What's a rich media ad, anyway?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

11 short films about a browser

(Cross-posted from the Google Chrome Blog)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

Posted by Ji Lee, Creative Lab

Experimental Flu Trends for Mexico

(Cross-posted on the Google.org Blog)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Jeremy Ginsberg and Matt Mohebbi, Software Engineers

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

(Cross-posted from the YouTube Blog)

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Steve Grove, YouTube News & Politics

Get paid to Tweet with Twtad

You enjoy Tweeting with your friends, but wouldn't it be great to make extra cash on the site while you post on twitter? Twtad has the solution . We give you links to post on your Twitter account and you earn money each time someone clicks your link. Get paid to tweet could not be easier...
The twtAd referral program is a great way to spread the word of this great service and to earn even more money with your Twitter account! Refer friends! Just send them the link below, post it on your Twitter, post it on your website, http://twtad.com/?id=5255

Be Sure to Leave Your Comments!

Free Domain and Web Hosting

Want to get your web address like http://www.domain.com/ for free? sorry you can't have it today for free, but you can get domain like http://www.co.cc/ or http://www.domain.uni.cc/ you can get a FREE Domain and Hosting blog at http://www.today.com/ctr.cgi?idx_mem=7716&mode=vip and many more domain like that for free. It's not a fully qualified domain but just a sub domain from co.cc or uni.cc. Then your Blog's Url would look like this http://dotblogger.co.cc OR look like http://dotblogger.uni.cc instead of http://dotblogger.blogspot.com/ They offering 2 service that is url redirect and domain with co.cc or uni.cc. Other thing we need it is a free web hosting with domain support. Search to Google and you'll find many of them, such as today.com . For example in this article, i am gonna use co.cc as a domain and 000webhost as a free web hosting server.Setup domainGoto http://www.co.cc/ and create account there, after account success created then login to your account.Successful information should be like above image. Now click on Set up domain and you will be redirected to your domain information page. On domain list click edit to start setup your domain and there should be 2 service option showed. Before we continue this option we need to know to which web hosting this domain will be. We need to know ns server for they domain. Because we are using 000webhost then fill Name Server 1 with ns01.000webhost.com and Name Server 2 with ns02.000webhost.com. click on "Setup Domain" to complete setup.We hhave to wait about 48 hour or may be less before our domain completely successful configured.Setup Free Web Hosting You can find many hosting with many feature supported. Look for PHP/MysQL and domain support feature. 000Webhost.com is a free web hosting with support PHP/MySQL and domain. For more information read their feature.Register your self there by clicking on order now, don't worry they will charge you nothing. Now there will be 2 input option that is using our own domain or use they sub domain. Fill domain with domain we have registered before for example zexo.co.cc then fill the first box with zexo and the next box is co.cc.If web host account is success created we may now start to configure our hosting account while waiting our domain pointing to our web host server, it's should take 1 or 2 day to complete. Get yourself one of these Free blogs or websites that offer Free domain and hosting. You can always use another site to sell things from or a Blog filled with Pictures for Wordless Mondays or Wordless Wednesdays for any other ideas you may have and want to share with the rest of us.... Its FREE what you waiting for go and get you a FREE Blog with FREE domain and Hosting!! I DID.....

Adding search power to public data

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


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


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


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

Here's a video showing how it works:


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

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

This is just the beginning. Stay tuned for more.

Posted by Ola Rosling, Product Manager

Business in the cloud

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

Posted by Rajen Sheth, Senior Product Manager, Google Apps

Listening to Google Health users

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

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

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

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

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

"That's the way Life Blogs"Andrey's Adventures in Australia Contest

For Andrey it was tears and laughter. His life in Russia was an ongoing struggle, he could not change his ways or his thinking to suite others so when he no longer could stand it he moved to Australia where he found the happiness he was longing for. He started his Blog Andrey's Adventures in Australia to share some of his stories with others on the web and to meet and make new friends. He writes about other blogs he has visited and likes and shares their links with us so if we wish to visit them we can. His site is a friendly site that you will enjoy visiting. He even rewards you for leaving a comment with lots of EntreCards! How many? I won't say! .....IF your a member of EntreCard then its worth your time to visit and leave a comment and even if your not be sure to stop by he has other Contests that may interest you He has One now where the winner will win 5000 ECcredits..... Be sure to check out "Adelaide and South Australia News in Russian" at http://magpienews.com/ and be sure to invite your friends to visit also. Andrey is new to the web so lets make him feel welcomed by stopping by his blog and also visting http://magpie.news.com/ and saying hello and welcome..

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

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

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

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

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



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

Quick & Dirty FLOSS Game Updates

== Insert introductory text here ==

Strategy games

Civitas city

Civitas is a project of a colaborative educational game, where children from schools can cooperate in a network for the construction of cities.

This sounds/looks like a multiplayer OpenCity. Civitas is a GPLed project written in Java.

Thumbs up to kid/education-related game projects whose creators are brave enough to use standard free licenses!

Clippers

Clippers is a board game designed by Alan R Moon that is an abstract island connection game based on clipper ships and the south pacific. This computer version is written in Java 1.5 and includes AI players.

Just like Civitas, I wasn't able to give it a spin. Sorry, Java issues. :(

The Spring Engine has a nice new homepage and a pleasantly clear list of games. (This is probably very old news but kind of new to me.) I was told that Kernel Panic is a 100% open source game for Spring, but unfortunately I am either too stupid or too lazy to make it work. :|

Role-playing games

FreedroidRPG 0.12.1 has been released [download]. The main game map has been re-organized to make more plot-sense. It does, but too many gameplay-useless rooms full of stasis chambers have been added. To my feel, the game is now a lot harder too. However, the controls feel slightly better compared to the last time I tried it. Unfortunately I experienced annoying laggy map-loading and a few crashes from playing too many sounds at once (might have to do with my sofware mixer though). Check out the full changelog for more details.

Rigged FreedroidRPG armor

I noticed that FreedroidRPG's image sources (.blend and .svg files) have been uploaded. an unsorted heap of everything visual that is used in the game [archive tree]. I must say that I like the graphics much better in high resolution. 3D game developers eying this pack will be glad to hear that everything that needs rigging is rigged. For 2D game devs, there is a rendering guide.

Cheese Boys [remember?] is still in development - and still looking for artist help... though maybe someone to scout OpenGameArt would even be enough?..

Ardentryst is being constantly developed - the 1.7 release was added three weeks ago.

Eating daggers in Radakan

Radakan 0.0.1, which can be currently described as "young Qt GUI-driven text RPG", was released. Future plans include graphical clients and such. Creating a system to allow writing the story/gameplay before starting work on a graphical engine is a playing-it-safe decision. IMHO a good idea.

The WorldForge client Ember now has real-time shadows [announcement].

Worldforge Ember, real time shadows

By the way, WorldForge is in the Google Summer of Code 2009. [GSOC page] as are some other game or gamedev-related projects, as seen in this list.

Game makers/tools

Dungeon Mapper

Dungeon Mapper is yet another tile map editor.

Mokoi Gaming 0.4 was released. It now supports OSX and contains a Tetris variant [changelog].

Development on Opensource Game Studio has started. Features: 3D, Qt, Lua. It contains a small glxgears-like demo [video]. Nothing to see here yet. :)

The rest

The two-day game programming competition Ludum Dare #14 has ended a while ago. Unfortunately nobody except arcticum's and Flood of Air's authors cared to release their game as open source software (or I couldn't find them).

Armagetron Advanced 0.2.8.3_rc2 [download] fixes color filters and crashes. [changelog].

How to Twitter and get Followers

I understand this topic has been discussed over and over again. There is probably very little you can’t find on other blogs. I also don’t claim to be a “social media expert” as so many do. I just want to help new people understand how twitter works and how you can make the most out of your twitter experience. I want to show you the tools I use, as well as how I build friendships on twitter.
Twitter Tools
TweetDeck - Probably the best twitter client for your desktop. It allows you to take control of your twitter feed by having different groups. The groups are helpful when you start to follow more and more people. Another key feature is the search filter. With it you can follow topics that interest you, and find new users to follow.
TweetBurner - If you post a lot of links into twitter. You want to be able to follow how many people click on it, and when. This is the ultimate tool to do this with. At the writing of this article however, they are having some problems with users signing up, but they still show you how many clicks your links are getting.
Twitter Grader - A interesting tool that calculates a score for you based on number of followers, numbers you follow, and number of tweets. Then you can compare yourself to other twitter users in your area. I find this tool to be a nice way to find other twitter users around your area.
Quitter - This tool follows your followers. Lets you know when someone stops following you, and what your last tweet was before they stopped. Can be helpful to see if your doing/saying something a lot of people don’t agree with.
Friend or Follow - Here you can type in your twitter name. In return they will tell you who are your friends, who are just following you, or who you are just following. Can be used to weed out people that you don’t need to have on your friend list.
For a list of almost every twitter app there is on the market. Go to: Mashable.com
Social Twitter
# - This tool is underused on twitter in my humble opinion. When you are writing a twitter with a link to a video, do #video, or a link to something funny do #funny. The # is what twitter uses to group similar tweets together. I use this as much as possible, because I know there are people out there listening to #video with twitter search. Since they are watching it, they will see my post and possibly find it interesting, in return following me.
RT - You have probably seen people write this, or Re-Tweet. This is a very popular thing to do on twitter. It helps people with links or message get seen by a bigger group of people. So if you RT @USERNAME, there is a bigger chance that this user will do the same back to you if you post something if value. This propels your name to a new group of users, that in return might follow you because of the link.
#FollowFriday - A fun community tool that people use to let their followers know about people they find funny, cool, whatever. If you work hard and are continually submitting valuable information, its likely that people will include you on their #FollowFriday. So in return, if you find someone interesting, do a #FollowFriday for them as well.
Ask Questions - Ask your followers questions. Get them to think about topic. Basically get a back and forth exchange going.
Share - Share information with your followers. Try to give them valuable resources, or tricks of the trade.
Reply - Try to do a @ reply as much as possible. If someone is asking for information and you know the anwser, reply and help them out. This is the best way to get others to notice you.
Source: GinSims Be Sure to Leave Your Comments!

Engineering a healthier diet

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Nathan Laredo, Software Engineer

Project Spectrum: recognizing the talents of children with autism

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

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



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

Posted by Tom Wyman and Chris Cronin, Project Spectrum Team

Try out new features in Google Toolbar Labs

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

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

Google Toolbar with My Location

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


Google Simplified Chinese Toolbar

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

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

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

Posted by Aseem Sood and Susan Taing, Toolbar Product Team

Congratulations to NSF CLuE Grant awardees

(Cross-posted from the Google Research Blog)

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

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

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

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

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

Smarter shopping on smartphones

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

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

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

 

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

Posted by Yury Pinsky, Product Manager, Google Mobile team

Happy Earth Day, Earthlings

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Lacy Caruthers, Green Business and Operations Strategy

Three start-ups attack Twitter Search

New companies are emerging to address the deficiencies in Twitter Search I covered last week.
This isn't so easy. The challenge for anyone trying to fix Twitter Search is that the service is extremely good at showing you what's happening on Twitter at any moment. If you add a ranking algorithm to Twitter search results, you risk burying that value. On the other hand, without some form of relevancy indicator or ranking, Twitter Search can get so noisy as to be unusable.
Here are three companies that apply some form of ranking to Twitter search results.
The newest--scheduled to launch at noon on Monday--is Twazzup. It solves the relevancy problem first by not messing with raw time-sorted Twitter search results. Those go to the main column. What shows up around them makes this tool great.

Twazzup doesn't mess with Twitter's time-sorted results. But the related links and lists around the main display add a lot of utility.(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)
First, you get a menu of related words and hashtags at the top of the results page. There's also an expandable "Popular Tweets" sidebar item that has the tweets on your keyword that are the most retweeted or linked to. There's also a list of "Trendmakers," people actively tweeting your keyword. And there are photos and popular links.
My preview of this product showed some performance hiccups, but the concept and presentation are very strong.
Tweefind gives you what looks like a standard Twitter Search (albeit in My Little Pony colors), but it layers a ranking algorithm into the display order.
Currently, it factors the number of followers and the number of retweets on an item in the ranking. Its results are better than the unfiltered Twitter Search, but I have the feeling, when looking at Tweefind results, that I might be missing items I'd like to see. That's the paradox with which all these tools have to deal. More on Mashable: Tweefind Applies Google Magic to Twitter Search.

Tweefind ranks results using a Google-like algorithm.(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)
Finally, there's Twitalyzer Search. It shows you raw, time-ordered Twitter results but adds two relevancy numbers to each tweet in the results list: The Influence (I don't understand exactly how this is calculated) and the number of followers the tweet's author has. It helps you find the items from the people to which other Twitter users are paying attention, and since the search order isn't modified, you don't feel like you might be missing other items.

Twitalyzer Search adds Influence and Followers data to standard Twitter Search results.(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)
I like Twazzup the most of these three products, since it presents a lot of useful information while maintaining the value of the raw Twitter search results. I do worry about the viability of all these experiments.
Twitter Search itself is going to get some sort of ranking technology eventually--possibly from one of these companies, possibly from Google or Microsoft--leaving the others stranded. Until then, try Twazzup. Source: Rafe Needleman - cnet news Be Sure to Leave Your Comments!

Search for "me" on Google

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

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


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

Posted by Brian Stoler, Software Engineer

GSA contest results are in

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

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

Keeping "operations" running smoothly

Posted by Dave Kim, Associate Product Marketing Manager

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

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

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

Similar Images

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

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


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


Or more pictures of the brand of [car]:


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

Interested in learning more? Check out this video tour.



Google News Timeline

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

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

Google Labs reloaded

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

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

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

Spring CLeaning is here- If you could get rid of One thing what would it be?

This Question was asked on CNN and some of the answers were really amazing..One journalist was asked if you could get rid of one thing for Spring Cleaning what would it be? He answered The Vice Presidents......... The other reporter answered: I get rid of all the politcians.......................... So come on guys Im curious to hear your answers to this question......It can be anything even spinach (SMILE) or something .........Just one thing you could get rid of?........Speak Your Mind!..............If you could get rid of one thing for Spring CLeaning what would it be????????????? My Answer to this is Id get rid of Pollution.................................... Leave your answers in the Comments and I shall post each and every answer into my post, so everyone can see your answers......and who left them. Your name and name of your blog...

17 Year Old claims responsibility for letting loose the Twitter Worm

What kind of Punishment do you think he should get a fine? Jail time? Banned from the net? You tell us what you think? Speak what's on your mind?
A 17 Year old Mikkey Mooney has claimed responsibility letting loose the worm on Twitter. “I am the person who coded the XSS which then acted as a worm when it auto updated a users profile and status, which then infected other users who viewed their profile. I did this out of boredom, to be honest. I usually like to find vulnerabilities within websites and try not to cause too much damage, but start a worm or something to give the developers an insight on the problem and while doing so, promoting myself or my website.
I decided if I had a site that followed the same functionality and simplicity as one of the most known sites on the web at the time then it would receive a lot of hits. While playing around and getting the site developed I started adding more features and tried to part myself from Twitter, while still giving it’s still compact nature and simple use.
Only the sessions were encrypted and passwords were not played with, so it was not that harmful, but was still a matter of concern and the Twitter team was able to resolve that pretty fast."
Techstartups advice to all users: If your Twitter ID is compromise immediately change your password!

Protect your information or he'll take it away. Posted by techstarups

Be Sure to Leave Your Comments!

Nexuiz 2.5 (taking my time)

Nexuiz 2.5 has been released 6 11 15 days ago. (I *am* taking my time! O_o) You might have spotted the announcement on Phoronix.

Here is the 666 MB heavy download. In case you care about traffic more than graphics and sounds or have a weak system: An Arch Linux user created a ~60MB version for 32-bit Linux systems.

So what are the big selling points of 2.5 from the player side of view? According to the changelog: New HUD, new weapons, new racing game mode, improved look & sound, better bots. Nex is also supposed to be faster regarding processor and network utilization, I did not try to test this though.

Head-up display

Nexuiz 2.5 - more screenshots

I did not notice any revolutionary changes in the user interface - besides the better score board and noob-friendlier map voting system. Unfortunately the game menu part of the GUI is still slightly weird with its microscopic quit button.

Racing mode

Futuristic "Racetrack"

"Race" is a game mode, in which the player has to move as fast as possible using weapons and jumping techniques. As I understand it, this old concept developed from Quake elitists having too much fun with the game's movement 'physics'. It's an important mode in Warsow gameplay and I don't like it. However, I do appreciate that Nexuiz makes itself interesting for a wider audience of course.

I was very annoyed by the racetrack being in the new single-player campaign and wanted to record a video showing how I struggle with it but when I recorded the demo, I surprisingly won! I still think it should be kept out of the campaign or at least it should be possible to skip it - many Nexuiz players will want to finish the campaign but not even know about the advanced movement techniques it requires.

New weapons

I can't help but being overly subjective here (again): Nexuiz has more than enough weapons! Then again, the new weapons are optional (at least I think so) and that makes them okay. The grappling hook was already in the last version (just not as a weapon) and I don't like it, but I know a lot of people do. The portal gun is fun, but not interesting for long if you ever played Portal.

The rifle, however, makes my eyes twitch. It needs to be reloaded! Reloading weapons in a Quake/UT-like game. This is so stupid. No further comments.

Take a look at the weapon models: Grappling Hook, Port-O-Launch, T.A.G. Seeker, Heavy Laser Assault Cannon, Rifle.

Improved look and sound

Sharp new flag model

My favorite part of this review! This is where the 2.5 release shines. The new map desert factory [video] looks great! Even though it seems too large, it plays well and is a nice alternative to the mostly narrow Nexuiz in-door maps.

The new organic-style weapon models fit unexpectedly well. Especially the good look of the shotgun is important, as it's the default weapon.

Smoke

One issue though: the rocket explosion smoke is so dark, I can't see through it. This means that each explosion animation serves as a visual shield for the enemy. It's so sad and funny when one has to disable effects to be able to play better for other reasons but processing speed...

I wrote a poem about how the rocket explosion smoke annoys me:

Rocket smoke

So dark I can not see!

Why do you torture me?

Ain't I grand? Next up: voices. I love the new voices! Not only there are more different tracks but now teammates verbally protesting against friendly fire. Yay for audio improvements! (Oh, speaking of audio.. pdsounds.org is dead [backup])

As mentioned above, there is a new single-player campaign, which introduces new weapons, maps and game modes. It is rather chaotic though. Two capture the flag rounds in it are meant as 'tutorials' (endlessly boring plus bots suck). I hope in the future the Unreal Tournament approach will be chosen: campaigns should be separated by genre and tutorials should be optional.

Portals: still ugly

I have few complaints about the visual quality: portals and player models need better textures also the machine gun looks weak compared to the other weapons. This will hopefully be improved in the future. (If you're a 3d artist, you know what to do ;) .)

Better bots

I red the changelog only after I tested Nexuiz 2.5 for a while. I was confused by the "bots are better" claim. They stand around, walk against walls and fail to capture flags/domination points next to them. Increasing their difficulty seems to only make their aim annoyingly good, but they are not getting any smarter.

Conclusion

All is well, nothing is perfect. Since a lot new things were added, 2.5 might even be fun to those that did not like previous versions. Nexuiz players that don't care for new stuff will enjoy the updated graphics and voices. Single-player mode players will like the new campaign, even though it does have its faults. Now it's time for you to enjoy the video(s) below!

Nexuiz 2.5 wannabe-promo - OGV download

Note: If the HD YouTube version slows down your computer, I recommend downloading the OGV video and watching it with VLC.

I created above video using Nexuiz' awesome video recording tools, Cinelerra and this helpful thread. On the game's homepage you will see a video that concentrates on the new features more.