Thursday, June 9, 2011

Googland

Googland

[G] Know when your bus is late with live transit updates in Google Maps

Posted: 09 Jun 2011 03:59 AM PDT

Official Google Mobile Blog: Know when your bus is late with live transit updates in Google Maps


(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog)

Often when I'm taking public transit, I arrive at my stop on time only to anxiously check my watch and look down the street for my bus, which is running late once again. Those extra minutes I'm forced to wait seem like an eternity, and the only information I can access on my phone is when the bus was supposed to arrive.

Starting now, Google Maps for mobile and desktop can tell you when your ride is actually going to arrive with new live transit updates. We partnered with transit agencies to integrate live transit data in four U.S. cities and two European cities: Boston, Portland, Ore., San Diego, San Francisco, Madrid and Turin.



When you click on a transit station or plan a transit route with Google Maps and there are delays or alerts related to your trip, you'll now see "live departure times" (indicated with a special icon) and service alerts.



Live transit departure times after tapping on a station



Live service alerts when receiving transit directions



Live departures and alerts on desktop


We're working with our public transit partners to help them provide live data to more people in more cities. You can get live transit updates in the latest version of Google Maps for mobile (requires Android 1.6+), as well as Google Maps on all supported desktop and mobile browsers.

Posted by Sasha Gontmakher, Software Engineer
URL: http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2011/06/know-when-your-bus-is-late-with-live.html

[G] Make your secondary Google Voice number permanent

Posted: 08 Jun 2011 02:51 PM PDT

Google Voice Blog: Make your secondary Google Voice number permanent

Until now, if you changed your Google Voice number, ported your number to Google Voice, or opted in for the Sprint Option 1 integration (where your Sprint number becomes your Google Voice number), your previous Google Voice number remained on your account for 90 days before it was returned to Google.

Since many Google Voice users grow attached and become closely associated with their Google Voice numbers, we're making it possible for users in any of the scenarios above to permanently keep the previous Google Voice number on their account.

This means that calls made and text messages sent to your previous number will still reach you, however, your new primary Google Voice number will display on caller ID when you make calls or send text messages.

To keep a previous number on your account, log in to Google Voice, visit the Settings tab, and click "make permanent" next to the number that you want to hang on to. There's a one-time $20 administration charge to make it permanent, and the process is instantaneous.

Visit the Google Voice Help Center to learn more.

Posted by Eugene Goldfarb, Software Engineer
URL: http://googlevoiceblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/make-your-secondary-google-voice-number.html

[G] Petting Zoo at Green Apple Books in San Francisco Tonight

Posted: 08 Jun 2011 02:22 PM PDT

Inside Google Books: Petting Zoo at Green Apple Books in San Francisco Tonight

Posted by Pete Mulvihill, co-owner of Green Apple Books

Richard Savoy founded Green Apple Books in 1967 when he was 25 years old. In 1999, he handed the reigns over to three new owners: Kevin Hunsanger, Kevin Ryan and myself. Today our store in the Inner Richmond district of San Francisco is more than 10 times its original 750 square feet, with two storefronts and three floors of used and new books along with music, DVDs, and now... Google eBooks. In a dynamic industry that has seen the rise (and fall?) of discounters, chain super-stores, and online sellers, Green Apple has always strived to adapt and remain relevant to our community.
Green Apple Books is one of more than 250 independent booksellers selling Google eBooks nationwide. Readers can visit our website at GreenAppleBooks.com, browse and shop for Google eBooks, sample them and buy them directly from us. Then you can access your Google eBooks "in the cloud" without ever having to download them (unless you want to), picking up on the page where you left off as you switch among your PC,smartphone, and tablet. The best part about Google eBooks is that you can buy them from your locally-owned independent bookseller, and read them on devices of your choice. You're not locked in to one bookseller or one kind of hardware. And keeping that money in your local economy really makes a difference.

We've found that it's easy to learn once you get your hands on a device and try it. So we're hosting a Google eBooks "petting zoo" this evening from 5:00 -- 8:00 p.m. in our store at 506 Clement Street @ 6th Avenue in San Francisco. We'll have refreshments and digital enlightenment as we show you how to browse, buy and read Google eBooks by playing with an array of devices, some of which you may already own. And if you're looking for a gift for all those dads and grads out there, a Green Apple Books gift card never expires and can be used to buy anything we sell including Google eBooks.

As a store with a sense of humor in addition to our well groomed selection of books, we made this YouTube video to explain how you can support us from anywhere in the U.S. by buying your Google eBooks from us.



We also display QR codes in front of many print books featured in-store that point to the corresponding ebook page online where you can sample and buy the digital version using your smartphone right here in the store. Because sometimes you want to get dressed and leave the house, right?

We know many avid readers prefer the tactile sensation of a turning a page and the satisfying thud of a finished novel on a nightstand. So do many of us, but for those of you who want to dabble in the digital, are considering lightening your literary load or crave a healthy mix of 1s and 0s with your paper pulp -- look no further than Green Apple Books. (We buy books, too, so if you go digital, think about selling those used books to us for re-use!).

Thanks for reading. We hope you'll drop by to touch some screens.
URL: http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2011/06/petting-zoo-at-green-apple-books-in-san.html

[G] Tech writer Steven Levy discusses All Things Google [video]

Posted: 08 Jun 2011 02:22 PM PDT

Inside Google Books: Tech writer Steven Levy discusses All Things Google [video]

Posted by Oliver Chiang, Google eBooks Support Team


Veteran technology journalist Steven Levy, a senior writer at Wired, visited Google recently as part of the Authors@Google program to talk about In the Plex, his latest book detailing the inner workings of our company. Levy was interviewed by search engineer Matt Cutts. Cutts asked Levy about his experience writing the book, his many visits to our Google campuses, and his impressions of the company as a whole.



In the video above, Levy is interviewed on-stage as part of the Authors@Google series


Levy touched on a number of interesting topics about Google in his interview, which you can watch in the video above. One Googler asked Levy what was one of the biggest revelations the author had about the company. Levy said that while some criticize Google for lacking coherence in what it does, you can find "the root of 'Googliness'" in any of the company's projects.

Citing Google's self-driving cars, for example, Levy says:


"It's AI [artificial intelligence]-based, and Google to me is an AI company among other things. It's also a really big information-processing exercise. [The car] takes in all this information about its local area, with little laser sensors and things like that, and it brings back information from Google in Street View and Maps and things like that. So I found it not a surprising product, once you think about it, for Google to embark on."


The book itself reads like an insider's guide to Google, with fascinating anecdotes dating back to the very founding of Google. One memorable scene shows founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin getting their first big investment in 1998 -- before the company even existed -- from investor Andy Bechtolsheim:


"At that ungodly hour Page and Brin demoed their search engine for Bechtolsheim... Bechtolsheim, impressed, but eager to get to the office, cut the meeting short by offering to write the duo a $100,000 check.

'We don't have a bank account yet,' said Brin.

'Deposit it when you get one,' said Bechtolsheim, who raced off in his Porsche. With as little fanfare as if he were grabbing a latte on the way to work, he had just invested in an enterprise that would change the way the world accessed information. Brin and Page celebrated with a Burger King breakfast."




Levy, with a copy of his Google eBook "In the Plex"


My colleague Ariel and I also had the pleasure of interviewing Levy before his conversation with Cutts. We asked Levy what initially drove him to start writing about technology. He told us that he originally covered many topics, and was even a rock music critic for awhile. Then in 1982, he had the opportunity to do a story about computer hackers. "I hadn't even touched a computer before then," he noted.

The experience writing his now-famous book, Hackers: heroes of the computer revolution (1984), led him to reject common stereotypes about hackers. "They were not creepy sociopaths," he said. "They were doing fascinating things with computers and it was clear that computers were going to change everything." Levy was inspired to become a technology journalist -- one of the early pioneers in the field.

This prompted us to ask Levy what he thought of tech journalism today. Levy thought the field was more interesting now, calling it a more "varied ecosystem." While coverage of tech companies and innovations used to be found in the business sections of big newspapers, he noted that with the Internet, there was a lot more diversity of outlets now. "A lot of the more interesting stuff comes from blogs," he said.

Finally, as members of the Google eBooks team, we wanted to know just what Levy thought of the digital publishing revolution. Levy liked that his books were available on new platforms, but also thought the digital books industry needed to figure out business models that work better for authors and consumers.

"It will take a while for people to understand how those economics really work," he said. "Books should be less expensive and more ubiquitous: there should be three times the number of books for half the price. You should be able to buy a book on whim, like music, or like getting a movie from Netflix."

If you're a fan of Levy's writing in the books In the Plex and Hackers, the Google eBookstore also has two other books of his on sale:

URL: http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2011/06/tech-writer-steven-levy-discusses-all.html

[G] 5 Fun Facts about Thomas Hardy

Posted: 08 Jun 2011 02:22 PM PDT

Inside Google Books: 5 Fun Facts about Thomas Hardy

Posted by Archi Sarkar, Google Books and Online News Associate


English novelist Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) posing for E. O. Hoppe
(LIFE Magazine)


Poet, novelist, short story writer and dramatist, Thomas Hardy was a nineteenth-century literary genius, whose profound influences continued to resonate years later in the works of famous literary stalwarts like D.H. Lawrence and W. Somerset Maugham.

Here's wishing "Happy Birthday" to an exceptionally gifted writer who gave us Far From the Madding Crowd, The Mayor of Casterbridge, as well as "The Darkling Thrush," among many others.

Despite his reputation as a great novelist, Hardy preferred to be known as a poet — who wrote novels for financial security. This pragmatism, often reflected in his novels, provided stark glimpses of contemporary reality — like the perils of Clym Yeobright in the rustic terrains of Egdon Heath in The Return of the Native.

Here are five fun facts about Thomas Hardy that shaped his character:

  1. Thomas Hardy was a skilled architect. He received his formal training from King's College, London, and went on to win accolades from the Royal Institute of British Architects. After the successful publication of Far from the Madding Crowd, Hardy decided to give up his vocation as an architect to become a dedicated poet and writer.

  2. Hardy almost gave up writing and destroyed the manuscript of his first novel, The Poor Man and the Lady, after several failed attempts to find a publisher for it. Noted novelist George Meredith is also said to have turned him down after a brief interview, urging him to experiment more with intrigues, rather than brooding protagonists. Hardy then anonymously published Under the Greenwood Tree, followed by Far From the Madding Crowd.

  3. The coining of the word "cliffhanger" is often credited to Thomas Hardy. The first mention of the word appears in one of serialized episodes of the novel A Pair of Blue Eyes, published in Tinsley's Magazine. Hardy depicts one of the protagonists, Henry Knight, as actually hanging off a cliff.

  4. Jude the Obscure received heavy criticism after publication in 1895 for expressing radical views on the institution of marriage and Christianity. Underlying motifs included children born out of wedlock and conjugal relationships between cousins. Some book merchants would wrap it in brown paper before selling it to the public. Hardy wrote an amusing postscript in the 1912 edition of the book, while referring to some of these incidents: "After these verdicts from the press its next misfortune was to be burnt by a bishop — probably in his despair at not being able to burn me."

  5. Hardy was a naturalistic writer and an ardent believer in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. The plots of his novels were deterministic in essence, where the protagonists were subservient to the forces of nature, and their predicament was usually predetermined by environmental factors, which they had no control over.

URL: http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2011/06/5-fun-facts-about-thomas-hardy.html

[G] See the seafloor like never before on World Oceans Day

Posted: 08 Jun 2011 02:22 PM PDT

Google LatLong: See the seafloor like never before on World Oceans Day

Only a tiny fraction of our oceans have ever been explored. As a matter of fact, we know more about the surfaces of Mars and the Moon than we do about our own ocean floor. So in honor of World Oceans Day, we collaborated with Columbia University to add more ocean seafloor terrain to Google Earth than has ever been available before. With the addition of Columbia's Global Multi-Resolution Topography (GMRT) synthesis data, you can explore half the ocean area that has ever been mapped, an area larger than North America.

The red lines show new seafloor data from Columbia, CSUMB and UH.

Our partners at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia have curated 20 years of data from almost 500 ship cruises and 12 different institutions. See the full GMRT attribution layer in the Earth Gallery to learn more. High-res underwater mapping is vital to understanding how tsunamis will spread around the globe. For example, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) created a Tsunami spread map after the Japan earthquake to allow anyone to visualize the wave spread.

To get started, dive under the ocean surface by clicking any ocean in Google Earth and explore underwater volcanoes, trenches and sea mountain peaks. You can also download this Seafloor Updates kmz file to take a tour of the new high-resolution data.


Explore the Ocean Seafloor tour and others on the Ocean Showcase.

Our 2011 Seafloor Tour video highlights some of the amazing places you'll find in Google Earth, like the Mendocino Ridge, where the massive Juan de Fuca Plate slides toward western North America.


Deep Sea Vents tour video.

Continue exploring with the Deep Sea Vents Ridge 2000 Google Earth tour, which includes the deepest volcanic eruption ever captured on video at the West Mata volcano, near Fiji. Twenty additional ocean education posts from Ridge 2000 can be found in the Explore the Ocean layer in Google Earth; download this kmz to see them all.

Complete your tour, by checking out the recently published University of Hawaii at Manoa's 50-meter seafloor synthesis for the US Hawaiian islands and California State University Monterey Bay's new data for Cordell Bank and the Gulf of the Farallones off the west coast of California.

We hope our new high-res terrain data inspires you to dive into the unknown world that is the ocean and discover the many underwater treasures that lie beneath.

Posted by Jamie Adams, Ocean in Google Earth Team
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2011/06/see-seafloor-like-never-before-on-world.html

[G] Know when your bus is late with live transit updates in Google Maps

Posted: 08 Jun 2011 02:22 PM PDT

Google LatLong: Know when your bus is late with live transit updates in Google Maps


(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog)

Often when I'm taking public transit, I arrive at my stop on time only to anxiously check my watch and look down the street for my bus, which is running late once again. Those extra minutes I'm forced to wait seem like an eternity, and the only information I can access on my phone is when the bus was supposed to arrive.

Starting now, Google Maps for mobile and desktop can tell you when your ride is actually going to arrive with new live transit updates. We partnered with transit agencies to integrate live transit data in four U.S. cities and two European cities: Boston, Portland, Ore., San Diego, San Francisco, Madrid and Turin.



When you click on a transit station or plan a transit route with Google Maps and there are delays or alerts related to your trip, you'll now see "live departure times" (indicated with a special icon) and service alerts.



Live transit departure times after tapping on a station



Live service alerts when receiving transit directions



Live departures and alerts on desktop


We're working with our public transit partners to help them provide live data to more people in more cities. You can get live transit updates in the latest version of Google Maps for mobile (requires Android 1.6+), as well as Google Maps on all supported desktop and mobile browsers.

Posted by Sasha Gontmakher, Software Engineer
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2011/06/know-when-your-bus-is-late-with-live.html

[G] Imagery Update - Week of May 31st

Posted: 08 Jun 2011 02:22 PM PDT

Google LatLong: Imagery Update - Week of May 31st

The Google Earth and Google Maps Imagery Team has just published its first batch of satellite and aerial imagery for June, and as always, there are all kinds of fascinating sites and features to check out.

Our first example image shown below is of the Sacred Heart church and its famous gilded dome located on the Notre Dame campus in Notre Dame, Indiana. A church has continuously occupied this site since 1830 and the current basilica foundation was laid in 1868. This aerial imagery was acquired in late April, 2011.

Basilica of the Sacred Heart, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana

When you're done checking out the beautiful Notre Dame campus imagery, zoom over to Oregon and explore our new aerial imagery of the Salem region acquired this past summer. Below is a section of the Oregon Garden, a botanical garden located in Silverton. In the upper-right corner, you can see the only Frank Loyd Wright building in the state, the Gordon House. This home is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was envisioned as a model of affordable homes for the local working-class citizens.

Oregon Garden, Silverton, Oregon

Finally, here's a satellite image taken in December 2010 of the San Cristóbal Volcano. This active volcano rises above the town of Chichigalpa, locted in Chinandega, Nicaragua. In the image, you can see the gas and ash clouds emanating from the volcano's caldera. These clouds and prevailing winds have served to remove all vegetation from the volcano's southwestern flank.

San Cristóbal Volcano, Chichigalpa, Chinandega, Nicaragua.

Do you have a place you love for which you'd like to receive a notification when the Earth and Maps Imagery team updates the site? We've got just the tool: The Follow Your World application!

As always, these are but a few examples of the types of features that can be seen and discovered in our latest batch of published imagery. Happy exploring!

High Resolution Aerial Updates:
Fresno, CA; Huntington, WV; Laredo, TX; Los Angeles, CA; Manchester, NH; San Francisco Peninsula, CA; Salem, OR; Soldotna, AK; Southbend, IN; Sumter, SC; Victoria, TX.

Countries/Regions receiving High Resolution Satellite Updates:
Albania, Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Benin, Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Fiji, France, French Guiana, French Polynesia, Ghana, Greece, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Moldova, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar (Burma), Namibia, Nepal, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Sri Lanka, St. Helena, Sudan, Syria, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam, West Bank, Western Sahara, Yemen, Zambia.

These updates are now available in both Google Maps and Google Earth. To get a complete picture of where we updated imagery, download this KML for viewing in Google Earth.

Posted by Eric Kolb, Geo Data Strategist
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2011/06/imagery-update-week-of-may-31st.html

[G] This week in Docs and Sites: Ignore All, Ubuntu, and Site soft delete

Posted: 08 Jun 2011 12:31 PM PDT

Docs Blog: This week in Docs and Sites: Ignore All, Ubuntu, and Site soft delete

We're releasing a small batch of features this week: In Google documents, we added an Ignore All option to hide all spelling suggestions for a specific word and a new web font, Ubuntu. We've also made it easier to manage your deleted sites in Google Sites.

Ignore All
In documents, we already give you the option to add words to your dictionary so we won't show spelling suggestions for them in the future. That feature is convenient if you're using a surname that will be reused in many documents. But sometimes there's a non-dictionary word that's only used in one doc, which might make you hesitant to add that word to your dictionary for all docs. Ignore All lets you hide the spelling suggestions for a specific word, but only affects the doc that you currently have opened.



Ubuntu
We're also adding a new font to Google documents: Ubuntu. Earlier this year, we made Ubuntu available in the Google Font API, and it quickly rose to become one of our most popular fonts. The font was commissioned by Canonical Ltd and designed by Dalton Maag as part of the Ubuntu operating system open source project.


Ubuntu has a simple, modern style that's both recognizable and legible. It's designed to look great in many sizes, and we hope you'll find it useful in anything from document text to large poster headlines to small image captions.

You can learn more about Ubuntu and see how to use the font by visiting the Google Font Directory.

Soft delete your sites
We've received a lot of feedback that it was sometimes difficult to restore a deleted site, since you needed to remember a deleted site's URL. Starting today, you will be able to view any sites you've deleted in the Deleted sites section of My Sites rather than needing to remember their URLs. In this section, you can also choose to restore your site or delete it permanently before 30 days have passed. Note that as before, after the 30-day grace period, deleted sites will be permanently deleted.


Let us know what you think of these updates. If you have any ideas for new features, submit them to our Product Ideas page, open until June 16.

Posted by: Kara Levy, Software Engineer
URL: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2011/06/this-week-in-docs-and-sites-ignore-all.html

[G] A few improvements to discussions in Google Docs

Posted: 08 Jun 2011 10:01 AM PDT

Docs Blog: A few improvements to discussions in Google Docs

(Cross-posted to the Enterprise blog)

In March, we launched discussions in Google Docs, replacing comments with discussion threads, @mentions, email notifications, and much more. This week, we're launching a handful of improvements based on your feedback.

Improvements to the discussion pane

The discussion pane now shows the selected text for each comment thread, making it easy to figure out which part of the document each discussion pertained to. We've also given the pane a visual tuneup.


Document statistics

Ever wonder if people are actually looking at the document you've shared? Wonder no longer. By clicking the Discussions button and then the Document stats link, you can now see the 7-day activity of your doc.


Collapse discussions

Sometimes, discussions can get a little long and start to clutter your workspace, particularly if guy-who-always-replies takes the discussion on a tangent. Now, long discussions are automatically collapsed and expanded on click.



Email notifications

Email notifications have also undergone a facelift. Instead of sending the entire discussion in reverse chronological order, we now show you the selected text and most recent comment, with the full thread in chronological order below.


We're looking forward to hearing your feedback about these improvements. Let us know what else you'd like to see in discussions on our Product Ideas page.

Posted by: Joseph Scarr, Software Engineering Intern
URL: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2011/06/few-improvements-to-discussions-in.html
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)