Congratulations to our U.S. and Canadian Anita Borg Scholars

Posted by Jordan Bookey, Diversity Programs Manager

In 2003 we established the Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship to honor the work of Dr. Anita Borg, a computer scientist who dedicated her professional career to increasing the participation of women and other under-represented minorities in the field of technology. In her memory, we're pleased to announce the fifth class of Anita Borg Scholars in the U.S., and our first class of scholars in Canada.

The U.S. program awards $10,000 academic scholarships to 23 outstanding female leaders in technology, and $1,000 scholarships to 32 finalists. In Canada, 4 women will receive $5,000 scholarship awards, and 13 finalists will receive $1,000 scholarships. These undergraduate and graduate women are completing degrees in computer science and related fields. Each of these award recipients has demonstrated a commitment to advancing women in technology. We congratulate these leaders on their accomplishments.

The U.S. scholars and finalists recently visited the Googleplex in Mountain View, CA as part of the annual all-expenses-paid Google Scholars' Retreat. Students attended technical workshops and discussions with Google engineers and executives, and heard first-hand about the life and work of Anita Borg from Telle Whitney, President of the Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology. The retreat enables these scholars to meet each other and create a network of future leaders in computer science. The 2008 recipients of the Google United Negro College Fund Scholarship and Hispanic College Fund Scholarship also attended.

The 17 Canada Anita Borg Scholars and Finalists will attend a Scholars' Retreat for their inaugural class this Thursday and Friday at our engineering office in New York.

Visit our scholarships page to learn more about our programs. The Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship is also available to female computer science students in Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

The 2008 U.S. Anita Borg Scholars ($10,000 winners)

• Allison Park Heath - Rice University, PhD Computer Science
• Amy Hurst - Carnegie Mellon University, Ph Human Computer Interaction
• Betsy Nora DiSalvo - Georgia Institute of Technology, PhD Human Centered Computing
• Diane Marie Budzik - University of California, Los Angeles, PhD Electrical Engineering
• Elizabeth Arrowsmith Bales - University of California, San Diego, PhD Computer Science
• Emily Anne Fortuna -Rice University, B.S. Computer Science
• Erika Shehan Poole - Georgia Institute of Technology, PhD Human Centered Computing
• Gabriela Marcu - University of California, Irvine, B.S. Informatics
• Ghinwa Fakhri Choueiter - Massachusetts Institute of Technology, PhD Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
• Gina-Maria Pomann - The College of New Jersey, B.A. Math
• Jennifer C. Stoll - Georgia Institute of Technology, PhD Human Centered Computing
• Jennifer Denise Tam - Carnegie Mellon University, PhD Computer Science
• Jill Patrice Dimond - Georgia Institute of Technology, PhD Human Centered Computing
• Julie Maureen Letchner - University of Washington, PhD Computer Science
• Katherine Mary Everitt - University of Washington, PhD Computer Science
• Nancy Dougherty - Stanford University, B.S. Electrical Engineering Raluca Ada Popa - Massachusetts Institute of Technology, B.S. Computer Science
• Sally Kadry Wahba - Clemson University, PhD Computer Science
• Sarita Ann Yardi - Georgia Institute of Technology, PhD Human Centered Computing
• Silvia Lindtner - University of California, Irvine, PhD Information & Computer Science
• Svetlana Yarosh - Georgia Institute of Technology, PhD Human Centered Computing
• Tammara Massey - University of California, Los Angeles, PhD Computer Science
• Yvon Hall Feaster - Clemson University, B.S. Computer Information Systems

The 2008 U.S. Anita Borg Finalists ($1,000 winners)

• Aditi Suhas Pendharkar - Carnegie Mellon University, M.S. Information Networking
• Alokika Dash - Univeristy of California, Irvine, PhD Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
• Ashley Leonora Podhradsky
• Dakota State University, PhD Information Systems
• Carla Mae Webb - Western Illinois University, B.S. Computer Science & Math
• Christina Marie Williams - Colorado State University, B.S. Computer Science
• Devorah Gurwitz - Touro College, B.S. Computer Science
• Eakta Jain - Carnegie Mellon University, PhD Robotics
• Elena Jocelyn Jakubiak - Tufts University, PhD Computer Science
• Geeta Sharad Shroff - Carnegie Mellon University, B.S. Computer Science
• Jessica Lee Heier - Georgia Institute of Technology, PhD Industrial & Systems Engineering
• Karen Edwards Works - Worcester Polytechnic Institute, PhD Computer Science
• Kathy Tran Pham - Georgia Institute of Technology, M.S.Computer Science
• Kimber Diane Lockhart - Stanford University, B.Eng. Computer Science
• Kriti Rameshlal Puniyani - Carnegie Mellon University, PhD Computer Science
• Liangrong Yi - University of Kentucky, PhD Computer Science
• Lisa Deanne Brown - Carnegie Mellon University, M.A. Entertainment Technology
• Lisa Marie White - University of Notre Dame, B.Eng. Computer Science
• Lisa Minerva Tolentino - Arizona State University, PhD Media Arts & Computer Science
• Meghan Katheleen Revelle - The College of William and Mary, PhD Computer Science
• Nahid Mahfuza Alam - Clemson University, PhD Computer Engineering
• Ramya Raghavendra - University of California, Santa Barbara, PhD Computer Science
• Rashida Zalika Davis - University of Delaware, PhD Computer & Information Sciences
• Renuka Ajay Apte - Georgia Institute of Technology, M.S. Computer Science
• Ruth Lorraine Wylie - Carnegie Mellon University, PhD Human-Computer Interaction
• Sara Gatmir Motahari - New Jersey Institute of Technology, PhD Electrical & Computer Engineering
• Sofia Jeon - Drexel University, PhD Computer Science
• Sonya Stoyanova Nikolova - Princeton University, PhD Computer Science
• Stiliyana Boycheva Stamenova - Macalester College, B.A. Math & Computer Science
• Tasneem Kaochar - University of Arizona, B.S. Computer Science
• Valerie Henderson Summet - Georgia Institute of Technology, PhD Human Centered Computing
• Vibha Laljani - California Institute of Technology, B.S. Computer Science
• Yi Mao - Purdue University, PhD Electrical & Computer Engineering

The 2008 Canada Anita Borg Scholars ($5,000 CAD Winners)

• Angelica Lim - Simon Fraser University, BSc Computer Science
• Celina Gibbs - University of Victoria, MSc Computer Science
• Christina Boucher - University of Waterloo, PhD Computer Science
• Mireille Gomes - Queens University, BCompH Biomedical Computing

The 2008 Canada Anita Borg Finalists ($1,000 CAD Winners)

• Alma Juarez-Domiguez - University of Waterloo, PhD Computer Science
• April Khademi - University of Toronto, PhD Electrical Engineering
• Carrie Demmans - University of Saskatchewan, MSc Computer Science
• Cristina Ribeiro - University of Guelph, MSc Computer Science
• Gail Carmichael - Carleton University, MSc Computer Science
• Georgia Kastidou - University of Waterloo, PhD Computer Science
  
• Jocelyn Simmonds - University of Toronto, PhD Computer Science
• Katelyn Kent - University of New Brunswick, BSc Computer Engineering
  
• Ming Hua - Simon Fraser University, PhD Computer Science
  
• Pooja Viswanathan - University of British Columbia, PhD Computer Science
  
• Terri Oda - Carleton University, PhD in Computer Science
• Thuy Vu - University of Toronto, BSc Computer Science
• Viann Chan - University of British Columbia, PhD Computer Science

Where art thou?

Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP, Search Products & User Experience

Did you notice the chrome tulips on Google's homepage today? They are part of a special Google doodle done by renowned artist Jeff Koons. And that isn't the only art appearing anew on Google today. As part of our iGoogle Artists project, we have collaborated with almost 70 artists in 17 countries on 6 continents to create special iGoogle themes -- works of art that appeal to all ages and interests. Artists, designers and other notables involved include Jeff Koons, Dale Chihuly, Coldplay, Diane von Furstenberg, Dolce & Gabbana, Yann Arthus-Bertrand, Michael Graves, Philippe Starck, Robert Mankoff, Mark Morris, Oscar de la Renta, Anne Geddes and Tory Burch. While the list of those who have contributed themes is impressive (I've only listed 1/5th(!) of the artists here), even more impressive is the art itself -- it's spectacularly beautiful!

Until now, iGoogle has been about getting the content you want on your homepage. The iGoogle artist themes take personalization to the next level -- allowing you to select world-class art that really reflects your personality for your pages. It's what happens when great art meets technology.

As part of our launch, we will be holding an outdoor art gallery this weekend in New York's Meatpacking District, where on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights the art from the iGoogle artists project will be projected on the buildings, sidewalks, and streets. This is a map of where you can find the display. We will post video of the event on YouTube.

Check it out. The art speaks for itself. Select your iGoogle artist theme today at www.google.com/artistthemes!

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How to avoid getting hooked

Posted by Ian Fette, Google Security Team

This post is one of a series devoted to online security. - Ed.

Millions of people have gotten "urgent" emails asking them to take immediate action to prevent some impending disaster. "Our bank has a new security system. Update your information now or you won't be able to access your account," or "We couldn't verify your information; click here to update your account." Sometimes the email claims that something awful will happen to the sender (or a third party), as in "The sum of $30,000,000 is going to go to the Government unless you help me transfer it to your bank account."

People who click on the links in these emails may see a web page that looks like a legitimate site they've visited before. Because the page looks familiar, these people enter their username, password, or other private information on the site. What they've actually done is given an unknown third party all the information needed to hijack their account, steal their money, or open up new lines of credit in their name. They just fell for a phishing attack.

The concept behind such an attack is pretty simple: Someone masquerades as someone else in an effort to fool you into sharing personal or other sensitive information with them. Phishers can masquerade as just about anyone, including banks, email and application providers, online merchants, online payment services, and even governments. And while some of these attacks are crude and easy to spot, many of them are sophisticated and well constructed. That fake email from "your bank" can look very real; the bogus "login page" you're redirected to can seem completely legitimate.

The good news is there are things you can do to steer clear of phishing attacks:

• Be careful about responding to emails that ask you for sensitive information. You should be wary of clicking on links in emails or responding to emails that are asking for things like account numbers, user names and passwords, or other personal information such as social security numbers. Most legitimate businesses will never ask for this information via email. Google doesn't.

• Go to the site yourself, rather than clicking on links in suspicious emails. If you receive a communication asking for sensitive information but think it could be legitimate, open a new browser window and go to the organization's website as you normally would (for instance, by using a bookmark or by typing out the address of the organization's website). This will improve the chances that you're dealing with the organization's website rather than with a phisher's website, and if there's actually something you need to do, there will usually be a notification on the site. Also, if you're not sure about a request you've received, don't be afraid to contact the organization directly to ask. It takes just a few minutes to go to the organization's website, find an email address or phone number for customer support, and reach out to confirm whether the request is legitimate.

• If you're on a site that's asking you to enter sensitive information, check for signs of anything suspicious. If you're on a site that's asking for sensitive information -- no matter how you got there -- check for the signs that it's really the official website for the organization. For example, check the URL to make sure the page is actually part of the organization's website, and not a fraudulent page on a different domain (such as mybankk.com or g00gle.com.) If you're on a page that should be secured (like one asking you to enter in your credit card information) look for "https" at the beginning of the URL and the padlock icon in the browser. (In Firefox and Internet Explorer 6, the padlock appears in the bottom right-hand corner, while in Internet Explorer 7 the padlock appears on the right-hand side of the address bar.) These signs aren't infallible, but they're a good place to start.

• Be wary of the "fabulous offers" and "fantastic prizes" that you'll sometimes come across on the web. If something seems too good to be true, it probably is, and it could be a phisher trying to steal your information. Whenever you come across an offer online that requires you to share personal or other sensitive information to take advantage of it, be sure to ask lots of questions and check the site asking for your information for signs of anything suspicious.

• Use a browser that has a phishing filter. The latest versions of most browsers -- including Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Opera -- include phishing filters that can help you spot potential phishing attacks.

All fairly simple, right? What it all comes down to is if someone asks you to share personal or other sensitive information online, take a moment to think through the request carefully. Doing so will help you stay safe online, and help us all put phishers out of business.

Vega Strike 0.5.0

After over 3 years of development since the last stable release, many major new features and contributions, and lots of patience, Vega Strike 0.5.0 has finally been released.

There's so much potential in this release. Shader support, movie support, so many active contributors, and a more settled development timeline that should see more regular releases from now onwards. Despite the length of time since the previous release (0.4.3) the project rarely was not in active development. That means that 0.5.0 is a huge update and Vega Strike is poised to return to the high esteem in which it was once held as a FOSS project.

For screenshots check out the gallery but none were recent enough for me to include them here.

Vega Strike is a really cool project and this stable release will hopefully further galvanise the development. If things continue, I have no doubts VS will turn out to be a truly stunning FOSS game. It's pretty damn good already!

Digital clothing takes center stage at the Exploratorium

A man wearing a costume covered in green LEDs at the Exploratorium for the opening night of the 2nd Skin digital clothing exhibition.

CNET News

HOW OFTEN SHOULD WE CLEAN OUR REGISTRY

On the Internet, you will find several Web sites promoting the use of Registry programs. These Web sites make you aware of the importance of registry maintenance and how registry programs can simplify the process. However, there is very little information available on how often you need to scan the registry.

Quite often, we hear people asking you to clean up your registry on a daily basis. However, the truth is that there are no specific set norms that control how often you need to clean your Windows Vista registry.

In fact, the frequency of registry repair and clean up activity depends on several factors. For instance, if your computer is new and you do not make any major changes to it, you may not need to perform a registry scan for a long time.

Make Money this is Better then PayPerPost

There is alot of Buzz goin on in the Bloggersphere about Smorty Post. Smorty is a service connecting advertisers with bloggers. Smorty is creating excitement around the web with its get paid to blog, get paid for blog advertising and blog for money opportuniities. Also with its affiliate program where you can earn more through your referrals. Smorty is for the blogger who wants the fastest way to get paid for blogging. Make money from your blogs writing opinion articles about advertisements. When their are ads available you will be notified through your email account or you can check on whats available yourself by login into your account, and looking to the sidebar to see what ads are avaiable, you choose the ads you want to write about and each ad has an amount that will be paid to you if your post is approved. Some ads pay $6.00 others pay more. The sweet thing about it all is you get to choose the ads you want to write about and you have three days to think about what your going to write.Its easy to do you read the ads and then from there you put it together using their ads as a guide. You can even use some of their own text to mix in. Check it out for yourself and Between 5 and 20 minutes of writing sends money directly to your paypal account after posts are approved. If you have more then one blogs thats even better because you can apply with all your blogs this way you choose more ads to write about and earn extra payments. Smorty looks for quality bloggers who want to get paid to blog. If you like to write and make some money at the same time then start using Smorty services, Sign up and start making money on your blogs, get paid for your opinions, just click on the Smorty banner now and sign up, start earning cash today.

New: Google Finance China, new Finance homepage

Posted by Feng Hong, Product Manager

The Chinese stock market has caught people's attention in recent years. People all over the country started investing, and [stock information] has become one of the most popular search keywords in China. After adding Shanghai/Shenzhen market data into Google Finance and launching the Chinese finance onebox last year, we are excited to announce the launch of Google Finance China. Now it's easier to get Chinese stock and mutual fund data through our easy-to-use and familiar interface in Chinese.

This was a joint effort across continents with engineers from New York and Shanghai. We hope Google Finance China will become a practical tool for Chinese investors to get up-to-date and comprehensive financial information. The site includes popular features such as Google Suggest for stock codes, whether you enter the stock code or name in Chinese or pinyin, and a display of financial information from Chinese sources on the stock price chart.

At the same time we have launched a newly redesigned home page for all our Google Finance sites (U.S., Canada, U.K., China). It's now easier to follow the latest news affecting the market as well as those that are relevant to your portfolio. We hope you enjoy this new look. The simultaneous launch of the new homepage across countries is just one of the new features and updates to come.

As usual, we encourage you to provide us with your ideas and comments through the Help Center. Your feedback is very important for us to continuously improve Google Finance.

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What makes a design "Googley"?

Posted by Sue Factor, Writer, User Experience Group

Late in 2007, our User Experience (UX) group—which does user interface design, visual design, user research, web development, and user interface writing—set out to articulate the principles that ought to guide Google designs worldwide. What are the fundamentals that all Google designers and researchers accept? Which approaches to design are particularly "Googley"? How can we encourage teams throughout Google to dream big and make smart design decisions?

A small team gathered to discuss these questions and define the Googley Design Principles:

1. Focus on people—their lives, their work, their dreams.
2. Every millisecond counts.
3. Simplicity is powerful.
4. Engage beginners and attract experts.
5. Dare to innovate.
6. Design for the world.
7. Plan for today's and tomorrow's business.
8. Delight the eye without distracting the mind.
9. Be worthy of people's trust.
10. Add a human touch.

These UX principles flow naturally from the Ten things Google has found to be true and the UX group's stated mission: to design products that satisfy and delight our users. We described the principles as "Our Aspirations" for two reasons:

• We have a lot of work to do when it comes to implementation.
• Every real-world product will have to strike a balance between all ten principles.

Still, we don't want to waffle too much. These principles represent the User Experience group's declaration of beliefs. With "Satisfy and Delight" stitched on our leotards, we're determined to get up on the tightrope and start juggling principles. Please applaud or boo, as appropriate, so that we can make the next act even better.

The Designer tool for Uninspired Webloggers

Here is a link to a layout generator, that I found that I thought might be of interest to alot of you bloggers out-there. On this blog you will come to find all sorts of different items that can be of use to you all so I hope you all enjoy visiting my blog and I sincerely hope you all will leave comments if you like or dislike this blog. There are more interesting and different things to come. So do stop by and check out what is happening in Cyberspace. I do the search for you so you don't have to. Its simple to use for those who want to design and generate a 2 - Colum Layout or a 3 - Colum layout. Go and check it out Firdamatic™ is an online tableless layout generator that allows you to create and customise layouts easily only by completing forms, making creating skins for your Firdamatic-based layout a breeze. This tool is available for free for personal/non-commercial use only and comes with no technical support as my interest in web design has died down. Use it at your own risk. If you find it useful, please consider making a donation.
This blog is also open for contributors. If you would like to write a guest post, go ahead and register here.

Firdamatic

Celebrate World Book Day with The Literacy Project

Posted by Anne Meyer, Chief of Education Design, CAST

According to UNESCO, one in five adults is illiterate, with the majority living in the developing world—where access to books, libraries, and education is often limited. But the barrier to literacy isn’t simply a question of access, nor is it limited to the developing world. It’s a problem we see in the U.S. as well. People may struggle to read for lots of reasons. Some of these have to do with basic literacy skills, such as inadequate vocabulary.

Sometimes readers have trouble "decoding" what that string of letters on a page really means--they might have reading disabilities, for example. Readers may not have enough background knowledge about a story’s characters, geography, or culture.

At the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST), an educational nonprofit near Boston, we have spent the past two decades working to leverage the potential of personal, digital technologies to customize educational media to meet individual needs. In celebration of World Book Day, CAST has created a powerful new tool, UDL Editions, that showcases how classic and sometimes difficult texts—such as Shakespeare’s 18th Sonnet and Jack London’s Call of the Wild—can be rendered in smart, reader-friendly ways to provide a whole host of learning supports—such as multimedia glossaries, chapter summaries, and read-aloud features, links to Google Maps to place settings in contemporary contexts.

The books are one of the many projects being featured starting today on The Literacy Project, a joint effort by Google, LitCam, and UNESCO’s Institute for Lifelong Learning. The project encourages literacy and reading organisations from around the globe to connect and share materials and best practice—from a searchable maps database to e-learning tools—like PlanetRead’s same-language subtitling videos—that can be used in the classroom.

We’re really excited to be participating in the project. Come join us on the site and share your thoughts!

Five factors to look for in Pennsylvania

Posted by Brittany Bohnet, Google Elections Team

As you know, the Democratic primary is coming down to the wire, and American voters are following each set of state results more closely than ever before.

We wondered what would make the difference in the tight Pennsylvania primary—and what those results might indicate about the rest of the primary process and the general election. So we turned to numbers-cruncher Jim Barnes from the National Journal and asked him to weigh in on different sets of demographic data. Jim helped us set up an embeddable Google Map comparing different essential factors for the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania.

As you’re watching the results from this race on April 22, Jim says there are five things to look for—and they have interesting implications for the general election in November:

Age. Barack Obama has generally drawn more support from younger voters while Hillary Clinton’s base has come from older voters. With 15.2 percent of its overall population aged 65 or older, Pennsylvania has the third biggest population of seniors in the country after Florida and West Virginia. The candidate who does a better job turning out this core age group could take a big step towards winning the primary. Take a look at the percentages of registered Democrats by age bracket.

Democratic primary in the 2002 gubernatorial race. In 2002, then-Pennsylvania State Auditor General Bob Casey Jr. lost the Democratic gubernatorial primary to then-Philadelphia mayor Ed Rendell, who went on to capture the statehouse. Casey carried 57 of the state’s 67 counties in that primary, but Rendell won the contest because of his strength in the southeastern part of the state, specifically the four suburban and exurban counties outside of Philadelphia—Bucks, Delaware, Chester and Montgomery—where he carried more that 80 percent of the vote. In the Democratic presidential race, Rendell has endorsed Clinton, and Casey is backing Obama. Whether Rendell can help Clinton hold down Obama’s margins in the Philadelphia area, where he is still popular, or Casey can give Obama a boost among his political base in western, central and northeastern Pennsylvania could be pivotal in this primary’s outcome. Here are county-by-county results for the 2002 Democratic primary for governor.

Geography and growth. Based on the results seven weeks ago for the primary next door in Ohio, Clinton should be favored in the Keystone State, but Pennsylvania is more diverse state in terms of its patterns of growth. It has rural and metropolitan areas that are losing population, and fast-growing exurbs. For Obama to do well, he must win not only in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, but also in some of the faster-growing parts of the state. Track the rate of population growth in Pennsylvania counties from 2000-2007.

Race. Obama has had some difficulty winning a significant share of support from white voters in most of the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries, but at the same time he has dominated Clinton in regard to the African-American vote in these contests. Here is the racial breakdown of Pennsylvania's 67 counties.

Religion. Obama and Clinton recently participated in a forum on issues of faith that was held at Messiah College in Pennsylvania. So far in this primary season, Sen. Obama has done well among Democratic primary voters who identify as Protestants and other denominations, but lagged among Catholics. Review the data on religious adherence by county.

As technology continues to be an influential part of this race for President, we hope you can use this map to gain a better understanding about which factors are causing Pennsylvania citizens to cast their vote. Try using the data to make your own predictions for the Pennsylvania outcome, then check if you're right by following live results tonight on Google Maps.

Helping others go green

Posted by Bill Weihl, Green Energy Czar

Happy Earth Day! I'm sure some of you are wondering how Google is celebrating, and we want to know what you're doing too. We work to make our business more environmentally sustainable throughout the year, but this month, we want to support the hard work you're doing to fight climate change. Last week we blogged about some of Google's new green tools, and now we have even more ways to help you observe Earth Day 2008:

• Today we're launching the largest batch of new Google Transit cities yet. Travelers in San Francisco, Denver, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Rhode Island and other locations across the country can now use Google Maps to plan trips using public transportation.
  

• Google Checkout continues to help you and your friends and family team up and donate to environmental organizations. We have a new video to help you learn how to donate and see how easy it is to map your network of generosity.

• The Google Desktop team has developed a handy little gadget that will help those of you making Earth Day pledges to reduce your energy consumption. Install the Energy Saver gadget to enable and optimize your computer’s power management settings, putting it to sleep when you're not using it.
  
  
• Google SketchUp has created a new site for green design professionals, and Google for Educators has put together some [recommendations] for teachers who want to use Google Earth and Maps to teach about environmental issues in the classroom.
  
  
• Several more Google blogs are celebrating Earth Day as well, so be sure to read about the teacher who has cut his paper use by using Docs and Spreadsheets, advertising best-practices for environmental organizations, eco-trendspotting on YouTube and Google.org's tribute to the green collar economy.

Finally, I'll leave you with some photos of our team's trip to Washington, D.C. for this past Sunday’s Earth Day concert on the National Mall. It got a bit soggy, but we had a blast showing attendees how the Google Checkout donation campaign works. We're especially proud of our booth, which was made of sustainable materials and powered by energy from clean hydrogen fuel cells.

A new look for Google Video

Posted by Bindu Reddy, Group Product Manager

Last year, we shared our vision for Google Video and announced a renewed focus on organizing all the web's video. We have a lot of new features to tell you about, so head over to the Google Video Blog for more information about our new look.

Here's to Tom Lehrer, elemental geek

Posted by Jonathan J. Rosenberg, Senior VP, Product Management

We live in a world focused on celebrity, but there are also luminaries -- those guiding lights who actually inspire celebrities along with the rest of us. Today there's a luminary we'd like to call out: Tom Lehrer. It hasn't escaped our attention that Mr. Lehrer turned 80 last week. (We have it on good authority that his view of numbers is such that 80 is not so different than 79, so he probably won't mind this belated note.) We think he's great. We're fans.

Mr. Lehrer is the Harvard mathematician turned parodist songwriter-performer whose sense of humor, intelligence and rhythm created a cult following that, weirdly enough, anticipated a lot of what Google's culture tries to be about. His work is clever, playful and fun and connects things in ways that surprises, delights and inspires. (Consider "The Element Song", his ode to the periodic table, or his lesson on "New Math".) How could we not be inspired by someone who can craft a good laugh, a great tune, and an elegant equation?

From "The Masochism Tango" to "Who's Next" to "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" (trust us, you have to hear it), Mr. Lehrer's unique music carved out a distinctive place in popular music in the 1950s and '60s. He made his fans feel smart. An entrepreneur -- and we like entrepreneurs -- he self-produced and sold his songs via mail order. And for all the edginess in his humor, he ended up writing some ten clever songs for the '70s public television children's program The Electric Company, including a tune about the letter 'e.'

Although Wikipedia notes that he performed only 109 shows and wrote just 37 songs over 20 years, we think his impact and influence goes well beyond those numbers. He was the best kind of "geek" before the word made its way into pop culture. He's the kind of character as comfortable teaching a university course on the history of the musical -- which he did -- as running a seminar on the nature of mathematics -- which he did.

We hope that in retirement Mr. Lehrer is enjoying himself even a fraction as much as we've enjoyed his work. We're grateful that he's such a great example of how science, humor, music and mathematics can be combined to create such wonderful things.

Working together to fight malware

Posted by Panayiotis Mavrommatis, Google Security Team

We recently began a series of posts related to online security that focus on how we secure information (with posts like these) and how you can protect yourself online. Here's the latest in the series.- Ed.

As part of this ongoing security series, we'd like to talk a little about malware. The term malware, derived from "malicious software," refers to any software specifically designed to harm your computer or the software it's running.

Malware can be added to your computer, with or without your knowledge, in a number of ways -- usually when you visit a website containing malware or when you download seemingly innocent software. It can then slow down your system, send fake emails from your email account, steal sensitive information like credit card numbers or passwords from your computer, and more.

The conventional wisdom was that you could avoid malware by learning to spot sites that were created with the sole purpose of spreading it, and by staying away from other sites that might be risky. But recent research from Google suggests that an increasing number of malware attacks are taking place on sites you'd normally regard as safe or legitimate, but have actually been compromised.

Google works closely with the security community to identify malware on the web and then share that information more broadly. We've set up a number of automated systems to scour our index for potentially dangerous sites, and we add a label to those that appear to be a vehicle for malware. If you're searching on Google and click on a link that we've flagged, a warning page will appear before you move forward.

We also notify webmasters if we discover that a site is no longer secure and provide a method for webmasters that clean up their sites to request a review. And starting soon, we'll be providing more detail on sites that appear to be spreading malware, so users have a better sense of why we have flagged a given site and webmasters can more easily identify and correct issues on their sites.

All this stems directly from our security philosophy: We believe that if we all work together to identify threats and stamp them out, we can make the web a safer place for everyone. Of course, we can't catch everything, so our users play a crucial part of this effort too. Below are a few tips that can help you reduce your chances of being affected by malware:

• Use anti-virus software. Most anti-virus software is specifically designed to find and remove harmful software on your computer. Be sure you have anti-virus software installed on your computer (you can get a free trial through Google Pack if you don't), keep it current, and use it to run frequent full-system checks.

• Make sure your operating system and browser are up to date. Attackers typically target vulnerabilities in your operating system (OS) and your browser to install malware on your computer. OS and browser providers frequently release updates to close those vulnerabilities. Enable automatic updates for both your browser and your OS, and check for alerts to ensure you have the latest and greatest protection.

• Be careful about what you download. While Google and everyone else in the online community is working hard to identify harmful sites, new sources of malware are emerging all the time. Whenever you're prompted to download an email attachment, install a plug-in, or download an unfamiliar piece of software, take a moment to think it through. You won't always be able to identify a risky download, but if you practice some reasonable caution, you'll be able to reduce that risk.

If you come across a potentially dangerous site that hasn't already been flagged, please report it. To learn more about malware and how to protect yourself, check out StopBadware.org's help page.

We can't wait for Earth Day

Posted by David Bercovich, Google Green Team

On April 22nd, millions of people around the world will come together to celebrate Earth Day -- a commitment to taking care of our planet, and to fighting climate change. In anticipation of Earth Day, Googlers from many of our offices have been looking for ways to demonstrate our commitment to sustainability. We also want you to have more ways to support the goals of Earth Day, and to share ideas on reducing your own environmental impact. Here are a few to get you started:

• If you use Google Checkout to donate to a non-profit environmental organization on behalf of anyone you know, we'll generate a personal view of Google Maps that includes a marker representing your donation. The people you donate on behalf of will get an email about your contribution, and if they follow your example, their donation will be marked on your map as well. We'll connect the markers, so that you can watch how your generosity spreads as more and more people donate. Visit Checkout's Earth Day page to learn more.

• Hot on the heels of last week's Google Transit launch in Chicago, a whole new batch of transit agencies have made their data available on Google Maps. From Lubbock, Texas to Walla Walla, Washington, people in communities across the country will now find it easier than ever to leave their cars at home.

• I hope you'll take a moment to download the newest version of Google Earth, which launched earlier today. While you're exploring its fancy new features, be sure to check out some of the latest Global Awareness layers (found in the left-side "Layers" panel) that celebrate the beauty and biodiversity on Earth, like ARKive's Endangered Species and Greenpeace's Stop Climate Change. And I encourage you to visit the Google Earth Outreach Showcase, which features a number of environmentally-focused KMLs that can be downloaded and viewed in Google Earth.

Tell the world what you're doing for Earth Day (and beyond) by uploading a message to our Earth Day '08 site. Get together with friends, family or coworkers, grab a camera, and take five minutes to put yourselves on the map. From the everyday to the extraordinary, we want to hear about your plans to take on climate change and make our planet a greener place.

A whole new world to explore

Posted by Peter Birch, Product Manager, Google Earth

On the Google Earth team, we're big fans of Earth Day, so much so that we couldn't hold out until it arrives next week to release our latest labor of love: Google Earth 4.3. With this version, we have completely rethought how you might interact with the 3D world. We've redesigned the navigation to make it much easier to fly from the heavens down to the streets of your town. And with all of the great user-created buildings in the 3D Warehouse, we wanted to make it easy for you to get right up close to see the rich detail.



Here's a sample of what you'll find in this release:

• New navigation - We've improved the zoom control so you can swoop down from outer space to street level in a single seamless motion. And with the addition of the "look" joystick, you can look up at buildings or across a mountain range.

• More, faster 3D buildings - It's more fun to navigate through a lot of new 3D content. Besides adding thousands of buildings contributed by people around the world, we've added dozens of photo-textured cities and towns in the U.S. and elsewhere.

• Street View - The popular Google Maps feature makes its Google Earth debut.

• Sunlight feature - Never seen the sunrise over the Alps? Now you can.

• New languages - There are 12 new languages, including Danish, English (UK), Spanish (Latin American), Finnish, Hebrew, Indonesian, Norwegian, Portuguese (PT), Romanian, Swedish, Thai, and Turkish.

Check out the Lat Long blog for all the details, or head over to our website at earth.google.com. And stay tuned for more details about Earth Day coming soon.

KML, the HTML of geographic content

Posted by Michael Weiss-Malik, KML Product Manager

HTML has completely transformed our world. Through the web, a previously inconceivable amount of information is now just a few keystrokes and mouse clicks away. What makes this possible is the fact that web browsers, web servers, and many other pieces of Internet infrastructure all speak the same language. Because of Internet standards like HTML, any web browser can view any web page. Internet standards are what makes the web a flourishing marketplace.

Today, a new standard was born: The Open Geospatial Consortium has announced its acceptance of KML 2.2 as an official OGC Standard. KML started as a file format for Google Earth, a way to save out the list of restaurants or parks or hiking trails that you might have drawn as a custom map. It's since matured into something much larger, and is supported on a wide variety of mapping platforms produced by a range of companies. You can even view KML on your cell phone! There are tens of millions of KML files available online -- a testament to just how much user-generated content is now map-based information.

Mapping has come a long way from the origami paper creations of the past. Our choice to give KML to the OGC is part of our strong commitment to open standards. It's our belief that KML's standardization will do much to make more geographic-based content accessible online.

There's more on KML's standardization on the Lat Long blog.

Building software tools to find child victims

Posted by Shumeet Baluja, Research Scientist

Since it was founded in 1984, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) has reported more than 570,000 child exploitation leads to law enforcement agencies and assisted with more than 140,900 missing child cases, resulting in the recovery of more than 124,500 children.

The advent of the Internet has unfortunately provided child predators with a new avenue to exploit children. In August 2006, we joined NCMEC's Technology Coalition Against Child Pornography, teaming up with other tech industry companies to develop solutions that hinder predators' ability to use the Internet to exploit children or traffic in child pornography.

In an outshoot of that industry initiative, I discovered some other areas where I thought Google could help the staff at NCMEC. For instance, to date, NCMEC analysts have reviewed more than 13 million child pornography images and videos to assist law enforcement agencies working to identify and rescue children. This task has been time-consuming, and NCMEC analysts were simply getting overwhelmed by all of the data they had to sift through.

One of our core strengths here at Google is our ability to manage and organize immense amounts of information -- whether it's text, image, audio, or video -- and make it more useful and accessible for users. As a member of Google's research group, I realized that NCMEC had an immediate need for some of our research-stage technology. They needed help organizing and making sense of the enormous number of images and videos sent to them every week through their CyberTipline and from law enforcement officers nationwide.

So we went into overdrive. I recruited some fellow engineers to help me build tools that NCMEC might find useful. Throughout 2007, using our 20% time, we created innovative software tools to help NCMEC track down child predators through video and image search. With these tools, analysts will be able to more quickly and easily search NCMEC's large information systems to sort and identify files that contain images of child pornography. In addition, a new video tool we built streamlines analysts' review of video snippets.

The keys here were organization, scalability, and search. In particular, the tools we provided will aid in organizing and indexing NCMEC's information so that analysts can both deal with new images and videos more efficiently and also reference historical material more effectively. We hope the tools we've built for NCMEC will help its analysts make the important and often time-sensitive work of investigating child predators faster and more efficient.

For me, working with NCMEC provided an incredible opportunity. It allowed us to immediately deploy some of our latest research in image and video analysis in a real-world setting. On a personal note, I've been truly inspired by the entire NCMEC team's dedication and diligence in completing such a heart-wrenching mission.

You always hope that your work will eventually be used do some good in the world, and this was an amazing chance to make that hope real by creating tools that have the potential to aid investigations of child predators, find child victims and reduce the flow of child pornography on the Internet.

Salesforce for Google Apps

Posted by Scott McMullan, Google Apps Partner Lead, Google Enterprise

A little less than a year ago, we partnered with Salesforce.com to create Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords. It combines Salesforce.com’s CRM applications with AdWords to make it easier for businesses to generate leads, track, and close them.

Since then, people have offered up a constant stream of requests to streamline even more of the CRM process. At the top of list are everyday tasks like improved efficiency sending and sharing account emails, easier ways to create and share documents and presentations, and simpler ways to schedule meetings and events.

To address these requests, we set out to collaborate on another product integration. Live today, we're happy to unveil Salesforce for Google Apps, a new product for all of those using Salesforce.com available at no additional charge. It brings the collaboration and communications features of Google Apps directly into the user experience of Salesforce.com, and is focused on streamlining the activities most frequently requested by our users. (There's more detail on our Enterprise Blog.)

Here's a quick look at the problems we're trying to solve with Salesforce for Google Apps:



Regarding improvements, we'd like to remind developers that these new features -- as well as those announced today by our partners Astadia and Appirio -- were created using our respective open APIs. We share with Salesforce.com a commitment to make the web the best platform for application innovation.

Thanks to everyone for your good ideas so far. We hope you'll continue to share your thoughts about what you like and what can be improved.

The Spelman College CS Olympiad

Posted by Marcus Mitchell, Engineering Director

We're always interested in supporting computer science education, and in encouraging top talent from diverse backgrounds. Which is why we've just sponsored the Sixth Annual Spelman College Computer Science Olympiad for the second consecutive year. In all, 16 teams from eight Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCUs), or Association of Computer/Information Sciences and Engineering Departments at Minority Institutions (ADMI) participated.

These teams competed in five computer science-related events. One of these was a Google Gadgets competition, where the assignment was to build an interactive, creative and useful Google Gadget. Students brought their semi-completed gadgets and got troubleshooting advice and tips at a hack session, where Googlers and students worked together into the night to perfect them. The following day, each team presented their gadget to our panel of three judges (myself and 2 other Googlers).

We chose first, second and third place winners, whose gadgets will be uploaded to the iGoogle Directory soon:

• First place: Morehouse College Team 2 (Lawrence Forrester, Kevin Walton, Mark Slade, Michael Davis)
• Second place: Old Dominion University Monarchs (Duc Nguyen, Cesar Barbieri, Darrin Lee, Nicole Jackson)
• Third place: Spelman College YOMamaBoards (Jonecia Keels, Jazmine Miller, Paige McReynolds, Arielle Baine)

It was inspiring to see the energy, enthusiasm, and skill of these future computer scientists -- our congratulations to all the teams that participated.

First-place winner.

Adonthell-artwork, FreeOrion Linux builds

Adonthell's broccoli bushes.

James Nash has kept working on vegetation sprites for Adonthell's art repository (which is quite meager right now.) He is using layers for producing the images.

What you don't see is the fact that in the original image I have the outlines and surfaces separated as individual layers so I can easily re-colour them to make variations. Equally I can hide some layers such as the leaves.

This way it is much easier to manipulate the images and to create a richer variety of objects. Layered images can be seen as "source" files for flat/"compiled" bitmaps. Great to know that people actually use this editing-friendly layered-images technique for producing game art.

Good news for Linux-users! Automatically built binaries of FreeOrion's latest SVN revision are available from psitronic.de/div/FO. They will allow you to play the game without having to build it, which isn't that easy on some distributions. Best thanks to kroddn! Windows builds are also available, but they are not as fresh... Sorry dear Win-users, but I see no other way for you, but to switch to Linux ASAP. ;) Anyways, here's a gameplay video while you download:

FreeOrion rev2473 gameplay

Sharing gadgets just got better

Posted by Jeff Regan, Engineer

Have you ever wanted to tell a friend about a really great game gadget on iGoogle or help someone set up a gadget exactly the way you have it? You can do those things on iGoogle using the Share menu, but what you couldn't do before today was share a gadget and collaborate with your friends on the same gadget data. This means you can now view and edit gadgets just like Google Docs.

A simple gadget to share is one for sticky notes. Enter a grocery list, share it with family members, and everyone can see and edit the same list. If you like crosswords, but like me need plenty of help, just share your crossword with a friend and they can work on it with you.

Here's how in three steps:

Step 1: Click the triangle on the gadget you want to share and click "Share this gadget."


Step 2: If you're a Gmail user, just pick the friends you want to share with or type in their email addresses.


Step 3: Decide whether you want to let your friends edit your gadget content or just view it on their iGoogle page and click "Send invites." Your friends will get an email from you and they will be able to see a preview of the gadget in the email and add it to their own iGoogle page.


So go ahead, check out the full list of gadgets with this feature and give it a try. We've enabled this feature for some of our more popular gadgets to encourage collaboration, but of course it doesn't make sense for every gadget. For example, you can share a weather or movie listings gadget with a friend, but data sharing is not enabled - your friend gets an independent copy of the gadget, as before.

Developers, check out the Gadgets API Blog to learn how to incorporate this feature in your gadget with one line of code.

We would love to know what you think.

sil-ver-tree, arr-pee-gee

SilverTree, buggy and ugly but stable and promising!

SilverTree RPG dead? It's forum full of porn (nsfw) spam (nsfw)? Today I got a letter from Anok (name not changed), asking about the whereabouts of SilverTree's devs and whether the project did evaporate or not, and I say "Stand back lady, I'll handle this!" ;)

Well, I have to say that the inconsistency between the google code project, the forum, the web page and the Gna! project is a bit confusing, but SilverTree seems to be pretty stable and working.

There are lots of sensible-gameplay-impossible-making bugs, but as I said, the game is stable and the major problem seems not to be the code, but rather the media. It definitely needs more 3D models and prettier textures and sounds and music. Very nice about SilverTree is how easy it is to compile it. Here's a little introduction set for ya'll:

Getting the source? Easy as pie! svn checkout http://silvertree.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ silvertree and wait. Compiling? Easy as cake! ./configure, wait, install missing libraries, ./configure again, wait, make, wait. Playing the game? Easy as brownies! src/silvertree, play. Creating new content? Easy as muffins! src/editor/silvertree-editor (for the editor to work you will need to pay extra attention to ./configure's output, for example you'll need libqt-dev) Read the README and get additional info in the SilverTree wiki

The menus aren't pretty, please help, oh 2D artists out there!

The editor is cool, it's simple and just works! I played around with it, because that was satisfying for me. Now I share my hard, hard work with you. Enjoy! =D

SilverTree RPG editor

Last call for scalability papers

Posted by Andrew Schwerin, Software Engineer

As an engineer in Seattle, I can't wait for summer to arrive. This year, I'm not just looking forward to the beautiful weather, but also the Seattle Scalability Conference. It takes place on Saturday, June 14th.

Conference planning is underway, and the deadline for our call for papers is this Friday, April 11th! If you have an interesting approach for building and maintaining scalable systems, this is the perfect gathering to share it. Send a 500-word abstract of your 30-minute presentation to scalabilityconf at google.com -- and plan on enjoying the long-awaited Seattle sunshine with me this June.

Here are some of the topics that interest me (but I'm open to more ideas):

Scalable algorithms:

• Parallelization techniques (fully automatic or programmer-assisted)

• Algorithms that are robust in the face of system failures (flaky hardware, OS bugs, network failures)

Scalable systems:

• Managing large, evolving data stores

• Languages and tools for organizing high-throughput data processing systems

• Handling partial failure (automatic failure detection/diagnosis/repair)

We'll be posting more information for conference attendees soon.

Gadgets for a cause

Posted by Samantha Crow, Product Marketing Manager, iGoogle

With Americans spending the same amount of time online as they do watching television (so says this Pew/Internet study), organizations and campaigns have the opportunity to build awareness of election issues broadly through Google tools that make it easy for users to access information.

Gadgets -- which are basically interactive and dynamic mini-billboards -- are one of the fastest growing applications at Google. They're the foundation for iGoogle, the personalized version of the Google homepage that has tens of millions of users. They can also be included on most any page on the web with some simple copy-and-paste. Our top gadget developers include a database specialist from the University of Southern Maine, a stay-at-home mom from Utah, and a computer science major from Puerto Rico.

Now any campaign or organization with a live website can use the Gadget Builder for organizations to quickly create a gadget. You can drive traffic from your gadget on iGoogle to your website and help your organization be seen and heard on this new platform. Your gadget could feature news from your organization, blog updates, a YouTube video channel, polls, trends, speeches, and more. You can submit your gadget to the iGoogle directory and drive additional usage of your gadget from your website.

By making content accessible on iGoogle, organizations can engage supporters, reach undecided voters, and provide information to the uninformed. All you need to get started is access to a publicly available server where you can host your gadget files. If you already have a gadget, make sure it's in the appropriate category, for instance Politics or News. If you don't have a gadget yet, it only takes a few minutes to get started.

For more details on gadget creation, visit the Google Gadget Center.

Developers, start your engines

Posted by Kevin Gibbs, Tech Lead, Google App Engine

We just launched a preview release of Google App Engine, a way for developers to run their web applications on Google's infrastructure. In the same way that Blogger made it easy to create a blog, Google App Engine is designed from the ground up to make it easy to create and run web applications.

With Google App Engine, developers can write web applications based on the same building blocks that Google uses, like GFS and Bigtable. Google App Engine packages those building blocks and provides access to scalable infrastructure that we hope will make it easier for developers to scale their applications automatically as they grow. This means they can spend less time dealing with system administration and maintenance, and more time building and improving their applications. (There's more detail on the new App Engine Blog.)

Google App Engine is free to use during the preview release, but the amount of computing resources any app can use is limited. In the future, developers will be able to purchase additional computing resources as needed, but Google App Engine will always be free to get started.

Today's launch is a preview release. We've got a lot left to do, and there are a lot of features we still want to add to the system. What we'd really like is to get your feedback on it, so we know which features are most important to you. We'll use your suggestions to keep improving the system.

This preview of Google App Engine is available for the first 10,000 developers who sign up; we will increase that number in near future. So, developers, please sign up, download the SDK, and start your engines.

Radakan is pretty

Radakan's devs have decided to use the jME aka jMonkeyEngine, just like JCRPG does! Neat! I admit that I was expecting the project to evaporate, it just had too pretty a website and some team member was very concerned with picking the right wiki and installing a flash audio player on the site, while there was nothing of the game in sight. (I also was afraid the team would come up with some idea like "Hey, let's make our own 3D engine! Right?")

I'm glad I seem to be wrong, the first tech demo video has been uploaded. (I'm not sure if that's not just some engine-bundled terrain and model, but even if it is, what the hell! They're grappling with it! Enough proof of interest and engagement for me!) I just hope they won't let the plans for game story get in the development's way. But I might be wrong worrying about that - Radakan is a "single-player sandbox 3D RPG". Sounds like something that is free of the bug feature "storyline" and like something one can have fun with, without touching any code. Yay for spawning 1k melons mid-air and abusing rag doll physics!

Radakan - Prototype #1

La Croix Pan, some game made with AGS

I tried to find an open source 2D adventure game engine and also was given some recommendation in the last post's comments. Wintermute Engine (WME) and Adventure Game Studio (AGS) caught my attention, both are closed-source freeware. What surprised me, was that AGS has been ported to Linux and MacOSX! Thanks to .Net and Mono (the open source .Net implementation) I suppose.

SceneEdit, one of WME's tools

I visited WME's IRC channel and asked Mnemonic (the only developer, since the beginning of the project) about his views on open sourcing the engine. He said approximately "not now and not anytime soon". These are his reasons: Leading an open source project means stress, because people whine about your code. It requires work, because the code has to be put in a readable state for others. It requires even more work, because submitted patches have to be tested, to make sure that they don't 'feature' new bugs.

"Simply dumping the source on SF.net" was right out, a decision which seems logical. After all, why should you make a project open-source, if you're not able to manage foreign development to take place in it? But on the other hand: If one has not enough time for maintaining an open project, maybe "dumping" the code isn't so bad a thing? In the end it shouldn't do any harm to the project and if someone decides to fork it, it can only be good for the gene pool.

I haven't talked to anyone in the AGS team. I hope I'll get round to catching up on that.

Update: (thanks to the comments) There is only a client, no editor of AGS for linux. Also there is Adventure Game Goddess, something about being an open source adventure game engine. I don't know, read it yourself ;).