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Google's data-transferring tool gets a shiny new interface
Google already makes it very simple for you to pull your data from some of its many services, via the Takeout transfer tool on the web. Up until today, however, Google Takeout wasn't necessarily pleasing to the eye, despite being extremely useful at letting users extract their archives. As a way to alleviate that, the search giant has quietly given Takeout a design makeover, bringing the user interface more in line with its other products, like Gmail and Google Drive. Still, it's not all about the visuals here -- Google Takeout is now also more thorough, allowing you to pull specific data from each service. For example, with Google Play Books, you can choose to include select files, rather than only having the option to download all at once. Just don't go too crazy creating archives, since they do take up space from your Drive's free storage allotment.
Google dives into personal analytics with new Account Activity feature
We recently saw Stephen Wolfram reveal what he called the personal analytics of his life (built from decades of meticulous data collection), and it looks like Google is now going some way towards making that easier for you to do yourself. It rolled out its new Account Activity feature today, an opt-in tool (still technically in beta) that tracks your activity across Google's services and delivers a report each month on your internet use. That includes things like the number of emails sent and received, your most contacted email addresses, information about your search history (if you have it enabled), stats from Google Latitude, and the different browsers and devices you've used to sign into Google services. What's more, that's apparently just the beginning -- Google says it plans to incorporate even more services over the next few months.
What do you love, asks Google with a new portal to its many web services
Say hello to your new online friend, wdyl.com. An eagle-eyed TechCrunch tipster spotted this freshly launched Google portal, whose purpose it seems to be to gather up all of the company's multifarious web services under one umbrella. A Google search for Google products, in other words. Punching in a topic brings up its popularity in Google Trends, lets you set up Google Alerts, plan related events in Google Calendar, email someone in Gmail, or hit up Picasa, YouTube or Google News with the same query. You get the picture. It hasn't yet been made official and hitting up the site without the "www." prefix throws up a bad URL error at the moment, but it's there and seemingly fully functional. Give it a try and let us know which search terms bring up the most humorous results.
