stylesightings
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Toolbar, now with advanced translation
If you saw this text on a webpage, how would you figure out what it means?
Если вы читаете этот текст, вы, вероятно, уже говорите по-русски. Однако миллионы людей не знают русского и не могут прочитать миллионы русскоязычных веб-страниц.*
You would likely need to translate manually via our language tools or in Toolbar. Today we're excited to announce that translations will be even easier with the newest release of Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer. We have been working with the Translate team to make translations a faster and more integrated part of your browsing experience.
The Translate feature automatically detects if the language of a webpage you're on is different from your default language setting and allows you to translate it. With one click, you can now instantly translate the page and all of its text will appear in the new language.
Language detection happens only on your computer, so no information is sent to Google until you choose to translate a page. You can find more details about how the feature works in our help center.
If you go to another page in the same language, you will continue to see translations rather than have to translate one page at a time. And if the page has dynamic content, like Google Reader, you will get translations in real-time. Finally, if you frequently translate pages in the same language, Toolbar will let you translate that language automatically without any extra clicks in the future.
The new Translate feature is available in all international versions of Toolbar, including English, and the translation service supports 41 different languages: Albanian, Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese.
Download Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer to try it out for yourself. We'll add this feature to Toolbar for Firefox soon, too.
* In case you don't speak Russian, we translated the paragraph above for you using our translation engine:
If you are reading this text, you probably already speak in Russian. However, millions of people do not know Russian and cannot read the millions of Russian-language webpages.
Если вы читаете этот текст, вы, вероятно, уже говорите по-русски. Однако миллионы людей не знают русского и не могут прочитать миллионы русскоязычных веб-страниц.*
You would likely need to translate manually via our language tools or in Toolbar. Today we're excited to announce that translations will be even easier with the newest release of Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer. We have been working with the Translate team to make translations a faster and more integrated part of your browsing experience.
The Translate feature automatically detects if the language of a webpage you're on is different from your default language setting and allows you to translate it. With one click, you can now instantly translate the page and all of its text will appear in the new language.
Language detection happens only on your computer, so no information is sent to Google until you choose to translate a page. You can find more details about how the feature works in our help center.
If you go to another page in the same language, you will continue to see translations rather than have to translate one page at a time. And if the page has dynamic content, like Google Reader, you will get translations in real-time. Finally, if you frequently translate pages in the same language, Toolbar will let you translate that language automatically without any extra clicks in the future.
The new Translate feature is available in all international versions of Toolbar, including English, and the translation service supports 41 different languages: Albanian, Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese.
Download Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer to try it out for yourself. We'll add this feature to Toolbar for Firefox soon, too.
* In case you don't speak Russian, we translated the paragraph above for you using our translation engine:
If you are reading this text, you probably already speak in Russian. However, millions of people do not know Russian and cannot read the millions of Russian-language webpages.
Celebrating Gay Pride 2009
All around Google, we're proud of our work, our culture and, most importantly, our people. In the spirit of celebration, this spring and summer Googlers have participated in Pride celebrations in Tel Aviv, New York, Zürich, San Francisco and many other cities around the world. Pride is a time for the LGBT* community along with families, friends and supporters to stand up for equality, and to honor those who paved the way for us to express sexual orientation and gender identity openly.
In the U.S., this year's celebration is historically important: it's the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York City, a response to what was then routine police harassment of LGBT people. Some 75 Googlers, family members and friends marched with several hundred members of New York's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center. Hundreds of Googlers also joined other U.S. celebrations in Pittsburgh, Chicago, and San Francisco.
Earlier this month, around 50 Googlers and friends gathered to celebrate at Europride, Europe's best-known Gay Pride celebration. This year it was in Zürich, Switzerland. After weeks of sunshine, on the morning of the parade it began to storm, but that didn't deter our intrepid Googlers from being out at 6:30am turning a 28-ton truck into a rainbow-colored nightclub on wheels. Hundreds of nuts, bolts and gallons of helium later, the truck was transformed, the sun came out and we were ready to march through the city streets, cheered on by a crowd of 50,000.
Google is a company that supports its LGBT employees, taking a public stand on issues that are important to our community. This is not the first year that Google has supported Pride, and it will certainly not be the last. We hope you enjoy this photo album of our global celebrations.
*LGBT stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered people and is also intended to include people who identify as queer, asexual or intersexed, amongst others.
In the U.S., this year's celebration is historically important: it's the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York City, a response to what was then routine police harassment of LGBT people. Some 75 Googlers, family members and friends marched with several hundred members of New York's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center. Hundreds of Googlers also joined other U.S. celebrations in Pittsburgh, Chicago, and San Francisco.
Earlier this month, around 50 Googlers and friends gathered to celebrate at Europride, Europe's best-known Gay Pride celebration. This year it was in Zürich, Switzerland. After weeks of sunshine, on the morning of the parade it began to storm, but that didn't deter our intrepid Googlers from being out at 6:30am turning a 28-ton truck into a rainbow-colored nightclub on wheels. Hundreds of nuts, bolts and gallons of helium later, the truck was transformed, the sun came out and we were ready to march through the city streets, cheered on by a crowd of 50,000.
Google is a company that supports its LGBT employees, taking a public stand on issues that are important to our community. This is not the first year that Google has supported Pride, and it will certainly not be the last. We hope you enjoy this photo album of our global celebrations.
*LGBT stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered people and is also intended to include people who identify as queer, asexual or intersexed, amongst others.
Google heads to grade school: New resources for K-12 teachers and students
We use the Internet all the time: at home, at work (especially at Google!), on the move, and, increasingly, at school. We believe that the Internet and cloud-based tools are a key part of a 21st century classroom, helping students learn and teachers teach in collaborative and innovative ways. Students use Google Docs to work on group projects; classrooms use Google Sites to show off their work; and teachers use Forms in Google Docs for instant grading and Google Calendar for lesson planning. Google Apps Education Edition is helping schools build online communities for students, teachers and parents, and we now have 4 million students using Google Apps Education around the world.
This week the Google Apps Education team is launching a few new ways to make it easier for K-12 schools to use Google Apps, and attending the National Education Computing Conference (NECC) in Washington D.C. To help address schools' email security needs, Google Message Security (GMS) will be offered free to current and new eligible primary and secondary schools globally that opt in by July of next year. GMS filters out email messaging threats, and education IT departments can customize the filtering rules and group messaging lists to suit their schools. We're also launching the Google Apps Education Community site for educators and students to share tips and ideas for using Google Apps in their classrooms, as well as the Search Education Curriculum and a Google Apps Education resource center with more than 20 classroom-ready lesson plans for teachers. We'll be adding more to these resources going forward.
If you're at NECC this year, come visit the Google team in booth #3148. If not, the teaching and learning continues with some cool presentations and lesson plans on the Google Apps Education Community site, or you can learn more at google.com/a/edu.
This week the Google Apps Education team is launching a few new ways to make it easier for K-12 schools to use Google Apps, and attending the National Education Computing Conference (NECC) in Washington D.C. To help address schools' email security needs, Google Message Security (GMS) will be offered free to current and new eligible primary and secondary schools globally that opt in by July of next year. GMS filters out email messaging threats, and education IT departments can customize the filtering rules and group messaging lists to suit their schools. We're also launching the Google Apps Education Community site for educators and students to share tips and ideas for using Google Apps in their classrooms, as well as the Search Education Curriculum and a Google Apps Education resource center with more than 20 classroom-ready lesson plans for teachers. We'll be adding more to these resources going forward.
If you're at NECC this year, come visit the Google team in booth #3148. If not, the teaching and learning continues with some cool presentations and lesson plans on the Google Apps Education Community site, or you can learn more at google.com/a/edu.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Media and citizens meet in the YouTube Reporters' Center
This is the first of a series of posts from YouTube's news and politics blog, Citizentube. -Ed.
YouTube is the biggest video news site on the Internet, and at no time in our site's history was that more apparent than in these last two weeks of the crisis unfolding in Iran. As hundreds of thousands of Iranian citizens took to the streets of Tehran to protest the national elections, the government kicked out foreign journalists, leaving citizens themselves as the only documentarians to the events unfolding there. We've been highlighting many of these videos and keeping track of the latest developments on our YouTube news and politics blog, Citizentube.
Though the circumstances in Iran are unique, this isn't the first time that citizens have played a crucial role in reporting on events around the world. Burmese citizens uploaded exclusive video footage to YouTube during the protests in Myanmar back in 2007; people in China's Sichuan province documented the devastating and historic 7.8-magnitude earthquake of 2008 in real-time; and eyewitnesses to the shooting of young Oscar Grant by Oakland police forces captured the event on their cell phone cameras and uploaded videos to YouTube for the world to see. Citizens are no longer merely bystanders to world events. Today, anyone can chronicle what they see and participate in the news-gathering process.
Though it's the phenomenon of citizen reporting that YouTube is probably best known for, we also have hundreds of news partners who upload thousands of videos straight to YouTube every day. You can see lots of these on our news page at youtube.com/news. Many of these organizations have used YouTube in unique ways, like asking the community to submit questions for government officials, providing a behind-the-scenes look at traveling with the Obama press corps and accepting video applications for a reporting assignment in West Africa. We believe the power of this new media landscape lies in the collaborative possibilities of amateurs and professionals working together.
And so today, we're launching a new resource on YouTube to help citizens learn more about how to report the news, straight from the experts. It's called the YouTube Reporters' Center, and it features some of the nation's top journalists sharing instructional videos with tips and advice for better reporting. Learn how to prepare for an interview; or how to be an investigative reporter from the legendary Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward; or how to report on a global humanitarian crisis from Nick Kristof of the New York Times. All of the videos are available on the YouTube Reporters' Center channel.
YouTube is the biggest video news site on the Internet, and at no time in our site's history was that more apparent than in these last two weeks of the crisis unfolding in Iran. As hundreds of thousands of Iranian citizens took to the streets of Tehran to protest the national elections, the government kicked out foreign journalists, leaving citizens themselves as the only documentarians to the events unfolding there. We've been highlighting many of these videos and keeping track of the latest developments on our YouTube news and politics blog, Citizentube.
Though the circumstances in Iran are unique, this isn't the first time that citizens have played a crucial role in reporting on events around the world. Burmese citizens uploaded exclusive video footage to YouTube during the protests in Myanmar back in 2007; people in China's Sichuan province documented the devastating and historic 7.8-magnitude earthquake of 2008 in real-time; and eyewitnesses to the shooting of young Oscar Grant by Oakland police forces captured the event on their cell phone cameras and uploaded videos to YouTube for the world to see. Citizens are no longer merely bystanders to world events. Today, anyone can chronicle what they see and participate in the news-gathering process.
Though it's the phenomenon of citizen reporting that YouTube is probably best known for, we also have hundreds of news partners who upload thousands of videos straight to YouTube every day. You can see lots of these on our news page at youtube.com/news. Many of these organizations have used YouTube in unique ways, like asking the community to submit questions for government officials, providing a behind-the-scenes look at traveling with the Obama press corps and accepting video applications for a reporting assignment in West Africa. We believe the power of this new media landscape lies in the collaborative possibilities of amateurs and professionals working together.
And so today, we're launching a new resource on YouTube to help citizens learn more about how to report the news, straight from the experts. It's called the YouTube Reporters' Center, and it features some of the nation's top journalists sharing instructional videos with tips and advice for better reporting. Learn how to prepare for an interview; or how to be an investigative reporter from the legendary Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward; or how to report on a global humanitarian crisis from Nick Kristof of the New York Times. All of the videos are available on the YouTube Reporters' Center channel.
Extending Google services in Africa
At Google we seek to serve a broad base of people — not only those who can afford to access the Internet from the convenience of their workplace or with a computer at home. It's important to reach users wherever they are, with the information they need, in areas with the greatest information poverty. In many places around the world, people look to their phones, rather than their computers, to find information they need in their daily lives. This is especially true in Africa, which has the world’s highest mobile growth rate and where mobile phone penetration is six times Internet penetration. One-third of the population owns a mobile phone and many more have access to one.
Most mobile devices in Africa only have voice and SMS capabilities, and so we are focusing our technological efforts in that continent on SMS. Today, we are announcing Google SMS, a suite of mobile applications which will allow people to access information, via SMS, on a diverse number of topics including health and agriculture tips, news, local weather, sports, and more. The suite also includes Google Trader, a SMS-based “marketplace” application that helps buyers and sellers find each other. People can find, "sell" or "buy" any type of product or service, from used cars and mobile phones to crops, livestock and jobs.
We are particularly excited about Google SMS Tips, an SMS-based query-and-answer service that enables a mobile phone user to have a web search-like experience. You enter a free form text query, and Google's algorithms restructure the query to identify keywords, search a database to identify relevant answers, and return the most relevant answer.
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Both Google SMS Tips and Google Trader represent the fruits of unique partnerships among Google, the Grameen Foundation, MTN Uganda and local organizations*. We worked closely together as part of Grameen Foundation's Application Laboratory to understand information needs and gaps, develop locally relevant and actionable content, rapidly test prototypes, and conduct multi-month pilots with the people who will eventually use the applications have truly been a global effort, and created with Ugandans, for Ugandans.
We're just beginning. We can do a lot more to improve search quality and the breadth — and depth — of content on Google SMS, especially on Tips and Trader. Google SMS is by no means a finished product, but that's what's both exciting and challenging about this endeavor.
Meanwhile, if you're curious about what Google is doing in Africa, learn more at the Google Africa Blog.
Update: Corrected link to YouTube video for "rapidly test prototypes".
____
*BROSDI, (Busoga Rural Open Source and Development Initiative), Straight Talk Foundation, Marie Stopes Uganda.
Posted by Joe Mucheru, Head of Google Sub-Saharan Africa, & Fiona Lee, Africa Project Manager
Most mobile devices in Africa only have voice and SMS capabilities, and so we are focusing our technological efforts in that continent on SMS. Today, we are announcing Google SMS, a suite of mobile applications which will allow people to access information, via SMS, on a diverse number of topics including health and agriculture tips, news, local weather, sports, and more. The suite also includes Google Trader, a SMS-based “marketplace” application that helps buyers and sellers find each other. People can find, "sell" or "buy" any type of product or service, from used cars and mobile phones to crops, livestock and jobs.
We are particularly excited about Google SMS Tips, an SMS-based query-and-answer service that enables a mobile phone user to have a web search-like experience. You enter a free form text query, and Google's algorithms restructure the query to identify keywords, search a database to identify relevant answers, and return the most relevant answer.
.gif)
Both Google SMS Tips and Google Trader represent the fruits of unique partnerships among Google, the Grameen Foundation, MTN Uganda and local organizations*. We worked closely together as part of Grameen Foundation's Application Laboratory to understand information needs and gaps, develop locally relevant and actionable content, rapidly test prototypes, and conduct multi-month pilots with the people who will eventually use the applications have truly been a global effort, and created with Ugandans, for Ugandans.
We're just beginning. We can do a lot more to improve search quality and the breadth — and depth — of content on Google SMS, especially on Tips and Trader. Google SMS is by no means a finished product, but that's what's both exciting and challenging about this endeavor.
Meanwhile, if you're curious about what Google is doing in Africa, learn more at the Google Africa Blog.
Update: Corrected link to YouTube video for "rapidly test prototypes".
____
*BROSDI, (Busoga Rural Open Source and Development Initiative), Straight Talk Foundation, Marie Stopes Uganda.
Posted by Joe Mucheru, Head of Google Sub-Saharan Africa, & Fiona Lee, Africa Project Manager
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Friday, June 26, 2009
Outpouring of searches for the late Michael Jackson
At Google, we are moved by the life and untimely passing of Michael Jackson. As word spread of his death, millions and millions of people from all over the world began searching for information about the pop icon. The following chart shows the meteoric rise in related searches around 3:00pm PDT:
Search volume began to increase around 2:00pm, skyrocketed by 3:00pm, and stabilized by about 8:00pm. As you can see in Google Hot Trends, many of the fastest rising search queries from yesterday and today have been about Michael Jackson's passing (others pertained to the death of another cultural icon, Farrah Fawcett). People who weren't near a computer yesterday turned to their mobile phones to check on breaking news. We saw one of the largest mobile search spikes we've ever seen, with 5 of the top 20 searches about the Moonwalker.
The spike in searches related to Michael Jackson was so big that Google News initially mistook it for an automated attack. As a result, for about 25 minutes yesterday, when some people searched Google News they saw a "We're sorry" page before finding the articles they were looking for.
Michael Jackson led an amazing and controversial life in the public eye. Many of us have a "Michael Jackson story." Mine is that he actually taught me how to moonwalk — thanks to many an hour I spent in front of the television trying to mimic his performances. Regardless of your story or personal opinions about this astounding performer, global interest in the King of Pop is undeniable.
Search volume began to increase around 2:00pm, skyrocketed by 3:00pm, and stabilized by about 8:00pm. As you can see in Google Hot Trends, many of the fastest rising search queries from yesterday and today have been about Michael Jackson's passing (others pertained to the death of another cultural icon, Farrah Fawcett). People who weren't near a computer yesterday turned to their mobile phones to check on breaking news. We saw one of the largest mobile search spikes we've ever seen, with 5 of the top 20 searches about the Moonwalker.
The spike in searches related to Michael Jackson was so big that Google News initially mistook it for an automated attack. As a result, for about 25 minutes yesterday, when some people searched Google News they saw a "We're sorry" page before finding the articles they were looking for.
Michael Jackson led an amazing and controversial life in the public eye. Many of us have a "Michael Jackson story." Mine is that he actually taught me how to moonwalk — thanks to many an hour I spent in front of the television trying to mimic his performances. Regardless of your story or personal opinions about this astounding performer, global interest in the King of Pop is undeniable.
We have a winner for the Google Photography Prize
Huge congratulations to Daniel Halasz from Hungary, who was awarded the Google Photography Prize this week. This was a global student competition to create themes for iGoogle. More than 3,600 students from across the world entered, and a couple of weeks ago we asked you to vote on the shortlist. The six finalists who got the most public votes were Amelia Ortúzar (Chile), Fahad AlDaajani (Saudi Arabia), Matjaz Tancic (U.K.), Mikhail Simin (U.S.) and Vesna Stojakovic (Serbia) — congratulations to all of them! From that group, a jury of respected art critics and artists chose Daniel as the winner. They also gave a special commendation prize to Aliyah Hussain from the U.K.
You can see the work Daniel and the other finalists submitted at the Saatchi Gallery in London until Sunday, June 28th. Come by if you're in town, or have a look at their photographs on google.com/photographyprize, where you can also add them to your iGoogle homepage.
You can see the work Daniel and the other finalists submitted at the Saatchi Gallery in London until Sunday, June 28th. Come by if you're in town, or have a look at their photographs on google.com/photographyprize, where you can also add them to your iGoogle homepage.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Google Voice invites on their way
A couple of months ago we announced Google Voice, a service that gives you one phone number to link all your phones and makes voicemail as easy as email. We are happy to share that Google Voice is beginning to open up beyond former GrandCentral users. If you requested an invitation on the Google Voice site or previously on GrandCentral, keep your eye out for an invite email.
Once you receive your invitation, just click on the link and follow the instructions to setup your new Voice account. To help you find a Google number that is personalized to you, we've added a number picker that lets you search by area code and text. See if you can find a number that contains your name, a specific word or a number combination.
To learn more about Google Voice, check out the video below. If you haven't signed up for a Google Voice invite, make sure to get on the list by leaving us your email address at www.google.com/voiceinvite.
Once you receive your invitation, just click on the link and follow the instructions to setup your new Voice account. To help you find a Google number that is personalized to you, we've added a number picker that lets you search by area code and text. See if you can find a number that contains your name, a specific word or a number combination.
To learn more about Google Voice, check out the video below. If you haven't signed up for a Google Voice invite, make sure to get on the list by leaving us your email address at www.google.com/voiceinvite.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
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