This is essentially part of an ongoing effort from the search giant to further streamline all of its services and integrate them with one another, creating a seamless ecosystem of Google services. Instead of 10GB in Gmail for attachments and email messages and 5GB for documents and other media in Google Drive, the two are coming together to share amongst each other, as well as Google+ Photos joining the party.

This is good news for users who need more storage for one service more than the other. For example, I store a lot of photos and documents on Google Drive, but my Gmail bin is barely full. With the unified storage, I’ll now have more room in Google Drive for more photos and documents without sacrificing space in Gmail.

However, this means that Google is getting rid of one of its storage plans. You’ll no longer be able to grab 25GB of extra space for $2.50 per month. If you currently have that plan, Google will allow you to keep it until you cancel or change to another plan. After that, you won’t be able to opt for the 25GB plan any more. The cheapest plan now is an additional 100GB for $4.99 per month, which is half the price that Dropbox charges currently.

If you’re a Google Apps user, these changes will also take affect for you, but instead of 15GB of shared storage, you’ll receive a 30GB pool of storage to share amongst the three Google services. To make sure that you know how much storage you’re using for each service, Google will include a handy pie chart that breaks down the amount of storage your using for either Gmail, Drive, or Google+ Photos. Frankly, we’re not too surprised by this move, and we’ve been wondering when Google would finally make a move like this. It’s always been a shame that we could never use our Gmail storage for Google Drive, but finally, that’s changed.

SOURCE: Google Drive Blog

Actually baking the functionality into an existing site is straightforward, with it requiring the addition of just a couple of lines of HTML. After that, a new “Save to Drive” option will show up, with the choice of adding multiple buttons for different downloads on each page using the JavaScript API.

Google has already been working with a number of sites – including O’Reilly, which will allow ebooks to be saved straight to Google Drive storage, and Delta Dental, which will make dental records and statements easily shuffled over to the cloud – to get the feature up and running, but now has made it publicly available. There’s more technical documentation if you want to dig through the minutiae.

Of course, some Drive users have been sharing files with the online storage service from their browser already, thanks to various plugins that are already available for browsers like Chrome. These extensions generally add a right-click context menu option, to save links and media, such as photos and document downloads.

Ironing out the hassles of getting files from one place to another is a big issue for cloud provider services, given the number of options for free storage space users have to choose between. The hope, of course, is that the free capacity will quickly be used up, and free subscribers turned into paying ones. Google offers 100GB for $4.99 per month – shared between Google Drive and Google+ photo galleries, among other things – or 200GB for $9.99 per month, with higher-tier packages also available.

Starting today, Google Drive users utilizing the service on their PC or Mac can share directly from within the folder using a couple of simple mouse clicks, both rapidly speeding up the rate at which one can share content and also bringing the service in line with some other services that have offered this feature – or one remarkably similar – for quite awhile now.

You can see the feature in action in the screenshot above. Right-clicking on the file you want to share, such as a text document, picture, or something else entirely, pulls up a menu with various options, which hasn’t changed and will look familiar to those who already use the service. This is with the exception of the last entry in the list, under Google Drive -> Share…

If you’re not seeing the new feature yet, be patient – Google says in its announcement on Google+ that the feature is being rolled out over the course of this week, so you might not be seeing it yet, and may not see it until Thursday or Friday. While you’re waiting, you can check out some other recent Google Drive news from us by hitting up this link here.

[via Google+]

It appears to have been a snowball effect, with the Admin control panel and API going down at around 8:20 AM, with Gmail following at 8:58 AM. Google Drive then shut down at 9:01 AM, with Google Docs biting the dust at 9:11 AM. Google News also seems to be experiencing some issues on the back-end, but users are able to access the section just fine.

However, the “service disruption,” as Google is calling it, isn’t affecting everyone, and some users are reporting that all systems are nominal on their end, including yours truly, but we can’t help but feel slightly bad for those who can’t check their morning email when they got to their desks at the start of the work day.

There’s no word on when Google is planning to have these services back up and running for everyone, but we’re positive the company has top men and women on the job to get your Gmail back up and running, because we all know you can’t function without your daily feed of comical email forwards.

Google also promises that loading times and editing are much quicker on this release, although we didn’t seem to notice a huge difference in that respect — you’re mileage may vary as far as that’s concerned. It still took a couple of seconds for documents to load, and creating a new document took even longer.

The Mountain View-based company also included the usual consortium of bug fixes in this release, which will hopefully fix any quirks that you might have been having with the app recently. Other than that, you can expect the same experience on the app. It’s certainly not a huge update, but the added bonus of landscape mode is a Godsend if you ask us.

Google has been keeping a good eye on its line of iOS apps and is even updating them in a timely fashion. While the app didn’t support editing when it first launched on Apple’s platform, the company eventually added editing support later on, with spreadsheet editing being tacked on back in November. Google has yet to add more capabilities like this, but could be a matter of time before they do.

Some of Google’s examples share some overlap, at least at first glance, with other services, like Google Docs, though with the benefits of a huge chunk of online space and Drive’s other advantages. Neutron Drive now supports a collective editor feature for any document or source code file you have in your Drive account, with room for multiple people to work on the same file simultaneously:

Elsewhere, there’s collaboration support for project scheduling, with Gantter using the new API to bake in IM-style chat, project editing, and Gantt diagram manipulation. Obviously there are controls around who can access documents and who can edit them, as well as color-coding so that each person’s changes are trackable:

Finally, from Google’s showcase, there’s draw.io, which as the name suggests is a diagramming app. Just as with the multi-author Gantt diagrams in Gantter, draw.io allows a remote team to work together on flowcharts, electronic circuits, and other diagrams:

Those developers keen to get onboard with the Drive Realtime API can find documentation and examples here, plus there’s a step-by-step guide to implementing it. There’s also a realtime collaborative Rubik’s Cube style puzzle you can play with.

With the API in place, developers will be able to integrate Google Drive into their apps that way users can edit Google Drive text, spreadsheet, and presentation documents, and have the changes show up in realtime for collaborators. This new API also “handles network communication, storage, presence, conflict resolution, and other collaborative details.”

A few apps are already using the new API, including Neutron Drive, Gantter, and draw.io. As an example, Gantter (which is a free online project scheduling tool) allows users to now work on project schedules in realtime, and the app features an embedded chat program that uses the Google Drive Realtime API.

Of course, we’ll have to wait a little bit for more app developers to integrate the new API into their apps, but it should only be a matter of time. Developers can go to the Realtime API landing page to learn more about the API and to get started integrating the new API into apps. We’re pretty excited to see what developers come up with.

With the shutdown of Google Reader there’s been a bit of an outcry from the public – or at least the vocal part of the public – to keep it around for the future. Many – including the creator of the technology known as RSS himself – have made it clear that Google Reader is no longer a necessity as RSS-friendly services have appeared from so many different angles you’ll have a tough time NOT having a service to read all your favorite news sources with.

Google Keep, on the other hand, is a system that’s been rumored in the past and was made “prematurely public”, as it were, over the weekend. This system appears to be ready to use Google Drive to store information recorded as notes for your many multiple devices. This sort of system would go into direct competition with Evernote and OneNote and connectivity with Dropbox.

“The problem with Google Drive should be resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support. Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better.” – Google

Above you’ll find the official Google response to the situation at hand with Google Drive. At the moment if you’re still seeing some distressing downtime, be sure to report to Google right away. They’ll be ready to knock down some walls and bring your free services back up to speed. Meanwhile have a peek at the timeline below for more information on Google Drive and its immediate past!

Exactly what the nature of the problem might be is unclear, and according to Google’s status dashboard Drive is the only web service to be encountering issues today. However, there have been reports on Twitter that Gmail, Google Reader, Docs, and other services have also been sluggish in their responsiveness.

Drive has made headlines in recent days, after a new notetaking service intended to challenge Evernote and OneNote was spotted apparently prematurely public over the weekend. Google Keep was briefly available at a Drive sub-domain, though there’s no official word from the company as to when – or even if – it will launch properly.

Meanwhile, Google continues to come under fire from Google Reader users, furious that their RSS aggregator will be shut down by July. Google’s habit of juggling services and weeding out those it claims are the least popular has left some concerned that the products they currently rely on, such as Docs and Drive, may one day be shuttered should Google decide it is not getting the return on investment it requires.

Update: Google says that Drive “has already been restored for some users, and we expect a resolution for all users within the next 1 hours.”

For those of you who don’t know, the Google Takeout service is an impressive service that lets you export data contained in your Google accounts. You can export data from Google+,Google+ pages, Blogger, Buzz, Contacts, Drive, Latitude, Pages, Picasa, Reader, Voice, and YouTube.

Google Takeout previously offered its services for your personal Google+ account, but now if you have a Google+ page set-up for your business, or websites, you can export the data from those as well. The new Blogger support allows you to export data from your entire Blogger account, or you can choose to export only a single page or blog. The data will be exported as an Atom XML file. Your Google+ pages will be exported as HTML files containing your posts and JSON files containing the circles on your page.

The Google Takeout service is like taking a trip down memory lane. Viewing files and data from the entirety of your Google accounts is very nostalgic. Looking back to your very first posts can be mind-blowing, seeing how far you’ve come and how far you’ve changed over time. I’d highly recommend you try it out.

[via Data Liberation]

Starting today (the features are being rolled out over the course of the day, although it looks like they’re all there now), Google Slides users can now do the following sans a live Internet connection: create presentations, edit presentations, and – most convenient out of the bunch – give presentations, as well as leave comments.

This is a massive boost to the service, which was otherwise severely limited compared to its competition by the need for an Internet connection. While offline editing was perhaps a forgivable feature omission, the inability to make a presentation offline made the entire service highly inconvenient to many users.

Google Docs has already had an array of offline editing features, and so this move increases Google’s cloud-based productivity suite’s usefulness for more users who have more than casual needs. According to the announcement, Google Sheets, a spreadsheet app, is the next slated to get some offline editing features.

[via Google Drive Blog]

Google Drive

Google Docs, the company’s own cloud-based office suite, was pretty rad, but they completely overhauled the service by renaming it Google Drive and turning it into a full-fledged cloud storage solution. They made it even better by introducing an iOS app that now features full editing capabilities, as well as the ability to make changes offline. It makes the service not only a top-notch cloud-based office suite, but also an awesome cloud storage service that’s capable of taking on Dropbox, SugarSync, and the rest of the cloud-storage gang.

Google Chrome

Chrome is an awesome browser for the desktop, but the company replicated the app and brought it to iOS over the summer. It includes most of the same great features as the desktop version, including the omnibar that allows for instant searches, pre-fetched pages, and swipe gestures to manage and close tabs. You can also sync bookmarks, history, open tabs, and even saved passwords for web pages across devices that also have Chrome running. Essentially, it’s a feature-packed app, and it’s even better when you already use Chrome on your desktop. Read our full review to learn more.

Clear

To-do list apps are a dime a dozen nowadays, with a only few that really stand out. Clear is just one of them. It has an insanely minimalist interface, and while there’s not much to look at (other than a to-do list), swipe, pull and pinch gestures are what make the app really shine. Tasks are arranged on top of one another and the more important task are toward the top in red, while low-priority tasks are given a cooler color the further down they are. There’s no buttons whatsoever — everything is done through gestures, and tasks are limited to 30 characters, forcing you to make your lists straightforward and to the point. Check out our full review of Clear to learn more about it.

iPhoto

If you use OS X, you most likely take advantage of iPhoto to organize and manage your photo collection. For iOS, though, there was really no good app that had the capabilities of iPhoto on the Mac — the built-in Photos app was the next best thing. However, Apple finally released iPhoto for iOS earlier in the year, and it allows you to browse, edit, and share photos on your mobile device, all from a good-looking and intuitive interface. There’s also a lot of quality effects and features that you can take advantage of right in the app, including adding captions for photo journals, adding vignettes, and use a variety of “brushes” to repair or adjust photos. Read our full review of the app to learn more.

Google Maps

If there was one app that felt like it was saving us from a sinking ship, it was Google Maps for iPhone. Many iOS 6 users who loathed Apple’s own maps offering looked to Google for a ring buoy to grab onto. Luckily the company delivered in only a few short months after the release of iOS 6, and while we didn’t have anything to complain about with either apps in our comparison, you can’t go wrong with Google’s extensive database and super-detailed maps. Check out our full review of Google Maps for iPhone to learn more.

Fantastical

Fantastical is probably one of the best calendar apps you can get for your Mac, and it just recently released on the iPhone. The mobile version is just as solid as the OS X version, and it features an intuitive interface, as well as incredibly fast natural language input. The app’s interface relies mostly on swipes. It starts off by giving you the day’s events, and swiping to the right will advance the calendar one day, while swiping down will give you a quick glance at the full month. Swiping down again will result in going back to the day view. And of course, it integrates with all sorts of different calendar services, like Google Calendar, iCal, and even Facebook.

YouTube

Just like with Google Maps, Apple ousted its built-in YouTube app in iOS 6. However, that didn’t stop Google from releasing a native YouTube app that turned out to be even better than Apple’s previous built-in offering. This time around, the app comes with voice search and a redesigned user interface that makes navigation way easier, as well as a slide-out sidebar that provides quick access to settings and playlists. Avid viral-video viewers can finally watch Gangnam Style just one more time while on the go.

Checkmark

There’s certainly nothing wrong with iOS’s default Reminders app, but why settle when you can get so much more? Checkmark offers location-based reminders that are far more easier to set up than Apple’s offering. In just three taps, you can create reminders that notify you when you get home, arrive at work, or pass by the grocery store. And just for good measure, Checkmark also includes normal reminders that will alert you of important tasks at a specified time.

Spotify for iPad

One of the best music-streaming services arrived on the iPad earlier this year, and it came with an interface that we fell in love with immediately. Spotify for iPad is only available to Premium subscribers, but users will certainly get their money’s worth. The app sports a “Now Playing” screen with huge cover art, and also features gapless playback and crossfading abilities. It also allows you to search for songs and playlists right from the main screen without having to tab around or even stop a song that’s currently playing. Check out our full review of the app to learn more.

Tweetbot for iPad

As with iOS 6’s Reminders app, the official Twitter app isn’t horrible, but Tweetbot offers a few more features and greatly takes advantage of swipe gestures. Essentially, Tweetbot does what any other Twitter client can do, but it does it extremely well. The apps includes quick access to all of your essential feeds, like replies, mentions, and favorites, and it offers quick customization options. However, one of the most-used features that users will enjoy is the ability to tap on a tweet and instantly have a selection of actions to choose from. Check out our review of Tweetbot for iPad to learn more about it.

Google’s product management director for Google Apps, Clay Bavor, says that the company is “very careful” about where they invest time and resources, and Google will only go where the users are, and the users “are not on Windows Phone or Windows 8.” However, should that change, Bavor said the company would reconsider making apps for the Windows mobile platform.

A large portion of the company’s time and resources are focused on continually improving and updating their iOS and Android products. Bavor said that 2013 will be a year where Google will make “big investments” in mobile, and said that the mobile apps the company has available now are simply just “first versions.”

Windows 8 and Windows RT users are most likely not happy about the decision from Google, and while you can still access Google services through a web browser, having these kinds of services in app form makes the user experience a lot better. Hopefully, the userbase for Windows 8 kicks in enough that Google will see its importance.

[via V3]

While it’s an easy process overall, there’s still one more thing that you have to do in order to get the website up and running. Once you put all of your HTML files and assets into a public folder, you have to link to the files contained in the folder using the “webViewLink” code. The Google Developers site has more info about that if you’re confused about the code part.

The webViewLink code simplifies how each of your HTML files shows up in a URL. Without the code, individual files would have unique ID strings with a combination of numbers and letters, but with the code, files get recognizable paths such as “images/kittens.jpg.” Google also mentions that if you don’t have an index.html file, Google Drive will automatically just display a list of the folder’s contents.

This feature could come in handy quite a bit, especially if you’re not willing to pay for web hosting. With the Google Drive site publishing feature, you could make small websites like an online resume, a personal start page, or even a professional landing page. However, there’s no word on bandwidth limitations, but we’re pretty sure that most websites that would get a lot of hits would have their own dedicated web hosting.

Whether you have an iPhone, iPad, Android tablet, or other similar mobile device, with the Google Drive app, you can perform a variety of spreadsheet activities that desktop users have enjoyed for quite a while. Mobile users can create and edit spreadsheets, which includes resizing layouts, changing fonts and colors, and utilizing data filters. This is performed in the new native editor.

In addition, edits and changes can be viewed live as they’re implemented, something highly useful for collaboration purposes. Pasting into Google Docs retains the original formatting, and entering “edit mode” in the Docs editor is as simple as a single tap. For those who use the service regularly, shortcuts to Google Drive folders and individual files can be added to your device’s homescreen if you’re running Android.

In addition to the new spreadsheets functionality, the Google Drive app includes a few other improvements, as well. Users will find text formatting to be improved when copying and pasting into a Google document. Those running Android can also now edit the text within a table in a document. You can pick up the app over at the Google Play Store.

[via Android Community]

Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2012 turned out to be the best ones ever for Amazon’s Kindle family of devices, and Evernote Clearly has added text-to-speech for its premium members, which is a pretty awesome new feature if you ask us. Gmail has added support for 10GB attachments so long as those attachments are stored in your Google Drive account, and Outlook.com was able to boast 25 million users today, with Microsoft telling us that an Android app is on the way.

We heard today that Foxconn might be manufacturing Microsoft’s rumored Surface phone, and Apple reassured everyone today that the new iMac is still on track to launch later this month (November 30 to be exact, which is right around the corner). Cyber Monday sales topped a whopping $2 billion this year, and we learned that Nintendo TVii will be launching in Japan on December 8, which leads us to believe that it won’t be long before the service is available in the US and Europe.

HP and Nomadix have settled their patent lawsuit, while Nintendo launched new nostalgia-fueled DLC for New Super Mario Bros. 2. Fans are petitioning Rockstar to release Grand Theft Auto V on PC, and indie hit Super Hexagon is now available on Steam. Microsoft might be opening its first retail store in Europe as early as next year, the NYPD is building a database of calls made with stolen phones, and Rdio has been updated on iOS and Android with an entirely new UI.

Finally tonight, we have a couple of reviews for you to check out. Vincent Nguyen delivered his review of the new Jawbone UP earlier today, while Chris Burns takes on Hamilton’s Great Adventure THD for some mobile gaming goodness. That does it for tonight’s Evening Wrap-Up, enjoy the rest of your night folks!

What’s probably the most convenient aspect about this feature, is that since the file you’re attaching is in your Google Drive (thus, in the cloud), everyone you send it to will have the most up-to-date version, which means you can make changes to the attachment even after you send off the email, and your recipients will still see the updated version.

Gmail will also double-check that all of your recipients have access to the attachments that you’re sending. So, whenever you send a file from Google Drive that isn’t shared with everyone, you’ll be prompted with the option to change the file’s sharing settings without leaving Gmail. The feature will also work with Drive links pasted directly into emails.

Sparrow for Mac has long supported a similar feature, where you could easily paste in a Dropbox attachement, but it’s certainly nice that Google has finally done this with Gmail and Google Drive. This new integration will roll out gradually over the next few days, and you’ll also need to be using the new compose window that was recently launched.

Out of the five new features added to Google Drive, perhaps the best one is the support for Google Earth files. Users can now open .KML and .KMZ files directly in Drive. Once opened, the files can be previewed and interacted with. Google Earth files can be downloaded from a variety of websites and users, such as real-time earthquake files from the USGS.

The next feature is the ability to search by person, allowing users to find a file based on the person who shared it. In case you’re really having trouble remembering the who-when-what, the new feature auto-completes names as users type. The information is displayed in the drop-down menu that Google users are no doubt familiar with by now. In addition, search also includes results in Trash.

The last two Google Drive features allow users to create new folders while they are organizing files, speeding up the process and removing unnecessary steps. Users can drag and drop folders if they’re using Chrome browser. As for Gmail, users can now search emails by size (size:8mb, for example), as well as messages over a year old (older_than:1y).

[via Google]

So far, it has been reported that Google.com, Google.com.hk, mail.google.com, drive.google.com, play.google.com, docs.google.com, and maps.google.com are all inaccessible. Other subdomains may be blocked as well. All lookups lead to the IP 59.24.3.173, which doesn’t belong to a website. Obviously, users can’t access any Google service, including Search, without the aid of a VPN or similar bypass.

Google checked out the issue, and reported via a spokesperson to El Reg that “we’ve checked and there’s nothing wrong on our end.” The company’s transparency report shows a sudden drop in traffic that started at midnight. Presumably, this comes as a move to stop protests and other disturbances in light of the 18th Congress Party.

Of course, this isn’t the first time Google has been blocked by the Great Firewall; we reported back in April, for example, that the country had blocked Google Drive. If you want to check it out for yourself, head over to GreatFireWallofChina.org and plug in some Google domains. Thus far, every one that’s been tested returns the message, “No servers were able to reach your site. This means that your site is most likely NOT accessible from within mainland China.”

[via The Register]

You’re able to open PDFs, play videos, and look at photos now directly from Google+ as they sit pretty in your Google Drive account box. With your Google+ stream you’re going to have full access to everything you’ve got in either your totally free OR payed account, making this a universal ability for the masses. Google has prepared these simple instructions for you to follow to make it all just about as easy as it can be:

Sharing a file or document from your Drive using Google+

1. From within Google Drive, open the file or document you want to share.
2. Copy the file’s URL from your web browser’s address bar.
3. Paste the URL into the Share box at the top of your Google+ stream. If you’re signed into another Google service, like Gmail, you can also use the + Share button, which you’ll see in the upper right corner of your browser window.
4. Select a circle or type the name of individual people you’d like to share your post with.
5. Click the Share button.

It’s also possible to share from inside Google Drive with the “Share” button in the upper right-hand corner of your browser window. The Google+ button has been there for a while, but it’s just a bit more intuitive now, so they say. You can also share to several other networks too, such as Gmail, Facebook, and Twitter too!

So goes the continued expansion of Google’s own cloud storage system and their still fledgeling social network. To find SlashGear on Google+, simply head to https://plus.google.com/+SlashGear and let em know we sent ya – we’ll be there to greet you, too!

[via Drive]

When putting together a presentation or sketching up a drawing in Google Drive, users can now use the research pane to search for content and help them with their project without minimizing or opening up another window. For example, you can add a photo from your Picasa album, or grab a quote from a friend’s Google+ profile and paste it into your project, all from the same window.

Just like when the research pane was first introduced, Google Apps users will still only be limited to web-only search results, since personal content search is intended for individual accounts only. However, most students for which this feature would benefit usually only have individual accounts anyway, so the limitation probably isn’t too much of an issue.

If you find that you’re not a big fan of the research pane and it’s just taking up precious screen real estate, you can easily toggle it on and off right from your document. However, those who heavily rely on the Google ecosystem will no doubt get some great use out of the new feature, and it’s a time saver that’ll shave a few minutes off of your project work session each time you use it.

Google has a ton of services, and while most of them are decent, there are always bound to be a few that don’t quite live up to the hype of their other services. Sadly that time has come for Google to clean up some of their in-house offerings. They’ve also consolidated some of their more-popular features like Picasa and Drive, both of which will be sharing storage of 5GB total.

A lot of the services that Google is shuttering aren’t too important, and I think the company knows that. Obviously, I’m sure some users (albeit few) will be frustrated that Google is shutting down services like the Places app for Android, but if the user base isn’t there, Google is bound to make some changes.

Of course, this isn’t the first time that Google has shut down some of its services. In the past, it shuttered Wave, which was more missed than anyone would have thought. The company also gave the axe to its first attempt at a social network, Buzz, as well as other services like Knol, Health, and Google Desktop.

[via Engadget]

Google has also given iOS users the ability to “create a new document, edit an existing one or format text,” with this latest iteration of Google Drive, along with the ability to see edits made by others in real time. That isn’t all though, as iOS users can now view Google presentations in full-screen mode on their iDevices, as well as create folders, move content between those freshly-created folders, and upload stuff like photos and video directly from their device. Not too bad.

The company has released a new video previewing all of the stuff you can do with Google Drive on your Android or iOS device. Interestingly, Google Drive users will be able to create and edit spreadsheets at some point in the future, but Google makes it clear in the video that spreadsheet functionality is not yet available on iOS and Android. Something to look forward to, we suppose. Have a look at the video below to get a better idea of all you can do with Google Drive for mobile devices.

Of course, Google isn’t about to leave Android users out in the cold, as their app has been updated too. The Android update to Google Drive is a little less substantial than the iOS update, with a number of new features centering around posting and replying to comments. Android users also now have the same presentation capabilities as their iOS counterparts, and Google promises that more – such as “native editing and real-time collaboration for Google spreadsheets” – is on the way soon. This update is available now on both the iOS App Store and the Google Play Store, so Google Drive users can feel free to go and download it.

[via Google Drive Blog]

Google’s introduction of Fiber for Kansas City brings on the TV package that includes not just the two boxes listed above, but 1TB of Google Drive storage and a Network Box as well. You’ll also get all the major networks in one package, premium movie channels at an additional fee, and thousands of hours of content each month.

There’s one $300 construction fee, one time fee, and you’ve got a $120 a month cost. With a two-year contract you also have no construction fee at all. All of this will be live for Kansas City immediately if not soon – and once Google is ready to bring on Fiber to the whole USA, you’ll have it as well. Can’t wait!

There’s also a firmware update for Chromebook Series 5 550 and the UI for CR-48 laptops have gotten a design overhaul. “The Stable channel has been updated to 20.0.1322.54 (Platform version: 2268.105.0) for Chromebooks (Acer AC700, Samsung Series 5, Samsung Chromebook Series 5 550, and Samsung Chromebox Series 3, and Cr-48),” Google said.

On the Google Chrome Release blog, gave some additional information on a couple known issues with Chromebooks, including a suspension problem with playing streaming audio on the Series 5 550 and rare reports of login problems on machines. The updated release is being rolled out over the next few days across the Chrome OS stable release channel.

[via Engadget]

Developers will be able to implement uploads, downloads, or simple file edits within their own applications by leveraging the SDK. It mimics similar functionality that Dropbox has been offering developers for some time. On top of that, the programming interface has seen some tweaks, now coping with conversions and revisions.

Google Drive SDK 2.0 is up for download now, and some apps have already been updated to take use of the new functionality. Google says that others will be updated in due course. If you’re a developer and want the full details as well as the SDK, head on over here.

Offline functionality has been something of a theme at IO this week. Google Maps has been updated to support selective offline use, allowing Android device owners to select a portion of the map to locally cache. Meanwhile, Jelly Bean supports offline voice typing for Android phones and tablets.

The connection-free editing should also improve the user-experience of Chromebooks, which so far have only been fully functional when they’re online. Google added the ability to locally cache documents for reading on Chromebooks several months ago, but not editing.

Offline Google Docs will be available today, the search company says. You can sign up for a free account here, as part of Google Drive.

Searching for a topic gives you a stripped down results browser, which then presents you with several options. You can preview the link to make sure it’s what you’re looking for, insert the link into your document, or cite the website which will automatically create a footnote. Image results are presented in a similar way, and you can drag images from the Research panel straight into your document.

Quotes also work in the same way, and can again be inserted straight into your document with a author and link attribution automatically created. Maps and places have similar functionality, although map scales can be manipulated to give the best preview possible. The new feature should be rolling out to Google Docs users shortly if you don’t already have it.

Dropbox has assured, however, that this year’s Dropquest is much more challenging. It’s a series of logic puzzles that will make you browse around the Web while also learning about the various features and services that Dropbox offers. Anyone who makes it to the end will get an extra gigabyte, but the first person to complete it wins a grand prize package culminating in a 100 GB account, free for life.

Of course, this year, the Dropquest event is potentially even more relevant for the company, if it is able to drum up some level of excitement and enthusiasm. In 2012, the cloud space is much more competitive, but on the flip side it’s much more exciting. A lot of people are finally starting to understand the power of the cloud, but as it makes its way into the mainstream market, will consumers stick with the names they know (Google Drive, Amazon Cloud Drive) or will companies like Dropbox be able to get their message across to those users? Only time will tell.

[via TechCrunch]

It might not seem like an IPO is anything that Box should be considering right now, since the current state of the cloud industry dictates that it should focus on really building its brand from something that appeals to a niche market to something that every enterprise customer should be using. Nevertheless, in an interview with Reuters, Box CEO Aaron Levie sure seemed like it was something that’s on the table, though admittedly not for the immediate future.

Asked about IPO possibilities, Levie was quoted as saying, “It won’t be a 2012 exercise. Even though the market is pretty amazing right now, there are some things we want to get done as a company. We see these moves as ways of building a strong foundation.” The next 12 months will see a fundamental revolution in cloud services. If Box goes into an IPO next year, it will need to be a much different produce than it is right now.

[via Reuters]

Other services, like Dropbox, are great for letting users store files so that if you don’t have to worry about having a Word document on your home PC and then forget to save it to a Flash drive or email it to yourself so you’ll have it at work. The idea is to have your stuff stored in the cloud so you can access it from anywhere. But even with Dropbox, once you log in and access that Word file, you still need to have Office or some sort of applicable software to be able to open it.

That is where CloudOn comes in. With Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, and image file support, it’s pretty much anything you would need in a business setting. In fact, it doesn’t even consider itself a Dropbox competitor. It integrates directly with Dropbox, and as part of the new Android update, it also now has Google Drive integration. It’s a smart move because it can live on as a complement, not a substitute, to cloud storage services.

[via VentureBeat]

To update your Google Docs environment, you’ll have to click your FONT menu and select ADD FONTS. From there you’ll be able to pick from a number of Google Web Fonts available. You can add the fonts you’d like to use multiple times to your everyday font menu if you like, all 450 of them!

In addition to fonts, there are several features Google has added to Docs to entice you to stick around in the cloud for the time being. First there are several new options for inserting images in your Docs. You can now insert images into your Docs via Google Drive, by searching in the LIFE Photo archive, or by taking a photo with your webcam – expansion!

The following additions have also been made to Google Docs:

• Accessibility in Docs got better with support for screenreaders in presentations and with the addition of NVDA to our list of supported screenreaders.

• From File > Page setup… you can now set the default page size for your new documents.

• It’s now easier for speakers of right-to-left languages by automatically showing bidirectional controls when you type in a language that might use them.

• Apps Script had many improvements, including
• • A new ScriptService for programmatically publishing your scripts and controlling when they run.
• • A new function to find the root folder of someone’s Drive.
• • An increase in the allowed attachment size in emails from 5MB to 25MB.
• • An increase in the size of docs files you can create from 2MB to 50MB.

• There are now over 60 new templates in our template gallery.

Google Docs, needless to say, has suddenly become better than ever. Students and web-based businesspeople rejoice!

Featured: Here are some of this week’s featured articles:
The Pirates key animator speaks claymation machines forward
Nintendo’s nightmare: “Just Good Enough.”
Twitter update hands-on with push notifications galore
Why there’s no stopping iTunes
Dark Meadow: The Pact THD for Android Review
Google Drive mini review for desktop
You want a Galaxy S III, not a Google Galaxy Nexus

Other Stuff: Of course, lots of other stuff made news this week as well. HTC is working on a Facebook phone, but will it be terrible? And we have even more news on the Nexus front, which is that Samsung is rumored to be making Google’s next Nexus.  A nice bit of news for all you Google people out there – Gmail gets 10GB bump plus Google Drive bonuses. Speaking of cloud-based things, Apple is also doing quite well in that space: Apple’s iCloud hits 125 million users since launch. And finally, in other Apple news, we have a new bit of info about what could be a new entry in the iPhone family – iPhone mini will be half the size

The update, as you might expect, requires users to have the Dropbox app installed on their computer, and it must be always on in the background for the automatic process to work. “Getting pictures off your camera has always been a huge pain. So we put our heads down and worked worked worked to ensure that automatic upload would play nicely with anything that might have a photo or video on it,” Dropbox wrote in an official blog post.

This latest news, of course, comes as Google Drive is taking the lion’s share of the cloud headlines. Because of the increasing pressure, Dropbox has been working around the clock to optimize and refine its experience. Over the last couple months this has included such features as integration with Facebook and the automatic upload mechanic for Android. For cloud storage to really take off, it needs to be as seamless and easy as managing files on your local desktop. Dropbox wants to achieve that.

[via VentureBeat]

Google’s dip into the cloud storage space only expands what they’ve already had on the books for several years now. Gmail has had an amount of storage available to the public for several years, Google-owned Picasa has also offered space to the public for media for quite a while as well. The only thing Google Drive expands upon is your ability to easily access Google-owned web storage space in a simple folder-like environment.

So why would Google create such a service? They needed to bring the idea that you can store anything (even though you basically already could) to the Google ecosystem. Google needed to come out with a win after Apple’s iCloud was revealed – or the branding took hold, that is, and they’ve done it already with flying colors only after a couple of days out in the wild. You’ve had your hands on Google Drive now for months or even years if you’ve used basically any Google app, now it’s time for the branding.

Have a peek at our hands-on and review posts for Google Drive in the timeline below as well as our extensive coverage of its innards. Let us know if you plan on sticking with the basic version of Google Drive also, or if you will be upgrading for more space asap!

Arguably causing most consternation was the section in Google’s Terms of Service which details what license the company holds around data you upload to it. Using Google Drive – or, indeed, any other Google service, such as Gmail or the Google+ social network – grants the company ”a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content.”

Nonetheless, Google is also clear that users “retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.” In a statement this week regarding concerns around Google Drive, the company insisted that ”Our terms of service enable us to give you the services you want … so if you decide to share a document with someone, or open it on a different device, you can.”

Online trust has become headline news in recent months, with questions around who owns user data and what they do with it prompting government and watchdog attention on firms like Google and Facebook. Google stirred up a hornets’ nest with its decision to merge what had previously been multiple privacy documents into a single, overarching policy earlier this year, in the process drawing attention to the fact that it might share data between its services so as to better personalize them for each user.

At the time, Google pointed out that the clause was no different to what was allowed under its previous, separate policies, even taking out adverts to reassure users. However, the furore appeared to be merely postdated from the original conditions, only now being recognized, rather than any more recent changes.

All of the main cloud storage competitors have similar privacy policies, and in the end the decision over which one to use – and which to trust – comes down to how confident in them adhering to them the user is. If potentially having aspects of your cloud data store used to “tailor” your other Google experiences feels uncomfortable, then opting for a different service, although potentially less streamlined than going all-Google, might be a way of settling those concerns.

Although no official statement from the Chinese government was issued, Google Drive was reportedly blocked almost immediately after it went public on Tuesday. Still, the decision to bar China’s roughly 500 million web users from accessing it comes as little surprise: Google search and other services are also blocked in the country, with company and government having high-profile arguments around censorship and internet freedoms.

Likely to gain from the block is Baidu, which launched its own cloud storage service back in March. WangPan offers 15GB of free space for users, and comes with Windows, iPhone, iPad and Android apps for desktop and mobile access and sync. Baidu claims to already have 30m users of WangPan worldwide.

A change in heart from the Chinese government looks unlikely, especially with Google luminaries such as Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt vocally describing the country as a key threat to web freedom and suggesting that “prison is no bandwidth.” Meanwhile, Apple’s iCloud service continues to be available in China.

“With Chromebooks, [Google Drive] is even more powerful,” Pichai said of the upcoming integration, “because it just starts working naturally. Your local drive is also Google Drive. This makes it really powerful because you just don’t think about it.”

Google’s focus with Chrome OS has been on ease of use, targeting students and PC-shy owners who don’t want the hassle of maintaining a Windows computer or the expense of a Mac. “We’ll … effectively integrate Drive into the native file system of Chrome OS,” Google Drive project manager Scott Johnson confirmed. “All the core OS functionality will use Drive as a place to store data — if that’s what you opt in to.”

Chromebooks have yet to reach a tipping point in the mass market, not helped by their heavy reliance on web-based services. The notebooks in effect boot into the browser, using web-apps and cloud storage for all functionality.

Google Drive baked into Chrome OS won’t be ready in time for v19 of the platform, which is currently in testing; however, Pichai says, it should be included in Chrome OS v20. A timescale for that OS’ release is yet to be confirmed.

Featured: So what were our featured articles today? Well, we have to go back to Google Drive. It’s the hottest thing in the tech world at the moment. That will probably fade soon, but for now it’s the thing to discuss, so we have a Google Drive mini review for desktop. Let’s move on to another galaxy. That is, another Galaxy. There’s so many of them these days, but You want a Galaxy S III, not a Google Galaxy Nexus.

Phones, Phones, & More Phones: In keeping with the phone theme of today’s wrap-up, we’ll move on to a potentially interesting story – HTC is working on a Facebook phone, but will it be terrible? And we have even more news on the Nexus front, which is that Samsung is rumored to be making Google’s next Nexus. And finally, yes, another Android story. It dominated the news today. HTC One S goes on sale for T-Mobile.

It was WordPress / Linux Consulting member Chad McCullough who raised the point at the end of launch day for Google Drive, the point being that Google Drive did not support Linux, one of the primary components behind such hits as Android – a Google staple. In his message he spoke on how he’d have to sit tight with DropBox, a system he doesn’t mind using but would rather drop in favor of Google’s flavor:

“I’m sure you’re being inundated with questions about your lack of support for Linux but I need to ask the same question. Why? Is it coming soon? I’d rather not have to stick with Dropbox but if you don’t support Linux, that’s exactly what MANY of us are going to have to do. Google, we love you but you need to show that love for Linux, too.” – McCullough

Though it’s been tipped to us that the release of this integration may come as soon as May, we’ve got our doubts. Remember just this past week that Google did away with Picasa for Linux altogether. On the other hand, that may have been done to make way for Google Drive – we’ll see soon!

Have a peek at our miniature review of the desktop version for Mac OS X and note how the environment Google is providing here in the first days of Google Drive’s arrival are so simple that they should be applicable to essentially any operating system. It’s just windows and folders, after all.