9 Google Photos Features You Need to Know

Google Photos was probably one of the most raving of the many announcements in Google I/O 2015. Google Photos is a free photo management system and offers unlimited storage for high-resolution images (16MP max) and videos (1080p max). Google Photos is available as an iOS, Android, and desktop app allowing you to sync images and videos from your Mobile devices, PC, camera, or SD cards.

I have been using Google Photos for a couple of days now, and I’m quite impressed with what it can do. Herein I would like to share what I have found along the way.

Note: The iOS app is only compatible with iOS 8.1.

Easy Photos and Videos Uploads

With Google Photos, it is easy to upload images and videos. Aside from auto-syncing through the desktop and mobile apps, you can also upload photos through a "drag-and-drop" interface. So long as the browser tab is viewing photos.google.com URL, you can drop numerous images and videos, or a folder of images or videos into the tab. The drop initiated an upload of all the files simultaneously, saving you time.

Now once we have the images uploaded, we can do a few things to them such as manipulate the images, post them to Facebook and Twitter, share a link pointing to the images, create an Album, or tell Stories with them.

No More Duplicates

On top of that, I also noticed that Google Photo will merge two or more duplicates of photos leaving only just the one photo, thereby springcleaning your storage space for you automatically.

High-Quality setting

Before uploading your photos, ensure that the Google Photos setting is set to the "High Quality (free unlimited storage)" option. The other setting, "Original" wil see your images saved into Google Drive (where you have limited storage) instead.

As you login through the mobile app, Google will show this setting as you use the app for the first time. If you are login to the Web though, the setting is hidden beneath the “…” > Settings menu.

Photo Search

Google also incorporates smarter search in Google Photos. We can search through our photos with a keyword much like what we do while searching for images in Google search. In Google Photos, the keyword “food” , for example, will return the image of foods, “Surabaya” will return images which has been geo-tagged with that location, while searching for “cat” (you gueseds it!) results in cat images.

Surprisingly, Google also allows you to search with a color keyword like “red”, “green”, or “black” and it will come up with images with the respective shade or have the appointed color.

However, accuracy is still a problem. Sean Buckley of Gizmodo gave some examples in his post where searches for “Sega” returned Nintendo, “evil” returned Disneyland images, and “food” returned book images instead.

During my experiments, most of my searches come up empty (which may or may not be because of the small number of images in my library). Nonetheless, I’m sure it will improved over time as search has always been Google’s strength.

Ease of Selecting Photos

Selecting your images in Google Photos and videos is intuitive and equally effortless. In the mobile app, hold your finger on an image and then move your finger all the way to the last photo you want to select, and that is your selected batch of photos.

On the Web, hold the Shift key to select multiple images in a batch, or use the Ctrl / Cmd key to select individual images.

Gallery View

Furthermore, Google Photos also incorporate swipe and pinch gestures in almost every corner in the mobile application. If you are on mobile, Google Photos will arrange all your photos in a grid, in medium-sized thumbnails, by default.

Pinch outward and it will set the view to a “Comfortable View”, with larger image views. Pinch inwards to set the view to “Compact” with smaller-sized thumbnail so you can see more images in the screen.

Assistant

Assistant is another feature in Google Photos that is worth mentioning. This feature will go through your images for similarities through various aspects and find relationships among your photos. It then compiles them together, prompting you to choose whether to save the compilation in the Library or not.

On top of that, it also prompts you if your local storage (your phone storage) is running out space, and to help you free up some space, it will offer to remove photos.

IMAGE: smithers85/Reddit

Image Editing

Google Photos is also equipped with a decent photo editor. To start editing, click on an image. Find and click the edit button represented with a “Pencil” icon at the top right. If you are using the mobile application, the edit icon resides below the image.

The edit button will bring a new toolbar which lets you do some basic image editing such as cropping the image, adjusting the shade, lights, and colors. In addition, you can also apply pre-defined effects ala Instagram. Once you are pleased with the output, Save it.

Image Compression

Lastly, another feature that I think is less noticeable on the surface is the image compression. As we are uploading photos to Google Photos, the image size is compressed. Once it has been uploaded, download the photos and you will find the image sizes much smaller.

A photo initially 11.2MB will become only 2.4MB, that is an almost 80% compression rate. For comparison, JPEGMini compressions only could bring the same photo down to 3.2Mb. Aside from storing photos, it is a great tool for web developers to optimize their photos on their website for speed.

Final Thoughts

Google Photos is a great app. You can upload as many as photos and videos from old hard drive, old computer disk, camera, and mobile phone without having to worry of running out of storage.

It will organize the photos with its intelligent Assistant, and you can search, edit, and share it to other mediums, right from the app itself. Google Photos would probably make similar services like Dropbox, iCloud, Amazon, Flickr a little worried.

9 Google Photos Features You Need to Know

9 Google Photos Features You Need to Know

Google Photos was probably one of the most raving of the many announcements in Google I/O 2015. Google Photos is a free photo management system and offers unlimited storage for high-resolution images (16MP max) and videos (1080p max). Google Photos is available as an iOS, Android, and desktop app allowing you to sync images and videos from your Mobile devices, PC, camera, or SD cards.

I have been using Google Photos for a couple of days now, and I’m quite impressed with what it can do. Herein I would like to share what I have found along the way.

Note: The iOS app is only compatible with iOS 8.1.

Easy Photos and Videos Uploads

With Google Photos, it is easy to upload images and videos. Aside from auto-syncing through the desktop and mobile apps, you can also upload photos through a "drag-and-drop" interface. So long as the browser tab is viewing photos.google.com URL, you can drop numerous images and videos, or a folder of images or videos into the tab. The drop initiated an upload of all the files simultaneously, saving you time.

Now once we have the images uploaded, we can do a few things to them such as manipulate the images, post them to Facebook and Twitter, share a link pointing to the images, create an Album, or tell Stories with them.

No More Duplicates

On top of that, I also noticed that Google Photo will merge two or more duplicates of photos leaving only just the one photo, thereby springcleaning your storage space for you automatically.

High-Quality setting

Before uploading your photos, ensure that the Google Photos setting is set to the "High Quality (free unlimited storage)" option. The other setting, "Original" wil see your images saved into Google Drive (where you have limited storage) instead.

As you login through the mobile app, Google will show this setting as you use the app for the first time. If you are login to the Web though, the setting is hidden beneath the “…” > Settings menu.

Photo Search

Google also incorporates smarter search in Google Photos. We can search through our photos with a keyword much like what we do while searching for images in Google search. In Google Photos, the keyword “food” , for example, will return the image of foods, “Surabaya” will return images which has been geo-tagged with that location, while searching for “cat” (you gueseds it!) results in cat images.

Surprisingly, Google also allows you to search with a color keyword like “red”, “green”, or “black” and it will come up with images with the respective shade or have the appointed color.

However, accuracy is still a problem. Sean Buckley of Gizmodo gave some examples in his post where searches for “Sega” returned Nintendo, “evil” returned Disneyland images, and “food” returned book images instead.

During my experiments, most of my searches come up empty (which may or may not be because of the small number of images in my library). Nonetheless, I’m sure it will improved over time as search has always been Google’s strength.

Ease of Selecting Photos

Selecting your images in Google Photos and videos is intuitive and equally effortless. In the mobile app, hold your finger on an image and then move your finger all the way to the last photo you want to select, and that is your selected batch of photos.

On the Web, hold the Shift key to select multiple images in a batch, or use the Ctrl / Cmd key to select individual images.

Gallery View

Furthermore, Google Photos also incorporate swipe and pinch gestures in almost every corner in the mobile application. If you are on mobile, Google Photos will arrange all your photos in a grid, in medium-sized thumbnails, by default.

Pinch outward and it will set the view to a “Comfortable View”, with larger image views. Pinch inwards to set the view to “Compact” with smaller-sized thumbnail so you can see more images in the screen.

Assistant

Assistant is another feature in Google Photos that is worth mentioning. This feature will go through your images for similarities through various aspects and find relationships among your photos. It then compiles them together, prompting you to choose whether to save the compilation in the Library or not.

On top of that, it also prompts you if your local storage (your phone storage) is running out space, and to help you free up some space, it will offer to remove photos.

IMAGE: smithers85/Reddit

Image Editing

Google Photos is also equipped with a decent photo editor. To start editing, click on an image. Find and click the edit button represented with a “Pencil” icon at the top right. If you are using the mobile application, the edit icon resides below the image.

The edit button will bring a new toolbar which lets you do some basic image editing such as cropping the image, adjusting the shade, lights, and colors. In addition, you can also apply pre-defined effects ala Instagram. Once you are pleased with the output, Save it.

Image Compression

Lastly, another feature that I think is less noticeable on the surface is the image compression. As we are uploading photos to Google Photos, the image size is compressed. Once it has been uploaded, download the photos and you will find the image sizes much smaller.

A photo initially 11.2MB will become only 2.4MB, that is an almost 80% compression rate. For comparison, JPEGMini compressions only could bring the same photo down to 3.2Mb. Aside from storing photos, it is a great tool for web developers to optimize their photos on their website for speed.

Final Thoughts

Google Photos is a great app. You can upload as many as photos and videos from old hard drive, old computer disk, camera, and mobile phone without having to worry of running out of storage.

It will organize the photos with its intelligent Assistant, and you can search, edit, and share it to other mediums, right from the app itself. Google Photos would probably make similar services like Dropbox, iCloud, Amazon, Flickr a little worried.

9 Google Photos Features You Need to Know

Google’s Mobile Friendly Web: What You Need to Know

One element of web marketing that you can always rely on to stay the same is that nothing stays the same for very long. Page rankings and search engines are every bit as changeable as the reading habits of the customers who use them, though often for very different reasons.

Anyone with any kind of web presence will be familiar with the perpetual tweaking and repositioning that has to take place behind the scenes in order to keep your online profile relevant and high in those search results. Yet every once in a while, search engines will introduce fundamental changes to the way they rank pages, forcing everybody to rethink their own strategies.

This is precisely the way that 2015 has begun, with Google announcing a new emphasis on mobile friendly content. By the end of April (only a week or so away!), the search engine will have begun showing results that prioritise sites and content that is optimised for mobile viewing. This will result in many websites moving to mobile-ready designs and content. But we will look at how, ultimately, a move to a mobile friendly web is good for your business and your customers, and how you can use these changes to your advantage.

Even the most diligent web design company is likely to feel the affects of this latest round of alterations to Google’ssearch engine algorithm, because they have such broad implications. But every creative agency and webmaster who addresses these changes in a rational and imaginative way will be well positioned to reap the rewards of the new system.

The Changes

There are two main changes:

• Firstly, app-based services that use Google’s app indexing will be rewarded with preferential rankings. This is another clear indication that the search engine is working towards fusing the content of the old web with modern, app-based functionality. Crucially for developers, this change has already gone live.


• The second change, which comes into affect on April 21st 2015, means that sites will be labelled as mobile friendly if their content is optimised for viewing on a mobile device.

Sites that are mobile-friendly will enjoy more favourable rankings in mobile searches. The upshot of these changes is that there is unlikely to be a single quick fix, where a few lines of additional code will suffice. But this is precisely why Google has announced the move in advance: giving webmasters the necessary time to at least begin to plan out and implement changes, and not be left behind.

Why Mobile? The Case for Change

2014 saw a definite turning point in the way we interact online. For the first time, the total amount of time spent online was primarily experienced through mobile devices, rather than desktop computers. With the strong sales and ever-increasing specifications of mobile handsets, it is a trend that seems set to continue.

Planning an Effective Response

First of all, it is useful to remind yourself that everybody will be affected by these alterations. At this stage it’s unlikely that most players in your industry are already fully prepared. However, that is no excuse to give anybody a head start, and the sooner you implement changes, the stronger the hand you can play later on.

There is plenty of support to help you. Google provides a comprehensive set of guidelines for the mobile web, plus an instant test to check in real time whether your website qualifies as mobile friendly.

Finally, you can look at this whole project as digital spring-cleaning: use this move towards mobility as the catalyst for more fundamental changes to your online presence that you may have been planning. With greater consideration being given to the smaller screen sizes, the mobile web is a place of fresher, cleaner designs. Think of ways that you can appeal to new clients and customers, as well as to the search engines.

The post Google’s Mobile Friendly Web: What You Need to Know appeared first on Speckyboy Web Design Magazine.

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Google’s Mobile Friendly Web: What You Need to Know

5 Everyday Tasks You Need to Outsource Right Now

5 Everyday Tasks You Need to Outsource Right Now

10 Essential Magento Extensions You Need

Magento is probably the most solid e-Commerce platform around. If you own an online store, you probably have given some consideration to using Magento on your site. Even big names like Nike, MotherCare, and Bazaar are on Magento. Still, Magento has a few features that could really be improved further, which is why sometimes you need to be proactive and check out what you can better achieve with extensions.

Magento Extensions is a collection of extensions that can add extra functionalities that you might want on your e-Commerce website. Whether it is to track your sales and invoices or to make checkout a lot easier for your visitors, these extensions can help you better manage your online business and more.

Recommended Reading: Ultimate Guide To Setting Up Your First Online Shop

1. MageMonkey

MageMonkey is the official MailChimp extension that integrates with Magento. It will effectively improve how you communicate with your customers and potential customers. It allows you to create auto-responding emails for completed transactions, birthday wishes, reminders about abandoned carts among others.

2. Blog

Even if you have an e-Commerce site, you can still use a blog to announce promotions, news on upcoming products, write about your company alongside other relevant content about your business. This may help in attracting visitors to your online store. If you want to have a blog try Blogs.

The extension serves as a regular blogging platform including RSS, native WYSIWYG editor, and excerpt fields.

3. One Page Checkout

By default, Magento set six separate steps to complete checkout for the goods you are buying, which in truth may annoy some of your customers. This extension, One Page Checkout, simplifies the checkout process into just a single step.

The extension also comes with auto-complete feature that will fill the checkout for your customers. Try this if you want to uncomplicate the checkout process.

4. AddShopper

AddShopper adds social icons into your product so your customers can share them onto various social sites like Facebook and Twitter. In addition, this extension also provides a record of the number of products shared. You can see which products are the most widely shared, or most sold, from the social share as well as see the highest revenue-generating item.

5. MatrixRate

MatrixRate lets you adjust the shipping cost based on customer location, destination, ZipCode numerical ranges (e.g. 5000-6000), product price and number of items, cart weight, subtotal or quantity. If you want more flexibility on how you decide the shipping price, this is the extension to install.

6. Yopto

Shopping online may be convenient but there are people with reservations against trusting a seller that you haven’t seen in person. In cases like that, customers usually fall back on reviews by other buyers to help determine their purchasing decisions. Yopto improves the Magento review facility by allowing you to email customers after a purchase for a review and thoughts on their purchase.

You can also customize the email style and the Reviews widget.

7. Related Product Manager

Want to keep your customers scrolling on your page? Use this. Related Products Manager is an extension that generates related products, up-sells, and cross-sells automatically based on various data including previous purchases and views by customers. The Related Products Manager will display the related products randomly when there is no data to decide additional products to display.

8. Address Label Printing

Cubix Address Label Printing is a Magento extension that will allow you to print address labels — the kind you attach on a package before sending it out. This extension lets you print the label directly from the admin panel. You can determine the label size, layout, and pieces of information to include in the label.

9. Magento WordPress Integration

Magento WordPress Integration will integrate your Magento online store with your WordPress blog. You can easily switch to the WordPress dashboard with one click from Magento’s admin panel to start blogging.

This extension also supports a wide range of WordPress plugin integrations. WordPress and Magento is the best platform in their respective fields. With this extension, you can enjoy these two togetether seamlessly.

10. Fooman

For each completed purchase order, Magento will generate a separate numbering convention for the documents to the sale, documents such as the invoices, memos, and shipment notes. This could be very inconvenient when you need to find an invoice for a particular sale due to the inconsistent numbering.

Fooman helps you better manage your invoices by auto-generating these documents with consistent numbering, so you can easily find locate the document you need.

Now Read:
E-Commerce Tools To Understand Your Users Better

No related posts.

10 Essential Magento Extensions You Need

10 Essential Magento Extensions You Need

Magento is probably the most solid e-Commerce platform around. If you own an online store, you probably have given some consideration to using Magento on your site. Even big names like Nike, MotherCare, and Bazaar are on Magento. Still, Magento has a few features that could really be improved further, which is why sometimes you need to be proactive and check out what you can better achieve with extensions.

Magento Extensions is a collection of extensions that can add extra functionalities that you might want on your e-Commerce website. Whether it is to track your sales and invoices or to make checkout a lot easier for your visitors, these extensions can help you better manage your online business and more.

Recommended Reading: Ultimate Guide To Setting Up Your First Online Shop

1. MageMonkey

MageMonkey is the official MailChimp extension that integrates with Magento. It will effectively improve how you communicate with your customers and potential customers. It allows you to create auto-responding emails for completed transactions, birthday wishes, reminders about abandoned carts among others.

2. Blog

Even if you have an e-Commerce site, you can still use a blog to announce promotions, news on upcoming products, write about your company alongside other relevant content about your business. This may help in attracting visitors to your online store. If you want to have a blog try Blogs.

The extension serves as a regular blogging platform including RSS, native WYSIWYG editor, and excerpt fields.

3. One Page Checkout

By default, Magento set six separate steps to complete checkout for the goods you are buying, which in truth may annoy some of your customers. This extension, One Page Checkout, simplifies the checkout process into just a single step.

The extension also comes with auto-complete feature that will fill the checkout for your customers. Try this if you want to uncomplicate the checkout process.

4. AddShopper

AddShopper adds social icons into your product so your customers can share them onto various social sites like Facebook and Twitter. In addition, this extension also provides a record of the number of products shared. You can see which products are the most widely shared, or most sold, from the social share as well as see the highest revenue-generating item.

5. MatrixRate

MatrixRate lets you adjust the shipping cost based on customer location, destination, ZipCode numerical ranges (e.g. 5000-6000), product price and number of items, cart weight, subtotal or quantity. If you want more flexibility on how you decide the shipping price, this is the extension to install.

6. Yopto

Shopping online may be convenient but there are people with reservations against trusting a seller that you haven’t seen in person. In cases like that, customers usually fall back on reviews by other buyers to help determine their purchasing decisions. Yopto improves the Magento review facility by allowing you to email customers after a purchase for a review and thoughts on their purchase.

You can also customize the email style and the Reviews widget.

7. Related Product Manager

Want to keep your customers scrolling on your page? Use this. Related Products Manager is an extension that generates related products, up-sells, and cross-sells automatically based on various data including previous purchases and views by customers. The Related Products Manager will display the related products randomly when there is no data to decide additional products to display.

8. Address Label Printing

Cubix Address Label Printing is a Magento extension that will allow you to print address labels — the kind you attach on a package before sending it out. This extension lets you print the label directly from the admin panel. You can determine the label size, layout, and pieces of information to include in the label.

9. Magento WordPress Integration

Magento WordPress Integration will integrate your Magento online store with your WordPress blog. You can easily switch to the WordPress dashboard with one click from Magento’s admin panel to start blogging.

This extension also supports a wide range of WordPress plugin integrations. WordPress and Magento is the best platform in their respective fields. With this extension, you can enjoy these two togetether seamlessly.

10. Fooman

For each completed purchase order, Magento will generate a separate numbering convention for the documents to the sale, documents such as the invoices, memos, and shipment notes. This could be very inconvenient when you need to find an invoice for a particular sale due to the inconsistent numbering.

Fooman helps you better manage your invoices by auto-generating these documents with consistent numbering, so you can easily find locate the document you need.

Now Read:
E-Commerce Tools To Understand Your Users Better

No related posts.

10 Essential Magento Extensions You Need