Friday, August 26, 2011

Googland

Googland

[G] YouTube Presents: Taylor Swift takes your questions

Posted: 26 Aug 2011 01:19 AM PDT

Official Google Blog: YouTube Presents: Taylor Swift takes your questions

With her vocal talent and songwriting skills, Taylor Swift has won four Grammys, six CMT Music Awards, 13 Teen Choice Awards, the Academy of Country Music's Entertainer of the Year award—and a tremendous following of loyal fans. Now, she's taking questions from you on YouTube.



Starting today and until 12 p.m. PT on August 31, you can submit written or video queries on Taylor Swift's channel, and vote on your favorites. She'll answer the most popular ones as part of our YouTube Presents program.

Visit the YouTube blog for more info, and keep an eye on the YouTube homepage to see Taylor's Q&A as soon as it's uploaded.

Posted by Anna Richardson, Communications Manager
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/youtube-presents-taylor-swift-takes.html

[G] Today is a Fairytale: Taylor Swift takes your questions on YouTube

Posted: 26 Aug 2011 01:19 AM PDT

YouTube Blog: Today is a Fairytale: Taylor Swift takes your questions on YouTube

From "Tim McGraw" to "Sparks Fly," Taylor Swift has won over fans worldwide with her vocal talent and songwriting skills. In addition to a tremendous fan following, Swift has racked up four Grammys, six CMT Music Awards, thirteen Teen Choice Awards and even the Academy of Country Music's Entertainer of the Year award, joning the likes of Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton and The Dixie Chicks. And now she takes your questions on YouTube!



Ever wonder what it's like to become a major pop star before you're out of high school -- on the strength of your own songs? Whether you're cheer captain or on the bleachers, Taylor wants to hear from you and she's agreed to be fearless in answering!







Starting today, submit written or video queries on Taylor Swift's channel, and she'll answer the most popular ones as part of our YouTube Presents program. You have until noon on August 31 to submit your questions and vote on the ones you'd most like to see her answer.



YouTube Presents is an ongoing program dedicated to bringing you live performances and interviews with your favorite artists. Upcoming YouTube Presents events will include artist interviews (with questions provided by the YouTube community), intimate performances at the YouTube offices, and live streams of music festivals.



Stay tuned for more YouTube Presents sessions this fall -- and watch the homepage to see Taylor's Q&A, which we'll post as soon as it's uploaded.



Anna Richardson, Communications Manager, recently watched "Our Song."


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/RR2yLQRUCL4/today-is-fairytale-taylor-swift-takes.html

[G] Another look under the hood of search

Posted: 26 Aug 2011 01:19 AM PDT

Official Google Blog: Another look under the hood of search

(Cross-posted on the Inside Search blog and the Public Policy blog)

Over the past few years, we've released a series of blog posts to share the methodology and process behind our search ranking, evaluation and algorithmic changes. Just last month, Ben Gomes, Matt Cutts and I participated in a Churchill Club event where we discussed how search works and where we believe it's headed in the future.

Beyond our talk and various blog posts, we wanted to give people an even deeper look inside search, so we put together a short video that gives you a sense of the work that goes into the changes and improvements we make to Google almost every day. While an improvement to the algorithm may start with a creative idea, it always goes through a process of rigorous scientific testing. Simply put: if the data from our experiments doesn't show that we're helping users, we won't launch the change.



In the world of search, we're always striving to deliver the answers you're looking for. After all, we know you have a choice of a search engine every time you open a browser. As the Internet becomes bigger, richer and more interactive it means that we have to work that much harder to ensure we're unearthing and displaying the best results for you.

Posted by Amit Singhal, Google Fellow
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/another-look-under-hood-of-search.html

[G] Food for (green) thought

Posted: 26 Aug 2011 01:19 AM PDT

Official Google Blog: Food for (green) thought

This is the second in a short series of posts and videos spotlighting our efforts to make Google greener. In this post, we give you a glimpse at our sustainable food programs. -Ed.

When it comes to eating sustainably, it's about more than being organic, grass-fed or cage-free. Through our food program, we delight and support Googlers as well as uphold our company's health and environmental values. And it's a job we relish, because food is such a defining part of our unique culture. Our cafes and microkitchens help spark greater innovation and collaboration, allowing different teams to come together to share ideas, problem-solve or just get to know each other better over lunch or a mid-morning snack.

As part of Google's Food Team, we serve roughly 50,000 healthy and delicious meals every day at nearly 100 cafes around the world—and strive to apply sustainable food principles to all the cafes we operate. We aim to source food that's as local, seasonal and organic as possible. This helps us prevent artificial additives, pesticides and hormones from entering Google's food supply—whether that means sourcing our eggs from cage-free chickens or using steroid- and antibiotic-free poultry. It's fresher, and it tastes better!



Through Google's Green Seafood Policy, we've established guidelines to help ensure that (whenever and wherever possible) we purchase species caught locally from independently managed fisheries that use environmentally responsible catch practices. At our Mountain View headquarters, where we benefit from our proximity to the ocean and local agriculture, we've been able to establish close relationships with several local, independent farmers and fishermen. We see firsthand how they raise and harvest their stock, and what sustainable catch methods they use. Much of our Mountain View produce (nearly half of which is organic) comes from farms in California, and our seafood comes from within 200 miles. Many of our campuses also have edible gardens that empower green-thumbed Googlers to grow herbs for their own cooking.

Because optimal eating habits extend beyond the walls of our offices, we're committed to helping Googlers make the most informed choices possible as part of a healthy lifestyle. We want to not only become the healthiest workforce, but also make it easier for employees to take Google's sustainable food values home to share with friends and family. Many of our offices in the U.S. offer Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs where Googlers can buy fresh, seasonal produce directly from local farms that's delivered right to campus. In Mountain View, we also recently launched the Google Green Grocer program, where Googlers can order the same high-quality, sustainably sourced seafood, meat and eggs they already enjoy in our cafes, while supporting local community fisheries and farms.

We also pay very close attention to how we manage and reduce waste from our food program. Most employees use non-disposable dishware, and all of our grab-and-go containers are compostable. We have recycling and composting bins throughout many of our offices worldwide, and 20 percent of food waste from our cafes is recycled. In fact, organic food waste from our cafes in Europe, the Middle East and Africa is recycled to help produce bio-diesel or electricity. In some of our U.S. offices, any untouched, edible food is donated to local shelters, and the rest is put to use as compost.

Through our our cafes, microkitchens, edible gardens and community-supported food programs, we're connecting Googlers to sustainable values on a daily basis. The more we care about what happens to the food on our plates and where it comes from, the more it can improve our health, our local economies and the environment.

Posted by Scott Giambastiani, Executive Chef
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/food-for-green-thought.html

[G] Peering into Jorge Luis Borges’s Labyrinth

Posted: 25 Aug 2011 10:50 AM PDT

Inside Google Books: Peering into Jorge Luis Borges's Labyrinth

Posted by Matt Werner, Technical Writer, Enterprise

In honor of Jorge Luis Borges's 112th birthday, Google has prepared a special doodle for today. Borges (1899-1986) was an Argentinian author best known today for his fantastic short stories and influential essays and poetry. His ideas have made a lasting impact on fields as far-ranging as mathematics, philosophy, literary theory, translation studies, and studies in cyberculture/futurology.


Google Doodle by Sophia Foster-Dimino

The New York Times piece "Borges and the Foreseeable Future" highlights Borges's surprising influence on the Internet era. Focusing on Borges's story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius," the article shows how Borges's idea of an infinite encyclopedia can be interpreted as a prototype for Wikipedia.

In a similar light, Borges's story "On Exactitude in Science," which is about a map as large as the area it depicts, has a virtual corollary with Google Earth and Google Maps. In "El Aleph", Borges wrote about a single point in space through which all other points in space and time could be seen. The Google search box hasn't quite reached this breadth, but we are adding to the index everyday.

In The Library of Babel, Borges describes an infinite library that holds every conceivable book, composed of every conceivable combination of letters. This story has left scholars pondering the consequences of this infinite library, and recent titles, like William Bloch's The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel, have set about analyzing the mathematics in Borges's story.




Visualizing Borges's literary legacy

The Google Books Ngram Viewer is a tool in Google Books which allows you to search for terms and phrases. Using the tool, you can compare trends in word usage in the millions of books in the Google Books digital corpus. Below are Ngrams showing the trends in the number of books that have "Jorge Luis Borges" in Spanish and English. The graphs go from 1899 (when he was born) to 2000. These graphs show Borges's explosive rise in popularity for Spanish and English-reading audiences.

References to Jorge Luis Borges's name in Spanish-language books in Google Books 1899-2000

Books Ngram Viewer graph for Borges references in Spanish

References to Jorge Luis Borges's name in English-language books in Google Books 1899-2000

Books Ngram Viewer graph for Borges references in English

What's interesting about these graphs is how there are Spanish-language books referencing Borges as early as the mid-1920s. However, for English books, Borges's popularity didn't take off until he shared the Formentor Prize, an international literary award, with Samuel Beckett in 1961.

At that point, Borges's popularity in the English-speaking world took off. English translations of his works became more widely available thanks to the efforts of Norman Thomas di Giovanni and other translators, and Borges traveled the world in the later years of his life with Maria Kodama, giving lectures on literature. The number of times Borges's name appears in English books rises sharply in the decade from 1961 to 1971 and continues its upward trend through 2000.

Interestingly, for Spanish books, the frequency of his name dropped soon after his passing in 1986, only to surge from 1990 to 2000. It will be interesting to see in the future, if references to Borges keep rising.

"Of a language of the dawn"

How would Borges, a lover of language known for his exquisite word choice, have used Ngram Viewer? This tool is a step beyond the card catalogue and library indexes he used as a librarian, but is a data visualization tool that allows one to simultaneously peer at and dissect individual words and phrases used in millions of books.

Would Borges have used Ngram Viewer to track trends and the emergence of words in the many languages he knew? Could he have used it to write about the death of one word or language, to be supplanted by another, similar to how he describes the birth of English from Anglo-Saxon in his poem "On Beginning the Study of Anglo-Saxon Grammar"? Or would he have have used the tool in ways we have not yet imagined?

Want to learn more about Borges and his writing?

Visit Google Books to access ebooks by and about Borges:
URL: http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2011/08/peering-into-jorge-luis-borgess.html

[G] Our software application guidelines explained

Posted: 25 Aug 2011 10:50 AM PDT

Google Affiliate Network: Our software application guidelines explained

Two years ago today, we announced new Google Affiliate Network software application guidelines to better protect the interests of our users, advertisers, and publishers. These policies are rooted in the belief that applications should enhance the user experience and never interfere with the user's choice or purchase path.

Google Affiliate Network's publishers have shown great innovation, building useful applications, toolbars, and browser extensions that benefit their users and drive quality conversions for advertisers. All approved applications go through a software review, where our Network Quality team thoroughly tests all submissions and each of their updates.

Our guidelines help ensure that applications don't subject users to malicious or manipulative behavior, or create unwarranted commissions for advertisers. They also help prevent software from automatically co-opting commissions from other publishers. Most notably, these policies require users to agree before redirecting them through Google Affiliate Network links.

In the two years since we released our updated guidelines, our Network Quality team has reviewed and approved dozens of new software applications and updates. We want to thank our publishers for applying these guidelines to their applications, and look forward to the continued growth of the entire affiliate ecosystem.

Posted by Matt Dougherty, Network Quality
URL: http://googleaffiliatenetwork-blog.blogspot.com/2011/08/our-software-application-guidelines.html

[G] The Google Docs app for Android now with Web Clipboard and in 46 languages

Posted: 25 Aug 2011 10:50 AM PDT

Official Google Mobile Blog: The Google Docs app for Android now with Web Clipboard and in 46 languages

In April, we introduced the Google Docs app for Android, a useful way to view, edit and create documents and spreadsheets on the go. Today, we're extending the availability of this app to 45 additional languages and adding a new Web Clipboard feature that makes it easy to insert photos from your Android phone into a Google document. Learn more on the Google Docs blog and update or download the app today from Android Market.





Posted by Tobias Thierer, Software Engineer
URL: http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2011/08/google-docs-app-for-android-now-with.html
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