Googland |
- [G] A Silicon Valley Story: HeyZap has gone Google
- [G] Lego robots and their young inventors come to Google
- [G] More spring cleaning out of season
- [G] Which came first, the turkey or the hand?
- [G] Pre-order your favorite ebooks at the Google eBookstore
- [G] Interactive weather results, now in 34 languages
- [G] Music Tuesday: Alan Lomax’s American Patchwork, “Occupy” songs and more
- [G] ‘Tis the season for Chromebooks
- [G] Protecting data for the long term with forward secrecy
- [G] Webinar: Reaching Your Goals with Analytics
- [G] Turkeys and taxes
- [G] Street View special collections: ski and snow edition
- [G] Finding the perfect home with Google Fusion Tables
| [G] A Silicon Valley Story: HeyZap has gone Google Posted: 23 Nov 2011 02:59 AM PST Official Google Enterprise Blog: A Silicon Valley Story: HeyZap has gone GooglePosted by Immad Akhund, Co-Founder and CEO of HeyZapEditor's note: Today's guest blogger is Immad Akhund, co-founder and CEO of HeyZap. HeyZap is a social network for mobile gamers and a platform for mobile and online games. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.  Games are our business, but our business is certainly not a game. We take running our business seriously, and a key part of this is our IT. From day one, we set up our email on Gmail and have since been running our business on Google Apps. For a company of 18, working efficiently and communicating fluidly is extremely important. When it was just three of us, we used our personal Gmail accounts for work. Then as the company scaled, it became difficult to separate work from our personal lives. We moved to Google Apps where all our work information could be neatly kept under one company domain.As we grew, we needed the ability to share and work together on documents. Google Docs provides the infrastructure to create and share documents through the cloud. Even better, the collaboration features let us work on the same docs together in real-time from anywhere. Sometimes we have up to 10 people working on a doc, an ability which has enabled us to be much more productive in our work. For our 10 engineers, Google Docs has also served another purpose. Instead of a wiki, they use Google Docs to store technical materials for others to use. They take advantage of labels and folders to sort the information by topic. Wikis can be hard to maintain, but with Google Docs, it's easy to create new documents and edit content. Our sales staff has also used Google spreadsheets to manage a lot of our client information and data. Google Apps has been a powerful tool to help grow our business. As we focus more of our attention on the mobile space, where we already have a very successful app with over two million installs, I'm sure it will continue to enable our business and allow us to keep working quickly and efficiently, whether we're at the office or on the go.  URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/11/silicon-valley-story-heyzap-has-gone.html       |
| [G] Lego robots and their young inventors come to Google Posted: 22 Nov 2011 06:50 PM PST Official Google Blog: Lego robots and their young inventors come to Google"He makes his way down the field, finds his target, aims—can he make it before time runs out?"Nope, we're not at a sports game, but rather watching a robot, made of Legos, and built and programmed by a team of young students, compete at the FIRST® LEGO® League (FLL) robotics tournament. Last Saturday, November 19, marked our sixth year hosting a qualifying tournament at Google headquarters. This year, 16 Bay Area teams made up of 9-14 year olds participated, energizing our campus with their enthusiasm and even a spontaneous conga line or two. I'm a software engineer with a longtime personal interest in LEGO robotics and, even more, in getting kids excited about doing science and technology. When fellow Google engineer Albert Bodenhamar and I heard about the tournament awhile back, we put together a team of volunteers at Google, got in touch with the FLL regional coordinators—the nonprofit group Playing at Learning—and held our first tournament. Now we host the event every year, with a cadre of 25-30 Googlers, spouses and friends who spend the day volunteering as judges and referees and help with all of the set-up and logistics. The center of the action during tournament day was the two ping pong-sized tables where these homegrown robots raced against the clock to complete various physical tasks, all related to the tournament theme of food safety. The tables were covered with small "props" the robots would need. For example, at one point, the robots had to scoop up, carry and then empty dispensers of little plastic "bacteria" into a miniature plastic sink at the opposite end of the table. Referees in black-and-white striped shirts started and stopped the clock and kept their eyes out for penalties while the MC gave play-by-plays of the action. Meanwhile, parents and coaches crowded around, cheering and taking photographs, and the action was broadcast on a jumbo screen for all to see. When not competing at the tables, teams met with three different sets of judges. One panel of judges asked students about their robot (how they designed it, how it worked), while another set asked about core values (how they worked together as a team, the learning process, camaraderie). In front of the third set of judges, the teams presented their research projects and answered questions. The research project, while unrelated to robotics, aims to incorporate research and problem-solving—keys to the success of any real-world engineering team—into the competition. At the end of the day, we announced awards. The team Nibbles & Bytes took home the Core Values award, Decon Droids won the award for best Research Project, Xtreme Creators won for Robot Design and the Flying Cougar Cyborgs won for Robot Performance. The LegoNauts took home the Champion's award. Seven teams advanced to the district championship, which will take place in Redwood City, Calif. in January. Eventually, the tournament reaches the national, and then international, level. It's important, not to mention fun, to support creative outlets for young people to get involved in computer science and technology. Competitions like FLL introduce a whole new generation to the world of technology and engineering, and it's always a blast to support the students who are participating—even if I am a bit exhausted after that conga line.  If you want to get involved with FLL, you can check the website to find out if a team exists in your area, or register a new one. Posted by Glenn Trewitt, software engineer and FLL tournament director  URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/lego-robots-and-their-young-inventors.html   |
| [G] More spring cleaning out of season Posted: 22 Nov 2011 06:50 PM PST Official Google Blog: More spring cleaning out of seasonThis is our third blog post in our off-season spring cleaning series. To recap, we're in the process of shutting a number of products which haven't had the impact we'd hoped for, integrating others as features into our broader product efforts, and ending several which have shown us a different path forward. Overall, our aim is to build a simpler, more intuitive, truly beautiful Google user experience. In terms of the details, here is the latest update:
 URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/more-spring-cleaning-out-of-season.html   |
| [G] Which came first, the turkey or the hand? Posted: 22 Nov 2011 06:50 PM PST Official Google Blog: Which came first, the turkey or the hand?Creating hand turkeys remains one of my favorite elementary school memories—glue on the table, colorful feathers stuck to your sleeve and glitter everywhere. This year, you have the option to skip the actual mess involved with making these classic Thanksgiving decorations and craft a unique turkey from the comfort of the Google homepage.Whether you want to customize the headpiece, feet or individual feathers—or just prefer a random surprise by pulling on the turkey's wing—there are many ways to show off your creativity. We can't stick your creations on our fridge, but thanks to a collaborative effort between our engineers and artists, you'll be able to share your turkeys via Google+ or a shortened URL. This way all your friends and family, wherever they may be, can see your festive creation. The doodle will be up from now until Thanksgiving in the United States, and you can make as many different turkeys as you like. With nearly three days to express your inner child or artiste and millions of possible combinations, you may find you unlock a surprise or two... or three... or 12! Posted by Willie Real, Doodler  URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/which-came-first-turkey-or-hand.html   |
| [G] Pre-order your favorite ebooks at the Google eBookstore Posted: 22 Nov 2011 05:38 PM PST Inside Google Books: Pre-order your favorite ebooks at the Google eBookstorePosted by Stella Loh, Google eBookstore Product Manager Excited about Michael Connelly's upcoming new book The Drop? Can't wait to get your hands on True Blue by Diana Palmer? Worried your bookstore will run out of Dean Koontz's The Moonlit Mind before you can get your copy? Have no fear: Pre-ordering in the Google eBookstore is here! We are excited to announce that the our eBookstore now supports pre-orders for many titles that have not yet been released. No longer must you wait outside in long lines and in the cold, or worry that you'll forget to call ahead with enough time to reserve a copy of that sequel you've been dying to read. Simply sign into your Google Account, search for the title you want to pre-order and click on "Pre-order eBook" button.   After you've confirmed your pre-order, the title will appear in your purchase history. Once the title is officially released to the public, your credit card will be charged, and we'll send you an email letting you know that your book is ready to read!  URL: http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2011/11/pre-order-your-favorite-ebooks-at.html   |
| [G] Interactive weather results, now in 34 languages Posted: 22 Nov 2011 04:39 PM PST Official Google Mobile Blog: Interactive weather results, now in 34 languagesEarlier this year, we introduced interactive weather information in mobile search results and now this feature is available in 33 more languages. Now when you search for 'météo', 'tempo', '날씨', or 'weather' in your language, you'll see the current temperature, humidity level and wind speed for your location. You'll also get an overall forecast and the weather outlook for the next few days. To see weather conditions at various times throughout the day, move the slider across the next 12 hrs; that way you'll know if you'll need a light jacket in the afternoon or perhaps an umbrella in the evening.  Give it a try by searching Google for 'weather' in your language on your Android or iOS mobile device. Posted by Sungjoon Jung, Software Engineer  URL: http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2011/11/interactive-weather-results-now-in-34.html   |
| [G] Music Tuesday: Alan Lomax’s American Patchwork, “Occupy” songs and more Posted: 22 Nov 2011 12:33 PM PST YouTube Blog: Music Tuesday: Alan Lomax's American Patchwork, "Occupy" songs and moreIt's a short holiday week in the United States, and as a chunk of the North American continent prepares to gorge themselves this Thursday for Thanksgiving, we threw together what we hope is an inspiring playlist of...well...feast-oriented music videos. In the meantime, we thought it was a good week to celebrate America's musical history, pre-YouTube.An American Patchwork How do you describe Alan Lomax? The man was committed to capturing the music of ordinary people around the world: songs that had passed down through the family, sometimes played on instruments people had made themselves. Much of what we know about early American music comes from his efforts (and those of his folklorist father John Lomax). Between 1978 and 1982, Lomax traveled through the American South with a video camera for the first time, catching on film a breathtaking array of music talent and traditions. The 400+ hours of footage were edited down for a 1991 PBS special called American Patchwork but were never made available to the public. Over the past few years, the Alan Lomax Archive has been painstakingly uploading these videos. Find this cultural treasure trove at youtube.com/AlanLomaxArchive. Songs of Occupation The Occupy movement shows few signs of slowing down -- even as encampments are cleared out in certain cities, other protests and encampments spring up. It's a many-headed hydra of a movement, and we wondered if any songs have emerged as anthems for the protesters the way they did for Tunisians during the Arab Spring. The short answer is: no. But there are certainly a lot of interesting songs being uploaded -- including one that the Hawaiian artist Makana performed recently for 19 unsuspecting world leaders during the APEC summit. Michael Kiwanuka: Home Again Haven't heard of Michael Kiwanuka? Now's the time to start listening. This young singer-songwriter has opened for Adele and garnered comparisons to no less than soul great Bill Withers. Yep, he's got a voice, a viewpoint, and a way with a guitar. 21st-century soul music? Sounds like it to us. Sarah Bardeen, Music Community Manager, recently watched "Zaz à Montmartre: Les Passants."     URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/AWCWNhtdpLA/music-tuesday-alan-lomaxs-american.html   |
| [G] ‘Tis the season for Chromebooks Posted: 22 Nov 2011 12:33 PM PST Google Chrome Blog: 'Tis the season for ChromebooksThe Chrome team elves have been busy packing a few goodies into Chromebooks in time for the upcoming holiday season.A simple, streamlined user interface From the moment you hit the power button and watch your Chromebook boot up in eight seconds flat, you'll notice that the operating system got a bit of a facelift. For example, the Chromebook now sports a fresh, clean login experience.  We've also revamped the New Tab page to make it easier to manage your apps, bookmarks and most visited sites. By popular demand, we've added a few handy new shortcuts to the New Tab page: a shortcut to the File Manager on your Chromebook, as well as to music apps and games in the Chrome Web Store.  You may have also noticed, we recently gave the Chrome Web Store a new look, so that you can easily scan the wall of images to discover fun and useful apps and extensions. Hassle-free for the holidays We've heard from many of you that one of the things you enjoy most about the Chromebook is its hassle-free simplicity. If you're someone who's often called upon to provide tech support when you're home for the holidays like I am, you'll be happy to know that the Chromebook gets your loved ones up and going on the web quickly, without the usual pains of computing like seemingly endless boot times and setup manuals. With that in mind, we wanted to share a few updates to the lineup of Chromebooks that make them more giftable to loved ones. For folks in the United States, Samsung is introducing a sleek, black version of its Wi-Fi only Samsung Chromebook Series 5.  We've also been working closely with our partners to continually improve the overall Chromebook experience while making them even more affordable. So, we're excited to share that beginning this week Acer and Samsung Chromebooks will be available starting at $299. The updated prices will be available through our online retail partners. Lastly, if you're in the U.S. and you'd like to take a Chromebook for a test drive, visit the Samsung Experience in New York City or check one out when flying with Virgin America. We're excited to hear your feedback, as we continue to build a faster, simpler and more secure experience on a computer that always gets better. In the meantime, we'll leave you with one in a series of new film shorts that highlight some of the reasons why we think Chromebooks make a great holiday gift. Posted by Venkat Rapaka, Senior Product Manager  URL: http://chrome.blogspot.com/2011/11/tis-season-for-chromebooks.html   |
| [G] Protecting data for the long term with forward secrecy Posted: 22 Nov 2011 12:33 PM PST Google Online Security Blog: Protecting data for the long term with forward secrecyPosted by Adam Langley, Security TeamLast year we introduced HTTPS by default for Gmail and encrypted search. We're pleased to see that other major communications sites are following suit and deploying HTTPS in one form or another. We are now pushing forward by enabling forward secrecy by default. Most major sites supporting HTTPS operate in a non-forward secret fashion, which runs the risk of retrospective decryption. In other words, an encrypted, unreadable email could be recorded while being delivered to your computer today. In ten years time, when computers are much faster, an adversary could break the server private key and retrospectively decrypt today's email traffic. Forward secrecy requires that the private keys for a connection are not kept in persistent storage. An adversary that breaks a single key will no longer be able to decrypt months' worth of connections; in fact, not even the server operator will be able to retroactively decrypt HTTPS sessions. Forward secret HTTPS is now live for Gmail and many other Google HTTPS services(*), like SSL Search, Docs and Google+. We have also released the work that we did on the open source OpenSSL library that made this possible. You can check whether you have forward secret connections in Chrome by clicking on the green padlock in the address bar of HTTPS sites. Google's forward secret connections will have a key exchange mechanism of ECDHE_RSA. We would very much like to see forward secrecy become the norm and hope that our deployment serves as a demonstration of the practicality of that vision.  (* Chrome, Firefox (all platforms) and Internet Explorer (Vista or later) support forward secrecy using elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman. Initially, only Chrome and Firefox will use it by default with Google services because IE doesn't support the combination of ECDHE and RC4. We hope to support IE in the future.)  URL: http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2011/11/protecting-data-for-long-term-with.html   |
| [G] Webinar: Reaching Your Goals with Analytics Posted: 22 Nov 2011 12:33 PM PST Google Analytics Blog: Webinar: Reaching Your Goals with AnalyticsIs your website performing as well as it could be? Do you want to get more out of your digital marketing campaigns, including AdWords and other digital media? Do you feel like you have gaps in your current Google Analytics setup?We've heard from many of our users who want to go deeper into their Analytics -- with so much data, it can be hard to know where to look first. If you'd like to move beyond standard "pageview" metrics and visitor statistics, then please join us next Thursday: Webinar: Reaching Your Goals with Analytics Date: Thursday, December 1 Time: 11am PST / 2pm EST Sign up here! During the webinar, we'll cover:
Whatever your online business model -- shopping, lead-generation, or pure content -- these tools will deliver actionable insights into your buying cycle. This webinar will be led by Joe Larkin, a technical specialist on the Google Analytics team, and it's designed for intermediate users of Google Analytics. If you're comfortable with the basics, but you'd like to do more with your data, then we hope you'll join us next week! Posted by Sara Jablon Moked, Google Analytics team     URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/tRaA/~3/7AUf250xbSE/webinar-reaching-your-goals-with.html   |
| Posted: 22 Nov 2011 12:33 PM PST Inside AdSense: Turkeys and taxesThe NBA season may be unusually absent at this time of year, but thankfully we can still count on Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and oh yes... preparation for taxes. Before falling asleep next to a warm fireplace with a belly full of savory delicacies and sugary sweets, be sure to log in to your AdSense account to double-check your address. To ensure that your AdSense account reflects your current tax standing, you may even re-submit your tax information. We'll soon be using the information in your AdSense account to generate your tax forms for 2011, so you'll want to make sure that the information we have is correct. Remember, you'll only receive a tax form 1099-MISC from us if you meet either of the following requirements:
Enjoy the festivities! Posted by Sharlene Su - AdSense Payments team    URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/tuAm/~3/oFfOvfPF6dM/turkeys-and-taxes.html   |
| [G] Street View special collections: ski and snow edition Posted: 22 Nov 2011 12:33 PM PST Google LatLong: Street View special collections: ski and snow edition(Cross posted on the Official Google Blog)From the streets to the slopes, Street View in Google Maps recently updated its special collections to include a number of new ski resorts, so you can tour some of the world's most beautiful ski terrain right from your browser. Whether you're planning your annual trip to your favorite resort or hunting for an exciting new adventure, Street View can transport you to your desired destination. Tour a few of our favorite ski resorts below. First stop off the ski lift is the world famous Squaw Valley, in northern California. Squaw Valley has been a ski destination since it hosted the Olympic Winter Games in 1960. Squaw Valley Resort - Going down Gold Coast Face Following a record setting 519 inches of snowfall last season, Breckenridge Ski Resort is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. Take a tour of this famous Colorado destination. Breckenridge Resort, Looking down Four O'Clock Last, but surely not least, you can tour Whistler Blackcomb, home of the 2010 Winter Olympics. We captured Whistler with our Street View cameras last year and made some recent updates. Located in the Coast Mountain range of British Columbia, Whistler, known for both its scenery and adrenaline-pumping runs, is one of the most famous ski destinations in the world. Whistler Blackcomb, Whistler Peak All snow view imagery was captured by the Street View snowmobile which made its debut two years ago at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. To get a glimpse of a few more resorts you can go to the gallery or watch the video: Enjoy the slopes! Posted by Ryan Falor, Product Manager, Street View Special Collections  URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2011/11/street-view-special-collections-ski-and.html   |
| [G] Finding the perfect home with Google Fusion Tables Posted: 22 Nov 2011 12:33 PM PST Google LatLong: Finding the perfect home with Google Fusion TablesEditor's Note: This is a true story, but some of the details have been changed for privacy purposes. My husband and I were recently in the market for a new home. We worked with a realtor for a few months, looking at several houses every weekend. As we checked out each house, we tracked our thoughts about it in a Google spreadsheet, which included columns for the address, our pros and cons, individual ratings and the combined rating of the house. One day, while my husband and I were rating a recently viewed home, he came up with a brilliant idea to put all of our home data on a map. We realized that adding geographic information to our personal opinions would help us find trends, such as which neighborhoods we preferred. A light bulb went on over my head: Google Fusion Tables! Fusion Tables is a data management web application that makes it easy to view tabular data on a Google Map. Columns with location data, such as addresses, points, lines, or polygons, are automatically interpreted and mapped. The map features can be styled according to the data in your table. It's also simple to share the map visualization with others. In just a few steps, we were able to convert our spreadsheet into a fusion table:  This was a great start, but what we really wanted was to quickly get a glimpse of this data on a map. All we had to do was select 'Visualize > Map' from the table menu and the data in the 'Address' column was geocoded (i.e. converted into latitude and longitude coordinates) and the markers were displayed on the map. Clicking on the markers showed additional information about the house pulled from our spreadsheet, including the pros, cons and ratings we inputted for each location.  Fusion Tables also allow you to style the features on the map according to data in a numerical column in the table. We had the perfect column to use for this purpose: the 'Total Rating' column! In order to color code the map markers by their 'Total Rating' score, we customized the icons based on a range of scores, with red representing the lowest scores, yellow show mid-range scores and green showing the houses with the highest combined rating. After saving these new settings, the map markers were immediately styled:  Our new map made it much easier to see what locations we were most interested in (the house just south of Redwood City) and the neighborhoods of low interest (those that were closer to the bay or hills). We shared the map with our realtor and she loved it. It helped her refine the selection of homes she showed us and in just a matter of weeks, I'm happy to say that my husband and I found the perfect house! Posted by Kathryn Hurley, Developer Programs Engineer, Geo DevRel  URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2011/11/finding-perfect-home-with-google-fusion.html   |
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