Hasta La Gadget!

Google Drive for Android received a big update today with “a clean, simple card-style” layout, as well as the ability to scan documents, receipts, bills, etc. The new feature also comes with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology that will allow you to easily search for said documents later, thanks to the ability for Google Drive to recognize text in a scanned document.

This is a huge boost for Google Drive, in a way that the service can now be used as a digital file cabinet of sorts, whereas before it was merely just a cloud storage system to stash all of your Google Docs and other various files. With document scanning, Google Drive takes Evernote and other note-taking apps head on.

The feature is pretty self-explanatory, in that you simply tap the “+” sign to add a file and tap on “Scan.” From there, you take a snapshot of a physical document and Google Drive will automatically save it as a PDF file and upload it to your Drive account. You can also crop and rotate the snapshot before you upload it to your Drive.

Currently, Evernote remains one of the top note-taking and document-archiving services around, and its scanning abilities, as well as its OCR text recognition is one of Evernote’s most popular features. Google Drive can certainly give Evernote a run for its money, especially since it automatically saves docs as a PDF and you can download them easily — Evernote can do the same, but it’s a bit tricky to figure out at first.

Of course, we can’t forget about Google Keep, which is the search giant’s new note-taking app that also competes with Evernote. Keep allows users to scan business cards, although it hasn’t been touted as one of the bigger features of the app. In any case, this changes the game for Google Drive, and makes archiving physical documents a whole lot easier — a process that we would never think about using Google Drive for in the past.

As for other new features in this Android update, there’s a new grid view that shows thumbnails of your various files. The app also now includes the ability to download files locally to your phone, but it requires Android 3.0 Honeycomb and higher. Furthermore, the Spreadsheet editor now supports changing fonts, colors, and cell alignment. And as always, there are a handful of bugfixes and general performance improvements. The update is available now.

VIA: Google Drive Blog

Google Drive for Android updates with document scanning is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Google has announced that it’ll be changing the way it does cloud storage across Gmail, Google Drive, and Google+. Instead of each service having it’s own allotted amount of space. All three will be joined together and will share a pool of 15GB of cloud storage space, allowing Google Drive users to essentially have more free space than the previous 5GB that was originally offered.

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

Google unifies 15GB of shared storage for Gmail, Drive and Google+ is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Google has further tightened the integration between browser and cloud, launching a new “Save to Drive” button that allows files to be sent straight to Google Drive from websites, assuming they’ve enabled the functionality. The new feature avoids the hassle of downloading a file to a local computer and then uploading it again to the user’s Drive storage, particularly handy if you’re using a public machine.

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.

Google “Save to Drive” button wants to bypass your desktop is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Towards the end of April, Google announced a number of new features for Google Drive. These were actually new social features that make it easier for people to collectively work on documents in Drive. The features consisted of one-click group chat and entirely new profile pictures.  Today the internet search giant rolled out another update of Google Drive, which now makes it even easier to share files to the cloud through PC or Mac computers.

The update makes it easier and faster than ever before to share files that are in the Google Drive folder. The submenu now features a “share” option. The user simply needs to select a file they want to share, right click on it to bring up the submenu and click on “share.”  Google has said that this new feature for PC and Mac Drive apps will be rolling out internationally over the next couple of days. This particular update itself might seem a minor one, but its a pretty big deal for those who’re sharing with Google Drive quite a lot of times every single day.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Domino’s Now Lets You See How They Make Your Pizza, HTC Profits Dip 98% In Q1 2013,

If you can’t access your Gmail this morning, don’t worry, since it’s not just you. Google has reported that some of its services are experiencing a partial outage, meaning that some users can’t access certain Google Apps like Gmail, Drive, and Docs. The Admin control panel and API are also partially down.

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 Apps hit with partial outage for some users is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.