Google search experiment integrates Google Drive, Calendar

Google recently announced an updated search experiment that lets you integrate documents from Google Drive and Calendar appointments into your searches on Google.com and Gmail. Integrated search will also include improvements to Gmail's new autocomplete feature including results from Drive, Calendar, as well as e-mail. Frequent fliers will also see an improved flight tracking feature that includes current flight information on Google.com for any upcoming flights with itineraries saved in Gmail.

Google's new integrated search experiment expands the company's field trial launched in August that brings together results from your Gmail account into your own searches on Google.com. In October, Google also added the ability for Gmail users to search text and data inside attachmentsthat use common file formats such as PDF, DOC (Microsoft Word), and PPT (PowerPoint).

Google's new beta test requires you to sign up at the integrated search field trial page, even if you're already participating in the current Gmail-search mashup. The new feature is only available in English and only for @gmail.com addresses. Google says the field trial has limited space and the company may not be able to accommodate every person interested in the experiment. Once you've signed up, Google will send you an e-mail when your account is activated for the new trial. You have to be signed in to your Google account to use the new feature, and your personal data will only appear in your search results, not someone else's.
Google's new field trial is an example of the integrated services the company is hoping to roll out after the company unified most of its user privacy policies in March. But Google's changes are starting to face challenges from European consumer protection authorities. On Tuesday, France's National Commission on Information Technology and Civil Liberties, on behalf of European data protection authorities, asked Google to “ modify its practices when combining [user] data across services.” The commission issued three main recommendations for Google:

• “reinforce users' consent” to the combination of data for new and improved services, advertising and analytics.
• provide an opt-out mechanism for users that don't want to combine data across services; and allow more user control over which services can combine data.
• “adapt the tools used by Google for the combination of data so that it remains limited to the authorized purposes.”

Google Drive 1.5.3449.3345 | Download Google Drive

Google Drive is a place where you can create, share, collaborate, and keep all of your stuff. Whether you’re working with a friend on a joint research project, planning a wedding with your fiancé or tracking a budget with roommates, you can do it in Drive. You can upload and access all of your files, including videos, photos, Google Docs, PDFs and beyond.
Features:

• Create and collaborate. Google Docs is built right into Google Drive, so you can work with others in real time on documents, spreadsheets and presentations.
• Store everything safely and access it anywhere (especially while on the go). You can access your stuff from anywhere—on the web, in your home, at the office, while running errands and from all of your devices.
• Search everything. Search by keyword and filter by file type, owner and more. Drive can even recognize text in scanned documents using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology or images using image recognition.

You may need to install Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Redistributable Package to run this software.

http://www.filehippo.com/download_google_drive/download/a876e9b4bd41320800e3211ce29cdf1e/

Google Drive Files Open To Share On Google+

Drive has enhanced its file-sharing capabilities with Google+, allowing users to easily share their documents, images, presentations with the outside world.
The new sharing capabilities for Drive, which were already available in Google+, were unveiled in an 31 October post by Li-Wei Lee, a Google software engineer, on the Google Enterprise Blog.

Interactive Sharing

“Starting today, you can also share the work you create and store in Google Drive, and people will be able to flip through presentations, open PDFs, play videos and more – directly in the Google+ stream,” wrote Lee.  “Forms shared in the stream, like feedback surveys or lunch order polls, are interactive as well and can be completed with just a couple of clicks.”
To share content from Drive to Google+, users can paste the link for the Drive file directly into the share box inside Google+, according to Google. Users of Google Apps for Business, Education or Government can make the post restricted to ensure that the discussion is only visible to people in your organisation.
The new Google Drive features are the latest additions to a Google service that was launched 24 April after about six years of planning and talks about its intentions to introduce a cloud storage service.
In September, Google updated its Drive services for Android and iOS users to make it easier for them to modify documents on the go, see changes by others and view presentations.
Apple device users gained the ability to edit Google documents for the first time, and could now see other people’s edits instantly as they are made. Apple iOS users also gained the ability to view Google presentations on an iPhone or iPad, including speaker notes, full-screen mode and to swipe to see the next slide.
Android users gained improvements, including the ability to add comments, reply to existing comments and view tables inside Google documents.
Google Drive can be downloaded from Apple’s App Store for iPhone, iPad or iPod devices, and from the Google Play Store for Android phones or tablets.

Cloud Storage

The Drive offering joined a busy cloud storage marketplace that was already packed with competitors such as Box and Dropbox.
Google Drive offers users up to 5GB of storage for free and is integrated with Google’s core services, such as Google Docs, where users can do their work and then seamlessly store it in their part of the cloud for safekeeping and easy access.
In June, Google added Apple iOS support for Drive, which wasn’t originally available when the service debuted. Drive now supports iOS, Windows and Google’s Chrome OS operating systems.
Google Drive also includes support for a wide variety of file formats, even if the applications aren’t installed on the user’s device. That allows users to open the files for viewing as needed.
Drive proved to be very popular among users just after its launch. Sign-ups for the service grew to a “very strong start, with probably about 35 million to 40 million sign-ups in 15 days,” according to an earlier report.
Google provides free storage for up to 5GB in Google Drive. Extra storage is priced as follows: 25GB: $2.49/month (£1.54); 100GB: $4.99/month (£3.10); 200GB: $9.99/month (£6.20); 1TB: $49.99/month (£31.05); 16TB:$799.99/month (£497.10). Other increments below 16TB are available.

Google Drive Apps Added to Chrome Web Store

Google is making it easier to access its Drive cloud-storage service on the Chrome browser, bringing its Documents, Spreadsheets, and Presentations apps to the Chrome Web Store.
Starting today, the programs - now known as Docs, Sheets, and Slides - are available in the Chrome store. Add them to your browser for one-click access whenever you open a new tab. Drawings, Forms, and Script apps are also available.
On the Chromebook, Google said Docs, Sheets, and Slides will be listed by default on Chrome in the next few weeks.
Google Drive, formerly known as Google Docs, launched in April, and provides up to 5GB of free cloud storage for documents, videos, photos, and more.
While it took Drive only a few months to make the jump into the Chrome store, Docs has been hanging around for six years. PCMag sister site Geek.com pointed out that the wait may have been due in part to the lack of offline editing, which was introduced only this summer. Now that all three programs can run without Internet access, it makes more sense to integrate them into the Chrome OS hardware, Geek said.
While Chrome has picked up steam among Web users, Google has had less success with its Chromebooks $744.57 at Amazon Marketplace. Last week, however, it unveiled the $249, ARM-based Samsung Chromebook, a low-cost option that might appeal to a broader audience. For more, see the slideshow below.
Meanwhile, Google's three-year-old whatbrowser.org has been completely rebuilt in HTML5, available in 43 languages, and now works on mobile, too. The site originated as a way to help people learn about the importance of browser choice, and has evolved into a mechanism to ensure that users know and understand which browser version they are running. It also highlights the importance of using a modern browser and keeping it up to date — to save time, stay safer, and open online possibilities.

Google Drive files can now be shared via Google+

Users can now share files from their Google Drive storage account on their Google+ social networking profile, a capability that could be particularly relevant for workplace collaboration.
Users can share links to any file stored in Drive, including text documents, spreadsheets, slide presentations, forms and video clips, Google said on Wednesday.
Their Google+ contacts will be able to click on a thumbnail within the Google+ interface and open the file in a separate browser window.
Drive files can be shared on Google+ in different ways. Users can copy the URL of the Drive file and paste it into the share box in Google+. Another option is to share it on Google+ using the Drive share feature, which now includes Google+ as a destination option.
When shared on Google+, each file carries with it the access settings their owner gave it on Drive. Users can define which Google+ contacts they want to share a file with.
People who use Drive and Google+ at work as part of the Google Apps cloud email and productivity suite can also restrict posts to colleagues within their organization.

In fact, the integration could help push the business value of Google+ within Google Apps, where it is expected to become eventually a full-fledged enterprise social networking (ESN) system.
ESN software, such as Microsoft's Yammer, NewsGator's Social Sites, Salesforce.com's Chatter, Tibco's Tibbr and Jive's Social Business, provides social media features like the ones on Facebook and Twitter but adapted for workplace collaboration.
Google Apps needs an ESN component, and Google has been taking steps to adapt Google+ for that purpose.
Google first made it possible for Apps administrators to offer Google+ to their users, and has also provided IT controls to centrally establish access settings to Google+ posts and Google+ multiparty videoconferencing sessions.
Google also lets Google+ users add links to videoconferencing sessions—called Hangouts in Google+—to a Calendar event, so that participants can join directly from the Calendar invite or entry.

CloudLock Brings PCI Compliance Scan to Google Drive

CloudLock will announce its pattern matching engine for Google Apps customers on Tuesday, bringing Payment Card Industry (PCI) and other compliance requirements to Google Drive.
Available as a cloud service, the company’s engine “identifies, classifies, and secures very sensitive information, including Personally Identifiable Information (PII), Payment Card Industry (PCI) data and custom regular expressions…,” it said in a statement. CloudLock’s PII and PCI Compliance Scan identifies files containing Social Security numbers and credit card information, as well as product SKUs and postal codes.
“As more companies move to the cloud, more sensitive data follows, including PII and PCI data that is subject to auditing and compliance requirements,” said Gil Zimmermann, CEO and co-founder of CloudLock. “Customers now have a way to implement and enforce Acceptable Usage Policies; whether that entails securing sensitive data or preventing its dissemination to certain applications and users in the first place.”
CloudLock said the features in the new compliance scans came from customer requests. One such company, AMAG Pharmaceuticals, touts how the service keeps them on the right side of the law. Nathan McBride, vice president of IT at AMAG, said in a statement: “As a publicly traded pharmaceutical company, we face the challenge of complying with SOX and FDA regulations as well as protecting our IP. With CloudLock’s pattern matching engine, we’re able to identify PII as well as very sensitive data related to our intellectual property…”
Other customers were looking to allow cloud-based collaboration for staff, but still keep personally identifiable information out of the public domain.
Joe Fuller, VP/CIO, Dominion Enterprises, said, “We wanted to make things easier but we didn’t want our sensitive data being compromised. CloudLock gives the visibility we need to identify, classify, monitor and eliminate any employee’s risky sharing behavior in the Google Apps cloud.”

http://www.wired.com/cloudline/2012/06/cloudlock/

Cloud storage: How useful is Google Drive?

Did you know that you store a lot of your personal and official information on a cloud? Where do you think all the attachments in your web mail accounts are stored? However, when it comes to consciously storing data and accessing it, most of us prefer a USB flash drive or, if the data is sizeable, a portable hard disk drive (HDD). Now, Google Drive aims to change this since it is not just a warehouse, but also offers a bunch of applications.