Nexuiz 2.4 has been released

Lee Vermeulen's brainchild Nexuiz is a fast-paced first-person shooter, better comparable to Unreal Tournament than to Quake, though based on latter's engine. Release 2.4 has been available for some hours now. Time to grab a copy and freaking play it. But first, let me bore you some. (Not recommended, skip following paragraphs, you could be fragging already! Time is money! Go shoot stuff!)

Nexuiz is not just a remake of a UT or Q shooter, it contains many advanced and even some innovative features! Rockets can be destroyed by Bullets and if the timing is right, they will explode right into their shooter's face. The laser gun is the main method of movement, allowing alternative "rocket"-jumps without too much pain. Also you have the ability to make your rockets explode mid-air, which on one hand means that you don't have to aim for the ground and on the other hand allows you a combination of laser- and rocket-jumps - provided you have enough health and armor. The last two features make "capture the flag" a very fast-paced game mode.

I would tell you about the glowing balls which you can shoot and then make explode chain-reaction-wise but I think the video documents this better...

The gui of nex has been referred to as "some ugly version of Unreal Tournament" before. But this fact has apparently changed. To tell the truth I don't know yet, because for some reason I decided to first spread the happy news, before playing. Stupid. Check out the video, and check out the new homepage. Oh and by the way, the download link is here, in case you missed it.

See you on a server soon I hope... 15 minutes left to download...

Bedtime

Tired today. Sorry for lack of details.

Daimonin (2D MMORPG) got a new website. Spiffy.

Warsow 0.42. It's a fast multiplayer FPS.

Ace video on Nexuiz, looks fancy FPS.

There's an RC out for VDrift release 2008-02-23, the "next gen" car game. (I don't quite get the notion of an RC for dated releases.

Vega Strike needs nvidia users to test before release due to an unknown number of cards affected by a buggy driver (boo for closed source).

I'm... Zzzzzz...

Hello, Pittsburgh

Posted by Andrew Moore, Engineering Director

On Tuesday, March 4, the Google Pittsburgh office will open its doors to the technical community for a special evening. We'll kick things off with some mingling over beer, wine and snacks, and then transition into a tech talk with one of our local engineers, Pat Stephenson.

Pat will discuss the implementation of Dapper, a low-overhead system for monitoring the performance of large, distributed applications at Google, and the tools his team has built to analyze the data in a talk titled "Dapper: It's 11 p.m. and do you know where your RPC is?"

We hope to create a collegial atmosphere where members of the technical community can learn from and get to know one another.

If you're in the Pittsburgh area, please join us. Space is limited, however, so hurry and register.

Bringing it all together

Posted by Scott Johnston, Senior Product Manager (former VP of Products at JotSpot)

Many of you have been waiting for JotSpot to re-emerge, integrated into Google -- and now it's happening. Here's the story:

In the last 10 years, the way all of us work has changed. We've grown accustomed to always being connected through email and instant messaging. Consequently, people are working together in teams more often, with larger groups, and with others who may be in different parts of the country or the world. We are shifting our focus from personal to team productivity. It's less about "you" and more about "us."

But with this explosion in collaboration, how do you bring together everything your team needs to work? How do you take information, whether it is on your desktop or online, and share it with specific groups of people -- your team, the company, the public?

Meet Google Sites, the newest addition to the Google Apps product suite. It was designed to allow you to easily create a network of sites and share them with whomever you choose. Google Sites lets you pull together information from across Google Apps by embedding documents, spreadsheets, presentations, videos, and calendars in your sites. Of course, we also harness the power of Google search technology so your search results are always fast and relevant.

What does it take to start using Google Sites? Just a click of a button -- that's it. Here's an overview with more detail:



We're just finishing up the code to migrate existing JotSpot customer wikis to Google sites, so if you're already a JotSpot customer, you'll be hearing from us soon on how to make the switch.

If you aren't a Google Apps customer yet and want to use Google Sites, sign up at http://sites.google.com.

Google Health, a first look

Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP, Search & User Products

It's been a busy week for the Google Health team. Last week we announced our partnership and pilot with the Cleveland Clinic. This week, the team has been at the HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society) conference in Orlando, Florida, where Eric Schmidt gave the closing keynote. Eric's keynote marks the first time we've talked publicly about the product we've been designing and building. His talk also offered a deeper view into our overall health strategy. (Watch the video.)

Google Health aims to solve an urgent need that dovetails with our overall mission of organizing patient information and making it accessible and useful. Through our health offering, our users will be empowered to collect, store, and manage their own medical records online.

For the healthcare industry, online personal health records (PHRs) aren't a new idea and, in some cases, online PHRs already exist for patients. Here's what we think sets Google Health apart:

• Privacy and Security - Due to the sensitive and personal nature of the data that will be stored in Google Health, we need to conduct our health service with the same privacy, security, and integrity users have come to expect in all our services. Google Health will protect the privacy of your health information by giving you complete control over your data. We won't sell or share your data without your explicit permission. Our privacy policy and practices have been developed in thoughtful collaboration with experts from the Google Health Advisory Council.
  

• Platform - One of the most exciting and innovative parts of Google Health is our platform strategy. We're assembling a directory of third-party services that interoperate with Google Health. Right now, this means you'll be able to automatically import information such as your doctors' records, your prescription history, and your test results into Google Health in order to easily access and control your data. Later, this platform strategy will mean that you will be able to interact with services and tools easily, and will be able to do things like schedule appointments, refill prescriptions, and start using new wellness tools.
  

• Portability - Our Internet presence ultimately means that through Google Health, you will be able to have access and control over your health data from anywhere. Through the Cleveland Clinic pilot, we have already found great use-cases in which, for example, people spend 6 months of the year in Ohio, and 6 months of the year in Florida or Arizona, and will now be able to move their health data between their various health providers seamlessly and with total control. Previously, this would have required carrying paper records back and forth. With Google Health, the user can simply import the data from each medical facility and then choose to share it with the other facilities. It's advances in data portability like this that we think can really make a difference in the quality of healthcare. The clearer and more comprehensive the information regarding your health becomes, the better your care will be.
  

• User focus - We aren't doctors or healthcare experts, but one thing Google can create is a clean, easy-to-use user experience that makes managing your health information straightforward and easy. We're still iterating and testing our user interface, but here is what the welcome screen looks like:
  
  Here is a screenshot deeper in the application:
  
  
• We're proud of the product that we've designed and are continuing to build, but recognize that we are just at the initial stages of our "launch early and iterate" strategy. We look forward to the feedback we will receive from our Cleveland Clinic pilot, from all of you, and from the initial users of our service when we make it publicly available in the coming months.

Update: Added link to video of Eric's talk; refreshed second screenshot.

Project CARE in San Francisco

Posted by Craig Walker, Senior Product Manager

As we mentioned last fall, GrandCentral's Project CARE initiative, which provides permanent telephone numbers and voicemail services to the homeless, has partnered with San Francisco's Project Homeless Connect (PHC) to support the city's homeless as they get back on their feet.

Today, Mayor Gavin Newsom will announce plans to give every homeless person in San Francisco a local phone number and voicemail account through Project CARE. We're thrilled to be a part of this effort, and as a first step towards simplifying the process of setting up a phone number and voicemail, we're rolling out a website where shelters and agencies across the city can create new accounts. Project CARE will also be visiting both city-owned and private shelters to help introduce this new system, assist the staff in familiarizing with the process, and answer any questions.

We're firm believers in the power of technology to improve the daily lives of individuals and communities as a whole, and we recognize that access to phone and voicemail services is one way that GrandCentral can help San Francisco's homeless stay connected with family, friends, social workers, health care providers, and potential employers.

While we're excited to bring this technology to our local Bay Area community, our ultimate goal is to provide these invaluable services to cities and shelters across the country.

If you're in San Francisco and would like to learn more about Project CARE's work with PHC, please join us at today's Project Homeless Connect 21 at the Billy Graham Civic Auditorium. If you can't make it to the event, check out Project Homeless Connect's website.

Searching right to left

Posted by Josh Daniel, Software Engineer

Many of us in the English-searching world don't realize that a large portion of the world's population writes (and types) right-to-left. For the Arabic, Hebrew, and other right-to-left searchers of the world, searching just got a little easier. If you're searching from a supported local interface (e.g. google.co.il/ or google.com.eg/) we now dynamically detect the direction of your query.

Enter a query like [افرض مثلآ] or [מכבי חיפה] and your query will align right so you can type to the left. Enter a query like [2008 world cup soccer] or [(5 - 3) * 32] and it will align left so you can type to the right. Enter a mixed query like [SMS משלוח] and we'll set the alignment and overall direction based (roughly) on the first word.

We've enjoyed learning about bidirectional issues. Enabling applications for bidirectionality is especially tricky because any sentence or phrase may contain a mix of left-to-right text (e.g. English, numbers), right-to-left text (e.g. Arabic, Hebrew), and neutral text (e.g. punctuation). The rules for displaying the direction of characters in individual words are different from the rules for displaying the direction of words in a phrase. Things are further complicated due to widely varying limitations across web browsers.

We hope you'll enjoy the improved search experience!

Develicious

SuperTuxKart 0.4rc1 has been released. It replaces the physics engine with bullet for collisions, and subsequently is far more fun to play. Some track improvements, a new character, better AI, music, and other features. I'll be honest, I thought 0.3 was unplayable because of the terrible collisions. I had a quick go of 0.4rc1 and it's much more fun. I still think the tracks are generally lacking but the game being more fun should encourage more contributors so hopefully we'll see some good tracks contributed this year.

If you love MarioKart or just love SuperTuxKart, and have some good ideas for tracks, sketch them down and contact the STK team who are very receptive. Also they are looking for original gameplay ideas to give STK it's own identity, so contribute those too if you have any.

FreeTrain

Bloodmasters

There's been a major development with the FreeTrain project. For those who don't remember, I ran a campaign asking for help translating FreeTrain to English. It's a mature open source game but was, until last year, only available in Japanese. We got it translated, but it was very Windows/.NET dependent and porting to SDL/Mono proved tricky. With the effort stalled, I asked on the Mono mailing list if anybody might be able to help. Within a few days a Mono developer provided a patch to make FreeTrain build against Mono! It still doesn't run, but things are a lot easier already and a Mono/SDL version should run on Linux and MacOSX, which will breathe new life into the project and it's community. Looks like 2008 could be a good year for FreeTrain. :-)

The FreeTrain project is looking for able C# developers (there are plenty and not-so-many C# games) to make it rock on Mono/SDL so don't be shy if you are a C# guy. ;-)

I reported yesterday that Bloodmasters was going to be released under an open source license - well developer Pascal vd Heiden was not just true to his word but very fast to act, and it can now be found in SVN on the Sourceforge project. The game is licensed under the GPL. It's 400mb though, not for the feint hearted. Note to self: this game needs a review.

I also mentioned yesterday we have a great new theme for the FreeGameDev forums (aka Free Gamer forums). I forgot to mention that it's not yet the default skin. You need to login (registration required) and switch to 'qubodup2' to see it. Edit: Due to an admin issue the new theme is currently not working. D'oh! Third time lucky tomorrow, eh?

A renewed wish for open document standards

Posted by Zaheda Bhorat, Open Source Programs Manager

The subject of open document standards grows in importance not only for the technically- minded, but for anyone who uses a computer to work on editable documents. Across the board, standards are crucial. They ensure that the devices and technology you use today will continue to work tomorrow, that your DVDs will play in your player, that your calls will go through to any network, and that your documents will be accessible from whichever system you choose today and in the future.

Google supports open document standards and the Open Document Format - ODF, the recognized international standard (ISO 26300). ODF is supported and implemented across the globe, and its communal creation and iteration has helped ensure the transparency, consistency and interoperability necessary in a workable standard.

Currently, the technology industry is evaluating a proposed ISO standard for document formats. Given the importance of a workable standard, Microsoft's submission of Office Open XML (OOXML ) as an additional international standard has caught the attention of many. In September 2007, the original request to ISO was defeated. After further technical analysis of the specification along with all the additional data available on OOXML, Google believes OOXML would be an insufficient and unnecessary standard, designed purely around the needs of Microsoft Office.

We join the ODF Alliance and many other experts in our belief that OOXML doesn't meet the criteria required for a globally-accepted standard. (An overview of our findings and sample technical issues unresolved are posted here.)

As ISO Member bodies around the world work on possible revisions of their vote previously submitted, the deadline of March 30th approaches fast. I invite you to pay close attention, and heed the call of many for unification of OOXML into ODF. A document standards decision may not matter to you today, but as someone who relies on constant access to editable documents, spreadsheets and presentations, it may matter immensely in the near future.

About the Unity bandwidth consortium

Posted by Francois Sterin, Manager, Network Acquisitions

As more and more people conduct online searches and interact with applications like Gmail, Google Earth and YouTube, we've had to think outside the box to create a more scalable, affordable and easy to manage network that meets our users' needs worldwide. One of the biggest challenges we face is staying ahead of our broadband capacity needs, especially across Asia.

One of the ways we are addressing this is by working with five other international companies to create a consortium. Collectively we just signed an agreement to build a new high-bandwidth subsea cable system linking the U.S. and Japan (more detail in the press release). This cable system, named Unity, will address increasing broadband demand by providing more capacity to sustain the unprecedented growth in data and Internet traffic between Asia and the U.S. Our participation in building Unity ultimately helps provide our users with faster and more reliable connectivity.

If you're wondering whether we're going into the undersea cable business, the answer is no. We're not competing with telecom providers, but the volume of data we need to move around the world has grown to the point where in some cases we've exceeded the ability traditional players can offer. Our partnership with these companies is just another step in ensuring that we're delivering the best possible experience to people around the world.

Searching for the Wisconsin primaries

Posted by Robert Snedegar, Technical Solutions Engineer and Chief Election Tracker

We're in the midst of a big election season, and of course that means pollsters and pundits have lots to say about where it will all end. I've been curious to see if their predictions match up with trends in online searches. So as my 20% project, I devised a method to track the number of searches for each candidate's name. I wanted to visually represent the trends I found, so I plotted them onto Google Maps to see where the searches were concentrated. It's fascinating to see how people in a region have turned to the Internet to engage in the primaries.

Last Tuesday during the Wisconsin primary, the maps for Democratic queries (blue) and Republican queries (red) in Wisconsin turned out slightly different than each other. The circles are proportional to the amounts of search terms that contained the name of a Democratic or Republican candidate. Of course, the data includes queries for both positive and negative keywords for each.

From the data, we can see that Democratic candidates were searched more often in Madison, while Republican candidate queries were more widely dispersed throughout the state:

We'll continue to study interesting search trends as they apply to election queries and share other findings with you.

Update: Corrected title.

Supporting cluster computing in the research community

Posted by Christophe Bisciglia, Senior Software Engineer, Google Research and James French, Program Director, National Science Foundation

Research and development is the foundation of innovation in the technology industry, and both Google and the National Science Foundation (NSF) are committed to making substantial investments in computer science research and education to ensure that our students, faculty and scientists remain on the leading edge of computing and have the tools necessary to make significant advances. As the technology industry moves into an exciting new phase of massively scaled, highly distributed computing, academic users have expressed a need for resources to engage and explore this emerging model, which is already responsible for many "internet-scale" applications that we now take for granted. That's why we're excited to announce that the NSF will use resources made available via Google and IBM's Academic Cluster Computing Initiative (ACCI) to reach the broader research community and explore new applications for massively scaled, highly distributed computing.

In October of 2007, Google and IBM announced the first pilot phase of the ACCI, which granted several prominent U.S. universities access to a cluster of thousands of processors running Apache's Hadoop, an open source distributed computing platform inspired by Google's file system and MapReduce programming model. (There's a YouTube video showing how students and faculty at the University of Washington have made use of the cluster.) Encouraged by these results, we sought out ways to extend the reach of this technology, and given its prominence in national research funding, the NSF emerged as a natural partner. For decades, the NSF has engaged the U.S. research community by setting research agendas and encouraging the development and adoption of disruptive technology, and this partnership will encourage a broader range of academic researchers to develop innovative new methods of data analysis using the unique advantages of massively parallel systems architecture - without the massive infrastructure costs usually associated with large-scale computer clusters.

Starting this year, the NSF will work to evaluate project proposals from academic researchers across many disciplines and select some of the most interesting and promising projects to receive ACCI computational grants. More details, including information on how to apply for access to these resources via the NSF's Cluster Exploratory (CluE) program, will be posted soon on the NSF site.

Our secret sauce

Posted by Hal Varian, Chief Economist

I was recently a guest columnist on the Freakonomics Blog. There were several interesting questions from the readers, but one was quite striking:

"How can we explain the fairly entrenched position of Google, even though the differences in search algorithms are now only recognizable at the margins? Is there some hidden network effect that makes it better for all of us to use the same search engine?"

It seems that a lot of people are trying to figure out why Google has done so well. The difficulty is that the typical economic forces at work in many technology businesses that lead to entrenchment don't seem to explain our success. Let's take a look at the usual culprits.

Supply side economies of scale. This refers to the fact that a larger business may enjoy a cost advantage. The problem is that though there probably are some scale advantages, they get played out at a reasonably small scale. There are plenty of data centers out there and plenty of people that know how to run them efficiently.

Lock-in. The idea here is that when users have a high cost of switching to an alternative provider, they can be charged high prices that reflect the fact that they are effectively locked in to a single provider. But if you look at Google's business, the competition is only a click away. Users can trivially switch search engines. Most of our large customers also advertise on other search engines. And most publishers get their ads from a variety of providers, including their own sales force. So there are very small costs of switching to an alternative search engine for users, advertisers, and publishers.

Network effects. This refers to a phenomenon where the amount that people are willing to pay for a service depends on the number of people that have already adopted a service. The classic example is a fax machine: the amount that I am willing to pay for a fax machine depends on how many of my correspondents already have one. But this doesn't fit the Google case either: my decision to use Google is irrelevant to other users. It's true that advertisers want to advertise where there are lot of users but that doesn't affect the amount that they are willing to pay on a per user basis. The value of a user to an advertiser depends on how likely he or she is to buy, not how many users there are. A small website about knitting could be a great place to advertise yarn and could charge rates far higher for such ads than a much larger site.

If it isn't economies of scale, lock-in, or network effects, what is it that explains Google's success?

The answer, at least in my opinion, is a much older economic concept called "learning by doing" that was first formalized by Nobel Laureate Kenneth Arrow back in 1962. It refers to the widely-observed phenomenon that the longer a company has been doing something, the better it gets at doing it.

Google has been searching the web for nearly 10 years, which is far longer than our major competitors. It's not surprising that we've learned a lot about how to do this well. We're constantly experimenting with new algorithms. Those that offer an improvement get rolled into the production version; the others go back to the drawing board for refinement.

So I would argue that Google really does have a better product than the competition -- not because we have more or better ingredients, but because we have better recipes. And we are continuously improving those recipes precisely because we know the competition is only a click away. We can't fall back on economies of scale, or switching costs, or network effects, to isolate us from the competition. The only thing we can do is work as hard as we can to keep our search quality better than that of the other engines.

Community Updates

Lots of activity amongst the FreeGameDev crowd. Qubodup has created an amazing new forum skin, so participating in the forums has never been a more pleasant experience than it is now, and he's still tweaking away. A new feature, Wikiwatch, a sort of planet for wikis, was added.

Now I just need to improve the blog (include announcements rss, update links, generally nicer layout) and FreeGameDev is go. 5.... 4.... 3... etc. ;-)

In terms of game news, it's gone a bit quiet, fortunately for me.

Glest with shadows

Bloodmasters

Glest got shadows. Purty. :-)

The OpenClou! team have put up their first model concepts, as seen on the Sourceforge project. Lovely!

Bloodmasters will soon be open source. It's a 3D top-down arcade shooter with plenty of blood. Will report on it more when it is. Yay for me. :-D

I wanted to put a screenshot up but Blogger is being lame... will put it up later. Edit: Done!

Bridge Builder 2006 is now available for Linux from here. It's only freeware (it'll be "eventually open source"). I spoke with the authors briefly so I'll strong arm them into believing. I'm sure I can think of a suitable way to coerce them into accepting Free Software is best. ;-)

For purists, there's still Construo and Bridge Constructor but the former isn't really a game and the latter is way behind in features, and both are somewhat abandoned.

Is your game violent in Rambo-esque proportions? Well you can label it with a suitable rating. Check out TIGRS and PEGI. Discuss in the forums here.

The art of science and engineering

Posted by Michael Weiss-Malik, Software Engineer

(Cross-posted on the Google Lat Long Blog.)

Google Moon and Google Mars are great examples of products that required much more than pure software engineering to produce. There was quite a bit of science, and even a little bit of artistry, that went into their creation. They both expose large volumes of imagery and information in simple and accessible designs, and it turns out that I'm not the only one who thinks that they qualify as art in this regard.

New York's Museum of Modern Art has honored both products by including them in their exhibition Design and the Elastic Mind, which opens to the public on February 24th. The exhibit showcases objects and systems that pair modern design with innovations in science and engineering in creative ways. Google Moon's Apollo landing panoramas and Google Mars' imagery of the largest canyons and volcanoes in the solar system were intended to do exactly that, by applying Google Maps technology to places that are out of this world.

We're delighted that MOMA saw fit to include us in their lineup, and recommend the show to anyone living in or visiting the New York area. It runs through May 12th.

The Best Way To Play

Here's a good tip on how to get extra performance in Linux. It's on the Ubuntu forums but is essentially an X.org trick.

Battle for Wesnoth 1.4rc1 (aka 1.3.18) is out - good preview of what is close to becoming the next stable release.

FreeOrion 0.3.8 is out. Another steady iteration that lays the groundwork for easier AI development.

NERO 2.0 released. This is currently freeware however the next version will be open source (2.0 uses Torque) which will make it a very interesting Free Software project indeed. "Neuro-Evolving Robotic Operatives, or NERO for short, is a unique computer game that lets you play with adapting intelligent agents hands-on. Evolve your own robot army by tuning their artificial brains for challenging tasks, then pit them against your friends' teams in online competitions!"

Project TTNA is a project, "to create a free (as in open source), crossplatform 3d game." What a delightfully simple goal. They are writing their own game engine, which seems a little superfluous given the myriad of Freely available game engines. Anyway, there's a long way to go with TTNA but the goal was so endearing, I just had to mention it.

Open Source representatives in mod-of-the-year awards 2007 on MODDB. It's one of those annoying pages that tries to make you watch a video you probably don't want to watch. Press 'next' (beneath the video) a couple of times to get to the results. Tremulous (#5), World of Padman (#4), and Warsow (#4) are the open source representatives while BSG: Beyond the Red Line (#1) is a standalone freeware game that uses the freespace2 source code project. Quite a domination and vindication that open source engines make a big difference to mods that would otherwise struggle to survive the changing times.

Two popular open source games that have gone a while without a release are close to release - Vega Strike 0.5.0 and Scourge 0.20 are imminent.

A quick thanks to everybody who submitted information for todays post, in comments and emails and the forum. This is probably the first time that most of the information was provided by others and I'm just putting it in a post. Perhaps one day Free Gamer can be evolved to be more community-driven but for now it's good to have people feed information because it means I can post even if I don't have much time to look things up.

A pilot with the Cleveland Clinic for health information access

Posted by Alan Newberger, Engineering Manager

I suffer from poor eyesight and intense seasonal allergies, but I'm thankful that health issues occupy just a small portion of my life. Even though I'm rather healthy, I sometimes find myself needing access to accurate health information. I can get a long way by searching for health facts online, but I also need to incorporate what I find with my own history of conditions and treatments. I didn't even realize I had allergies until my early twenties -- for more years than I care to admit, I'd forget that the "cold" I came down with in April was suspiciously similar to the one I had at exactly the same time the year before. I've often been overwhelmed when trying to determine or track a condition, because my personal record of health information is either nonexistent, or it's spread on forms and receipts from (at least) a dozen doctors and five insurance companies.

Working as an engineer here on the health team, I've been excited to participate in building tools that will help me and others manage our personal health information more effectively. Many innovators in the healthcare industry have worked hard to make results of doctor visits, prescriptions, tests and procedures available digitally. By using the GData protocol already offered in many Google products, and supporting standards-based medical information formats like the Continuity of Care Record (CCR), our health efforts will help you access, store and communicate your health information. Above all, health data will remain yours -- private and confidential. Only you have control over when to share it with family members and health providers.

This week, we hit another important milestone. We launched a pilot with a medical institution committed to giving patients access to their own medical records: The Cleveland Clinic. A large academic medical center, Cleveland is one of the first partners to integrate on our platform. Because of their size and reach with patients who already have access to their medical records online, Cleveland has been a great partner for us to test out our data sharing model. Patients participating in the Cleveland pilot give authorization via our AuthSub interface to have their electronic medical records safely and securely imported into a Google account. It's great to see our product getting into the hands of end users, and I look forward to the feedback that the Cleveland patients will provide us.

Cleveland is just the first of many healthcare providers that will securely send medical records and information via Google APIs at your request. We've been hard at work collaborating with a number of insurance plans, medical groups, pharmacies and hospitals. While this pilot is open initially to just a few thousand patients, I see it as an important first step to show how Google can help users get access to their medical records and take charge of their health information.

AdSense for video now in beta

Posted by Shamim Samadi, Product Manager and Ryan Hayward, Product Marketing Manager

In a very short time, watching videos online has become a common pastime, and the imagination of artists and other content owners continues to fuel this trend. Meanwhile, across the industry, advertisers and video publishers continue to look for the best solution that balances the needs of video fans with the need for video sites to generate the revenue that enables them to continue to be creative as they grow.

Enter, stage left: the AdSense for video beta. This approach takes the same non-intrusive InVideo ad format used on YouTube and extends it across video partner sites on the Google Content Network. This enables advertisers to run a single campaign across the largest network of online video content.

Unique to AdSense for video are text overlay ads contextually targeted to a combination of signals in your videos and on your site. With these overlay ads, the user's experience is not interrupted; users determine how much they want to interact with the ad.

We have two major goals: to make it easier for publishers to monetize video online, and for advertisers to learn how to reach the video community. Towards these ends, today we're also launching a single destination with an overview of various options to expand online video opportunities called Google Video Advertising Solutions. We hope this will be your starting point to understand how to leverage the Google Content Network and YouTube to make the most out of the online video experience. You can also see our overview videos for advertisers and publishers -- because isn’t video the best way to experience video?

We've been working with a number of video partners (e.g. popular destinations like BobVila.com, eHow, MyDamnChannel, ExpertVillage, PinkBike, TheNewsRoom, and social video aggregators like Revver, blip.tv, and GodTube). And we're also working with several key video platform solution solutions like Brightcove, Yume, Tremor Media, and Eyespot Network, who have plugged our ads into their platforms.

There are some criteria that publishers have to meet to participate in AdSense for video, which you can learn about on the Inside AdSense blog.

As with many things we do around here, we’ll keep testing various ad formats, iterate and expand, so keep an eye on us.

Superdelegate layer in Google Earth

Posted by Rick Klau, Strategic Partner Development Manager and Elections Hipster

I'm a political junkie, and as Super Tuesday neared it seemed likely that the race for Democratic nominee would extend well past that big day at the polls. I started looking around for information about the so-called "superdelegates" (the party leaders and elected officials who make up 20% of the vote at the convention) -- and was disappointed to find no single resource that provided details on who they were, which candidate they'd endorsed (if anyone) and where they are located.

So I went ahead and registered 'superdelegates.org', installed MediaWiki and started populating the site with the info I could find. Thanks to a terrific extension to MediaWiki (KML Export, written by Juliano Ravasi), it's possible to map the wiki pages to a Google Earth layer, which helps to visualize where these delegates are.

Since the superdelegates site launched two weeks ago, it has been featured on CNN, and tens of thousands of people have stopped by to learn more about superdelegates, understand the process, and add information. Over 60% of the delegates are now on the map and are associated with their endorsed candidate, with more info coming in every day. It's tremendously gratifying to see a community grow around this timely subject- hope you find it useful!

Update: Since I posted this entry, there have been a few additional improvements to the superdelegates site. Every delegate's wiki page now includes a Google Newsbar with scrolling headlines mentioning the delegate. Fellow Googler Bob Rose also created an enhanced KML layer so that each delegate's placemarker now includes information and links to their home state, position in the DNC, and candidate endorsement (with YouTube videos of speeches if available).

Disclaimer: Since superdelegate endorsements are not binding, we can't ensure that the endorsements listed are indicative of future events. But we're excited that people are engaging in politics online by drawing from a compilation of candidate endorsement lists on Roll Call, CNN's Election Center and other sources to update the site on a daily basis. Other groups and publications may have different superdelegate counts, including candidates' campaigns, the New York Times, and the AP.

Developing Games Takes Time

Zero Projekt

FIFE is starting to come of age. Although their tech-demo collaboration ended after a dispute between the two parties, Zero Project have continued their efforts and have settled on FIFE for their game project which has so far been two years in the making. To celebrate their second birthday they've put up an array of WIP screenshots. FIFE got a nice new layout for it's wiki too.

The Castle 0.8.1 has been released. "The Castle is a first-person shooter game in a dark fantasy setting. Your main weapon is a sword, so the fight is mostly short-range. Three main levels are included, packed with creatures, items, and sounds. The game engine is based on VRML, OpenGL, OpenAL, and all shadows are done by the shadow volumes approach." Interesting but not quite there yet.

Remember the classic game Theme Park (it started off the whole dang 'Theme X' genre)? Followed by the Rollercoaster Tycoon series (1-3)? Well these guys do and they are aiming to recreate, in open source glory, the ultimate theme park game. Theme Park Builder 3D just got it's inaugural source release.

Speaking of projects to create 'the ultimate of their genre', Transport Empire has come back to life. Started by members of the Transport Tycoon community, it had languished for years in the depths of design documents and decision making. Well last year somebody decided enough was enough, grabbed the bull by the horns and started coding - basically throwing the overbearing bureaucracy out of the window. Code is available from SVN and can now be compiled on Linux (for the brave only at the moment). It'll be interesting to see where that one goes in 2008.

Last but not least, one of my favourite projects GemRB released a new version, 0.3.0 and now you can [mostly] play through a bunch of Infinity Engine games (i.e. the Baldur's Gate series). Hopefully somebody will start creating a Free game that uses GemRB. :-)

On to a freeware game, The Silver Lining (a massive fan effort to make a top quality freeware game based on the King's Quest series) have a journal update where they show how they build up the 3D scenes used in the game. It's both pretty and interesting and shows just how much effort is involved for just a single aspect of the game. It's a Windows only game but I guess that's becoming less of a problem these days.

Glest 3.1 invaded by aliens

Glest: Alien Invasion

Gearhead2

Chromium BSU

Hot on the heels of Glest 3.0 is... Glest 3.1! Great to see the rejuvenated development of a poster Free Software game. This version continues to add multiplayer features such as in-game chat. Oh, and a new menu background. Eye candy! :-)

The mod scene for Glest has also never been healthier. The latest mod to show up (although currently just a WIP) is Glest: Alien Invasion. Pictures speak etc - see the images.

In the grand scheme of things, websites aren't that important. Or are they? Gearhead2 is a mech-based rogue-like. Maybe you like the sound of a [mech-based] rogue-like. To everybody else, the term 'rogue-like' tends to mean 'no graphics', so when you visit a web page like the homepage of Gearhead2, combined with the knowledge of it being a rogue-like, I bet the vast majority of people go no further. It looks awful, the screenshots link doesn't work, and because in the lay visitor's mind the game isn't graphical, it's game over already.

The shame of it is, Gearhead2 looks like a really promising game. It has a 3D version with a snazzy UI (it's predecessor Gearhead does not). Mechs are cool. There is a well supported forum. Somebody needs to just delete every bit of HTML on that Gearhead2 homepage and put up something 1. functional (i.e. working links) and 2. web layout !circa 1998.

Last but not least for today, Chromium BSU, the frantic top-down shooter, is under new maintainership. The Debian maintainer of the game has access to the Sourceforge project for Chromium BSU so will be applying patches that have been collecting for a few years in the various distros. Whether it'll see further development of the game is unlikely but it's good to avoid the usual bitrot of forgotten projects. Also I noticed the sequel project Chromium BSU 2: Second Strike, but despite there being source in SVN, it didn't really get off the ground.

In Internet-lameness news, I can't believe my Portalized exclusive barely made a dent on digg. I mean, utter rubbish which is merely a Portal influence gets 1000s of diggs. How come a [possibly open source] improvement on Portal's game dynamics not even break double-digits? I mean, I got more damn "diggs"* on FSDaily! The Internet won't do what I want. It's officially lame. Want to correct this ludicrous aberration? Go forth and DIGG!

* Is digg a new verb? What would you call it on FSDaily? FSDailied? :-?

Times of War

Warzone 2100 2.1-beta1 is out, with plenty of new features (changelog). Internationalized, improved/additional AI, 64-bit support, in-game video options, and multi-turret support are the picks of the bunch.

"Additionally there are many parts of the game that have been completely or partially rewritten. So old bugs may have been made completely irrelevant and new ones most certainly have been introduced. So new bug reports are most certainly very welcome, even [for] bugs that where present in 2.0.x already. Any suggestions are welcome as well of course."

You'll have to compile the beta yourself. Here's a slightly out of date youtube showing what the fuss is about:

LordsAWar

Freelords

LordsAWar 0.0.8 is also available to download. The LordsAWar homepage is a bit spartan. It's a continuation of the C++ version of FreeLords, which has since been rewritten in Java and recently released 0.0.2 of the Java version. The games are not going their different ways graphically with many new tiles and other artwork added in recent LordsAWar releases, which has a top-down view. FreeLords is now isometric. This is what is good about Free Software. From one project, we now have two; after the original author changed direction, others could continue the initial effort.

Both games share the goal of creating a modern Warlords style of game.

Anyway, it's a sunny day, no time for computer games!

Tactics with lasers and lite space

Laser Tactics is the new name for Nuclear Graveyard. It's a turn based 3D squad tactics game, originally a remake of Laser Squad in 3D that has since transcended the initial goal of being a remake. The author is fairly frustrated at the lack of interest in the game because it doesn't fit the standard mold. If you want to try something a bit tactical and a bit different to the usual FPS or strategy style of game.

There were quite a few links in the last post with little description of them.

OpenFracas

Pathman

Asteroid Wars

OpenFracas is like an advanced version of Risk. What it actually is, is a rebirth of the game Fracas which was open sourced but is writtin in VB6, which is frankly a bit of a rubbish language for anything other than win32 forms.

There's a new development release of Oolite (announcement + Mac, Linux, Windows), the 3D space flight adventure game. I'd seen in many places concern that Oolite development was dead, so this is a delightful reminder that it is still going. It's definitely an underrated game, given the stature of Elite in gaming history and how much Oolite improves upon the original concept. The 1.70 release was actually at the start of December 2007 but, as is the case with many open source projects, it went beneath the radar for a while.

The OpenTTD community are putting together a basic free release for the low-res verison of OpenTTD so it can be included in Linux distros etc. Good to know that the game will no longer require non-free media. Anyhow, anybody interested in getting involved can find all the relevant info in the Graphics Replacement wiki page.

And finally two cool looking new Free games.

Pathman is, "a 3D first/third person re-interpretation of Namco's popular 1980's arcade hit Pac-Man, arguably the most popular computer game of all time." Not much more to say other than check it out if that sounds like your cup of tea.

Also cool looking, but unfortunately missing any kind of project page or cross-platform availability (Windows only) is Asteroid Wars, a snazzy take on another classic game. Perhaps somebody can convince the author to register over at Sourceforge and maybe somebody can make it run in Linux.

A Valentine Treat from Google

Posted by Scott Giambastiani, Executive Chef



This recipe pairs well with Roederer Estate, Anderson Valley Brut sparkling wine for a Valentine's day treat for two.

Ingredients:

Yields about 4 cakes

1 tbsp. butter (You may substitute olive oil.)
4 shallots, minced
¼ cup mayonnaise
1 fuji apple, peeled and grated on a cheese grater, juice reserved
1 tsp. lemon juice, fresh
2 tsp. tarragon, minced
2 tbsp. parsley, minced
1 cup Dungeness crab meat, picked free of shells
¼ cup breadcrumbs, finely ground
Tabasco sauce
kosher salt

cooking oil (rice bran, canola, vegetable, etc.)
metal heart shaped cookie cutter, large size (About 4-6 oz)

Roast Pepper Sauce:

8 oz. pimento peppers in the jar (You may substitute with Spanish piquillo peppers,
or 3 each red bell peppers roasted over an open flame, peeled and seeded), chopped into 1-inch pieces
2 tbsp. sherry vinegar (You may substitute with any vinegar)
2 tbsp. water
2 tbsp. butter (Optional)

Procedure:

In a sauté pan, sweat the shallots in butter over medium-low heat until sweet, but with no color forming. This will take about 5 minutes. When sweet, allow the shallots to cool in a medium-sized mixing bowl. Add the mayonnaise, grated apple with juice, lemon juice, herbs, and picked crab to the mixing bowl.

With a spatula, gently fold the mixture together, so as not to break up any whole crab meat. This will give the cakes a better texture. Fold the mixture just until evenly mixed. Add enough breadcrumbs to bind the cakes. You might need more or less breadcrumbs than stated,
depending on the moisture of the crab. Season the cakes with salt and Tabasco to taste. Using a teaspoon, spoon crab mixture into a metal, heart-shaped cookie cutter. Gently press the crab into the mold. Repeat this process until all cakes are molded. Keep the crab cakes refrigerated until ready for service. Prepare the sauce.

To prepare the sauce, place the prepared peppers into a small non-reactive sauce pan with the vinegar and water. Bring contents to a simmer and transfer to a bar blender. Add the butter to the blender, cover and puree the sauce until it is smooth. Season with salt and pepper.

To finish the crab cake, heat a sauté pan over medium-high heat, add a teaspoon of cooking oil, and sear the crab cake over medium heat until golden brown. This will take 1-2 minutes. Using a spatula, flip the crab cake over and repeat for 1-2 minutes until the crab cake is golden brown on both sides and warm in the center. Piercing the center of the crab cake with a toothpick and feeling the temperature of the toothpick under your lip will give you a good idea how warm
the cake's center is.

To plate the crab cake, pour about two heaping spoonfuls of warm pepper sauce over a warmed plate. Place the warm crab cake over the sauce and garnish with baby mixed greens (mâche, upland cress) and/or freshly picked herbs (Italian parsley, chervil, tarragon, chives…). Enjoy!

Global marketing challenge now underway

Posted by Daniel Rubin, Google AdWords Communications team

It's well known that online advertising is becoming increasingly important to the marketing mix. Now we're giving 21,000 students the chance to experiment and gain hands on experience of this medium -- and to empower small local businesses to harness the power of the web to attract more customers. In a vast global academic competition, business students from 466 universities in 61 countries will participate in the Google Online Marketing Challenge.

The competition offers student groups $200 vouchers to spend on Google AdWords™ advertising so that they can work with a local business they choose to devise effective online marketing campaigns. The teams will outline a strategy, run the campaign, assess their results, and recommend ideas to further develop the businesses' online marketing.

Students will have three weeks to mastermind their strategy, and will pit their marketing minds against thousands of others worldwide. During this period, the various teams will submit two competition reports: one before they begin the Challenge, and one after the campaign has ended. An international panel of professors will judge the entries, and will choose winners based on the success of the campaigns and the quality of the reports.

We'll post an update once the winners are announced in July. Read more about the Challenge.

What if... you could have your doodle on the Google homepage for a day?

Posted by Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products & User Experience, and Dennis Hwang, Webmaster Manager and Chief Google Doodler

Today, we're excited to announce the Doodle 4 Google competition.

Every once in awhile, we redesign the logo (a.k.a. Google Doodle) on our homepage to commemorate special birthdays and events. Dennis Hwang draws these Google Doodles (check out this cool time-lapse video of Dennis creating the latest one):



However, with the Doodle 4 Google competition, we're making an exception...

Doodle 4 Google gives U.S. students in grades K-12 the opportunity to design a doodle for the Google homepage. Students will be asked to draw a doodle that best represents the theme "What if...?" We ask ourselves this question every day when we build our products, so we thought we would ask the same of the future doodlers.

A panel of expert judges and Googlers will select 40 regional winners, who will be invited to the Googleplex in Mountain View, California, in May. Four national finalists will be announced as the result of a public vote. From there, Dennis will select one lucky student whose doodle will be on the Google homepage for a day in the U.S. This winner will also receive a $10,000 college scholarship and a technology grant for his or her school.

Check out www.google.com/doodle4google for more details. All you need to do to get started is to have a teacher or principal register your school. Registration closes on 3/28/08, and entries must be postmarked by 4/12/08.

So gather those art supplies. All it takes to enter is a drawing on paper using your favorite medium (crayons, markers, colored pencils, whatever!) -- and encourage your kids to enrich us all with their imaginative vision. We look forward to seeing the creative doodles that are submitted!

Be a Busy Bee

Well... I have a big list of stuff to write about, so, I'll cheat.

Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V

Game updates

• OpenFracas (http://www.openfracas.org/) from Ubuntu forums (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=692342)


• Oolite 1.70 development version (http://www.aegidian.org/bb/viewtopic.php?t=4060) with enhanced scripting


• OpenTTD OpenGFX project (http://wiki.openttd.org/index.php/Graphics_Replacement)


• Daimonin tileEngine v2 (http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=38992)


• Pathman, 3D pacman (http://pathman.sf.net/)


• AsteroidWars (http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=27326)


• Official ETCE homepage (http://etce.usef-et.org/)


• Sector91 (http://www.sector91.com/) from Wesnoth forums (http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19845)


• Flightgear 1.0 vid (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnKg0Gpm00o)


• Platinum Arts Sandbox Beta 2.0 (http://www.kids.platinumarts.net/) is a Sauer mod for kids, including karts (http://www.cubeengine.com/forum.php4?action=display_thread&thread_id=1657)


• Forsaken Sanctum (http://www.forsakensanctum.com/?sid=home) maybe an open source Sci-Fi MMORPG (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=564160)


• Freelords 0.0.2 (http://freelords.sf.net/) new Java version now isometric

Thats more Free gaming news that you can shake a fist at...

If you don't want to follow the links to find out stuff for yourself, don't worry as I'll revisit the interesting bits in the next few days.

You are connected to mountaintop removal

Posted by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

[From time to time we invite guests to blog about initiatives of interest, and are very pleased to have Mr. Kennedy join us here. – Ed.]

In 1810, Thomas Jefferson wrote to a contemporary, "No one more sincerely wishes the spread of information among mankind than I do, and none has greater confidence in its effect towards supporting free and good government." Almost 200 years later, Google provides us all with unprecedented access to the world’s information. In Appalachia, nonprofit organizations are using that information in innovative new ways to reveal the destruction caused by mountaintop removal coal mining, and to demand for the people of Appalachia the "free and good government" that Jefferson envisioned.

If the American people could see what I have seen from the air and ground during my many trips to the coalfields of Kentucky and West Virginia: leveled mountains, devastated communities, wrecked economies and ruined lives, there would be a revolution in this country. Thanks to Google Earth, you can now visit coal country without ever having to leave your home.

Every presidential candidate – and every American – ought to take a few seconds to visit an ingenious new website created by nonprofit organizations in Appalachia that lets you tour the obliterated landscapes of Appalachia. By entering your zip code into this amazing new website, you learn how you're personally connected to mountaintop removal. Americans from Maine to California can see these mountains and the communities that were sacrificed to power their home. This puts a human face on the issue by highlighting the stories of families living in the shadows of these mines.

The site uses Google Maps and Google Earth as interfaces to a large database of power plants and mountaintop removal coal mines. A November 15, 2007 article in the Wall Street Journal highlighted the site as one of the most cutting-edge uses of these powerful tools. And today, the Google Earth Outreach program is launching a featured case study about this project, along with additional resources for nonprofit organizations, in order to help spread the word and make these tools even more accessible to the public.

Each day coal companies detonate 2500 tons of explosives – the power of a Hiroshima bomb every week – to blow away Appalachian mountaintops to reach the coal seams beneath. Colossal machines then plow the rock and debris into the adjacent river valleys and hollows, destroying forests and burying free-flowing mountain streams, flattening North America's most ancient mountain range. According to the EPA, 1,200 miles of American rivers and streams have already been permanently interred, leaving behind giant pits and barren moonscapes, some as large as Manhattan Island. I recently flew over one 18 square-mile pit – Hobet 21 – which you can now tour in Google Earth.

We are literally cutting down the historic landscapes where Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett roamed and that are so much the source of American's values, character and culture.

Mountaintop mining poisons water supplies, pollutes the air, destroys hundreds of miles of North America's most ancient and biologically diverse hardwood forests and permanently impoverishes local communities. For too long, this devastation has been hidden in the remote poverty-stricken communities of Appalachia. This new website finally exposes this national disgrace for every American to witness. Wherever you live, you have a connection – and a responsibility.

Stop the press: Portalized - "open source Portal"

Ok, this is the sh*t. Not only that, word has it, this is going to be open source. Of course, this is what some guy who reads some forum has emailed me, and I'm being completely sensational by posting it on an open source blog, but the youtubes are so cool that I can't help myself. Update: as confirmed in a comment by nullsquared [the author], he is currently undecided over whether to go with a freeware or open source license.

MasterNave emails, "Just got a tip from a coder friend of mine, about portalized, an open source portal engine, based on ogre3d. Apparently, 0.5 will be public."

So, the scene is set. Ready to blow your mind?

Ooo er that's kind of mad.

Update: the next video deserves a bit of explanation - it demonstrates scalable portals where the world is a different size through the portal. That is, if you go through the portal the world gets bigger/smaller, or if you pass an object through the portal that object gets bigger/smaller. Very neat.

Here's a Google video that, "Shows off the gravity that will be used in Portalized. Every physical object will have it's own gravity, and it can be anything (not just +x -x +y -y +z -z as shown in the demo)."

It's great to see somebody innovating. I know that the portal concept itself isn't exactly original, but ideas like the scalable portals and variable gravity per object are showing that nullsquared really has some come up with many innovations that portals are just part of.

I can't really find a homepage for the project. There are threads like this one (that contains a Windows development build) scattered across several forums but no official homepage yet, it seems. Nor can I verify the claim that this will be open source. Anyway, whatever happens, it looks great and it's cool to see a single guy using good Free Software tools to create amazing things.

Of course, Portalized won't come with the polished content that is part of the Portal game, but if he does open up this project then that's what you guys - the "community" - can provide, right? :-)

He does mention in a few places that the next version, 0.5, is going to be the first beta release. If anybody has any information on whether this will indeed be open source then please comment. I may (or may not) get in touch to ask nullsquared myself. Update: see the comments.

New Open Source Programs blog

Posted by Leslie Hawthorn, Program Manager, Open Source Team

Since its inception in 2005, our Open Source Programs Office has been responsible for maintaining license compliance within Google. And over the past three years, our mission has grown encompass even more activities that we hope are useful to our colleagues in the open source community: project hosting, releasing Google created code and funding open source development. We've also continued to get students involved in open source, recently debuting the Google Highly Open Participation Contest for secondary schoolers as a complement to our university program, Google Summer of Code.

When you have this much good news to share, you just have to create your own blog --so we did. Come check out the new Google Open Source Blog for regular updates on all of the above and, if you like what you see, subscribe.

Google search on Nokia phones

Posted by Christian Hernandez Gallardo, Strategic Partner Development Manager, mobile team

At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona today, we announced a partnership with Nokia that will bring Google search to millions of Nokia phones. There's more detail on the Google Mobile Blog.

Share the love with iGoogle

Posted by Paul Wilcox, iGoogle Support Team

From time to time, people share stories with us that are too good to keep to ourselves. Here's one that an iGoogle user named Heather recently shared about how Gadget Maker helps her connect with her boyfriend Christopher.

"My boyfriend lives in Memphis and I live in Manhattan. We've each created a custom gadget for each other that we update every morning. Generally it's a compliment, or song lyrics, or something related to an inside joke. It takes us 2 minutes to update every morning and helps us to stay connected in a small way every day. We also both have a countdown gadget on our homepage, which counts down the days until our next visit with each other. Thank you for helping 'keep the magic alive' with my boyfriend, even if he's not here in person!"

As Valentine's Day approaches, we wish Heather and Christopher the best. May their countdown go extra-fast this week. Heather shared one of her gadgets with us:

If you're part of our gadget developer community, perhaps hearing about interesting and unique ways people are using gadgets will help spark some creative ideas. But whether you are HTML-savvy or not, and you want to show your sweetie how much you care, it's very easy to be able to create gadgets. Just visit the Google Gadget Center or Gadget Maker and give it a try.

Survey says: love at first ping

Posted by Jen Grant, Group Product Marketing Manager

In the spirit of Hallmark and chocolate roses, we recently took a special interest in Valentine's worthy tidbits about how Gmail has helped spur romance -- as it did for Jordan Burleson, who told us:

"Gmail is the new Cupid. Gmail's green chat light meant 'go' for love in my life. My girlfriend and I used ... it for projects and homework at first, but then for flirting, pinning down a location for a first date, emoticon hearts and more."

In other cases, email has helped maintain long distance relationships, like that of long-time Gmail user Meagan Coleman:

"My husband and I met in 2004. He's from Macedonia and I'm from the USA...Since we met, Gmail has been archiving our long-distance relationship from the beginning! It's very sweet to be able to read those messages that we wrote to each other 3 years ago."

Curious about how common emailing love letters really is -- and to learn more about how people use email to communicate with friends, family, and co-workers -- we recently worked with Nielsen Online to conduct a national survey examining how people think about and use webmail.* The survey affirmed that email is an increasingly important part of our most intimate and personal interactions, and that younger people are leading the charge: they are more likely to use email for everything from sending love letters to ending relationships.

Love is in the inbox

• 1 in 3 survey respondents noted having emailed a love letter
• Young people indicated they were less averse to showing their affections over email than older adults: only 14% of 18-24 year olds considered email love letters bad behavior, compared to 43% of respondents over the age of 55
  
• Men were more likely than women to have asked someone out via email (26% versus 16%)
• While 31% of 18-24 year olds thought asking someone out on a date via email was poor form, 42% of respondents aged 55+ felt the same way

Breaking up is hard to do; some get help from email

• 1 in 3 male respondents considered "break-up emails" neutral to good email etiquette, whereas only 1 in 7 female respondents agreed
• 8% of men and 6% of women said they had broken up with someone over email

Whether you're sending hearts this year or breaking them, we hope you have a happy Valentine's Day.

* The online survey, commissioned by Google, was conducted by Nielsen Online from September 24th to October 15th, 2007, with a sample of 1,713 webmail users over the age of 18. "Webmail user" was defined as someone who uses AOL Mail, Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo! Mail.