Hasta La Gadget!

CNET has learned that Google may be implementing measures to keep the government (or anyone else) out of your Google Drive-stored data. Should this be true, folks concerned about their privacy — everyone, we would hope — might rest easier in a post-PRISM world. According to one of CNET‘s anonymous sources, this isn’t some flight of fancy, either: A small percentage of Drive files are already protected. Of course, even such digital protection is not guaranteed to keep your files private, but it would force those who would like a peek to obtain your login credentials first. Not that Uncle Sam would ever do such a thing without legal permission, right?

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Source: CNET

Google Drive updates might be few and far in between, but they usually add welcome changes to the service — take for example its recently improved copy/paste function. You can now paste tables from spreadsheets into Gmail with their formatting intact, and it doesn’t even matter what browser you use. Chrome users get a bit of extra, of course, like bringing shapes from drawings into presentations and copying slides from one presentation to another. While minor at best, these upgrades do make it easier to share data from Drive — when it’s online, anyway.

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Source: Google Drive (Google+)

Navigating that image repository and commenting on collaborative documents while in route is now a bit easier with Google Drive for iOS. The folks in Mountain View updated the Apple-centric version of its cloud storage app to allow swiping between stored images and the ability to view, create and respond to a Docs’ comments on the go. Those who haven’t already been prompted to update — or those looking to dive in for the first time — can do so via the source link that follows.

Filed under: Internet, Software, Mobile, Google

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Via: Google Drive (Google+)

Source: iTunes

Cards, cards, cards… that’s the refrain around the Google campus these days. Everything is getting turned into cards. That now includes your documents stored on Drive, too. The Google Drive app for Android was updated today with a whole new UI that moves towards the refined Holo design of the Play Music app and displays your uploaded files as “cards,” though, you can always revert to a tweaked list view. The cards offer a thumbnail preview along with the file name and an icon indicating the type of document. The ability to snap photos and have the results turned into a OCR-processed PDF has also been updated slightly. The feature is now called “scan” and it automatically crops photos to contain only the document you need to upload. Lastly, you can finally tweak text settings in sheets, delivering a much more robust mobile formatting experience. Just hit up the Play Store to get your update now.

Filed under: Software, Mobile, Google

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Source: Google Drive Blog

Google’s efforts to streamline aren’t limited to some spring cleaning and more spartan interfaces. Today the company is breaking down the artificial walls between the pools of online storage provided for Gmail, Drive and Google+ Photos. Instead of 10GB for all your messages and attachments, alongside a separate 5GB repository for your photos and documents, now all three sites share a common 15GB slice on Google’s servers. So, if you happen to be a little photo crazy, but are nowhere near the limit on your Gmail account, you no longer need to rely on workarounds like archiving images as attachments. This also means that storage upgrades for Gmail no longer top out at 25GB. There’s also a handy new visualization that shows how much of your available storage you’re using and breaks it down by service for finer-grained tracking.

Update: If you’re a Google Apps customer your available cloud storage will also be unified, leaving you with 30GB shared between all three services.

Filed under: Internet, Google

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Source: Google Drive Blog, Google Enerprise