Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Googland

Googland

[G] Doodling for Dickens’ Birthday: A behind the scenes look

Posted: 08 Feb 2012 02:19 AM PST

Inside Google Books: Doodling for Dickens' Birthday: A behind the scenes look

Posted by Ariel Levine, Google eBooks Associate

Today marks the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens' birthday (born February 7, 1812). To celebrate the life and work of one of the world's greatest storytellers, the Google doodle team created this fantastic celebratory doodle for our home page:


In addition, our Google Books editorial team curated a collection of free and featured Dickens classics available in the Google eBookstore in Dickens' native land (United Kingdom) and some Commonwealth countries (Canada, Australia) as well as the US -- a relatively new nation that Dickens himself visited in 1842 and 1867.

As anyone who has read a Dickens novel can attest, they are full of memorable characters, realism, humor, lyricism, and social commentary. He is considered one of the greatest novelists of the Victorian era, and responsible for some of the most iconic stories in English literature. Contemplating Dickens' diversity of characters and themes, I wondered how the artist who created the Dickens doodle, Mike Dutton, handled the challenge.

Prior to working at Google, Mike was a freelance artist, and illustrated several children's books, including Donovan's Big Day. He is no stranger to making the words on a page come alive through imagery.

Mike has worked on countless doodles, some honoring other authors like Richard Scarry, and others celebrating events like the Royal Wedding and the World Cup. His favorite doodles to work on (so far!) were Mary Blair's 100th birthday and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (author of The Little Prince).

When asked about his experience trying to represent Dickens, Mike said that it posed a greater challenge than most. "Google doodles," he said, "are intended to be fun and delightful"; however Dickens' work is frequently serious in tone. So I decided to focus on Dickens' characters to bridge this gap."

And Mike's doodle is full of characters! We see Nell and her grandfather in the The Old Curiosity Shop, many characters from Little Dorrit, Oliver and his friends from Oliver Twist and Estella and Pip from Great Expectations. Even a certain French aristocrat graces the doodle, sitting inside the uppercase "G" -- a reference to his near death by guillotine. And no tribute to Dickens would be complete without Ebenezer Scrooge and a vivid depiction of London in the background.

Mike said that while he normally works on his tablet, he had to go back to a physical drawing board for the Dickens doodle, creating each character separately so that he could place them within different parts of the Google logo. Like an engineer, he likes to iterate on what he designs until he gets it right.

Mike's puzzle – layering characters from Great Expectations and Oliver Twist

When I visited his office, I also saw that like other artists, Mike immersed himself in his subject. He had Dickens' novels stacked by his desk, as well as images from adaptations of the author's novels pinned to his wall.

 "Just happy to be here."

Interestingly, while a doodler's work neither hangs in a museum nor receives the reverence of a Da Vinci or a Picasso, the illustrations are perhaps more widely and instantly viewed than any other artists' in history. When asked about this, Mike responded:

"Sometimes I feel I got to cut in line somewhere along the artist's journey. Being a doodler is a very fun job, but we take it seriously. Our ultimate goal is to engage and delight users, but we want to make sure we really pay proper homage to each figure along the way too."

Mike's doodle lets Dickens' characters speak to the author's impact, the way Dickens himself used them to speak his messages to the world. They are familiar, warm, and tell their sometimes harsh stories in a way that makes us want to take notice and enjoy. He uses them to successfully capture what made Dickens' great: characters that are real to us.

Find out more about Dickens' work and Google doodles: 

URL: http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2012/02/doodling-for-dickens-birthday-behind.html

[G] Introducing Chrome for Android

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 10:50 PM PST

Google Chrome Blog: Introducing Chrome for Android

In 2008, we launched Google Chrome to help make the web better. We're excited that millions of people around the world use Chrome as their primary browser and we want to keep improving that experience. Today, we're introducing Chrome for Android Beta, which brings many of the things you've come to love about Chrome to your Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich phone or tablet. Like the desktop version, Chrome for Android Beta is focused on speed and simplicity, but it also features seamless sign-in and sync so you can take your personalized web browsing experience with you wherever you go, across devices.



Speed

With Chrome for Android, you can search, navigate and browse fast—Chrome fast. You can scroll through web pages as quickly as you can flick your finger. When searching, your top search results are loaded in the background as you type so pages appear instantly. And of course, both search and navigation can all be done quickly from the Chrome omnibox.

Simplicity

Chrome for Android is designed from the ground up for mobile devices. We reimagined tabs so they fit just as naturally on a small-screen phone as they do on a larger screen tablet. You can flip or swipe between an unlimited number of tabs using intuitive gestures, as if you're holding a deck of cards in the palm of your hands, each one a new window to the web.



One of the biggest pains of mobile browsing is selecting the correct link out of several on a small-screen device. Link Preview does away with hunting and pecking for links on a web page by automatically zooming in on links to make selecting the precise one easier.

And as with Chrome on desktop, we built Chrome for Android with privacy in mind from the beginning, including incognito mode for private browsing and fine-grained privacy options (tap menu icon, 'Settings,' and then 'Privacy').

Sign in

You can now bring your personalized Chrome experience with you to your Android phone or tablet. If you sign in to Chrome on your Android device, you can:
  • View open tabs: Access the tabs you left open on your computer (also signed into Chrome)—picking up exactly where you left off.

  • Get smarter suggestions: If you visit a site often on your computer, you'll also get an autocomplete suggestion for it on your mobile device, so you can spend less time typing.

  • Sync bookmarks: Conveniently access your favorite sites no matter where you are or which device you're using.




Chrome is now available in Beta from Android Market, in select countries and languages for phones and tablets with Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich. We're eager to hear your feedback. Finally, we look forward to working closely with the developer community to create a better web on a platform that defines mobile.

Sundar Pichai, SVP, Chrome and Apps
URL: http://chrome.blogspot.com/2012/02/introducing-chrome-for-android.html

[G] January in Review: Styles, Sparklines, Google+ sharing, and more

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 10:50 PM PST

The Google Apps Blog: January in Review: Styles, Sparklines, Google+ sharing, and more

One of the best things about working on web apps like Google Docs is that it gives us the flexibility to frequently bring you new features and improvements. Starting this month, we're going to make some small changes to how we communicate what's been happening in the world of Docs. Instead of writing blog posts for each and every minor update, we're going to try bundling them together monthly to give you a detailed overview of our favorite features and a short list of other notable changes to make sure you don't miss out on anything new.

On that note, we've got a bunch of new features that launched today, as well as some great things that improved over the month of January.

Customizable styles in documents
Giving your document consistent and beautiful formatting should be easy. Before today, if you wanted to update all the Subtitles in your document to look a particular way, you had to change each of them one at a time. That's too many steps. Now you can restyle all your regular paragraphs, headings, or titles with just a couple clicks.For example, if you want to update all the Subtitles in your document to be a particular size, set one Subtitle to that size, select it, right click and choose Update Subtitle to match selection. This will change all the Subtitles already in your document and automatically update the style for any new Subtitles you create. Plus, with the new Options menu in the styles dropdown, you can set the current document's styles as the default for new documents or you can load your default styles into the current document.

Sparklines in spreadsheets and more charting options
In Google spreadsheets, we've added more charting options and support for sparklines to make it easier to communicate data. The new options give you a bunch of tools to create more sophisticated charts including different Y-axes on either side of the chart, formatting options for the axis and title text, and all sorts of other customization for how your lines, bars, or pies are displayed.We've also added sparklines, which let you display line or bar charts inside of cells and are handy for presenting and comparing data in a simple, bite-sized way. In the example below, we've used sparklines to plot currency exchange rates over a 30-day period.


Sharing forms on Google+ 
Sharing the forms you create in Google Docs with the right people shouldn't be a hassle. Today we added a Google+ share to the form editor so that you can share your forms directly with your circles with just a couple clicks.


And there's more… 
On top of today's new features, here are some changes from January that you may have missed:
  • Adding images to your docs from a high quality stock photo gallery. Simply go to Insert > Image, select Stock photos, and then search for the images that you want.
  • A more streamlined format for document discussion notifications that batches multiple discussions into a single email.
  • Quickly opening and selecting items from specific menus with keyboard accelerators. For example, when using Google Chrome, Ctrl+Option+E on a Mac and Alt+E on Windows or Linux will open the Edit menu.
  • Copying and pasting via the context (right click) menu in documents when you have the Chrome App installed.
  • Easily adding Google drawings or Google Groups discussions to a Google Site from the Insert menu.
  • Progress bars while uploading files to Google Sites.
  • Searching for text inside of PDFs in your documents list using Optical Character Recognition. 
If you'd like to learn more about what we've been up to in January, I'll be doing a Hangout On Air later this week this to talk about these changes and listen to your feedback. Stop by our Community Manager Teresa's Google+ page on Thursday, February 9 at 12 p.m. EST to tune in.

Posted by: Jeff Harris, Product Manager
URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GoogleAppsBlog/~3/omFql1FUdT0/january-in-review-styles-sparklines.html

[G] Google Voice Android app - now with offline texting

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 07:26 PM PST

Google Voice Blog: Google Voice Android app - now with offline texting

Sometimes the times that we're offline can be our most productive times. However, whether on a plane or out of range of coverage, it'd still be nice to be able to draft text messages. With this new app, you can now compose new messages (single recipients for now) while offline and the app will automatically queue them and send them out when you're connected again.

We hope you enjoy this new feature.

Posted by Yong Hoon Choi, Software Engineer
URL: http://googlevoiceblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/google-voice-android-app-now-with.html

[G] Educating Across the Globe for Safer Internet Day

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 03:56 PM PST

Google Public Policy Blog: Educating Across the Globe for Safer Internet Day

Posted by Katharine Wang, Policy Analyst

As more of our life happens online, Internet skills are crucial to living responsibly. So what are the skills needed to navigate today's Internet society? To answer this question and help adapt to digital society, parents and educators are working together to find new ways to teach themselves, their families, and their communities about important topics like identity protection, online security, and digital citizenship.

Today, on Safer Internet Day, we are proud to partner with Common Sense Media, ConnectSafely, the National Consumers League, on launching a new digital literacy portal called ThinkB4U. ThinkB4U combines "choose-your-own-adventure" style videos with expert advice from leading online safety NGOs and the Federal Trade Commission's OnGuard Online resources.

ThinkB4U is just one example of how seriously we take the challenge of increasing safety on the web. Here are a few examples of Google's involvement across the globe, along with inspiring efforts from our partners, NGOs, government stakeholders, and researchers from Asia-Pacific to Europe:

Awareness Campaigns
  • Australia: The Google Australia team is raising awareness of Google and YouTube safety tools by placing advertisements in newspapers and online.
  • Russia: In collaboration with Net Literacy we are meeting with over 200 Russian journalism students to engage them in a broader discussion on digital literacy, and what they can personally do in their schools and local communities. Additionally, we are hosting a series of international expert panels at the Safer Internet Forum. 
Research and Technical Solutions
  • UK: We are funding research by Young and Well Cooperative Research Centre (YAW-CRC) on how parents can practice online safety (part 1 and part 2).
  • France: We are supporting great work by e-Enfance on Net Ecoute Chrome extension an extension that allows for quick access to online discussions with a helpline counselor.
  • Italy: Italian child advocacy organization Telefono Azzurro has decided to share a Google Search Appliance that we had previously donated with all of the members of Missing Children Europe (MCE)—the federation of national NGOs responsible for the European 116.000 phone hotline. We hope the use of our GSA will help streamline processes among the members of MCE in combating child exploitation and recovering missing children throughout Europe.
Events
  • Israel: Following our successful launch of the Web-Rangers program, Israel's Ministry of Education has invited these talented online safety ambassadors to present their projects all across Israel and on YouTube.
  • Hong Kong: We are working with Weborganic, an organization tasked by the government to bridge the digital divide in schools, on an online safety exhibition for participating students and teachers.
  • Indonesia: We are organizing a series of trainings for NGOs, youth and community leaders, educators, and officials in the Ministry of Communications.
  • Germany: Wieland Holfelder, Google Engineering Director, is keynoting a session on safe Internet use at the Safer Internet Event in Germany, organized by Bitkom and the Ministry of Consumer Protection (BMELV).
  • Portugal: We're launching the Google Family Safety Center in Portugal with an event in Lisbon, chaired by the President of the National Commission for Children's Protection and Young at Risk, Mr. Armando Leandro.
There is still much to be done to achieve high levels of digital literacy for everyone. We hope that these projects and events will boost advocacy for online safety education, the importance of which is invaluable in a deeply connected world.

Check out the EU Public Policy Blog for more Safer Internet Day information!
URL: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2012/02/educating-across-globe-for-safer.html

[G] Introducing Chrome for Android

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 11:43 AM PST

Official Google Blog: Introducing Chrome for Android

In 2008, we launched Google Chrome to help make the web better. We're excited that millions of people around the world use Chrome as their primary browser and we want to keep improving that experience. Today, we're introducing Chrome for Android Beta, which brings many of the things you've come to love about Chrome to your Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich phone or tablet. Like the desktop version, Chrome for Android Beta is focused on speed and simplicity, but it also features seamless sign-in and sync so you can take your personalized web browsing experience with you wherever you go, across devices.



Speed
With Chrome for Android, you can search, navigate and browse fast—Chrome fast. You can scroll through web pages as quickly as you can flick your finger. When searching, your top search results are loaded in the background as you type so pages appear instantly. And of course, both search and navigation can all be done quickly from the Chrome omnibox.

Simplicity
Chrome for Android is designed from the ground up for mobile devices. We reimagined tabs so they fit just as naturally on a small-screen phone as they do on a larger screen tablet. You can flip or swipe between an unlimited number of tabs using intuitive gestures, as if you're holding a deck of cards in the palm of your hands, each one a new window to the web.


One of the biggest pains of mobile browsing is selecting the correct link out of several on a small-screen device. Link Preview does away with hunting and pecking for links on a web page by automatically zooming in on links to make selecting the precise one easier.

And as with Chrome on desktop, we built Chrome for Android with privacy in mind from the beginning, including incognito mode for private browsing and fine-grained privacy options (tap menu icon, 'Settings,' and then 'Privacy').

Sign in
You can now bring your personalized Chrome experience with you to your Android phone or tablet. If you sign in to Chrome on your Android device, you can:
  • View open tabs: Access the tabs you left open on your computer (also signed into Chrome)—picking up exactly where you left off.
  • Get smarter suggestions: If you visit a site often on your computer, you'll also get an autocomplete suggestion for it on your mobile device, so you can spend less time typing.
  • Sync bookmarks: Conveniently access your favorite sites no matter where you are or which device you're using.


Chrome is now available in Beta from Android Market, in select countries and languages for phones and tablets with Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich. We're eager to hear your feedback. Finally, we look forward to working closely with the developer community to create a better web on a platform that defines mobile.

Posted by Sundar Pichai, SVP, Chrome and Apps

(Cross-posted from the Chrome blog and on the Mobile blog)
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/introducing-chrome-for-android.html

[G] January in Review: Styles, Sparklines, Google+ sharing, and more

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 11:43 AM PST

Docs Blog: January in Review: Styles, Sparklines, Google+ sharing, and more

One of the best things about working on web apps like Google Docs is that it gives us the flexibility to frequently bring you new features and improvements. Starting this month, we're going to make some small changes to how we communicate what's been happening in the world of Docs. Instead of writing blog posts for each and every minor update, we're going to try bundling them together monthly to give you a detailed overview of our favorite features and a short list of other notable changes to make sure you don't miss out on anything new.

On that note, we've got a bunch of new features that launched today, as well as some great things that improved over the month of January.

Customizable styles in documents
Giving your document consistent and beautiful formatting should be easy. Before today, if you wanted to update all the Subtitles in your document to look a particular way, you had to change each of them one at a time. That's too many steps. Now you can restyle all your regular paragraphs, headings, or titles with just a couple clicks.For example, if you want to update all the Subtitles in your document to be a particular size, set one Subtitle to that size, select it, right click and choose Update Subtitle to match selection. This will change all the Subtitles already in your document and automatically update the style for any new Subtitles you create. Plus, with the new Options menu in the styles dropdown, you can set the current document's styles as the default for new documents or you can load your default styles into the current document.

Sparklines in spreadsheets and more charting options
In Google spreadsheets, we've added more charting options and support for sparklines to make it easier to communicate data. The new options give you a bunch of tools to create more sophisticated charts including different Y-axes on either side of the chart, formatting options for the axis and title text, and all sorts of other customization for how your lines, bars, or pies are displayed.We've also added sparklines, which let you display line or bar charts inside of cells and are handy for presenting and comparing data in a simple, bite-sized way. In the example below, we've used sparklines to plot currency exchange rates over a 30-day period.


Sharing forms on Google+ 
Sharing the forms you create in Google Docs with the right people shouldn't be a hassle. Today we added a Google+ share to the form editor so that you can share your forms directly with your circles with just a couple clicks.


And there's more… 
On top of today's new features, here are some changes from January that you may have missed:
  • Adding images to your docs from a high quality stock photo gallery. Simply go to Insert > Image, select Stock photos, and then search for the images that you want.
  • A more streamlined format for document discussion notifications that batches multiple discussions into a single email.
  • Quickly opening and selecting items from specific menus with keyboard accelerators. For example, when using Google Chrome, Ctrl+Option+E on a Mac and Alt+E on Windows or Linux will open the Edit menu.
  • Copying and pasting via the context (right click) menu in documents when you have the Chrome App installed.
  • Easily adding Google drawings or Google Groups discussions to a Google Site from the Insert menu.
  • Progress bars while uploading files to Google Sites.
  • Searching for text inside of PDFs in your documents list using Optical Character Recognition. 
If you'd like to learn more about what we've been up to in January, I'll be doing a Hangout On Air later this week this to talk about these changes and listen to your feedback. Stop by our Community Manager Teresa's Google+ page on Thursday, February 9 at 12 p.m. EST to tune in.

Posted by: Jeff Harris, Product Manager
URL: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2012/02/january-in-review-styles-sparklines.html

[G] Introducing Chrome for Android

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 11:43 AM PST

Official Google Mobile Blog: Introducing Chrome for Android

In 2008, we launched Google Chrome to help make the web better. We're excited that millions of people around the world use Chrome as their primary browser and we want to keep improving that experience. Today, we're introducing Chrome for Android Beta, which brings many of the things you've come to love about Chrome to your Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich phone or tablet. Like the desktop version, Chrome for Android Beta is focused on speed and simplicity, but it also features seamless sign-in and sync so you can take your personalized web browsing experience with you wherever you go, across devices.




SpeedWith Chrome for Android, you can search, navigate and browse fast—Chrome fast. You can scroll through web pages as quickly as you can flick your finger. When searching, your top search results are loaded in the background as you type so pages appear instantly. And of course, both search and navigation can all be done quickly from the Chrome omnibox.


SimplicityChrome for Android is designed from the ground up for mobile devices. We reimagined tabs so they fit just as naturally on a small-screen phone as they do on a larger screen tablet. You can flip or swipe between an unlimited number of tabs using intuitive gestures, as if you're holding a deck of cards in the palm of your hands, each one a new window to the web.One of the biggest pains of mobile browsing is selecting the correct link out of several on a small-screen device. Link Preview does away with hunting and pecking for links on a web page by automatically zooming in on links to make selecting the precise one easier.And as with Chrome on desktop, we built Chrome for Android with privacy in mind from the beginning, including incognito mode for private browsing and fine-grained privacy options (tap menu icon, 'Settings,' and then 'Privacy').


Sign inYou can now bring your personalized Chrome experience with you to your Android phone or tablet. If you sign in to Chrome on your Android device, you can:
  • View open tabs: Access the tabs you left open on your computer (also signed into Chrome)—picking up exactly where you left off.
  • Get smarter suggestions: If you visit a site often on your computer, you'll also get an autocomplete suggestion for it on your mobile device, so you can spend less time typing.
  • Sync bookmarks: Conveniently access your favorite sites no matter where you are or which device you're using.
Chrome is now available in Beta from Android Market, in select countries and languages for phones and tablets with Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich. We're eager to hear your feedback. Finally, we look forward to working closely with the developer community to create a better web on a platform that defines mobile.


Posted by Sundar Pichai, SVP, Chrome and Apps


(Cross-posted from the Chrome blog and the Official Google blog)
URL: http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2012/02/introducing-chrome-for-android.html

[G] Vacation inspiration from travel experts at YouTube Vacationer

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 11:43 AM PST

YouTube Blog: Vacation inspiration from travel experts at YouTube Vacationer

If you're planning a vacation, check out the new YouTube Vacationer Channel. Vacationer is a one-rest-stop destination for travel videos from folks like National Geographic, LonelyPlanet and the TravelChannel, and is presented by Alamo Rent-A-Car.







Whether you're already planning spring break, getting ready for a road trip or hungry to experience new cuisines in exotic places, Vacationer can take you around the world and back. Not ready to leave the house? Vacationer also has travel eye-candy and on-the-road reporting, so you can broaden your horizons from the comfort of your home, couch or commute.



So pull over to the Vacationer Channel and start planning your next great adventure.



Alison Walker, lifestyle marketing program manager, recently watched "Hungry in San Francisco - Three Babes Bake Shop."


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/AAAs0blYX4g/vacation-inspiration-from-travel.html
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)