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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Eric and the NAE

Posted by Vint Cerf, VP and Chief Internet Evangelist

Eric Schmidt was formally inducted as a member of the National Academy of Engineering this past Sunday at the National Academies building in Washington, D.C. Upon receipt of this well-deserved honor, Eric was warmly greeted and high-fived. Congratulations, Eric -- your Googlers are proud of you!

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Looking for Google Talk stories

Posted by Lewis Lin, Product Marketing Manager

Wanted: Stories about how you use Google Talk. Details here.

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Corporate solar is coming

Posted by Robyn Beavers, Corporate Environmental Programs Manager

Epic games of beach volleyball, urban indoor workspaces infused with natural light, enthusiasm for the outdoors – at Google, we've always taken advantage of the sun. And now we're ready to use the sun yet another way: to create clean electricity.

Soon we plan to begin installation of 1.6 megawatts of solar photovoltaic panels at our Mountain View campus. This project will be the largest solar installation on any corporate campus in the U.S., and we think it's one of the largest on any corporate site in the world. The panels will cover the roofs of the four main buildings of the Googleplex, and also those of two additional buildings across the street. There will also be a portion of this installation on new solar panel support structures in a few parking lots. The amount of electricity that will be generated is equivalent to powering about 1,000 average California homes. We’ll use that electricity to power several of our Mountain View office facilities, offsetting approximately 30% of our peak electricity consumption at those buildings.

To tackle this ambitious project, we're partnering with EI Solutions. The installation of clean and renewable power represents a first step in reducing our environmental impact as a company. We believe that improving our environmental practices is not only our responsibility as a corporate citizen, but good business planning -- a new report from the North American Electric Reliability Council suggests that demand continues to outstrip power supply by a considerable margin. And of course by saving electricity (not to mention producing clean renewable energy), we also save money. In fact, we believe this project demonstrates that a large investment in renewable energy can be profitable.

If the business community continues to increase investments and focus on energy efficient and renewable power generation technologies, we have a good feeling that our future will be bright. If you're interested, visit the Solar Electric Power Association.

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Maps in the Palm in your hand

Posted by Jerry Morrison, Tech Lead

Since we first launched Google Maps for mobile devices, we've adapted it to more phones and languages and added features like traffic info. And as of today, the new Palm Treo version answers our top request from users. It's been months in the making, but I think you'll find it worth the wait. We think this is the fastest, slickest version yet, with draggable maps and translucent pop-up balloons that don't hide the map.

If you don't read English, you'll have to wait some more.

There are two ways for Treo users to download Google Maps: visit google.com/gmm on your Treo's web browser, or you if you prefer, download and HotSync® here.

And by the way, the "Do not operate while driving" caution is deadly serious. Please be mindful of pedestrians, bikes, cars, and trees -- not messages and keyboards.

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Music for your eyes

Posted by Jason Liebman, Google Video team

As you might guess, we think free is always better, so we've just announced major partnerships with two of the world's largest music companies -- Sony BMG and Warner Music Group -- to bring thousands of music videos to Google Video via free, ad-supported on-demand streams. And as per our recent announcement with MTV, in the coming months our AdSense partners can put all these great videos on their sites as well.

So now if you're at work, get charged up for that important meeting with a Red Hot Chili Peppers video. Or if you're at home getting ready for a night on the town, you can bring sexy back with Justin Timberlake –- or pretty much anyone else who floats your music-video boat.

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Teacher's helper

Posted by Cristin Frodella, Product Marketing Manager

Create picture collages of famous Americans with Picasa. Find out what Virginia newspapers had to say about the Civil War in 1862 with Google News Archive Search. Check out the pyramids in Egypt with Google Earth, and then build your own with SketchUp.

We’ve been hearing about some pretty cool assignments from classrooms across the U.S. where teachers at all grade levels are using Google products to bring history lessons to life, illuminate new sources of information, and encourage sharing and collaboration. What we’ve also heard loud and clear is that teachers want more information about using Google products, and more connections to other educators who are using the web creatively. This is why we’ve launched a set of resources for K-12 educators today at the new Google for Educators site. Here you'll find teachers’ guides for 12 Google products, including basic information about each, examples of how educators are using them, plus lesson ideas. We’re also offering some additional multimedia content, including lesson plans and videos from Discovery Education that use Google Earth and SketchUp, and a series of podcasts at Infinite Thinking Machine on innovative ways to use the web in the classroom.

So please, teachers, students, and parents -- check it out and let us know what you think. And remember, we've made it impossible to forget your homework when it’s saved safely on Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

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Better together: Docs & Spreadsheets

Posted by Jen Mazzon, Senior Product Marketing Manager

Did you ever notice that some things are just better together? For example, vanilla ice cream: on its own, it's good, but throw some strawberries or chocolate jimmies on it and all of a sudden you've got something truly tasty. I've noticed this combo superiority effect quite a lot lately because, well, I'm pregnant with twins (there's a bit more on our official D&S blog.)

This idea of superior combos is also how I think of the new Google beta service that we've just launched. We took Writely, the Web word processor, and integrated it with Google Spreadsheets. The result is Google Docs & Spreadsheets -- one place where you can create, store, share and publish your documents and spreadsheets online. (Bookmark this: docs.google.com.) Keeping your documents and spreadsheets online is a treat because you can access them from anywhere via a Web browser. You can also get feedback and contributions from others you invite without having to email around copies of files, because the current version is always online.

Get a taste of the Google Docs & Spreadsheets combo with our mini tour. Really, though, the best way to get a flavor is to sample it for yourself. Anyone can use it -- after you log in just click on the links for New Document, New Spreadsheet, or Upload(lets you upload your desktop files) to get going. Help yourself and let us know (via this new D&S Google Group) what you think.

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Score one for the Sun Devils

Posted by Kevin Gough, Product Marketing Manager

As Arizona State University (ASU) gears up to go against USC this weekend, they've already scored a touchdown on campus this week. Today ASU announced that it's making Google Apps for Education available to all of its 65,000 students. Our free hosted email, IM and calendar offering should be a boon for students who need to collaborate on the latest Econ assignment (or plan their tailgate before the game). ASU went for a two-point conversion by using our APIs to integrate Google Apps with their single sign-on system (students only have to log on once to access all their school-related applications and student records system), so that admins can give students an @asu.edu email account when they register for classes. In all, it took ASU less than two weeks from decision to full-scale deployment -- a truly inspired play.

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Greetings, Earthlings!

Posted by Dave Cohen, Software Engineer

On October 14th and 15th, the sleepy desert town of Moab, Utah wakes up to a buzz of excitement. It's not an alien landing and it's not killer bees. It's 24 Hours of Moab, a day-long mountain bike race starting at noon this coming Saturday and ending at noon on Sunday.
And Google will be there! We're team Google Earthlings, five Googlers who love mountain biking. We're not pro riders. In fact, none of us have ever competed in a 24-hour race before, so we don't expect to win ... but we do expect to have a good time and make some noise about Google Earth and Blogger to more than 5,000 riders and spectators!

Sound sweet? Head on over to our team blog and check out our ride reports, rants, and musings, as well as some demos of the really cool stuff you can do with Google Earth.

Gonna be at the race? Swing by our Expo Tent where we'll have laptops running Google Earth so riders can upload their own GPS data and see their home trails in 3D. And, if we can manage to capture an internet signal way out in the middle of the desert, we'll have a couple laptops with Blogger as well, encouraging riders to post their pics, lap times, and ride reports to a team blog. Of course, it wouldn't be a Google event without fun schwag -- we'll be giving away water bottles, blinky pins (we'll be the brightest riders on the course!), T-shirts, and some SketchUp socks. After the race, we'll update the blog with pics and stories, so stay tuned, and see you at the race!

P.S. This is not a fake post.

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Inside Macs at Google

Posted by Rose Yao, Mac Product Manager

As a relatively new Mac user, I've found that I can't get enough of Mac stuff. I eagerly await Apple's next announcements, and scour the web for hints of what that could be. There are a lot of people who love Macs at Google, and we're really excited to contribute to the Mac OS X platform. I know how frustrating it is to not get a regular dose of Mac news or find the Mac application you want. So check out the new Google Mac Blog to get all the news, tips, and insider stories about Macs at Google. Another site you might want to visit is www.google.com/mac. Created by Ryan Brown, an engineer on the Mac team, this site showcases all of the Google applications for the Mac.

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About that fake post

Posted by Karen Wickre, Google Blog team

A bug in Blogger enabled an unauthorized user to make a fake post on the Google Blog last night, claiming that we've discontinued our AdWords click-to-call test. The bug was fixed quickly and the post removed. As for the click-to-call test, it is progressing on schedule, and we're pleased with the results thus far.

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Our security stance

Posted by Heather Adkins, Security Team

Most readers of this blog are familiar with our mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Maintaining the trust of our users and ensuring a positive experience using our products and services is paramount to our ability to accomplish our mission. As a result, Google takes security very seriously and designs all of its services and applications to protect your privacy and data security.

Behind the scenes of these efforts is the Google Security Team. We keep the bad guys out of our systems and have brought you features like the anti-phishing extension in Google Toolbar and warnings about Internet malware. As part of our commitment to security, we're putting up some additional help content to let users and security researchers know how to quickly contact us on these issues.

We've learned that when security is done right, it's done as a community, and this includes everybody: the people who use Google services (thank you all!), the software developers who make our applications, and the external security enthusiasts who keep us on our toes. These combined efforts go a long way toward making the Internet safer and more secure.

Please visit our new security page and feel free to contact us anytime at security@google.com.

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More developer love with Google Code Search

Posted by Bret Taylor, Senior Product Manager

Today we launched Google Code Search, which gives programmers a single place to search publicly accessible source code. I am really excited about this launch, as it caps off a long sequence of Google product launches for developers in the past year, including Google Maps API v2, Google Calendar API, Google Web Toolkit, Google AJAX Search API, Google Checkout API, project hosting on Google Code, Google Base API, and Google Gadgets for Your Page. Google's developer team is focused on building tools that help developers extend and improve Google's products and improve their own applications, and we are really excited to see all the amazing things that have been created already (traffic map for your Google homepage, anyone?).

The success of the Google Maps API taught us that an API doesn't need to be complex to be powerful, and that principle has formed the basis of our API design. If you haven't seen how far cut-and-paste can get you, check out the list of sample applications we've published for the AJAX Search API. Or check out the Google Calendar API examples; to get a feed of your calendar entries, you just need to fetch a single URL from Google's servers.

We have also launched a number of general-purpose developer and open-source tools like Google Web Toolkit and project hosting on Google Code. Our view is what's good for the web is good for Google -- we want users to have the best online experience possible, and we hope these tools will help developers create compelling applications for their users.

So if you haven't been to Google Code lately, check it out. We are continuously adding useful tools to our suite of developer products, and it's a great way to leverage the power of Google's infrastructure in your own projects.

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Got blog? Will ping.

Posted by Nikhil Chandhok, Product Manager

Today we're launching the Google Blog Search Pinging Service, which is a way for individual bloggers and blog platform providers to inform us of content changes. Blogging providers who syndicate RSS/Atom/XML and want to be included in our Blog Search index can now ping us directly. We'll continue to monitor other pinging services and will contribute change notifications to the community. Read more at our FAQ.

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The new Groups experience

Posted by Brett Lider, User Experience Designer, Google Groups

Today, the Google Groups team launched a new beta version, available to anyone at groups-beta.google.com. It may have been awhile since you thought of Groups as cool or sexy — if you ever did — but I couldn’t have been more excited to work on the team responsible for making the current Google Groups better. As a designer, I really relished the opportunity to make a Google product that’s been around for years more compelling and easier to use.

One of the things I'm happiest with in the beta version is the new design for individual groups. It’s cleaner and simpler, and yet manages to integrate a lot more features. Group owners can now create a welcome message, upload a group logo and customize your fonts and colors. You can make your group your own, in other words — something you had been telling us you really wanted.

Another thing I'm particularly proud of is the Pages feature, which lets you create web pages inside your group, and work on them with others. Instead of only offering rigid templates, we integrated many of the functions of Google Page Creator right into Groups, so you can create exactly what your group needs: an essay for school, the history your family, a web page with photos, a list of links, and so on.

Some of the other improvements to Groups include:

• Using Gmail's message cards for discussions, which makes them easier to follow
• Adding a Files section so users can share and collaborate on documents
• Helping groups have a better sense of their members with the Member area

Of course, the current non-beta version of Google Groups is still around and you can still use it (although without the cool new features). But we are going to change all of Groups to this new look soon enough — we’re even trying to (gasp!) take it out of beta reasonably quickly. So try out the new version for yourself. And let us know what else we can do to make the experience even better.

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Accessible Search now has advanced search features

Posted by T.V Raman, Research Scientist

Ever since we launched Google Accessible Search in July, one of the most oft-requested features has been the addition of advanced search capabilities similar to those available on the main Google Search page. In response, we've added an advanced search link at http://labs.google.com/accessible in order to refine your searches in various ways. The order of results will continue to take the accessibility of the search results into account.

Here are the types of advanced queries you can perform:

• restrict search to portions of a page, e.g., the title
• restrict search to results in a given language
• restrict searches to web pages found during a given time period
• restrict searches to content in a given file format

And a lot more that won't fit on the margin of this page --- for complete details, see our Advanced Search Tips.

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The Literacy Project

Posted by Dr. Brij Kothari, Founder and President, PlanetRead & BookBox, Inc.

In India, a country saddled with one-third of the world's literacy problem, there are nearly 300 million people who are illiterate and 400 million who have only a rudimentary knowledge of the alphabet. That's 700 million people who cannot read even a newspaper headline.

As I wrote in December, PlanetRead employs Same Language Subtitling (SLS) to give subconscious reading practice for 30 minutes a week to more than 200 million early-literates in India, operating via 10 TV programmes in 10 languages. We’re hoping to take this project internationally, as well as collaborate with literacy organizations in other parts of the world. That’s why we’re so excited about The Literacy Project -— the initiative announced today by Google, the Frankfurt Book Fair literacy campaign (Litcam), and the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning. (There's also a German version of the Google page.)

The project enables people to find everything -- from videos, books and scholarly articles about literacy to reading groups and literacy-related blogs. PlanetRead is one of the many organisations that is contributing. We’ve uploaded our subtitled videos (take a look!) and are sharing our own literacy research. And the site’s map of world literacy organisations also make it easier for us to connect with partner agencies who want to make literacy a way of life for everyone on this planet.

The idea that others around the world will be able to see what we’re doing —- and in turn, that we’ll be able to see what other people are doing and saying about literacy -— is thrilling, and at the very heart of PlanetRead’s mission to make its projects available to everyone. With each new person that we reach, we come one step closer to solving this truly global problem.

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Yes, you can have a pony

Posted by Adam Sah, Software Engineer

It's crazy over here -- in the last few months, we've had thousands of gadgets submitted for the Google Personalized Homepage. If you've used it, you've seen them -- those useful little units you can add, remove, and move around on your page. We have old-school games, clocks, calendars, and horoscopes. We've got a VAT calculator. We've got a pony.

We've extended these gadgets to work on Google Desktop and Google Pages, but it occurred to us that these would be slick on other people's web pages, too.

Today we're opening up our gadget inventory for your viewing and cloning pleasure. In other words, now you can copy and paste some simple HTML to add the Google Gadgets you like to your own webpage. Check out our directory of Google Gadgets for your webpage to see all the options. And as always, if you can't find one like the one you had in mind, you can always write a gadget yourself.

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Create web apps on top of Google search

Posted by Tom Stocky, Product Manager

We just launched a new version of the Google AJAX Search API, which is designed to make it easier for webmasters and developers to do two things:

• Add a search box to your site that displays Google Web, Video, News, Maps, and Blog Search results without taking users to a separate page.

• Build powerful web apps on top of Google search. (See some samples.)

Read more about this release on the Google AJAX Search API Blog.

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Discount with Checkout

Posted by Dror Shimshowitz, Product Marketing Manager

Here's another way it pays to use Google Checkout: there's a $10 bonus on purchases of $30 or more at participating stores.

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Now anyone can Talk

Posted by Mike Jazayeri, Product Manager, Google Talk

Last year, we launched Google Talk, a free and easy service for making voice calls and sending instant messages. It used to be that only Gmail users could use Google Talk but now anyone can sign up for Google Talk. If you haven't tried the service yet, here are 5 good reasons to give it a try:

• now anyone can use the service (Gmail accounts no longer required)
• free and crystal clear voice calls to your friends and family anywhere in the world
• transfer files and folders to others
• free voicemail messages (MEEP!)
• IM from your BlackBerry

Just sign up, invite some friends, and you can be chatting with them in minutes. There are millions of people around the world to chat with! There are, however, still some features including chat histories and mail notifications that will only work if you sign into Google Talk with a Gmail account. Either way, we encourage you to give it a try.

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Your inbox for the web

Posted by Nicholas Baum, Product Manager, Google Reader

Do you ever wish that finding interesting stuff on the web was as easy as watching TV? Some nights, I just want to relax, tune in to HBO and see what's on. Other times, I know exactly what I want to watch: all those Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes that I've recorded, for one thing. But on the web, the only way to "tune in" is to go to the websites themselves and see what's there. What I really want is for the websites to come to me instead, so I can read them when I feel like it.

Enter Google Reader. Today there's a new version that makes it even easier to keep track of your favorite websites. Think of Google Reader as your inbox for the web. When you check your email, you don't go to each of your friends' mailboxes to see if they sent you anything — you just check your inbox. Google Reader does the same thing for the Internet, by putting all the sites that interest you in one convenient location and indicating when something has been updated. Here's a quick video intro for you:



We've also made sharing a lot more fun. Everyone who uses Google Reader now gets their own public page to which they can post items of interest. Kind of like a blog with training wheels — it creates a whole stream of your favorites on a page your friends and family can see or even subscribe to. This is definitely my favorite feature — I use it all the time to share pictures from my favorite photoblogs with my friends and family.

So go ahead and try it out. If you're already a regular, we hope you'll like the new look. If you've never used Google Reader before, we invite you to discover a brand new way to keep track of the sites that interest you. We still have a lot of features we want to experiment with, so it's in Google Labs for the time being. And keep up to date with the latest developments via our Reader blog... in Google Reader, of course!

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Happy trails with Google Transit

Posted by Chris Harrelson, Software engineer & Transit team tech lead

A little less than a year ago we announced the launch of a new Labs product, Google Transit Trip Planner. We made it easier for Portland commuters to find the fastest and most effective way to get around the city using public transportation.

Today, we're thrilled to tell you that we've added five more cities to our coverage:

• Eugene, Oregon
• Honolulu, Hawaii
• Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
• Seattle, Washington
• Tampa, Florida

Now riders in these cities (and Portland, of course) can use Google to plan trips using public transportation, and in some cities, compare the cost of public transportation with the cost of driving. You can also specify when you want to leave or arrive, and see different route possibilities. Here are some things you can find out:

• In Seattle, how to get from UW to Google's Kirkland office
• In Pittsburgh, how to get from brunch at Pamela's to a 1pm matinee at the Waterfront
• In Honolulu, how to get from the airport to Waikiki Beach

Stay tuned, as we'll be making many improvements in the weeks and months ahead based on your feedback. If you have comments or ideas about how this site could be even more helpful, don't hesitate to send us email.

The transit agencies in Google Transit Trip Planner now serve a population of more than 6 million people with over 1 million transit trips per day. For us, that's a fivefold increase in transit riders that we can help -- but we realize that it's still only a small fraction of the world's transit riders. To help expand coverage and to make it easier for transit agencies to get their schedules included, today we're announcing a lightweight Google Transit Feed Specification. If you're from a transit agency interested in being included in this Labs product, just write to us.

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Google Calendar does something about the weather

Posted by Michael Bolin, Google Calendar Engineer

Maybe you haven't tried Google Calendar yet because you don't think your daily routine is complicated enough to use one. But it's more than just a personal organizer – it also keeps you current about other kinds of time-related information, like what the weather will be on Friday.

Our latest feature, web content events, makes it easier to distinguish between what you've scheduled for yourself and other things going on around you. A web content event appears as an icon at the top of the day – you can either mouse over that to get a quick summary, or click it to bring up a web page with more information.

You can add web content events to your own calendar for weather forecasts, moon phases, and even Google doodles (those special-occasion logos you sometimes see on Google.com). Now you can be the first to know when there's a new one!





Developers can also create their own web content event calendars to share. We think this opens a whole new world for interesting calendar content, and we're excited to see what people will come up with. For more on how to create one, take a look at these tips for getting started.

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How long is 8 years in Internet time?

Posted by Dennis Hwang, Webmaster

This week we celebrate Google's 8th birthday, and I hope you like the commemorative logo that appears on today's homepage:
Having worked at Google for 6 years, I've been lucky enough to design our birthday images (and a lot of other doodles). I hope you enjoy reading the candles. :)

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Our approach to content

Posted by David Eun, VP, Content Partnerships

The Internet has broken down many of the barriers that exist between people and information –- effectively democratizing access to human knowledge. By typing just a few keywords into a computer you can learn about almost any subject. Google is one of many organizations that work to make this possible.

But today only a fraction of the world’s information is available online. Our aim to help organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful means working with a lot of information – newspaper articles (many written over a century ago), books (of which there are millions), images, videos (including all of the new footage users are creating), websites, important financial information and much, much more.

Because we don’t own this content, over the years we’ve come up with three primary principles to ensure that we respect content owners and protect their rights:

• we respect copyright;
• we let owners choose whether we index their content in our products;
• we try to bring benefit back to content owners by partnering with them.

Respecting copyright
There are many legal rights that help protect content. Among the most important is copyright. Content creators deserve to be rewarded for their creative work -- and copyright law is fundamental to ensuring that as well as fostering future creativity. While protecting the rights of owners, those laws also encourage others to make use of content in limited ways. That's why newspapers are allowed to include short quotations from in-copyright books in their reviews. That's also why search engines can show snippets (small excerpts) of text in their results. Copyright owners benefit from these types of usage because they help to publicize their works.

Google News is a good example of how Google protects copyright in practice. We index the content of thousands of news sources online. When users go to Google News, they see only headlines, snippets and image thumbnails from the relevant news articles. If people want to read the story, they must click through links in our results to the original website.

Google Book Search is another example. We're digitizing and indexing millions of books as part of our effort to make these works as easily found as web sites are today. Some of these books are in the public domain. For those, we will show the full text of the book. Other books are in copyright. For these we show only bibliographic information and a few snippets of text, unless we have the owners’ prior permission to show more.

There are also times when, in addition to securing permission, we pay for greater use of content. For example, we've agreed to pay the Associated Press (AP) for the right to make new uses of its news content – uses that go beyond the limited uses permitted by copyright laws. This use of AP’s content will make our services even more valuable. We also license content from third parties for several other Google services such as Google Earth Google Finance and Google Maps.

Letting content owners choose
Even if use of their work would be perfectly legal, we respect the wishes of content owners. For example, if a content owner asks us to remove his or her content from our web search results, we do. If a newspaper does not want to be part of Google News, we take the paper’s stories out. And if publishers would prefer not to have their books included in Google Book Search, we honor their request. It’s simple: we always allow content owners to opt out – quickly and easily.

Of course, some people argue that we should be asking content owners to opt in, not requiring them to opt out. Google aims to provide comprehensive search results. This would be impossible in a world where permission simply to index (which is entirely legal) was necessary. But we also believe that opt-out rather than opt-in benefits not just Google users, but also content owners. If content isn't indexed it can't be searched. And if it can't be searched, how can it be found? Imagine a library with no index of titles or subjects of the books on its shelves, or no catalogue of the authors who wrote them.

Benefitting content owners
There are around one billion people online today -- all of them wanting access to information. We partner with publishers, news organizations and others to help them to reach a wider global audience. By enabling people to discover information, Google drives web traffic, customer queries, advertising revenues and sales to our partners, both online and offline.

Take our AdSense advertising program. We display ads on thousands of partners’ websites – and we let them keep the majority of the revenue generated. The same is true for our Book Search publisher partners – they keep the lion’s share of the advertising on the books they include in our program. And Google Video helps media companies generate revenues in a number of different ways. They can upload their videos and share them freely with millions of users globally, generating awareness for their content – and some may sell their videos through our online store. We also place ads within videos on Google Video and throughout our AdSense network through a new product called Adsense for Video -- and as with AdSense and Book Search, we share the money with the content owner.

And we have other initiatives to help our partners sell their content. In Google News, we work with some companies whose content is only available via subscription. We index their content and then when people click on their story we link them to the site where they can purchase the individual story, login if they are a subscriber, or subscribe to the paper. And we recently added a feature to Google News which enables searchers to find historical articles, many of which are only available from the owner for a fee.

Protecting content owners’ rights, respecting their wishes, helping to reward them for their creative endeavors – these are the primary principles that guide Google’s approach. We believe it’s the best way to make the world’s information universally accessible and useful.

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Towards a more efficient computing infrastructure

Posted by Luiz Barroso, Distinguished Engineer

Intel CTO Justin Rattner was kind enough to invite me on stage today during his R&D keynote at the Intel Developers' Forum to talk about some of the computing platform challenges we face in building large-scale Internet services. Talking to industrial colleagues and the academic community about some of our most important platform-level requirements is something I always make time for. If you're trying to build interesting systems, life is easier when hardware vendors are aware of what works for you and what doesn't.

Chip multiprocessing -- the idea that multiple simpler processing units in one chip can be a better choice than a single hulking one -- is an example of a technology we've been vocal supporters of for quite a while. See for example "Web Search for a Planet" and "Price of Performance." We're happy to see this thinking being embraced by several vendors.

The focus of our message at IDF today was efficiency: power efficiency and programming efficiency. There are several hard technical problems surrounding power efficiency of computers, but we've found one that is actually not particularly challenging and could have a huge impact on the energy used by home computers and low-end servers: increasing power supply efficiency. All computers, including personal computers and servers, have power supplies to convert the alternating current (AC) from the outlet to the direct current (DC) needed by the machine. Typical power supplies waste 30-45% of their input power, and relatively simple modifications can bring this waste down to 10%. Others, like 80 PLUS, have also identified and targeted these inefficiencies. We believe that the development of a new open standard is necessary to achieve very high efficiencies at low costs, so we have begun discussions with Intel and other vendors that we hope might lead to significantly more efficient power supplies. Here's a short white paper describing this in more detail (PDF). If you'd like us to keep you posted on our progress, please send us a note at efficient-psu@google.com.

Programming for systems with many computers can be a daunting task, but one that our engineers have to face every day. Simplifying this task has a direct impact on programmer productivity, and consequently the rate of innovation. Software tools such as MapReduce have been very successful at Google by making it easier to process huge amounts of data quickly by spreading it over many computers. However, the efficiency of the computation can still suffer because of the limitations of the underlying computer platform. For example, programmers only have two major storage options that are widely available: memory (DRAM, specifically) and disk drives. Latency of disk accesses is about 100,000 times slower than memory, while memory is approximately 200 times more expensive (per gigabyte) than disks. These two alternatives are so far apart that programmers are forced to choose from two extremes, making some computations very difficult. I suggested to the IDF audience that there might be an opportunity for intermediate solutions in this space, faster than disks but cheaper than memory. Some forms of FLASH memory might soon be possible solutions, for example.

It's always rewarding to exchange notes with our friends in industry and academia, whether through participation in events or by publishing papers. I expect we'll continue to do that.

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Google Notebook improvements

Posted by Varun Kacholia, Software Engineer

Four months back Google Notebook launched, enabling you to collect and organize information as you find your way through the Wild West. Since then, we've gotten a ton of great feedback and learned what features you'd love to have -- and we've put that feedback into action. For starters, you can now collaborate on a notebook with fellow notebookers (of course, you can still share your published version with the entire world if you want to).

There are many other great features, like a much slicker drag-and-drop UI to let you organize better, a trash bin for all your deleted items, and the ability to undo your last action. And we realize a lot of you wanted to see your notebooks on your personalized homepage. Now you can, through the Google Notebook module for your Personalized Homepage. Add it to get quick access to your notebook, either for that upcoming trip to Bora Bora or your "to-do" list.

If you haven't tried Google Notebook yet, we bet you'll love it. And as always, we would love to hear your comments, because that helps us make it even better.

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About the Google News case in Belgium

Posted by Rachel Whetstone, European Director of Communications and Public Affairs

You may have read recently about Google being taken to court in Belgium. Whilst we aren't allowed to comment on the judgment itself, we thought you may want to know the facts of the case -- what actually happened, and when -- and the issues it raises.

In August Google was sued by an organization called Copiepresse, which represents a number of newspapers in Belgium. It argued that our search engine and news site breached these publications’ copyright.

In September a court ruled in favor of Copiepresse and ordered us to remove these publishers’ content from both Google. be and Google News. We did this within the time specified. The court also required Google to post its ruling to the home pages of Google.be and Google News Belgium.

Last week we asked the court to reconsider its decision and requested that the requirement to post the ruling on our home pages be suspended. The court on Friday 22nd September agreed to reconsider its ruling in November this year, but maintained the requirement that we must post the initial judgment to our home pages for five days or face a fine of 500,000 Euros a day.

As the case will be heard in November, we can only offer general comments on the larger issues it raises at the moment. Any legal discussion must be pursued in court. Nevertheless we do feel that this case raises important and complex issues. It goes to the heart of how search engines work: showing snippets of text and linking users to the websites where the information resides is what makes them so useful. And after all, it’s not just users that benefit from these links but publishers do too -- because we drive huge amounts of web traffic to their sites.

Of course, if publishers don’t want their websites to appear in search results (most do) the robots.txt standard (something that webmasters understand) enables them to prevent automatically the indexing of their content. It's nearly universally accepted and honoured by all reputable search engines.

Google News is no different than Google web search in this regard: We only ever show the headlines and a bit of text. If people want to read the entire story they have to click through to the newspaper’s website. And if a newspaper does not want to be part of Google News we remove their content from our index –- all they have to do is ask.

We hope that this explanation helps, and will keep you posted about any developments.

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Our call from space

Posted by Betsy Hanes Perry, Technical Writer

Today Anousheh Ansari, the first female private space explorer, called the Googleplex from the International Space Station. (We're nervously awaiting the long-distance bill.) Larry Page took the call. The topics ranged from what Anousheh forgot to pack (her husband!) to her hopes for the future of space exploration. I took notes. Here are some highlights:

What was the most fun in space?
Flying from one end of the Space Station to the other. She's gotten so good that she can nearly make it all the way without hitting any walls.

What was the biggest surprise?
Seeing the Earth rotate for the first time. Every time Anousheh wants to remind herself that she's really in space, she looks out the window, watches the Earth rotating, and pinches herself to make sure she's still awake.

Larry (wistfully): When can we come up to join you?
You'll have to come up one at a time. In any case, construction is speeding up on the International Space Station, so tourists will probably be fewer for the time being. She hopes Larry can improve the food; although the cheese pasta is fun to chase, it's not much fun to eat. At least there are M&Ms.

What would you change about the space station?
(Fast reply): "Add another shower!" And then - "Add Internet access!" (Wild cheering from Googlers.) Right now email is batched. Larry suggested that Anousheh plan that for her next trip -- and she shot back, "Actually, I'm planning my next trip!"

Do you have anything inspirational to say?
"Explore the boundaries. Try new things. Be free-thinkers and use your imaginations. Learn from your environment, your teachers, your books -- but then go beyond your knowledge. I always wanted to go to space, although I didn't wind up working for NASA. I detoured to different areas, but finally I found a way to make it happen."

After the call ended, Larry commented that Anousheh had been a visionary and an inspiration from the earliest days of the Ansari X Prize. To be inspired yourself, check out her blog.

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TechnoServe announces entrepreneur development program winners in Ghana

Posted by Nick Railston-Brown, Ghana Country Director, TechnoServe

Google.org and the Google Foundation support select organizations whose work addresses the challenges of global poverty in ways that are effective, sustainable and scalable. We invited TechnoServe, a 2006 Google Foundation grant recipient, to tell us more about the winners of its business plan competition and entrepreneurship development program in Ghana. The Google Foundation joins TechnoServe in sending heartfelt congratulations to all of the winners, finalists and participants in Believe Begin Become.

With financial support from the Google Foundation, TechnoServe (an economic development organization that applies business solutions to rural poverty) launched Believe Begin Become in Ghana in March. It's a program that identifies entrepreneurs whose businesses can create jobs and increase incomes. Ghana’s competition marks the beginning of TechnoServe’s multi-country rollout of these business plan competitions across Africa.

More than 300 of Ghana’s most promising entrepreneurs applied to the program, and 60 participated in the rigorous training and business plan development for this year’s competition. With strong support from over 70 local partners and 23 business development service providers, participants receive individual support from technical consultants and access to a business network that included more than 15 financial institutions.

The 20 finalists came from seven of Ghana's 10 regions and represent a diverse cross-section of the Ghanaian population. One-third of the finalists are women, and more than a third are from rural areas. They range in age from 20 to 55, and their business concepts are varied, from a web-based tour company to a high-tech environmentally friendly carwash. Each of the 20 finalists receive between $10,000 and $15,000 of individualized local business services. Each of the top 10 winners received $15,000 in seed capital to start or expand their businesses.

To the delight of Ghanaians, the top winners were announced at today’s awards ceremony in Accra. They include: Nicholas Vordzogbe, Isaac Bohulu, Maxwell Hammond, Paul Tetteh, Daniel Tamatey and Prince Yakubu. There are also three winners who presented the best business plans in three sectors: light manufacturing, services and agriculture. These sector winners, all women, are: Agnes Frimpong (Mixline Ventures – disposable baby diaper packaging and retailing), Joyce Opon (Adekyee Lodging and Conferencing – hospitality business) and Rita Asamoah (Kasdar Company Ltd – dried fruit processing). The top winner of the overall business plan competition went to the impressive Joseph Tackie, who is revolutionizing the meat processing business in Accra by introducing the highest standards of quality and new sales and distribution models.

Google.org provided support by sending Google employees to Ghana to serve as judges, guest lecturers and supporters of the participating entrepreneurs. Here are three reflections on their experience:

• "When I originally agreed to volunteer, I wasn't sure what contribution I was going to be able to make, trying to teach finance in a place where having access to electricity is as big a concern as running out of capital. But during my lecture, I could see how introducing some of the lessons we've learned at Google to these budding entrepreneurs in Ghana was really making a difference. It was definitely the best week of work I've ever had." – Albert Ching

• “It was refreshing to see the impact of TechnoServe’s results-driven approach to development. This approach seems more successful for generating skilled and unskilled jobs, income for the community, and in the long run, sustainable economic growth for developing nations. It can instill a sense of pride and achievement in people that can have tremendous effects - successful entrepreneurs can contribute to their communities and inspire others to achieve more.” – Jackie Bona

• “The highlight of my trip was the event celebrating the graduation from the core training of the business plan competition: the best 20 business plans that would receive some level of funding. I realized that the aim of supporting sustainable businesses and creating a local ecosystem to spur innovation and entrepreneurship was really happening.” – Marco Marinucci

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New Spreadsheets fun

Posted by Fuzzy Khosrowshahi, Tech Lead, Google Spreadsheets

The day after we launched Google Spreadsheets, one of the team said, "I can't believe you're already on the (Google) Groups page answering questions." After a late night-launch night? No way. "I'm definitely not posting, and I don't have the time even if I wanted to," I told him. Strangely, someone going by "Fuzzy" and/or "Fuzzy wuzzy" was answering everyone's questions! This unlikely-named person seemed to be very knowledgeable about Google Spreadsheets and spreadsheets in general. Well, the identity of that Fuzzy is still a mystery, but here's my chance to weigh in as myself.

I've been carefully watching the feedback we get on Google Spreadsheets, looking for people who may have discovered a bug or just need help using it. I'm also trying to judge our success in offering the right features. In a recent perusal of our Google Group (where interested people can discuss the product, help each other, and suggest improvements), it occurred to me that our growing body of users is about as diverse as a group can get, in terms of spreadsheet desires (if we can call them that!).

Here's a sampling of what people have been asking for:

• support for Open Document Format (handy for those who use linux-based machines and Open Office products)
  
• a way to force multiple line text in a single cell (like a street address in, say, a spreadsheet for planning a wedding)
  
• currency symbols in addition to $
  
• an option to create PDF files that will print nicely
• the ability to share a spreadsheet with anyone who receives the URL (without having to specify their email address).

This latest release of Google Spreadsheets that we just rolled out does all of these things and more. Here's a list of all the new features. I'm still watching the list of requests grow – and will keep trying to meet those needs -- unless of course the mysterious "Fuzzy wuzzy" beats me to it.

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Students: Get your gadget on

Posted by Samantha Crow, Product Marketing, Google Gadgets

When was the last time you tried to write HTML, build your resume and strut your stuff all at once? Well, now's your chance. We recently launched the Google Gadget Awards, a program designed to challenge U.S. college students to create clever Google Gadgets. It's easy for anyone with even a little bit of web design experience to create one. They can be fun (like one of my personal favorites, this radio gadget), useful (like this to-do gadget), or just really, really simple (like this facts and trivia gadget). And anyone can add the gadgets to their Google personalized homepage or to Google Desktop.

If you're not a university student in the U.S., you can still create Google Gadgets. Although they won't be entered in the Awards, if they're clever enough you just might find them on Google homepages around the world.

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Congratulations, Luis von Ahn

Posted by Alan Eustace, VP Engineering

Today our warmest congratulations go out to a notable young computer scientist, Dr. Luis von Ahn of Carnegie Mellon University. Based on his work in cryptography, AI, and natural intelligence, Luis has just been recognized as a Fellow by the MacArthur Foundation, which has granted him a "genius" award.

A major thread of his research is about human computation that can't currently be emulated by computers. (Together with colleagues he developed the CAPTCHA system, which has of course found widespread commercial application in preventing automated-generated spam.) He also works in the area of cryptography known as steganography. Unlike standard encrypted communications, a steganographic message disguises the fact that it contains a secret; one example is a text message subtly embedded in the bits that encode a digital photograph. He's also developing systems for characterizing visual images in ways that can vastly improve their searchability, and which help to build a rich database for exploring human visual cognition. (We've developed the Google Image Labeler based on his groundbreaking work in this area.)

Around here, we like to quote Isaac Newton's phrase about "standing on the shoulders of giants." Clearly, Luis is one of these.

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Bigger and better search appliance

Posted by Nitin Mangtani, Product Manager, Google Search ApplianceTeam

We hear you, we hear you -- your company has more documents than ever. That's why today there's a new version of the Google Search Appliance that can handle even more documents, and offers some cool new features to boot. The GB-8008 now searches up to 30 million documents (if you need more, just let us know). And we've added date and number range search plus support for 16 languages. There's more on the enterprise blog.

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Time travel

Posted by Mike Samuel, Software Engineer

For a while now, it's been rumored that Google has been working on time travel. Unfortunately, I have to lay these rumors to rest: we've really been working on having "organizing-your-time" travel.

Back in April, we released Google Calendar to the world in English. But that wasn't good enough. So now it's available in 17 new languages: French, Italian, German, Spanish, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Portuguese (Brazilian), Russian, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, Danish, Polish, and English (UK).

We hope this means people in countries across the world will want to organize their daily lives with a fast, easy to use online calendar. Perhaps even better, you can now share calendars and events with people who speak and use Google Calendar in different languages. Schedule calls with your Tokyo office, or schedule that call to your relatives in Amsterdam or Seoul. Changing the language is as easy as a few clicks on your settings page.

As for time travel, maybe someday. After all, we're already on the moon.

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Picasa goes online, gets new features too

Posted by Michael Herf, Picasa Engineer

I have 80,000 photos in Picasa, Google's free photo organizer, but most of my friends haven't had a chance to see them yet. That's why I'm so excited about the new version of Picasa that came out today. It has a feature called Picasa Web Albums that lets you post and share your photos online for free with just one click. You can show the world (or just your friends and family) what kinds of pictures you've been taking. And best of all, you can even download your friends' online photos right back to Picasa.

I run around at parties and take photos of people, and now my friends can see the pictures online as soon as I post them. Rather than bugging me all the time to email them around (which I'm too lazy to do), now they're asking to have the bad shots deleted instead. Some of them even add online comments right to the photos themselves.

We've also fixed a whole bunch of things in Picasa. Folders finally work as you'd expect, so people who've kept their photos meticulously organized in folders and subfolders can see them displayed the same way in Picasa. And we've added a shiny new feature to photo-editing: Save. Your Picasa edits can now be preserved when using other programs. The save feature is even undoable, so you never lose your original files.

And there's more -- you can import into any folder you like, make time-lapse sequences into movies, search by color, create a screensaver with beautiful visual effects, and even re-arrange Picasa's buttons. Oh, and we also made Picasa work with Google Earth, so you can put information about where you went on vacation into the photos themselves, and then, view your shots on a 3-D globe. Try it all out for yourself at picasa.google.com.

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The best stories on Earth

Posted by Rebecca Moore, Google Earth team

Everyone knows that Google Earth imagery and 3D terrain are unbelievably cool and fun to explore. But while you're flying around, have you ever wondered what is actually going on "down there" -- on the real earth? That narrative of living on this planet is portrayed in the new Featured Content for Google Earth. Accessible from the "Featured Content" folder in the Google Earth Layers sidebar, these new layers contain images, audio, video, stories and information about events unfolding around the globe.

In our September installment, follow the daily exploits of "Flirt" and her kindred Tanzanian chimpanzees in The Jane Goodall Institute's "geoblog"; fans have called this a "Chimp Soap Opera." Or go on a virtual safari in South Africa's Kruger Park -- or maybe you'd like to learn about how the locals in Reykjavik, Iceland relax in molten-lava-heated pools. Explore more than 10,000 miles of trails (in full 3D) in the U.S. National Parks, and find an idyllic lakeside camping spot in the backcountry of Yosemite. Visualize the global story of the earth itself, and how our environment has changed over the past 30 years -- or travel back in time to the Valley of the Kings in Egypt to discover the gold treasures of King Tut's tomb.

This first installment of Featured Content features six of the world's seven continents. (We fully expect that Antarctica will have a story or two coming up.)

By some accounts, nearly half of the information on the web actually relates to a place on earth. We'd like to help you find the best of that information and place it in the visually compelling context of our beautiful planet.

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UNCF Google Scholarship Program

Posted by Emily Nishi, Diversity Program Manager

As part of Google's ongoing commitment to advancing computing and technology, we're pleased to tell you that the United Negro College Fund and Google have partnered to create the UNCF/Google Scholarship Program. We hope this program will encourage students to excel in their studies, inspire them to become role models and leaders, and help remove the financial barriers for African-American students wishing to pursue an engineering degree.

On the strength of candidates' academic background and demonstrated leadership, we'll be awarding $5,000 scholarships. Students must be enrolled in their junior year of undergraduate study at a UNCF Member College or University or at a participating Historically Black College or University (HBCU), and pursuing a Computer Science or Computer Engineering major.

Tell your friends, or apply yourself -- the deadline for applications is Friday, October 6.

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Celebrate your freedom to read

Posted by Leslie Burger, President, American Library Association


What was your favorite book when you were in school? Did F. Scott Fitzgerald give you an inside look at a world of glamorous parties where the wealthy fell in love and went home with their feelings hurt? Did Holden Caulfield speak directly to your inner misanthrope? For decades, literary classics such as The Great Gatsby and The Catcher in the Rye have had a profound impact on millions of readers. Yet every year, there are hundreds of attempts to remove great books from schools and libraries nationwide. Fortunately, the American Library Association and many other organizations are fighting back with Banned Books Week, taking place this year Sept. 23-30.

For 25 years, libraries and bookstores nationwide have been celebrating the freedom to read during Banned Books Week, which is sponsored by the American Booksellers Association, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the Association of American Publishers, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the National Association of College Stores, and endorsed by the Library of Congress Center for the Book.

Now Google has joined the party. At google.com/bannedbooks, you can use Google Book Search to explore some of the best novels of the 20^th century which have been challenged or banned. And while libraries and bookstores around the country celebrate the 25th anniversary of Banned Books Week with special readings, displays, and more, you just might end up with a visit to your local library or bookstore and an old favorite or a new banned book in hand.

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Co-op for health information

Posted by Dr. Taraneh Razavi, M.D., Staff Doctor

One of my goals in starting my blog has been to reliably provide useful health information and advice to a wider audience than just the people I see. As part of this effort, I have been labeling health-related websites that I think are good ones using Google Co-op, a beta product that premiered in May. Google Co-op is designed to improve results for searches. If you opt in to my Co-Op profile (and subscribe to it), you'll see my labels in your health-related search results.

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7 Days in September

Posted by Cliff Samaniego, Google Video team

A while ago, New York filmmaker Steve Rosenbaum produced 7 Days in September which tells the story of a week -- September 11-18, 2001 -- with the help of many filmmakers and a multitude of perspectives. As Rosenbaum notes, "Those seven days are full of fear, anger, pain, loss, and a deep sense of community," adding that 7 Days "isn't meant to be an answer, but rather a sounding board that may help people to ask deeply personal questions." We're honored to share it with you on Google Video.

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History as it unfolds

Posted by Anurag Acharya, Distinguished Engineer

As a teenager, history was the class in which I daydreamed -- the one that required memorization of long lists of kings, of battles, of arcane disputes that led to war. It was something I left behind when I graduated from high school and went on to the "real" things in life.

But history was not done with me. Many years later, I drifted from reading George Orwell's novels 1984 and Animal Farm and Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon to reading more about the Russian Revolution. The evolution of the Bolshevik Old Guard from scruffy revolutionaries fighting a stifling monarchy to becoming ruthless dictators for Stalin's killing machine was fascinating. History had drawn me into its web. History isn't a dry laundry list of the likes of "Ozymandias". It is what everyone in any era does, full of rich detail.

And now you can find those contemporary details (and more current ones as always) through a new archive search feature of Google News. This new feature can help you explore history through archives of news and other information sources. You can search for events, people and ideas, and see how they have been described over time. If you were to seek information on the 1969 moon landing, now you can find original coverage from that year, as well as analysis, news and commentary from the 37 years following.

Based on relevance, the archive results on Google News include freely available articles from sources such as TIME.com, The Guardian and many others, as well as snippets of articles available for a fee or via subscription. These may come from news organizations like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, and also from news aggregators like AccessMyLibrary.com, ThomsonGale, Factiva, HighBeam™ Research, LexisNexis and others.

In addition to finding the most relevant articles for your query, you can get an historical overview of the results by browsing an automatically created timeline. Articles related to a single story or theme within a given time period are grouped together to enable you to see a broad perspective on the events. The archive search results include articles about an incredibly wide variety of topics, people and events over the last 200 years or so. About kings and battles, yes, but also about athletes and games, political dramas, crimes, romances and much, much else.

History is often presented to us with a viewpoint many years after it happens -- and it's frequently smoothed over in many ways, and for many reasons. Here's hoping archive search in Google News can help you read about history as it has unfolded, and explore and understand the past for yourself.

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