450 new fonts and 60 new templates in Google Docs

Google announced that it is adding 450 new fonts and 60 new templates to its word processing program Google Docs

Google software engineer Isabella Ip wrote in a company blog post.

“Today, we added over 450 new fonts to Google documents to make it easier for you to add a little something extra to whatever you create.”

The way users choose new fonts is by clicking on the font menu in Google Docs and selecting “add fonts.” People will then be taken to a menu of all the Google Web Fonts available. The types of fonts range from straightforward and business-like to scripty to cartoonish. These are the same fonts offered on Google’s Web Fonts site for designers.

The 60 new templates are designed for work, home, school, fun, holiday, and more. Examples of some of the types of templates include resumes, newsletters, recipes, photo sharing, and legal invoices.

Google has worked on vast improvements to its word processing program since it launched in 2007, including the addition of more than 200 updates to the core apps suite in the past year. These changes are apparently causing some users to make the switch from Microsoft Word.

Other Google Docs announcements from today include more options for inserting images into documents, charts in spreadsheets now have support for minor gridlines and customization, and users can set the default page size for new documents.

Cyber-Attacks Up 81% in 2011, SMBs Increasingly Targeted

Hackers stole 187 million personal identities last year, with the average yield per data breach amounting to 1.1 million identities, Symantec said. Identity theft gleaned from lost or stolen PCs or mobile devices also exposed 18.5 million identities in 2011. And malicious attacks increased by 81 percent in comparison with Symantec’s 2010 estimates.

Google’s ex-CEO gets $101M pay package in new job

Shifting from Google’s CEO to executive chairman proved to be lucrative career move for Eric Schmidt.

Google Inc. awarded Schmidt a compensation package valued at $101 million last year, according to a Friday regulatory filing. The amount is 322 times higher than the $313,219 package that Schmidt received in 2010 during his final full year as the Internet search leader’s CEO.

Schmidt, 56, ended a decade-long stint as Google’s CEO last April and turned over the job to Google co-founder Larry Page.

Shortly before the change in command, Google gave Schmidt stock and stock options valued at nearly $94 million, according to the company’s proxy statement. Google had designed the stock and stock option package to be worth $100 million, but the compensation formula spelled out by securities regulators arrived at a slightly different calculation.

To top it off, Google raised Schmidt’s salary from $1 annually as CEO to $1.25 million as executive chairman. His 2011 salary ended up being $937,500 because he spent the first three months of the year in the lower-paying job as CEO.

The rest of Schmidt’s 2011 compensation consisted of a $6 million bonus and perks worth nearly $264,000. Schmidt deposited half of his bonus last year in a company plan that can defer payment for up to five years.

Page’s compensation package totaled $1 last year, consisting solely of a nominal salary. He has maintained a $1 salary since 2005, although in some years he has accepted the Google’s companywide holiday bonus. That’s what happened in 2010 when Page’s pay package totaled $1,723.

Weekly paychecks, annual bonuses and stock options haven’t been essential to Schmidt or Page since Google’s initial public offering of stock in August 2004. That IPO turned them, along with Google co-founder Sergey Brin, into multibillionaires who are perennials on Forbes’ list of the world’s richest people.

Forbes’ latest rankings estimate Page, 39, and Brin, 38, are each worth nearly $19 billion. The magazine pegs Schmidt’s wealth at nearly $7 billion.

Like Page, Brin limited his pay package last year to $1.

Since Google’s IPO, Schmidt’s total compensation package as CEO had never exceeded $560,000, based on an analysis of Google’s past regulatory filings. From 2004 through 2010, Schmidt’s combined compensation totaled $2.2 million.

In his new job as executive chairman, Schmidt serves as a company ambassador who meets with government regulators, explores potential acquisitions and makes public appearances.

In its proxy statement, Google described Schmidt’s big stock and stock option package as a way to recognize his accomplishments as CEO. When Schmidt took in job in 2002, Google had annual revenue of $86 million and fewer than 300 employees. In Schmidt’s final full year as CEO, Google had grown to a company with $29 billion in revenue and more than 24,000 employees.

Even after last year’s big windfall, Schmidt is still raising cash. In February, he filed plans to sell up to 2.4 million shares of stock currently worth about $1.4 billion.

Page and Brin are in the process of selling 5 million Google shares apiece under a program scheduled to be completed in 2015.

Page, Brin and Schmidt have been Google’s controlling shareholders since the IPO, thanks to a special class of stock that gives them 10 times the voting power of other shareholders. To ensure they remain in power as Google doles out more stock to pay employees and finance acquisitions, Brin and Page are pursuing a 2-for-1 stock split that will create new class of shares with zero voting power.

The unusual stock split announced last week has been derided by corporate governance experts who oppose disenfranchising other shareholders.

But the proposal is almost certain to be approved at Google’s June 21 annual meeting because Page, Brin and Schmidt support it.

Friday’s regulatory filing disclosed that the idea for the stock split was first broached in June 2010. Google’s board then formed a special committee to analyze the pros and cons. After some haggling with Brin and Page over the limits on their control, the board reached a compromise earlier this month.

Apple, Google and Others to Face Former Employees’ Antitrust Suit

A federal court in California has ordered seven technology companies in the state including Apple, Intel, Adobe and Google to face a private antitrust suit from five former employees, who alleged that the companies conspired to eliminate competition between them for skilled labor to suppress compensation and mobility of employees.

District Judge Lucy H. Koh of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Jose division ruled on Wednesday that the plaintiffs’ antitrust claims cannot be dismissed on the basis of implausibility, and that they have adequately pleaded antitrust injury as a result of six agreements among the companies.

Judge Koh was ruling on a joint motion by the defendant companies to dismiss the complaint filed under the Sherman Act and Cartwright Act antitrust laws.

The former employees, all software engineers, had charged that from 2005 to 2007 the defendants had entered into nearly identical “do not cold call” bilateral agreements whereby each placed the employees of the other in a “do not cold call” list with instructions to recruiters not to “cold call” these employees.

In a properly functioning and lawfully competitive labor market, each defendant would compete for employees by soliciting or “cold calling” current employees of one or more other defendants, the plaintiffs said.

“The fact that all six identical bilateral agreements were reached in secrecy among seven Defendants in a span of two years suggests that these agreements resulted from collusion, and not from coincidence,” Judge Koh wrote in her 29-page order.

“For example, it strains credulity that Apple and Adobe reached an agreement in May 2005 that was identical to the “Do Not Cold Call” agreement Pixar entered into with Lucasfilm in January 2005,” Judge Koh added.

The seven companies were also investigated in this connection by the U.S. Department of Justice, and they settled in 2010 while admitting no wrongdoing, but agreed not to ban cold calling and not to enter into any agreements that prevent competition for employees.

It is reasonable to infer that such significant wide-ranging, company-wide, and worldwide policies would have been approved at the highest level, Judge Koh said referring to the six agreements.

The alleged role of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in the agreements has been referred to by the plaintiffs. Jobs is for example alleged to have threatened Palm with litigation for not entering into a “do not cold call” agreement, according to the plaintiffs. The conspiracy consisted of an interconnected web of express bilateral agreements, each with the active involvement and participation of a company under the control of the late Steve Jobs and/or a company whose board shared at least one member of Apple’s board of directors, the plaintiffs said according to the court document.

Stock trading via Facebook coming

Let’s say you want to buy shares in ACME Corp. and don’t want to pay a fee or go through a discount brokerage firm.

Facebook, which will become publicly traded soon, will allow ACME and thousands of other companies to offer their stock through their company Facebook page by June, according to a Business Insider report.

The transactions will be free to the investor, with no brokers involved, the website reported, citing a former Facebook executive appearing at an Ad Age digital conference.

Chris Kelly, a former Facebook chief privacy officer and now a director at Loyal3, said there will be a $2,500-a-month cap on investments to deter day traders. Loyal3 has developed a platform for buying and selling stock.

According to Business Insider and other market speculation, Facebook’s initial public offering could come toward the latter part of May and the company could have a valuation of at least $100 billion.

Gmail Meter Tracks Your Email Statistics

Google has just posted about Gmail Meter on the Gmail blog, a Google Apps Script designed to give users more insight on everything email. We’re talking word count, category distribution, traffic, and more. Last month, Google unveiled Account Activity, a beta feature that allows uses to track how they are using their Google account – stuff like search queries, check-in locations with Google latitude, global authentication stats, and more. A cursory Gmail stat tracker is included in your Account Activity report, but Gmail tracker gets into the specifics. Gmail Meter will show you your overall statistics, like number of emails received and sent. It will also give you insight into your daily and weekly email traffic. It will show you where your messages reside, like in the inbox, archived, or in trash (percentage wise), as well as how long it takes for you and others to respond to emails. There’s much more, which will all be included in a monthly report – one similar to what you’ll get if you’re signed up for Account Activity.

Here’s how you set it up:

It is easy to set up Gmail Meter. First, go to Google Docs and open a Spreadsheet. Click on Tools > Script Gallery. Search for “Gmail Meter” and click Install. You will now see a new menu item called Gmail Meter on your spreadsheet. Click on Gmail Meter > Get a Report. You can then choose the type of report. Preparing a report may take some time and you will get an email once the report is ready.

Alienware M11x reaching end of life

Alienware’s M11x 11.6-inch gaming ultraportable was conspicuous by its absence from the Dell-owned company’s M14x, M17x and M18x refresh earlier today, and in fact there’s bad news if you’ve been holding out for a pocket powerhouse. According to Alienware, there are no plans to update the M11x from its current configuration, after user feedback indicated that gaming and ultrabook-style portability don’t necessarily go together so well.

 

Apparently the absence of an optical drive was one of the biggest limiting factors; Alienware’s design team had thought digital distribution, such as Steam, would be sufficient to make the lack of a DVD or Blu-ray workable, but it turns out gamers like their optical media too much. The reduced size keyboard was also cited as an issue.

Alienware was keen to reiterate that sales of the M11x had been – and continue to be – brisk, but it’s clear that the company is looking to its larger, more traditional gaming notebooks for the future. The M11x won’t be deleted from the line-up immediately, but with updates not forthcoming it’s only a matter of time before it disappears from sight.

In many ways it’s a shame – a compact notebook with enough power to run modern games seems like a no-brainer for mobile users – but increasing performance from ARM-based devices has undoubtedly eaten into what market it has. iPad games aren’t quite at the same level as the sort of play possible on the M11x (or, indeed, its siblings) but the industry is certainly headed in that direction.

Rumours says Google is launching it own cloud-based storage drive – Google Drive

Drive.

The Next Web was lucky enough to get a heads up on what’s expected, and based on the details, it seems like competitors may be given a run for their money.

Space

The site which is expected to launch at http://drive.google.com will offer users a free online storage service with 5GB of space, with the option to upgrade at a small cost. There are no details yet about referral upgrades though. Dropbox users on the other hand start off at 2GB and also have to pay to upgrade. Their referral program however allows users to upgrade up to 16GB for free, and HTC users even get a special free 23GB upgrade for 2 years.

Until Google details their referral scheme, it’s hard to make judgement just yet, but starting with 5GB is definitely a big incentive for many over Dropbox. As a Dropbox user, I’ve found it hard to get referrals because of the fact that so many of my friends already have an account with them. There are some clever ways to upgrade, but most can’t be bothered.

Platforms

Google Drive will first debut on the PC, Mac, Android, and iOS systems. This alone was a good decision because they target a huge demographic of users. While Dropbox is also available on a few other Platforms such as Blackberry and Linux, Google Drive will still be available for most of the masses.

Integration

One of Google’s most prized services is Google Docs. It has revolutionized the way people share office/school/home documents over the web. There are rumours that Google Drive will also feature some type of real-time document editing service similar to that or even integrated into Google Docs. This alone could be a huge draw for many. Dropbox does offer real time syncing, but editing it means users have to completely sync a file before others can edit it, and edits can only be made by one users at a time per sync (for management’s sake).

While Google has had its share of failed services such as Wave and Plus, Drive sounds like an extremely competitive service when compared to Dropbox, and we can’t wait to try it out.

There are other services like iCloud, Box.net, and SkyDrive, which offer similar services but still lack in various areas such as bandwidth limits and lack of real time syncing.

Google Earth adds balloon and kite aerial imagery, invites you to contribute

Google Earth already offers quite a variety of ways to explore the planet, but the folks in Mountain View never seem content to leave things alone for long. Their latest addition is some aerial imagery of a slightly different sort — images shot from ordinary balloons and kites. That initial batch of photos comes courtesy of the The Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science, which is itself a grassroots effort that anyone can contribute to. And that’s apparently what Google hopes folks will do in order to expand the aerial views available — as Google notes on its Lat Long blog, all that you need to get started is a digital camera and about $100 in parts, plus a little initiative.

Gmail is down for some users

 

Some Gmail users are experiencing issues with the email service today. But don’t panic — because Google is aware of the problem and investigating it as you read these words.

There isn’t a lot of information about the problem at this point, but we do know that some users are seeing error messages — most commonly “Temporary Error 500” — and are unable to access their email accounts.

The Google Apps Dashboard doesn’t shed any additional light on things as it simply acknowledges that some users are reporting issues with Gmail and that someone’s looking into things. Supposedly service was already restored for some users and a “resolution for all users” is expected “in the near future.”

Google spokesperson has told following:

We’re aware that some users are experiencing an error when accessing their Gmail.  We’ve implemented a fix and users should be able to access their mail shortly.  We apologize for the inconvenience.   Thanks for your patience.