Today Google announced that they have started to roll out a new look for some of their most popular properties. The change affects Google Search, News, Maps, Translate, Gmail and other products that have not been mentioned explicitly in the announcement on the Google Blog site.

The new design does away with the black bar and replaces it with a much smaller header element that is called the gray bar. This bar consists of three different regions. First the Google logo on the left incorporating a drop-down menu, a search for the particular Google product the user is currently using and a third area with sharing and account related links.

The down arrow on the right side of the Google logo leads to a product list. This makes it possible to navigate to other Google properties with two clicks from any of the supported Google product pages. This works even if the user is not logged into any Google account.

Search is now displayed in the middle of the gray bar. Users can use it to search for information provided by the Google Product they are currently using.

The sharing section finally confirms Google’s intention to push the Google+ social networking service. It is the only Google product that is linked prominently in the gray bar. The account picture finally displays links to the user’s Google profile, Google+ as well as general account and privacy related settings. a new Switch account option has been added to give users an option to switch accounts more conveniently.

The changes are being rolled out currently with no information when they may reach all users. I for one see the black bar on all Google properties and all web browsers at the moment.

Google first started comparing and later on using the information provided by Personal Blocklist users into their search engine ranking algorithm (which added another weapon to the arsenal of black hats).

A month later Google began to add options to block sites from the search results directly. Users who visited a site from the Google results and clicked on back in the first seconds of visiting that site were greeted with a “block all domain results” link under that site’s search engine listing.

Yesterday Google made the announcement that users of the Personal Blocklist extension for Google Chrome can now export the blocked site data to their personal Google account.

For that they need to click on the red extension icon in the Chrome interface to bring up the list of blocked sites.

A click on Export opens a second window where the data can be copied to the Clipboard or exported to Google. Users who select the second option will see a prompt asking them if they want to disable the Chrome extension after exporting the data to Google. This obviously makes only sense if they stay logged in while searching on Google.

All blocked domains and sites are listed in a review window afterwards. Here it is again possible to unblock some sites so that they won’t be imported into the personal Google account blocklist.

Google users should note that the maximum amount of blocked sites is 500 currently.

The core benefit of moving the blocked sites data from the Chrome extension to the Google account is that the search engine results of the latter will always display ten organic search results.

Google users who do not run Chrome can add domains and sites to their blocked sites list with a click on the Settings icon, selecting Search Settings and clicking on Manage blocked sites in the new window. (thanks Venkat)

Lets take a look at both the old and new Google Sign-In page before we take a closer look at the differences. First the old sign-in page:

And now the redesigned new Google sign-in page:

The pages look very similar, there are however several key differences. When it comes to re-designs in recent time, Google seems to be intent to make fonts and page elements larger. This could be part of optimizing Google products for small screen resolutions such as smartphones or netbooks, and for touch based devices which will become more popular in coming years.

The two sign-in pages have pretty much the same functionality, some screen elements however have been moved around on the page to place them more or less prominently on the screen. This is for instance true for the “don’t have a Google Account? Create an account now” element which has been moved from below the sign-in form to above.

The footer links which were placed right below the page contents on the old Google accounts page have now been moved to the end of the page instead, which will surely impact their reach. One benefit here is that the other elements get better exposure.

Google users who switch to the new sign-in page may see the old page pop up on some Google product websites. This happens when users switch web browsers or IP addresses, and if a Google property has not updated yet with the new sign in page.

Users who do not like the new Google sign-in page can switch back to the old one for a limited amount of time. Google will however shut down the old sign in page in the near future.

Google does not introduce new functionality on the new sign-in page. Some users might not even notice that they are using a new page to sign-in.

What’s your take on the recent design changes on Google product pages?

The account is set to be semi-active until the email address has been verified. This is done by opening a link in the email in a web browser.

I did not get the verification email in the account, and decided to investigate the matter after 10 minutes of waiting. Google mentions that it can take a few minutes to receive the email, but ten minutes was all that I wanted to wait.

Google lists the username and Google account email address on the last account sign up page. It is a good idea to verify that the email address is correct so that you can be sure the verification email was send to the right email address.

But how can you get Google to resend the verification email to your account?

Google offers two suggestions to users who did not receive the verification email:

• They ask the users to check their spam and bulk mail folders to make sure that the verification email was not filtered out as spam. That’s the first thing that you should do. If the first email landed there and you did not check, you can be pretty sure that the second email will be flagged as spam as well.
• Request a new verification email. If you have made sure that the email is correct, and that the verification email has not been flagged as spam, you may want to ask Google to resend the email to your email address.

Users can get a new Google verification email by signing in to their new account. Remember, the account is semi-active, which means that it is possible to sign in and out among other things. When you sign in to the Google Accounts homepage you will see an “Account verification needed” message there, with an option to resend the verification email.

Just click on the link there to resend the email. You can repeat the process multiple times, which may sometimes be necessary if your email provider is experiencing technical difficulties.

In short: If you have not received the email with the verification link sign in to your Google account to resend it.

The good news is that you only need to harden one account to protect all Google services that you use.

The easiest way to harden your Google account is to open Google.com or a local Google domain. You need to log in first on that screen, and click on your name and the account settings afterwards.

Locate the Security section under Personal Settings. It should look like this.

Changing The Google Password

The password needs to be strong to protect the account sufficiently. A strong secure password should have at least 14 characters that include at least one of the following: lower case letter, upper case letter, number, special character.

Rules:

• 14+ characters made up of numbers, upper and lower case characters and at least one special character.
• It should not contain a dictionary word, or word that can be associated with you (home town, last name, high school).

To change the Google account password click on Changing your password under Security.

To change your password you need to enter your current password or the answer to your security question first, and then the new password twice.

A click on Save sets the new passwords which is from then on used to log into the account.

Account Recovery

The Recovering your password link leads to all account recovery settings. These options can be used to recovery the account password, for instance if it cannot be remembered.

You need to enter your current password before the recovering your password options are displayed. Here it is possible to add or edit a secondary email address, mobile phone number and security question.

All three options can be used to recover the account password.

• Email address: Needs to be protected with a secure password.
• Mobile Phone number: Protected by a password
• Security Question: Best to use a code or password and not a word or phrase as the answer.

2-Step Verification

2-Step Verification is a new option to protect the Google account login. It basically adds a second verification step to the login. Google users who have enabled 2-step verification log in with their username and password, and then in a second step with a temporary code that they receive on their mobile phone. The log in fails if the code is not entered during login.

A click on 2-step verification opens the setup for the security feature.

• 1. Phone setup, a verification code is send to the mobile phone number.
• 2. Backup options, important for account recovery, for instance if the mobile phone gets stolen.
• 3. Confirming the settings before the feature is turned on.

Authorizing applications & sites

Here you find a list of applications that have access to your Google Account. You can remove applications from the list to block them from accessing the Google Account. It is furthermore possible to create application-specific passwords which may be needed if 2-step verification is enabled and applications are used that do not support the secondary log in.

Closing Words

Google users have several optional but important configuration preferences at their disposal to properly protect their account. From selecting a secure password over 2-step verification to account recovery options. The best protection includes all options that Google offers.

How do you protect your Google account? Let us know in the comments.

The feature is still being rolled out to all Google account holders and it can take some time before it becomes available. I just found an interesting article on Caschy’s German blog where he explains how to start using the 2-step verification right now, even if the option is not displaying in the settings of the account yet.

Before I explain how that’s done lets take a look under account settings first to see if 2-step verification is available there. Go to Google and click the sign in button at the top right of the screen. Enter your username and password and wait until you are logged in. Now click on the tools icon at the far right of the screen next to your account name and select Account Settings from the options.

Using 2-step verification appears under Personal Settings on the next screen, if it is already enabled for the account.

If you cannot see it there you cannot activate it yet. That is, unless you try the following tweak:

All you need to do is to append ?hl=en at the end of the url to enable the feature. This basically switches the language from your native language to English. The change is only temporary and only to make the configuration change. To make it simpler, just click on this link which loads the English Account Settings right away.

One problem that users may run into is that the app for Android, iPhone or Blackberry devices may not be available in their local marketplace yet. This was for instance the case when I tried to load the Google Authenticator app on my Samsung Android device. SMS verification seems to be available on the other hand but it is not clear if it is available in all countries or only select countries.

This works for Google Apps users as well. They need to open Advanced Tools on the Google Apps dashboard and enable Two-step-verification next to the Authentication setting there. Once done it is possible to activate 2-step-verification under the Google Account settings.

The 2-step verification is currently rolled out to all users. You can check the Account Settings page to see if the “Using 2-step verification” link is already available under Personal Settings > Security.

But what does it do? It basically adds a second login step after the username and password have been entered. It is possible to receive the code via SMS, a call from Google or with a software that gets installed on the phone so that the code can be generated by the user without direct contact to Google. The software is available for Android, BlackBerry or iPhone devices

The code is a unique temporary verification code that needs
to be entered during login.

Once you enable 2-step verification, you’ll see an extra page that prompts you for a code when you sign in to your account. After entering your password, Google will call you with the code, send you an SMS message or give you the choice to generate the code for yourself using a mobile application on your Android, BlackBerry or iPhone device. The choice is up to you. When you enter this code after correctly submitting your password we’ll have a pretty good idea that the person signing in is actually you.

A hacker would need access to both the phone and the Google login information to access the account. While that is still possible under certain circumstances it eliminates many possible attack vectors.

The verification code can be remembered for 30 days on a specific computer so that it only needs to be entered again once the 30 days are over. There is also an option to create a one-time application specific password to sign in from non-browser based applications that do not prompt for the code.

A backup phone and backup codes can be created in case the phone gets destroyed, stolen or lost.

Users need to carry their phone with them if they want to access the Google account. They also need to make sure that the phone is accessible, as it is not possible to log into the account if it is not. (via)

How does this work? Using the IP address you provide to us, our automated system can determine your broad geographic location. If you log in using a remote IP address, our system will flag it for you. So if you normally log into your account from your home in California and then a few hours later your account is logged in from France, you’ll get a notice like the one above at the top of your Dashboard page – alerting you to the change and providing links for more details. [via]

Google has now rolled out the feature to all Google services, and will display suspicious account activity in the Google Dashboard.

This means that they now check the IP address in all Google services and not only Gmail, a useful change that adds to the security of the account.

google dashboard

Two links are provided in the notification message, details opens a small popup with additional information about the account activity listing the location, IP address and date and time. The alert can be ignored or closed in this popup. The other option is to change the Google Account password, an option that is also provided directly in the initial notification message.

The only problem with this service is that most users probably do not access the dashboard regularly, if at all. It would be great if the feature would be activated for all Google services so that the suspicious account activity would be displayed right there. Up until then it might be wise to visit the Google Dashboard regularly to check the account.

Supported are the web browsers Google Chrome and Internet Explorer as well as the desktop applications Google Talk, Google Picasa, Google Desktop Search and Gmail Notifier.

Google Password Decrypter displays the username of the currently logged in user as well as the version of Internet Explorer. A click on the Start Recovery button will initiate a scan for installed Google applications on the computer system.

If the password is stored for any supported applications it will automatically be decrypted by the program. The software then lists the application the password was found, the Google username and the Google password in its interface.

The password is hidden by default for security purposes. A click on the Show Password button displays the passwords.

It has to be noted that only passwords and usernames of the currently logged in user are discovered. To display usernames and passwords of another user select Run As from the right-click menu first or log into that user account in Windows before starting the application.

The Google account information can be saved as a text or html file by clicking on the links in the program’s interface.

The developer has created a page with information on the procedure that is being used to recover the Google username and password. This page can be accessed here.

Google Password Decrypter is a portable program for 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. It can be downloaded from the developer’s homepage.

A lot of information are displayed in Google Dashboard many with links to the services to look and manage the information. It is likely that a lot of Google users will be surprised at the wealth of information that are displayed in Google Dashboard.

Probably even more useful than the display of the data are links to various privacy policies and options to clear or manage the data that gets stored in the accounts. It is for example possible to use a link to remove items or clear the web history, manage privacy settings in Orkut or Google Reader, manage Gmail https settings or manage Blogger blogs.

In an effort to provide you with greater transparency and control over their own data, we’ve built the Google Dashboard. Designed to be simple and useful, the Dashboard summarizes data for each product that you use (when signed in to your account) and provides you direct links to control your personal settings. Today, the Dashboard covers more than 20 products and services, including Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Web History, Orkut, YouTube, Picasa, Talk, Reader, Alerts, Latitude and many more. The scale and level of detail of the Dashboard is unprecedented, and we’re delighted to be the first Internet company to offer this — and we hope it will become the standard. Watch this quick video to learn more and then try it out for yourself at www.google.com/dashboard.

Google Dashboard is definitely an interesting concept to manage many privacy related tasks from one central interface. Users who want to try it out to see the data that is stored in their Google account can visit the Google Dashboard website directly. (via official Google Blog and Connected Internet.

• Files must be fairly high-resolution — rule of thumb is 10 pixel character height.
• Maximum file size: 10MB, maximum resolution: 25 mega pixel
• The larger the file, the longer the OCR operation will take (500K: ~15s, 2MB: ~40s, 10MB: forever)

Supported image formats that are uploaded on the demonstration page will be turned into text documents and displayed in Google Docs once the process has been completed. The quality depends largely on the quality of the image. It is usually necessary to look over the text and correct errors that have been made during character recognition. Google Docs helps in the error correction by underlining unknown words in red in its interface. It still takes some time to correct the errors.

The OCR demonstration is linked to a Google Docs account but not integrated into Google Docs yet. It is very likely that Google will integrated OCR capabilities to Google Docs in the near future. You can use the demonstration page for now to test the OCR service.

The option to enter a cell phone number and recover the Google account password by SMS was only available to US users. Google seems to have changed this frequently as German users (and probably users from other countries such as the UK, France or Canada) can now add a cell phone number to their account as well to use the SMS for password recovery.

The option is available after logging in (at any Google service), selecting the My Account link on the top right corner of the screen and the Change password recovery options link under Security. Please let us know where you are from and if you are seeing the SMS option under security.

Google Talk is not only used by individuals who want to chat with their family, friends and relatives but also by businesses who use it to communicate with customers and for internal support. One of the problems that users do experience is that there is not a way to let the user initiating the communication know that they are not available at that time.

Enter Google Talk Autoreply; A lightweight Open-Source computer program that can be used to configure auto-replies that notify the Google Talk user that the person is currently not in the place to answer.

The message that is automatically posted whenever the Google Talk Autoreply client is running can be configured individually. This message is then send to users who try to contact the user running Google Talk Autoreply.

Security conscious users might want to analyze the source code as a Google account username and password have to be supplied. Google Talk Autoreply is available at the project’s homepage at Codeplex.

The common security options to avoid this horror scenario are a secondary email and a security question that can be used to recover a Google account. Google users from the United States have another option at their disposal which has been added recently to Google: The ability to recover an account password by a SMS that is send to a cell phone.

The option is currently only visible to US visitors. The Googlesystem blog suggested to use a US proxy server so that the option would become visible to users from other countries as well. I personally would not be using a proxy server to log into important web account. The possibility is there however and you can check out their blog post for some pointers. It is apparently possible to select another country from the list which makes it strange why they are not enabling the option for all users.

Users from the US or those using a US based proxy can open the Google Accounts page to enter a cell phone number as an additional method of restoring a Google account. It is likely that Google will roll out the feature soon for other countries as well.