Mark this for future reference

Posted by Jenny Zhang, Software Engineer

Ever forget to return to a website you bookmarked? If you’re like me, the answer is "definitely." For those of us with more than a few neglected bookmarks, the enhanced search box in the newest Google Toolbar beta can help you rediscover them. Now when you start typing in the Toolbar's search box, relevant bookmarks that you’ve saved with the Toolbar will display in the list of suggestions.

And since bookmark negligence seems to be a worldwide phenomenon, the Google Toolbar beta for Internet Explorer is now available in 16 additional languages: UK English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Brazilian Portuguese, Finnish, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Japanese, Korean, and Russian. So don't let your bookmarks fade away – install the Toolbar beta for IE today.

Update: Last sentence now specifies that Google Toolbar 4 is currently for Internet Explorer only.

Two more Gmail languages

Posted by Shanjian Li, Gmail Engineer

We've just launched Arabic and Hebrew language interfaces for Gmail, as well as several new features that will improve the Gmail experience for the people using those interfaces. (You can change the Gmail language interface on the Settings page in your account.)

This was my first project at Google, and I ended up learning a lot about Arabic and Hebrew by talking to native speakers. I'm really pleased to have worked on a launch that will help some of these folks use Gmail and make it available to even more users (we now offer 40 different language interfaces).

Map your way to greener travel

Posted by John Hanke, Director, Google Maps & Earth

Summer is almost here and the Googleplex is buzzing with travel plans. (Hey, even geeks have to play sometime.) We looked at all the great Maps mashup sites out there and thought, why shouldn't we have some fun too? So we started working on a Maps mashup that would highlight some fun summer activities that also respect the environment. The result is our Summer of Green travel mashup site. We've teamed with Earth Day Network to highlight some planet-friendly travel tips for top U.S. travel destinations as well as how to use Google Maps in your daily routine to find and support green activities.

Did you know you could go kayaking in Las Vegas? Or rent a hybrid limo service in LA? Or stay at a Disney hotel in Orlando that recycles its water? These are a just few of the stops documented in our video-enhanced Google Maps mashup.

Hope you enjoy these and maybe even find some fun -- and green -- destinations for your summer trips.

On the map Down Under

Posted by Julian Sonego, Marketing Manager, Google Australia and New Zealand

Google Australia has officially come out of beta--we've recently launched our new Australian operation. While Google has had a presence Down Under since late 2002, we have only recently moved into our new digs, which have water views that are the envy of Googlers worldwide.

This new Googleplex in Sydney gives us the opportunity to scale our operation to support a growing band of users, advertisers, and partners. We have also invested heavily in local engineering talent, underscoring Google's commitment to Australia and willingness to set up shop wherever there's talent.

To coincide with the grand opening of the office, the team recently released street maps for Australia and New Zealand so web developers can get a jump start on integrating Down Under maps into their sites.

If you're interested in becoming an Aussie Googler, take a look here. Who wouldn't want to join this team?

Picture this: Picasa for Linux

Posted by Chris DiBona, Open Source Programs Manager

Let's say you happily use Linux, but you sometimes find yourself wishing you had access to interesting new apps that launch for Windows but not Linux. And maybe, like a lot of us, you have a lot of photos stored on your personal machine, and you've read about or even tried Google's photo organizer, Picasa. But using it means switching to Windows, even temporarily. (We know--thanks but no thanks.)

Well, we've got you covered, because today we're launching Picasa for Linux on Google Labs. It incorporates nearly all the features of the current Windows version of Picasa, providing you with the tools you need to easily find, edit, and share the photos on your computer. And because it runs on a carefully tested version of Wine, Picasa avoids the slowing effects of an OS emulation or a virtual machine.

Have fun with it--and tell us what you think.

Attention all Pearl Jam fans

Posted by Eva Ho, Product Marketing Manager, Google Video

Pearl Jam's new music video "Life Wasted" is now on Google Video for free! Be sure to check it out now, as free streaming and download is available only until June 1.

And in line with the band's experimental personality, Pearl Jam released the "Life Wasted" video under a Creative Commons "some rights reserved" copyright license. What does all that legal gibberish mean to you? It means that you can download the video for free, share it with your friends, and even post it on your own site--provided you give the band credit and don't use it for commercial purposes. It's yet another example of Pearl Jam putting its fans first.

[UPDATE 05/25: The free streaming-and-download period was originally scheduled to end on May 24; due to popular demand, we're extending it until June 1.]

Never browse outdated posts again

Posted by Dave Weissman, Software Engineer, Google Blog Search

Today we launched a new feature on Google Blog Search that lets you narrow your search by date. Using this feature, you can track blog posts on your favorite topics according to when those items were posted. We've also incorporated some improvements in search quality that should make your blog-search experience even better.

Ever since Google Blog Search launched, we've noticed that the universe of blogs has truly exploded--our index is doubling every six months. Perhaps even more striking, though, is that there's no one region in the world that leads the growth of blogs. Self-publishing clearly has global appeal, and blogging makes it easy for everyone on the web to share their voices and connect. True, there continues to be blog spam (and we continue to fight it), but our blog search reveals the great range and quality of ideas and writing out there.

Take it for a spin and let us know what you think.

Google's "20 percent time" in action

Posted by Alex K., Technical Solutions Engineer, Partner Solutions Organization

I love what I do (I work for Google's Partner Solutions Organization, writing internal programs and tools to help better manage our partner relationships--check out our job listings), but Google's "20 percent time" recently came in handy. The 20 percent time is a well-known part of our philosophy here, enabling engineers to spend one day a week working on projects that aren't necessarily in our job descriptions. You can use the time to develop something new, or if you see something that's broken, you can use the time to fix it. And this is how I recently worked up a new feature for Google Reader.

I really like the keyboard shortcuts in Gmail, and they work in Reader too. But when using Reader, I found myself wanting to skip whole sections of stories, and I was wearing out my "N" key (which moves the browser down one item). There are buttons on the screen to scroll up and down a whole page at a time, but I thought it would be nice to have a keyboard shortcut too. I could have hacked something together with Greasemonkey or a Firefox extension, but that would've only helped me and the three other people who read my blog.

So I fired off an email to the Reader team, hoping that they'd be able to add a keyboard shortcut. The team got back to me right away, and they told me how easy it would be to add the shortcut myself. They were right--it was easy, because the internal documentation was good and the code was really easy to work with. Once my change had been reviewed, it went live.

And I have to admit--every time I use the new shortcut ("shift" and "N"), I get a little thrill at how easily I was able to get my idea implemented.
Hope you enjoy it too.

Ready, AIIM, Search

Posted by Matthew Glotzbach, Head of Products, Google Enterprise

Innovation shouldn't come at the expense of simplicity. That's the message this week as search takes center stage at the AIIM Expo in Philadelphia, where Google VP and GM Dave Girouard will deliver a keynote on how consumer expectations drive innovation in technology, and Google partners will demonstrate how search is changing the face of enterprise applications.

Check out the new partner announcements and conference details and see why more than 4,000 customers rely on Google enterprise search technology.

Instant gratification, Google Video style

Posted by George Strompolos, Content Acquisition, Google Video

Let's say you've just captured some incredible footage of what appears to be a UFO, and you want to share it online with the world before anyone can claim that you're crazy. Lucky for you, Google Video just made sharing your videos a lot faster and a lot easier (and yes, even a crazy person can do it).

With the launch of our new web-based uploader, you're just two clicks away from posting your videos online. Best of all, you can watch and share your videos with friends and family, and embed them on blogs and community websites immediately.

If you prefer stories of love and loss over aliens and tractor beams, Google Video and Universal Pictures encourage you to try Google’s new web-based uploader by sharing your break-up stories in honor of National Break-Up Day (June 2) and the new movie "The Break-Up," starring Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn.

In my day, we thought calculators were neat

Posted by Aidan Chopra, Program Manager, Education

The Maine Learning Technology Initiative is an innovative program that equips every one of the state's public middle-school students with a laptop computer. This fall, more than 36,000 students will receive brand-new Apple iBooks pre-installed with great software.

We think the whole thing sounds terrific, so we're donating Google Earth and SketchUp Pro to Maine for installation on every public-school computer in the state. They accepted, and now it looks like Maine will be the first state in the US to have Google Earth, SketchUp Pro, and the 3D Warehouse available to every student, teacher, librarian, and administrator who wants it.

Information about the SketchUp for Education program can be found here. Government agencies that would like to follow Maine's lead are welcome to drop us a line at education@sketchup.com.

Making AJAX development easier

Posted by Bret Taylor, Product Manager

AJAX has the power to make your site more compelling and more dynamic, but AJAX development is often complicated, with much of the development time spent working around browser quirks and the fragility of AJAX components. Trust us, we know--the development of our own AJAX apps, like Google Maps and Google Calendar, caused us no small amount of AJAX-induced frustration.

That's why we're bringing you Google Web Toolkit. GWT is a new publicly available software development tool that makes creating AJAX applications much easier. With GWT, you can develop and debug your own AJAX applications in Java code using the Java development tools of your choice. When you deploy your application to production, the GWT compiler simply translates your Java application to browser-compliant JavaScript and HTML.

Check it out over on Google Code.

Talking in tongues

Posted by Mike Jazayeri, Product Manager, Google Talk

Thirteen more, to be exact. Google Talk has just added some new language interfaces: UK English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, and Turkish.

Check it out and talk amongst yourselves...

Note this

Posted by Bay-Wei Chang, Senior Research Scientist

Search is all about finding the answers you need. Unfortunately, some kinds of questions--like where you should stay and what you should do on your Hawaiian vacation, or what kind of digital camera you should buy, or what the latest treatments for arthritis are--can't always be answered in one sitting, or by visiting one site.

That's why we built Google Notebook--to give you an online "notebook" where you can organize all your research, add personal notes to it, and share it with others. Google Notebook surfs along quietly with you as you browse, letting you clip and annotate whatever text, images, and links that help answer your question, all without ever leaving the webpage you're on.

If this sounds like something you'd like to try, you can find it here.

Smile! Gmail now has pictures!

Posted by Vadim Spivak, Gmail Engineer

When Google Talk added pictures, you probably knew they were coming soon to Gmail. But we decided to add a little twist. You can now upload a picture for each of your contacts and display it instead of the one they chose, like I do for my friend with the ugly dog picture. Then, if your friends have Gmail addresses, you can send them picture suggestions so they can use them as their own (and everyone else can see the cool pics you found).

PS: Since Google Talk already has pictures, we decided to share them. So the picture you select in Gmail will appear in Google Talk and vice versa.

Stop, hey, what's that sound?

Terry Lucas, Gmail and Google Talk Engineer

It might be Gmail. Starting today, Gmail chat will play a little ping sound whenever someone sends you a new chat message (just like Google Talk). Now you can work in other windows or even sit back and watch some TV without worrying about missing a message from your friend. Check out the details.

Gmail chats in more languages

Posted by Aaron Whyte, Gmail Engineer

We're pleased to now offer Gmail Chat in 17 more languages: UK English, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Japanese, Korean and simplified and traditional Chinese.

Here's what some people have had to say about Gmail Chat:

"My sister & I love Gmail because it's so cool! We're 3,000 miles apart, but are SO connected now with Gmail Chat. And we love the rotating smileys!"

"Pretty cool--I just got my 70+ year old aunt to use IM through Gmail."

"I heart Gmail. The new chat option is marvelous. You people bring joy to my life."

Aww, shucks. Well, we heart you--and we hope lots more of you will now enjoy getting in touch instantly this way.

Yes, we are still all about search

Posted by Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products and User Experience

We are often asked at Google what we are doing to improve regular web search. There's a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes, but today, at our press event, we announced four new products that will give you a better sense of how all this work becomes reality.

Our new products offer a pretty wide range of services and capabilities, but they have one thing in common: They all enhance and improve the search experience for our users.

- Google Co-op is a way for users to help us improve search. It lets people and organizations label web pages and create specialized links related to their unique expertise. Whether it's information about a hobby, a profession, or an unusual interest, everyone can contribute to making Google search more relevant and useful for the entire community.

- Google Desktop 4 gives you another way to improve search, by personalizing your desktop. New "Google Gadgets" deliver an array of information--ranging from games and media players to weather updates and news--straight to your desktop.

- Google Notebook (which we'll be launching next week) is a personal browser tool that lets you clip text, images, and links from the pages you're searching, save clippings to an online notebook, and then share notebooks with others.

- Google Trends builds on the idea behind the Google Zeitgeist, allowing you to sort through several years of Google search queries from around the world to get a general idea of everything from user preferences on ice-cream flavors to the relative popularity of politicians in their respective cities or countries.

If you're interested in hearing what was said on stage today, check out the webcast of our press event at www.google.com/pressday.

Conference on automated testing

Posted by Allen Hutchison, Engineering Manager

Those who follow the world of automated testing may be interested in the call for papers for our upcoming conference on the subject. Deadline for papers: June 1.