Plan your journey with Google Maps!

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Navigating the myriad road network of Indian cities is a challenge that all of us face everyday. One often wonders whether there is a better, maybe off-beat, way to get to the destination and ease the daily commute.

With the launch of driving directions for India on Google Maps^TM on desktop and mobile, you now have an option to explore ways to get from point A to point B anywhere in India. If you don't like the suggested route, you can just click and drag the blue route line to navigate through your favorite route. Even better, on your cell phone, just see where your friends are on Latitude, get directions to them and catch-up.

So, the next time you want to travel between cities like Bangalore to Mysore, or even within a city like Connaught Place to Vasant Vihar, you can use Google Maps to find your way around. Simply search for driving directions by typing "source to destination" like "Mumbai to Pune" in the search box. Or, right click on any location on the map and get directions to/from the location. You can also click on "Get Directions" and type the start and end addresses. e.g. Wilson College, Mumbai to Bandra Railway Station, Mumbai.

How about planning a multi-stop journey? Just click "Add Destinations" or drag the blue line and enter another stop on your journey.

Also, if you are a local expert, and see that there are some things that might need to be updated, such as old road names, unmarked one-ways or no-longer-in-use turns you can head over to Google Map Maker where you can edit them.

You can get more information on directions on our help pages for desktop and mobile .

Go ahead and take some of the hassle out of planning your next journey with Google Maps. Happy driving!

Posted by - Anand Srinivasan, Software Engineer, Zareer K'Maneck, Strategist Online Operations (Geo), Manik Gupta, Product Manager

What's a rich media ad, anyway?

Since last year's DoubleClick acquisition, we've increased our focus on helping marketers and agencies use Google tools for all of their display advertising needs. DoubleClick Rich Media is the part of DoubleClick that provides the technology for the most technically advanced and engaging of these display ads, which are typically created by creative agencies for their brand-focused clients. To help make this process even easier and efficient, today we're launching DoubleClick Studio, our new rich media production and development tool.

To describe rich media, it helps to think about other ad formats that we're all familiar with, starting with the simplest: text ads. With just a few keystrokes, anyone can create simple messages in a standardized format, and place them on a site like Google.com in minutes. Then we have standard display ads, ads that usually include text with a visual such as a logo or a graphic. These can be in formats we're all familiar with like .jpg, .gif, .swf and more. Standard display ads can either be static or animated with tools like Flash. They typically have only one interaction, meaning that when you click on them, you'll be taken to a destination site. And then at the most complex level, from a design and interaction perspective, we have rich media ads. With rich media, you can have ads that expand when users click or roll over, for example, and there are extensive possibilities for interactive content, such as HD video or even the ability to click to make a phone call.

But making a rich media ad possible requires much more complex technology to ensure that all of the ad behaviors function properly, that all of the interactions can be measured, and to serve the ads onto web pages. Every piece of the canvas, from the video play button to the button that allows for expansion, requires coding in Flash that's made possible by a rich media technology provider like DoubleClick Rich Media. With all of this complexity, there's also a lot of room for error. So in addition to enabling the development of the ads, tools like DoubleClick Studio provide quality analysis and preview functionalities to make sure that the ads work the way they should.

Here is a graphic that represents some of the differences between types of online ads:

With DoubleClick Studio, we hope to make it easier for our existing users to produce rich media ads, and to expand the number of advertisers that can make these useful formats part of their marketing strategy. This is also a good thing for Internet users; rich media capabilities make advertising even more useful, letting a viewer interact with an ad and learn about a brand without having to leave the page they're on. And, advertisers have an expanded creative canvas within the ad itself, allowing for deeper, higher-quality content in the ad itself. At Google, we believe that ads at their best are useful information.

To read more about DoubleClick Studio, visit the DoubleClick blog.

Posted by Shamim Samadi and Ari Paparo, DoubleClick Rich Media Team

11 short films about a browser

(Cross-posted from the Google Chrome Blog)

For those of us who live and work on the web, the browser is an unsung hero. It's become the most important piece of software on our computer, but rarely is it given proper recognition, let alone fêted.

We invited some creative friends to make short movies about our own browser, Google Chrome, and then watched as they came back with dozens of interesting ways to portray the browser. After finishing his video, artist and illustrator Christoph Niemann wrote to us about his approach:

"Instead of thinking of what I wanted to show, I tried to think about what I did NOT want to show. I realized that when I use a computer or browse the web these days, the one thing I do NOT think about is... a computer.

There was a time when I knew the meaning of every single item in my system folder and had to wisely allocate RAM to an application before burdening it with a complex task. Dealing with a computer has become much simpler these days (if everything works), but much more difficult and complex (especially if it doesn't behave) — almost like dealing with a living creature.

I wanted to find a simple metaphor that explains what a browser does, without showing a screen, a keyboard, the letters WWW, pixels, zeroes or ones.

Initially I thought of my mom (the browser) who brings me (the user) a plate of spaghetti bolognese (the Internet). But since spaghetti bolognese is not a rewarding thing to draw, let alone animate, I went for the next best metaphor, which can be seen in the animation."

Along with Christoph's video, there are great shorts by Motion Theory, Steve Mottershead, Go Robot, Open, Default Office, Hunter Gatherer, Lifelong Friendship Society, SuperFad, Jeff&Paul, and Pantograph. You can view the individual Chrome Shorts on our YouTube channel as well as a quick compilation below.



We're really excited about the imagination and range of their ideas, and we hope you enjoy them.

Posted by Ji Lee, Creative Lab

Experimental Flu Trends for Mexico

(Cross-posted on the Google.org Blog)

In November 2008, we launched Google Flu Trends after finding a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms. Google Flu Trends may be able to detect influenza outbreaks earlier than other systems because it estimates flu activity in near real time.

In response to recent inquiries from public health officials, we've been attempting to use Google search activity in Mexico to help track human swine flu levels. Experimental Flu Trends for Mexico is, as you might have guessed, very experimental. But the system has detected increases in flu-related searches in Mexico City (Distrito Federal) and a few other Mexican states in recent days, beginning early in the week of April 19-25.

In the United States, we were able to validate our estimates using data from a surveillance system managed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). We have not verified our data for Mexico in the same manner, but we've seen that Google users in Mexico (and around the world) also search for many flu-related topics when they have flu-like symptoms. Given the tremendous recent attention to swine flu, our model tries to filter out search queries that are more likely associated with topical searches rather than searches by those who may be experiencing symptoms.

While we would prefer to validate this data and improve its accuracy, we decided to release an early version today so that it might help public health officials and concerned individuals get an up-to-date picture of the ongoing swine flu outbreak. As with our existing Flu Trends system, estimates are provided across many of Mexico's states and updated every day. Our current estimates of flu activity in the U.S. are still generally low as would be expected given the relatively low confirmed swine flu case count. However, we'll be keeping an eye on the data to look for any spike in activity.

We're keenly aware of the trust our users place in us and our responsibility to protect their privacy. Experimental Flu Trends for Mexico -- like Google Flu Trends -- cannot be used to identify individual users. The patterns we observe are only meaningful across large populations of Google searchers. We hope that this experimental release provides useful information.

For updates on swine flu and information on how to stay healthy during a disease outbreak, visit the CDC's swine flu site.

Posted by Jeremy Ginsberg and Matt Mohebbi, Software Engineers

Live stream on YouTube: the President's First 100 Days News Conference

(Cross-posted from the YouTube Blog)

The first three months of the Obama Administration have brought the new American President unprecedented challenges. Back in November, when he was elected, everyone knew the economy and the Middle East would be critical issues for Obama to attack early on. But like every president before him, he's had to deal with the unexpected as well: who could have predicted pirates off the Somali Coast or swine flu?

As citizens and pundits from all political perspectives analyze the President's first 100 days in office today, Obama himself will address the nation tonight on the 100-day anniversary of his inauguration -- and we're going to carry a live stream of the conference from the White House YouTube channel. Be sure to tune in at 8pm EDT to watch it live.

We're also featuring commentary and analysis from top news organizations on our homepage today. Hear Karl Rove grade the President on Fox News. Get a re-cap from Al-Jazeera on what Obama has accomplished in his opening act. Watch the Washington Post talk with Americans in DC about their early impressions of the new President.

You can join in the conversation by making a video: How is the Obama Administration doing, and what advice would you give the President moving forward? Upload your thoughts to YouTube and add them as a video response to this Citizentube video, and we'll feature some of them on our News page tomorrow.

Finally, don't forget to come to youtube.com/whitehouse at 8pm EDT to watch President Obama address the nation.

Posted by Steve Grove, YouTube News & Politics

Adding search power to public data

Earthquakes are not the only thing that can shake Silicon Valley. After the dot-com bubble burst back in 2000 the unemployment rate of Santa Clara county went up to 9.1%. During the last couple of months, it has gone up again:


We just launched a new search feature that makes it easy to find and compare public data. So for example, when comparing Santa Clara county data to the national unemployment rate, it becomes clear not only that Santa Clara's peak during 2002-2003 was really dramatic, but also that the recent increase is a bit more drastic than the national rate:


If you go to Google.com and type in [unemployment rate] or [population] followed by a U.S. state or county, you will see the most recent estimates:


Once you click the link, you'll go to an interactive chart that lets you add and remove data for different geographical areas.

Here's a video showing how it works:


The data we're including in this first launch represents just a small fraction of all the interesting public data available on the web. There are statistics for prices of cookies, CO2 emissions, asthma frequency, high school graduation rates, bakers' salaries, number of wildfires, and the list goes on. Reliable information about these kinds of things exists thanks to the hard work of data collectors gathering countless survey forms, and of careful statisticians estimating meaningful indicators that make hidden patterns of the world visible to the eye. All the data we've used in this first launch are produced and published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau's Population Division. They did the hard work! We just made the data a bit easier to find and use.

Since Google's acquisition of Trendalyzer two years ago, we have been working on creating a new service that make lots of data instantly available for intuitive, visual exploration. Today's launch is a first step in that direction. We hope people will find this search feature helpful, whether it's used in the classroom, the boardroom or around the kitchen table. We also hope that this will pave the way for public data to take a more central role in informed public conversations.

This is just the beginning. Stay tuned for more.

Posted by Ola Rosling, Product Manager

Business in the cloud

There's a lot of interest in understanding cloud computing these days, so we thought we'd share some thoughts. If you're interested in hearing what we talk about when we talk about the role of cloud computing in business, check out our post on the Google Enterprise Blog.

Posted by Rajen Sheth, Senior Product Manager, Google Apps

Listening to Google Health users

At Google, we believe that consumers should have convenient and secure access to all their health data so that they can be better informed and be more involved in their care. Recently, a data-savvy patient known as e-Patient Dave blogged about data that was imported into his Google Health Account from his hospital in Boston, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Once he saw his data in Google Health, he saw diagnoses that were both alarming and wrong. Where did they come from?

It turns out that they came from the billing codes and associated descriptions used by the hospital to bill the patient's insurance company. These descriptions, from the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-9), often do not accurately describe a patient because the right ICD-9 code may not exist. So the doctor or hospital administrator chooses something that is "close enough" for billing purposes. In other cases, the assigned code is precisely what the doctor is trying to rule out, and if the patient turns out not to have that often scary diagnosis, it is still associated with their record. Google Health faithfully displayed the data we received on Dave's behalf. We and Beth Israel knew that this type of administrative data has its limitations but felt that patients would find it a good starting point. Too often, this is wrong.

At Google, we are constantly learning important lessons from our users. Two days after we learned about this issue, I met with Beth Israel CIO John Halamka, the patient's physician Dr. Danny Sands, and e-Patient Dave himself. We agreed on a reasonable plan: Beth Israel will stop sending ICD-9 billing codes and will instead only send to Google Health the free text descriptions entered by doctors. Beth Israel is also working with the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to associate those free text descriptions with a more clinically useful coding system called SNOMED-CT, so that we can offer patients useful services like automatic drug interaction checking. The result will be more accurate and useful information in patients' Google Health profiles.

This week, all four of us were also at a conference called Health 2.0 in Boston. Dave's story, and the lessons we all learned, were the focus of much discussion. We are grateful to Dave for his openness and passion for making things right. We're also glad this happened because we and many others now better understand the limitations of certain types of health data and we are working with partners to improve the quality of the data before it gets to Google Health and our users. We look forward to sharing what we learn with the broader community. We also learned that the patient community is surprisingly interested in understanding these data issues. Dave and his doctor Danny Sands collaborated on an informative post about different data vocabularies used in different aspects of healthcare. The patient-controlled "data liquidity" that Google Health supports is clearly an important part of the future of health care. We are more committed than ever to putting consumers in charge of their own health information.

Posted by Roni Zeiger, M.D., Product Manager, Google Health

Coming soon to YouTube: Besson's and Bertrand's environmental film project

Today we're pleased to share an exciting new project that taps into the power of YouTube and Google Maps to spread the word about the state of our planet. Luc Besson's and Yann-Arthus Betrand's 90 minute full-length film "Home" will exclusively be available online on YouTube for English, French, Spanish and German–speaking countries beginning June 5 — just in time for the 37th World Environment Day.

Through stunning displays of aerial camerawork, the film will give people from all corners of the world a glimpse of our planet like never before and visually demonstrate the urgency for preservation efforts. In addition to its Internet premiere, "Home" will be shown in movie theaters and outdoors on big screens at key locations around the globe. It will also air on TV stations around the world. Using this unique distribution model, one with a massive online and offline effort, the film creators are able to reach the widest audience possible. So whether you'd prefer to head to the theaters, watch it under the stars, or just stay put on the couch — the way you view "Home" is up to you.

And starting today, YouTube channels in English, French, Spanish and German will feature behind-the-scenes looks from the making of the film, as well as interviews, and extras. To add even more dimension, Google Maps is featuring specially created layers that shed more light on some of the material covered in the movie. You can also use Maps to find a theater location near you.

To get a preview of what you can expect on June 5, check out some of the spectacular footage in the Home YouTube channel, like the video below of the Arctic world and its wild terrain that's essential to preserve. Or this one of Los Angeles exclusively seen from the sky, giving us a new perspective of the cityscape at night. And please respond and react to the film via video responses, comments, and ratings and share links via email with your friends.



Posted by Mats Carduner, Head of Google France and Southern Europe

Engineering a healthier diet

Back in 2007, the cafes at our Mountain View campus started color-coding menu items according to healthfulness. The healthiest items are colored green ("go ahead, pile it on!"), foods you should portion-control are yellow, and foods you should eat sparingly -- in the words of my favorite recently reformed blue monster, "sometimes foods" -- are red.

While the whole point of the color-coding was to encourage healthy eating, and Google certainly makes it very easy for one to do that, I quickly realized that all of my favorite food items were colored red on the menus. Since all of the cafe menus are posted to separate pages of our intranet, it took too long to look through them to find the one or two items that would hook me into eating at a particular cafe for the day. So I decided to write a script that scans all the pages and creates a single unified menu of just the "heart-stoppingly good" food in all of the Mountain View cafes. (The nutritionist at Google at the time called them "least healthy" rather than "heart-stoppingly good.")

It took only a few minutes to write the script for the menus as they existed on the first day I ran it, but there were complications as each following day's menus started rolling in. Not all the chefs were using the same programs to create HTML menus, so the colors were all marked up differently in each. Every morning, I found I needed to add special cases to handle the various HTML variations to the original awk script that I'd started with. Every chef had a different idea of which color should be used for red items, green items and yellow items (the favored color for "yellow" text on white background is actually orange), so I ended up having to write a formula to perceptually classify the colors (by hue angle). Plus, I started to learn how hard things must be for someone who is blind or colorblind when reading web pages. To solve that problem, I had the program generate well-structured HTML with CSS classes applied to each menu item to handle things in a consistent way that was easy to filter by XPath.

After I finished the script, I sent a link to the new web page to an internal food discussion mailing list, and soon enough I was receiving fan mail. What I'd intended to be a tool for my own personal use proved so popular that, early this year, the chefs at Google asked if I could expand the tool to include support for historical statistics. They wanted to keep track of which cafes had the greenest menus over time. The result is a tool that tracks the healthiness of all menu items at Google cafes around the world. You can see every color menu item in a single menu and toggle colors on and off as desired, depending on how you want to browse the menus. So I can look only at red items if I'm in the mood for pepperoni pizza or roasted garlic mashed potatoes. And if I want leafy greens, I can limit the menu to show only the healthiest dishes. It has other uses, too: a cafe in Switzerland, for example, could use the stats page (filled with graphs generated using the Google Chart API) to compete with a cafe in Mountain View for the title of "healthiest cafe." In fact, all the Google cafes worldwide are now in a heated competition now for this very title.

If you suspect I've gone "green," and if my mom is reading this: I have. I'm eating healthier, I've had my cholesterol checked, and I walk at least three miles every day. For everyone else, don't worry -- after I produced the healthiest cafe statistics page, I also made another set of graphs that ranks by red items. If you see me eating red items at Google, please don't tell my mom.

Posted by Nathan Laredo, Software Engineer

Project Spectrum: recognizing the talents of children with autism

A couple of years ago, the Google SketchUp team began hearing from a new group of users -- people on the autism spectrum. After consulting with some experts, we learned the connection between autism and SketchUp isn't particularly surprising. Many people on the autism spectrum have visual and spatial strengths, and 3D design software plays to them. With this in mind, we started a program called Project Spectrum.

As part of Autism Awareness Month in April, we've launched a new webpage showcasing some great SketchUp artists (Rachel, Jeremy, JP and others). We've also created a Getting Started with Google SketchUp video for anyone who wants to learn the basic tools to start modeling. More of the Project Spectrum models can be seen in the Google 3D Warehouse collection. Watch the video below to hear the story behind Project Spectrum and meet some of the kids involved:



Googlers around the world are working with the autism community to introduce kids, teachers, parents and adults to SketchUp, and we've been inspired by the results. We hope you take the time to look at Project Spectrum and share it with others in your community. For more detail, check out the Google SketchUp blog.

Posted by Tom Wyman and Chris Cronin, Project Spectrum Team

Try out new features in Google Toolbar Labs

One of the best things about working on the Google Toolbar team is that when someone says "Wouldn't it be great if Toolbar could...," our answer is usually "Yes! Let's build it!" And then it's just a question of when. To test these ideas more easily, today we're introducing Google Toolbar Labs. Just as Google Labs and Gmail Labs are playgrounds for new ideas, Toolbar Labs was built to get ideas out there quickly to see how you like them.

And now we're ready to roll out our first two Labs versions of Toolbar. Drum roll, please...

Google Toolbar with My Location

Back in September, the Mobile team launched Mobile Search with My Location. Looking at this, we wanted to figure our how we could bring the same convenience of typing fewer words to computer users. With Toolbar with My Location, both Google Maps and the included Maps gadget automatically center on your current location. Similarly, you can just do a search like [thai food], and you will receive a list of nearby restaurants and more local Google search results. This feature is similar to IP-based local search results announced earlier this month, except Google Toolbar with My Location can determine a more accurate location by using nearby Wi-Fi access points. This is done without associating location information with a user's Google Account. Google Toolbar with My Location is only available in the U.S.


Google Simplified Chinese Toolbar

We recognize that due to differences in local language structures, users who speak other languages may have specific needs for browsing the web. To address this, our team in China developed a slightly different Toolbar concept called the Google Simplified Chinese Toolbar (Google工具栏简体中文版). We updated the user interface to use the space more effectively, and users will be able to translate pages with a single click and manage bookmarks with a new sidebar. This toolbar is only available in Simplified Chinese.

A few things to keep in mind as you check out Toolbar Labs: It's a forum to test out new ideas, so some of these ideas will make it into the standard Toolbar, but others may not. Also, Labs versions are not as well-tested as beta versions, so they may be slightly more unstable. And Toolbar Labs is currently available for Internet Explorer only.

We hope to bring you the next batch soon. Meanwhile, we look forward to hearing your feedback on these two new toolbars!

Posted by Aseem Sood and Susan Taing, Toolbar Product Team

Congratulations to NSF CLuE Grant awardees

(Cross-posted from the Google Research Blog)

The first goal of the Academic Cluster Computing Initiative was to familiarize the academic community with the methods necessary to run very large datasets on massive distributed computer networks. By expanding that program to include research grants through the National Science Foundation's Cluster Exploratory (CLuE) program, we're also hoping to enable new and better approaches to data-intensive research across a range of disciplines.

Now that the NSF has announced the 2009 CLuE grants in addition to some previous Small Grant for Exploratory Research (SGER) grants, we're excited to congratulate the recipient researchers and wish them the best as they bring new projects online and continue to run existing SGER projects on the Google/IBM cluster.

The NSF selected projects based on their potential to advance computer science as well as to benefit society as a whole, and researchers at 14 institutions are tackling ambitious problems in everything from computer science to bioinformatics. The institutions receiving CLuE grants are Purdue, UC Santa Barbara, University of Washington, University of Massachussetts-Amherst, UC San Diego, University of Virginia, Yale, MIT, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Carnegie-Mellon, University of Maryland- College Park, University of Utah and UC Irvine. Florida International University, Carnegie-Mellon and University of Maryland will continue other projects with exiting SGER grants. These grantees will run their projects on a Google/IBM-provided cluster running an open source implementation of Google's MapReduce and File System.

We're excited to help foster new approaches to difficult, data-intensive problems across a range of fields, and we can't wait to see more students and researchers come up with creative applications for massive, highly distributed computing.

Posted by Jeff Walz, Head of University Relations, and Andrea Held, Program Manager

IPL scores, commodity prices, local time and richer train info - more power in your hands with Google SMS Search !

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Looking for live IPL scores, current time in New York, today’s gold price, availability of seats or fares for trains from Bangalore to Mumbai ?

We have recently enhanced our SMS Search offering to bring you all that and more. A simple SMS to 9-77-33-00000 gives you instant access to Google SMS Search and that too at the cost of a normal SMS.

SMS ‘cri’ to 9-77-33-00000 to get much more than just international match scores; send 'cri ipl' for instant IPL scores, 'cri ipl ' (for example 'cri ipl knight riders') for your favorite team score and 'cri ranji' for domestic match updates.

Apart from stock prices, we now provides commodity prices as well. Just SMS 'price gold', 'price oil', or 'price cotton' to know the MCX spot prices for these commodities. To learn more, sms 'help commodity' to 9-77-33-00000.

Trying to call a friend in New York and wondering what time it is for him ? For an instant update on local time in any city or country in the world, simply sms 'time ' to 9-77-33-00000. For example 'time new york'

Didn't you wish you could do more than just getting your PNR status and train schedule on SMS ? We now provide seat availability and fare information as well. For ex. to check seat availability for 24th April on train #1018, going from Bangalore to Mumbai, simply sms 'train avail 1018 Bangalore to Mumbai on 24-04' or if you want to know the fare for sleeper class, sms 'train fare 1018 Bangalore to Mumbai for SL'. To learn more, sms 'help train' to 9-77-33-00000.

To learn more about various interesting features, please visit http://www.google.co.in/sms or SMS 'help' to 9-77-33-00000.

Posted by Deepali Singla and Naga Naresh, Software Engineers, SMS Search Team

Smarter shopping on smartphones

This weekend my wife and I went shopping for a birthday present for our 5-year-old nephew, and as usual we were looking for a gift at the last minute. We found ourselves in the toy aisle of a local store, unsure what to buy or how much these toys should cost. It could have been a stressful experience, but luckily I was able to reach into my pocket and use Google Product Search on my G1 to quickly see that the price of a building set was reasonable and that the reviews for a DVD were generally positive.

I'm happy to announce that as of today, when you type a product query on Google.com in your iPhone or Android browser, you'll get Google Product Search results nicely formatted for your phone. You can see online ratings, reviews, prices, and product details if you're out and about, or just do some mobile web surfing from your couch. Whether you're trying to decide between two digital cameras while you're in a store or checking out prices for a new product that you've just seen on TV, we hope Google Product Search for mobile helps you to make better-informed shopping choices.

Below, you can see Rob, one of our engineers, go on a shopping adventure at our Mountain View headquarters.

 

Visit the Google Mobile Blog or Help Center to learn more. Or try it out by going to Google.com on your Android or iPhone device, type in a shopping query and then select the 'Shopping results' link. (Note that the experience is enabled for U.S. and U.K. users only.)

Posted by Yury Pinsky, Product Manager, Google Mobile team

Happy Earth Day, Earthlings

Googlers around the world are celebrating Earth Day today by participating in events from green-themed film screenings in Singapore and Hyderabad, to a local food event in Kirkland, WA and Bike to Work Day in London. At our Mountain View campus, we're holding an environmental fair and hosting talks all week long as part of our Green@Google speaker series.

We're also giving employees in most of our offices around the world next-generation, super-efficient LED light bulbs to encourage energy efficiency. (LEDs use up to 90% less energy than incandescent bulbs and 50% less energy than a CFL.) In the average U.S. home, lighting accounts for about 20% of the electricity bill. If every Googler changes out one incandescent light bulb for one of these LEDs, the combined impact would be the equivalent of taking over 4,000 cars off the road for one year!

Of course, installing efficient light bulbs is just one way to cut down on energy consumption and costs. Just in time for Earth Day, the Climate Savers Computing Initiative's Power Down for the Planet pledge campaign aimed at colleges and universities wrapped up last week. More than 17,000 students took the pledge to support more efficient computing. The University of Maine at Farmington won the challenge, beating out 18 other schools with more than 24% of their campus community taking the pledge. You too can help save energy by enabling power management on your computer and buying more efficient computers.

As you take a moment today to think about how you can make our lovely patch of blue and green a little more healthy, we encourage you to explore a special gallery of Google Earth layers we compiled to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth's environment. With the power of Google Earth, we have the ability to visualize geo-spatial information and help us better understand the true impact humankind has on the planet. For example, you can visualize the changes in glaciers over the years, rising sea levels and climatic change and rising temperature from the feature KMLs in our Gallery.

Like others have said before us, we like to think that every day is Earth Day. But on this 39th anniversary of the official Earth Day, we're showing Mother Earth a little extra love and care, and hope that you'll be doing the same.

Posted by Lacy Caruthers, Green Business and Operations Strategy

Share your passion for Indian food through the Indian Cooking Knol-edge Contest!

Are you tempted to preserve your family recipes when you spot "Just like mother used to make" next to a delicious curry on a roadside dhaba menu? Do you have a unique take on chai or biryani that you want to share with the rest of the world? Here's your chance! Google is launching the Indian Cooking Knol-edge Contest to find the best recipe in five Indian languages (Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam) based on the recent launch of Indic Transliteration on Knol. Indic Transliteration helps you type in Indian languages using an English keyboard. For example, you type Hindi words with English alphabets and the Hindi word that you've written with English alphabets will be converted into Hindi characters after you hit Space or Enter. For example, typing "aloo" in English transliterates into Hindi as आलू . Similarly, "urulakizhangu" becomes உருளைகிழங்கு in Tamil and ഉരുളകിഴങ്ങ് in Malayalam while "bangaladumpa" becomes ಬಂಗಳದುಮ್ಪ in Telugu and "aalugadde" becomes ಆಲುಗಡ್ಡೆ in Kannada.

Master Chef Sanjeev Kapoor, one of the most well-recognized faces of Indian cuisine, will be the judge of the contest. As the host of Khana Khazana, one of the longest running TV shows in the history of Indian television, he continues to share his love for cooking with millions. This contest is being run on Knol, which is a powerful new Google product that enables users to share their expert knowledge in a well-organized, easy manner and highlight their authorship of this content. Knol was born out of the recognition that we need a tool to unlock the incredible knowledge of millions of people that is not readily available on the web today. The launch of Indic Transliteration on Knol has further opened doors for more users to share high-quality content in Indian languages. By bringing both Chef Sanjeev Kapoor and Knol together through this contest, we are offering users a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to share their passion for Indian food and a chance at showcasing their culinary genius to the world. Prizes worth 150 USD for each winner and Google goodies for the next 40 shortlisted entrants won't hurt either!

For everything else you need to know about the contest from the steps for writing a Knol in Indian languages to the detailed rules and regulations, please visit the Indian Cooking Knol-edge Contest now.

Jayadev Vadakkanmarveettil, Consumer Operations Strategist and Rahul Roy-chowdhury, Product Manager

Search for "me" on Google

It's no secret that from time to time many of us have searched on Google for our name or someone else's. When searching for yourself to see what others would find, results can be varied and aren't always what you want people to see — whether it's someone else with your name, or the finishing time from that 5K you ran back in 2002. We want to make that better and give you more of a voice.

To give you greater control over what people find when they search for your name, we've begun to show Google profile results at the bottom of U.S. name-query search pages. These results offer abbreviated information from user-created Google profiles and a link to the full profiles. We've also added links so it's easy to search for the same name on MySpace, Facebook, Classmates and LinkedIn.


Don't have a Google profile? Just search for [me] and follow the instructions at the top of the page to create one. In just a few minutes, you can create a public profile that represents you and that appears when people search for your name on Google. Check out www.google.com/profiles to learn more.

Posted by Brian Stoler, Software Engineer

GSA contest results are in

Back in February we announced a contest to discover how "findable" the Google Search Appliance (GSA) is in offices across the U.S. The GSA gives businesses of all shapes and sizes the power of universal search. In order to discover exactly how the GSA is helping businesses, we asked our customers to submit photos of their shiny yellow box with an explanation of how enterprise search has made their job easier.

The results are in and we have chosen two grand prize winners who will attend an all-expenses paid trip to the Google IO Conference in May. Check out one of the winning photos below from WellStar Health Systems, one of the largest not-for-profit health care systems in the Southeast, based in the Atlanta area. You can read their story and more on the Enterprise Blog.

Keeping "operations" running smoothly

Posted by Dave Kim, Associate Product Marketing Manager

Hard at play in Google Labs with Similar Images and Google News Timeline

At Google, we are constantly researching, designing, and brainstorming about the next big idea, and when we think we've found something compelling, we often use our "20-percent time" to build a working version. Back in 2002, we created Google Labs to give these budding experiments a home where users could try them and share their thoughts with us. Some of our most popular products began this way, including Google Maps, iGoogle, and Google News.

In keeping with our long-standing tradition of bringing new ideas to our users early in the development process, we're proud to welcome two new innovations to Google Labs: Similar Images and Google News Timeline.

Similar Images

Image Search is a tool you can use to find just about any kind of image, but it can sometimes be difficult to find the right image if you can't describe it in words. The new Similar Images feature was developed with just this in mind. Using it you can now find images that look like an existing result simply by clicking on a link. Using visual similarity, you don't have to refine the text of your search, instead, you can just click on the link of an image you like. For example, if you search for [jaguar], you can use the "Similar images" link to quickly narrow your search.

Image Search results will vary for the query [jaguar]:


With one click, we can help you find more pictures of the [cat]:


Or more pictures of the brand of [car]:


You might try exploring the pyramids of Egypt or discovering the Forbidden City. Or you might go shopping for an elegant evening gown or that perfect pair of shoes. So if you see an image you like, but you're stumped on how to describe it, just click the "Similar images" link to see more like it.

Interested in learning more? Check out this video tour.



Google News Timeline

Google News Timeline organizes information chronologically by presenting results from Google News and other data sources on a zoomable, graphical timeline. You can navigate through time by dragging the timeline, setting the time scale to days, weeks, months, years, or decades, or just including a time period in your query (i.e., "1977"). To see this in action, check out the results viewed by month in the summer of 2006.

Google News Timeline can present results from lots of different sources, including both recent and archival news, scanned newspapers and magazines, blog posts, and sports scores and media like music and movies. You can view multiple sources simultaneously, allowing each source to lend context to the others. Try out some of our favorite queries like [jack nicholson movies], [barack obama quotes], and [baseball news photos]. To read more, check out our post on the Google News Blog.

Google Labs reloaded

These are just two examples of Google's innovation at play, with plenty more to come. In order to keep up with our engineers, we decided it was time to remodel Google Labs to make room for more — you guessed it — innovation! We started with the foundation: we rebuilt the service from scratch using Google App Engine, and we moved it to a new home at www.googlelabs.com. We also redesigned the website to make it easy and fun to discover new experiments as they arrive and to follow them as they evolve. We even added an RSS feed and an iGoogle gadget to make it easier to stay up to date.

When you visit the site, you can also hear from the innovators themselves and share your thoughts, helping us shape your favorite experiments into future Google products. So come early and come often and bring your adventurous spirit — after all, we're building these experimental products and features for you!

Posted by Chuck Rosenberg, Similar Images, Andy Hertzfeld, Google News Timeline, and Michael Cohen, Google Labs

Google Latitude on orkut- share your live location with friends

[x] http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=6296508887730508910&postID=6128274519191550303

[x] http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=6296508887730508910&postID=6128274519191550303

Some of you may have heard about the recent launch of Google Latitude, a fun new way to share your live location with friends. For those of you who aren't familiar, Google Latitude is a feature of Google Maps for Mobile that lets you (if you choose to opt-in) share your whereabouts and receive updates about your friends' approximate locations.

While we've already launched an iGoogle gadget, we knew that our launch couldn't be complete without bringing this to orkut. That's why a group of us on the Google Mobile team have created a Google Latitude application.



With this app, you can share your location and see your friends' locations on a map inside of orkut. Notice that an old friend is back in your hometown? Just click on her photo and send a scrap or head to her profile page and see what she's up to.

If you use Google Latitude from your mobile phone, you can even send your friends updates on your location while you're out and about, making it easier to bump into the people you care about.

Of course, none of this would be very much fun at all if you didn't have control over what and when you share and who you share it with. We've taken Latitude's privacy features very seriously and invite you to learn more about them in either the Help Center or by watching this privacy video.

Excited? Add the app and let your friends know where you are!

Posted by Surojit Chatterjee, Google Mobile Team

Introducing the Google Lime Scholarship

Today, we're pleased to announce the most recent addition to our scholarship programs, the Google Lime Scholarship for Students with Disabilities. We're partnering with Lime to offer scholarships to students with disabilities who are pursuing university degrees in the field of computer science in Canada or the U.S. Lime is a not-for-profit organization that brings together global corporations and people with disabilities, bringing to light an untapped source of talent. Scholarships will be granted for the 2009–2010 academic year, and recipients will be invited to attend an all-expenses-paid retreat at the Googleplex in Mountain View in 2010.

We hope that this program will increase opportunities for students with disabilities and encourage them to pursue careers in computer science. We also hope to foster long-lasting relationships through which these students can support each other over the course of their academic studies.

The deadline to apply for this year's Lime Scholarship is June 1, 2009. For complete details, visit www.google.com/jobs/scholarships.

Posted by Meghan O'Farrell, Talent and Outreach Programs Specialist

YouTube Symphony Orchestra: from idea to reality

(Cross-posted from the YouTube Blog)

Today represents the final culmination of an idea many months in the making: a first-class global orchestra brought together by YouTube. This week, over 90 musicians from around the world -- including a Spanish guitarist, a Dutch harpist and a Lithuanian birbyne player — have gathered in New York City in preparation for tonight's historic YouTube Symphony Orchestra performance at Carnegie Hall. And today on YouTube's homepage, we are proud to present the world premiere of Tan Dun's composition "Internet Symphony, Eroica," as selected and mashed up from nearly 3,000 video submissions from around the globe.

Maestro — the mash-up, please!



Along with the "Eroica" premiere, we're also posting exclusive behind-the-scenes footage of the preparation leading up to tonight's performance. Learn more about the YouTube Symphony Orchestra by watching candid vlogs, early rehearsals with conductor and creative director Michael Tilson Thomas, and meet-and-greets between the musicians lucky enough to participate in this once-in-a-lifetime event. Many thanks to our "Vlog Squad" team of classical musicians (Caeli Smith, Jeremy Denk, and Eiko Sudoh), and to Harmony Films, who are currently putting together a full-length documentary on the YouTube Symphony Orchestra.

And for those of you who can't make it to New York in time for the big show, don't fret. We'll be posting the full performance from Carnegie Hall on YouTube tomorrow at www.youtube.com/symphony.

Posted by Michele Flannery, YouTube Music

An ARIA for Google Moderator

From time to time, our own T.V. Raman shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see -- tips that sighted people, among others, may also find useful. - Ed.

Google-AxsJAX was launched in late 2007 as a library for access-enabling Web-2.0 applications. Since then, we have released accessibility enhancements for many Web-2.0 applications via the AxsJAX site as early experiments that have eventually graduated into full-fledged products. Just recently we posted about using the AxsJAX library to provide ARIA enhancements for Google Calendar, Google Finance and Google News. Now we are happy to share an early AxsJAX extension for Google Moderator that enables fluent eyes-free use of the tool.

For details about AxsJAX enhancements, see the AxsJAX FAQ. Briefly, you need Firefox 3.0 and a screenreader that supports W3C ARIA to take advantage of these enhancements. Users who do not have a screenreader installed can most easily experience the results by installing Fire Vox, a freely available self-voicing extension for Firefox.

You can activate the AxsJAX enhancement for Google Moderator either by clicking on the link that says "Click here for ARIA enhanced Google Moderator" or by accessing the ARIA-enhanced version directly. After enabling the enhancement, you can use Google Moderator via the keyboard, with all user interaction producing spoken feedback via W3C ARIA.

Here is a brief overview of the experience:

1. The user interface is divided into logical panes — one listing topic areas, and the other listing questions on a given topic. At times (e.g., before a meeting), you may find an additional Featured Question pane that shows a randomly selected question that you can vote on.
2. Users can ask new questions under a given topic, or give a thumbs-up/thumbs-down to questions that have already been asked.
3. Use the left and right arrow keys to switch between the two panes. You hear the title of the selected pane as you switch.
4. Use up and down arrows to navigate among the items in the selected pane. As you navigate, you hear the current item.
5. Hit enter to select the current item.
6. The current item can be magnified by repeatedly pressing the + (or =) key. To reduce magnification, press the - key.
7. When navigating the questions in a given topic, hit y or n to vote a question up or down.
8. When navigating items in the topic pane, hit a to ask a question. Once you confirm your request to post the question, it will show up in the list of questions for that topic so that others can vote that question up or down.

Please visit the Google Group for accessibility to provide feedback. This AxsJAX extension is still a work in progress, so we'd love to hear from you as we continue to work out the kinks.

Update on 4/14: Clarified in the second and third paragraphs that you do not need to install this enhancement. You can access it directly from Google Moderator.

Posted by Posted by T. V. Raman, Research Scientist, and Charles L. Chen, Software Engineer