Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Googland

Googland

[G] Saving one million hours per week

Posted: 30 Mar 2010 06:55 PM PDT

Blogger Buzz: Saving one million hours per week

by Noah Fiedel, Blogger Tech Lead

Five weeks ago we rolled out Auto Pagination, a major milestone in our efforts to make Blogger faster for you and your readers. We are very happy to report a ten percent overall decrease in page loading latency across all Blogger blogs and a twenty-seven percent decrease on archive pages.

Just how significant is a ten percent latency reduction? It's not often that software engineers get to save lives, yet in just the past five weeks we've saved eight human lifetimes spent waiting for pages to load! Every week saves an additional:
  • 1 Million Hours
  • 114 Years
  • 1.6 Human Lifetimes
Some of you have expressed concern over the change in how Blogger displays your blogs. Without addressing each individual case, the vast majority of blogs negatively impacted were not actually blogs, but were using Blogger as a kind of free web host. As today's post makes clear, Auto Pagination has had an extraordinarily positive impact on how blogs are consumed — blog readers are spending less time waiting for pages to load and more time reading the posts you work so hard to write. (By the way: if your pages show fewer posts than you would like, we recommend using After the Jump to ensure that your readers can see more posts per page.)

If a ten percent improvement has such a major impact, what else can be done to speed up your blog? One area we're looking at is third-party JavaScript. We remain one of the few blogging services to allow users unlimited ability to add JavaScript to their pages — but that flexibility comes at a cost. These JavaScript widgets often add several seconds to page loads — even on fast Internet connections. We'll talk more about this in a future post; in the mean time, you can try out Google's Page Speed to identify what might be causing a page to load slowly.

As always, thanks for using Blogger!
URL: http://buzz.blogger.com/2010/03/saving-one-million-hours-per-week.html

[G] Limit removed from category filtering feature

Posted: 30 Mar 2010 03:55 PM PDT

Inside AdSense: Limit removed from category filtering feature

Based on your feedback about the category filtering feature, we're happy to announce that there's no longer a limit to the number of categories you can filter from your sites. You can now filter as many of the 11 available categories as you'd like.

The category filtering feature allows you to prevent ads that fall into specific categories like 'religion' and 'dating' from appearing on your pages. You can filter categories by visiting your Ad Review Center, located under the AdSense Setup tab. Click the 'change' link to view available categories to filter. Your selections will be applied to ads in English, French, German, and Spanish, no matter how they've been targeted to your site.

We also recommend taking a look at the columns showing how much of your recent revenue and ad impressions are generated by each of the categories. This will give you an idea how applying these filters may affect your account.

Thanks for continuing to provide your feedback about category filtering. We'll be sure to keep you posted with any additional updates. In the meantime, please feel free to visit our Help Center for more information about the feature.

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team
URL: http://adsense.blogspot.com/2010/03/limit-removed-from-category-filtering.html

[G] Google Alerts: Now with More Liberation!

Posted: 30 Mar 2010 03:55 PM PDT

Data Liberation: Google Alerts: Now with More Liberation!

This week Google Alerts joins the expanding group of liberated Google products by launching a feature that allows you to export your alerts. You can now access all the data about your alerts (search terms, type, etc.) in CSV format.

To try it out:

  1. Head on over to Google Alerts

  2. Sign in

  3. Follow the link to the management page

  4. Click the "Export alerts" link, you will find it above the list of your alerts, on the right-hand side





If you don't have a Google account, you will have to either create a Google account for your email address, or add the email address to an existing Google account.

Enjoy your cage-free data!

Posted by Robert Leland, Google Alerts team
URL: http://dataliberation.blogspot.com/2010/03/google-alerts-now-with-more-liberation.html

[G] The chilling effects of malware

Posted: 30 Mar 2010 03:55 PM PDT

Google Online Security Blog: The chilling effects of malware

Posted by Neel Mehta, Security Team

In January, we discussed a set of highly sophisticated cyber attacks that originated in China and targeted many corporations around the world. We believe that malware is a general threat to the Internet, but it is especially harmful when it is used to suppress opinions of dissent. In that case, the attacks involved surveillance of email accounts belonging to Chinese human rights activists. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these are not the only examples of malicious software being used for political ends. We have gathered information about a separate cyber threat that was less sophisticated but that nonetheless was employed against another community.

This particular malware broadly targeted Vietnamese computer users around the world. The malware infected the computers of potentially tens of thousands of users who downloaded Vietnamese keyboard language software and possibly other legitimate software that was altered to infect users. While the malware itself was not especially sophisticated, it has nonetheless been used for damaging purposes. These infected machines have been used both to spy on their owners as well as participate in distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against blogs containing messages of political dissent. Specifically, these attacks have tried to squelch opposition to bauxite mining efforts in Vietnam, an important and emotionally charged issue in the country.

Since some anti-virus vendors have already introduced signatures to help detect this specific malware, we recommend the following actions, particularly if you believe that you may have been exposed to the malware: run regular anti-virus as well as anti-spyware scans from trusted vendors, and be sure to install all web browser and operating system updates to ensure you're using only the latest versions. New technology like our suspicious account activity alerts in Gmail should also help detect surveillance efforts. At a larger scale, we feel the international community needs to take cybersecurity seriously to help keep free opinion flowing.
URL: http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2010/03/chilling-effects-of-malware.html

[G] Planning your public transit ride doesn’t have to be a drag

Posted: 30 Mar 2010 03:55 PM PDT

Google LatLong: Planning your public transit ride doesn't have to be a drag


Google Maps has allowed you to get public transportation directions in hundreds of cities around the world for a while now, helping you get to your destination without a car. But sometimes you're not quite sure which destination to choose, and you want to try out multiple options. We often get asked if it will ever be possible to drag your transit route, just like you can do with driving directions. As of today, it is indeed possible! Now you can drag your start or end point to preview your various options for the most efficient itinerary.

Imagine that you are on a business trip to New York City, and you will stay at the Chelsea Hotel. You start planning your trip by searching for directions form JFK airport to the Chelsea Hotel. Then you realize that you can also take a flight to Newark, and you want to figure out which is more convenient for getting to your hotel. Now it's as easy as picking up the marker at JFK (you'll see instructions "Drag to change route" when you hover over the marker):


..and drop it over Newark Airport:


As you drag the marker, we will calculate the new trip automatically in the background and show a tooltip with the time of the new trip. When you drop the marker back onto the map at your desired starting (or ending) point, you'll see the left panel update with your new step-by-step transit directions. Just search, drag, and ride!

Posted by Noam Ben-Haim, Product Manager
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/03/planning-your-public-transit-ride.html

[G] Explore the world with new iGoogle themes

Posted: 30 Mar 2010 12:55 PM PDT

Google LatLong: Explore the world with new iGoogle themes


Today the iGoogle team announced a new set of themes designed for the world traveler in all of us. There are 25 themes that highlight places around the world and include beautiful scenery, historic monuments, exotic beaches, iconic cities, and breathtaking sites.

In addition to partnering with National Geographic Society, LIFE, Lonely Planet, UNESCO, and visiteurope.com to bring you the stunning imagery featured in most of the themes, we also created a couple of themes using imagery from Google Earth.

The 3D Views in Google Earth theme gives you a birds-eye view of a couple of natural wonders in the Unites States -- the Grand Canyon and the Great Lakes. It transports you to the last of the remaining Seven Wonders of the Ancient World -- the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. And you can view the stunning architecture of the Taj Mahal in India. Lastly, relax in Positano, Italy, or Bondi Beach, Australia.

The 3D Cities in Google Earth theme puts you in the middle of the action in New York City and Tokyo. It transports you to the ancient ruins of Athens, Greece, and takes you down under to Melbourne, Australia. It also gives you a glimpse into the historic architecture of Budapest, Hungary; Copenhagen, Denmark; and Vienna, Austria.
We hope that you enjoy our new iGoogle themes and that they'll help inspire you to keep exploring the world around you.

Posted by Anita Barci, Product Marketing Manager
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/03/explore-world-with-our-new-igoogle.html

[G] Phishing phree

Posted: 30 Mar 2010 11:52 AM PDT

Google Online Security Blog: Phishing phree

Posted by Colin Whittaker, Anti-Phishing Team

To help protect you from a wide array of Internet scams you may encounter while searching, we analyze millions of webpages daily for phishing behavior. Each year, we find hundreds of thousands of phishing pages and add them to our list that we use to directly warn users of Firefox, Safari, and Chrome via our SafeBrowsing API. How do we find all these phishing pages? We certainly don't do it by hand!

Instead, we have taught computers to look for certain telltale signs, as we describe in a paper that we recently presented at the 17th Annual Network and Distributed System Security Symposium. In a nutshell, our system looks at many of the same elements of a webpage that you would check to help evaluate whether the page is designed for phishing. If our system determines that a page is being used for phishing, it will automatically produce a warning for all of our users who try to visit that page. This scalable design enables us to review all these potentially "phishy" pages in about a minute each.

What we look for


Our system analyzes a number of webpage features to help make a verdict about whether a site is a phishing site. Starting with a page's URL, we look to see if there is anything unusual about the host, such as whether the hostname is unusually long or whether the URL uses an IP address to specify the host. We also look to see if the URL contains any phrases like "banking" or "login" that might indicate that the page is trying to steal information.

We don't just look at the URL, though. After all, a perfectly legitimate site could certainly use words like "banking" or "login." We collect a snapshot of the page's content to examine it closely for phishing behavior. For example, we check to see if the page has a password field or whether most of the links point to a common phishing target, as both of these characteristics can be a sign of phishing. Additionally, we pick out some of the most characteristic terms that show up on a page (as defined by their TF-IDF scores), and look for terms like "password" or "PIN number," which also may indicate that the page is intended for phishing.

We also check the page's hosting information to find out which networks host the page and where the page's servers are located geographically. If a site purporting to be an American bank runs its servers in a different country and is hosted on a local residential ISP's network, we have a strong signal that the site is bad.

Finally, we check the page's PageRank to see if the page is popular or not, and we check the spam reputation of the page's domain. We discovered in our research findings that almost all phishing pages are found on domains that almost exclusively send spam. You can observe this trend in the CCDF graph of the spam reputation scores for phishing pages as compared to the graph of other, non-phishing pages.


How we learn to recognize phishing pages

We use a sample of the data that our system generates to train the classifier that lies at the core of our automatic system using a machine learning algorithm. Coming up with good labels (phishing/not phishing) for this data is tricky because we can't label each of the millions of pages ourselves. Instead, we use our published phishing page list, largely generated by our classifier, to assign labels for the training data.

You might be wondering if this system is going to lead to situations where the classifier makes a mistake, puts that mistake on our list, and then uses the list to learn to make more mistakes. Fortunately, the chain doesn't make it that far. Our classifier only makes a relatively small number of mistakes, which we can correct manually when you report them to us. Our learning algorithms can handle a few temporary errors in the training labels, and the overall learning process remains stable.

How well does this work?

Of the millions of webpages that our scanners analyze for phishing, we successfully identify 9 out of 10 phishing pages. Our classification system only incorrectly flags a non-phishing site as a phishing site about 1 in 10,000 times, which is significantly better than similar systems. In our experience, these "false positive" sites are usually built to distribute spam or may be involved with other suspicious activity. While phishers are constantly changing their strategies, we find that they do not change them enough to reliably escape our system. Our experiments showed that our classification system remained effective for over a month without retraining.

If you are a webmaster and would like more information about how to keep your site from looking like a phishing site, please check out our post on the Webmaster Central Blog. If you find that your site has been added to our phishing page list ("Reported Web Forgery!") by mistake, please report the error to us.
URL: http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2010/03/phishing-phree.html

[G] Summer Student Stats: Degrees and Majors

Posted: 30 Mar 2010 11:52 AM PDT

Google Open Source Blog: Summer Student Stats: Degrees and Majors

The student application period for Google Summer of Code™ opened yesterday, and many students are wondering if they should apply. We encourage students of all backgrounds to apply, as long as they meet our eligibility requirements, which state that if you are enrolled as of April 26, 2010 in a college or university program, you are eligible to participate in the program.

From our FAQ's:

"Google defines a student as an individual enrolled in or accepted into an accredited institution including (but not necessarily limited to) colleges, universities, masters programs, PhD programs and undergraduate programs."

Many people don't realize that we accept graduate students in addition to undergrads, when in fact graduate students make up ~36% of our student population.



Regardless of where you are in your academic career, you should consider applying!

Many people also assume that all of our students are studying computer science. While computer science is indeed the most popular area of study, we also have a significant number of students who focus on math, physics and engineering. What is surprising is that we also have some students who study biology, music, visual art, and a wide range of other fields. One interesting note about our students is there is an impressive number of double and triple majors in the population.

A variety of statistics about past Google Summer of Code students are available for those who are interested in learning more about what kind of students have participated in the program in the past. If you apply to this year's program, you'll have the chance to shape the statistics for the future! Good luck to all our student applicants!


By Ellen Ko, Open Source Team
URL: http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/03/summer-student-stats-degrees-and-majors.html

[G] Our stand for digital due process

Posted: 30 Mar 2010 11:52 AM PDT

Google Public Policy Blog: Our stand for digital due process

Posted by Richard Salgado, Senior Counsel, Law Enforcement and Information Security

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog)

The year was 1986. A gallon of gas cost 89 cents, Paul Simon's Graceland won the Grammy for album of the year, and the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), which governs how law enforcement can access electronic data, was signed into law.

A lot has changed since 1986. Gas is now measured in dollars and Taylor Swift (born 1989) won album of the year. All the while, technology has moved at record pace. But ECPA has stayed the same. Originally designed to protect us from unwarranted government intrusion while ensuring that law enforcement had the tools necessary to protect public safety, it was written long before most people had heard of email, cell phones or the "cloud" — the term used for programs helping people store personal data like photos and documents online. As a result, ECPA has become outdated.

This is why we're proud to help establish Digital Due Process, a coalition of technology companies, civil rights organizations and academics seeking to update ECPA to provide privacy protections to new and emerging technologies.

Specifically, we want to modernize ECPA in four ways:
  • Better protect your data stored online: The government must first get a search warrant before obtaining any private communications or documents stored online;
  • Better protect your location privacy: The government must first get a search warrant before it can track the location of your cell phone or other mobile communications device;
  • Better protect against monitoring of when and with whom you communicate: The government must demonstrate to a court that the data it seeks is relevant and material to a criminal investigation before monitoring when and with whom you communicate using email, instant messaging, text messaging, the telephone, etc.; and
  • Better protect against bulk data requests: The government must demonstrate to a court that the information it seeks is needed for a criminal investigation before it can obtain data about an entire class of users.
We also created this video to help explain ECPA and why it needs updating:



You can read more about our proposal at our coalition website. In the coming months, we'll meet with lawmakers, law enforcement officials and others to help build support for modernizing the law.

1986 was a good year, but it's time our laws catch up with how we live our lives today.
URL: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/03/our-stand-for-digital-due-process.html

[G] Our stand for digital due process

Posted: 30 Mar 2010 10:33 AM PDT

Official Google Blog: Our stand for digital due process

The year was 1986. A gallon of gas cost 89 cents, Paul Simon's Graceland won the Grammy for album of the year, and the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), which governs how law enforcement can access electronic data, was signed into law.

A lot has changed since 1986. Gas is now measured in dollars and Taylor Swift (born 1989) won album of the year. All the while, technology has moved at record pace. But ECPA has stayed the same. Originally designed to protect us from unwarranted government intrusion while ensuring that law enforcement had the tools necessary to protect public safety, it was written long before most people had heard of email, cell phones or the "cloud" — the term used for programs helping people store personal data like photos and documents online. As a result, ECPA has become outdated.

This is why we're proud to help establish Digital Due Process, a coalition of technology companies, civil rights organizations and academics seeking to update ECPA to provide privacy protections to new and emerging technologies.

Specifically, we want to modernize ECPA in four ways:
  • Better protect your data stored online: The government must first get a search warrant before obtaining any private communications or documents stored online;
  • Better protect your location privacy: The government must first get a search warrant before it can track the location of your cell phone or other mobile communications device;
  • Better protect against monitoring of when and with whom you communicate: The government must demonstrate to a court that the data it seeks is relevant and material to a criminal investigation before monitoring when and with whom you communicate using email, instant messaging, text messaging, the telephone, etc.; and
  • Better protect against bulk data requests: The government must demonstrate to a court that the information it seeks is needed for a criminal investigation before it can obtain data about an entire class of users.
We also created this video to help explain ECPA and why it needs updating:



You can read more about our proposal at our coalition website. In the coming months, we'll meet with lawmakers, law enforcement officials and others to help build support for modernizing the law.

1986 was a good year, but it's time our laws catch up with how we live our lives today.

Posted by Richard Salgado, Senior Counsel, Law Enforcement and Information Security
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/our-stand-for-digital-due-process.html

[G] AdWords for mobile: check in quickly, anywhere

Posted: 30 Mar 2010 09:55 AM PDT

Inside AdWords: AdWords for mobile: check in quickly, anywhere

Did your smartphone suddenly start blinking and buzzing like crazy? No need to worry– it's probably just getting excited about AdWords for mobile, our new mobile interface for Android, iPhone, and Palm Pre devices.

We've heard that your smartphone and AdWords account have been pining for each other. Over the past few months, many of you have let us know how much you'd like to have fast and easy mobile access to AdWords, which is why we're now testing a streamlined mobile experience. AdWords for mobile gives you easy access to your key alerts and statistics, enabling you to make quick changes even when you're out and about.



AdWords for mobile works best when you customize your experience. Before using the mobile website, you should log in from your desktop computer and choose the parts of your account that you want to monitor closely. Set up custom alerts for key account events (like when your campaign reaches 90% of your daily budget, or when your traffic drops substantially compared to the previous week), and saved filters to flag your most important keywords and campaigns. You'll then see these filters and alerts on your AdWords for mobile home screen.

We built AdWords for mobile to help you quickly access the essentials in your account, so we've focused on letting you view and make basic edits to campaigns and keywords through the mobile application. If you need access to the other parts of your account, like ads or campaign settings, you can switch to the desktop version of AdWords through a link at the bottom of the screen.

Today, AdWords for mobile will be used as the default mobile interface for a small percentage of English language advertisers, and we look forward to enabling the feature for additional advertisers and languages in the coming weeks. However, if you'd like to try AdWords for mobile immediately, simply direct your Android, iPhone, or Palm Pre to http://adwords.google.com/dashboard/Dashboard

Hope you (and your lovestruck smartphone) enjoy having easy access to AdWords wherever you go!

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/03/adwords-for-mobile-check-in-quickly.html

[G] Around the world in 25 iGoogle themes...

Posted: 30 Mar 2010 07:57 AM PDT

Official Google Blog: Around the world in 25 iGoogle themes...

One way we love to help you make iGoogle your own is with our artist and designer themes — ranging from food and fashion to games and comics. Today, we're excited to announce a set of new themes, tailored to the world traveler in all of us. These new themes, focused on destinations all over the globe, allow you to experience beautiful landscapes, historic monuments, stunning beaches, iconic cities and other picturesque sites — right from your homepage.

To bring you this imagery, we've partnered with a few leading organizations including National Geographic Society and LIFE, who photograph some of the most breathtaking destinations on earth. Lonely Planet, UNESCO and visiteurope.com have also shared a selection of incredible images.

Here's a quick preview of some of what you'll find:

Hopefully, you're as eager to try out these new themes as we are. Whether these themes remind you of one of your favorite places or allow you to experience a global destination on your homepage, we hope you enjoy them. Bon voyage!

Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/around-world-in-25-igoogle-themes.html
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