Celebrate World Book Day with The Literacy Project

Posted by Anne Meyer, Chief of Education Design, CAST

According to UNESCO, one in five adults is illiterate, with the majority living in the developing world—where access to books, libraries, and education is often limited. But the barrier to literacy isn’t simply a question of access, nor is it limited to the developing world. It’s a problem we see in the U.S. as well. People may struggle to read for lots of reasons. Some of these have to do with basic literacy skills, such as inadequate vocabulary.

Sometimes readers have trouble "decoding" what that string of letters on a page really means--they might have reading disabilities, for example. Readers may not have enough background knowledge about a story’s characters, geography, or culture.

At the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST), an educational nonprofit near Boston, we have spent the past two decades working to leverage the potential of personal, digital technologies to customize educational media to meet individual needs. In celebration of World Book Day, CAST has created a powerful new tool, UDL Editions, that showcases how classic and sometimes difficult texts—such as Shakespeare’s 18th Sonnet and Jack London’s Call of the Wild—can be rendered in smart, reader-friendly ways to provide a whole host of learning supports—such as multimedia glossaries, chapter summaries, and read-aloud features, links to Google Maps to place settings in contemporary contexts.

The books are one of the many projects being featured starting today on The Literacy Project, a joint effort by Google, LitCam, and UNESCO’s Institute for Lifelong Learning. The project encourages literacy and reading organisations from around the globe to connect and share materials and best practice—from a searchable maps database to e-learning tools—like PlanetRead’s same-language subtitling videos—that can be used in the classroom.

We’re really excited to be participating in the project. Come join us on the site and share your thoughts!

Five factors to look for in Pennsylvania

Posted by Brittany Bohnet, Google Elections Team

As you know, the Democratic primary is coming down to the wire, and American voters are following each set of state results more closely than ever before.

We wondered what would make the difference in the tight Pennsylvania primary—and what those results might indicate about the rest of the primary process and the general election. So we turned to numbers-cruncher Jim Barnes from the National Journal and asked him to weigh in on different sets of demographic data. Jim helped us set up an embeddable Google Map comparing different essential factors for the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania.

As you’re watching the results from this race on April 22, Jim says there are five things to look for—and they have interesting implications for the general election in November:

Age. Barack Obama has generally drawn more support from younger voters while Hillary Clinton’s base has come from older voters. With 15.2 percent of its overall population aged 65 or older, Pennsylvania has the third biggest population of seniors in the country after Florida and West Virginia. The candidate who does a better job turning out this core age group could take a big step towards winning the primary. Take a look at the percentages of registered Democrats by age bracket.

Democratic primary in the 2002 gubernatorial race. In 2002, then-Pennsylvania State Auditor General Bob Casey Jr. lost the Democratic gubernatorial primary to then-Philadelphia mayor Ed Rendell, who went on to capture the statehouse. Casey carried 57 of the state’s 67 counties in that primary, but Rendell won the contest because of his strength in the southeastern part of the state, specifically the four suburban and exurban counties outside of Philadelphia—Bucks, Delaware, Chester and Montgomery—where he carried more that 80 percent of the vote. In the Democratic presidential race, Rendell has endorsed Clinton, and Casey is backing Obama. Whether Rendell can help Clinton hold down Obama’s margins in the Philadelphia area, where he is still popular, or Casey can give Obama a boost among his political base in western, central and northeastern Pennsylvania could be pivotal in this primary’s outcome. Here are county-by-county results for the 2002 Democratic primary for governor.

Geography and growth. Based on the results seven weeks ago for the primary next door in Ohio, Clinton should be favored in the Keystone State, but Pennsylvania is more diverse state in terms of its patterns of growth. It has rural and metropolitan areas that are losing population, and fast-growing exurbs. For Obama to do well, he must win not only in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, but also in some of the faster-growing parts of the state. Track the rate of population growth in Pennsylvania counties from 2000-2007.

Race. Obama has had some difficulty winning a significant share of support from white voters in most of the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries, but at the same time he has dominated Clinton in regard to the African-American vote in these contests. Here is the racial breakdown of Pennsylvania's 67 counties.

Religion. Obama and Clinton recently participated in a forum on issues of faith that was held at Messiah College in Pennsylvania. So far in this primary season, Sen. Obama has done well among Democratic primary voters who identify as Protestants and other denominations, but lagged among Catholics. Review the data on religious adherence by county.

As technology continues to be an influential part of this race for President, we hope you can use this map to gain a better understanding about which factors are causing Pennsylvania citizens to cast their vote. Try using the data to make your own predictions for the Pennsylvania outcome, then check if you're right by following live results tonight on Google Maps.

Helping others go green

Posted by Bill Weihl, Green Energy Czar

Happy Earth Day! I'm sure some of you are wondering how Google is celebrating, and we want to know what you're doing too. We work to make our business more environmentally sustainable throughout the year, but this month, we want to support the hard work you're doing to fight climate change. Last week we blogged about some of Google's new green tools, and now we have even more ways to help you observe Earth Day 2008:

• Today we're launching the largest batch of new Google Transit cities yet. Travelers in San Francisco, Denver, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Rhode Island and other locations across the country can now use Google Maps to plan trips using public transportation.
  

• Google Checkout continues to help you and your friends and family team up and donate to environmental organizations. We have a new video to help you learn how to donate and see how easy it is to map your network of generosity.

• The Google Desktop team has developed a handy little gadget that will help those of you making Earth Day pledges to reduce your energy consumption. Install the Energy Saver gadget to enable and optimize your computer’s power management settings, putting it to sleep when you're not using it.
  
  
• Google SketchUp has created a new site for green design professionals, and Google for Educators has put together some [recommendations] for teachers who want to use Google Earth and Maps to teach about environmental issues in the classroom.
  
  
• Several more Google blogs are celebrating Earth Day as well, so be sure to read about the teacher who has cut his paper use by using Docs and Spreadsheets, advertising best-practices for environmental organizations, eco-trendspotting on YouTube and Google.org's tribute to the green collar economy.

Finally, I'll leave you with some photos of our team's trip to Washington, D.C. for this past Sunday’s Earth Day concert on the National Mall. It got a bit soggy, but we had a blast showing attendees how the Google Checkout donation campaign works. We're especially proud of our booth, which was made of sustainable materials and powered by energy from clean hydrogen fuel cells.

A new look for Google Video

Posted by Bindu Reddy, Group Product Manager

Last year, we shared our vision for Google Video and announced a renewed focus on organizing all the web's video. We have a lot of new features to tell you about, so head over to the Google Video Blog for more information about our new look.

Here's to Tom Lehrer, elemental geek

Posted by Jonathan J. Rosenberg, Senior VP, Product Management

We live in a world focused on celebrity, but there are also luminaries -- those guiding lights who actually inspire celebrities along with the rest of us. Today there's a luminary we'd like to call out: Tom Lehrer. It hasn't escaped our attention that Mr. Lehrer turned 80 last week. (We have it on good authority that his view of numbers is such that 80 is not so different than 79, so he probably won't mind this belated note.) We think he's great. We're fans.

Mr. Lehrer is the Harvard mathematician turned parodist songwriter-performer whose sense of humor, intelligence and rhythm created a cult following that, weirdly enough, anticipated a lot of what Google's culture tries to be about. His work is clever, playful and fun and connects things in ways that surprises, delights and inspires. (Consider "The Element Song", his ode to the periodic table, or his lesson on "New Math".) How could we not be inspired by someone who can craft a good laugh, a great tune, and an elegant equation?

From "The Masochism Tango" to "Who's Next" to "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" (trust us, you have to hear it), Mr. Lehrer's unique music carved out a distinctive place in popular music in the 1950s and '60s. He made his fans feel smart. An entrepreneur -- and we like entrepreneurs -- he self-produced and sold his songs via mail order. And for all the edginess in his humor, he ended up writing some ten clever songs for the '70s public television children's program The Electric Company, including a tune about the letter 'e.'

Although Wikipedia notes that he performed only 109 shows and wrote just 37 songs over 20 years, we think his impact and influence goes well beyond those numbers. He was the best kind of "geek" before the word made its way into pop culture. He's the kind of character as comfortable teaching a university course on the history of the musical -- which he did -- as running a seminar on the nature of mathematics -- which he did.

We hope that in retirement Mr. Lehrer is enjoying himself even a fraction as much as we've enjoyed his work. We're grateful that he's such a great example of how science, humor, music and mathematics can be combined to create such wonderful things.

Working together to fight malware

Posted by Panayiotis Mavrommatis, Google Security Team

We recently began a series of posts related to online security that focus on how we secure information (with posts like these) and how you can protect yourself online. Here's the latest in the series.- Ed.

As part of this ongoing security series, we'd like to talk a little about malware. The term malware, derived from "malicious software," refers to any software specifically designed to harm your computer or the software it's running.

Malware can be added to your computer, with or without your knowledge, in a number of ways -- usually when you visit a website containing malware or when you download seemingly innocent software. It can then slow down your system, send fake emails from your email account, steal sensitive information like credit card numbers or passwords from your computer, and more.

The conventional wisdom was that you could avoid malware by learning to spot sites that were created with the sole purpose of spreading it, and by staying away from other sites that might be risky. But recent research from Google suggests that an increasing number of malware attacks are taking place on sites you'd normally regard as safe or legitimate, but have actually been compromised.

Google works closely with the security community to identify malware on the web and then share that information more broadly. We've set up a number of automated systems to scour our index for potentially dangerous sites, and we add a label to those that appear to be a vehicle for malware. If you're searching on Google and click on a link that we've flagged, a warning page will appear before you move forward.

We also notify webmasters if we discover that a site is no longer secure and provide a method for webmasters that clean up their sites to request a review. And starting soon, we'll be providing more detail on sites that appear to be spreading malware, so users have a better sense of why we have flagged a given site and webmasters can more easily identify and correct issues on their sites.

All this stems directly from our security philosophy: We believe that if we all work together to identify threats and stamp them out, we can make the web a safer place for everyone. Of course, we can't catch everything, so our users play a crucial part of this effort too. Below are a few tips that can help you reduce your chances of being affected by malware:

• Use anti-virus software. Most anti-virus software is specifically designed to find and remove harmful software on your computer. Be sure you have anti-virus software installed on your computer (you can get a free trial through Google Pack if you don't), keep it current, and use it to run frequent full-system checks.

• Make sure your operating system and browser are up to date. Attackers typically target vulnerabilities in your operating system (OS) and your browser to install malware on your computer. OS and browser providers frequently release updates to close those vulnerabilities. Enable automatic updates for both your browser and your OS, and check for alerts to ensure you have the latest and greatest protection.

• Be careful about what you download. While Google and everyone else in the online community is working hard to identify harmful sites, new sources of malware are emerging all the time. Whenever you're prompted to download an email attachment, install a plug-in, or download an unfamiliar piece of software, take a moment to think it through. You won't always be able to identify a risky download, but if you practice some reasonable caution, you'll be able to reduce that risk.

If you come across a potentially dangerous site that hasn't already been flagged, please report it. To learn more about malware and how to protect yourself, check out StopBadware.org's help page.

We can't wait for Earth Day

Posted by David Bercovich, Google Green Team

On April 22nd, millions of people around the world will come together to celebrate Earth Day -- a commitment to taking care of our planet, and to fighting climate change. In anticipation of Earth Day, Googlers from many of our offices have been looking for ways to demonstrate our commitment to sustainability. We also want you to have more ways to support the goals of Earth Day, and to share ideas on reducing your own environmental impact. Here are a few to get you started:

• If you use Google Checkout to donate to a non-profit environmental organization on behalf of anyone you know, we'll generate a personal view of Google Maps that includes a marker representing your donation. The people you donate on behalf of will get an email about your contribution, and if they follow your example, their donation will be marked on your map as well. We'll connect the markers, so that you can watch how your generosity spreads as more and more people donate. Visit Checkout's Earth Day page to learn more.

• Hot on the heels of last week's Google Transit launch in Chicago, a whole new batch of transit agencies have made their data available on Google Maps. From Lubbock, Texas to Walla Walla, Washington, people in communities across the country will now find it easier than ever to leave their cars at home.

• I hope you'll take a moment to download the newest version of Google Earth, which launched earlier today. While you're exploring its fancy new features, be sure to check out some of the latest Global Awareness layers (found in the left-side "Layers" panel) that celebrate the beauty and biodiversity on Earth, like ARKive's Endangered Species and Greenpeace's Stop Climate Change. And I encourage you to visit the Google Earth Outreach Showcase, which features a number of environmentally-focused KMLs that can be downloaded and viewed in Google Earth.

Tell the world what you're doing for Earth Day (and beyond) by uploading a message to our Earth Day '08 site. Get together with friends, family or coworkers, grab a camera, and take five minutes to put yourselves on the map. From the everyday to the extraordinary, we want to hear about your plans to take on climate change and make our planet a greener place.