Launching Google Wallet on Sprint and working with Visa, American Express and Discover

Launching Google Wallet on Sprint and working with Visa, American Express and Discover: In May we announced Google Wallet—an app that makes your phone your wallet—with Citi, MasterCard, Sprint and First Data. With Google Wallet, you can tap, pay and save using your phone and near field communication (NFC).



We’ve been testing it extensively, and today we’re releasing the first version of the app to Sprint. That means we’re beginning to roll out Google Wallet to all Sprint Nexus S 4G phones through an over-the-air update—just look for the “Wallet” app. Here’s a demo of Google Wallet in action:







Google Wallet enables you to pay with your Citi MasterCard credit card and the Google Prepaid Card, which can be funded with any of your existing plastic credit cards. As a thanks to early adopters, we’re adding a $10 free bonus to the Google Prepaid Card if you set it up in Google Wallet before the end of the year.



When we announced Google Wallet, we pledged a commitment to an open commerce ecosystem. We appreciate Citi and MasterCard for being our launch partners. And today, Visa, Discover and American Express have made available their NFC specifications that could enable their cards to be added to future versions of Google Wallet.



Our goal is to make it possible for you to add all of your payment cards to Google Wallet, so you can say goodbye to even the biggest traditional wallets. In fact, we’ve got a video of our first customer, someone who is ready to replace his famously over-stuffed wallet. We hope Google Wallet gives him “serenity now.”



This is still just the beginning, and while we’re excited about this first step, we look forward to bringing Google Wallet to more phones in the future. You can learn more about Google Wallet at google.com/wallet.



Posted by Osama Bedier, Vice President of Payments

Comment-only access in Google documents

Comment-only access in Google documents: In the past several months, we’ve added new discussion and commenting features to improve collaboration in Google documents. As an engineer, I often create docs with design concepts and send them to my team to review and provide feedback, and we use the commenting features to facilitate these discussions. Sometimes, I want to let team members view and make comments without allowing them to directly edit my document.

Over the next several days, we're releasing a new sharing option so that you can let people view and add comments to your documents without giving them edit access. To give comment-only access to your document, click on the Share button. From there, add in the contact you’d like to share your document with, and select Can comment.


You can also choose to give comment-only access to anyone with the link or anyone on the web by changing the sharing settings within the document. To do this, click Change in the sharing settings window and change visibility options to Public on the web or Anyone with the link, then change the access options to Can comment.

Similarly, if you’re using a Google Apps account, click Change in the sharing settings and select either “People at [your domain] who have the link can access” or “People at [your domain] can find and access.” Then change access option to Can comment.


Users that have comment-only access can view your document and add comments throughout -- without being able to change the content of the document directly.

We hope this latest feature in discussions helps you get the feedback you need while providing you with more control over the content in your docs. So comment away and tell us what you think -- below or in the forum.

Posted by: Sarah Wu, Software Engineer

This week in Docs: Format painter, Google Fusion Tables, and drag & drop images

This week in Docs: Format painter, Google Fusion Tables, and drag & drop images: This week in Docs, we’re introducing three new tools that put the fun in functional.

Format painter in Google documents

First, we’ve added a format painter to help you copy formatting within Google documents. The new format painter allows you to copy the style of your text, including font, size, color and other formatting options and apply it somewhere else in your document. To use the format painter, select the text for the formatting you want to copy, press the paintbrush button in your toolbar, and then select the text where you want to apply that formatting.

If you double-click on the format painter icon, you’ll enter a mode that lets you select multiple sections of text so you can apply the same formatting to each section.

You can also use keyboard shortcuts for format painting. To copy the style of your selected text, press Ctrl+Option+C for Mac or Ctrl+Alt+C for Windows. To apply any copied styles to whatever text you have selected, press Ctrl+Option+V for Mac or Ctrl+Alt+V for Windows.

Google Fusion Tables in documents list

With this week’s update, we’re also integrating Google Fusion Tables into your documents list. Google Fusion Tables is a data management web application that makes it easy to gather, visualize and collaborate on data online. Now you’ll be able to store and share your Fusion Tables with the rest of the files in your documents list.

Recently, people have used Google Fusion Tables to:

• Visualize evacuation zones for New York City during Hurricane Irene
  
• Host data sets
made public by the State of California

• Gather data from local flu shot clinics for Google Flu Vaccine Finder
  
• Map shelters and road status during the tsunami crisis in Japan

Go to Create new > Table from your documents list menu to get started visualizing or sharing tables of data in .csv, .xls or .kml files.

We're working on making Google Fusion Tables available to Google Apps customers and will let you know as soon as they are. Take a tour to learn more about Google Fusion Tables.

Drag & drop images in Google drawings

We also made it easier to add images from your desktop to Google drawings. If you’re using the latest version of Chrome, Safari, or Firefox, you can now drag an image from your desktop and drop it directly in the drawing canvas.


Give these tools a try and let us know what you think in the comments.

Posted by: Micah Lemonick, Software Engineer

Updated 9/13 to add shortcuts for Windows

How to Force Install Incompatible Addons in Firefox

How to Force Install Incompatible Addons in Firefox:

Oftentimes you may update Firefox only to find that your favorite addon is incompatible. Since downgrading isn't a viable option, you may be at a loss for options. However, often the addon itself is actually compatible, but the version in the addon needs updating. This article will demonstrate how to override this in Firefox.

Edit Steps

1. 
   Navigate to Help->About Firefox. Make note of the version number listed here, you will need it later on. In this example, it is Firefox 6 (6.0).
   
2. Navigate to the Firefox preferences editor. You can do this by typing "about:config" in the address bar and hitting Enter. You will be prompted with a warning about being careful. Click "I'll be careful, I promise!".
   
   
   
   
   
3. 
   Create a new key. To do this, right click in the body of the preferences. A menu will be displayed. Click New->Boolean. A boolean value just means one that is either true or false.
   
   • Note: If this key already exists, you can right-click on it and click "Toggle" so that it says "false" under "Value".
     
   
   
4. Enter the preference name. This follows the format of "extensions.checkCompatibility" followed by the version number. In Firefox 6, for example, the preference name would be "extensions.checkCompatibility.6.0". Enter it and click OK.
   
   
   
   
   
5. Select 'false' in the list box to set this setting to false. This will disable the Firefox compatibility checking.
   
   
   
   
   
6. Restart Firefox for the changes to take effect.
   

Edit Video

Edit Tips

• You could also use the Nightly Tester Tools extension available at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nightly-tester-tools/ to override compatibility checking.
  

Edit Warnings

• Forcing addons to install can risk data loss or broken features if the addons aren't designed to be run on the newer version of Firefox. Be especially cautious with themes and skins.
  

Edit Things You'll Need

• Firefox
  

Edit Related wikiHows

• How to Use Mozilla Firefox
  
• How to Install Firefox Extensions
  
• How to Backup Firefox Extensions, Bookmarks, Themes and Preferences
  
• How to Install Add Ons in Mozilla Firefox
  
• How to Add a Theme to Firefox
  

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