Googland |
- [G] Share Blogger posts to Buzz
- [G] Google Apps and the cloud: Improved reliability and security
- [G] Google Follow Finder: Find some sweet tweeps
- [G] London OSJam 0x10
- [G] Tip: Going Undercover
- [G] Preview the faster, more feature rich Google spreadsheets
- [G] Privacy protections are good for our users and business
- [G] More love for our multilingual Toolbar users
- [G] The Rise of Fake Anti-Virus
- [G] Q1'10 spam & virus trends from Postini
- [G] Replay it: Google search across the Twitter archive
| [G] Share Blogger posts to Buzz Posted: 14 Apr 2010 07:55 PM PDT Blogger Buzz: Share Blogger posts to Buzzby Jiho Han, Software Engineer, BloggerWhen Google Buzz launched in February, many wondered how they could share cool posts to their Buzz stream. That's why we're excited to announce that Blogger has made it easy to share to Google Buzz via the Share button in the Blogger navigation bar. Just click "Share", choose Google Buzz, and you'll be able to customize your message before posting to Buzz.   Google Buzz is a new way to share updates, photos, videos and more, and start conversations about the things you find interesting. Better yet, all comments to your Buzz post get sent right to your Gmail inbox so it's easy to keep the conversation going. Just go to Google Buzz homepage and give it a try! We know you write interesting stuff, so sharing to Buzz is a great way to spread the word about your blog. Building your audience is important, and sharing to social networks is a great way to promote your site. We are committed to make the sharing experience better on Blogger: More updates are on their way, so please stay tuned.  URL: http://buzz.blogger.com/2010/04/share-blogger-posts-to-buzz.html      |
| [G] Google Apps and the cloud: Improved reliability and security Posted: 14 Apr 2010 04:52 PM PDT Official Google Enterprise Blog: Google Apps and the cloud: Improved reliability and securityEditor's note: This post is the second in a three-part series on the benefits of Google Apps' cloud-computing architecture. - Ed.Last week's post kicked off our series on the advantages of Google's cloud, and described how our infrastructure gives customers faster access to innovation than on-premises technology, single-tenant hosted applications, and "software plus services". Here, part two focuses on how Google Apps is designed from the ground up to provide higher reliability and better security. Improved Reliability and Security Through synchronous replication, data and user actions in Google Apps are mirrored in nearly real-time across multiple data centers. If one data center becomes unavailable for any reason, the system is designed to instantly fall back to a secondary data center with no user-visible interruption in service. For Google Apps customers, our recovery point objective (RPO) design target is zero, and our recovery time objective (RTO) design target is instant failover. Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Groups, Google Docs and Google Sites have a 99.9% uptime guarantee, and our actual reliability has been significantly higher than this commitment. Attempting to replicate this level of reliability with on-premises or hosted technology is tremendously costly and complex. Even very large enterprises with state-of-the-art disaster recovery systems typically target a recovery time of one hour and accept the loss of one hour's worth of data. On the security front, Google's large investments in physical and process-based security are passed on to customers. First, Google is able to hire many of the worlds leading security experts to protect our systems and conduct cutting-edge security research. Our data centers are hardened with many of the latest measures in security precautions, including biometric access controls and multi-tiered security perimeters. Furthermore, Google has implemented a multi-layered security process protocol designed to help keep customer data safe. Our processes have been independently verified in a successful third-party SAS 70 Type II audit to verify our confidentiality, integrity and availability of customer data. Finally, Google is able to efficiently manage security updates across our nearly homogeneous global cloud computing infrastructure, so customer aren't exposed to known vulnerabilities until they install security patches themselves. Browser-based applications also help keep sensitive data more secure. Unlike traditional software, when a user is finished using a web-based application, minimal data is left on the machine that could be compromised. Also, when employees can securely access their data from any browser, they're less likely to store data locally on unsecured end-points like thumb drives. In a world where one out of ten laptops go missing in the first year1 and 66% of workers report having lost a thumb drive2, making data securely available from the browser and minimizing the amount of sensitive data stored on devices is an effective security strategy. Next week I'll conclude this series by sharing how Google's economies of scale can help companies reduce costs and free up technology resources for higher value initiatives that can make businesses more competitive. If you're interested in going a level deeper, we invite you to geek out with us on Thursday, April 22nd, when we'll be holding a webcast to explore the advantages of Google's cloud. Hope you can join us! Geek out on the Cloud-Based Infrastructure of Google Apps Thursday, April 22, 2010 2:00 PM ET / 11:00 AM PT / 6:00 PM GMT  1. The Federal Bureau of Investigation & The Computer Security Institute's annual Computer Crime and Security Survey, 2005. 2. "Thumb Drives? The New Portable and Convenient Way to Lose Data", 2007. Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager  URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/04/google-apps-and-cloud-improved.html   |
| [G] Google Follow Finder: Find some sweet tweeps Posted: 14 Apr 2010 04:52 PM PDT Official Google Blog: Google Follow Finder: Find some sweet tweepsThis morning we announced a replay feature in real-time search that helps you search the public archive of updates from Twitter. Now, we have more Twitter news from today's Chirp Conference. We've just released a new experimental service in Google Labs called Google Follow Finder to help you expand your Twitter network. With Google Follow Finder, simply enter your Twitter account name and you'll see a list of people you might be interested in following. You can also get interesting suggestions by entering other Twitter user names. Here's what it looks like: If you see someone you want to follow, just click "Follow on Twitter," log in, and they'll be added to your following list in Twitter. This integration is based on Twitter's new @anywhere frameworks, which make it easy for any site to add Twitter functionality. We're using the frameworks to provide dynamic information about Twitter accounts and one-click following. The lists in Google Follow Finder are generated using public following and follower lists on Twitter. For example, if you follow CNN and the New York Times on Twitter, and most people who follow CNN and the New York Times also tend to follow TIME, we'll suggest TIME as a "Tweep you might like." The list of "Tweeps with similar followers" is simply a list of accounts with similar follower lists to yours. We hope you find some sweet tweeps. Posted by Aaron Wise, Associate Product Manager  URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/google-follow-finder-find-some-sweet.html   |
| Posted: 14 Apr 2010 01:47 PM PDT Google Open Source Blog: London OSJam 0x10On Thursday the 1st of April we held the Google London Open Source Jam 0x10 (that is, the 17th). The Jams are informal meet-ups where people can present 5 minute lightning talks on all things open source-y, as well as network, eat free pizza, and drink free beer. The evenings usually have a theme, and this time it was "Open Source Building Blocks" - though as usual our talks strayed somewhat from this topic!Our first three talks all hinged around web technologies. Ade Oshineye gave a talk on how simple technologies like HTTP and Atom are being used to create powerful publisher-subscriber models on the web. Dj Walker-Morgan presented Sinatra, a lightweight yet powerful Ruby web framework. Matt Godbolt - in an Open Source Jam scoop - demonstrated Quake II running in a browser, bringing together HTML5 technologies like WebGL and WebSockets. The next two talks were more about soft skills and open source. Kuldip Reyatt gave a presentation on open source leadership skills - he is trying to bring together publicly-available training material and make it more discoverable. Sam Mbale gave an update on his work trying to bring the benefits of open source to Africa. Bill Ray showed us some OpenGL ES demos on Android, and gave a quick run-through on how to set up the Android development environment, which he thinks "puts the pleasure back into programming." Douglas Squirrel presented an update on his work helping blind people. He demonstrated his ideas for connecting blind people with technical and other problems with sighted volunteers who can help transcribe screenshots and offer advice. We were back on topic with Matt Ford's presentation on Raphael - a library for displaying SVG in a browser. He showed us a simple clock app he'd written on the way to the Jam. Next up, Joe Walnes and Neil Dunn did a tag-team presentation on WebSockets and how it could be used to implement a high performance, thin-client, model-view-controller system. Glyn Wintle made an impassioned plea on behalf of the Open Rights Group for us to write to our MPs about the UK's controversial Digital Economy Bill.  Photo Credit: adewale_oshineyeFinally we ended with Jag demonstrating his amazing DIN digital instrument and how he was experimenting with collaborative music by allowing it to be controlled through an IRC bot, letting the audience join in and manipulate the sound as he played. This time around there were more talks than we had time available so as usual, we all retired to the pub around the corner to discuss further. Another successful Jam! By Matt Godbolt and Malcolm Rowe, Software Engineering Team  URL: http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/04/london-osjam-0x10.html   |
| Posted: 14 Apr 2010 01:47 PM PDT Google Chrome Blog: Tip: Going UndercoverSometimes you don't want to leave traces on your computer of some site you visit. Google Chrome's incognito windows are made just for this. Visit a website in an incognito window, and when you close the window, the browser has no record of you having been there. Of course, you probably knew that. What you might not have known is that you don't have to use the Tools menu in the upper corner of the window to get an incognito window. Just hit ctrl-shift-n, and one will pop right up. (And it's command + shift + N on a Mac.)  If there's a particular link you want to open in incognito mode, you can right click the link and select "Open link in incognito window", and you'll navigate to it without leaving any tracks.  Posted by Peter Kasting, Software Engineer  URL: http://chrome.blogspot.com/2010/04/tip-going-undercover.html   |
| [G] Preview the faster, more feature rich Google spreadsheets Posted: 14 Apr 2010 10:47 AM PDT Official Google Docs Blog: Preview the faster, more feature rich Google spreadsheetsOn Monday we launched a preview version of the new Google spreadsheets. We completely rebuilt the user interface to be faster, stabler, and more feature-rich, while maintaining the real-time collaboration that has made Google spreadsheets a powerful tool for the past four years.In this new version you will find a host of highly requested new features, as well as performance and usability improvements. The new UI also gives us engineers a better platform to build on in the coming months, so stay tuned for more exciting developments. You can now edit cells using the formula bar, which is ideal for working with complicated formulas.  Cell auto fill makes duplicating an entry as easy as pressing Enter. Just type the first few characters and the rest will show up as you type.  You can now move columns by dragging them with your mouse. You can also sort a column with the drop-down menu on the column header.  Our changes even made it down to the bottom of the spreadsheet, where we've re-designed the links to sheets so they're clearer and easier to use. Sheet titles are bigger and easier to click. And for those of you with a lot of sheets in one doc, we added a quick way to view a list of all your sheets.  At Google, we believe every millisecond counts and we're happy the new technological foundation allows for faster loading and a smoother scrolling experience. Initial loading, cell freezing, scrolling, and edits from collaborators are all improved. And getting where you want in a spreadsheet is faster too: you can provide direct links to any sheet in a spreadsheet. To give the new spreadsheets a try, click the New version link in the top right corner of every spreadsheet. And let us know what you think on the forums. Posted by: Zach Loyd, Staff Software Engineer  URL: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/04/preview-faster-more-feature-rich-google.html   |
| [G] Privacy protections are good for our users and business Posted: 14 Apr 2010 10:43 AM PDT Google Public Policy Blog: Privacy protections are good for our users and businessPosted by Will DeVries, privacy policy counselAlma Whitten, Google's Privacy Engineering Lead, wrote this commentary for Forbes, where she discusses our company's commitment to user choice and transparency. In the piece she describes how privacy is something we think about everyday because it's good for our users and critical for our business. If you find her piece interesting, you might also want to look at this presentation. It discusses our guiding privacy principles, explains what search logs look like, and discusses how we use data to improve our products and services.  URL: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/04/privacy-protections-are-good-for-our_14.html   |
| [G] More love for our multilingual Toolbar users Posted: 14 Apr 2010 09:52 AM PDT Official Google Blog: More love for our multilingual Toolbar users(Cross-posted from the Google Translate Blog) Entire page translations are great if you have little knowledge of a given language. However, if you're a multi-lingual user who just needs certain words translated, hovering is a lot quicker than searching word-by-word on Google Translate. Here is an example of the word "vitesse" (speed) translated from French to German:  The new Word Translator feature is available for Internet Explorer and Firefox. And if you use Google Chrome, automatic page translation is already built in, and we're working to build more Translate features. We hope this helps you browse pages in non-native languages faster, regardless of your language proficiency. Install the latest Toolbar version and give it a try! Posted by Dmitry Gozman, Software Engineer  URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/more-love-for-our-multilingual-toolbar.html   |
| [G] The Rise of Fake Anti-Virus Posted: 14 Apr 2010 09:52 AM PDT Google Online Security Blog: The Rise of Fake Anti-VirusPosted by Niels Provos, Security TeamFor years, we have detected malicious content on the web and helped protect users from it. Vulnerabilities in web browsers and popular plugins have resulted in an increased number of users whose systems can be compromised by attacks known as drive-by downloads. Such attacks do not require any user interaction, and they allow the adversary to execute code on a user's computer without their knowledge. However, even without any vulnerabilities present, clever social engineering attacks can cause an unsuspecting user to unwittingly install malicious code supplied by an attacker on their computer. One increasingly prevalent threat is the spread of Fake Anti-Virus (Fake AV) products. This malicious software takes advantage of users' fear that their computer is vulnerable, as well as their desire to take the proper corrective action. Visiting a malicious or compromised web site — or sometimes even viewing a malicious ad — can produce a screen looking something like the following:  At Google, we have been working to help protect users against Fake AV threats on the web since we first discovered them in March 2007. In addition to protections like adding warnings to browsers and search results, we're also actively engaged in malware research. We conducted an in-depth analysis of the prevalence of Fake AV over the course of the last 13 months, and the research paper containing our findings, "The Nocebo Effect on the Web: An Analysis of Fake AV distribution" is going to be presented at the Workshop on Large-Scale Exploits and Emergent Threats (LEET) in San Jose, CA on April 27th. While we do not want to spoil any surprises, here are a few previews. Our analysis of 240 million web pages over the 13 months of our study uncovered over 11,000 domains involved in Fake AV distribution — or, roughly 15% of the malware domains we detected on the web during that period. Also, over the last year, the lifespan of domains distributing Fake AV attacks has decreased significantly:  In the meantime, we recommend only running antivirus and antispyware products from trusted companies. Be sure to use the latest versions of this software, and if the scan detects any suspicious programs or applications, remove them immediately.  URL: http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2010/04/rise-of-fake-anti-virus.html   |
| [G] Q1'10 spam & virus trends from Postini Posted: 14 Apr 2010 09:52 AM PDT Official Google Enterprise Blog: Q1'10 spam & virus trends from PostiniEditor's note: The spam data cited in this post is drawn from the network of Google email security and archiving services, powered by Postini, which processes more than 3 billion email connections per day in the course of providing email security to more than 50,000 businesses and 18 million business users. In 2009, the security community started seeing diminishing returns from the takedown of malicious ISPs. After the ISP 3FN was taken down, spam levels rebounded in less than a month, and after Real Host went down, spam volumes recovered after only two days. In response, the anti-spam community turned its attention toward taking botnets offline instead. Toward the end of 2009, Mega-D, a top-10 botnet – responsible for infecting more than 250,000 computers worldwide – was severely crippled through a carefully orchestrated campaign designed to isolate the command-and-control servers spammers were using to support the botnet. In early 2010, security professionals, along with government agencies, successfully mounted a campaign against several more targets: major botnets such as Waledac, Mariposa, and Zeus were either shut down or had their operations significantly curtailed. However, this recent spate of botnet takedowns has not had a dramatic impact on spam levels. Although spam and virus levels did fall below Q4'09 highs, reports from Google's global analytics show that spam levels held relatively steady over the course of Q1'10. This suggests that there's no shortage of botnets out there for spammers to use. If one botnet goes offline, spammers simply buy, rent, or deploy another, making it difficult for the anti-spam community to make significant inroads in the fight against spam with individual botnet takedowns. Spam by the numbers Overall, spam volume fell 12% from Q4'09 to Q1'10, which follows a trend of quarterly decreases in overall spam levels that started after the surge in Q2'09. This may be attributed to some of the recent takedowns, but spam volume was still 6% higher this quarter than it was during the same period in 2009, and spam volume as a percentage of total email messages is holding steady.  Recently, our data centers showed a 30% increase in the size of individual spam messages (measured in bytes) that occurred toward the end of March, as shown below.  This spike points to a resurgence of image spam, similar to what we reported in Q2'09. This is likely due to the fact that reusing image templates makes it easier and faster for spammers to start new campaigns. As always, spammers tend to make use of predictable topics – cheap pharmaceuticals, celebrity gossip, breaking news – to encourage user clicks. In January, spammers hastened to exploit the Haiti earthquake crisis, sending pleas for donations that appeared to have been sent by reputable charitable organizations, politicians, and celebrities. The frequency and variety of post-earthquake spam illustrates an unpleasant reality: spammers will exploit any means – even tragedies – to accomplish their objectives.  Virus levels fall after Q4'09 surge During 2009, spam with attached viruses increased tenfold, with levels rising from 0.3% of total spam in the first half of the year to 3.7% in the second. Postini filters blocked more than 100 million virus-bearing messages per day during the worst of the attack. In fact, this virus surge may be part of the reason that there hasn't been a significant impact on spam volume after the recent takedown of major botnets. With a host of new machines now infected and part of a botnet, it is unlikely that there would be a dip in spam proliferation. Benefits of security in the cloud Although the botnets that distribute spam are mindless drones, the spammers that take advantage of these botnets are a highly active and adaptable group. This is evidenced by the varied techniques and tactics that they employ in an ongoing effort to evade spam filters and deliver messages to their targets. 2010 is likely to see more botnets taken offline, but the question remains – will that have a long-term impact on spam volumes overall? So far in 2010, the effect has been limited, and the security community may begin to turn to other tactics that yield a more substantial impact on global spam volumes. As long as the threat is there, however, Google is committed to using the power of the cloud to protect your enterprise from spam and viruses. Outsourcing message security to Google enables you to leverage our technical expertise and massive infrastructure to keep spammers from your inbox. For more information on how Google's security and archiving services can help your business stay safe and compliant, please visit www.google.com/postini. Posted by Gopal Shah, Google Postini Services team  URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/04/editors-note-spam-data-cited-in-this.html   |
| [G] Replay it: Google search across the Twitter archive Posted: 14 Apr 2010 09:52 AM PDT Official Google Blog: Replay it: Google search across the Twitter archiveSince we first introduced real-time search last December, we've added content from MySpace, Facebook and Buzz, expanded to 40 languages and added a top links feature to help you find the most relevant content shared on updates services like Twitter. Today, we're introducing a new feature to help you search and explore the public archive of tweets.With the advent of blogs and micro-blogs, there's a constant online conversation about breaking news, people and places — some famous and some local. Tweets and other short-form updates create a history of commentary that can provide valuable insights into what's happened and how people have reacted. We want to give you a way to search across this information and make it useful. Starting today, you can zoom to any point in time and "replay" what people were saying publicly about a topic on Twitter. To try it out, click "Show options" on the search results page, then select "Updates." The first page will show you the familiar latest and greatest short-form updates from a comprehensive set of sources, but now there's a new chart at the top. In that chart, you can select the year, month or day, or click any point to view the tweets from that specific time period. Here we've searched for [golden gate park] and browsed to see March, 2010:  The chart shows the relative volume of activity on Twitter about the topic. As you can see, there are daily spikes in the afternoon (when parks are the most fun) and an unusually high spike on March 27. Clicking on the 27th, you'll discover it was a sunny Saturday, which may explain the increased traffic on Twitter. People were tweeting about disc golf and tennis, biking, riding a party bus, craving chips and salsa...the kind of local, time-specific information that up until now would be almost impossible to find online.  By replaying tweets, you can explore any topic that people have discussed on Twitter. Want to know how the news broke about health care legislation in Congress, what people were saying about Justice Paul Stevens' retirement or what people were tweeting during your own marathon run? These are the kinds of things you can explore with the new updates mode. The replay feature is rolling out now and will be available globally in English within the next couple days (if you want to try it now, try out this special link). For our initial release, you can explore tweets going back to February 11, 2010, and soon you'll be able to go back as far as the very first tweet on March 21, 2006. All of us are just beginning to understand the many ways real-time information and short-form web content will be useful in the future, and we think being able to make use of historical information is an important part of that. As for me, after some hard work on real-time search, it's time for a virtual vacation to relive one of my favorite moments of the Winter Games. Posted by Dylan Casey, Product Manager for Real-Time Search  URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/replay-it-google-search-across-twitter.html   |
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