Today, scientists announced a new hominid fossil discovery in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site in South Africa. The discovery is one of the most significant palaeoanthropological discoveries in recent times, revealing at least two partial hominid skeletons in remarkable condition, dating to between 1.78 and 1.95 million years. We are especially excited because Google Earth played a role in its discovery.
So how did this come about? Back in March 2008, Professor Lee Berger from Witswatersrand University in Johannesburg started to use Google Earth to map various known caves and fossil deposits identified by him and his colleagues over the past several decades, as it seemed the ideal platform by which to share information with other scientists. In addition, he also used Google Earth to locate new fossil deposits by learning to identify what cave sites looked like in satellite images.
At the beginning of this project, there were approximately 130 known cave sites in the region and around 20 fossil deposits. With the help of the navigation facility and high-resolution satellite imagery in Google Earth, Professor Berger went on to find almost 500 previously unidentified caves and fossil sites, even though the area is one of the most explored in Africa. One of these fossil sites yielded the remarkable discovery of a new species, Australopithecus sediba. This species was an upright walker that shared many physical traits with the earliest known species of the genus homo - and its introduction into the fossil record might answer some key questions about our earliest ancestry in Africa.
We're absolutely thrilled about this announcement, and delighted that our free mapping tools such as Google Earth and Google Maps continue to enable both individuals and distinguished scientists to explore and learn about their world. With these tools, places both foreign and familiar can be explored with the click of a mouse, allowing for new understandings of geography, topology, urbanism, development, architecture and the environment. Our efforts to organize the world's geographic information are ongoing - but at the end of the day, seeing the way these tools are put to use is what most inspires us.
Let's say that you have x different stocks, and the plots of their prices over time. You want to print them in newspaper, printing multiple plots on the same chart to save space. But here's the catch: no two plots on the same chart can overlap, lest the readers be confused. Look at the plots and figure out the smallest number of charts required.
Looking for a challenge like the riddle above? And I mean an exciting brain-twisting and turning kind of challenge. I mean competing with fellow coders from around the world for top bragging rights kind of challenge.
Since 2003, we've brought you our annual Google Code Jam - a competition in which professional and student programmers from all around the world solve tough algorithmic challenges in a limited amount of time. Last year's 23,000 contestants vied for the title of Google Code Jam champion. After five rounds and some furious typing, China's Lou Tiancheng (code-named ACRush) was named champion.
Sound like the challenge for you? Well registration is now open. And you can try your hand at problems from previous competitions and get up to speed with the rules. We recommend that you practice hard - Code Jam is not for the weak of heart! And, this year we've decided to take the show on the road - for the very first time, the final competition will take place in Google's Dublin office.
The qualification round starts on May 7, 2010 and after four rounds of online competition, the top 25 competitors will be flown to Dublin to match wits for the $5,000 first prize - and, of course, the title of Code Jam champion!
P.S. Have you solved our "Stock Charts" problem yet? Test your solution on the Code Jam website.
The first-ever Google Model Your Town Competition has entered the public voting phase. It's now up to you to help decide which of the five finalist towns should be the overall winner. Cast your vote before May 1.
Barranco (Lima, Peru)
Braunschweig (Niedersachsen, Germany)
Donostia - San Sebastián (Gipuzkoa, Spain)
Dursley (Gloucestershire, United Kingdom)
West Palm Beach (Florida, United States)
These five teams used Google SketchUp and Google Building Maker to create beautifully detailed 3D models of their communities - and now they're viewable in Google Earth by everyone in the world. To see all of the towns who entered the competition, check out the Google 3D Warehouse collection.
The winning town will receive an event hosted by Google in their honor, US $10,000 for their local schools and more. Don't forget to vote by May 1, and we’ll announce the winning town by May 15.
And if you're interested in learning how you can model your town, check out our Your World in 3D website for examples and other tools to help you get started.
Not too long ago we got word that Google is working on a TV search project with Dish Network, and now there's all indication the search giant wants even more direct involvement with the television ecosystem. According to the New York Times, they're partnering with Intel and Sony in a new Android-based platform literally dubbed Google TV.
The new set-top box will allow users to surf online video from the comforts of the couch, and will compete with the likes of the Popbox and the Boxee Box we got our hands on at CES this year, the Roku set-top device, and to a few extent video game consoles that have the ability to stream content from Netflix, Amazon Video on Demand, and others. Beyond straight up video, the idea is to give users an interface to access popular social web sites like Twitter and browse photos on sharing sites like Google-owned Picasa on their TVs as well.
As with Android itself, Google TV will probable be an open source platform, with Sony stepping up to manufacture the first hardware that will run it - likely including both set-top boxes and internet-connected TVs. In the meantime, peripherals manufacturer Logitech is reportedly working on accessories for Google TV devices like a remote control with a small keyboard.
The project is reported to be a few months in already, though without official commentary from Google itself the news technically remains in rumor status.
I use Google Reader a lot - not only to stay on top of the news, but also to find interesting blog posts and articles. I'm always telling my friends about Google Reader, and while some of them love it, others don't want to take the time to set it up. For those of you who fall into this second category, we're announcing Google Reader Play, a new product that makes the best stuff in Reader more accessible for everyone. Reader Play is a new way to browse interesting stuff on the web, customized to the topics you're interested in, with no setup required.
Items in Reader Play are presented one at a time, and images and videos are automatically enlarged to maximize the viewing experience. We use the technology behind Recommended Items in Reader to populate Reader Play with the most interesting content on the web. While you don't need a Google account to use Reader Play, your experience will be personalized if you sign in. As you browse, you can let us know which items you enjoy by clicking the "like" button, and we'll use that info to show you other content we think you'll enjoy.
We think Reader Play is a fun way to browse interesting items online that you wouldn't find otherwise. We designed it especially for people who don't want to spend time curating their own set of feeds - but folks who already use Reader can easily use it to read their feeds as well. Just click the feed settings menu on any feed in Reader and select "View in Reader Play." We're launching Reader Play as an experiment in Google Labs so that we can test it out, get feedback from you and then improve it as quickly as possible. Visit google.com/reader/play to give it a try, and let us know what you think!
More than ever before, people are sharing and storing their photos online. But until recently, you had to edit your photos using client software on your computer. Today, we're excited to announce that Google has acquired Picnik, one of the first sites to bring photo editing to the cloud. Using Picnik, you can crop, do touch-ups and add cool effects to your photos, all without leaving your web browser.
We're not announcing any significant changes to Picnik today, though we'll be working hard on integration and new features. As well, we'd like to continue supporting all existing Picnik partners so that users will continue to be able to add their photos from other photo sharing sites, make edits in the cloud and then save and share to all relevant networks.
We're very impressed with the Picnik team and the product they've created, and we're excited to welcome them to Google. We're looking forward to collaborating closely with them to improve the online photo editing experience on the web. In the meantime, we encourage you to head to Picnik, import some of your photos from Picasa Web Albums, Flickr or Facebook and try your hand at photo editing in the cloud!
Google has now rolled out "Google Shopper," a new mobile application for Android devices that offers a variety of different ways to search for products.
In addition to basic search functionality, users can search by voice, take a picture of cover art, or scan a bar code to get detailed product information and the price comparison. Google introduces this application on its website and in the video below.
As AndroidAndMe notes, the app obviously competes with the likes of ShopSavvy, who tells the publication that Google [and Amazon] "are and always have been our biggest competitors."
Google could deal a much stronger blow to the upstart by including Shopper - now a Labs product - with new Android handsets. We also don't see why Google wouldn't extend the application to other mobile platforms as well.
At the Mobile World Congress, Google CEO Eric Schmidt showed off a new prototype of Google Goggles - Google's experimental Android visual search application - that can easily translate text captured in photos.
The prototype uses Google's machine translation technology and image recognition capabilities to create an extra layer of useful context. So should the user take a photo from his Android device, the application can easily translate the text in that photo - though right now it only supports German-to-English translations.
Here's how Google explain the process:
"You may question what's happening in the background. On the very simplest level, this prototype connects the phone's camera to an optical character recognition (OCR) engine, recognizes the image as text and then translates that text into English with Google Translate."
You can't get your hands on updated application yet, and Google is being coy about when it will release an update, but you can expect the application to eventually support photo-to-text translation in all of the 52 languages supported by Google Translate.
Once translation makes its way into Google Goggles we can only imagine how helpful the application could become to travelers looking to quickly translate menu items, street signs and transit information.
Google has opened up and doing its charity wallet once again. This time, the search giant has donated $2 Million to the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization that runs and maintains Wikipedia.
The donation, in true social media fashion, was announced via tweets from Wikimedia Foundation advisory board member Mitch Kapor and Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales. Neither Wikimedia Foundation nor Google the have made an official announcement yet - it's supposed to come tomorrow.
The donation's absolutely in line with Google's generosity to foundations that promote a faster and more open web. However, we think it's very interesting that Google is giving money to the Wikimedia Foundation now, only a year and a half after the search giant launched its own Wikipedia killer, Google Knol.
Back then, we said it was doomed to fail, and so far Knol's stagnation has proven us correct. Is this a sign that Google's abandoned the project and is embracing Wikipedia as the web's center for knowledge? Hopefully we'll get a few answers tomorrow.
We've blogged before about our thoughts on the social web, steps we've taken to add social features to our products, and efforts like OpenSocial that propose common tools for building social apps. With more and more communication happening online, the social web has exploded as the primary way to share interesting stuff, tell the world what you're up to in real-time and stay more connected to more people. In today's world of status messages, tweets and update streams, it's increasingly tough to sort through it all, much less engage in meaningful conversations.
Our belief is that organizing the social information on the web - finding relevance in the noise - has become a large-scale challenge, one that Google's experience in organizing information can help solve. We've recently launched innovations like real-time search and Social Search, and today we're taking another big step with the introduction of a new product, Google Buzz.
Google Buzz is a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting. It's built right into Gmail, so you don't have to peck out an entirely new set of friends from scratch - it just works. If you think about it, there's always been a big social network underlying Gmail. Buzz brings this network to the surface by automatically setting you up to follow the people you email and chat with the most. We focused on building an easy-to-use sharing experience that richly integrates photos, videos and links, and makes it easy to share publicly or privately (so you don't have to use different tools to share with different audiences). Plus, Buzz integrates tightly with your existing Gmail inbox, so you're sure to see the stuff that matters most as it happens in real time.
We're rolling out Buzz to all Gmail accounts over the next few days, so if you don't see it in your account yet, check back soon. We also plan to make Google Buzz available to businesses and schools using Google Apps, with added features for sharing within organizations.
On your phone, Google Buzz is much more than just a small screen version of the desktop experience. Mobile devices add an important component to sharing: location. Posts tagged with geographical information have an extra dimension of context - the answer to the question "where were you when you shared this?" can communicate so much. And when viewed in aggregate, the posts about a particular location can paint an extremely rich picture of that place. Check out the Mobile Blog for more info about all of the ways to use Buzz on your phone, from a new mobile web app to a Buzz layer in Google Maps for mobile.
We've relied on other services' openness in order to build Buzz (you can connect Flickr and Twitter from Buzz in Gmail), and Buzz itself is not designed to be a closed system. Our goal is to make Buzz a fully open and distributed platform for conversations. We're building on a suite of open protocols to create a complete read/write developer API, and we invite developers to join us on Google Code to see what is available today and to learn more about how to participate.
We really hope you enjoy the experiences we've built within Gmail and for mobile phones. If you want to learn more, visit buzz.google.com. We look forward to continuing to evolve and improve Google Buzz based on your feedback.
The rumors were right: Google took the bold step of running a Super Bowl ad in the third quarter of the game today, marking its first main push into TV advertising and a new frontier of marketing for the company that has triumphed in online ads above all else.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt's Tweet hinted at the ad yesterday, reading: "Can't wait to watch the Superbowl tomorrow. Be sure to watch the ads in the third quarter (someone said 'Hell has indeed frozen over.')"
Every year, Vogue and the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) sponsor a Fashion Fund to support emerging designers. In 2009, every participating designer was asked to create a one-of-a-kind item inspired by Google in some way - whether through our logo's colors, technology or our commitment to equal access to information. Last October, Google transformed 10 of the finalists' designs into iGoogle Artists themes. While Google loved seeing fashion meet iGoogle, they wanted to see these pieces in person - and wear them! Now, they're debuting three of our favorite designs from this challenge. These three featured designers have customized their original designs for a broader audience, and they're making them available to the public to purchase for a limited time.
Today, we're excited to announce our third annual Doodle 4 Google contest in the U.S. Google doodles, created by our talented team of doodlers, have helped us celebrate events and anniversaries from Van Gogh's birthday to Valentine's Day. And since 2008, Doodle 4 Google has given K-12 kids the opportunity to create their own logo and have it displayed on the Google homepage for hundreds of millions of users to enjoy for a day.
In addition to the winner's art appearing on Google.com on May 27, 2010, they'll also receive a $15,000 college scholarship, a laptop computer and a $25,000 technology grant for their school.
This year's theme is "If I Could Do Anything, I Would..." and it's all about pushing the limits, dreaming big, and seeing what you can accomplish in life. When coming up with inspiration for this year's contest, we turned to some of our very own Googlers, including Ed Lu, a former astronaut.
Ed typifies this year's theme in action, and shares an inspiring anecdote:
On my first mission STS-84, one of my crewmates and I were having dinner aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis. After all our work for the day was done, we decided to eat "upside down" on the ceiling, gazing out at the Earth moving by below our feet. As we flew around the Earth, watching the continents go by, my crewmate remarked how amazingly large the Earth really is. But at that same time, it also felt small to us. There we were, flying at 18,000 miles per hour around the Earth in a machine built by humans, with a crew made up of astronauts from all over the world. Both of our observations were true at the same time. The world is indeed a big place with many challenges. But by using science, technology and the power of people working together, nearly anything is possible.
So dream big! If you could do anything, what would you do?
For even more inspiration, you can see last year's winner, Christin Engelberth, a sixth grader at Bernard Harris Middle School in San Antonio, Texas. She titled her doodle "A New Beginning" to express her wish that "out of the current crisis, discoveries will be found to help the Earth prosper once more."
We're happy to let you know that this year, we've also assembled a panel of well-known "Expert Jurors," including creative directors, cartoonists and famous animators ranging from Sesame Workshop to Pixar Animation Studios. Our Expert Jurors will help us narrow down the cream of the crop to 40 regional finalists, who will come to the Google office in New York City on May 26, 2010. For the second year, we'll also be partnering with the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, where the top 40 regional finalists will get to have their artwork displayed in a national exhibit. And for the first time this year, we'll give out eight Technology Booster awards to schools that submit maximum number of doodles per school by March 10th and have students in our 400 State Finalists.
Please visit the official competition website for a full listing of all contest rules and requirements. Only students from registered schools can enter, so be sure your school is registered by March 17, 2010. All doodles must be submitted by March 31, 2010.
We hope you're as excited about this year's contest as we are. Good luck!
Thursday, January 28th marks International Data Privacy Day. We're recognizing this day by publicly publishing our guiding Privacy Principles.
Use information to provide our users with valuable products and services.
Develop products that reflect strong privacy standards and practices.
Make the collection of personal information transparent.
Give users meaningful choices to protect their privacy.
Be a responsible steward of the information we hold.
We've always operated with these principles in mind. Now, we're just putting them in writing so you have a better understanding of how we think about these issues from a product perspective. Like our design and software guidelines, these privacy principles are designed to guide the decisions we make when we create new technologies. They are one of the key reasons our engineers have worked on new privacy-enhancing initiatives and features like the Google Dashboard, the Ads Preferences Manager and the Data Liberation Front. And there is more in store for 2010.
You can find out more about our efforts at the Google Privacy Center and on our YouTube channel.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's promised speech on Internet freedom took place last morning. Clinton called for China to "conduct a thorough review of the cyber intrusions" that Google implied were conducted by Chinese government against human rights activists.
A small background: In response to the cyber attacks, Google said that it may shut down Google.cn and its Chinese offices if it can't strike a deal with the Chinese government to run an uncensored search engine. The circumstances might also threaten Google Android's place in China's cell phone market.
China is already censoring the news reports about the Google situation within its borders. Its representatives have said that it doesn't need the conflict between it and Google to be "over interpreted," and that this incident shouldn't affect its relationship with the United States. Hillary Clinton does not agree. "Countries or individuals that engage in cyber attacks should face consequences and international condemnation," she said.
Clinton's speech also addressed some other issues, (indirectly) including Iran's decision to censor Twitter and Facebook in the wake of the country's election crisis. She announced that the United States will spend more million dollars on initiatives to protect Internet freedom around the world.
Google's been investing heavily in its future over the past quarter, both in the form of main acquisitions and new product launches.
Today, the company is out with its recent earnings report, with the results indicating that the economy may indeed be recovering, and the company's CEO Eric Schmidt painting a bullish picture on Google's future prospects.
Here are some of the highlights:
Google's income for the quarter jumped 17% year-over-year to $6.67 billion.
Google grew its cash position to $24.5 billion - up from the $22 billion it reported previous quarter.
Google's headcount increased slightly during the quarter to nearly 20,000 employees in worldwide. That's significant given the company was forced to create the first cutbacks in its history during the worst of the economic downturn.
As for the 2010, Eric Schmidt offered the following statement: "We remain hugely optimistic about the Internet and are continuing to invest heavily in technological innovation for the benefit not only of our users and customers, but also the wider web." With $24 billion in cash, expect those investments to include more acquisitions, as well as further spending on huge projects including handsets, the Chrome OS and even potentially tablet computers.
Wall Street doesn't seem to be sharing Schmidt's optimism, however, in the instant aftermath of the numbers - shares of Google are trading down about $30/share after hours, or about 5%.
Google has released new, higher-resolution satellite images of the Port-au-Prince area of Haiti that was devastated by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake on January 12.
The new impressively detailed photos were taken on Sunday, January 17 and have resolution of around six inches, according to Google. You can see the full set of images in Google Maps in the Satellite mode.
Last week, Google and GeoEye released a set of satellite images of Haiti taken on January 13, just a day after the earthquake, along with earlier images of the area from 2008.
Google is working to create the new imagery available as a layer in Google Earth as well. An updated Haiti earthquake layer for Google Earth is presently available with images from multiple sources as well as maps, including earthquake epicenters.
YouTube will begin live-streaming Indian Premier League cricket matches from 12th March. It's possible that the matches will be viewable in countries like the United States that don't presently have a place to watch IPL matches on traditional TV.
YouTube has been a destination for both the lPL (Indian Premier League) and live streaming before, just not at the same time. It streamed U2's Rose Bowl concert to ten million viewers across seven continents last year, and there's an IPL cricket channel that shows pre-recorded highlights from league matches.
Live sports coverage has been one of the greatest reasons to keep those cable or satellite subscriptions, so YouTube moving into this area could be an additional step towards the dominance of Internet-based TV. There have really been live-streaming options for sports online before; they just usually come with subscription fees. For example, ESPN Insider members have the access to live streams of much of what the network of sports channels covers.
Every year, search engines post special logos for Martin Luther King, Jr. This year is no different, we have logos from Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask.com and others. MLK, Martin Luther Kind, Jr wants no explanation. It is a legal US holiday and a day celebrated by many around the world. And here are the logos:
Now you can get a satellite's-eye view of the devastation in Haiti with Google Earth. Google worked with satellite imaging company GeoEye to put together a map layer file that provides up-close views of the wreckage of government buildings and extra in the Haitian capital city of Port-au-Prince.
Download the file to check it. It's in KML format, and it should load in Google Earth automatically if you have that desktop application installed. Alternatively, you can just pull it up in the web-based Google Maps application.
If you switch the layer on and off for some before-and-after perspective, you'll see just how serious the damage is - as if the pictures circulating on Twitter and additional places on the Internet weren't harrowing enough already. Here's an embed with the data to create things even easier.
Imagine this: You're strolling virtually through your favorite Google Street View destination, when abruptly you notice an animated ad on one of the billboards beside the street. "Buy product X," it beckons you, replacing the obsolete ad that was initially on the billboard when the Google Street View car took the picture.
This might extremely well turn into a reality. Google has been granted a copyright named "Claiming Real Estate in Panoramic or 3D Mapping Environments for Advertising," detailing "techniques for identifying groups of features in an online geographic view of a real property and replacing and/or augmenting the groups of features with advertisement."
The idea is ingenious, truly. Most of those obsolete ads on billboards serve very small purpose in the virtual world of Street View, but if one could replace them with up-to-date advertisements, they could be another source of income for the giant from Mountain View.
Of course, there's a jungle of legal obstacles that Google would have to solve before really going through with this. Who owns the virtual billboards? And what about the companies who paid for the original ads on them? ReadWriteWeb points out a few of the possible issues, but one thing is certain: Google's strategy of amassing virtual real estate will pay off in one direction or another.
Go to Google.com in your iPhone or Android browser and you'll see a little new addition to the homepage: a tiny Near Me Now option below the search box. The new functionality turns your location into an automated search query and makes finding or learning about places in your instant vicinity a no-brainer.
The U.S.-only functionality uses GPS on your device to pinpoint your whereabouts and sort nearby results - right on the www.Google.com mobile homepage - into the following functional categories: Explore right here, coffee shops, restaurants, bars, and ATMs and banks.
Actually, the "Explore right here option" serves up an instant drop-down menu, providing you with results that are literally right in front of you. You'll immediately get a fast glance at a venue's Place Page rating and its distance from you. As a result, the simple and smart addition to the mobile Google experience is bound to be both a large time saver and a boon for Place Pages.
It's no mystery that Google is trying to attack mobile location-based services and customer review web sites like Foursquare and Yelp head-on, and actively promote its Place Pages. This update is natural progression to help it do just that. We do have to wonder, however, as to why the functionality isn't a part of Google Mobile app yet.
If you're an iPhone owner, you probably don't need to hear about Flash. Full support for Adobe's rich media technology has been promised for the iPhone several times, but it's still not there yet.
However, if you plan on getting the Google's Nexus One, you'll be one of the first users to be able try out Flash Player 10.1, currently in beta.
Adobe posted a video showing the latest Flash Player happily working on the Google's Nexus One. It can be used to browse Flash-heavy web sites and play online games, but it can also be used to deliver Flash-based ads. From what we can see in the video, Google Nexus One's powerful Snapdragon CPU handles Flash with ease.
From the same folks at Whirled Interactive who brought us the superbly funny "Pulp Wave Fiction" comes one more intelligent use of Google Wave as a video production medium - this time it's used to encapsulate the year in news and social media.
In "Waving Goodbye to 2009," embedded after the break, that we see a Google Wave rendition of the year's most memorable moments. From Obama inauguration to the Iran elections, from Susan Boyle to Kanye West, the video highlights the best - and worst - moments of 2009.
Google has recently been prone to changing its own logo, often turning it into a series of doodles with a riddle attached. It seems we're about to see another series of logo changes, but this time their purpose is fairly easy to discover.
If you've visited Google today, you may have noticed that Google home page logo has turned into a holiday postcard. Clicking on it leads to a "Happy Holidays" landing page, with the present logo listed as the first in a series.
One of our favorite Google tools, Google Translate, not only talks and translates in real-time, but it's been integrated in a wide variety of Google services, including Gmail, Google Reader, and most recently, Google Toolbar.
Now Google has announced that it has integrated Translate with yet another one of Google's numerous products. This time, it's Google Sites, a tool for creating simple but helpful web pages. All of the pages within Sites can be translated just by clicking a floating "translate" button on bottom right of the page.
Now, plenty of cars have built-in GPS navigation. But up until now, no car had Google Earth integrated, but at present Audi has remedied that with their new luxury car, the Audi A8.
Snugged right into the LCD screen in the car, the Google Earth application will let lucky owners look at 3D satellite imagery, terrain information, and even extra info layers such as Wikipedia articles or Panoramio images related to a certain location.
Audi A8's system will also feature Google Maps and Local Search, plus the ability to link it all with your desktop computer. To save time, you can just search for an address on your computer and send it to the car; when you start driving, the car will know where to go.
However, if you,re not familiar with German manufacturer's luxury cars, let's just say that only those with the deepest pockets will be buying one. The rest of us will have to make do with iPhone stand and the Google Earth mobile app.
We launched updated versions of the Google Toolbar and FeedBurner that offer a new URL shortening service from Google called the Google URL Shortener. We mentioned our URL shortener as a feature in both announcements, so we wanted to say a little more about how this product works and why we're offering it.
People share a lot of links online. This is particularly true as microblogging services such as Twitter have grown in popularity. If you're not familiar with them, URL shorteners basically squeeze a long URL into fewer characters to make it easier to share with others. With character limits in tweets, status updates and other modes of short form publishing, a shorter URL leaves more room to say what's on your mind - and that's why people use them.
First, we think people who use the Google Toolbar and FeedBurner will benefit from a shortener that is easily accessible - making it faster and easier to share, post and email links. Second, we've built this on Google's global infrastructure to offer the following benefits:
Stability: Google's scalable, multi-datacenter infrastructure provides great uptime and a reliable service to our users.
Security: As we do with web search, shortened URLs are automatically checked to detect sites that may be malicious and warn users when the short URL resolves to such sites.
Speed: At Google we like fast products and we've worked hard to ensure this service is quick. We'll continue to iterate and improve the speed of Google Url Shortener.
Google URL shortener is not a stand-alone service; you can't use it to shorten links directly. Currently, Google URL Shortener is only available from the Google Toolbar and FeedBurner. If the service proves useful, we may eventually make it available for a wider audience in the future.
Relief is at hand for anybody who simply has to know at short notice just how many seconds are left in the decade.
Navigate to the Google home page and, with the search window left blank, click on the I'm Feeling Lucky button and a countdown clock will pop onto the screen counting down the seconds until the turn of the New Year in big blue numbers.
The JavaScript clock is available in all localised versions of the Google home page, and is based on an individual computer's IP address, so even if you type in the Australian Google URL, for example, you'll still see the UK countdown if that's where you're based.
Google is well known for its 'easter eggs' as these hidden features are well-known. Other efforts contain the results for a search for "the answer to life, the universe, and everything" being topped by the calculator result "42" - a reference to the late Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
This fall we've seen lots of government agencies decide to make the switch to cloud computing, joining the many businesses already using Google Apps for email and collaboration at work. Today we'd like to officially welcome another customer to the mix: the City of Los Angeles. Starting today, Los Angeles will be equipping 34,000 city employees with Google Apps for email and collaboration in the cloud.
The story of Los Angeles moving to Google Apps started early this year, when the city's Chief Technology Officer, Randi Levin, and her team at the Information Technology Agency (ITA) looked to replace their aging, on-premise system with more secure, productivity-focused technology. After calling for proposals and carefully evaluating over 14 different ones, Randi and the ITA decided to revamp the city government's email technology by adopting Google Apps. Los Angeles' going Google will help the city on a number of fronts. The cloud computing system will improve the security and reliability of city email, transitioning from servers in the City Hall basement to hosted, secure data centers. Employees will also have a new avenue for collaboration with Google Apps in the cloud: sharing docs, sites and videos and editing them together in realtime as they work on making the city run more smoothly and efficiently and thus better serving Angelenos city-wide. Furthermore, Randi and her team realized that moving to Apps would mean less taxpayer money spent on IT - valuable budget that can be rededicated to other city efforts over the next few years.
Check out this video to hear more from Randi on Los Angeles and Apps.
Los Angeles is the second-largest city in the U.S., and the latest in a string of cities, like Washington D.C. and Orlando, FL, to go Google. With this switch to the cloud, Los Angeles joins the group of leaders on the innovation front — not only with regard to budget but technology as well. Bringing in cloud applications will make city work more efficient, which is great for Los Angeles residents too. Read more from Randi on the Google Enterprise blog, and stay tuned to follow Los Angeles' Google Apps story, and to learn about other governments moving to the cloud.
When Google asked what you liked and disliked about their new real-time communication application, you unquestionably said that you wanted extra invites to share with friends and family. Problem solved.
Now, Google decided to play Santa with Wave invites. It has just doled out significantly additional invites to existing users.
In conjunction with the invite rollout, Google is also hinting that they'll shortly reach the one million user mark. The title of their post suggestively point out that "a million stamps" have been licked, which we take to mean that they've now opened up Google Wave to a million users.
While invites may be extra readily available, be forewarned: Google is still not ready to graduate the service from preview phase to beta phase. Still, we're excited that extra of you can get in on the shared experience that is Google Wave.
We know it was inevitable, and now it's here: Google has now launched real-time search integrated into search results pages.
Google real-time search updates as stuff is happening around the Web - for example, live tweets, Yahoo Answers, news articles and Web pages now stream in on the real result pages for your query. It works on mobile also (at least iPhone and Android for now).
As we were expecting, Google has now released Chrome for Mac, which can now be downloaded by Mac OS X 10.5 or later users.
If you're everything like us, you've been anxiously awaiting the chance to get your hands on the new browser since last year's release of the Windows version.
Of course, Google Chrome for Mac is just a beta release, and, you won't be able to use applications like Gmail that run on Google Gears, but you can take advantage of other Chrome improvements such as speed and Google search right from the address bar.
Here's a video demo that Google has released:
After you install Google Chrome on your Mac, you can optionally import your Safari or Firefox settings, which means your bookmarks and certain preferences can carry over from your existing favorite browser. Given that Chrome Extensions should launch any day, you might not even have to live without your favorite add-ons for very long (though at this time extensions are not available for the Mac version).
Google brought a rich database of information to Google Maps in September with Place Pages, and now those detailed results on businesses and points of interest are available in Google Earth as well. To access the Place Page for a particular place, just click the "View more information" link at the bottom of the summary overlay that pops up when you click on a business or place of interest.
It's a sensible integration that brings Google's rich collection of place information to browsing the globe in 3D. Although it lacks the same level of social commentary afforded by the similarly oriented Yelp, Place Pages focus on collecting detailed information about a place including a description, photos and videos, nearby transit options, related Web sites and reviews.
If you're a fan of Google Earth, it just got easier to gather even more information about cities, landmarks, neighborhoods, shops and other points of interest around the world. Have you had a chance to check out Place Pages from within Google Earth yet? Let us know if you discover everything new and interesting.
Avast!, a run-time antivirus software is a darling for numerous of the internet users! If you are an Avast! user, you might be in really excellent company since Avast has over 100 Million users.
After achieving those big numbers, Avast has now decided to duo up with Google Chrome to bring you a fast and secure browser along with a widely used Antivirus solution. This would be implemented from mid-November of the upcoming year (2010) along with its new release of version 5.
The users who install the new version of Avast! will be notified (or more exactly recommended) to install Google Chrome browser along with it, provided the computer doesn't have the Google Chrome browser.
It's been spotted in the wild before, but a before Google is officially unveiling a new and minimalist version of the classic Google.com homepage.
There's literally not much to it, as it only sports the Google logo and two search buttons: Google Search and I'm Feeling Lucky. But don't worry, the whole thing you've come to expect from the homepage is still there, but the features are hidden until you move your mouse, at which point they fade in.
Google explain the decision to scrap the additives with this statement on their blog:
"For the vast majority of people who come to the Google homepage, they are coming in order to search, and this clean, minimalist approach gives them just what they are looking for first and foremost. For those users who are interested in using a different application like Gmail, Google Image Search or our advertising programs, the additional links on the homepage only reveal themselves when the user moves the mouse."
In fact, Google has attempted to master the fade-in effect, as they tried 10 different variations of it, ultimately landing on one that a majority of testers had positive and neutral reactions to. Interestingly enough though, the fade-in approach they picked also slows down the time it takes for users to take their first action on www.Google.com. While this would appear to be a troubling, Google says, "we want users to notice this change… and it does take time to notice something (though in this case, only milliseconds!)."
Bing and Yahoo have already announced their lists of the most popular search terms of 2009, and now it's time for the undisputed, heavyweight champion of search - Google, in the red trunks - to announce its rundown.
In their annual Zeitgeist report, Google crowns "Michael Jackson" as the fastest rising search term, followed by "Facebook" in second place and "Twitter" in fourth place, with Spanish Facebook "Tuenti" coming in third place.
As far as the fastest falling search terms go, unsurprisingly the heaviest hitters of old, such as "Beijing 2008″ and "Euro 2008," have decreased in relevance, and certain Internet giants, such as eMule and Bebo, have obviously lost their luster.
The full list is below:
Fastest Rising Search Terms (Global):
1. michael jackson 2. facebook 3. tuenti 4. twitter 5. sanalika 6. new moon 7. lady gaga 8. windows 7 9. dantri.com.vn 10. torpedo gratis
Google seems to have a new focus on improving the image search experience. For example, just last month Google Similar Images, which uses the image recognition technology for filtering search results, graduated from Google Labs and became a default feature of Google Image search.
In an effort to continue down the better image search path, Google has now released a new Labs feature called Google Image Swirl. The new functionality is the result of computer vision research and clusters images into the groups that you can search by way of an experimental new user interface.
With Google Image Swirl, your image search results are joined together in 12 different groupings. Once you identify a particular group, your results will swirl into view, whereby every selection refocuses and swirls the search results in a circular fashion. The experience is evocative of Google's Wonder Wheel, and reminds us of Visual Thesaurus.
Image Swirl expands on technologies developed for Similar Images and Picasa Face Recognition to discern how images should be grouped jointly and build hierarchies out of these groups. Every thumbnail on the initial results page represents an algorithmically-determined representative group of images with similar appearance and meaning. These aren't just the most pertinent images - they are the most relevant groups of images.
Google Sites, a service that lets you create and collaborate on a simple webpage, and embed documents, photos, videos into it, was visually a bland affair...until now. Google has created a template gallery for Sites; when you create a new website, you can now select a template which you can further customize according to your needs. Available templates cover a wide selection of specific needs; you'll find one for schools, weddings, churches, families, restaurants, clubs, projects and more.
Moreover, the template gallery is public, and anyone can contribute. Given Google's popularity, and the fact that Google Sites is a free service, we expect the gallery to be populated with dozens of great looking templates very soon. Directions for adding a template to gallery are here; you can also see an overview of Google Sites Templates in a video below.
Google's been on a homepage logo changing spree: they've celebrated H.G. Wells, the bar code, Gandhi, Confucious, and Sesame Street over the last few months alone.
If you check www.Google.com now though, you'll see that the search giant is celebrating something different: the discovery of water on the moon! NASA made the stunning announcement earlier today after its moon bombing mission successfully revealed water under the lunar surface. And currently the Google logo depicts the bombing revealing water.
When you think about it, Google had a fast turnaround time for this logo. As fellow space enthusiasts, our hats go off to NASA and the men and women behind successful mission. Hopefully this is only the beginning of something even larger than ourselves.
Google is apparently in the early stages of a research project that appears to aim as high as perhaps replacing the HTTP protocol, the basic technology that essentially makes the World Wide Web possible.
In a rather obscure post on the Chromium blog, the development branch of their Chrome browser, Google reveals they've been working on a new protocol dubbed SPDY for "SPeeDY" for its target of making the web faster.
While HTTP is an "elegantly simple protocol" that has powered the web since 1996, the tone of Google's post is nearly patronizing, as if HTTP were our doddering old uncle that's had his day and needs to be put out to pasture. Then again, Google's hubris is perhaps warranted as one of the only companies with sufficient clout and resources to indeed spur on the "evolution of websites and browsers" with an entirely new protocol designed to speed up the communication between web servers and clients.
Google reveal they've already got a prototype web server and a Chrome client with built-in SPDY support that they've been testing in the lab. With these tools they've reportedly been able to see an up to 55% speed increase in page loading, and feel like the project is now stable sufficient to warrant soliciting feedback from the web community. The SPDY documentation is currently available, as well as the source code. Google encourages feedback on new protocol in the Chromium Google Group.
Internet giant Google has been ordered to pay 500,000 dollars in damages to Formula 1 racer Rubens Barrichello for hosting fake online profiles of him on Google social network Orkut.
The judgment by the court in Sao Paulo was published Monday in the Brazilian state's official government gazette.
It said that the damages could be raised to 700,000 dollars because of the case was lodged in July 2006, and that Google risked a daily fine of 590 dollars until the pages referring to Barrichello were removed.
Orkut, owned by Google, has a huge following in Brazil, though it is losing some ground to a new Portuguese-language version of Facebook that has become available.
The 15th district court of Sao Paulo hearing the civil case determined that Google's responsibility is proved because it managed the site and established the rules for its use.
Media said that there were more than 300 fake profiles under Barrichello's name on Orkut.
The US Internet company made no immediate comments on the judgement.
Brazilian specialists said the total of damages was the biggest yet awarded for false web profiles and online libel.
Here's a pleasant holiday gift from Google (which may point to a service further ahead): the company will provide free Wi-Fi on airports across USA from now through January 15, 2010.
Google has worked with Boingo Wireless, Advanced Wireless Group, Airport Marketing Income and other companies to give this free service. It is presently available at 47 airports, including Las Vegas, San Jose, Boston, Baltimore, Burbank, Houston, Indianapolis, Seattle, Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando, St. Louis and Charlotte. It gets better for residents of Seattle and Burbank, where airports will now offer airport-wide free Wi-Fi indefinitely.
It's a cool gift, but Google also provide you the option to make someone else happy, too; once you log in to one of the Wi-Fi networks, you'll have the option to donate to Engineers Without Borders, the One Economy Corporation or the Climate Savers Computing Initiative. Moreover, Google will match the donations made across all the networks up to $250,000. At last, the airport network that generates the highest amount per passenger by January 1, 2010 will receive $15,000 to donate to the local nonprofit of their choice.
This initiative comes on the heels of an extra similar holiday gift; recently, Virgin America and Google started offering free in-flight Wi-Fi for passengers. This opportunity will be also be available up to January 15, 2010.
You can get more info about this initiative, as well as a full list of participating airports, over at www.freeholidaywifi.com.
Google purchased mobile ad firm AdMob for $750 million Monday, placing a heavy bet that targeted ads on mobile devices could assist diversify Google's income stream.
While Google already has text ad that accompany mobile searches, AdMob specializes in graphic ads that show up on web pages and mobile applications. AdMob collects demographic data on mobile users, and charge a premium to let advertisers choose to target professionals, teens or early adopters. While Google still makes the majority of its revenue from text ads it display next to search results, the company has been seeking to diversify that model for years.
Google has successfully become an ad publishing network for other sites, through its AdSense program, and in 2007, spent $3.1 billion to acquire DoubleClick, which serves banner ads on thousands of web sites around the Internet. Google integrated that tracking and serving technology with its own, in hopes of gaining more adveritising dollars.
Now Google is be betting big on mobile ads. The iPhone has shown that mobile phone users will spend lots of time on their devices and on the Internet. Google's sort-of open source mobile Android operating system has grown to become a formidable force in the smart phone competition, with Google's own applications - and ads - at the heart of those applications.
Google pulled in $5.96 billion in revenue in the 3rd quarter of 2009 and had $1.65 billion in profit. Search engine text ads accounted for 67 percent of that revenue, while 30 percent comes from ads on other publishers' web sites.
Last week, Google launched a new music search feature, which helps you search and discover millions of songs with a simple Google search. When you search for an artist, song, album or even a few lyrics, you'll find links to their partner sites - putting you just one click away from listening to and purchasing the music you're looking for.
To celebrate their launch, MySpace and Lala are hosting exclusive, never-before-heard tracks from a variety of artists - and they are helping people to find those tracks through a simple Google search. So if you're a Lady Gaga fan looking for a new remix, in love with the Arctic Monkeys and looking for something additional or hunting for a new acoustic track from YouTube sensation Zee Avi, just search for it. You'll find links to these tracks right in your usual search results. And when you click the links, you'll be able to hear the songs straight from MySpace and Lala.
Google know how much you care about music, and they are excited to partner with Lala and MySpace to help you discover more music from artists you love, using Google.
Today, Google are excited to announce the launch of Google Dashboard. Have you ever wondered what data is stored with your Google Account? The Google Dashboard offers a simple view into the data associated with your account - simply and concisely in one location.
Over the past 11 years, Google has focused on building innovative products for the users. Today, with hundreds of millions of people using those products around the world, Google are very aware of the trust that you have placed in us, and the responsibility to protect your privacy and data. In the past, Google have taken numerous steps in this area, investing in educating their users with their Privacy Center, making it easier to move data in and out of Google with their Data Liberation Front, and allowing you to control the ads you see with interest-based advertising. Transparency, choice and control have become a key part of Google's philosophy, and today, Google are happy to announce that they are doing even more.
In an effort to provide you with greater transparency and control over their own data, they have built the Google Dashboard. Designed to be simple and helpful, the Dashboard summarizes data for each product that you use (when signed in to your account) and provides you direct links to control your personal settings. Today, the Dashboard covers more than 20 products and services, including Gmail, Orkut, YouTube, Calendar, Docs, Web History, Picasa, Talk, Reader, Alerts, Latitude and many more. The scale and level of detail of the Dashboard is unprecedented, and they are delighted to be the first Internet company to offer this - and we hope it will become the standard.
The holiday period is right around the corner, so online retailers are gearing up for spikes in traffic. When people go to shop online, search is large part of finding the right product, whether they're looking for a gift or just something for themselves. Today Google are aiming to make e-commerce searching as easy as using Google.com with a new enterprise product, Google Commerce Search.
Search quality is a large factor in changing visitors to buyers online, and in making customers happy too. Visitors spend an average of just eight seconds before deciding whether or not to remain on a site, so having a good search tool is important for turning visitors into buyers. Google Commerce Search is hosted by and uses Google search technology to make online retail searching both quick and customizable - visitors to your online store can sort by category, price, brand or any other attribute. E-store administrators can highlight special products or connect related ones so searching is so easier for their customers. Google Commerce Search contains a built-in spellchecker and synonyms so if visitors can't remember exactly how to spell the particular toy or perfume or anything else they're hunting for, Google Commerce Search will make some suggestions. Deciding the right one is up to them, though.
Google Commerce Search is hosted in the cloud, meaning it lives online, so e-commerce websites can get up and running quickly. Using a cloud search tool will also help site owners meet the rise in demand from the holiday rush without having to devote additional time or resources to worrying about their capacity or infrastructure. Online retailers are free to focus on their business, while Google focuses on search, and shoppers can find what they require faster.
The latest Google Chrome beta build ushers in a great new feature: bookmark syncing. If you use various computers, or even just appreciate a cloud backup of your browser bookmarks, this feature will be a boon.
You can grab the new beta build 4.0.223.16 here, which also contains speed improvements by as much as 30% since the current stable release. For more information on how the bookmark sync works in the new build, head on past the break for an introductory video from the Google Chrome team.
Whether it's a laptop and desktop, machines at home and at work, or more than one machine in the house, it's a pain to try to keep them in sync - you inevitably don't have access to that one bookmark you're looking for no matter which machine you're on. That's undoubtedly the reason Xmarks syncing extensions was so popular in our "Favorite Firefox extensions" Lunchtime Poll.
The bookmark syncing feature actually debuted earlier in the developer version of the browser, but needed setting a command-line flag. Now that Google Chrome supports bookmarking sync natively - if only in beta - will any of you consider switching or perhaps just adding it to your browser arsenal?
Remember that for now, unluckily, this is only enabled in the Windows version of Chrome (Mac users are sadly still waiting for an official version). You'll also have to of course download the beta and also allow each computer individually for syncing, by choosing "Synchronize my bookmarks" from the Wrench menu.
