Distracted driving and cell phones

"Distracted driving" is when you drive while taking your hands off the steering wheel, your eyes off the road, or your mind off of driving. Whether you are eating while driving or using your cell phone while driving, distracted driving increases your chances of getting into a serious accident. Today, organizations throughout the US are collaborating to raise the awareness about the dangers of distracted driving. Read more about what the Google Maps team is doing with the Oprah Winfrey Show.

With the exception of Google Maps Navigation, which is designed for hands-free use with a car dock, Google Mobile products are not intended to be used while you are driving. Hand your phone to a passenger or park your car in a safe place if you need to search for a restaurant or check your email while behind the wheel.

For more information about distracted driving and how you can help prevent it, please visit www.distracteddriving.gov. And if you're in the US and have an iPhone, Palm Pre, or Android-powered device, you can go to Google.com in your browser today to see our mobile doodle. Do not do this while you are driving, of course.

Posted by Marc Vanlerberghe, Director of Mobile Marketing

On Flash for Mobile Phones

Apple's CEO wrote a thoughtful post about Adobe Flash and explained the reasons why Apple doesn't intend to add support for Flash to the iPhone OS:

"Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short."

Steve Jobs says that Flash doesn't perform well on mobile devices, it drains the battery and it's not optimized for touch interfaces. Flash is also a way to create cross-platform applications, but Apple doesn't want applications that look the same way on all mobile platforms and don't take advantage of iPhone's features. "We cannot be at the mercy of a third party" is the main reason why Steve Jobs doesn't want to include Flash's runtime. Flash's main use today is to play videos, but web developers should start using the native video tag, which is already supported by most web browsers, including iPhone's browser.

Apple's refusal to support Flash in popular products like iPhone or iPad has an important side-effect: web developers will be forced to take advantage of HTML5 features like native video, canvas or create animations using SVG, instead of/in addition to using Adobe's proprietary plug-in.

Unfortunately, users can't access a lot of content on their mobile devices. There are many sites built using Flash and many popular sites use Flash to create animations, charts and other interactive content. Adobe is already working on Flash Player 10.1, the first version of the plug-in that will work on smartphones, if you don't take into account Flash Lite. Flash will soon be available for Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Palm and Google will include the plug-in in Chrome and Chrome OS. Flash Player 10.1 for Android will be available as a public preview in May at Google I/O and the general release will be in June.

Google's decision is pragmatic: even if HTML5 is the future, Flash is an important part of the web today. "[Sometimes being open] means not being militant about the things consumer are actually enjoying," said Google's Andy Rubin. Users will be able to choose if they want to enable Flash and Adobe will be pressured to deliver a better product.

Some might say that Android is actually the anti-iPhoneOS: it's an open source operating system, it encourages competition and collaboration in the mobile space, it lets you replace built-in functionality, install applications from other sources than the Android Market and customize your device. Android is not "at the mercy of a third party", but third parties can add a lot of value. Even if Android's user experience is inferior to iPhone's user experience, Android is an open platform that can be fully customized and a better catalyst for innovation. Android doesn't strive for perfection, it's a flexible platform that lets you transform a device into whatever you want it to be.

Ability to reset sign-in cookies from the control panel

Now Google Apps admins can reset the sign-in cookies for any user from the Google Apps control panel. This will log out a user from all current browser sessions and require new authentication the next time that user tries to initiate an browser session to log in to Google Apps.

Editions included:

Premier, Education

Languages included:

All languages supported by the Google Apps Administrator control panel

How to access what's new:

To reset the sign-in cookies for a user:

- In the Google Apps control panel, click the 'Users and groups' tab, then click the user's name.

- In the 'Password' section, click 'Reset sign-in cookies'.

For more information:

http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=178854

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How Google Collects WiFi Data

After Germany's Federal Commissioner for Data Protection criticized Google for using Street View cars to scan wireless networks, Google posted a detailed answer that explains how Google collects data about WiFi networks to improve location based services like Google Maps for Mobile. Google says that collecting WiFi network information is not illegal and many other companies collect this data.

Visibly attached to the roof of each vehicle is a commercially available Maxrad BMMG24005 omnidirectional radio antenna. This antennae receives publicly broadcast wifi radio signals within range of the vehicle.

The vehicle travels at normal road speeds, and so spends only a very short amount of time within the range of any given wifi access point.

The signals are initially processed onboard in the car, using software including the standard Kismet open source application. The data is then further processed when transferred to servers within a Google Data Centre, and used to compile the Google location based services database.

The equipment within the vehicle operates passively, receiving signals broadcast to it but not actively seeking or initiating a communication with the access point.

The information visible to the equipment is that which is publicly broadcast over the radio network, using the 802.11 standard. This includes the 802.11 b/g/n protocols.

The equipment is able to receive data from all broadcast frames. This includes, from the header data, SSID and MAC addresses. (...) The equipment also separately records the signal strength and channel of the broadcast at the point at which it was received by our equipment, and is able to establish the protocol used (i.e. 802.11b/g/n).

The data which we collect is used to provide location based services within Google products and to users of the Geolocation API. For example, users of Google Maps for Mobile can turn on My Location to identify their approximate location based on cell towers and wifi access points which are visible to their device. (...) Google currently uses 2 pieces of the data collected during the driving operation to build its database and provide location based services - the MAC address of the access point and the GPS co-ordinates of the vehicle at the point at which the access point was visible. This data is stored in aggregate form, and is used to provide the location based service.

Google location based services using wifi access point data work as follows:

* The user's device sends a request to the Google location server with a list of MAC addresses which are currently visible to the device;
* The location server compares the MAC addresses seen by the user's device with its list of known MAC addresses, and identifies associated geocoded locations (i .e. latitude / longitude);
* The location server then uses the geocoded locations associated with visible MAC address to triangulate the approximate location of the user;
* This approximate location is geocoded and sent back to the user's device.

Now that Motorola decided to replace Google's location services for Android with Skyhook, Google needs to improve the accuracy of the results.

{ Photo licensed as Creative Commons by mgroot. }

Integrating virtual keyboards in Google search

You’ve spilled coffee on your keyboard. The a, e, i, o, u, and r keys have stopped working. Now try to search Google for the nearest computer repair shop. The pain of typing on this broken keyboard is similar to what many people searching in non-English languages feel when trying to type today. Typing searches on keyboards not designed for your languages can be frustrating, even impossible.

Our user research has shown that many people are more comfortable formulating search queries in their own language but have difficulty typing these queries into Google. (Try typing नमस्ते on a keyboard with English letters.) To overcome the difficulty they face in typing in their local language scripts, some people have resorted to copying and pasting from other sites and from online translation tools. But there’s an easier way — a virtual, or “on-screen” keyboard, lets you type directly in your local language script in an easy and consistent manner, no matter where you are or what computer you’re using.

Virtual keyboards let people type directly in their local language script and don't require any additional software.

Last year, to make text input easy for people across the globe, we introduced a virtual keyboard API through code.google.com. This allowed developers to enable virtual keyboards on any text field or text area in their webpages. Today, we are taking this effort one step further by integrating virtual keyboards into Google search in 35 languages.

A virtual keyboard on www.google.am to input Armenian text (the query term is [armenia])

If you use Google search in one of the languages listed below, you’ll see a small keyboard icon show up next to the search field, on both the Google homepage and search results page. Clicking on that keyboard icon brings up a virtual keyboard in your language. You can input text by either clicking on the on-screen keyboard or pressing the corresponding key.

You can find out more information on how to use the virtual keyboard in our help article. If you use Google in a language not listed below and feel that your language will benefit from a virtual keyboard, let us know by voting for your language. We hope virtual keyboards help you find information more easily — especially those of you who speak/type/read in non-Latin scripts.

Languages with integrated virtual keyboards
Albanian
Arabic
Armenian
Basque
Belarusian
Bosnian
Bulgarian
Catalan
Croatian
Czech
Finnish
Galician
Georgian
Greek
Hebrew
Hindi
Hungarian
Icelandic
Kazakh
Kirghiz
Macedonian
Malayalam
Mongolian
Persian
Polish
Russian
Serbian
Slovak
Slovenian
Swedish
Tatar
Thai
Turkish
Ukrainian
Uzbek

Posted by Manish Bhargava, Product Manager Google Îñţérñåţîöñåļîžåţîờñ

Disable Google Reader's Social Features

If you don't like Google Reader's social features and you only want to read your subscriptions, you can now switch to the antisocial asocial Google Reader interface:

1. Go to Google Reader

2. Type this JavaScript code in the address bar:

javascript:antisocial('true')

3. Google Reader will reload and you'll see a simplified interface that removes the section "People you follow" and no longer shows shared items from your friends.


The setting is saved to your account, even if the toggle is not included in the interface. To go back to the standard interface, type this code in the address bar:

javascript:antisocial('false')

{ via George Moga }

Connect with your "neigh"bors using Google Places

This is the second post in our Small Business series about entrepreneurship and the various Google tools you can use to establish and improve your business presence on the Internet. Here, you’ll learn how Google Places (formerly called the Local Business Center) can help you attract and be discovered by customers in your area for free. -Ed.

As a local business owner, one of the things that sets you apart is your ability to make personal connections with your customers because of your passion for what you do. Letting people know who you are and what your business is about is a vital part of finding customers, building lasting relationships with them and helping your business succeed. Google Places helps business owners like you to manage your online presence and supplement your Place Page with all the information that helps people decide to visit you — from basics like hours of operation and address to helpful extras like videos, coupons and special announcements.

To give you a firsthand account of how Google Places can help a small business grow and succeed, I’ve invited Danya Wright to share her experience:

I first began riding horses at age six. Ever since then I knew that I wanted to spend my life working with horses and sharing my passion with others. I had jobs working for several barns and riding programs around Arizona, but always dreamed of having a school of my own.

Two years ago, I finally realized my dream and opened Specialized Training and Riding School — S.T.A.R.S. of Horsemanship. At S.T.A.R.S., we offer lessons to riders of all ages and skill levels, provide therapeutic horse training services for those with disabilities, and train Special Olympics riders. Our property is a 10-acre scenic environment for our students and horses. But because we’re located in a rural area of Gilbert, AZ, this also presents a big challenge: I don’t have the advantage of “window shoppers” or drive-by traffic. Without a storefront, those who do pass by may not realize that my stable is open to customers. Whenever I want to find a local business, Google Maps is my resource, so I wanted to make sure my business appears there too.

I did a little research and quickly found Google Places (which was known as Local Business Center when I first signed up). Within a few minutes, I was able to update the S.T.A.R.S. Place Page to add key details about my business, like exact location and contact information. And I could mention the special services we offer like group classes, private lessons, birthday parties, Scouting events, parent-child sessions and so on. Now when a company’s looking specifically for a team-building venue, they can find my business easily.


Since avid equestrians can be quite particular about facility details, I wanted to make sure that my Place Page included all of the specialized information that’s relevant to my target clients. Now when you search on Google, you can be taken to our Place Page to see photos that offer preview of our stables and even meet Salty, one of the horses. You can also find a coupon to help provide a little extra incentive to come try out our lessons if you’re new to horseback riding.

Since I started using Google Places six months ago, my business has grown tenfold from what it was before — I’ve gone from averaging around 10 to 15 students to now serving more than 100. To be honest, I had just figured that new customers would trickle in over time, but it’s boomed far beyond my expectations. And now I can spend more time with horses and riders, and less at the computer!

Posted by Carter Maslan, Director of Product Management, Local Search

Creating a Google Account Requires to Enter Your Birthday in the US

If you try to create a new Google account in the US, Google asks for your birthday. Choosing any other country, removes the birthday field and you no longer have to enter this information.

Google's page for creating a new account is famous for only requiring your email address and your country, so it's strange to see that users from the United States have to enter their birthdays.

Google's terms of service say that "you may not use the Services and may not accept the Terms if you are not of legal age to form a binding contract with Google". If you try to enter a date like 4/28/2009, Google shows this message:

"In order to have a Google Account, you must meet certain age requirements. To learn more about online child safety, visit the Federal Trade Commission's website."


{ Thanks, Itamar. }

Google Updates Mobile Image Search

If there's one thing that I like about Bing's iPhone application is the interface for image search. Google borrowed some ideas from Bing and improved the mobile version of Google Image Search for iPhone and Android.


"In the redesign of Google Image Search for mobile, available today for iPhone 3.0+ and Android 2.1 devices, we focused on making it easy to quickly see as many image thumbnails as possible. The thumbnails are square to maximize the number of images we can get on the screen at one time so you can scan them quickly. You can swipe to see the next or previous page of results, or tap the large, stationary 'Next' and 'Previous' page buttons. We optimized for speed so that the images appear quickly when you browse," explains Google.


Google Image Search's interface for iPhone and Android is much better than the desktop interface, which really needs an update. The Sideshow extension for Chrome enhances Google Image Search and other photo sites, but it would be better if Google implemented some of its feature.

New YouTube Player

The player recently tested by YouTube is now live for everyone. YouTube's redesigned player has a lot in common with the new YouTube interface: it's simpler and more subtle. Controls fade out if you don't move your mouse, the progress bar is less visible, volume controls are now horizontal. It takes some time to get used to it, but the new player is one of the most brave attempts to minimize complexity in YouTube's user interface.



Unfortunately, the new video player has too many moving parts and the animation effects could become annoying. Vimeo's player is even more streamlined and more user-friendly.

Update: The new player is not available for all videos. Here's an example of video that uses the new player.

Update 2: YouTube says that it has "released a new player design for all videos without ads. The goal is for the player to be as subtle as possible so that the video itself shines and doesn't have to compete with the stuff around it. We'll be following this roll-out with player upgrades for videos with ads and then for embedded videos."

The New Image Search for Android and iPhone

When you do an image search, we find that it is typical that you will look through many pages of search results. So in the redesign of Google Image Search for mobile, available today for iPhone 3.0+ and Android 2.1 devices, we focused on making it easy to quickly see as many image thumbnails as possible:

• The thumbnails are square to maximize the number of images we can get on the screen at one time so you can scan them quickly
• You can swipe to see the next or previous page of results, or tap the large, stationary 'Next' and 'Previous' page buttons
• We optimized for speed so that the images appear quickly when you browse

When it comes to viewing the images, we now make them as large as possible by introducing a special image viewing page:

• The black background emphasizes the image and the buttons fade after a few seconds so you can just see images with little distraction
• Easily browse through the images by swiping from picture to picture

To try this new version of Image Search, just go to www.google.com on your phone and tap on “Images.” The new experience is available in 38 languages worldwide. Whether you like to look through pictures of prom dresses, impressionist paintings or 猫　ジャンプ we hope you love this update to Image Search for mobile.

Update on 6/2 @ 5:40 pm: This version of Image Search is now available for all Android and Palm webOS devices.

Posted by Leo Ting, Software Engineer, and Nick Fey, User Experience Designer

Alis volat propriis: Oregon’s bringing Google Apps to classrooms statewide

Growing up in the late seventies in Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan, technology wasn’t really a part of my educational life. My teachers graded printouts and the idea of collaborating with my classmates on a project anytime, anywhere just wasn’t possible. Not to mention, we didn’t have a computer at home and working on the Internet was still a pipe dream for a middle schooler.

Things have changed since I was in middle school of course, and there are people working hard to bring technology into classrooms to help students learn and teachers teach. Today Oregon is taking a huge step in that direction — they’re the first state to open up Google Apps for Education to public schools throughout the state.

Starting today, the Oregon Department of Education will offer Google Apps to all the school districts in the state — helping teachers, staff and students use Gmail, Docs, Sites, Video, Groups and more within their elementary, middle and high schools. School funding has been hit hard over the past couple of years, and Oregon is no exception. This move is going to save the Department of Education $1.5 million per year — big bucks for a hurting budget.

With Google Apps, students in Oregon can build websites or email teachers about a project. Their documents and email will live online in the cloud — so they’ll be able to work from a classroom or a computer lab, at home or at the city (or county) library. And instead of just grading a paper at the end of the process, Oregonian teachers can help students with their docs in real time, coaching them along the way. It’s critical that students learn how to use the kind of productivity technology they’ll need throughout their lives, and Oregon is helping students across the state do just that.

It blows my mind to think about how far technology in the classroom has come since I was in school, and how far we still have to go to make sure kids in classrooms everywhere have access to these tech resources. Cloud computing tools like Google Apps are one way teachers, schools — and now a whole state — are addressing the issue. Oh, and alis volat propriis? That’s the Oregon motto. It means “she flies by her own wings” — makes perfect sense for a state heading to the cloud.

Posted by Jaime Casap, Google Apps Education Manager

New Place Pages for mobile

Last fall, we launched Place Pages which organize relevant and useful information about places on Google Maps. Since then we've been developing a version, available now, which gives you access to the same useful information optimized for your mobile phone. For example, in the video below, the Place Page for Mama's restaurant in San Francisco shows location information, customer ratings, opening hours and what people are saying about the restaurant in summary format.



To get more details on opening hours or on customer specific comments related to the food, service or ambiance, simply click on those respective sections to show more information instantly. The Place Page also provides links to useful websites where the user can read full reviews about the place. Lastly, if address and cross street information is not enough, click on the map button and you will be taken to a full screen dynamic map which is pannable and zoomable. In this way you can quickly see the restaurant's location in the context of the entire neighborhood.

To try this yourself, go to google.com on your phone's browser and search for "mama's sf". On the search results page, click on the listing for Mama's restaurant to go to the Place Page. This mobile optimized Place Page is currently supported on Android-powered devices and iPhones/iPod touches in the US.

Posted by Dan Zivkovic, Software Engineer, and Karen Groenink, User Experience Designer, Mobile Search

Google OneBox for Similar Pages

Google constantly improves its search algorithms, but not many people notice the changes. Last year, Google has updated the feature that finds similar web pages: it now returns up to 200 pages and the results are much better.


Even if Google shows a link to this feature next to each Google result, few people click on "similar" to find related web pages. That's probably the reason why Google decided to show at the bottom of the search results page an OneBox with pages that are related to the top result, but only if the pages are likely to be helpful and only for navigational queries.

"Since we've been continuously improving this feature and we think it's really useful, we're now going to start showing these alternative sites more prominently," explains Google.



The feature is only available in the US and it's an alternate way to show a list of related searches. Instead of showing similar searches, Google displays a list of pages that are similar to the top result.

If you're wondering how Google manages to find related pages, read this article.

Discovering pages “similar to” ones that you like

One of the great things about the web is choice. There’s a website out there for nearly everything, and sometimes there are many sites all dedicated to a single topic. But how can you find all the sites that are related to the subject that interests you? This week, we launched a search feature that helps you easily find new websites that are similar to the ones with which you’re already familiar.

For example, with the recent earthquakes around the world, many of us have been looking for international relief organizations. We knew that Direct Relief International has been actively involved in Haiti, so we started off by searching for [direct relief international]. The first result on the page linked us to the Direct Relief website, where we found many ways to help in Haiti. But what if one wants to support several organizations? If you click the "Similar" link that’s on the same line as the "www.directrelief.org/" URL, you’ll find other nonprofits that are also involved in relief efforts.

We've offered a "Similar" feature on results for a while now as a way to discover new, useful sites, but it hasn't been too visible. Since we've been continuously improving this feature and we think it's really useful, we're now going to start showing these alternative sites more prominently. Starting this week, for queries where similar sites are likely to be helpful, we’ll display a list of "Pages similar" at the bottom of the results page. For example, this is the list of sites similar to Direct Relief International:

These sites might provide alternative ways to contribute to Haiti or Chile, like AmeriCares and Operation USA. Or they could provide a different perspective or approach, like giving more broadly through a blood donation at the Red Cross.

We hope this feature helps you discover many useful websites that you didn’t know about before and get a better understanding of all the choices the web has to offer.

Posted by Doantam Phan, Software Engineer

Google Buys LabPixies

Google acquired LabPixies, an Israeli startup that developed high-quality iGoogle gadgets and ported them to other platforms: iPhone, Android, Facebook, OpenSocial. LabPixies created widgets for games, calendars, feed readers, notes and even for ads.

"One of the first developers to create gadgets for iGoogle was Labpixies. Over the years, we worked closely together on a variety of projects, including the launch of a number of global OpenSocial based gadgets. Recently, we decided that we could do more if we were part of the same team, and as such, we're thrilled to announce the acquisition of Labpixies. We are looking forward to working with Labpixies to develop great web apps and leverage their knowledge and expertise to help developers and improve the ecosystem overall," mentions Google Code Blog.

iGoogle really needs some new ideas to remain relevant. The updated interface launched in 2008 and the social gadgets launched last year weren't very popular. For example, the NY Times Crossword gadget developed by LabPixies only has 92,000 users, although it was a featured social gadget.

Earthly pleasures come to Maps

Earth Day may have just passed, but the Google Earth team loves it too much to let it go. So we’ve found our own special way to celebrate Earth Day (a little late) by making an announcement that we’ve been working toward for a long time: Earth view in Google Maps.


When we first launched Google Earth back in 2005, it revolutionized the world of digital mapping. In the years since, Earth has been getting faster and lighter while adding large amounts of imagery, more ambitious features and an ever-expanding roster of platforms, including support for Mac, Linux, iPhone, Android and even the 2011 Audi A8!

Web browsers haven’t exactly been standing still either. As their capacity to handle richer applications has steadily grown, our ability to bring Google Earth online has grown along with it. In 2008, we released the Google Earth Plugin to developers, and since then thousands of sites have used it to create many cool applications and even games. Now the time has come to take off the plugin’s online training wheels and roll it out on the main stage: Google Maps. So if you’re one of the hundreds of millions of people who use Maps worldwide, you can now explore the world in luxuriantly-detailed, data-rich 3D imagery and terrain from Google Earth. If you’ve already downloaded the Google Earth Plugin, you should be able to see Earth view in Maps right away. Otherwise, you can just install the Plugin to enjoy a Maps experience that includes angled Earth views, 3D buildings, smooth panning and zooming and a great introductory showcase of places to visit and things to see.

Current Google Earth users, of course, will continue to enjoy the full power of the standalone application: KML editing, historical imagery, GPS tracks, tour-creation, Mars, Sky, flight simulator and so on. But for quick online access, the power of 3D will also be available at the click of a[n Earth] button. We’re thrilled to be able to bring this functionality to the web and we invite you to come share the moment with us.

Posted by Brian McClendon, VP of Engineering, Google Geo

Google Earth Tab in Google Maps

Google Maps replaced the terrain tab with a tab for Google Earth. When you click on the Earth tab, Google asks you to install a plug-in for Windows or Mac. If you have a recent version of Google Earth, you already have the plug-in.

"Five years ago, shortly after Google's acquisition of Keyhole, we introduced the first integration of Keyhole technology into Google Maps -- Satellite view. Suddenly, you could see what places actually looked like from the air, and easily switch between this view and the map view. Mapping has never been the same. A few months later, the desktop Google Earth application was released, and now we have over 600 million downloads. Today we are proud to announce the next major step in the marriage between Google Earth and Google Maps -- Earth view," says Peter Birch, from Google.

Even though the new view makes it easier to use Google Earth, since you no longer have to open a new application, I think it's a bad idea to add it to Google Maps. Google Earth plug-in uses a lot of resources, it slows down your browser and it continues to run in the background even if you switch to the Map tab. What's more, if you open Google Maps in another window and switch to the Earth tab, a new instance of the Google Earth plug-in will load.





{ Thanks, Andrew. }

Helping you find your way through the final frontier

Though our rocket program to help commuters to our Moon office is still a long way off, we’ve always jumped at the chance to bring the wonders of outer space a little closer to Earth. On Saturday, our Hubble telescope doodle celebrated 20 years of one of the most productive and celebrated science instruments since Galileo first made a telescopic survey of the heavens 400 years ago.

Hubble's razor-sharp vision has revealed previously hidden aspects of the cosmos with unparalleled intimacy and clarity, and you can see some of the best examples for yourself on our Hubble 20th birthday page. You can also download our new Hubble tour to explore further in Google Earth. And Google Sky Map now includes a Hubble Gallery for you to see Hubble discoveries by pointing your phone to the night sky.



So far, we’ve also announced a Moon office, a Moon race, an expedition to Mars, Sky in Google Earth (also available as a handy, hand-held guide), Moon in Google Earth, Mars in Google Earth, NASA images in Google Earth and more than a few extra-orbital doodles. Occasionally somebody will ask us, “Just what does space have to do with the Internet?” Plenty, if you ask Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf. But space, like the Internet, is also a fascinating place to spend time, especially for engineers, technologists and explorers. So we usually answer, “Well, who hasn’t thought about blasting off and seeing the stars up close?”

It’s incredibly important to encourage the next generation of scientists and engineers to (quite literally) reach for the stars. We’ve made these tools available to help these explorers and astronauts-in-training get their bearings, as well as to showcase the incredible achievements we’ve already seen from generations of brave, dedicated people working to challenge the limits of human capability and knowledge. And, depending on who you ask, space might be closer than you think. In the meantime, for everybody who’s taken a wistful look at the night sky — we’re looking up with you.

Posted by Anita Barci, Product Marketing Manager, Geo team

YouTube Auto-Captioning for Classic Novels

YouTube's auto-captioning feature is impressive, even if the results are sometimes hilarious. "Auto-captioning combines some of the speech-to-text algorithms found in Google's Voice Search to automatically generate video captions when requested by a viewer. The video owner can also download the auto-generated captions, improve them, and upload the new version."

Converting speech to text is a difficult technological problem, especially if you can't train the speech recognition software. Here's a video that illustrates how YouTube's audio transcription works for novels (also check the original video):


The results are terrible, but you should take into account that auto-captioning works best for speeches. There are many hilarious mistakes: "George Orwell" is recognized as "but it wasn't", "Lolita" is converted to "don't think so", "the hobbit" is recognized as "the hall", while "cold day" is converted to "cocaine".

And if that's not enough, try to enable auto-captioning for the video embedded above. "This goes on a infinite loop... the transcribe audio function applied to this version transforms entire non-sense phrases into single words," comments RequiemPipes.

{ Thanks, Richard. }

A new approach to how we work with advertising agencies

(Cross-posted on the Inside AdWords and the Agency Ad Solutions blogs)

As the advertising industry has grown and evolved, so too has our relationship with advertising agencies. These companies, from SEMs to the largest traditional agencies, play a critical role in the continued success of Google, our advertisers and our industry — so we spend a lot of time talking to agencies about how we can make it easier for them to work with us and our advertisers.

We’ve had a lot of great feedback from agencies and today we’re announcing changes designed to offer them better training and more rigorous certification in AdWords proficiency, and to lower costs for those who help advertisers get the most out of AdWords. We’re also making it easier for advertisers to find certified agency partners to work with them on digital advertising. Here’s an overview of what’s changing today.

Raising the bar for Google AdWords Certification
We're retiring our long-standing Google Advertising Professionals (GAP) program and replacing it with a new Google AdWords Certification program for those managing AdWords accounts on behalf of advertisers. The new program provides agencies and their employees with more up-to-date, comprehensive, strategy-focused training and certification on the latest tools and best practices for managing AdWords accounts, including:

• New training materials to help agencies better understand recent changes in search marketing and AdWords functionality, available via webinar series, learning center, or on-site training at Google
• More challenging certification exams to test practical application of knowledge and best practices (rather than simple recall of knowledge)
• Advanced-level exams to highlight competency in search, display, reporting and analysis
• A redesigned Certified Partner badge, which includes a “Click to Verify” element so advertisers can view the partner’s profile page for additional information.

For more information on the AdWords Certification Program or to create an account, visit the Google Certification program site and help center.

Helping advertisers find Google Certified Partners
Google Certified Partners can opt in to Google Partner Search, an online, searchable directory that helps advertisers identify Certified Partners that meet their criteria. Small and medium-sized advertisers who haven’t previously used an agency have told us that evaluating potential partners can be a daunting task, so we think Google Partner Search will be especially valuable for them.

To show up in advertiser searches through Google Partner Search, agencies must opt in and fill in details about their core attributes and capabilities. Searches can be filtered by location, agency experience within a particular budget range, the types of services provided and the industry verticals an agency serves. Advertisers can then evaluate the list of Certified Partners that meet their criteria and contact the partners who seem best suited to their needs. To learn more about Google Partner Search, visit the help center.

Introducing preferred AdWords API pricing
The Google AdWords API allows developers to build applications that interact directly with the AdWords platform. Agencies and developers of search engine marketing tools use these applications to manage large AdWords campaigns more efficiently and creatively.

Today, we’re announcing preferred AdWords API pricing. This gives qualified Google AdWords Certified Partners who manage client AdWords accounts free use of the AdWords API based on managed client spend. To apply, agencies must have an active agency profile page and be compliant with the AdWords API terms and conditions. We’ll evaluate applications for preferred AdWords API pricing based on the criteria listed here.

We hope preferred AdWords API pricing will encourage agencies and developers to experiment with new strategies, expand the functionality of their tools, and build more comprehensive client campaigns without worrying about increased costs. You can learn more about preferred pricing and how to apply at the preferred AdWords API pricing site.

We’re looking forward to receiving feedback on all of these initiatives and to continuing to improve our partnership with agencies.

Posted by Penry Price, Vice President, Global Agency Development

New York Times App for Android?

Andrew B. visited Nexus One's YouTube channel and noticed a demo for an official New York Times application:

I was on YouTube yesterday and noticed Google's Nexus One channel released a new video. The title looked like it had not been edited because it used underscores instead of spaces and it ended with the file extension.

The video showcased a New York Times app for Android running on the Nexus One with the user flipping through news articles and using the widget. The video has been pulled and I can't find it on either Google's main or Nexus One channel.

The New York Times application for iPhone is one of the best free apps from Apple's App Store, so it's not surprising to see that Google wanted a similar application for Android.


A FAQ page from the NYTimes site has more information:

"The NYTimes application for Android has a unique video display experience, font size adjustment and the ability to share articles via e-mail, SMS, and social apps such as Twitter and Facebook. The NYTimes application for Android works on Android smartphones with operating system version 1.6x or higher. It's available for free at the Android Market (app store). On your Android smartphone, visit nytimes.com/androidapp to download the application."

{ Thanks, Andrew. }

Google Trends for Subdomains

At launch, Google Trends for Websites didn't support subdomains. Google's service has been updated and you can now use it to find traffic information about subdomains.

"With Google Trends for Websites, you can get insights into the traffic and geographic visitation patterns of your favorite websites. You can compare data for up to five websites and view related sites and top searches for each one. Trends for Websites combines information from a variety of sources, such as aggregated Google search data, aggregated opt-in anonymous Google Analytics data, opt-in consumer panel data, and other third-party market research," mentions Google.



Google doesn't show traffic stats for most of its domains, but you can find information about blogger.com, vevo.com, android.com, chromium.org, googlelabs.com, orkut.com and obscure domains like ggpht.com, googleusercontent.com and gstatic.com.




{ Thanks, TOMHTML. }

This week in search 4/23/10

This is one of a regular series of posts on search experience updates. Look for the label This week in search and subscribe to the series. - Ed.

This week we announced a number of new developments:

Search for specific TV show episodes
As more and more full-length content is going online, we're making it easier to find the content you want by providing a more structured experience when you search for TV shows. This week, we launched a way to search for specific TV show episodes as part of this effort. Now, when you search for your favorite TV show in Google Videos, check the lefthand toolbar for “Episodes”. By clicking on the links in the Search Options panel, you can browse by season to see all episodes, and drill down to see all sources for a specific episode.


Example searches: [desperate housewives] and [the simpsons]

Image support for RSS gadgets
For many of you who use iGoogle as your homepage, RSS feeds are a great way to get the latest news content, blog updates, recipes and celebrity gossip. And because pictures enhance the online experience, this week we added image support to our iGoogle feed gadgets for people in the U.S. We now support "Slideshow view" as well as "Headline and lead story view." You should notice the change now on your iGoogle page, and you will be able to edit the display setting of each feed by choosing "Edit settings" in the dropdown menu for your feeds.

Slideshow view

Headline and lead story view

Example feeds: [CNN], [the economist], [entertainment weekly], [national geographic]

Google Places
Also this week we announced that the Local Business Center is becoming Google Places. With one out of five searches on Google related to location, we wanted to better connect Place Pages (which launched last September for more than 50 million places globally) to a tool that enables businesses to manage their Google presence. With this change, business owners will benefit from several new ways to expand their online presence, while making it easier for you to make better decisions about local shopping. From real-time coupon updates to interior photos of businesses on place pages, these ongoing enhancements will make local search all the more useful to you. The launch of Google Places is just the beginning of Google becoming more local. If you're a business owner and want to learn more, check out google.com/places.

Example place page: [mission mountain winery]

Hope you enjoy this week's features. Stay tuned for what's next!

Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience

Helping you read and write foreign scripts with Google Transliteration and Script Converter

(Cross-posted from the Google Translate Blog)

For many Internet users, it is not always easy to write in languages that use unique character sets like Hindi, Hebrew and Arabic. Most computer keyboards only allow for the input of Roman characters (the alphabet used by most Western languages) and converting between scripts can be difficult. To make this process easier we launched an improved version of Google Transliteration at the end of last year, a service which enables you to phonetically convert Roman letters into a variety of other scripts.

Today we’re delighted to announce support for five new languages: Amharic, Tigrinya, Hebrew, Oriya and Sinhalese. This bring the total up to 22 languages spoken across Africa, South Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. These new languages are currently available at http://www.google.com/transliterate.

Since you can’t use Google Transliteration offline we also launched the transliteration based “Input Method Editor” (IME) earlier this year. Once you download and install the Google Transliteration IME (don’t worry, it's free), you can type a word the way it sounds using Roman characters and the software will convert the word to its native script. For example, typing "hamesha" in Google Hindi IME transliterates into Hindi as: हमेशा.

As an improvement to the IME, we’ve recently added 5 more languages (Amharic, Russian, Sanskrit, Serbian and Tigrinya) as well as canonical schemes, macros and support for Windows 64-bit. You can read about all these powerful new features on the Google Transliteration IME help page.

Now what if you come across a language that you can speak but can’t read? For example, if you can speak Hindi, you may know that “namaste” is a greeting, however you may not be able to read ‘नमस्ते’ in Hindi script. Our new Script Converter tool converts a given web page or piece of text from one script to another so that you can read it phonetically. Script Converter currently supports 17 languages: Bengali, English, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Sanskrit, Serbian, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

So, try out these tools and let us know what you think.

Posted by New Melchizedec Sundararaj, Software Engineer

Google Reader Adds Support for Video and Audio Tags

Google's feed reader started to support the video and audio tags from feeds. The only popular browser that doesn't support the two tags is Internet Explorer, but that doesn't mean that you'll be able to play videos without plug-ins in all the other browsers.

As the screenshot below shows, Firefox and Opera don't support the H.264 compression standard, so you can't play videos from sites that only use H.264. Even if video sites like YouTube or Vimeo started to test HTML5 players, they don't offer the option to embed videos using HTML5 tags.


{ via Google Reader's Twitter page. Thanks, François. }

Two Beautiful Ads for Google Chrome

Even if you don't like Google Chrome, you have to admit that the ads promoting Google's browser are well-crafted. Take, for example, this ad for Google Chrome extensions, which promotes a modern technology using old-fashioned cinematic tricks.

"In keeping with the rustic feel of the ad, the music used is Fats Waller's (Do You Intend to Put an End to) A Sweet Beginning? To keep the explanation simple, ad agency BBH New York has used rudimentary mechanical images, such as a bird popping out of a cuckoo clock and tweeting in the corner of a computer screen and a hamster running in a wheel to drag actual bookmarks between two computers," reports The Guardian.


A second ad promotes the built-in translation feature launched in Google Chrome 4.1. "Both [films] are un-tech-like product demos, showing the work and genius going on behind creating something that is essentially very simple to use," explained Pelle Sjoenell, the executive creative director at BBH.


{ Thanks, François. }

New Ways to Read Feeds in iGoogle

iGoogle added two new views for feeds: a slideshow view for photo feeds and a view that shows the headlines and a snippet from the lead story. You can change the view for each feed by clicking on the arrow icon, selecting "Edit settings" and choosing one of three views: headline only, headline and lead story or slideshow.



By default, Google shows a small number of hand-picked feeds in the sideshow view and uses the "headline and lead story" view for feeds that support Media RSS. "These new views not only create a better experience for users, but also give publishers an opportunity to more easily expose rich content, often already present in their RSS feeds. To take advantage of this new feature, publishers simply need to add images and associated Media RSS and/or enclosure elements to their existing RSS feeds. We'll then grab the images, resize them down as necessary, and provide hosting/caching. Additionally, we'll make the images clickable and display a 150 character snippet in the Headline and lead story view," explains Google.

There's a guide for publishers which offers more information about the new views. All Blogger feeds use Media RSS, so they'll be displayed in the "headline and lead story" view.

Google Maps Adds Kinetic Scrolling

Google Maps has been updated and it now uses kinetic scrolling, a feature inspired by operating systems designed for touch screens. Click on the map, quickly move your mouse and then release it. You'll notice that the map continues to move with the momentum created after you released the mouse.

Now that mobile Google Maps uses the buttons from the desktop interface and both interfaces use kinetic scroll, Google Maps is more consistent.

"Kinetic scrolling is the popular term to denote the scrolling of a long list with a bit of physics so that user feels like moving a wheel. Such a list view is then often referred as a flick list, caused the scrolling involves some sort of flicking gestures. Made popular in iPhone, flick list quickly invades other mobile platforms with touch screen because it just feels so natural and more usable than using the conventional approach of scroll bars," explains Ariya Hidayat.


{ Thanks, que. }

Eating our way through Earth Day

Today, Earth Day turns 40 and is now celebrated in more than 198 countries. Here at Google, we’ll be focusing on one of the planet’s more enjoyable aspects: its food. (Though, to be fair, we’re always focused on food around here). Our offices are hosting farmers markets, planting herb gardens, hosting talks on sustainable cooking and much more.

At our Mountain View headquarters, we’re enjoying solar cooking demonstrations, classes on composting and local food sourcing, distribution of reusable shopping bags and discussions on healthy cooking and eating. We’re also hosting a speaker from The Nature Conservancy and giving tours of our on-site 1.6MW solar panel installation and the 400kW Bloom Energy fuel cells. Today is also Take Your Child to Work Day, so we have plenty of kid-friendly activities centered around healthy, sustainable habits to complement the bounce house, movies and games.

The focus on food is not limited to Mountain View. Our Dublin office is removing all disposable cups, Stockholm is running a special Earth Day food menu in their cafe, Wroclaw employees are planting seeds and Amsterdam is overhauling its salad bar with organic offerings. And the cafe in our London office is sourcing all of its food from within 50 miles of the office, as well as organizing a bike-to-work effort coordinated with Google Maps.

Beyond food, we’ve been busy with a number of other Earth-related initiatives. Last month, Google Maps biking directions launched in the U.S. and we hope that having these directions on hand will help you find less carbon-intensive ways to commute to work or meet friends. Just the other week we added a new feature in Google Finance that reports companies’ carbon disclosure rating from the Carbon Disclosure Project. Oh, and don’t forget about the new kids on the block.

If you’re looking to make a difference, check for local efforts or make a pledge to have an impact. We’re working to minimize our own carbon footprint, and hope that you’ll take a moment today to consider how you can make a positive impact on our planet.

Posted by Austin Rachlin, Green Business Operations

Android on an iPhone

A member of the iPhone Dev Team, a group of hacker that develop software for jailbreaking iPhone, managed to install Android on a first-generation iPhone. David Wong replaced Apple's bootloader with the open-source OpeniBoot so that he could install a different operating system. He also used a version of the Linux kernel ported to the iPhone in 2008.

"It should be pretty simple to port forward to the iPhone 3G. The 3GS will take more work. Hopefully with all this groundwork laid out, we can make Android a real alternative or supplement for iPhone users. Maybe we can finally get Flash," says David.

This is one of the many benefits of an open-source software: people can modify it and use it in new, interesting ways. You can install Android on a Windows Mobile phone, on an iPhone, on a notebook and on many other devices.

Friend Suggestions in Google Chat

The Google Chat gadget from iGoogle's sidebar started to show friend suggestions and they're usually people you've emailed frequently. Google also shows a list of Google Translate bots that help you translate the messages from a conversation.



Another new feature lets you send some of your contacts to someone you've emailed frequently.


It seems that the suggestions are displayed even if you've enabled this option in Gmail: "Only allow people that I've explicitly approved to chat with me and see when I'm online". By default, Gmail automatically invites to Google Chat the users whom you frequently email. "Gmail determines which contacts you'll be able to talk to without having to invite each other."

{ Thanks, Bogdan. }

Search by Voice Comes to Google Maps 4.1 for Windows Mobile and Symbian S60 phones

We understand that typing on phones isn’t as easy or fast as talking into them. As a result, we’re big fans of letting you search in Google Maps for mobile in the most natural way possible -- with your voice! Not wanting the BlackBerry and Android folks to have all the fun, today we’re happy to announce Search by voice in Google Maps 4.1 on Windows Mobile and Symbian S60 phones.

Search by voice lets you easily search for anything by simply speaking your search terms instead of typing them. Just open Google Maps, press your phone’s “call” button, and clearly speak your search term like “Park Plaza.” Search by voice works with all the kinds of searches Google Maps for mobile already supports, including places, addresses (1600 Amphitheatre Parkway), specific businesses (The French Laundry), or types of businesses (sushi restaurants new york).

You may also notice a few other additions, including a redesigned settings page with Search by voice language choices. Choose your preferred language from the supported options, including multiple English accents and Mandarin Chinese. Also, if you find a problem with any information in Google Maps, you can use the “Report a problem” option to let us know.

To get started, install the latest version of Google Maps for mobile 4.1 for Windows Mobile and Symbian S60 by going to m.google.com/maps in your phone’s standard web browser (e.g. Internet Explorer on Windows Mobile). This update is available in all the countries and languages where Google Maps for mobile is currently available.

Visit our Help Center to learn more or tell us your feedback and questions in our Help Forum. Give us suggestions and vote on other people’s on the Mobile Product Ideas page.

Posted by Yuliang Wang and Yifei Zhang, Software Engineers, Google Mobile Team

More Suggestions in Google Maps

Google Maps no longer shows suggestions only from your recent searches. When you start typing a query, Google Maps shows popular locations, searches and local businesses. For example, you can type "red" and the first suggestion is "Redmond, WA, USA".



The suggestions are helpful if you want to type a complicated name like Eyjafjallajökull and you only remember the first letters, but Google doesn't do a great job at ranking the list of suggestions.


The autocomplete feature from Google Maps is the first implementation of Google Suggest that uses HTTPS. Google Maps continues to show personalized suggestions from Google Web History, a feature that has replaced Saved Locations.