonymous character is!
Posted by Eric Zhang, Software Engineer (Anonymous Monkey)
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