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.
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.
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.
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%.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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'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.
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.
It looks like those Going Google billboards are really good for something, as the Los Angeles' city council has just unanimously approved a Google Apps deal worth $7.2 million.
According to CNET, LA would become one of the biggest government agencies, outside the District of Columbia, to make the switch to using hosted Google email and application services.
However, security concerns over storing information in the cloud did factor into the process and have so far to be 100% alleviate. Apparently the deal hinges around an agreement with Computer Sciences Corp, a contractor who would want to agree to pay a penalty should there be a security breach.
If the deal does go through it would be fairly the coup for Google and their Going Google campaign. With both the US Government supporting the initiative and the city of Los Angeles joining the Google team, Google is building up an arsenal of big and impressive customers that should make it easier to attract more top dollar enterprise clients.
When it comes to maps, Google has had nearly everything: great satellite imagery, enormous coverage, and even some basic navigation features, but not what everyone that's ever used a GPS device really wants: turn-by-turn navigation.
This changes today, as Google now released a beta version of Google Maps Navigation for Android 2.0. Here's a fast overview of the features:
- Search in plain English - speedily search and navigate to places, businesses, landmarks - Search by voice - View of live traffic data over the Internet. - Search along route - find locations close to your current path - Satellite view - you can view the similar satellite imagery you've seen Google Maps, on your phone - Street View - check out what the correct surroundings of a location look like - Car dock mode - when you place sure devices in a car dock, a special mode activates that enables easier operation
Google Maps Navigation does two extremely important things for Google: it makes it a contestant to established GPS firms like TomTom and Garmin, which should make this space a lot more interesting and it suddenly makes Android - the only platform this app is currently available on - a lot more desirable. And - you guessed it - the first Android 2.0 phone to support this application is the upcoming Motorola Droid.
Since the app is free, we can expect Google to add advertisements to it at some point. But presently, since you have to pay for every other mobile turn-by-turn navigation app out there (we're not talking pocket change here, either), the sheer fact that this thing is free will certainly make it a huge hit.
Way back in April, Google relaunched Google Labs, the place where the company tests its latest and experimental features. When it relaunched, it added a very interesting experimental feature to Google Image Search: Find Similar Images.
A recap if you don't remember similar images: it uses image recognition technology to help filter search results. If you find an action shot of soccer/football star Ronaldo and want to find more like it, for example, you can use Similar Images to filter your results and find similar images.
The features have been in Google Labs for over half a year, but that's no longer the case. Google said that Similar Images has now become a standard feature of Google Image search.
It was only a matter of time until Find Similar Images made its debut in Google Search. It's a very helpful and surprisingly accurate feature that really helps you filter images. We can expect to see a lot of users utilizing this feature very shortly.
The desktop version of Waveboard for Mac, though in a very early stage, is already available for download. Official info on the app is extremely scarce, but some users have tried it out and called it "simple and practical".
The same developer is presently waiting for Apple's approval of a Google Wave client for the iPhone under the same name. You can already run Wave on your iPhone by just accessing wave.google.com/wave from your iPhone, with mixed results (works a bit better on Nokia N900), but we expect the app to make the whole experience far smoother.
Although lots of airlines are cutting back on the standard perks (in-flight meals and snacks, free checking of bags, pillows), Internet-addicts can look forward to in-flight Wi-Fi on more and more airlines.
Right now, Virgin America, United, Delta, American and Southwest are just some of the airlines offering in-flight Wi-Fi as an additional perk (a perk that usually costs about $12 or $13 per flight).
How popular is the feature? Well, according to a study by the Wi-Fi Alliance back in August, 76% of frequent-fliers would alter airlines just to get access to Wi-Fi. Today, Google has announced that it will be offering free in-flight Wi-Fi on every Virgin America flights from November 10, 2009 through January 15, 2010.
You can obtain details and see what airports/destinations Virgin America serves at FreeHolidayWiFi.com.
This isn't the first time that Google and Virgin America have teamed up. Back in June, Google sponsored a "Day in the Cloud" virtual forager hunt and kicked-off the event by piling a ton of bloggers and techies onto two Virgin America flights (including our very own Ben Parr).
Dealing with airports during the holidays can be a really annoying experience, so having free Wi-Fi is a definite perk.
What do you get when you add an additional wheel to a bicycle and slap an omnidirectional camera on top? A Street View Trike, that's what.
While collecting imagery for its Street View project, the folks at Google realized that some places are unreachable with the standard Street View Car, so they imaginary this special trike which can collect imagery from scenic running and cycling trails, college campuses and similar locations.
To keep poor Google trikies (trikists? trikers?) from itinerant around aimlessly, you can tell them of locations worthy of being photographed. You can nominate locations within six categories: Parks & Trails, University Campuses, Pedestrian Malls, Theme Parks & Zoos (ie: outdoor shopping areas, boardwalks), Landmarks and Sports Venues (ie: golf courses, racing tracks, stadium grounds). Nominations are open until Wednesday October 28, 2009 and can be submitted over at www.google.com/trike.
As formerly anticipated, Chrome OS is a Linux distribution that includes a custom version of Chrome as the default browser. Google has lately posted a build of the custom Chrome and some people installed the .deb package (it's no longer available formally, but you can download it from other sources).
Chrome for Chrome OS is not extremely different from the browser you can already install in Windows, Linux or Mac. The main difference is that the browser contains UI elements from a traditional operating system: clock, battery status, network settings.
Since Google Chrome will contain most of the features that are necessary to use an operating system, it's obvious that the browser is the only visible component of Chrome OS, a lightweight browser-centric operating system.
There's no reason to nervously wait for Chrome OS, when you can already use Google Chrome in your favorite operating system and get the same features. A metaphor has become actuality, but the result fails to impress.
Since the debut of Google Voice, The early users of Google have shared lots of feedback that has led to some exciting new features, like the ability to receive SMS messages via email and the option to change your Google Voice number. But one of the most frequent requests Google have received is for the ability to share Google Voice with friends and family.
Starting today, Google are beginning to give out invitations to Google Voice users. If you presently use Google Voice, over the next few weeks, you'll see an "Invite a friend" link appear on the left-hand side of your inbox.
Google will be rolling out these invitations gradually, so don't worry if you don't see your invitations immediately. Google are initially giving out three invites to each account, but Google are planning to provide more invitations in the future.
If you don't have an account until now, you can request a Google Voice invitation at google.com/voiceinvite.
Crowdsourcing is an increasingly popular way to tackle big problems - both Facebook and Google are taking this approach to translating the web into several languages.
Now Google is leveraging the wisdom of the crowds for another purpose: the Building Maker tool helps users make precise 3D models of buildings for representation in Google Earth.
Using Google-provided aerial photographs, you essentially overlay appropriate 3D shapes on top of several different views of a building to construct an exact model of it. When completed, submit your building to Google for review. If approved, the model will be added to the 3D Building layer in Google Earth.
For now, you can only construct buildings in fifty cities (dear Google: no Los Angeles? What gives?), but the company will be adding more over time. You don't have to be familiar with a building to create a decent model of it, though - and for geography and travel buffs it's a fun way to engage with different cities around the world.
Just like with the Monopoly City Streets "virtual" building initiative, you can use the free Google Sketch Up to edit or modify your creations, and the completed products will live in the Google 3D Warehouse, an online database of 3D models.
Check out the video demo of Building Maker below and let us know if you've had a chance to use the tool, or if you plan to. Have fun!
Google is happy to launch one of the most requested Google Docs features - the ability to share folders. Shared folders make it easy for a team of people to join forces on projects that require multiple documents, spreadsheets or presentations. If you have a group of items you want to share, all that you have to do is put them into a folder and share it.
Once you've shared one folder, all of the items in the folder will be accessible to the group. You can also add someone to an existing shared folder to provide them access to all of the folder's content. Similarly, each item you add to the folder will be automatically shared. Just like with sharing document, you can specify edit and view-only access for a folder.
In addition to sharing folders, you can now upload several files to Google Docs at the same time, simplifying the process of transferring documents from your desktop to the cloud. Once your documents are in the cloud, you can access them from any device connected to the Internet or share them with people you select.
These features are presently rolling out and will be available to everyone by the end of the day.
For those who aren't in the know, the top secret of Google's success is the home page. This intelligent design almost one of a kind in that the home page was the only page. All you had was a search bar and a couple of choices, but the speed in using the site was phenomenal.
More frequently than not, you double-click your browser on your desktop and begin typing your search term. Because after loading the site, you don't want to click. Type in the term and then hit the return key. All people do from the home page is search, with the odd exemption here or there, but it is rare.
But since then, the home page has become a small cluttered. Google have opened up the floodgates to more services, more search sites, more business links and advanced options... maybe not for long though.
The company looks to recognise its grass-roots in the simplicity of its home page and is regressing through a live experiment. By adding a bit of JavaScript code to the address bar of your browser once Google has loaded, it will display only the logo, search bar and the buttons.
Hover over the page with your mouse and the rest of the options, the links and services will display. But the loveliness of this is that there is no inconvenience; those who search as soon as it loads don't use the mouse so the simplistic look works.
Once Google has loaded, copy and paste this code into the address bar, and hit return. Reload the page and then you should see the simplistic view. javascript:void(document.cookie="PREF=ID=abac7a90f5a3784b:LD=en: NR=10:TM=1254990196:LM=1254990236:S=uB6F4jDnMP_DuxtT;path=/; domain=.google.com");
Google search results sometimes contain documents that were not originally formatted to be viewed in a web browser, such as PDFs. In the past, the only way to view the PDF documents was to download them and open them in a separate viewer application. To provide an option, we made it possible to quickly and easily view these files as HTML right in a web browser by clicking "View as HTML." This was an improvement, but unfortunately the "View as HTML" option loses some of the formatting from the original PDF, such as graphics, fonts, tables and other elements.
Today, Google added new links to "Quick View" PDF documents in your browser with the formatting intact. The new links are based on the same technology that's presented in Google Docs and Gmail, as well as to webmasters through the Google Docs viewer. Google have been rolling this technology out to the search results page since July, and as of today Google added "Quick View" links to more than 50% of the PDFs in our index. The new links appear at the end of the second line of the result, right under the title.
For example, here is a search results for the IRS 1099 form:
Clicking "Quick View" will open up the PDF right in your browser with graphics, formatting and tables potted.
Google always keen to share updates about the browser Google Chrome. This past month, Google launched a new stable release with speed improvements and updates to key features, as well as a little something extra to make your browser pop: themes. Today, Google excited to build on this initial splash of color. They invited leading artists, architects, musicians, illustrators, filmmakers and fashion and interior designers from around the globe to create artwork for an unusual canvas: the modern web browser. The result? Artist Themes for Google Chrome, a fusion of art and technology, with a hundred Artist Themes that they hope will enrich and personalize your web browsing experience.
Google honored to have had the opportunity to work with artists including Jeff Koons, Jenny Holzer, Karim Rashid, Jonathan Adler, Oscar de la Renta, Anita Kunz, Tom Sachs, Kate Spade, Donna Karan, Kid Robot, Casey Reas, Dolce & Gabbana, Michael Graves, Todd Oldham, Yann Arthus-Bertrand and Mariah Carey (and that's just to name a few!). Google would like to extend our thanks to all the artists for lending their vision, imagination and hard work to this collaboration.
Google Wave has the potential to change the web. Still, understanding what Wave is all about - and why you should use it - can be difficult to clutch.
That's why we're all big fans of this video from Epipheo Studios. It really explains, in a very straightforward and entertaining way, what Google Wave is and why it is valuable of all the hype it has received.
According to comScore Inc. Google continues to dominate views of online videos, surpassing 10 billion video views in August.
The Reston, Va.-based Internet traffic tracking firm also says online video watching overall reached an all-time high of over 25 billion views in August. Above 161 million viewers watched an average of 157 videos during the month.
Google, which owns YouTube, had 39.6 percent of all video views in August, far ahead of second-place Microsoft Corp., whose sites attracted 2.2 percent of video views.
Microsoft Corp. was followed by Viacom Digital, Hulu and Fox Interactive Media.
comScore's (Nasdaq: SCOR) monthly report says the average online video viewer watched 582 minutes of video, or about 9.7 hours value. The average duration of an online video last month was 3.7 minutes.
Google launched a new technology at TechCrunch50, Google FastFlip, designed to help users quickly browse a number of web sites.
"At Google, we've had a very aggressive objective around speed," said Marissa Mayer, the vice president of search and user experience. "When you make the Web faster, you use it more."
Google has been shaving milliseconds here and there, Mayer said; however, co-founder Larry Page raised a question last fall: how come if you go to a new page, the content isn't preloaded?
Google FastFlip is type of an answer to that. The interface seems somewhat based on Google News, allowing users to preview sites oriented around particular topics. A slideshow slides left and right, allowing users to preview the screenshots of stories. The prototype service is being launched with The New York Times, The Washington Post, US Weekly, and TechCrunch, amongst others.
The interface just slides screenshots left and right on the screen. But the technology doesn't fairly solve the problem of speed, as to read the full article you need to click on it -- which opens the article on the publisher's home page. And the text is often too small to read on the linked web sites. So does this optimize the screening experience?
Google has enlarged its search box to make it "easier" to use, the company said late Wednesday.
In a blog post, Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president for search products and user experience, said the simple modify to the company's home page "symbolizes" it's "focus on search." She added that alteration to the height and width of the search box makes the company's home page "even easier and more fun to use." Yeah, I don't get it either.
Google said in an e-mail message that the fresh search box is "roughly twice the size of the (original) search box." The company also made its search buttons are "more similar" for those viewing Google "on different operating systems and browsers." Even with a bigger search box, the company's search still only allows for up to 2,048 characters in a single query.
A multinational game of Monopoly will be launched on Wednesday when Hasbro and Google Maps collide to bring online game called Monopoly City Streets to the world.
The Monopoly City Streets game, which assures 'a world of property empire building on an inconceivable scale' launches on 9 September.
Game's official site said, "An online worldwide game of MONOPOLY using Google Maps as the game board."
Goal
"The goal is simple. Play to beat your friends and the world to become the richest possessions magnate in existence."
"Own any street in the world. Build modest houses, crazy castles and stupendous skyscrapers to collect rent."
"Use MONOPOLY Chance Cards to sabotage your mates by building peril on their streets."
Sony Corp. is selling its Vaio-brand computers installed with Google Web browser Chrome for users in the U.S. and Europe.
Sony said that Chrome has been pre-installed on the Vaio computers as the default browser in the U.S. and Europe since May. The Sony devices continue to provide Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer - the world's most widely used Web browser - allowing users to have an alternative between the two.
Sony is the first PC creator to sell computers with Chrome pre-installed. The company doesn't reveal breakdown of sales figures, but said that it expects to sell 6.2 million PCs worldwide in the economic year through March 2010.
For small businesses looking to optimize their online presence and take benefit of digital marketing tools, search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing are emerging as increasingly precious strategies.
A latest report from digital marketing intelligence firm ComScore revealed that the number of global online searches increased 41 percent, rising from 80.5 billion searches (July 2008) to 113.7 billion searches (July 2009).
Google search engines may be the most excellent investment for a small business' search engine marketing dollars, as Google websites saw the maximum amount of searches - The 76.7 billion Google searches seen in July 2009 mark a 58 percent increase over the last year, and now represent 67.5 percent of the market share.
Yahoo search engines were in second place, yet far behind Google at 8.9 billion searches in July 2009, marking a 2 percent increase year-over-year. AOL was the only search engine to see moribund use, falling 11 percent since July 2008 to just 1 billion searches in July 2009.
Approximately two-thirds of businesses use search engine optimization (SEO) in their marketing efforts, according to a survey from Korn/Ferry International, iPressroom and the Public Relations Society of America.
It's a little tweak with a few lovely implications: Now Google Maps has much more tightly integrated Google Street View, so you can switch seamlessly between the two when looking for an address.
After performing a search in Google Maps, you'll see an option underneath the search result will go to "Street View," it's takes you to the street-level view of the business or location which you're searching for. The address will have a marker right in front of it, and you can use all the normal street view tools to zoom and navigate the representation of the space.
From the street view you get a link to "Search nearby," which then seamlessly takes you back out to Maps level to see results close to where you just were. You can click on any of the found icons to go back to Street View and see that location's positioning relative to other businesses or homes in the area.
