Thursday, August 11, 2011

Googland

Googland

[G] A big push for big ideas in Pakistan

Posted: 11 Aug 2011 01:24 AM PDT

Google LatLong: A big push for big ideas in Pakistan


Pakistan continues on a trajectory of exciting technology initiatives, sparked most recently by three consecutive Google Map Maker events in Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore in early June. Following on the heels of these successful MapUps, P@SHA (Pakistan Software Houses Association for IT & ITES), in collaboration with Google, launched a fund to drive social innovation in Pakistan.



Islamabad: Chairman Pakistan Telecommunication Authority Dr. Mohammed Yaseen inaugurating "Social Innovation Fund" by P@SHA at PTA headquarters. Dr. Khawar Siddique Khokhar, Ms. Jehan Ara, President of P@SHA, Mr. Badar Khushnood, Country Consultant for Google, MD PSEB Mr. Zia Imran are also pictured


The purpose of the P@SHA Social Innovation fund is to encourage big ideas by providing the Pakistani people with financial support and guidance for social innovation projects. Google has provided a seed grant of US$250,000, which will be allocated to 25 all-star proposals that incorporate technology as a means of addressing a specific social need, such as flood relief or disease prevention. The idea is not simply to fund the creation of software, but to fund ideas that use Information and Communication Technologies as a platform for delivery and as a means for empowerment.



Contributed by Outreach Guru, Rabia Garib of CIO Pakistan


In addition to offering funding, P@SHA has established an oversight committee, advisory board, and outreach gurus from the business IT community to guide the shortlisted proposals from inception to reality. The hope is to create a safe harbor for eager entrepreneurs to jump-start ideas without the fear of failure. P@SHA President Jehan Ara anticipates that many of these ideas will emerge from Pakistani youth. According to Jehan, one of Pakistan's main strengths is that 60% of the population is below the age of 24, something the country can leverage. Jehan believes a large number of these individuals are passionate about making a difference in the communities in which they live--and, to some extent, are already doing so.



P@SHA launch in Karachi, Pakistan: Mr. Ashraf Kapadia, Chairman of P@SHA, Mr. Badar Khushnood, Google Pakistan Country Consultant, Ms. Jehan Ara, President of P@SHA, Mr. Amin Hashwani and Mr. Danish Lakhani, members of the P@SHA Fund Advisory Board


Google Map Maker has already witnessed several such innovations in Pakistan, such as Sindh Flood Maps, FloodMAPS of Dr. Sohaib Khan, and http://www.local.com.pk/, which implement the Google Maps API to assist in disaster relief management. Proposals are being accepted through August, and are not limited by age, gender, caste or creed. P@SHA requires only that applicants be Pakistanis who are based in Pakistan and ready to share their innovations with the world.



Amongst others, we anxiously await any future mapping projects that may be in store following P@SHA's announcement of winners in the early fall, and encourage all our avid Pakistani mappers and brilliant innovators to submit their big idea!



Posted by Lori Savageau, Community Manager, Google Map Maker
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2011/08/big-push-for-big-ideas-in-pakistan.html

[G] Culturomics, Ngrams and new power tools for Science

Posted: 11 Aug 2011 01:24 AM PDT

Research Blog: Culturomics, Ngrams and new power tools for Science

Posted by Erez Lieberman Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel, Visiting Faculty at Google

Four years ago, we set out to create a research engine that would help people explore our cultural history by statistically analyzing the world's books. In January 2011, the resulting method, culturomics, was featured on the cover of the journal Science. More importantly, Google implemented and launched a web-based version of our prototype research engine, the Google Books Ngram Viewer.

Now scientists, scholars, and web surfers around the world can take advantage of the Ngram Viewer to study a vast array of phenomena. And that's exactly what they've done. Here are a few of our favorite examples.

Poverty
Martin Ravallion, head of the Development Research Group at the World Bank, has been using the ngrams to study the history of poverty. In a paper published in the journal Poverty and Public Policy, he argues for the existence of two 'poverty enlightenments' marked by increased awareness of the problem: one towards the end of the 18th century, and another in the 1970s and 80s. But he makes the point that only the second of these enlightenments brought with it a truly enlightened idea: that poverty can be and should be completely eradicated.



The Science Hall of Fame
Adrian Veres and John Bohannon wondered who the most famous scientists of the past two centuries were. But there was no hall of fame for scientists, or a committee that determines who deserves to get into such a hall. So they used the ngrams data to define a metric for celebrity – the milliDarwin – and algorithmically created a Science Hall of Fame listing the most famous scientists born since 1800. They found that things like a popular book or a major controversy did more to increase discussion of a scientist than, for instance, winning a Nobel Prize.

(Other users have been exploring the history of particular sciences with the Ngram Viewer, covering everything from neuroscience to the nuclear age.)


The History of Typography
When we introduced the Ngram Viewer, we pointed out some potential pitfalls with the data. For instance, the 'medial s' ( ſ ), an older form of the letter s that looked like an integral sign and appeared in the beginning or middle of words, tends to be classified as an instance of the letter 'f' by the OCR algorithm used to create our version of the data. Andrew West, blogging at Babelstone, found a clever way to exploit this error: using queries like 'husband' and 'hufband' to study the history of medial s typography, he pinned down the precise moment when the medial s disappeared from English (around 1800), French (1780), and Spanish (1760).

People are clearly having a good time with the Ngram Viewer, and they have been learning a few things about science and history in the process. Indeed, the tool has proven so popular and so useful that Google recently announced that its imminent graduation from Google Labs to become a permanent part of Google Books.

Similar 'big data' approaches can also be applied to a wide variety of other problems. From books to maps to the structure of the web itself, 'the world's information' is one amazing dataset.

Erez Lieberman Aiden is Visiting Faculty at Google and a Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows. Jean-Baptiste Michel is Visiting Faculty at Google and a Postdoctoral Fellow in Harvard's Department of Psychology.
URL: http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2011/08/culturomics-ngrams-and-new-power-tools.html

[G] Cox Schepp builds in more productivity with Google Apps

Posted: 11 Aug 2011 01:24 AM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Cox Schepp builds in more productivity with Google Apps

Posted by Nathanael Andrico, CIO of Cox Schepp Construction



Editors note: Today's guest blogger is Nathanael Andrico, CIO for Cox Schepp Construction, a leading provider of construction services in the southeastern region of the United States. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.



At Cox Schepp, we focus on completing our clients' construction projects in the most cost-effective way possible. We're based out of Charlotte, North Carolina with offices in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida with 150 employees across the region. Our team is spread out across our offices and we work on projects in the field as far west as Texas. Streamlining our operations and minimizing costs across offices is a priority for us so that we can spend more time focusing on our clients.



Prior to Google Apps, we were using Microsoft Exchange 2007. As our business expanded, we found that we were pouring a lot of time into keeping all of our offices and mobile teams up and running on the server. When we began evaluating cloud service providers, we were primarily concerned with finding an archiving solution for our growing business.



The cost of maintaining an Exchange server was growing as we wanted greater redundancy across our records. We had gotten to the point where we had to impose 4 gigabyte and then eventually 2 gigabyte limits for everyone's Exchange inboxes. This proved to be burdensome very quickly as our project managers often send large image files back and forth containing everything from architects' plans to photos of a job's progress.



Cox Schepp switched to Google Apps approximately one year ago. We purchased both Google Apps and Postini Archiving and Discovery. We chose Google Apps because we saw its potential to streamline our operations and solve our email archiving challenges at a competitive price point. We wanted a turn-key experience, so we worked with the implementation partner Dito who was able to quickly and easily bring us on board. We also decided to take advantage of the Apps platform's extensibility and integrated Cloud Lock from the Google Apps Marketplace as an additional layer of compliance and security features.



After deploying Google Apps, we wanted to make sure all of our offices were readily equipped to take advantage of all the useful product features. Since there's only one of me and multiple offices, we appointed some deputies among different teams to serve as local gurus to help their colleagues learn more about how to use Apps.



Google Sites has been the breakaway hit across the company since we started using Google Apps. It's been a really useful way to share information and manage projects. People also really enjoy using video chat, which was something we didn't anticipate when selecting Apps. It's been great to see that Apps has not only delivered a strong email platform with a great archiving solution, but has also helped us collaborate more effectively in ways we didn't initially foresee.



Moving from an onsite solution to Google Apps has solved our email archiving challenges, reduced our overhead IT costs and enabled seamless project collaboration. This change has allowed us to spend less time devoted to building IT infrastructure and more time devoted to building our clients' designs.
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/08/cox-schepp-builds-in-more-productivity.html

[G] Enhancements to Google News for Android tablets and iPads

Posted: 11 Aug 2011 01:24 AM PDT

Google News Blog: Enhancements to Google News for Android tablets and iPads

Posted by Arun Prasath, Tech Lead, Mobile Google News



Alongside working on improving the Google News design for smartphones, we have also been looking into enhancing our offering for tablet devices. Today, we are launching a few minor enhancements to Google News for Android tablets and iPads.



We have optimized columns in the home page and section pages so that they can be more easily viewed in portrait and landscape orientations. Some of the other updates include: a conveniently placed menu on the top for navigating across sections, support of finger swiping through the multimedia strip in expanded story boxes and a more friendly edition picker.





These improvements are now available in the U.S. edition. To view these changes, just type news.google.com on the browser of your favorite tablet.
URL: http://googlenewsblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/enhancements-to-google-news-for-android.html

[G] UN Strengthens Freedom Of Expression Safeguards

Posted: 11 Aug 2011 01:24 AM PDT

Google Public Policy Blog: UN Strengthens Freedom Of Expression Safeguards

Posted by William Echikson, Google Head of Free Expression, Europe Middle East and Africa

(Cross-posted from the Google European Public Policy Blog)

At Google, we believe that it is important for the international community to step up in defense of freedom of expression. Many governments around the world are attempting to exert more control over the net. Fortunately, the United Nations is going in the other direction.

In Geneva, the UN's Human Rights Committee recently emphasized that the protections guaranteed by one of the most important global human rights treaties apply fully in the online world: bloggers, for example, should receive the same protection as journalists.

The Committee's action represents only the latest sign of how international organisations are stepping up to defend free expression. Earlier this year, the UN's Special Rapporteur Frank La Rue argued in a report that restricting the flow of online information violates human rights. He has also joined with representatives from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the Organisation of American States, and the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights to issue a joint declaration.

These strong signals are generating positive momentum. After a group of UK parliamentarians leveraged the UN declarations to complain about website blocking plans, their government pulled back. The UN Human Rights Committee offers important safeguards: individuals can directly bring many human rights violations to the committee for redress. It's up to all of us to use this power to pressure governments to live up to their obligations and safeguard online freedom of expression.
URL: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2011/08/un-strengthens-freedom-of-expression.html

[G] FISL 12 was a Blast!

Posted: 11 Aug 2011 01:24 AM PDT

Google Open Source Blog: FISL 12 was a Blast!





Earlier this summer I attended FISL 12 in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The International Free Software Forum (FISL) is one of Latin America's largest free and open source software conferences, regularly drawing thousands of attendees from across the globe.



I spoke to the crowd on the first day of the conference (and right after the state governor!) about the Google Summer of Code program. I gave an overview of Google Summer of Code for those attendees who weren't familiar with the program. I also highlighted some interesting statistics from this year's program and encouraged everyone in the audience to participate in future programs and to spread the word to their friends and family.



We had a meetup later in the day where I heard firsthand from the students attending the conference about their experiences with the program. Some of the students at the Google Summer of Code meetup are working on their first year of the program and others had participated in the program for as many as four years.



No trip to Brazil would be complete without some delicious Brazilian cuisine - fellow Googlers and I had a wonderful dinner at the churrascaria we went to after the conference was over. The city of Porto Alegre is absolutely beautiful, and the people were a pleasure to meet!



I will definitely be returning to Brazil soon, thanks to everyone who made my stay so much fun!



By Carol Smith, Open Source Team



URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GoogleOpenSourceBlog/~3/e33zAgBKiDc/fisl-12-was-blast.html

[G] Making the planet a little less lonely

Posted: 10 Aug 2011 09:20 AM PDT

YouTube Blog: Making the planet a little less lonely

You've danced around the world, you've travelled to great heights and you've explored the deepest regions of the world. We love seeing you travel, and we want to see more of it. That's why we've teamed up with Lonely Planet and Intel to help you share your adventures, and even get a chance to win cash for your next one.







Until August 11, we invite you to upload your favorite travel video to Lonely Planet's YouTube channel for the chance to win $10,000 to create the adventure trip of your dreams. Upload your video at youtube.com/lonelyplanet to one of these categories: outdoor, urban, visual, culinary or family. Lonely Planet will select finalists based on these criteria, who will be announced on September 7. Voting runs from September 7 to 12, and the grand prize winner will be announced on September 26.



Safe travels!



Lee Hadlow, International Program Manager, recently watched, "Cooking in a hotel room with Natalie Tran - community channel."


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/HxfBZxhyTJU/making-planet-little-less-lonely.html

[G] Journal Communications builds a new business model based on the cloud

Posted: 10 Aug 2011 09:20 AM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Journal Communications builds a new business model based on the cloud

Posted by: Michael O'Brien, CIO, Journal Communications



Editors note:Today's guest blogger is Michael O'Brien, CIO for Journal Communications, a Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based media company with operations in publishing, radio and television broadcasting, interactive media and printing services. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.



Journal Communications owns and operates 33 radio stations, 13 television stations in 12 states, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel newspaper, and several community newspapers and publications in the Midwest. For the past several years, our IT infrastructure for those media stations and papers has been completely separate. We had 17 implementations and multiple versions of Microsoft® Exchange and SharePoint with multiple servers for each location, most of which were not backed up or redundant. The company managed for years without significant problems, until our second largest market, Las Vegas, had a catastrophic hardware crash - just weeks after we officially decided to move to Google Apps. Email, calendar and contacts were not recoverable for many. Some employees had been with the company for 15 years or longer and they lost everything. Now the future of using a redundant, web-based solution really hit home with the company leadership.



When I joined Journal Communications in May 2010, my first priority was to bring multiple IT divisions together and have them start working more collaboratively. We had 18 months left on our Enterprise Agreement with Microsoft, but we realized that if we really wanted to reach this collaborative goal, it would be very expensive and hard to do with the existing portfolio of Microsoft products. Prior to Journal Communications, I had been a CIO at a start up, and one of the decisions I made early on was not to have anything brick and mortar if we could avoid it. I came to Journal Communications and saw all this legacy hardware and software, and knew we needed to build a future business model based on cloud computing.



Despite the existing contract with Microsoft, we decided to move to Google Apps. As we all know, email and calendar have evolved from nice-to-have tools to mission-critical business applications, and everything Google has come out with so far, simply just works - the Google tool set sells itself. Google Apps make the business environment more productive and more cost effective. Instead of IT being seen as a cost center, we've really taken the boundaries out of a static IT organization and started to make decisions that provide current and future business value. Until we transition completely, we still have hundreds of servers surrounding MS Exchange and SharePoint, and they just need to go away. My goal is to end up with a media based company that is as much in the cloud as possible, this includes our Publishing ERP system. We are also evaluating the idea of going cloud with phones. Portions of the IT team now use Google Voice and calls through Gmail. Imagine a department and then large portions of an organization with no desktop phones - Journal Communications does.



We're rolling out Google Apps to over 2,700 Journal Communications employees and will be done by Q1 2012. We realize that this is a significant business change, but even some people who were originally skeptical are getting on board. This is just the beginning of moving to a more digital, cloud based world where we can work together across offices, know that our data is stored in the cloud and accessible from anywhere with any device, and start to move our business systems out of our brick and mortar data centers. We're entering a new age at Journal Communications. We're not your grandmother's newspaper, nor your grandfather's TV or radio station.



URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/08/journal-communications-builds-new.html
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