On the alert for bloggers

Posted by Naga Sridhar Kataru, Software Engineer

So many interesting blogs and so little time! If you're anything like me, you like to pick and choose what posts you read on any given blog. You may only want to read a post about a topic of your interest, or perhaps you only want to read blog posts by a particular writer or two. Hence the new Blog Alert, which notifies you about new blog search results. We've also added a Comprehensive Alert, which can show results from multiple sources (including Google News, the web, and blogs) so you get fuller information whenever your favorite topics appear online. Here are a few examples to get you going:

-- You want to know when anyone blogs about global warming.

-- You like to track all Google mentions on Slashdot.

-- You're a bit obsessed with chocolate recipes on food blogs.

-- You need to know when RottenTomatoes covers Will Ferrell.

-- That well-known search pundit John Battelle seems to have a lot to say.

And now, it's your turn to make some of your own.

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Scary stories

Posted by Arielle Reinstein, Associate Product Marketing Manager

“I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him.” -- Edgar Allen Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart.

Some people dress up in wacky costumes (like us), others carve pumpkins or stay home to pass out treats (my personal favorite is the fun-sized Hershey’s Special Dark Chocolate bars – yum). To help get you in the Halloween spirit, we’ve gathered some of the best classic spine-tingling tales you can find in Google Book Search. At google.com/scarystories, you can rediscover spooky classics like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, as well as explore less well-known tales like Thomas Hardy’s Victorian ghost story, "The Withered Arm".

Whenever you see a "Download" button, you're free to download, save, and print a PDF version to read at your own pace. If you decide you want a bound copy, the "All editions" link will show you multiple editions, many of which are available to buy.

We hope exploring these classics helps make your Halloween special -- maybe even keeps you up for a night or two. Please note that some of these books may not be in the public domain everywhere in the world. Where copyright status is in question, we do not enable Full View access or downloading.

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Do you "Google?"

Posted by Michael Krantz, Google Blog Team

Q: What do zippers, baby oil, brassieres and trampolines have in common?

A: No, the answer isn't that they're all part of the setup for a highly inappropriate joke. In fact, the above list (along with thermos, cellophane, escalator, elevator, dry ice and many more) are all words that fell victim to those products' very success and, as they became more and more popular, slipped from trademarked status into common usage.

Will "Google" manage to avoid this fate? This year has brought a spate of news stories about the word's addition to the Merriam-Webster and the Oxford English dictionaries, an honor that's simultaneously highly flattering and faintly unsettling. Consider, for example, this passage from a New York Times story published last May:

"Jim sent a message introducing himself and asking, 'Do you want to make a movie?'" Mr. Fry recalled in a telephone interview from his home in Buda, Tex. 'So we Googled him, he passed the test, and T called him. That was in March 1996; we spent the summer coming up with the story, and we pitched it that fall.'"

Now, since Larry and Sergey didn't actually launch Google until 1998, Mr. Fry's usage of 'Google' is as distressing to our trademark lawyers as it is thrilling to our marketing folks. So, lest our name go the way of the elevators and escalators of yesteryear, we thought it was time we offered this quick semantic primer.

A trademark is a word, name, symbol or device that identifies a particular company's products or services. Google is a trademark identifying Google Inc. and our search technology and services. While we're pleased that so many people think of us when they think of searching the web, let's face it, we do have a brand to protect, so we'd like to make clear that you should please only use "Google" when you’re actually referring to Google Inc. and our services.

Here are some hopefully helpful examples.

Usage: 'Google' as noun referring to, well, us.
Example: "I just love Google, they're soooo cute and cuddly and adorable and awesome!"
Our lawyers say: Good. Very, very good. There's no question here that you're referring to Google Inc. as a company. Use it widely, and hey, tell a friend.

Usage: 'Google' as verb referring to searching for information on, um, Google.
Example: "I googled him on the well-known website Google.com and he seems pretty interesting."
Our lawyers say: Well, we're happy at least that it's clear you mean searching on Google.com. As our friends at Merriam-Webster note, to "Google" means "to use the Google search engine to find information about (as a person) on the World Wide Web."

Usage: 'Google' as verb referring to searching for information via any conduit other than Google.
Example: "I googled him on Yahoo and he seems pretty interesting."
Our lawyers say: Bad. Very, very bad. You can only "Google" on the Google search engine. If you absolutely must use one of our competitors, please feel free to "search" on Yahoo or any other search engine.

Thanks for your attention, and we look forward to serving your search-related information needs again soon.

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Google Earth voter guide

Posted by Hans Riemer, Political & Issues Director, Rock the Vote

The 2004 election saw a big rise in voter participation, particularly among the young generation. From my perch at Rock the Vote, I believe one reason the trend is finally moving in the right direction is the rise of such Internet tools as online voter registration. So I jumped at the chance to tell you about the new U.S. Election Guide in Google Earth.

If you’ve already turned on the guide as a layer in Google Earth, you might already have noticed the patriotic stars now adorning the U.S. map. There’s one for every congressional district. Click on the star and it opens a set of links to useful voter tools. First, you can click to register to vote. I love this because so many people still think that in order to register, you need help from a government employee or political activist. Wrong. You can register yourself to vote by getting your forms online and sending them in by mail. Spread the word!

Second, there are links to news, web and photo searches for candidates for the U.S. House and Senate races on November 7. Now, I think a squirrel could figure out which way to go on our presidential candidates and political parties. But an educated vote does require some Google searching, especially when candidates try so hard to blur the differences.

This is a promising direction for Google and I hope it’s the start of something big. I’m looking forward to the day when voter participation tools are ubiquitous online -- and for those of you with any inclination to get involved, there’ll be nothing standing in your way.

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Eureka! Your own search engine has landed!

Posted by Shashi Seth and R.V. Guha, Google Co-op team

Wouldn't it be cool if you could easily build a search engine on your blog or website tailored to the topics and areas you know and love the most? You're not alone if you'd like that -- we've heard from partners large and small, and users across the web who want access to the Google search platform, and want to customize and make it their own.

We're thrilled to tell you that the search for your own search engine is over. Today we are launching the Google Custom Search Engine. As you might imagine, it's a simple and straightforward product to use and understand. In a matter of minutes you can create a search engine that reflects your knowledge and interests; looks and feels like your own; and, if you choose, you can make money from the traffic you receive through Google's AdSense program. You can even invite your friends and trusted community members to add to and help build your search engine.

Finding specific information has never been so easy, and there's no programming knowledge or cost involved. We worked with a few initial partners to demonstrate the power of the customization features. Check out the search engine RealClimate.org built to better connect their users to the environmental science information they are looking for. Intuit created a search engine for their JumpUp.com site, finding that it met the needs of their small business customers. But the Custom Search Engine is not just for businesses. Since Shashi is passionate about wine, he created a "wine search engine" and put it on his wine blog so his friends can search for wine-related topics from there.

You can build a Custom Search Engine on any topic you like. Give it a try.

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The rebirth of cool

Posted by Silas Reyes, Webmaster, Mobile team

Have you ever been involved in a project that you've seen evolve from an idea to a work in progress to a full-fledged product? I just had that experience with mobile.google.com. If you visited that URL yesterday, you would have seen some pretty basic information presented in a fairly simple format. Today you'll find a streamlined layout and some new ways to learn about Google's mobile offerings. Want to take a live test run of the traffic feature on Google Maps for mobile? Or maybe figure out how to stay on top of your Gmail using your phone? We've included video tutorials or emulators for every service or application, and we've designed the pages in such a way as to make it easy to learn more about the mobile offerings you're interested in. You can even have Google send a link to your mobile device via a text message that will help you start using Google mobile services with just a few clicks. You just enter your mobile number on the desktop version of mobile.google.com and we'll text you the link.

My favorite part of the site is probably the Google SMS demo. I think this SMS search is one of the coolest out there, and I'm always urging my friends and family to give it a try. The demo shows you firsthand just how useful and easy to use SMS is, with more than a dozen sample queries to try out and a search box for typing in your own. In fact I'm playing around with it now -- did you know that you can use Google SMS to get the address of an Ethiopian restaurant in Chicago, the exchange rate for dollars to baht, a weather forecast for Wamego, Kansas, or the score of the latest MLB playoff game?

Anyway, if you haven't already, head over to this new improved site and give it a whirl. And as always, don't be shy about sending us feedback -- we're always looking for ways we can make it even better.

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Heading to the X Prize Cup

Posted by Brian McClendon, Engineering Director, Google Earth

Heading to the desert to watch rockets launch and jets fly is fun all by itself. Doing it as part of an outdoor space exposition, with multimillion dollar prizes to help accelerate space development, is even better!

I'll be going to the Wirefly X PRIZE Cup in Las Cruces, New Mexico this weekend and it promises to be a blast! It turns out the XPRIZE Cup organizers are using Google Earth to share all kinds of information about space. Models of spacecraft and space stations, locations of launch sites, space centers all over the world, and even the locations of the moon trees (from seeds taken to the moon during Apollo).

Not only that, but we have helped create a 3-D model of the X PRIZE Cup event in Google Earth, or you can watch this video.

If you're coming to Las Cruces, come to the Google booth, where we will demonstrate the Google Earth content in person. Or see it now at this special Google page dedicated to what's happening at the Wirefly X PRIZE Cup.

Space is the final frontier, and many of us here at Google would like to join the adventure. Besides, if these X PRIZE events are successful, we may finally be able to go to space ourselves and take some of our own satellite photos for Google Earth!

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