Friday, June 17, 2011

Googland

Googland

[G] Go Inside Search to get the most out of Google

Posted: 17 Jun 2011 02:05 AM PDT

Official Google Blog: Go Inside Search to get the most out of Google

On Tuesday, we held a media event in San Francisco to introduce new and faster ways to search using your voice, an image or Instant Pages. We also launched Inside Search, a new website that hosted a live stream of the event. Inside Search contains a wealth of information about search and we wanted to let you know more about it.

When providing detailed information about a new search feature, we often link to an official landing page from the blog post (such as this one for Google Instant or this one for Google Images with sorting). Since there wasn't one central place you could find all that information, we created a one-stop shop for all search-related features, tips and tricks. Thus, following the release of the new Inside Search blog, we bring you a deeper look Inside Search.

Whether you're a beginner to web search or a search master, you'll find all the search shortcuts you need under the Features section of the site. For example, most people don't realize that the Google search box is a calculator, a world clock and a unit converter. You can also discover tips like how to use translated sites to search for [crepe recipes] on French sites or how to use an asterisk in a phrase or question so Google can fill in the blanks.


In addition, if you ever wonder how search takes your query and delivers results, you can use Inside Search to get an under-the-hood look at the technology behind Google Search. There are interactive diagrams with information on how far every query has to travel to get an answer back to you, how often we run experiments (we ran over 6000 in 2010 alone), how much time has gone into developing the algorithm and more. We've also included the Search Globe, an interactive display of searches around the world, on this page.

Inside Search also takes advantage of HTML5 to create a more interactive experience throughout the site, so instead of just clicking to read a list of search facts, you can do something a little more fun, like pick up a test tube with your mouse and pour the solution onto the Google homepage to reveal interesting facts about search:


Finally, be sure to visit the Playground section of the site. There, you can try your hand at the A Google a Day trivia game, browse our gallery of past Google doodles and be on the lookout for new fun additions coming soon.


To learn new search tips, get a behind-the-scenes look at Google technology or find out more information about the announcements from Tuesday's event, visit the new site at www.google.com/insidesearch.

Posted by Johanna Wright, Director, Search Product Management
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/go-inside-search-to-get-most-out-of.html

[G] CSU Monterey Bay offers dozens of new Google tools to students and faculty

Posted: 16 Jun 2011 11:54 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: CSU Monterey Bay offers dozens of new Google tools to students and faculty

Posted by Greg Pool, Lead for Web Services, California State University, Monterey Bay

Editors note: California State University, Monterey Bay is a growing public institution that serves nearly 5,000 students. Today is the two year anniversary of CSU Monterey Bay's deployment of Google Apps. Guest blogger Greg Pool, Lead for Web Services, shares CSU Monterey Bay's experiences with opting into the new infrastructure for Google Apps early.

CSU Monterey Bay (CSUMB) considers itself a "pre-release" campus; we want the latest features. This isn't to prove "we're cool," but because we see an opportunity to meet our users' needs. When we heard that Google was making more applications available to Google Apps users, we were excited because services such as Blogger fit with a number of internal initiatives we had planned for this school year. In our view, the transition to the new infrastructure represented an opportunity to get access to tools we wanted -- for less money and in a more integrated manner.

Our IT department supports 10,000 users representing distinct groups and needs (faculty, students, staff), so we decided to take the timeline into our own hands. To minimize disruption for our users we planned the transition to the new infrastructure around our academic calendar. We also chose to transition a pilot group of users from our IT staff before flipping the switch for everyone, which helped us understand exactly what our users would experience during the transition.

One issue we had to address before the full transition was conflicting accounts, which occur when a user links a personal Google account to their CSUMB email address. Using the transition wizard, we were able to reach out to the 500 conflicting accounts in our organization to educate them about the change. In the end, only one of these 500 users wanted us to walk through the changes with him personally. In early January we were ready to switch all of our users over. Everyone in our IT department is a "glutton for punishment," meaning we love to test new technology, poke around looking for bugs, and run through every possible scenario where a user might encounter a problem. With this project, our gluttony for punishment wasn't satiated: we didn't run into a single significant issue while testing. The transition turned out to be a total non-issue. It just worked. And it has continued to work. After the transition our help desk support volume didn't increase at all, even though we've enabled almost all of the new services, including Blogger, Google Moderator and Google Reader.

Now all of CSUMB's users can do the educational work with Google Apps that some were doing with their personal Google Accounts before. All that cool academic stuff can now be done in one place, and everyone has access to the same set of tools. We're excited about the ways these new applications increase our users' potential. For example, one of the applications that has seen a lot of use is Google Moderator. This tool allows students to ask questions, show due diligence, and participate in campus discussions, even if they aren't physically present in the same place. When we made the decision to enable the new applications, some of them such as Google Moderator had clear uses for our users, but we are convinced that students and faculty will find creative ways to use these services that we never could have thought of. We are still early in our exploration of what we can do with all of these new tools and we're looking forward to tons of new possibilities.
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/06/csu-monterey-bay-offers-dozens-of-new.html

[G] Reflecting on a school year with Google Apps for Education

Posted: 16 Jun 2011 11:54 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Reflecting on a school year with Google Apps for Education

Posted by Dana Nguyen, Google Apps for Education Team

As school lets out and summer vacation begins, the Google Apps for Education team has been reflecting on what we've learned from our users over the past school year. We wanted to share some of the great stories we've heard from students and teachers in Colorado, Canada, Brown University, and Iowa.

Littleton Public Schools (LPS) in Colorado decided to "go Google" in the fall of 2010 and students are giving Google Apps high marks for working on collaborative projects. High school sophomore Kylie shares, "we no longer have to exchange contact information because everyone already has a Google account and it is saved in our contacts. We are also easily able to create either a Google doc or group for the project, and can invite the teacher as well to look at our work." Other LPS students Rachel and Bekah find that editing together in Google Docs "improved our writing by sharing with others and making comments at the same time" and working with documents stored online made it "easier to be organized and bring home assignments." And 5th grade student Jonathan likes Google Apps for the practical reason that "you don't have to worry about paper getting lost and having your things get torn or ripped."

Before and after the faculty and staff at Littleton Public Schools have "gone Google."

Teachers from Edmonton Public Schools in Alberta, Canada are finding that Google Apps is increasing students' engagement and saving teachers time. One teacher notes that "students love having the option to complete assignments online and homework completion has improved drastically." Another educator observes "moving to a web-based platform has made distributing, sharing, and collecting material seamless. It has significantly decreased my workload and planning, as I do not need to create several different versions of things."

Brown University's undergraduates moved to Google Apps in the summer of 2009; the rest of the campus migrated the following year. This May, Brown asked the entire campus community -- faculty, staff and students -- to evaluate their satisfaction with and use of Google Apps. The results are overwhelmingly positive: nine out of ten members of the Brown community said they were "satisfied" or "very satisfied" with Gmail, and overall satisfaction has actually increased since the initial deployment. The detailed survey results are available at www.brown.edu/cis/GoogleApps/survey.



At Clear Creek Amana Middle School in Iowa, the benefits of Google Apps extend beyond organized lessons. The "Creek Squad," a tech support team made up entirely of student volunteers, helps teachers and administrators get the most out of the technology at their fingertips. With Google Apps, it seems, the students really have become the teachers!



While school may be out for students and teachers, we're excited to spend the summer coding away to make sure that when classes start again in the fall, Google Apps is better than ever.
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/06/reflecting-on-school-year-with-google.html

[G] Google eBooks Affiliate program - Open for business

Posted: 16 Jun 2011 08:46 PM PDT

Inside Google Books: Google eBooks Affiliate program - Open for business

Posted by Pratip Banerji, Product Manager, Google Books team

Retailers, bloggers, book publishers and other website owners in the U.S. can now become Google eBooks affiliates. Affiliates can link to Google eBooks on their sites for any of the hundreds of thousands of titles available for sale, earning a commission for referring sales to the Google eBookstore.


We launched the program as a limited beta in December with our first affiliate, Goodreads. Goodreads is a social reading site, who after becoming an affiliate was able to refer their avid book reading fans to the Google eBookstore. When Goodreads users buy a Google eBook, they're gaining immediate access to their book and supporting Goodreads in the process.

Starting today, we invite all interested site owners to apply to join the expanded Google eBooks affiliate program. Participating sites gain new revenue streams by giving their book-reading audiences an easy way to buy Google eBooks.

Google eBooks affiliates become part of the Google Affiliate Network (GAN). After joining GAN, you can subscribe to the Google eBooks product feed to get links to the full set of available Google eBooks. If you want to query a more targeted set of ebooks you can use the new Google Books APIs.

For more information and to sign up to be a Google eBooks affiliate, please visit our partner Help Center here.
URL: http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2011/06/google-ebooks-affiliate-program-open.html

[G] Following James Joyce's Footsteps

Posted: 16 Jun 2011 08:46 PM PDT

Inside Google Books: Following James Joyce's Footsteps

Posted by Agustina Dates, Google Books Online Support Team

One of the things I love most about books is how they can transport you to places all over the planet (and even in other worlds). Cities not only exist in the real world — they exist in literature as well. As a novel's characters walk through pages, our imaginations walk right along with them, following words as though they were streets.

James Joyce once said, "I want to give a picture of Dublin so complete that if the city one day suddenly disappeared from the earth it could be reconstructed out of my book." And so he did. He took me to Dublin long before I came to live here through books such as Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and, of course, his most celebrated novel, Ulysses.

One hundred and seven years ago today, Leopold Bloom, Joyce's most famous protagonist, started his journey through the city of Dublin. The story of this modern antihero started and ended on June 16, 1904 (much shorter than the one of Homer's Ulysses narrated in the Odyssey) and is celebrated every year in the streets of Dublin.

Every June 16th, those who live in or visit Dublin have the chance to witness the city literally blooming, as festivals, lectures, dramatizations and walking tours are held in celebration of Bloomsday. This is a great time to visit the city, and you can start planning your journey by taking a look at the Travel Section in the Google eBookstore, where you can find plenty of books about Dublin or Ireland. For more tips and insights, check out our past blog post on Dublin.

The city may not look exactly the same as it did more than a century ago, but you can still visit some of the Ulysses's main landmarks, such as the Martello Tower, where the novel starts, the National Library and St. Mary's Church, the O'Connell Bridge (that you can see on the cover of the reproduction of the 1922 first edition of Ulysses), and the famous statue of Leopold's wife Molly Malone.


Tackling a book as long and complex as Ulysses can be overwhelming. Luckily there is plenty of help to get you started, such as The New Bloomsday Book, The Joyce's Ulysses, James Joyce's Ulysses: A Reference Guide, or The Subaltern Ulysses, among many others.

See you in Dublin!
URL: http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2011/06/following-james-joyces-footsteps.html

[G] ⌘ + Q: I didn’t mean to do that

Posted: 16 Jun 2011 08:30 PM PDT

Official Google Mac Blog: ⌘ + Q: I didn't mean to do that

by Robert Sesek, Software Engineer

In Chrome, have you ever accidentally hit ⌘ + Q when you meant to hit ⌘ + W? It's both frustrating and a productivity killer to close your entire browser by accident, because you then have to restart and wait for all the pages to reload. It happens to us too. But now we've added a new feature in Chrome for Mac that can help keep you from losing your work.

On the Mac, Chrome can now warn you before quitting so that you don't accidentally quit the browser when you're just trying to close a single tab. To enable this feature, go to the Chrome menu in the upper-left and select Warn Before Quitting. The next time you press ⌘ + Q, a floating window will appear, instructing you to Hold ⌘Q to Quit. This way, if your hand slips and you press Q instead of W, you can go right on browsing without interruption. If you really do want to quit, hold down ⌘Q as it says and, after a second, all the windows will fade away and you can release the keys. If you want to skip this warning and quit quickly, you can just press ⌘ + Q twice.


As a side note, if you ever accidentally close a tab or window, you can use Chrome's tab restore feature to get it back. Simply press ⌘ + shift + T, which will reopen the most recently closed tab or window. Just like the Undo command in your word processor, you can use this shortcut multiple times to repeatedly reopen closed tabs. You can also find tabs you've recently closed on the bottom of the New Tab page, or in the History menu.

We hope this feature helps prevent you from losing your place accidentally. Happy browsing!
URL: http://googlemac.blogspot.com/2011/06/q-i-didnt-mean-to-do-that.html

[G] WWDC 2011 Journal, Day 4

Posted: 16 Jun 2011 08:30 PM PDT

Official Google Mac Blog: WWDC 2011 Journal, Day 4

by Mike Morton, Google Mac Team

Google Engineer Mike Morton is finished with Apple's 2011 Worldwide Developer Conference. Here's his final journal entry, written before he hopped a plane for home earlier today, where he's probably catching up on sleep and email, in that order.

My last day in town began with a short – OK, very short – visit to the hotel gym, then the usual breakfast at Moscone of pastries (have these folks not heard that carbs are out of fashion?) and coffee. The guy across the table was wearing a t-shirt that read "I was a Mac user when Apple was doomed". It's nice to be not doomed again.

Early in the day, I went to a talk on accessibility on iOS. This included a great demo of iOS features to help people who are blind, visually impaired, deaf, or motor-impaired. There were also details of how to make sure our apps are useful for everyone. We also saw a short video of the Wearabraille system, which is the most high-tech accessory I've seen for an iPhone.



Most talks include a demonstration app, sometimes with an Apple engineer creating the app one piece at a time. Since they paste in prepared snippets of code, that kind of demo moves fast, occasionally leaving me with the feeling of watching a cooking show on fast forward. Building an app on the fly, even with prepared ingredients, can be tough on the Apple folks, too. Even though it's scripted, the parts done manually are an invitation for the Demo Gods to fling a few thunderbolts. Audiences are very patient, as most of us have been hit with thunderbolts ourselves, but it's still tough on the person giving the talk.

One of today's highlights was a performance by James Dempsey and the Breakpoints. James is the funniest guy at Apple, and does a song every year. I got there early and scored a front-row seat. Worth the effort, not only to see James perform "The Accessibility Song" on iPad instead of his usual guitar, but also for the number of words rhymed with "accessibility". I don't think the performance has hit YouTube yet, but you can find several other performances online.

The other music news of the morning was speculation about which musical act would show up at the traditional Thursday night WWDC bash. Rumors flew about The Edge, Michael Franti and Spearhead, Arcade Fire, and others. Some thought it would be someone whose music was played before the sessions. That would suggest the equally unlikely possibilities of a James Brown gig or a Beatles reunion.

Those wanting to drink at the party had to show IDs to get wristbands. Perhaps they were expecting some serious drinking: the wristbands said "If found, return me to WWDC". The Franti faction was right, and the band rocked Yerba Buena Gardens, driving some of us old folks to the far edge of the garden, where the volume was more tolerable.

Tomorrow's special event is Buzz Aldrin speaking, but I'll be airborne while he talks about orbit. I hope he repeats next year! Tickets for next year are already on my mind — WWDC 2010 sold out in eight days, and 2011 in eleven hours. Pressure for tickets will be intense in the future. I wonder if we'll see scalping, or perhaps 'bots which will buy your ticket for you.

WWDC 2012 will bring new things, but it will also be the same thing all over again: long lines, repeated sleep deprivation, seeing friends. I wonder how we can keep this blog from being the same thing all over again. What should my intrepid editor and I do? Interviews with attendees? Writing in lolcat for teh intire confuhrens? Capturing each day in a single haiku? Using nothing but memes built at http://memegenerator.net? We'll have to work on that. See you next year!

URL: http://googlemac.blogspot.com/2011/06/wwdc-2011-journal-day-4.html

[G] WWDC 2011 Journal, Day 3

Posted: 16 Jun 2011 08:30 PM PDT

Official Google Mac Blog: WWDC 2011 Journal, Day 3

by Mike Morton, Google Mac Team

Every June, Mike Morton travels to San Francisco for Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference so you don't have to. WWDC content is covered by a non-disclosure agreement, so Mike's observations focus on ambiance, human behavior, and the effects of sleep deprivation.

I thought I was smart when I asked for a room across the hall from one of my team members, so we could easily get together for breakfast. It didn't feel so smart when he knocked on my door early this morning. When I stuck my head out the door, he apparently noticed that my hair was going in enough directions to inspire Stephen Hawking to new theories about the nature of space, and helpfully observed "Oh, I woke you up." I didn't have the presence of mind to reply, "No, no, I had to get up to answer the door anyway."

A few of us headed to Moscone and found a line of people waiting to get in. I knew I shouldn't have answered the door. But it wasn't much of a wait, and we soon had caffeine and pastries and were heading for the first session of the morning. I hit four talks today, skipping a couple of slots in a struggle to keep up with work email. (I got down to under 100 messages, but it's back up since then).

Queues continued inside Moscone, with thousands of people waiting for the most popular topics. At one point, I left a small room and walked halfway around the building to a large one, only to find and follow a line of engineers reaching right back to where I started. The veneer of civilization wore a little thin as some attendees snuck in exit doors to avoid the wait and get good seats, but Apple staff mostly stopped that. I watched one Apple staffer trying and mostly succeeding to keep us in line, and asked him whether it was more like herding cats or herding sheep. He didn't hesitate in answering — "Sheep".

During lunch, Michael Johnson from Pixar spoke to a huge audience about Pixar's technology and people. I caught him last year, but he always works in new material. There may or may not have been sneak previews of future films, but the non-disclosure agreement probably means I shouldn't go into detail. As always, his talk was a lot of fun, a nice break from the serious stuff. That serious stuff does weigh on some people after a while. In the last session, I heard snoring a few rows back.

I keep seeing old colleagues and friends I but don't have enough time to talk. I also wind up confessing that I flat out can't remember a few names, but nobody seems to mind.

I've written in past years about the value of labs, where you can talk one-on-one with Apple engineers for help with learning new areas or solving problems. Unlike past years, I didn't come with many questions, but some people sure did. There were huge waits in some labs. Unfortunately for the Apple folks, they wear distinctive t-shirts, so I bet they get cornered in the halls by people who didn't get to them in the labs.

Tomorrow is my last day at this conference. I'm heading home early Friday morning. We'll see if I can balance talks, email, and socializing – and oh, yeah, that gym in the hotel.
URL: http://googlemac.blogspot.com/2011/06/wwdc-2011-journal-day-3.html

[G] WWDC 2011 Journal, Day 2

Posted: 16 Jun 2011 08:30 PM PDT

Official Google Mac Blog: WWDC 2011 Journal, Day 2

By Mike Morton, Google Mac Team

Google Engineer Mike Morton continues his nerd's-eye-view report from the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco. Today Mike starts with a festive breakfast and finishes at this year's edition of the legendary Stump the Experts.

My team had a 7:00 a.m. meeting at a nearby restaurant so I woke early, dashed through the shower, glanced guiltily at the hotel gym, and headed out, only to find the restaurant is closed on Tuesdays. I continued on to a 7:30 breakfast for folks who coordinate chapters of CocoaHeads. I had a great time talking with people from around the world, everything from small talk about the conference to challenges in getting people to present technical talks. Mark Dalrymple, who helped found the organization, showed up and was mobbed by friends and well-wishers, about five steps from the food table. I helped disengage him and steered him to the food.

There were door prizes, with iTunes gift cards going to the oldest chapter (besides Mark's), the person who traveled the farthest, and the one who had the earliest Mac model. There was a tense moment on that last one when another guy and I both said we had original 128KB Macintoshes. I challenged "September, 1984. Full price!" He admitted he got his for two bucks at a yard sale — score!

Mark talked a little about founding Cocoaheads with the mysterious Agent M. (I've never known Agent M's name, and have gotten kind of resigned to that little mystery. I was kind of alarmed to see that nobody else there seemed to know it either.) Mark graciously said that Agent M had the vision to plan a global organization, joking that left to himself he would have named it "the Western Pennsylvania Macintosh Programmer's Cooperative". We posed for a group photo. Someone yelled "Java!" at the right moment and got a good group laugh.

I headed to Moscone and played hooky only once in six sessions. Apple works hard to make their engineers give polished talks with polished slides, and it shows. Most presentations were good — and crowded. Lines to get into the most popular sessions snaked randomly around the waiting areas.

A few sessions had hiccups: A missing slide, a demo application not working. Presenters rolled with the punches. One cheerfully moved on with "imagine you saw a demo, and it was great!". (He got a round of applause.)

I went to lunch in the Moscone cafeteria for the first time this week and found that every table had power strips and fast, wired network connections. Nerdvana! As so often happens when traveling, network connections are iffy. My hotel's wi-fi and wired connections are both flaky, and Moscone's wireless net is variable, depending on how crowded the room is. My iPhone's tethering makes a nice Plan B at any location.

After dinner out, I poked my head in for the Apple Design Awards. It was crowded, so I left and took a break at the hotel to try to catch up on email and other things. I returned about 9:00 p.m. in time for Stump The Experts, my first time seeing this famous event. It's a manic, disorganized, geekier-than-thou fest, with serious technical trivia about products (way back to the Apple I, even) and programming, but also some wild hats, a lot of improv, rebus puzzles, trying to guess a "will it blend" mystery object from its blended remains, a Mountain Dew tasting, and a "crazy Swiss guy". If I had attended any of the 19 previous years, maybe I would have understood what that last was all about.

Stump The Experts in a typically organized pose

The event is a competition between the audience and the on-stage experts. The format is… well, I couldn't figure out if there was one. Competition is high-spirited, with lots of argument about who's right. Example: "I quote the Wikipedia page, which we didn't even have to lie and edit".

Some questions are asked on the spot by the audience. The biggest laugh of the night came when an audience member asked what sounded like a rhetorical question: how did a particular much-hated app gain App Store approval? One expert turned out to be the bowling partner of the guy who wrote the app, and texted him to ask. The answer was "beer", which may or may not be a rhetorical answer.

We wrapped up at 10:30, with a few brave folks disco dancing to "Night Fever" as the rest of us headed out to get some rest (or beer).
URL: http://googlemac.blogspot.com/2011/06/wwdc-2011-journal-day-2.html

[G] WWDC 2011 Journal, Day 1

Posted: 16 Jun 2011 08:30 PM PDT

Official Google Mac Blog: WWDC 2011 Journal, Day 1

by Mike Morton, Google Mac Team

Google engineer Mike Morton is back with his annual report from Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco. Today Mike blogs about lines, coffee, a parking garage, and even more lines (or is it the same line?).

My alarm went off at 4:30 a.m. and I stumbled out of the hotel before realizing I hadn't checked Google Maps for the short walk to Moscone. I figured I could follow the stream of geeks in WWDC sweatshirts instead, but I didn't see a lot of people. Some salmonic instinct from past conferences kicked in and I found the conference anyway. (It's not hard — when you get near it, the line of attendees outside is obvious.)

I walked a couple of blocks to near the end of the line and found my colleague Pat (cutting in line to join friends is always accepted). He told me someone had been by counting and he was about number 700 in line. By this time, it was nearly 5:30 and a lot lighter. Many WWDC'ers were huddled against the wall of Moscone, trying to avoid the chill and looking unnervingly like homeless folks I'd seen a couple of blocks before on Market Street. Someone was playing saxophone on the sidewalk across the street. Most attendees looked pretty tired. A lot had brought folding chairs.

The line stretched around the block

Other Google colleagues and some friends-of-colleagues joined us. Paul, another engineer on the iOS Books team, brought coffee. (I owe him big time.) Lots of catching up, introductions, schmoozing, talk of past WWDCs, and speculation about this one. One great speculation game was the Expo Bingo app, which gives you a couple of dozen phrases to watch for. My board looked like this before I started…and I didn't do very well.


Apple staff encouraged us to close gaps and stand four abreast, later six abreast, to try to reduce the length of the line. Engineers aren't especially good at following simple orders, but the Apple folks tried anyway. Lots of people came by promoting various companies -- giving away freebies or coupons, hiring, and so on. We spent hours on the north side of Moscone West, looking at a big parking garage. I'm surprised nobody has paid to hang ads on it.

When registration reopened at 7 a.m., I took a break to go inside for that. Everyone got a nice "WWDC 11" sweatshirt. I'm giving mine to my friend Andy, who's crazy enough that he flew all the way from New York to San Francisco despite having no ticket for the conference. (Andy was not crazy enough to wake up and join us for hours in line, though.)

Staff let us in a little before 8:00 a.m. A staffer counted as I went by, and I was number 935. Inside it was warmer, with coffee, juice, and pastries. We crowded into long, broad lines in the hallways…and waited some more. Some folks sat; a few lay down. At one point the line surged then stopped as suddenly — a security guy explained that someone had picked up a backpack and others had followed suit and…well, these things happen. We debated whether we should be more properly compared to sheep or to lemmings. Security folks weren't entirely reliable: another told us that we were too far back to fit in the main room, and would be in an overflow room, which would have sharply reduced the RDF. He turned out to be wrong.

By 9:45 we got to sit down in the main room. One friend, who'll remain nameless, exclaimed loudly "This is the best thing that's happened to me today". We'd been standing for 4 to 5 hours. I suppose I shouldn't complain — rumor had it that the guy at the front of the line had been waiting since noon yesterday.

About 10:00 a.m., James Brown's "I Feel Good" blasted, and soon after that Steve Jobs walked on. He looked gaunt, but smiled broadly at the standing ovation he got. An audience member yelled "We love you!". I'll let you read more detailed accounts of the announcements in the many blogs and media sites covering it, and just say that I was impressed at the breadth of new features, and was glad he pulled a "one more thing" line to introduce iTunes Match. In the end, there were no hardware announcements, but nobody grumbled except for one colleague who lost a bet over that.

The afternoon was just a couple of sessions, one at a time. Tomorrow there'll be many sessions running concurrently, and I'll have to think about which ones to pick.
URL: http://googlemac.blogspot.com/2011/06/wwdc-2011-journal-day-1.html

[G] iOS and Mac Sign-In Controllers graduate to OAuth 2.0

Posted: 16 Jun 2011 08:29 PM PDT

Official Google Mac Blog: iOS and Mac Sign-In Controllers graduate to OAuth 2.0

by Greg Robbins, Software Engineer

In September, we introduced OAuth 1 sign-in controllers to simplify authenticating users from iOS and Mac applications. As the Internet software industry is converging on a newer standard, Google now offers the Google Toolbox for Mac OAuth 2.0 Controllers. This new library enables Cocoa applications to sign in to Google and other services that conform to the latest draft of the OAuth 2.0 standard.

From the perspective of both users and developers, the new controllers are similar to the old ones, and are just as easy to use. As before, the controllers handle displaying an embedded web view and interacting with the server, and optionally allow saving the authorization token in the keychain. The server takes care of obtaining the user's password, describing the permissions requested by the application, and asking for captcha responses or 2-step verification or whatever tomorrow's security requires.

Here is how developers can present the sign-in view for a Google service using the OAuth 2.0 controller:
NSString *scope = @"http://www.google.com/m8/feeds/";
  // scope for accessing a user's Google Contacts
GTMOAuth2ViewControllerTouch *viewController =
 [[[GTMOAuth2ViewControllerTouch alloc] initWithScope:scope
   clientID:@"9876.apps.googleusercontent.com"
   clientSecret:@"PVYx34Fr"
   keychainItemName:@"My App: Google Contacts"
   delegate:self
   finishedSelector:@selector(viewController:finishedWithAuth:error:)]
     autorelease];
When the user finishes signing in, the controller invokes the application's callback method:
- (void)viewController:(GTMOAuth2ViewControllerTouch *)viewController
      finishedWithAuth:(GTMOAuth2Authentication *)auth
                 error:(NSError *)error {
  if (error == nil) {
    // Authentication succeeded; retain the auth object
  }
}


There are a few important changes for developers in the new standard. The most prominent is that developers must obtain client ID and client secret strings for an installed application from Google's API Console. Other API providers supporting OAuth will also have web pages for issuing client ID and client secret strings. The provider may require that the application register an OAuth callback URI string, depending on the details of how they support native applications.

Another difference from the older OAuth protocol is that the step of authorizing a request must be asynchronous. Because OAuth 2.0 access tokens may expire, they must occasionally be refreshed when used to authorize a request. Our OAuth 2.0 authentication class hides the refresh step transparently by fetching refreshed tokens if needed when authorizing the application's request, invoking a callback method or block once the request is finally authorized, like this:
[auth authorizeRequest:myNSURLMutableRequest
     completionHandler:^(NSError *error) {
       if (error == nil) {
           // the request has been authorized
         }
       }];
Applications using our API library service classes or the GTM HTTP Fetcher class can make authorized requests even more simply by setting the service or fetcher authorizer property:
[fetcher setAuthorizer:auth];
The Google Data APIs Library for Objective-C now integrates the OAuth 2.0 controllers, making it the preferred way for developers to let users sign in to the library's many supported APIs.

You can learn more about the OAuth 2.0 protocol by checking out Google's documentation, and about the GTM OAuth 2.0 controllers by reading the introduction at the project site. Suggestions and questions on the controllers are welcome in the GTM OAuth 2.0 discussion group.
URL: http://googlemac.blogspot.com/2011/05/ios-and-mac-sign-in-controllers.html

[G] Three new updates to Google Sync for iPhone and iPad

Posted: 16 Jun 2011 10:52 AM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Three new updates to Google Sync for iPhone and iPad

Posted by Steve Hardt, Software Engineer

(Cross-posted on the Google Mobile Blog)

We don't have to tell you that the workforce is increasingly mobile, and that workers on the go expect to be fully productive on email and calendar from their mobile devices. But we do want to tell you that we have a few new features for Google Sync users that will help employees work efficiently from anywhere on their iPhones and iPads.

Google Sync keeps your phone's native mail and calendar apps in sync with your Gmail, Calendar and Contacts. Today, three new updates to Google Sync for iOS will allow you to:
  • Search all your emails in Gmail, not just the emails stored locally by the iOS mail app.



  • Accept, decline or edit calendar events from the iOS calendar app.


  • Send email from the address you want. We recognize that some of you manage multiple email addresses from a single Gmail account.Gmail's "Send Mail as" feature lets you send messages with another email address listed as the sender instead of your Gmail address, e.g. joe@altostrat.com instead of joe@gmail.com. Now the iOS mail app will respect these settings.

These three updates are available to both Gmail and Google Apps email accounts.
For more information, visit Setting up Google Sync with your iOS device
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/06/three-new-updates-to-google-sync-for.html

[G] Open for business: Chromebooks for businesses & schools

Posted: 16 Jun 2011 10:52 AM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Open for business: Chromebooks for businesses & schools

Posted by Rajen Sheth, Group Product Manager, Chrome for Business

A few weeks ago at Google I/O we announced a new kind of computer: Chromebooks. Chromebooks are fast, secure and simple to manage. Users like the easy, instant access to all of their computing needs without the complexity of traditional PCs. And if you're a business or school, they're extremely cost-effective.

With today's announcement that the new Google Chromebooks are available from our partners, we're officially open for business. For businesses and schools, we're offering a subscription that includes the Chromebook, a web-based management console and 24/7 support from Google starting at $28 per month/user for businesses and $20 per month/student for schools.

To learn more, please contact our sales team.


Pilot customer Jason's Deli discusses Chromebooks.
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/06/open-for-business-chromebooks-for.html

[G] Adding another tool in the fight against spam: enhanced email authentication for Postini customers

Posted: 16 Jun 2011 10:52 AM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Adding another tool in the fight against spam: enhanced email authentication for Postini customers

Posted by Matt O'Connor, Product Manager, Google Postini Services Team

We're constantly working to protect our users from email spam and phishing attempts. Some examples of these efforts include educating users about phishing and supporting open standards for email authentication such as DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) in Google Apps - which can help reduce the risk of phishing attacks sent from spoofed domains.

And now our Postini services customers can take advantage of new capabilities to help protect users on legacy email servers such as Microsoft(R) Exchange. Recipient Policy Framework (RPF) is a new feature we developed for Postini that allows customers to authenticate inbound email to help ensure that each message is actually coming from who it says it's from.

RPF uses an open Internet standard called Sender Policy Framework to authenticate inbound emails and allows customers to define policies on how to handle emails that don't check out. When RPF is enabled by an administrator, it will help detect and block email spam and other suspicious messages.

To learn more about Postini services including our email security, compliance and continuity products, please visit our web site where you can compare pricing and sign up online.
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/06/adding-another-tool-in-fight-against.html

[G] Thank you for reading

Posted: 16 Jun 2011 09:52 AM PDT

Official Google Checkout Blog: Thank you for reading

Thank you for reading the Google Checkout blog. We've realized that over the last few months, this blog has taken on a broader commerce focus; in fact, we recently launched the Google Commerce Blog to better share this content. As such, this will be our last post here on the Checkout blog. We encourage you to update your feeds and follow the Commerce blog for information about Google products such as Checkout, Wallet, Offers and more, and for shopping, retailing and payments news.

Posted by Jessica Smallman, Google Commerce Team
URL: http://googlecheckout.blogspot.com/2011/06/thank-you-for-reading.html

[G] Expanding VP8 Hardware Decoder for Full WebP Support

Posted: 16 Jun 2011 06:59 AM PDT

The WebM Open Media Project Blog: Expanding VP8 Hardware Decoder for Full WebP Support

With the recent launch of WebP support in Chrome, Picasa and Gmail, we're happy to announce that the third generation G-Series 1 VP8 hardware decoder, called "Chip Shot," now offers full 256 Megapixel support for WebP still images. The G-Series 1 is available for licensing at no cost through the WebM Project hardware page.

Chip Shot is part of our new golf theme for VP8 hardware decoders, as we noticed that most of the engineers working on the G-Series decoder are very fond of the sport.

The G-Series 1 decoder offers both 1080p 30 frames per second WebM and 36.5 Megapixels per second WebP processing at around 100 MHz clock rate. It is a full hardware implementation, requiring a mere 2 MHz host CPU load even when processing 1080p video or any size WebP images. The decoder uses 380 kilogates of logic area and 52 kilobytes of embedded single-port memory. The logic consumes a negligible 27 mW of power at 1080p resolution, ensuring many hours of video playback time on battery-operated devices.

G-series 1 Block Diagram


Based on the previous releases of the silicon-proven G-Series 1 decoder IP, Chip Shot is a low-risk solution for anyone who wants to enable WebM and WebP support on their chipsets or SOCs. Including all G-Series 1 versions that support WebM, we have released over 50 decoders to our semiconductor partners worldwide to date.

Posted by Aki Kuusela, Engineering Manager of the WebM hardware team.
URL: http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/06/expanding-vp8-hardware-decoder-for-full.html
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