Present to anyone, from wherever you are: Google Slides supports Hangouts video calls

Now present to anyone, from wherever you are: Google Slides supports Hangouts video calls.

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Google Docs in January: Styles, Sparklines, Google+ sharing, and more

One of the best things about working on web apps like Google Docs is that it gives us the flexibility to frequently bring you new features and improvements. Starting this month, we’re going to make some small changes to how we communicate what’s been happening in the world of Docs. Instead of writing blog posts for each and every minor update, we're going to try bundling them together monthly to give you a detailed overview of our favorite features and a short list of other notable changes to make sure you don't miss out on anything new.

On that note, we’ve got a bunch of new features that launched today, as well as some great things that improved over the month of January.

Customizable styles in documents
Giving your document consistent and beautiful formatting should be easy. Before today, if you wanted to update all the Subtitles in your document to look a particular way, you had to change each of them one at a time. That’s too many steps. Now you can restyle all your regular paragraphs, headings, or titles with just a couple clicks. For example, if you want to update all the Subtitles in your document to be a particular size, set one Subtitle to that size, select it, right click and choose Update Subtitle to match selection. This will change all the Subtitles already in your document and automatically update the style for any new Subtitles you create. Plus, with the new Options menu in the styles dropdown, you can set the current document’s styles as the default for new documents or you can load your default styles into the current document.

Sparklines in spreadsheets and more charting options
In Google spreadsheets, we’ve added more charting options and support for sparklines to make it easier to communicate data. The new options give you a bunch of tools to create more sophisticated charts including different Y-axes on either side of the chart, formatting options for the axis and title text, and all sorts of other customization for how your lines, bars, or pies are displayed. We’ve also added sparklines, which let you display line or bar charts inside of cells and are handy for presenting and comparing data in a simple, bite-sized way. In the example below, we’ve used sparklines to plot currency exchange rates over a 30-day period.

Sharing forms on Google+
Sharing the forms you create in Google Docs with the right people shouldn’t be a hassle. Today we added a Google+ share to the form editor so that you can share your forms directly with your circles with just a couple clicks.

And there’s more…
On top of today’s new features, here are some changes from January that you may have missed:

• Adding images to your docs from a high quality stock photo gallery. Simply go to Insert > Image, select Stock photos, and then search for the images that you want.

• A more streamlined format for document discussion notifications that batches multiple discussions into a single email.
• Quickly opening and selecting items from specific menus with keyboard accelerators. For example, when using Google Chrome, Ctrl+Option+E on a Mac and Alt+E on Windows or Linux will open the Edit menu.

• Copying and pasting via the context (right click) menu in documents when you have the Chrome App installed.
• Easily adding Google drawings or Google Groups discussions to a Google Site from the Insert menu.

• Progress bars while uploading files to Google Sites.
• Searching for text inside of PDFs in your documents list using Optical Character Recognition.

If you’d like to learn more about what we’ve been up to in January, I’ll be doing a Hangout On Air later this week this to talk about these changes and listen to your feedback. Stop by our Community Manager Teresa’s Google+ page on Thursday, February 9 at 12 p.m. EST (Pakistan Time 10 p.m)  to tune in.

Recruiter Tips & Tricks: Jeff takes your questions via Hangouts On Air

You know lead engineering recruiter Jeff Moore from his Recruiter Tips & Tricks series on the Google Students blog, which wrapped up in December. Since then, we’ve been thinking of ways in which Jeff can continue sharing his wisdom with all of you, and how to do so in a fun and engaging environment. What better way for us to connect you with him than Google+ Hangouts On Air? Over the next couple of weeks, Jeff will be hosting a series of Hangouts On Air from his Google+ profile. Each Hangout On Air will have a different theme based on his most popular Recruiter Tips & Tricks posts. For each Hangout On Air, you can submit your questions ahead of time via the Google Moderator links below. Jeff (and guest Googlers, including Fitz and Ben on January 19th!) will answer the questions with the most votes live. You can also post your question to Google+ using the hashtag #askagoogler in order to be considered for one of the spots in the Hangout.

Here is the line up with Google Moderator links and local time zone conversions so you know when to tune in:

• Preparing your resume: Tuesday, January 10th at 9:00 am PST
• Technical interviews: Wednesday, January 11th at 1:00 pm PST
• Non-technical interviews: Tuesday, January 17th at 11:00 am PST
• Transitioning from school to the working world: Thursday, January 19th at 4:00 pm PST

We’ll be accepting questions up until 24 hours before each of the Hangouts On Air begin. When the Hangout On Air starts, we’ll share the link on our Google Students page on Google+. You’ll also be able to see the broadcast on Jeff’s profile. Can’t tune in? Each Hangout On Air will be recorded and shared so you can watch the recap when you’ve got some free time.

By Jessica Safir, University Programs Coordinator

Connect to Google Plus

Back in October we made it possible for Blogger in Draft users to use their Google+ profile on their blog. This option is now available to all Blogger users, and as a result, we're starting to roll out the first of many Google+ features.

Starting today, if you have linked your blog to your Google+ account you will be presented with a prefilled Google+ share box immediately after publishing a post. The share box will contain a +snippet of your post that you can share with your circles on Google+.



Of course, you can disable this sharing prompt at any time on the "Settings - Posts and Comments" page. And you can always share individual posts on Google+ by selecting "share" underneath the entry in your post list.


You can start using the new Share to Google+ immediately if you’ve already chosen to use your Google+ profile on your blog. If you haven’t yet made the switch, click here to get started.

If you don’t have a Google+ account you can create one here, and then log in to Blogger and follow the above instructions.

To learn more, check out our FAQs or visit our Help Forum.

Want to chat about sharing to Google+ and other Blogger features with someone from the team? Join me on the Blogger +page for a live video Hangout at 3PM PST.

Follow us on Twitter and facebook! Happy blogging!