iGoogle Gets Enhanced Chat Feature, New Themes
The iGoogle homepage allows you to come up with a customized version of the Google homepage. It also allows you to chat with all your friends. The downside is that unlike the Google Talk desktop client, you could not send and receive files while chatting in iGoogle. Not anymore. The Mountain View-based search engine giant announced that it improved the chat feature in iGoogle (as well as Orkut) to allow users to send files.
“Have you ever wanted to quickly send a file to a friend who's online? Now you can share pictures, documents and other files directly with your friends while chatting in iGoogle and orkut, without having to switch to email to send the file as an attachment. File transfer works directly in the browser so you don't need to install anything,” explained Software Engineer, Bruce Leban.
Give it a try now. Start a conversation with one of your friends, click the Actions button, then click Send a file.
For the time being this functionality is available only in iGoogle and Orkut. Google said it is working on giving the chat feature in Gmail the same functionality. We just have to be patient and wait for it to be rolled out.
Moving on, you should know that Google released new themes for iGoogle. To be more precise, 25 new themes have been released; these themes are designed for the world traveler. The themes depict various geographical locations, from the castles of Europe, the kangaroos of Australia, to the beaches of Thailand.
“These new themes, focused on destinations all over the globe, allow you to experience beautiful landscapes, historic monuments, stunning beaches, iconic cities and other picturesque sites — right from your homepage. To bring you this imagery, we've partnered with a few leading organizations including National Geographic Society and LIFE, who photograph some of the most breathtaking destinations on earth. Lonely Planet, UNESCO and visiteurope.com have also shared a selection of incredible images,” explained VP Search Products & User Experience, Marissa Mayer.
“Have you ever wanted to quickly send a file to a friend who's online? Now you can share pictures, documents and other files directly with your friends while chatting in iGoogle and orkut, without having to switch to email to send the file as an attachment. File transfer works directly in the browser so you don't need to install anything,” explained Software Engineer, Bruce Leban.
Give it a try now. Start a conversation with one of your friends, click the Actions button, then click Send a file.
For the time being this functionality is available only in iGoogle and Orkut. Google said it is working on giving the chat feature in Gmail the same functionality. We just have to be patient and wait for it to be rolled out.
Moving on, you should know that Google released new themes for iGoogle. To be more precise, 25 new themes have been released; these themes are designed for the world traveler. The themes depict various geographical locations, from the castles of Europe, the kangaroos of Australia, to the beaches of Thailand.
“These new themes, focused on destinations all over the globe, allow you to experience beautiful landscapes, historic monuments, stunning beaches, iconic cities and other picturesque sites — right from your homepage. To bring you this imagery, we've partnered with a few leading organizations including National Geographic Society and LIFE, who photograph some of the most breathtaking destinations on earth. Lonely Planet, UNESCO and visiteurope.com have also shared a selection of incredible images,” explained VP Search Products & User Experience, Marissa Mayer.
- If you would like to get started with iGoogle, click here.
- The 25 new iGoogle themes ca be viewed here.
- If you would like to get started with Orkut, click here.
