Innholdsfortegnelse for Google Tips & Tricks i Google Tips & Tricks

When you think of Google, search engines and emails may come to mind, but there is a lot more to the company than just these runaway successes. It is true that Google dominates search and email, but did you know that YouTube is owned and powered by Google and so are many other online services that you may already be aware of. Over time, Google has grown from a company that provides the best search engine on the internet to one that can power almost every aspect of our computing lives. Google now provides the most popular email service in the world and enables people to store billions of documents online. It provides ultra-fast broadband and the operating system for the most popular smartphones – it sometimes feels that everything…

When you’re a Google customer, movies, books and games are all within easy reach and can be yours in just a single click. Modern living often means that many of us have to make do with accommodation that is too small for our needs, which means that having truckloads of stuff that takes up space isn’t the best situation. So why not compile an online library of movies instead of cluttering up the place with DVDs and Blu-rays? And why lose premium shelf space to physical books when you can get all of the latest bestsellers to read on your mobile phone? Google Play is an online store that stocks movies, TV shows, books and Android apps. By logging into your Google account and setting up a secure payment method,…

Information is a word that means many things to different people, depending on their exact needs. Google, however, has created a selection of services that offer almost everything you need if you are prepared to learn how they all work. Each service is designed to be easy to use and in many cases little instruction is required. But, as with everything, some useful tips and guides will help speed up the process, and open your eyes to what is possible with a group of services that are all free and extremely well implemented. In this section, we have tutorials which will show you how to communicate in multiple languages, how to view your entire web history and how to research information using the most focused tools available. Discounted goods and…

Google offers an email service, video streaming site, cloud storage, online shopping centre and more, all from one account. As there are so many different things you can control across your account, navigating the menus may seem daunting. Fortunately, Google’s navigation bar helps make things much easier. You can access this account hub on any Google website by clicking on the profile picture in the right corner of the page and selecting ‘My Account’. From here you will have access to all the settings and options for Google’s services, such as privacy settings, sign-in options and personal information. We suggest going to Account preferences first and selecting your preferred language. This is also where you will go if you wish to delete your account completely, and erase all of…

The modern age of the smartphone, which doubles up as a very adept video recording device, means that everything in life can be documented and shared with the world. The ever-surging popularity of the YouTube web video service means that it is often people’s first stop for entertainment as you can find pretty much anything you want, within reason, uploaded and ready for you to enjoy. Uploading your own videos is a quick and easy task and you have full control over who sees the videos that you uploaded and the promotional process to get them seen by as many people as possible, which could also mean an unexpected source of revenue for yourself as a result. When you upload a video, you must give it a title and a…

Although eBooks are best suited to mobile devices that you can carry around with you at all times just like real books, Google’s desktop book service is just as feature-packed and can be a real asset, whether you just want to sit at your computer and read or carry out important research. Any books purchased from the Google Play store can be accessed on your computer through your web browser and some may prefer the larger reading interface that its monitor affords. All of the features that are available in the Play Books mobile app are on hand, too. You can search for keywords to jump to a particular page, make notes and apply them to passages of text – making this a handy tool for research purposes – and…

Google is in the perfect position to offer real-time information on what are the most popular searches of the moment, and thanks to its domination of the web search market, you don’t just search the web, you ‘Google it’. This enables it to scour all of the searches that are being undertaken at any time, and present them for you to check whenever you like, using Google Trends. At any point, the top trends are of course changing every second and this is reflected in a variety of ways, but Google has also helpfully broken the trends down into categories if you are interested in a particular topic. The Top Charts section shows what is popular over a period of your choosing and will also be broken down by country.…

Feedly is a news feed reader, which has become the popular replacement for Google Reader. Since the announcement that Google Reader was shutting down, Feedly has amassed 12 million users, and with good reason too. If you were using Google Reader previously then you will be happy to hear that Feedly, who are not a part of Google, offers a similar but improved service. For those of you who are new to RSS news feeds, here is how it works: rather than visiting each of your favourite websites and browsing through its pages for new content, you can add your favourite sites to your Feedly news feed (as well as categories for them), putting all your favourite and most up-to-date news feeds in one manageable space. You can even add…

Google Keep is one of the lesser-known web apps available, but it may well be what tips you over the edge into becoming a full-on Google-head. Keep is a very simple note- and list-making service. That’s about all there is to it. If you are using multiple computers and devices through your day, perhaps you have experimented with note-making apps and software before. Apple offers Reminders and Notes, Samsung has Samsung Notes, and there are independent companies such as Wundershare, but with Google Keep (as with any of Google’s apps) it transcends all computers, operating systems and devices, making it universally compatible with just about all of your devices. The app has undergone something of a redevelopment in recent times and is now a stand-alone app, available on a…

If you have a busy day, week, month or lifetime coming up then it’s going to help to plan for it, right down to the minutes in the day. By using your Google Calendar to focus on one day at a time, you can create an incredibly detailed and concise schedule (appointment diary) for yourself, with event details, participants, times and locations. You can also integrate Google Tasks with your daily schedule, meaning that you can set up a primary task which will feature in your schedule and within that task you can add as many secondary tasks as you like, which will be displayed in the Google Tasks window next to your calendar. Once you have compiled your schedule for the day, week or month, you can view it,…

Maps Travel anywhere Google Maps offers some of the most accurate and complete online maps in the world. The coverage has improved over the years thanks to a huge investment by Google and you can also use it to navigate anywhere. Current traffic conditions are a feature and so it can also be used in place of a commercial navigation solution. The level of detail for each establishment you locate is impressive, thanks to the connection to Google Search, and the Street View feature adds even more realism to the experience. No matter what type of mapping requirement you have, this is the ultimate solution for any occasion. It is quite brilliant. Gmail Stay connected If you use Gmail, you will want to download the associated app. It includes all…

Getting the stories that matter most to you delivered quickly and efficiently by Google News How often do you catch the headlines at the start of a major daily news bulletin, only to find that the story you were interested in is crudely tacked onto the end after you have endured half an hour of stories that don’t matter to you? Google News eradicates this problem by only delivering the news that you are interested in. In fact, your news content is devised through various means, including your region and previous stories that you have clicked on. The more you use Google News, the better it gets at narrowing down your content and ensuring that superfluous stories are nowhere to be found. In developing its News service, Google has strived…

Getting organised with Google’s huge array of web, mobile and tablet apps goes way beyond syncing your emails and calendars and setting up a few bookmarks for your favourite sites. It is now possible to shift your entire life onto Google, utilising its free services to better manage everything from everyday tasks, to the running of your business, and keeping up to date with your stocks. The key is how you implement these tools into your life. A lot of what’s available through Google’s web browser, Chrome, is not always hugely advertised. There are a lot of great unknown tricks and tips for speeding up your workflow and streamlining the way you and your devices communicate with Google. In the following tutorials you will learn how to make the most…

The Gmail service is constantly recieving tweaks – and we’ve never been happier with how it works. One of the most useful feature revolves around tabs, though strangely this addition isn’t instantly apparent. To access it you have to open the Settings menu (via cog icon) – here you’ll find the option to ‘Configure inbox’, which is where the magic happens. You can add various categories of tabs to the top of your primary inbox and all the emails relating to these will be automatically filtered into their respective tabbed inbox, instantly de-cluttering your primary inbox. This makes it far easier to find certain emails and never miss the important ones. You can also move messages between tabs if you find something filed incorrectly and the system is intelligent enough…

Uploading your images to Google Photos is beneficial in so many ways. Not only is it a great way to keep your images safe in a cloud environment, but it also brings a wealth of options to help you organise and share your images with other people. Uploading your images to Photos is a quick and easy process that can be done by clicking on the ‘Upload’ link at the top of the page. You can then navigate through the folders on your computer and choose which ones to upload manually. You can also download the Google Photos app to your smartphone and have photos automatically upload, if you wish. Once your images have been uploaded, you can then go to work editing and enhancing them. The editing suite can…

If you have ever had to search for an old newspaper article or clipping, then you will remember how difficult it used to be. With the launch of Google News Archive back in 2011, finding articles became much easier. It is a particularly useful service that provides users with free access to both online and scanned newspaper articles over 30 days old. With so many articles available online now, the only issue you may face is that it can be difficult to pinpoint exactly what you are looking for. However, recent changes from Google mean that you can search for content directly through the Google homepage. In this tutorial we will guide you through the process of searching for both online and print articles via the Google homepage and Google…

The current Google Maps is much improved from the old version. For a start, Earth has been fully integrated to replace the satellite view and searches and clicks are tailored for your needs. Traffic, for instance, gives real-time updates and it looks much better in this version. But you can also see alternative routes, whether by car or public transport. You even get an indication of how long, under the current conditions, it will take you to get there. Google Maps is also hot on images. There are thousands of photographs which help to form an overall image of an area and give you a better flavour of what is around. You can also leave ratings for places and see what other people think. All of this has been made…

Most people use Google Search every day and accept the results that are presented. This is perfectly reasonable because the results are almost always accurate and fit the search term that has been inputted, but there are ways to improve your results. Google offers many tools that will let you search for images, locations and other non-text references with ease and even these can be expanded upon to let you find exact image sizes and the type of images you require. The Advanced Search option lets you specify more than one term and you can choose what to include and what to avoid, which should bring results that are as near to your requirements as possible. The simplistic search page also lets you compare the prices of products, find books…

It is easy and natural to use the default Google Search method when researching topics, but to do so would be missing out on one of the most useful Google offerings. Scholar is designed specifically for researching academic literature and journals and includes a number of simple features that come together to create a powerful solution that will save you a lot of time and improve the accuracy of your searching enormously. Each search result is presented with options below it that will automate the citation of each article and you can also then import them into your bibliography using your chosen referencing style with just a couple of clicks. Stats are available showing the number of citations and many of the results link directly to full articles which can…

We’ve been using folder systems for storing our images, music, videos and documents for about as long as it’s been possible to own a personal computer. Now we’re moving into a time where we need the content of our computers to be stored in the cloud, making it accessible from multiple devices. Google Drive allows us to access and edit a variety of files all through the Chrome browsing software, meaning it doesn’t matter what device you are on or what software is installed on the computer. However, it can still feel a little foreign to be opening an internet browser to access our computer’s files. With Google Drive’s desktop software we can keep our files in a nice and familiar file format, while also storing them in the cloud.…

Whether it’s sending basic messages through Gmail, uploading videos to YouTube, sharing photos or hooking up for a face-to-face video chat through Google Meet, communicating is made easy through the company’s numerous free services. Later in this book, we will be taking a look at some of the main apps for communicating in more detail, but for now we thought it important for you to get accustomed with some of the respective services’ lesser-known features, which can make using them even more intuitive and speed up your productivity no end. Since Gmail is used by people at work and at home on a massive scale, we have focused mainly on cool tips for getting the most out of that service – such as interesting ways to manage your inbox and…

Google is a search engine giant, but it is not only concerned with helping you to discover what is available on the world wide web or what is contained within your emails. It wants you to discover things in the real world, work out how to get there and find out more about them when you do. It wants you to explore outer space too, and get a general understanding of Earth along with the other planets and moons in our solar system. And it keeps improving. Google has rolled out a new Maps app for Android and it has recently revamped its desktop offering. Both combine to help you get more than just simple maps, and they draw on a social element with reviews, photographs and tours that all…

Google isn’t just a search engine any more. Although search remains its core business, and the primary way that users interact with the software giant, behind the scenes there are a whole host of additional products and services offered by the company – many of which you’ll probably encounter on a daily basis. The most well known of these are YouTube and Google Maps, but there are many others that provide services to help you improve your website, and your users’ experience. Google has also been acquiring services in recent years so that Blogger is now owned and operated by the firm, providing integration options that didn’t previously exist. Not to mention that it produces one of the most popular web browsers: Chrome. This section of the book provides you…

It’s becoming increasingly rare for people to operate on just one email account. We all tend to have separate accounts for work and personal, and maybe more on the go as well. So how time-consuming is it to have to switch between accounts in order to check all of our inboxes? Mercifully, Gmail comes with the built-in option to link Gmail accounts together so that all of the new emails are streamed into one place, making it simple to check them on the fly and easy to reply to them from whichever email address you choose. There is much more to Gmail than meets the eye too, because you can then really start to explore the main options available to you through the Settings screen (accessible by clicking on the…

You may use Google to search for services that help you plan holidays, but not many know that Google itself has a service for this. Search by destination and Google Travel will offer travel advice, things to see as well as find prices for hotels and flights. This service was originally known as Google Trips and was an app for smartphones and tablets, but this was shut down in 2019, its name changed to Google Travel, and it is now only accessible using an internet browser. Google has made the service intuitive, with everything you’d need accessible from the front page. Go to travel.google.com and on the main page will be five options: Explore, Things to do, Flights, Hotels and Holiday Rentals. These five shortcuts are also available on the…

It has never been easier to shop online, and Google is making strides to ensure that it gets easier by the minute. If you have ever bought anything from the Google Play store, such as an app or music track, then you will have already put your payment details in place when setting up your account. Google Pay provides you with a useful platform to carefully monitor your online transactions so that you can scrutinise every outgoing payment and know exactly what you bought and on which date (we wouldn’t want small children buying on our behalf, after all…) Through Google Pay you can also change certain aspects of your payment details, including the default billing address and registering extra debit or credit cards to use through your account. If…

We all have interests and we all have an in-built need to talk about them with other people who share these interests. Creating your own group page is a quick and easy way of doing this and thanks to Google’s intuitive Groups service, you can set up as many as you want and monitor them with ease through a simple interface. When setting up a new group, you have full freedom to decide the content and style of the group. For example, will it be a mailing list, will it be a web forum or will it be a collaborative inbox style of group whereby visitors can freely provide their own topics for discussion and content. With your groups set up, you can easily add posts and then go to…

As well as manually hopping from destination to destination in Google Earth and viewing the environment around you at each location, you are able to sit back and enjoy some tours, complete with information that helps you to get more out of what you are seeing. Using the Voyager tool, there are built-in tours that take you around some of the world’s most popular destinations, famous locations from Hollywood movies and natural or man-made wonders of the world. Look through the categories of tours, select the one that interests you and have Google Earth fly over it so you can see where you are going or you can produce a bespoke tour that you control, taking viewers on a journey. This is easy to do, as our tutorial shows. Each…

Simply put, Google Docs is a free web app that runs on Chrome, offering you an office suite to create, edit and share documents, spreadsheets, presentations and more. As of April 2012 Google Docs now runs within the Google Drive online storage solution. There are three apps available: Google Docs (word processor), Google Sheets (spreadsheet); and Google Slides (presentation). If familiar with any standard office software, you’ll have no trouble getting your head around these three apps. Google Docs, Sheets and Slides are available for installation through the Chrome Store. Another great web app that is currently available in Beta format only when running Chrome in Windows is Chrome Office Viewer. With Chrome Office Viewer you can open Word, Excel or PowerPoint documents found anywhere online; you can’t currently convert…

Google Drive is an incredibly useful service that, first and foremost, is a cloud storage facility that allows you to back up your important files and images so that you can access them anywhere. However, dig a little deeper and you’ll discover that Google Drive can be used as a means to share your files with other people and invite them to edit and make changes to the files as they see fit. In practical terms, this means that you can work remotely on projects and then relay them back to your colleagues at the office. These colleagues can then view and edit the files accordingly, meaning you never need set foot in the office again! The process is quick and easy and any file in your Drive can be…

For many people, at the centre of a well organised life is a well organised calendar. Some people prefer sticking to a pen-and-paper diary, but if you have a lot going on – in work, home, hobbies, projects and activities – it can be really beneficial to bring all of your different events, tasks and jobs together into one master calendar, and that is where Google’s calendar comes in. With Google Calendar you can combine all of your different calendars into one, by creating calendar categories within one single calendar. You can also share different categories within that calendar with different people. Say if you are working on a project with multiple people, and you all need to have set events and tasks noted down in your calendars, why not…