by Kristin Burnham

Summer of Google: 10 Hot New Features

News
Aug 30, 20115 mins

Some businesses embraced the relaxed pace of summer, but not Google. Check out how Google was beating the heat and rolled out 10 new tools for shopping, tracking weather and more.

Shop With Google Catalogs

If you’re looking to ditch your catalog subscriptions, check out Google Catalogs. Catalogs is a free app for tablet devices that lets you browse a number of catalogs from categories such as fashion and apparel, beauty, jewelry, home, kids and gifts, and lets you interact with the content.

Using your tablet device, you can zoom in to see products up close, tap on tags to learn more about an item, view photo albums and videos, find products in nearby stores, check out collages created by others, share products with friends and more.

Google News Badges

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Following in the footsteps of Foursquare and other social networks, Google jumped on the badge bandwagon, rolling out Google News Badges — icons and levels you collect based on the volume and type of Google News Stories you read.

Once you start accruing badges, you can share them with friends by hovering over the badge and clicking one of the share icons. When you share a badge, it reveals your badge’s name and level, as well as the rough number of articles you have read about that badge’s topic. Your friends won’t see the specific articles that you have read.

Google News Badges: The Price Is Your Privacy