Thursday, July 1, 2010

Googland

Googland

[G] DLT Solutions practices what they preach by installing the Google Search Appliance in minutes

Posted: 30 Jun 2010 09:44 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: DLT Solutions practices what they preach by installing the Google Search Appliance in minutes

Editor's Note: We're pleased to welcome Jim Helou, Vice President of the Google division at DLT Solutions, a Google Enterprise Partner. Jim and his team provide leading enterprise solutions, such as the Google Search Appliance, to the Public Sector.

The DLT team understands the principle of service and works with their Public Sector customers to determine the best product fit, necessary services & training, post-implementation support and procurement options to fulfill their mission.

"Practice what you preach." We've all heard that saying, right? At DLT Solutions, we're a modern day example of the age-old adage. DLT Solutions, a value-added reseller of information technology products to federal, state and local government, recently partnered with Google to bring their innovative products to the public sector marketplace. Among Google's business solutions is the Google Search Appliance 6.0. We at DLT figured what better way to preach the gospel of Google than to be users ourselves.

DLT Solutions recently installed the Google Search Appliance (GSA) for searching the DLT intranet. We chronicled the installation of the Search Appliance 6.0 by two DLT Web developers at our headquarters outside of Washington D.C in a two-part real time video, now available to view at www.DLT.com/GSA.


(That's Part One, above; you can also view the Part Two on the DLT YouTube channel.)

The video is a timed demonstration of how fast and easy Google's latest version of the Search Appliance is to install. In less than 20 minutes we had taken the Google Search Appliance out of the box, installed, and configured the Search Appliance for our intranet file search. Your own deployment time may take longer depending on how many data sources you're searching and how many files you need to crawl. The point, however, is just how easy it is – one server, two network cables, and a power cord. No army of consultants necessary.

Looking back, search results in the pre-GSA days were…sloppy. Nowadays, with the GSA, the customizable search criteria makes for a more personal internal search experience. Employees can find the information they need faster allowing them to focus on more mission-critical tasks.

DLT uses Google's search solution for not only our intranet, but also our public website. The Search Appliance's relevant search results in the recognizable Google format has allowed our government users to get the information they need while increasing the number of qualified prospects for DLT.

We confidently tell our customers how easy the Google Search Appliance is to install and use. We know. We've done it.

Posted by Dan Israel, Product Marketing Manager, Google Enterprise
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/06/dlt-solutions-practices-what-they.html

[G] A Shift Towards Custom Application Development

Posted: 30 Jun 2010 09:44 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: A Shift Towards Custom Application Development


Editor's Note: With the launch of the Google Apps Marketplace in March 2010, many members of our Authorized Reseller Program are taking full and immediate advantage of the benefits the Marketplace provides – new apps for their customers and a new channel for resellers to sell their own customized apps to Google Apps users. We asked Julia Rivard, VP-Communications for Canadian-based SheepdogInc.ca, to talk about her experiences as a Google Apps reseller and now a vendor within the Google Apps Marketplace.

SheepDogInc.ca, founded by Shawn Wilkie and Brandon Kolybaba, recognized early on the strengths and functionality associated with the Google Apps suite of communication and collaboration tools. In 2007, we began working with Google to become an authorized Google Apps reseller, allowing our team to bring Google Apps migration expertise to organizations in Canada and across North America. Based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, our team has migrated many organizations which were formerly utilizing a mishmash of tools to the unified, cloud computing platform created by Google Apps.

SheepDogInc.ca's position as an authorized Google Apps reseller accelerated our move towards custom application development in the cloud. The launch of the Google Apps Marketplace enabled us to create applications in the cloud specifically catered towards the needs expressed by our clients. For example, our team developed an application on Google App Engine for the 2009 World Canoe Championship that delivered race results to millions of global followers as well as a medal counting application for the Canadian Olympic Committee that delivered updates to Olympic athletes on their mobile devices at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. Focused on enhancing and improving existing business processes, SheepDogInc.ca recently launched our custom application, gTrax in the Marketplace.

gTrax

gTrax is a time tracking business tool that enables employees to track their work, facilitates intuitive reporting functionality, and integrates the user's Google Calender with the time-tracking application.

The application is aimed at organizations looking for a simple and user-friendly process of drilling down and analyzing time management and internal activities, and helps identify and allocate internal resources to projects which facilitates accurate time budgeting. Complete integration with Google Calender means that gTrax utilizes entries from the employee's calender thereby reducing the need for repeat data entry and decreasing the overhead associated with other time-tracking systems.

The developers at SheepDogInc.ca have been working tirelessly to develop a user-friendly mobile interface for gTrax. The app is now fully accessible on both the Android and iPhone platforms allowing users to conveniently access gTrax from their mobile device. Since all data is securely stored in the Google cloud, it is accessible anytime and anywhere.

Our relationship with Google as an authorized reseller has allowed us to deploy the Google Apps suite in numerous organizations across North America and the addition of the Google Apps Marketplace has created new and exciting opportunities for SheepDogInc.ca. With our development team focused on creating applications on Google App Engine, we now build both fully customized apps for specific client's business needs, as well as packaged apps for a larger audience of users through the Marketplace.

Posted by Pat Spears, Google Apps Reseller Team
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/06/shift-towards-custom-application.html

[G] A Better Dashboard: Helping Detect Suspicious Log ins

Posted: 30 Jun 2010 09:08 PM PDT

Google Public Policy Blog: A Better Dashboard: Helping Detect Suspicious Log ins

Posted by Yariv Adan, Product Manager

A few months back we launched a feature in Gmail that notifies you when our servers automatically detect suspicious log in activity on your account. Since this has been effective in helping people identify improper access, we decided to extend it to all our Google Account users, not just GMail. Starting this week, If we detect any suspicious log in on any of your Google Account products, we'll display a notification on your Google Dashboard.

How does this work? Using the IP address you provide to us, our automated system can determine your broad geographic location. If you log in using a remote IP address, our system will flag it for you. So if you normally log into your account from your home in California and then a few hours later your account is logged in from France, you'll get a notice like the one above at the top of your Dashboard page - alerting you to the change and providing links for more details.

When you get this notice and if you think your account has been compromised, you can then change your password directly from the 'more details' pop-up window.


Or, if you know it was legitimate access (e.g. you were traveling or your spouse who uses the same account was traveling), you can easily click "Dismiss" and remove the message. These notifications will hopefully help you identify suspicious activity but should not be considered a replacement for following best practices to keep your data secure.

In other Dashboard news, we recently added a link at the bottom of the page for you to 'report an issue' making it easier for you to tell us about a problem or to just share your thoughts. We want to work with you to keep making the Dashboard better, so let us know how we're doing or ways we can improve your experience. Just note we may not be able to reply to every single report; but rest assured, we will read the feedback so we can keep making the Dashboard better.

So send us your thoughts. Take care to protect your information. And always keep an eye out for future improvements and upgrades to your Dashboard.
URL: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/06/better-dashboard-helping-detect.html

[G] Bob Dudley, Chief Executive for BP Response, answers your questions about the oil spill

Posted: 30 Jun 2010 09:03 PM PDT

Official Google Blog: Bob Dudley, Chief Executive for BP Response, answers your questions about the oil spill

(Cross-posted from the YouTube Blog)

It's been 71 days since the offshore drilling rig Deepwater Horizon exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, causing the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history. Since then, we've used our platforms to make sure that people can watch and participate in real time, access all the latest information on the crisis and response and share concerns through various programs and initiatives.

Now we're teaming up with PBS NewsHour to take you to BP headquarters in Houston for an exclusive interview with Bob Dudley, President and CEO of BP's Gulf Coast Restoration Organization. In a live session moderated by the PBS NewsHour's Ray Suarez, Mr. Dudley will respond directly to your questions.



Now is your chance to ask BP questions on accountability, the clean-up plan, recovery efforts in the Gulf Region, environmental impact, the status of the relief well drilling, the role of the U.S. government, the future of offshore drilling and of BP as a company.

Using Google Moderator on youtube.com/citizentube, submit your questions and vote the best ones to the top. Then join us for the live interview tomorrow, Thursday, July 1, at 3:30 pm ET/12:30 pm PT on CitizenTube. Portions of the interview will also be aired Thursday evening on the PBS NewsHour and available on YouTube.

Early on, we partnered with NewsHour to bring you a live stream of the oil gushing into the waters of the Gulf. On June 15, we streamed President Obama's Oval Office address on the oil spill crisis on CitizenTube. After the President's speech, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs answered questions submitted by YouTube users, who cast nearly 200,000 votes to select the top questions from 7,000+ submitted.

We hope that these various opportunities to engage and participate in a current event help you and fellow citizens stay more informed and have your voice heard.

Posted by Olivia Ma, YouTube News Manager and Ginny Hunt, Google Public Sector Manager
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/bob-dudley-chief-executive-for-bp.html

[G] Extra! Extra! Google News redesigned to be more customizable and shareable

Posted: 30 Jun 2010 09:03 PM PDT

Official Google Blog: Extra! Extra! Google News redesigned to be more customizable and shareable

There's an old saying that all news is local. But all news is personal too—we connect with it in different ways depending on our interests, where we live, what we do and a lot of other factors. Today we're revamping the Google News homepage with several changes designed to make the news that you see more relevant to you. We're also trying to better highlight interesting stories you didn't know existed and to make it easier for you to share stories through social networks.

Before:


After:


The new heart of the homepage is something we call "News for you": a stream of headlines automatically tailored to your interests. You can help us get it right by using the "Edit personalization" box to specify how much you're interested in Business, Health, Entertainment, Sports or any subject you want to add (whether it's the Supreme Court, the World Cup or synthetic biology). You can choose to view the stories by Section view or List view, and reveal more headlines by hovering over the headline with your mouse. We'll remember your preferences each time you log in. If you don't want customized Google News, hit "Reset personalization" to clear all personalization preferences. If you haven't previously customized and would prefer not to, simply close the "Edit personalization" box. You can always go back and change it later.

To give you more control over the news that you see, we're now allowing you to choose which news sources you'd like to see more or less often. You can do so in News Settings. These sources will rank higher or lower for you (but not for anyone else) in Google News search results and story clusters. We've also added keyboard shortcuts for easier navigation, like in Gmail or Google Reader. When you're in Google News, hit the question mark key to pop up a full list of shortcuts.

There are the subjects that interest you and then there's the major news of the day. To make it easy for you to find the big stories like Hurricane Alex, we're adding links to topics that many outlets are covering. You'll find these topics in the Top Stories section on the left side of the homepage as well as in linked keywords above headlines. Clicking on a topic link takes you to a list of related coverage that you can add to your news stream. You can change your preferences any time in "Edit personalization."


We're also more prominently displaying the Spotlight section, which features stories of more lasting interest than breaking news and has been one of our most popular sections since we introduced it last fall. And then there's local news; we're now highlighting weather and headlines about your city or neighborhood in their own section, which you can edit with whichever location you want to follow.

Finally, you can now easily share story clusters with other people via Buzz, Reader, Facebook or Twitter. Just select the drop-down menu marked by an arrow on the top-right of each story cluster. In the drop-down, you can also choose to see more or less of the first news source.


The redesigned Google News homepage is rolling out today in the English-language edition in the U.S., and we plan to expand it to all editions in the coming months. We're making the ability to choose which sources you'll see more or less often available in all English-language editions worldwide and plan to expand it soon. For more information about these changes, check out the video below or visit our Help Center.


Posted by Kevin Stolt, Software Engineer
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/extra-extra-google-news-redesigned-to.html

[G] A Search Story for the dog days of summer

Posted: 30 Jun 2010 09:03 PM PDT

Official Google Blog: A Search Story for the dog days of summer

This is part of our summer series of new Search Stories. Look for the label Search Stories and subscribe to the series. -Ed.

When I first brought my dog Yoshka with me to work, I didn't expect he would go on to become a part of our company history and help inspire our dog-friendly culture. At Google, any employee can bring their dog to work, and it's rare that I reach my desk in the morning without seeing a pup or two on the way. All these dogs—my own and those I meet around campus—seem to possess that uncanny canine ability to bring a smile to my face. I hope this week's Search Story, Dog, will do the same for you.



Visit www.youtube.com/searchstories to check out the whole collection, or to create your own story.

Yoshka

Posted by Urs Hoelzle, Senior Vice President, Operations & Google Fellow
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/search-story-for-dog-days-of-summer.html

[G] AdSense: Behind the scenes - Meet Debby

Posted: 30 Jun 2010 09:03 PM PDT

Inside AdSense: AdSense: Behind the scenes - Meet Debby

Do you ever wonder who's helping you optimize your webpages? Who works hard to ensure your payments get to you on time? Who works with our product and engineering teams to deliver the products and features that you want?

Over the next few weeks you'll find out just that! We're kicking off a video series where you'll meet some of our AdSense team members. You can hear their stories, learn more about their role in AdSense, and listen to the tips they have to offer.

In the first video, Debby, a member of the AdSense Optimization team talks about her favorite websites, what she likes about working for Google, and the Google products that she recommends every publisher try.



Posted by Dia Muthana - Inside AdSense Team
URL: http://adsense.blogspot.com/2010/06/adsense-behind-scenes-meet-debby.html

[G] Google launches Korean Voice Search

Posted: 30 Jun 2010 08:36 PM PDT

Official Google Research Blog: Google launches Korean Voice Search

Posted by Mike Schuster & Martin Jansche, Google Research

On June 16th, we launched our Korean voice search system. Google Search by Voice has been available in various flavors of English since 2008, in Mandarin and Japanese since 2009, and in French, Italian, German and Spanish just a few weeks ago (some more details in a recent blog post).

Korean speech recognition has received less attention than English, which has been studied extensively around the world by teams in both English and non-English speaking countries. Fundamentally, our methodology for developing a Korean speech recognition system is similar to the process we have used for other languages. We created a set of statistical models: an acoustic model for the basic sounds of the language, a language model for the words and phrases of the language, and a dictionary mapping the words to their pronunciations. We trained our acoustic model using a large quantity of recorded and transcribed Korean speech. The language model was trained using anonymized Korean web search queries. Once these models were trained, given an audio input, we can compute and display the most likely spoken phrase, along with its search result.

There were several challenges in developing a Korean speech recognition system, some unique to Korean, some typical of Asian languages and some universal to all languages. Here are some examples of problems that stood out:

  • Developing a Korean dictionary: Unlike English, where there are many publicly-available dictionaries for mapping words to their pronunciations, there are very few available for Korean. Since our Korean recognizer knows several hundred thousand words, we needed to create these mappings ourselves. Luckily, Korean has one of the most elegant and simple writing systems in the world (created in the 15th century!) and this makes mapping Korean words to pronunciations relatively straightforward. However, we found that Koreans also use quite a few English words in their queries, which complicates the mapping process. To predict these pronunciations, we built a statistical model using data from an existing (smaller) Korean dictionary.
  • Korean word boundaries: Although Korean orthography uses spaces to indicate word boundaries (unlike Japanese or Mandarin), we found that people use word boundaries inconsistently for search queries. To limit the size of the vocabulary generated from the search queries, we used statistical techniques to cut rare long words into smaller sub-words (similarly to the system we developed for Japanese).
  • Pronunciation exceptions: Korean (like all other languages) has many exceptions for pronunciations that are not immediately obvious. For example, numbers are often written as digit sequences but not necessarily spoken this way (2010 = 이천십). The same is true for many common alphanumeric sequences like "mp3", "kbs2" or mixed queries like "삼성 tv", which often contain spelled letters and possibly English spoken digits as opposed to Korean ones.
  • Encoding issues: Korean script (Hangul) is written in syllabic blocks, with each block containing at least two of the 24 modern Hangul letters (Jamo), at least one consonant and one vowel. Including the normal ASCII characters this brings the total number of possible basic characters to over 10000, not including Hanja (used mostly in the formal spelling of names). So, despite its simple writing system, Korean still presents the same challenge of handling a large alphabet that is typical of Asian languages.
  • Script ambiguity: We found that some users like to use English native words and others the Korean transliteration (example: "ncis season 6" vs. "ncis 시즌6"). This makes it challenging to train and evaluate the system. We use a metric that estimates whether our transcription will give the correct web page result on the user's smart phone screen, and such script variations make this tricky.
  • Recognizing rare words: The recognizer is good at recognizing things users often type into the search engine, such as cities, shops, addresses, common abbreviations, common product model numbers and well-known names like "김연아". However, rare words (like many personal names) are often harder for us to recognize. We continue to work on improving those.
  • Every speaker sounds different: People speak in different styles, slow or fast, with an accent or without, have lower or higher pitched voices, etc. To make our system work for all these different conditions, we trained our system using data from many different sources to capture as many conditions as possible.

When speech recognizers make errors, the reason is usually that the models are not good enough, and that often means they haven't been trained on enough data. For Korean (and all other languages) our cloud computing infrastructure allows us to retrain our models frequently and using an ever growing amount of data to continually improve performance. Over time, we are committed to improve the system regularly to make speech a user-friendly input method on mobile devices.
URL: http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2010/06/google-launches-korean-voice-search.html

[G] Pay on the go with the Android Payment Extension

Posted: 30 Jun 2010 05:31 PM PDT

Official Google Checkout Blog: Pay on the go with the Android Payment Extension

Imagine you're selling at a market or expo and want to take credit cards. Rather than hassle with cash, you can use the new Android Payment Extension for the Google Checkout Store Gadget on your laptop to allow Checkout customers to purchase from their phones.

This extension helps merchants quickly set up a store and accept payments via Google Checkout and Android by following the steps below:

1. Create a Google Checkout merchant account and configure your tax on the Settings Tab
2. Use the Google Checkout Store Gadget Wizard to generate a webstore template
3. Fill in the Google Spreadsheet with information about the items you wish to sell
4. Create a Google Sites page and follow the wizard to embed the Store Gadget
5. Install the Android Payment Chrome Extension

Once your customer tells you the items he or she wants to buy, you can create a cart with those items on your laptop. You then click the green Checkout with Android button and have the customer scan the QR code displayed with their phone. The QR code directs your customer to the buy page where they can complete their purchase.

While this payment method may not be perfect for all cases, we hope you find it useful for setting up a shop on the go and that it inspires further innovation in the mobile and payment developer communities.

Posted by Peng Ying, Google Checkout
URL: http://googlecheckout.blogspot.com/2010/06/pay-on-go-with-android-payment.html

[G] Extra! Extra! Google News redesigned to be more customizable and shareable

Posted: 30 Jun 2010 04:16 PM PDT

Google News Blog: Extra! Extra! Google News redesigned to be more customizable and shareable

Posted by by Kevin Stolt, Software Engineer

There's an old saying that all news is local. But all news is personal too—we connect with it in different ways depending on our interests, where we live, what we do and a lot of other factors. Today we're revamping the Google News homepage with several changes designed to make the news that you see more relevant to you. We're also trying to better highlight interesting stories you didn't know existed and to make it easier for you to share stories through social networks.

BEFORE:



AFTER:



The new heart of the homepage is something we call "News for you": a stream of headlines automatically tailored to your interests. You can help us get it right by using the "Edit personalization" box to specify how much you're interested in Business, Health, Entertainment, Sports or any subject you want to add (whether it's the Supreme Court, the World Cup or synthetic biology). You can choose to view the stories by Section view or List view, and reveal more headlines by hovering over the headline with your mouse. We'll remember your preferences each time you log in. If you don't want customized Google News, hit "Reset personalization" to clear all personalization preferences. If you haven't previously customized and would prefer not to, simply save and close the "Edit personalization" box. You can always go back and change it later.

To give you more control over the news that you see, we're now allowing you to choose which news sources you'd like to see more or less often. You can do so in News Settings. These sources will rank higher or lower for you (but not for anyone else) in Google News search results and story clusters. We've also added keyboard shortcuts for easier navigation, like in Gmail or Google Reader. When you're in Google News, hit the question-mark key to pop up a full list of shortcuts.

There are the subjects that interest you and then there's the major news of the day. To make it easy for you to find the big stories like Hurricane Alex, we're adding links to topics that many outlets are covering. You'll find these topics in the Top Stories section on the left side of the homepage as well as in linked keywords above headlines. Clicking on a topic link takes you to a list of related coverage that you can add to your news stream. You can change your preferences any time in "Edit personalization."



The redesigned Google News homepage is rolling out today in the English-language edition in the U.S., and we plan to expand it to all editions in the coming months. We're making the ability to choose which sources you'll see more or less often available in all English-language editions worldwide and plan to expand it soon. For more information about these changes, check out the video below or visit our Help Center.







URL: http://googlenewsblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/extra-extra-google-news-redesigned-to.html

[G] Bob Dudley, Chief Executive for BP Response, answers your questions about the oil spill

Posted: 30 Jun 2010 03:25 PM PDT

YouTube Blog: Bob Dudley, Chief Executive for BP Response, answers your questions about the oil spill

It's been 71 days since the offshore drilling rig Deepwater Horizon exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, causing the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history. Since then, we've used our platforms to make sure that people can watch and participate in real time, access all the latest information on the crisis and response and share concerns through various programs and initiatives.



Now we're teaming up with PBS NewsHour to take you to BP headquarters in Houston for an exclusive interview with Bob Dudley, President and CEO of BP's Gulf Coast Restoration Organization. In a live session moderated by the PBS NewsHour's Ray Suarez, Mr. Dudley will respond directly to your questions.







Now is your chance to ask BP questions on accountability, the clean-up plan, recovery efforts in the Gulf Region, environmental impact, the status of the relief well drilling, the role of the U.S. government, the future of offshore drilling and of BP as a company.



Using Google Moderator on youtube.com/citizentube, submit your questions and vote the best ones to the top. Then join us for the live interview tomorrow, Thursday, July 1, at 3:30 pm ET/12:30 pm PT on CitizenTube. Portions of the interview will also be aired Thursday evening on the PBS NewsHour and available on YouTube.



Early on, we partnered with NewsHour to bring you a live stream of the oil gushing into the waters of the Gulf. On June 15, we streamed President Obama's Oval Office address on the oil spill crisis on CitizenTube. After the President's speech, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs answered questions submitted by YouTube users, who cast nearly 200,000 votes to select the top questions from 7,000+ submitted.



We hope that these various opportunities to engage and participate in a current event help you and fellow citizens stay more informed and have your voice heard.



Olivia Ma, YouTube News Manager, and Ginny Hunt, Google Public Sector Manager


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/Uk2r4TsjHy8/bob-dudley-chief-executive-for-bp.html

[G] Improved keyword diagnosis -- no appointments necessary

Posted: 30 Jun 2010 12:57 PM PDT

Inside AdWords: Improved keyword diagnosis -- no appointments necessary

"Are my ads showing? If they aren't, why not?"

Whether you have ten keywords or ten thousand, making sure your ads are showing is a top priority. Now you can get detailed diagnostic information for multiple keywords at once by using a new keyword diagnosis option on the Keywords tab.

To get started, open the "More actions" menu on your Keywords tab (at the account, campaign, or ad group level) and select "Diagnose keywords."


On the keyword diagnosis menu, you have all the options available in the standalone Ads Diagnostic Tool. For example, if you're interested in seeing whether or not your ad is showing in a particular location, you can use the Location drop-down to narrow the scope of your diagnosis.


After clicking "Run test," you'll see the real-time results appear in the Status column next to each keyword. If all is well, you see "Ad showing." If not, you'll see a brief summary of the problem (for example, "Low bid or quality score"):



To get more details on a keyword's status, hover over any speech bubble icon. In the above example, viewing details for the keyword "meeting icebreakers" displays more information on the Quality Score issues that are preventing the ad from showing. To focus on one issue at a time, try creating filters for Keyword Status.

The next time your keywords need a check-up, try using keyword diagnosis -- it even makes house calls!

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/06/improved-keyword-diagnosis-no.html

[G] Making the web more accessible, one step at a time

Posted: 30 Jun 2010 12:10 PM PDT

Google Chrome Blog: Making the web more accessible, one step at a time

From text that is too small to read, to user interfaces that do not offer keyboard navigation options, users with special needs face a lot of challenges when trying to access websites they are interested in. We believe that extensions can complement the work we are doing to make Google Chrome more accessible and can help users with disabilities turn the web from an often unwelcoming place to an environment they can truly enjoy.

Today we are launching a new category of featured extensions under the name "Accessibility". On this page you'll find ChromeVis a brand new extension from Google that allows users with low vision to magnify and change the color of selected text. You will also find extensions like Chrome Daltonize that can help color blind users to see more details in web pages or gleeBox that provides alternatives to actions traditionally performed via the mouse such as clicking, scrolling and selecting text fields.



All users can benefit from these extensions - not just users with disabilities. To encourage more developers to incorporate best practices in accessibility when designing extensions, we've open sourced the code behind Chrome Vis and created relevant documentation. You can get more information in the Chromium blog.

One can develop a lot of great extensions to benefit users with special needs. We plan to release a few more in the next months so stay tuned for more updates.

Posted by Jonas Klink, Accessibility Product Manager
URL: http://chrome.blogspot.com/2010/06/making-web-more-accessible-one-step-at.html

[G] Adobe Flash Player support now enabled in Google Chrome’s stable channel

Posted: 30 Jun 2010 12:10 PM PDT

Google Chrome Blog: Adobe Flash Player support now enabled in Google Chrome's stable channel

In our most recent stable release of Google Chrome, we talked about beta-testing Adobe Flash Player integration into Chrome. We're now happy to enable this integration by default in the stable channel of Chrome. To read more about this integration, check out the Chromium blog.

In testing Flash Player integration into Chrome, the Chrome team admittedly spent many, many fun hours with a few of our favorite Flash-based indie games. So as a side project, we teamed up with a few creative folks to build Chrome FastBall, a Flash-based game built on top of the YouTube platform.



Try pitting your wits against the clock at youtube.com/chromefastball. If you're using Chrome, your browser should be automatically updated with Flash Player integration as of this week. And if you haven't yet tried Chrome, download this newest stable release of the browser at google.com/chrome and take it for a test drive!

Update9:20 AM PST: Due to the overwhelming response to the game, some things aren't quite working as we hoped due to server-side overloading. Please forgive the maintenance work as we get the game back up again. Thanks!

Posted by Jeff Chang, Product Manager
URL: http://chrome.blogspot.com/2010/06/adobe-flash-player-support-now-enabled.html

[G] Professional caption services get “YouTube Ready”

Posted: 30 Jun 2010 10:20 AM PDT

YouTube Blog: Professional caption services get "YouTube Ready"

Captioning is becoming increasingly important to YouTube and videos all across the web. Captions ensure that many more people can understand what's happening in your video, from deaf and hard of hearing viewers to people who speak a different language from you and choose to auto-translate the captions into their language. Captions also make your video a lot more discoverable. People searching for content on YouTube might encounter your video if your captions contain the words or subjects they're looking for.



You may be able to manage creating captions for your videos on your own, but sometimes you have too many videos or your video has elements that need special care. Today, thanks to support from the Described and Captioned Media Program (DCMP.org), we're pleased to roll out a new "YouTube Ready" designation for professional caption vendors in the United States. The YouTube Ready logo identifies qualified vendors who can help you caption your YouTube videos.



If you're interested in having your videos captioned, here's DCMP's current list of YouTube Ready vendors who may be able to help. Please keep in mind that participating vendors:


  • Have passed a caption quality evaluation administered by the DCMP

  • Have a website and a YouTube channel where you can learn more about their services (see playlist below)

  • Have agreed to post rates for the range of services that they offer for YouTube content. Typical rates range from $2/minute for a transcript to $10/minute for full professional captions.


The first launch of the program includes 12 qualified vendors, with more to come. We're happy to have them on board, and hope they'll help to provide even more options for captioning your videos. If you're interested in finding a YouTube Ready caption vendor, check out our Help Center or visit DCMP's page.

 









Naomi Bilodeau, Caption Evangelist, recently watched "Deaf Mugger."


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/R-cCgxEZgIk/professional-caption-services-get.html

[G] Share Your Gone Google Story

Posted: 30 Jun 2010 09:34 AM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Share Your Gone Google Story

Earlier this month we launched the Go Google cloud calculator, and we're excited that so many of you have already taken a few minutes to discover how Google Apps can benefit your organization. Many of you have shared the results of your calculations and added your organization to our community map – and we've loved your enthusiasm about the time and money that can be saved by going Google.

As a token of our appreciation, we're giving away limited-edition Gone Google tote bags (made from material recycled from our billboards) to people who share their Gone Google stories.

Just tell us how your company has gone Google, and include a link to your poster from the cloud calculator in this form. (Hint: when you create your Gone Google poster, you can just copy and paste the unique URL of the PDF.) We'll send you a tote bag and may even highlight your story on the Google Enterprise blog.

*And our lawyers ask us to tell you that in sharing your story, you are giving Google permission to use it for marketing purposes, and the "giveaway offer is void where prohibited and valid only while supplies last" — so hurry!

Posted by Ashley Chandler, Google Enterprise team
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/06/share-your-gone-google-story.html

[G] Happy birthday: Google Maps API Turns 5!

Posted: 30 Jun 2010 09:21 AM PDT

Google LatLong: Happy birthday: Google Maps API Turns 5!


Today is an important milestone here at Google and we're all pretty excited - the Google Maps API turns 5! It was five years ago today that we posted a brief announcement to let the world know about the JavaScript Maps API and now 5 years later more than 350,000 active websites make use of it. Uses have ranged from tools that have made it easier to find an apartment, track the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and even make an Earth sandwich! Many, many more examples have been chronicled on sites like Mashable and the Google Maps Mania blog.

In 2005, Adrian Holovaty launched the first crime mashup that overlaid Chicago's public crime data onto online maps providing Chicago's citizens and journalists with a true picture of crime in their city. The site won the 2005 Batten Award for Innovations in Journalism and was named by The New York Times as one of 2005's best ideas.

In honor of this very special birthday, we took a chance to check back in with Adrian to see what he thought about the journey of the Google Maps API over the past 5 years:

"Of my 11 years of doing Web development, Spring 2005 was the most interesting and exciting time. When Google Maps launched -- with maps assembled client-side, in JavaScript! -- I was one of the band of tinkerers around the globe who poked at Google's obfuscated code until we figured out how to embed their maps in our own pages. It was a ton of fun, not only doing the reverse engineering, but seeing the various discoveries and hacks other people were making: embedding multiple maps in a single page, swapping out the map tiles, using custom map markers, making markers move, loading real-time data onto maps... New discoveries were being made on a seemingly daily basis, and the best ones built on the other ones, which led to a sense of a community contributing to a greater understanding.

"These days, it's hard to fathom a Web without embeddable maps. Wasn't it always that way? To Google's eternal credit, instead of shutting these hacks down, they recognized the demand and legitimized it in the form of their mapping API.

"And the rest is... well, kind of boring in its simplicity, now that reverse engineering isn't involved. There was something raw and pure about those original hacks, like hunting and skinning your own food, living off the land, a digital self-sustainability. I feel like an old man yelling at kids to get off my lawn: 'Back in my day, I had to reverse engineer Google's obfuscated JavaScript to get embeddable maps on my pages!' You don't know how good you have it."
The Google Maps API has seen some significant milestones of its own during the past five years. Some of the announcements we're most proud of are the Maps API for Flash, Static Maps API, our Enterprise offering Maps API Premier, and the new Maps API v3, built with mobile use cases in mind and recently graduated from Code Labs.

The Google Maps API has established itself as the most popular Google API and the most deployed service-based API on the web. We continue to be amazed by how popular this API continues to be for web and mobile apps being developed today. This ProgrammableWeb dashboard shows that of the apps built and submitted over the past 2 weeks, a quarter of them make use of the Google Maps API. Click the 'All Time' tab and you'll see that nearly half of the almost 5000 cataloged mashups use it.

Today, on this 5 year milestone, we really have all of you to thank for this incredible chapter in web and mapping development. The remarkable levels of innovation, creativity and interest have come from all of you. You saw the possibilities the Google Maps API held and what it could be combined with to create, and you built it. Now join us to celebrate! Keir Clarke from Google Maps Mania has created a mashup that we want all of you to contribute to. Please tag your Google Maps mashup or tool to the map wherever you are:



Since we can't all share a giant cake, I think it's fitting that we all build a giant mashup of mashups to mark this special API birthday. We're looking forward to the next 5 years of mapping innovation together with all of you!

Posted by Mike Pegg, Google Maps API team
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/06/happy-birthday-google-maps-api-turns-5.html

[G] Race to the finish line in a flash

Posted: 30 Jun 2010 08:58 AM PDT

Official Google Blog: Race to the finish line in a flash

We recently released a new version of our Google Chrome browser with Adobe Flash Player built in, automatically bringing you the latest and greatest updates. To celebrate, we teamed up with a few creative folks to make Chrome FastBall, a Flash-based game built for YouTube. Want to race?


Complete various games to get the shiny chrome ball to the finish line in the shortest possible time. (So far, the fastest time on the Chrome team is 1 minute, 20 seconds.)

Try your luck with Chrome FastBall, and if you haven't taken Chrome for a test drive yet, download the newest stable release of the browser at google.com/chrome.

Posted by Jeff Chang, Product Manager
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/race-to-finish-line-in-flash.html

[G] Googlers on the Loose at OSCON

Posted: 30 Jun 2010 08:50 AM PDT

Google Open Source Blog: Googlers on the Loose at OSCON

In three weeks, Googlers from offices around the world will be gathering in Portland, OR for OSCON, O'Reilly Media's annual open source convention. OSCON will take place from July 19th - 23rd, and we're looking forward to the opportunity to meet and interact with the open source community.

There is an impressive lineup of Googlers speaking at OSCON this year, with 20 of them presenting talks and even more attending. Click on the session names below for more information on each talk's time and location.
Robin Anil: Mahout: Mammoth Scale Machine Learning

Dan Bentley: Make Open Easy

Tim Bray: Practical Concurrency

Ben Collins-Sussman: How to Lose Friends and Alienate People: The Joys of Engineering Leadership

Chris DiBona: Google Open Source Update 2010 and Your Work in Open Source, 3 years of Incremental Change

Brian Fitzpatrick: How to Lose Friends and Alienate People: The Joys of Engineering Leadership

Joe Gregorio: Extending Wave with Robots and Gadgets

Sam Johnston: What We Need are Standards in the Cloud

John Koleszar: Introducing WebM: High Quality, Royalty-Free, Open Source Video

Ikai Lan: Introduction to Google App Engine and What is Google App Engine?

Alex Martelli: Practical Python Patterns and Powerful Pythonic Patterns

Mark Miller: E, Caja

Dan Morrill: Android: The Whats and Wherefores

A. Ali Pasha: Challenges of running Google Code - Porn, Malware, Hacks, etc.

Dan Peterson: Extending Wave with Robots and Gadgets

Rob Pike: Go, Public Static Void, and Another Go at Language Design

Mark Pilgrim: HTML5's Multimedia Future

Mark Smith: Build Your Own Contributors (One Part at a Time)

John Woodell: Ruby and Duby on App Engine

Roni Zeiger: Google Health: Connecting Mobile Patients
If you have a particular interest in Android, in addition to Dan Morrill's talk there will be an Android Hands-On session at 7 PM on Wednesday. This event promises to be "an intense, technical, and structured event led by Google Android experts." Advance registration is required for this event, so don't forget to sign up!

We'll also be holding a Google Summer of Code™ Birds of a Feather (BoF) session on Wednesday. This BoF is a chance for anyone who has been involved in Google Summer of Code or is interested in learning more to meet face to face and talk about the Google Summer of Code experience. The fun and community bonding starts at 7 PM!

In addition to all the talks and events listed above, the Google Open Source Programs Office will be holding Office Hours on Wednesday, at 2:30 PM. If you've ever had a question about open source and Google, this is a great opportunity to meet the team and ask it in person. You're also welcome to just come by, say hello, and hang out.

Hope to see you at OSCON!

By Ellen Ko, Open Source Team
URL: http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/06/googlers-on-loose-at-oscon.html
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