Local flavor for Google Suggest

Since the launch of Google Suggest last August, you may already be used to the magic feeling of getting real-time suggestions just after typing a few keystrokes — that is, if you're searching on Google.com. But what if you're doing a search on Google in the U.K., India, Ireland or Australia?

Today we're happy to announce the international launch of Google Suggest. We've localized our suggestions to account for various cultural and local factors to offer suggestions that look familiar to our users. For example, English users in different countries will get suggestions that feel natural:

• If you type [liver] in the U.K., you're probably a Liverpool fan (but in the U.S. you'll get more suggestions about liver diseases):

• In Australia, typing [kan] will offer suggestions about Australia's most famous animal:

• In India, where the mobile phone market is exploding, it's no wonder that typing [no] leads to:

• In Ireland, there are [pubs] everywhere:

• While in the Maldives, typing [ato] leads to:

Google Suggest now covers 155 domains in 51 languages. Special thanks go to the Suggest team in Israel for their hard work in making this a reality.

So go ahead and start using Google Suggest wherever you are, and enjoy the special flavor of local suggestions.

Posted by David Kadouch, Product Manager

Analytics in Latin America

If you run an e-commerce site or use AdWords to direct traffic to your business' webpage, chances are you're interested in knowing what visitors to your site are clicking on, what content interests these potential customers and what avenues brought them there. The more you know about how people engage with your site, the better you are able to design successful advertising campaigns to help grow your business.

In Latin America, online advertising is growing as more and more small businesses initiate an online presence and publicize their efforts through search and display advertising. But less than 5% of web properties throughout Latin America rely on analysis tools to improve their website's performance. Last week, our offices throughout the region hosted several Analytics-themed events to give agencies and other clients a better look at several Google measurement tools that provide people with the means to analyze their site's flow of data, interest and readership in order to build a better advertising campaign.

In Mexico City, advertisers got together to learn about Insights for Search, Ad Planner, YouTube Insights, Analytics, Sitemaps and Website Optimizer, as well as DoubleClick tools. Presentations were designed to give companies an in-depth look at the Google tools that can be helpful for planning their marketing budgets during an economic downturn. Being able to measure data on what content interests people and where consumers are searching for information can help advertisers be more selective about how they invest ad budget. Since the great majority of consumers go online for information before making a purchase, the goal of the seminar was to familiarize advertisers with tools that can increase the reach of their campaigns, while giving them a better idea of what works and what people are searching for.

Meanwhile, our Analytics guru Avinash Kaushik visited São Paulo and Buenos Aires to speak to clients about web analytics and how to make the most of online marketing through analyzing metrics (check out his recent post on bounce rate for related information). Avinash made web analytics fun and accessible with colloquial comparisons (referring sites as 'BFFs'), and demonstrated how to optimize a website's performance with changes in color and layout, among other things. He was accompanied by Google's Latin America managing director Alexandre Hohagen, Brazil's country manager Alex Dias, and Argentina's country manager Adriana Noreña at a succession of events revolving around web metrics and website optimization.



The response and interest from customers and agencies to all of these events was indicative of the huge need for metrics and the ability to track ROI for their marketing investments, especially during these difficult times. For more information on Google Analytics tools, check out the Google Analytics Blog, the Website Optimizer Blog and the Conversion Room blog.

Posted by Alfonso Luna, Marketing Director, Latin America

Google's newest venture

Today we're excited to announce Google Ventures, Google's new venture capital fund. This is Google's effort to take advantage of our resources to support innovation and encourage promising new technology companies. By borrowing the best practices of top-tier, financially focused venture capital firms and bringing to bear Google's unique technical expertise and brand, we think we can find young companies with truly awesome potential and encourage their development into successful businesses.

At its core, Google Ventures is charged with finding and helping to develop exceptional start-ups. We'll be focusing on early stage investments across a diverse range of industries, including consumer Internet, software, clean-tech, bio-tech, health care and, no doubt, other areas we haven't thought of yet. Central to our effort will be our fellow Googlers, whom we view as a critically important resource to help educate us about potential investments areas and evaluate specific companies.

Economically, times are tough, but great ideas come when they will. If anything, we think the current downturn is an ideal time to invest in nascent companies that have the chance to be the "next big thing," and we'll be working hard to find them. If you think you have the next big idea, or if you just want to to learn more, please see our website at www.google.com/ventures.

Posted by Rich Miner and Bill Maris, Managing Partners, Google Ventures

Email in Indian languages

It's hard for me to imagine going without email for a day. It's such an easy and convenient way to communicate with my friends and family. However, there was one limitation that bothered me: my family members and friends who prefer to communicate in Hindi did not have an easy way to type and send email in their language of choice. I am extremely happy to announce the launch of a new feature in Gmail that makes it easy to type email in Indian languages.

When you compose a new mail in Gmail, you should now see an icon with an Indian character, as the screenshot below shows. This feature is enabled by default for Gmail users in India. If you do not see this function enabled by default, you will need to go the "Settings" page and enable this option in the "Language" section.

When you click the Indian languages icon, you can type words the way they sound in English and Gmail will automatically convert the word to its Indian local language equivalent. For example, if a Hindi speaker types "namaste" we will transliterate this to "नमस्ते." Similarly, "vanakkam" in Tamil will become "வணக்கம்." We currently support five Indian languages -- Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam -- and you can select the language of your choice from the drop-down list next to the icon.

We built this new feature using Google's transliteration technology, which is also available on Google India Labs, Orkut, Blogger and iGoogle. I hope you find this feature useful to communicate with those of your friends and family who prefer to write in their native language, and it will be available soon to businesses and schools using Google Apps. Now back to replying to all those Hindi emails I got from my family and friends today!

Posted by Chandramouli Mahadevan, Software Engineer

Getting your Medicare records in Google Health

Google Health is working with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on a pilot program in Arizona and Utah that lets Medicare beneficiaries import their Medicare claims data into Google Health.

The pilot is one of several CMS programs to test out how the government can give beneficiaries secure access to their medical data online. Before I came to Google, I worked at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which houses CMS. At the time, the idea of giving beneficiaries access to their own Medicare claims data in electronic format was just that — an idea. Today, it's becoming a reality. And given the more than $19 billion investment the government is making in Health IT as part of the stimulus package, now is the perfect time.

As a part-time caregiver to my mother who has a serious chronic illness and someone who just lost both elderly grandparents in the past four months to illness, I can see the benefit of having all of my family’s medical information organized in one place. When Google Health launched last year, I promptly set up accounts for my mother and both grandparents. But at the time, I found it frustrating that I was not able to access electronic copies of my grandparents' Medicare claims — where most of their medical data resided.

The Medicare Arizona and Utah pilot is designed to give beneficiaries choice in the tools they use to manage their medical records online. Google Health is one of four personal health records (PHR) that beneficiaries can choose from. While only traditional fee-for-service (FFS) Medicare beneficiaries with a primary residence in Arizona and Utah are eligible to participate, this includes nearly 1.1 million beneficiaries living in those regions.

For beneficiaries who choose to participate, it's important to know that Medicare does not have access to information in your Google Health Account — Medicare will only be sending data to your Account. Beneficiaries who participate in the pilot will still have access to data imported into their Google Health Accounts after the pilot concludes at the end of 2009. And with the recently launched Google Health sharing feature, any beneficiary enrolled in this pilot can now share this data with family members and doctors in their care network.

If I had this type of electronic access to my grandparents' medical records during my family's medical crisis, it would have been a huge help to me. I applaud CMS for taking this big step towards empowering consumers with access to their own health records.

If you're a Medicare beneficiary living in Arizona or Utah and are interested in participating in the pilot, you can get started here.

Posted by Missy Krasner, Product Marketing Manager, Google Health

QNC- Duo Dynamic

Gotta love a 2005 cover that genuinely looks like it was made in the mid 90’s. To tell the truth, I only started rocking with QNC (MC Q Ball and producer Curt Cazal), when I first heard them over a vicious cut by Aim (don’t sleep on that true British hip hop). The type of song that makes you forget all the bullshit and realize why you loved hip hop. I’m teasin, I know, track’s called The Force (no Obi Wan), and it will literally rock your shit. Guaranteed. It’s like when you first heard O.C.’s stellar Word…Life and off the strength of that one album you tracked down his whole discography. Same here. That joint is so vicious, that I was compelled to go all out. Copped the 12′, the vinyl’s, the instrumentals, the album, everything. Off the strength of that one joint. Anyway, QNC is a great listen, and they got a feature from Camp Lo. At the moment, that might not seem all that impressive, but Camp Lo was ghost like Casper 4 years ago. And if you ain’t fucking with Camp Lo, I don’t even know.

For Da’ Love

How many songs have you heard where the MC’s claim they’re doing it for the love? Ludacris did it 3 songs in a row his last album. Take my word for it, this isn’t another I Do It For Hip Hop. This is a deeply heartfelt ode to that art form we all love. Haunting instrumental, those NY lyrics that quietly smack you across the face, and an immaculate scratch for the hook. What more can you ask for?

Streets Don’ Run (feat. Dimes)

You hear this beat? You hear this fucking beat? What’s fucking with that? To balance it out, QNC and Dimes kick some wack shit, still a dope track though.

It’s Going Down (feat. Camp Lo)

This song isn’t going to change anyone’s life, but at the same time it’s a harmless waste of four minutes. Sounds like any track on Uptown Saturday Night with a little more polish and a lot more playfulness.

Would You (feat. Dubble D)

Oh man, this guy must get so much shit for his rapper name. Some great storytelling over an almost Miami Vice- esque beat. To tell the truth, this shit is kinda wack, but that “would you” scratch is just immaculate.

Major League (feat. Schinie)

Schinie with (her?) gruff Lil Kim voice spits some hot fire all over the first verse, and then the lyrical dragon Q Ball finished the job. Nothing like a job done right.

On some real shit, this album wasn’t terrible but it wasn’t awfully impressive either. The few tracks listed above will prove as a good gateway to the rest of QNC’s discography. However, I didn’t find one joint that truly measured up to the greatness that was The Force. Different strokes for different folks though.

0-20: Terrible listening experience
21-40: Maybe one good song
41-60: A few good songs
61-80: Half are good songs, half are weak
81-100: Great listening experience, almost all are great songs

I give this album an 75.

Coppage here

Why Twitter is So Useful

CLICK ON HERE TO FOLLOW http://twitter.com/lilruth
Twitter can be useful in lots of ways especially if you do not have a contact page or a way that someone can communicate with you right away if they want to ask you something. Twitter also can let you communicate with your favorite news caster or Movie star, many important and famous people use Twitter to keep in contact with their fans. There are singers, comedians even people who run our country are on Twitter and you can contact them if you wish to do so.
You can use Twitter to send out updates about the status of your blog and answer quick support and regular questions without opening up your email client and writing a new message for a simple question.
With more links appearing in search engines to the service, it will begin becoming easier to find other users and their updates, should they also be indexed. Not everyone will be indexed, and it could take time before you even see your account reach the first page of results for a more broad keyword found on your profile/account.
You can’t really compare Twitter to blogs when you look at them in this way - they are separate and were designed to be used for different purposes. You don’t have full control with Twitter and are limited on purpose, while you have much more freedom on your blog.
Why Pairing is Important
Think about your contact information on your blog. What if someone was unable to access this? They’d probably just dismiss the questions or comments that they were going to pose to you. They had no real method of contacting you so they had to go elsewhere, to another blog to express their thoughts.
A Twitter account can be referred to as another form of communication, much like emailing, instant messaging, or even calling someone. Leaving out a Twitter account (whenever you have one) form your blog is a costly mistake that should be avoided.
Recap
Use similar user names for your blog and your profile/Twitter page.
Link immensely to your Twitter profile from your blog to increase awareness.
Don’t hesitate to ask people to contact you through Twitter rather than other methods.
Use proper techniques to increase the ranking of your Twitter profile - include keywords in content, update often, and so on.
Don’t let your Twitter page go blank or without updates.

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The 2009 Spelman College CS Olympiad

We've just sponsored the Seventh Annual Spelman College Computer Science Olympiad for the third consecutive year — something we were proud to do as part of our commitment to supporting computer science education and encouraging talented students from diverse backgrounds. This year, 22 teams from 12 Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCUs) or Association of Computer/Information Sciences and Engineering Departments at Minority Institutions (ADMI) participated in the Olympiad.

One of the five events was the programming challenge, which for the second time was a Google Gadgets competition. Their task? To build an interactive, useful, and creative Google Gadget. Teams worked on their gadget concept and design prior to the Olympiad, and then brought their gadgets to a Friday night hack session, where Googlers and students worked together to debug the gadgets and make last-minute adjustments. At the conclusion of the workshop, teams presented their gadgets to a panel of three Googler judges, demonstrating gadget functionalities, discussing design challenges, and providing suggestions for how they would further refine their gadgets. Our judges were then faced with the tough task of deciding upon the winners:

• First Place: Hampton University "2011"
• Second Place: University of the District of Columbia "Firebirds"
• Third Place: Norfolk State University "Green"

Here's a look at Hampton University's first place gadget, a rendering of a game akin to tic-tac-toe called "Do Not Want."


Congratulations to all 22 teams!

Posted by Anna Davda, University Programs Specialist

An hour for the Earth

Cities around the world will participate in Earth Hour on Saturday, turning off their lights to raise awareness for energy conservation.

You might remember that last year we “turned the lights out” on the Google.com homepage during Earth Hour to symbolize our own commitment to sustainability. We won’t be turning out the lights on our homepage again this year. Our users come first, and while we received lots of enthusiastic feedback last year, some found an all-black Google.com to be a little confusing. (Also, darkened screens don’t actually save energy — modern displays use the same amount of power regardless of what they display.) We are actively supporting this year's Vote Earth, an Earth Hour 2009 initiative to gather one billion words to present at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December of this year. Participants can share their opinions about climate change through the Earth Connect social platform which incorporates Google tools including Google Maps, App Engine, Friend Connect, Google Translate, Blogger and Feedburner.

After all, Earth Hour is about more than dimming lights; it’s about making a commitment to reduce energy consumption throughout the year. At Google, we take this commitment seriously and over the past twelve months we’ve worked hard to reduce Google’s own power use and to help others reduce theirs:

• We remodeled our San Francisco office to achieve a Gold rating by the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED Green Building Rating System
• Our engineers are working on a tool called Google PowerMeter that will show consumers home energy information almost in real time, right on their computer
• We’ve designed the most efficient data centers possible and are sharing some of our best practices with industry peers
• In the fall we compiled tips and tricks to help our users save energy (and money)
• Our summit on plug-in vehicles in Washington was standing room only, with policy, technology, and energy experts all discussing an electric vehicle future
  

Google will continue to work hard this year to be as green as possible as a company, and we encourage others to take an hour on Saturday and commit to the Earth too. For some great ideas on ways you can save energy every hour of every day through computing efficiency, check out Climate Savers Computing Initiative and their recent video challenge: “Power Down for the Planet.”

Posted by Bill Weihl, Green Energy Czar

Changes to our sales and marketing organizations

Google has grown very quickly in a very short period of time. When companies grow that quickly it's almost impossible to get everything right—and we certainly didn't. In some areas we've created overlapping organizations which not only duplicate effort but also complicate the decision-making process. That makes our teams less effective and efficient than they should be. In addition, we over-invested in some areas in preparation for the growth trends we were experiencing at the time.

So today we have informed Googlers that we plan to reduce the number of roles within our sales and marketing organizations by just under 200 globally. Making changes of this kind is never easy—and we recognize that the recession makes the timing even more difficult for the Googlers concerned. We did look at a number of different options but ultimately concluded that we had to restructure our organizations in order to improve our effectiveness and efficiency as a business. We will give each person time to try and find another position at Google, as well as outplacement support, and provide severance packages for those who leave the company. Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone affected for all they have contributed to Google.

Posted by Omid Kordestani, Senior VP, Global Sales and Business Development

Blogs, Bloggers, Blogs

There are many different types of blogs, differing not only in the type of content, but also in the way that content is delivered or written.
Personal blogs
The personal blog, an ongoing diary or commentary by an individual, is the traditional, most common blog. Personal bloggers usually take pride in their blog posts, even if their blog is never read by anyone but them. Blogs often become more than a way to just communicate; they become a way to reflect on life or works of art. Blogging can have a sentimental quality. Few personal blogs rise to fame and the mainstream, but some personal blogs quickly garner an extensive following. A type of personal blog is referred to as "microblogging," which is extremely detailed blogging as it seeks to capture a moment in time. Sites, such as Twitter, allow bloggers to share thoughts and feelings instantaneously with friends and family and is much faster than e-mailing or writing. This form of social media lends to an online generation already too busy to keep in touch
Corporate blogs
A blog can be private, as in most cases, or it can be for business purposes. Blogs, either used internally to enhance the communication and culture in a corporation or externally for mmarketing, branding, or public relations, purposes are called corporate blogs,
Question blogging
is a type of blog that answers questions. Questions can be submitted in the form of a submittal form, or through email or other means such as telephone or VOIP. Qlogs can be used to display shownotes from podcasts or the means of conveying information through the internet. Many question logs use syndication such as RSS as a means of conveying answers to questions.
By media type
A blog comprising videos is called a vlog, one comprising links is called a linklog, a site containing a portfolio of sketches is called a sketchblog, or one comprising photos is called a photoblog. Blogs with shorter posts and mixed media types are called tumbleblogs. Blogs that are written on typewriters and then scanned are called typecast or typecast blogs; see typecasting (blogging)
A rare type of blog hosted on the Gopher Protocol is known as a Phlog.
By device
Blogs can also be defined by which type of device is used to compose it. A blog written by a mobile device like a mobile phone or PDA could be called a moblog. One early blog was Wearable Wireless Webcam, an online shared diary of a person's personal life combining text, video, and pictures transmitted live from a wearable computer and Eye Tap device to a web site. This practice of semi-automated blogging with live video together with text was referred to a sousveillance.. Such journals have been used as evidence in legal matters.[citation needed]
By genre.
Some blogs focus on a particular subject, such as political blogs, travel blogs, house blogs, fashion blogs, project blogs, education blogs, niche blogs, classical music blogs, quizzing blogs and legal blogs (often referred to as a blawgs) or dreamlogs. While not a legitimate type of blog, one used for the sole purpose of spamming is known as a Splog.

Community and cataloging
The Blogosphere
The collective community of all blogs is known as the blogosphere. Since all blogs are on the internet by definition, they may be seen as interconnected and socially networked, through blogrolls, comments, linkbacks (refbacks, trackbacks or pingbacks) and backlinks. Discussions "in the blogosphere" have been used by the media as a gauge of public opinion on various issues. A collection of local blogs is sometimes referred to as a bloghood.
Blog search engines
Several blog search engines are used to search blog contents, such as Bloglines, BlogScope, and Technorati. Technorati, which is among the most popular blog search engines, provides current information on both popular searches and tags used to categorize blog postings. Research community is working on going beyond simple keyword search, by inventing new ways to navigate through huge amounts of information present in the blogosphere, as demonstrated by projects like BlogScope.[citation needed]
Blogging communities and directories
Several online communities exist that connect people to blogs and bloggers to other bloggers, including BlogCatalog, MyBlogLog, and YULBlog, a combination online and offline community for people with blogs based in Montreal.
Blogging and advertising
It is common for blogs to feature advertisements either to financially benefit the blogger or to promote the blogger's favorite causes. The popularity of blogs has also given rise to "fake blogs" in which a company will create a fictional blog as a marketing tool to promote a product.

Popularity
Researchers have analyzed the dynamics of how blogs become popular. There are essentially two measures of this: popularity through citations, as well as popularity through affiliation (i.e. blogroll). The basic conclusion from studies of the structure of blogs is that while it takes time for a blog to become popular through blogrolls, permalinks can boost popularity more quickly, and are perhaps more indicative of popularity and authority than blogrolls, since they denote that people are actually reading the blog's content and deem it valuable or noteworthy in specific cases
The blogdex project was launched by researchers in the MIT Media Lab to crawl the Web and gather data from thousands of blogs in order to investigate their social properties. It gathered this information for over 4 years, and autonomously tracked the most contagious information spreading in the blog community, ranking it by recency and popularity. It can therefore be considered the first instantiation of a memetracker. The project is no longer active, but a similar function is now served by tailrank.com.
Blogs are given rankings by Technorati based on the number of incoming links and Alexa Internet based on the Web hits of Alexa Toolbar users. In August 2006, Technorati found that the most linked-to blog on the internet was that of Chinese actress Xu Jinglei.[13] Chinese media Xinhua reported that this blog received more than 50 million page views, claiming it to be the most popular blog in the world. Technorati rated Boing Boing to be the most-read group-written blog.
Gartner forecasts that blogging will peak in 2007, leveling off when the number of writers who maintain a personal Web site reaches 100 million. Gartner analysts expect that the novelty value of the medium will wear off as most people who are interested in the phenomenon have checked it out, and new bloggers will offset the number of writers who abandon their creation out of boredom. The firm estimates that there are more than 200 million former bloggers who have ceased posting to their online diaries, creating an exponential rise in the amount of "dotsam" and "netsam" — that is to say, unwanted objects on the Web (analogous to flotsam and jetsam).

Blurring with the mass media
Many bloggers, particularly those engaged in participatory journalism, differentiate themselves from the mainstream media, while others are members of that media working through a different channel. Some institutions see blogging as a means of "getting around the filter" and pushing messages directly to the public. Some critics worry that bloggers respect neither copyright nor the role of the mass media in presenting society with credible news. Bloggers and other contributors to user-generated content are behind Time magazine naming their 2006 person of the year as "you".
Many mainstream journalists, meanwhile, write their own blogs — well over 300, according to CyberJournalist.net's J-blog list. The first known use of a blog on a news site was in August 1998, when Jonathan Dube of The Charlotte Observer published one chronicling Hurricane Bonnie.
Some bloggers have moved over to other media. The following bloggers (and others) have appeared on radio and television: Duncan Black (known widely by his pseudonym, Atrios), Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit), Markos Moulitsas Zúniga (Daily Kos), Alex Steffen (Worldchanging) and Ana Marie Cox (Wonkette). In counterpoint, Hugh Hewitt exemplifies a mass-media personality who has moved in the other direction, adding to his reach in "old media" by being an influential blogger. Equally many established authors, for example Mitzi Szereto have started using Blogs to not only update fans on their current works but also to expand into new areas of writing.
Blogs have also had an influence on minority languages, bringing together scattered speakers and learners; this is particularly so with blogs in Gaelic languages. Minority language publishing (which may lack economic feasibility) can find its audience through inexpensive blogging.
There are many examples of bloggers who have published books based on their blogs, e.g., Salam Pax, Ellen Simonetti, Jessica Cutler, ScrappleFace. Blog-based books have been given the name blook. A prize for the best blog-based book was initiated in 2005, the Lulu Blooker Prize. However, success has been elusive offline, with many of these books not selling as well as their blogs. Only blogger Tucker Max cracked the New York Times Bestseller List.argest environmental portals.
Early blogs were simply manually updated components of common Web sites. However, the evolution of tools to facilitate the production and maintenance of Web articles posted in reverse chronological order made the publishing process feasible to a much larger, less technical, population. Ultimately, this resulted in the distinct class of online publishing that produces blogs we recognize today. For instance, the use of some sort of browser-based software is now a typical aspect of "blogging". Blogs can be hosted by dedicated blog hosting services, or they can be run using blog software, or on regular web hosting services.

Rise in popularity
After a slow start, blogging rapidly gained in popularity. Blog usage spread during 1999 and the years following, being further popularized by the near-simultaneous arrival of the first hosted blog tools:
Open Diary launched in October 1998, soon growing to thousands of online diaries. Open Diary innovated the reader comment, becoming the first blog community where readers could add comments to other writers' blog entries.
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Bloggers Choice Awards

Come on and get those nominations in.. Nominate your favorite blog or go and vote for the blog you like the most. Its important that you all support these blogs by going and voting. Alot of bloggers work hard to get nominated so go and vote and show which Blogs are the ones you like and know they deserve to win. Welcome to the Blogger's Choice Awards, the most popular user-generated blog voting site on the planet! We are now accepting nominations for the 2009 competition. Sign up and vote for your favorite (and least favorite) blogs to help determine the winners for next year. Be Sure to Leave Your Comments!

iGoogle's got game... themes!

I'm happy to announce the launch of iGoogle game themes. These themes offer our users new iGoogle backdrops inspired by their favorite video games, including classics like "Mario" and "Mega Man" and new sensations like "Wii Sports" and "Spore." Like our iGoogle artist themes, fashion and music themes and themes for causes, we hope that the game themes delight our users and reflect their personal interests. As you can imagine, these themes in particular have captivated our iGoogle software engineers who are gamers themselves. I'll now turn the post over to one of our engineers who worked closely on the project, Matthew Chan, for more details.

A gamer's POV

I confess, I'm a game geek. My first experience with video games was spending hours and hours (not to mention my weekly allowance) playing "Donkey Kong" and "Galaga" at a nearby arcade until my fingers ached. These days I no longer have to ride my bike to the neighborhood arcade to play video games — I can do it in the comfort of my own home anytime I want! And even better... starting today, I can have images of my favorite childhood games right on my iGoogle page.

iGoogle now has graphics from all sorts of games that I know will excite my fellow gamers. Picture your homepage with "Burnout" cars zooming in the background, Ryu from "Street Fighter" blasting hadoukens across your page, or rock stars jamming out to tunes from "Guitar Hero." It doesn't end there. For those of you who used to dream about completing the Triforce or getting out of tombs alive, choose from "Zelda" or "Tomb Raider." Want more? Try "Dungeons & Dragons," "The Sims 3," or "World of Warcraft" on for size.

So come check out the new game themes (www.google.com/gamingthemes) and choose your favorite one. If you can't decide, no worries. Just add the game theme of the day and enjoy seeing a different one on your iGoogle page every day.

Here's a look at the themes in action:



Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP of Search Products and User Experience, and Matthew Chan, iGoogle engineer

Google, at your service

It used to be that creating a webpage was a pursuit reserved for the truly tech-savvy, requiring a geek's expertise in HTML, Java, or C++ coding.

These days, it's a different story. Working with a hosting service has made things a great deal easier, as they can help you reserve a name for your site (www.[insertyournamehere].com), and they often provide tools to help get you set up, with minimal to zero programming experience required.

Today, we're releasing Google Services for Websites, a few more tools that your hosting company can now enable to help you improve your website. This expanded program includes Webmaster Tools, AdSense, Custom Search, and Site Search, making it easier to drive traffic to your site, monetize your site through the Google ad network, and add various search capabilities to help your visitors find information on your site faster.


For more information, check out our Enterprise Blog, Webmasters Blog and Custom Search Blog. And if your hosting service doesn't have Google Services for Websites yet, send them to this page. We hope you find these new tools helpful.

Posted by Rajat Mukherjee, Group Product Manager

Google's 2009 EMEA Faculty Summit

Our Zurich office was proud to host Google's second annual EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa regions) Faculty Summit last month. Eighty leading academics joined us from 66 universities in 24 countries for this three-day event.

The Faculty Summit's purpose is to increase collaboration between key universities and our engineering teams. This year, we organised more than 40 talks and presentations, plus panels, networking and social events to help our guests learn more about Google's work in their regions. In return, Googlers gained valuable insight into challenges faced by the region's universities and new developments in the academic world. Event highlights included a keynote by leading cryptographer and Turing Award winner Adi Shamir on the topic of privacy and security as related to cloud computing. Further discussion centered on topics ranging from the power and limitations of cryptographic technology to usability issues introduced by security requirements, with some debate over the balance between preventing abuse and identifying and reporting abusers.

Alfred Spector (VP of Research), Jeff Walz (University Relations) and I spoke about Google's engineering efforts and the impact of our university relations initiatives, with much discussion focusing on our involvement in the Arab and African regions. Rapidly expanding markets in the Middle East and Africa represent a major engineering challenge for us, and we are eager to continue collaboration with leading academic attendees from the region well beyond the Summit. We were pleased to welcome representatives from the Al Arabiya news channel, who highlighted this topic in a recent broadcast. We also heard from Google 'Research Award' and 'CS4HS' (Computer Science for High School) grant recipients and EMEA-based academics spending long-term sabbaticals at Google, who described their experiences over the past year.


This year also saw new additions to the Faculty Summit agenda, including a networking session allowing academics to discuss collaboration options one-on-one with specific Google engineers. This session spurred a great deal of activity — for instance, multiple Googlers are booked to deliver guest lectures at external events and universities and several attendees have been invited to present their findings on research ranging from 'Software Visualisation' to 'Mobile Agile Testing' at Google engineering offices across EMEA. We plan to make these networking sessions a focal point at future Faculty Summits!

I'd like to thank the organising team for their help in planning and executing this important event for the second year running. The 2009 EMEA Faculty Summit proved to be an incisive and informative event resulting in new academic and industrial collaborations. We look forward to reporting back on these synergies as they develop over the next year!

Posted by Nelson Mattos, VP of Engineering

Citizen participation that scales: a call to action

At Google we hold weekly town hall-style meetings with our founders, CEO, and guest speakers, which always feature a Q&A session. Managing Q&A is a unique challenge with an audience of thousands, in offices around the world, who inevitably want to ask more questions than we have time to answer. To help address this challenge, we developed Google Moderator, built on App Engine.

Moderator gives participants a way to submit questions and vote for the ones they want answered. And thanks to the scale that App Engine provides, this application can now support tens of thousands of people at once. This gives everyone the chance to be heard in a way that gives priority to the issues that matter most to the broader group.

As you may have heard, the White House is hosting an online town hall meeting on Thursday and has asked people to submit questions for the president and vote on which ones they think he should answer.

We think technology can be a force for greater accountability and access between citizens and their elected officials. We're excited that the White House has chosen to use the power of cloud-based applications like Google Moderator and App Engine to scale the president's direct dialogue with the American people.

To take part in this experiment in citizen participation, please visit: http://WhiteHouse.gov/OpenForQuestions

Posted by Vic Gundotra, Vice President, Engineering

Two new improvements to Google results pages

Today we're rolling out two new improvements to Google search. The first offers an expanded list of useful related searches and the second is the addition of longer search result descriptions -- both of which help guide users more effectively to the information they need.

More and better search refinements

Starting today, we're deploying a new technology that can better understand associations and concepts related to your search, and one of its first applications lets us offer you even more useful related searches (the terms found at the bottom, and sometimes at the top, of the search results page).

For example, if you search for [principles of physics], our algorithms understand that "angular momentum," "special relativity," "big bang" and "quantum mechanic" are related terms that could help you find what you need. Here's an example (click on the images in the post to view them larger):

Let's look at a couple of examples in other languages. In Russian, for the query [гадание на картах] (fortune-telling with cards), the algorithms find the related terms "таро" (tarot), "ленорман" (lenormand) and "тибетское гадание мо" (tibetan divination mo). In Italian, if you search for [surf alle canarie] (surf at the canary islands), we now offer suggestions based on the three most famous Canary Islands: "lanzarote," "gran canaria," and "fuerteventura":

We are now able to target more queries, more languages, and make our suggestions more relevant to what you actually need to know. Additionally, we're now offering refinements for longer queries — something that's usually a challenging task. You'll be able to see our new related searches starting today in 37 languages all around the world.

And speaking of long queries, that leads us to our next improvement...

Longer snippets

When you do a search on Google, each result we give you starts with a dark blue title and is followed by a few lines of text (what we call a "snippet"), which together give you an idea of what each page is about. To give more context, the snippet shows how the words of your query appear on the page by highlighting them in bold.

When you enter a longer query, with more than three words, regular-length snippets may not give you enough information and context. In these situations, we now increase the number of lines in the snippet to provide more information and show more of the words you typed in the context of the page. Below are a couple of examples.

Suppose you were looking for information about Earth's rotation around the sun, and specifically wanted to know about its tilt and distance from the sun. So you type all of that into Google: [earth's rotation axis tilt and distance from sun]. A normal-length snippet wouldn't be able to show you the context for all of those words, but with longer snippets you can be sure that the first result covers all those topics. In addition, the extra line of snippets for the third result shows the word "sun" in context, suggesting that the page doesn't talk about Earth's distance from the sun:

Similarly, if you're looking for a restaurant review that covers all the parts of the meal, longer snippets can help:

But don't just take our word for it — try it out yourself with your favorite long, detailed query.

These are just two recent examples of improvements we've made. We are constantly looking for ways to get you to the web page you want as quickly as possible. Even if you don't notice all of our changes, rest assured we're hard at work making sure you have the highest quality search experience possible.

Posted by Ori Allon, Technical Lead, Search Quality Team, and Ken Wilder, Snippets Team Engineer

Supporting students in open source software development

Google Summer of Code, our program to introduce students to open source software development, is now in full swing for 2009. Over the past four years, we've paired nearly 2,500 "graduates" with more than 2,500 mentors from industry to academia, with some spectacular results: millions of lines of source code produced and over $15M in funding provided to open source development. This year student participants have more than 150 open source software and technology–related projects to choose from when submitting their applications, from operating systems to content management systems.

During the 2008 program, we had more than 975 students successfully complete their projects. Each participant received a $4,500 stipend and an ultra-awesome t-shirt to go along with their newly honed programming skills. We're particularly excited by the social ties our students form through the course of the program, as well. We've connected people in more than 98 countries, and hope to bring people from even more places into the Google Summer of Code community this year.

We'll be accepting student applications through April 3, 2009 at 12:00 pm PST. If you're interested in learning more, check out our Frequently Asked Questions or subscribe to our discussion list. You can also check out the Google Open Source Blog for regular updates on the program. When you're ready to get started, visit the Google Summer of Code 2009 site to submit your application. Best of luck to all of our applicants!

For an overview of the program, check out this video.



Posted by Leslie Hawthorn, Program Manager, Open Source Team

The Tough Boys Games On Internet

Boys will always be boys because no one can change their mindset therefore competition can be seen whether in maths or games. Most of the young boys are fond of video games and among all the video games bike games are the most popular one. Boys go crazy when they hear about bike games. The bike games can either be played individually or multi players can join these games. So all the young guys can join and enjoy this kind of games. When young boys start playing these video games they naturally feel that they are on a bike and they are only riding the bike. Young boys are fond of these games because they like speed and trouble that emerge while reaching a particular target in the games.

This creates lots of enthusiasm and craze among the. Whenever we like to play bike racing video games the first thing that strikes our mind is that we have to reach first which makes it more exciting and thrilling. That’s why this video game is very popular and is played by the masses.

All the young boys are really fond of bikes consequently bike games catch the interest of those guys. Riding bike is the passion of young boys and this is the good opportunity to develop their skill on the same. Bikes games are offered on internet you can easily download theses games on your PC.

Open source Artillery / Worms clones

So it seems that Scorched 3D, Wormux, Hedgewars, and Atomic Tanks are all clones of inspired by... Worms? No. Scorched Earth? Nah. Gorillas? Nope. Tank Wars? No. That's right, their roots go all the way back to a 1980 on the Apple II under the name Artillery. Even earlier ascii versions from as early as 1976 are reported. Now that's real history - all other games (pong and chess excepted) are modern upstarts. ;-)

Atomic Tanks

home • screenshots • download

One of the older and more mature open source Artillery clones, with version 0.5 first available in January of 2003, Atomic Tanks doesn't seem to have the online presence of it's contemporaries. This is probably because it doesn't look that nice, with garish colours, coarse widgets, and almost badly drawn sprites.

Update: Markus comments, "I am sure that the graphics and such in Atomic Tanks are intentional. It is a fairly faithful reproduction of the original Scorched Earth, and for those of us who grew up playing that game quite a bit, that is where the real appeal lies." I'm not sure I can agree with you there [on the intentionality of the bad graphics] after inspecting the original graphics.

What it lacks in the graphics department, it makes up for in features. The sheer range of weapons is overwhelming. You earn money, which you can use upgrade features and improve your tanks, making the game a much more appealing single player experience. Also the land behaves differently, falling to fill and holes created by explosions.

The latest release was 20th March 2009, which gives it a spot at the top of the article. :-)

Scorched 3D

home • screenshots • download

Scorched 3D has been in development since 2001 with build 1 released on 29th April of that year.

The first thing to note about Scorched 3D is that it looks beautiful. It is the only 3D game in the article, but it is especially well done. The islands deform as they get pounded by missiles. Battleships stay moored offshore, the waves lap against the beaches, and jet fighters fly overhead the tanks. It looks as good as a commercial game.

Scorched 3D build 42.1 arrived on 3rd March 2009.

Hedgewars

home • screenshots • download

Hedgewars is the youngest of the four projects, in development since 2004 and first released on 13th November 2006.

If I had to sum up Hedgewars in 3 words, I would say, "Worms II with hedgehogs." (Hey, II is a number!) With it's yelps and ows, and faithful recreation of many of the popular Worms weapons, it makes for a very similar gaming experience, arguably even better.

Hedgewars 0.9.9 was released 19th January 2009 and version 0.9.10 is imminent. I think the video successfully gets across just how Worms-like Hedgewars is:

Wormux

home • screenshots • download

Wormux looks very nice, and gameplay deviates a bit more than Hedgewars from the original worms experience, but is still very heavily inspired by it. It includes all the popular Free software mascots, so there's plenty of characters that you should recognise or should learn to recognise - making it almost educational! ;-)

The last few years have seen the developers work towards a new engine that will massively enhance the game with features like integrated physics (they created whysics engine just for this). I expect Wormux will continue to depart in a good way - by adding new interesting features that enhance gameplay - from it's Worms foundations whilst retaining the spirit that inspired the project originally.

Version 0.8.3 was released on 5th March 2009 and included some backported enhancements from the development version.

Incoming!

Looking to the future, there is also the iteam project, inspired by Gunbound. It seems like it could combine the graphical panache of Wormux with the upgrading fun of Atomic Tanks, but development has been very slow despite a wave of initial enthusiasm.

OpenLieroX

Teeworlds

Alternatives

If you like things to look Worms-like, but be more frantic, you should check out the games OpenLieroX or Gusanos - both inspired by a freeware game Liero(X). It has the character of old-school Worms but plays like 2D Quake. Gusanos (based on the classic Liero) development is inactive, last release occuring on 31st January 2006, whereas OpenLieroX (based on LeiroX) development is ongoing at a slow pace, with version 0.57_beta8 released 9th October 2008.

(My Liero-foo history may be out there, I'm not 100% sure how the different projects relate to eachother.)

Similar in gameplay style, but more modern and less retro-pixel, perhaps Teeworlds is your cup of tea. At version 0.5.1, the game is already solid, polished, and playable and has an enthusiastic, growing player base with many regular players. Development is very active and the last release was 25th January 2009.

Conclusion

The Artillery genre of open source games is possibly the healthiest genre of open source games with 4 very good, polished, playable, and actively developed projects, as well as other similar games, inspired by the classics. With 2D games increasingly neglected by the commercial sector, this genre is arguably one where a few of the open source projects have surpassed their commercial counterparts.

So, which (if any) of the Artillery-inspired open source games do you prefer to play? What's best about it? Or are you hardcore and only accept real clones and none of this contemporary rubbish? :-)

Kool G Rap- 4,5,6

Kool G Rap’s story has always intrigued me. This is a man who is widely considered a hip-hop pioneer for his early work with DJ Polo and The Juice Crew. Nowadays Kool G is still relevant, although he’s passing off third-rate mixtapes with the likes of DJ Whoo Kid among others. A whole hip-hop culture unto itself indeed. What’s really fascinating is how G Rap was able to outlast many of his peers. Rakim, Public Enemy, UMC, and most of his fellow Juice Crew have fallen into relative extinction. However, Kool G has quietly been keeping his name alive.
Also notable is the change in style. When G Rap was a member of the Juice Crew, his rhymes were well… kind of corny. Not compared to Biz Markie, but still, if you listen to his really early material you’ll notice that he emulated the times. Few years pass and KGR really takes hold of his true identity. Starts to patent his trademark rapid flow, the mafioso image, and the pentasyllabic rhyme scheme. About the time when he drops 4,5,6. This is one of those albums that got shitted on upon first release, but people grew to love it. Seems like a very common occurrence throughout hip hop history. On an extremely random note, did anyone else know that Kool G had a kid with Karine Stephans (you may know her better as Dick Tonsil or Supa Head)?

4,5,6

Isn’t it like an unwritten rule somewhere that the title track is never any good? Regardless that’s not the only surprise here. A certain Nasir Jones (who appears later on this album may I add), is sampled here almost directly in the same way that Sean Carter did it. Maybe Nas didn’t take offense to it, because it was done so sloppily. Seems like Dr. Butcher isolated the half-second he needed and just stuck it onto the hook. Regardless, one of the best odes to rollin’ dice ever.

It’s A Shame

The description of Tammy is priceless.

“Her name is Tammy, got a beach house in Miami
Rides around with a small jammy in her silk and satin panties
A down hoe, a Foxy Brown hoe, standin her ground hoe
And if you clown yo she’ll turn into a bust a round hoe”

One of G Rap’s premier ventures at storytelling, only weakened by the dime-a-dozen hook. Regardless, this is one of those tracks that attempts to be a laid-back cross between sultry R&B and softcore hip hop. It succeeds at neither, but KGR’s mastery in Aesop, makes you totally neglect everything besides the word’s coming out of his mouth.

Take ‘Em To War (Feat. MF Grimm and B1)

One thing that has steady amazed me is how many producer’s sample David Axelrod. I’ve never been a big Grimm fan, especially his later work, but his verse here is pure brilliance. Doctor Death. Following Grimm’s beast of a verse is early Rawkus legend B1. Launching an onslaught of lyricism that lasts for just one minute, but is remarkably vivid in it’s duration.

Executioner Style

This is where G Rap truly shines, a minimilastic beat with soft vibrations and vicious drums, which let’s KGR excel by throwing all sorts of alliteration and assorted rhyme schemes into the mix. One of the most violent and grotesque tracks you’ll ever hear ( “I make Bloody Mary’s out of your capillaries”), but it’s hard as fuck not to nod your head to this one.

For Da Brothaz

What would be just another ‘pour one for the homies’, is immeasurably improved by KGR’s lyrical prowess, but even that doesn’t rescue this song from mediocrity.

Blowin Up In The World

Not enough can be said for Buckwild’s production on this cut, I won’t attempt to do it justice, mixed with yet another KGR lyrical annihilation this track proves immaculate (word to Franco Harris).

Fast Life (feat. Nas)

This poppy instrumental has always reminded me of Miami in the ’80’s. The 20 second intro adds to that element. Lame-ass hook, but Nas and KGR combine to firebreath for a good four minutes.

Ghetto Knows

As someone who almost always has something bad to say about the hook, I’m rendered speechless here. Very well done. This has always seemed like a logical outro to me, so this is where we’ll end.

I think it’s fair to say that 4,5,6 is not a very well-produced album, an mirror image of Lifestylez ov Da Poor and Dangerous with average instrumentals and ‘way before their time’ lyricism. This album is a benchmark to the rapid-fire flow, never would any rapper spit half as fierce as KGR on 4,5,6, but countless rappers would try their hand at it. Well, imitation is the highest form of flattery Mr. Wilson.

0-20: Terrible listening experience
21-40: Maybe one good song
41-60: A few good songs
61-80: Half are good songs, half are weak
81-100: Great listening experience, almost all are great songs

I gotta give this one an 93.

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