Googler insights into product and technology news and our culture.
Speaking of search
Do you manage to lose track of files, emails and
websites in languages other than English? If so, you’ll be glad to know
that Google Desktop Search is now available in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Japanese and Korean.
Give them a hand
The product marketing team is currently
experimenting with some new ideas for Google Local, and I just went to
Kansas City to beta-test some of them with my colleagues Resmi and
Samantha. Our first order of business was to visit mall kiosks. Since my
poor sense of direction has inspired my family to invoke “The Debbie Rule”
(the listener travels in the opposite direction from what Debbie says),
before arriving in Kansas City I used Google Maps to print out driving
directions from Rafael
Hotel to Town Center Plaza, and from there to
the Oak Park Mall.
Aside from Arthur Bryant’s barbeque, a
highlight of the trip was a ball
game between those major rivals, the Kansas City Royals vs. the St.
Louis Cardinals. Not only did the Royals rally in the 8th inning to come
within one run of the Cards, but it was pretty cool to see fans wave big
foam hands from Google.
(If it's too hard to
read, one side says “Know your city like the back of your hand. In this
case, a big foam hand. Google Local.” The other side says “Go
Royals.”)
Some Cardinals fans also enjoyed the hands - but none of
those photos are suitable for posting (the hands we provided all started
out with five fingers, I swear).
No scraping necessary
My friends have been asking me for something that
could add Gmail and news headlines to the Google homepage. I saw a
Slashdot post requesting the same thing, and someone wrote back: if you
want that feature, do it yourself and whip up some code or scrape the
data. Of course, why would my friends spend any time hacking this together
when they could just get me to do it for them?
So I got involved
with the 'fusion' initiative by joining the team working on a personalized homepage. We launched
today, so now I can return the Python books I bought my lazy friends.
Check it out and tell us
what else you want to see. We just might code it up.
A method to our madness
Does Google
have a strategy, or are we just a bunch of mad computer scientists running
around building whatever we want? Today this question gets an answer:
we've launched our personalized homepage via Google Labs. It's part of a strategic
initiative we refer to as 'fusion' to bring together Google functionality,
and content from across the web, in useful ways.
The personalized
homepage is a complement to the existing Google homepage - not a
replacement. Keep using the original Google homepage if you want to. (We
expect many people will.) But if you're keen to organize and customize
your information, take a stab at designing your own homepage. You can add
Gmail, news, stocks, weather and more. Plus you can add great content from
websites like the BBC and Wired. We're incorporating feeds from just a few
other sites today, but we envision being able to accept any standardized
feed very soon.
Enjoy, and let us
know what you think!
Tomorrow, work that bike
So many Googlers commute by bike every day that you can't
easily look down a hallway and not see a bicycle or two leaning against
the wall. Some people bike in from just a few miles away while others
combine their commute with other training. I ride 40 miles from San
Francisco to Mountain View (and back!) twice a week. Somehow, I'm much
more awake and refreshed than I would have been if I sat in my car on 101
for an hour. Or more...
Google is a huge supporter of bike
commuting, and Bike to Work Day is
a real
party in Mountain View. Cyclists can get Google-branded bike goodies,
monthly onsite bicycle tune-ups, and classes on basic commuter skills,
bike maintenance, touring - even how to ride your first century. But it
doesn't matter what or how far you ride. Biking to work is a great way to
get some exercise, save some gas, improve the environment, and most
importantly of all, have fun!
this
just in from Aparna Brown, Commuting Coordinator:
Since he was just named San Francisco County's Bike Commuter of the Year by the Bay Area Bicycle Coalition, Joe is the perfect Googler to write about bike commuting. As someone who only bikes 2.5 miles to work, I'm pretty darn impressed with his dedication to regular rides to work. To encourage others to bike to work, Joe and others will be leading rides to Mountain View from all over the Bay Area on Thursday. Watch for bikers with Google shirts and give them a friendly wave (from your bike, natch).
Search for the enterprise
Looking for a crucial file you lost somewhere on
your computer? At home you’d use Google Desktop Search - and at work,
you’d start updating your resume. Not anymore. Check out Google Desktop Search for the
Enterprise: fast, secure (and free!) desktop search that you can
actually use from 9 to 5.
A Video Uploader for the rest of us
As a Mac user, my heart sank a little when I first
saw the post
about the Google Video Upload Program. Clearly, the concept is cool. It
was just that all-too-ubiquitous .exe file you must run to upload your
videos. Of course I know that something like 90% of the desktop/notebook
computers sold today run Windows. But in my circle of friends (admittedly
a small one -- I blame the caffeine), almost everyone uses a Mac, and the
rest use Linux or some other UNIX-like substance. Anyhow, this Video
announcement inevitably led to a lot of flak (again) from my friends about
how Google was shipping yet another Windows-only application. "I thought
Google has lots of smart developers." "Doesn't Google know how to write
platform independent software?" Blah, blah, blah.
But this time, I
took it as a personal challenge. I shoot a lot of video, and I edit it on
my Mac. How hard could it be to write a compatible video uploader that
would run everywhere? As I soon discovered, not very hard at all. After
all, I have access to the C++ source code for the existing
Windows-specific uploader, and I can spend my 20%
time working on whatever I want. And I have plenty of experience
writing portable code, given that I program in Java.
Java comes
pre-installed on the vast majority of operating systems in use today, or
it's available as a free
download from Sun. And software written in Java really, really does
work across all those platforms, as a decade of work by software
developers can attest. The Java mantra "Write once, run anywhere" is a
reality -- it just works. Java programs also tend to be less buggy than
their C/C++ counterparts, and programmers working in Java are a lot more
productive - but these are topics for another post.
Anyway, now you
can sign up for the Google
Video Uploader for Macintosh, and ditto for Linux (and UNIX and
Solaris and HP-UX and AIX and lots of other platforms). The same sign-up
page goes to to the Windows version too. So now I can ponder a different
problem - namely, which of my videos I want to share with the world.
Feed me
Shuman Ghosemajumder,
Product Manager, AdSense for Feeds
If you're like many savvy web
users, you may be reading this via a feed reader,
along with all the other blogs, newspapers, and other content that
interests you. Whether a feed is Atom-enabled or RSS, it offers
great flexibility for users and additional distribution for publishers. As
with many promising technologies feeds haven't quite hit the mainstream
yet, nor are the business models entirely sorted out.
Enter AdSense
for feeds, launching today in beta. The idea is simple: advertisers
have their ads placed in the most appropriate feed articles; publishers
are paid for their original content; readers see relevant advertising -
and in the long run, more quality feeds to choose from. Given the great
flexibility that feeds can offer, it's essential to get the model right,
especially so that readers are satisfied. Towards this end we have
outlined what we believe are some best
practices for advertising in feeds. Publishers who want to participate
in the public beta can apply here.
A Bay to Breakers break
The Bay to Breakers 12k run is a hallowed (if
irreverent) Bay
Area tradition that starts at San Francisco's Embarcadero (the Bay),
and ends in Golden Gate Park (sort of close to the breakers of the Pacific
- ok, it's a bit of poetic license). Though serious runners compete, the
streets are clogged with up to 70,000 hardy souls —
— a mix of halfway
decent and annual runners, often in costume (or not; there's a band of
nude runners too).
Today's 94th race included more than 40 Googlers
running as the "We're Feeling Lucky" team. We ran for fun and to raise
money for the Leukemia and
Lymphoma Society. Our "Lucky" Team "donned special T-shirts emblazoned
with the hurdles doodle from
the 2004 Summer Olympics on the front, and individual letters that
collectively spell GOOOOOOOGLE on the back. Faster runners got the G-O
tees, and well, the rest of us got O-O-G-L-E.
Of course, we did a little advertising. This was
a good crowd to inform that as always, we're hiring.
Q&A: the world tour
When we launched Google Q&A, we told
you it was just the beginning. Today marks the start of the Google
Q&A world tour -- we're kicking off with the UK (who's
the prime minister again?), Ireland (what's
the population of Dublin?), Canada (how many people
live there?), Australia (what's the
capital?), and New Zealand (how big is it,
anyway?). So now I can't say it's still just the beginning, but it's
still very early. We're putting together a lot of new information like
this to help you get the quickest possible answers to all your questions,
so keep checking back for more.
(updated with a new link)
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