By the pricking of our thumbs...

Posted by David Griswold, Google Blog Team

... something Googley this way comes.



It's that time of year, when ghouls, goblins, and Zeitghosts roam Google in search of fresh human bandwidth. We hope you enjoy these Halloween photos from several of our offices, and wish you a safe -- but suitably scary -- celebration.

And if you're looking to plot that perfect trick-or-treat route, might we recommend the My Maps feature on Google maps? You can even tag videos and pictures from your spooky night, highlighting your favorite stops. If you like seeing our ghoulish get-ups, you can use Picasa Web Albums to share yours with kindred costumed spirits.

Now get out there and enjoy All Hallow's Eve.

It's not about the spam

Posted by Brad Taylor, Software Engineer and "Spam Czar"

When Gmail's spam filters are working perfectly, no one talks to us anti-spam engineers. But as soon as something goes wrong, our users, our friends, and even our Google colleagues who use Gmail for their corporate mail are sure to tell us. That's just the way we like it. Spam is not something people should grow numb to and accept as a fact of life. We *want* people to complain. That's the only way things get better.

Due in large part to all the great feedback we get, things are better. We're keeping more spam out of your inbox than ever before, so more and more, you can use Gmail for things you enjoy without even realizing that the spam filter is there most of the time. It's not too different from driving a convertible down the freeway with the top down, with the wind blowing through your hair and no traffic jams to destroy the mood. Now, I'm not saying we're perfect, but the really good news is that it seems like spammers are finally starting to get discouraged. Attempts to spam Gmail users have been leveling off over the last year and more recently, even declining slightly. We need your help clicking on the "Report Spam" button, but through continuous improvement we are approaching the world we all want to live in.



As much as we don't want you to even think about spam, people are naturally curious and ask questions such as "where does spam come from?", "who buys the shoddy stuff spammers advertise?" and "how do you catch spam?" We're engineers, though, not forensic experts or economists, so while we can only speculate about the first two questions, we can talk authoritatively about the last one -- spam-catching. To that end, we've put together a video explaining how our spam filters work:



Now if we could only get a "Report Traffic" button in our cars ...

About the Google Education Summit

Posted by Mehran Sahami, Research Scientist

Since the dot-com bust in 2000, many colleges and universities nationwide have seen a decline (oftentimes quite dramatic) in computer science program enrollments. Many factors have been cited as possible causes including economic troubles in the high-tech sector, job off-shoring, the perceived image of computer science, and the growing complexity of programming. Recently, there's been a more critical examination of this crisis in computing, and stakeholders have proposed many targeted programs and curriculum changes to help stem the tide of students choosing not to pursue computing as a discipline.

In this vein, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has recently launched the CISE Pathways to Revitalized Undergraduate Computing Education (CPATH) program aimed at transforming undergraduate computing education. NSF has taken a multi-pronged approach, including what it describes as "community-building efforts that bring stakeholders together to discuss the challenges and opportunities inherent in transforming undergraduate computing education."

After conversations with some of our colleagues at NSF, we organized the Google Education Summit this summer, held in conjunction with our annual Faculty Summit. Its aim was to bring together a group of leaders in computer science education for presentations and discussions centering on how we can promote greater participation in computer science.

The Google Education Summit was attended by representatives from academia, NSF, CRA (Computing Research Association), and industry, including IBM, Intel, and Microsoft. This broad range of participants helped to foster a real discussion that showcased academic initiatives already in the works to address enrollment declines, as well as explore ways that industry and academia can work more cooperatively on the issue.

Many attendees reported that they enjoyed having an open dialog -- and sometimes heated debate -- with a variety of stakeholders. To share some of the ideas more broadly, all our Education Summit presenters have agreed to distribute their presentations under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. All of these files are in the PDF format.

• Mehran Sahami (Google) — Welcome and Overview

Panel: Addressing enrollment declines and increasing participation by underrepresented groups in CS

• Hal Abelson (MIT) — MIT's curriculum revision in EE and CS
  
• Lenore Blum (CMU) — The Crisis in Computer Science (Image and Education)
• Judy Cushing (Evergreen) — Broadening CS at the entry level interdisciplinary science & CS
• Ed Fox (Virginia Tech)— LIKES: Living In the KnowlEdge Society

Panel: How can academia and industry work together to address educational issues?

• Lillian "Boots" Cassel (Villanova) — Industry and the Academy
• Phokion Kolaitis (IBM) — How can academia and industry work together to address educational issues?
• Jane Prey (Microsoft) — Academic & industry collaboration to improve education
• Alan Eustace (Google) — Discussant (no formal presentation)

We hope you find these presentations insightful, and we look forward to further exploration of how we can work more effectively with educators to help increase participation in computer science.

Wildfire relief donations

Posted by Prem Ramaswami, Google Checkout Team

Nearly one million people have been displaced by the devastating wildfires in Southern California. The Red Cross and Salvation Army are actively helping the victims of this disaster. If you'd like to contribute to their efforts, you can make a donation via our "Support Wildfire Relief" page.

One year mark for Google Apps Education Edition

Posted by Jeff Keltner, Business Development Google Apps Education Edition

It's been one year since we unveiled Google Apps Education Edition and we've seen great progress in that time. Thousands of educational institutions on six continents now use Google Apps, and we have hundreds of thousands of active users. We want to thank our customers for providing feedback and having an open dialogue with us. Based on feedback from lots of folks, we have rolled in more than 40 product and feature updates in this first year, including:

• Increased inbox storage
• Mail migration and routing
• New Google Docs UI
  
• Shared documents and presentation features
• Customizable start pages
• Shared address book
• Web-based multi-user chat
• IMAP for Gmail (coming soon)

By keeping in touch with key customers, we can make the changes and additions necessary to truly meet your needs. Our Google@School event was a great success in connecting with our customers and gathering feedback last year, check out the video:



And this year at the Educause conference in Seattle we're announcing the first Customer Advisory Board (CAB) for Google Apps Education Edition. They are:

• Abilene Christian University
• Arizona State University
• Central Piedmont Community College
• Northwestern University
• University of North Carolina - Greensboro
• University of Southern California

These members represent a cross-section of the educational community as well as the range of institutions using Google Apps. We're meeting for the first time this week to address the needs and demands of all types of educational institutions.

API, gadgets, and tabs, oh my!

Posted by Matt Gundersen, Google Finance Engineer

Today, we're pleased to let you know about two new updates from Google Finance. First, we're releasing a new Google Finance tab on iGoogle. This new tab is a dashboard of financial gadgets which enable you to add, customize and share your Google Finance experience. But here's what's extra cool about these gadgets -- they now have communication skills and can "talk" to each other. When you make an update in one gadget, it automatically syncs with the other gadgets in the tab.

Second, if you're a gadget developer, we've made it a lot easier to make a gadget with market data. We're releasing a gadget API for market data which provides a framework for developers to display stock market information from the American, Nasdaq and New York stock exchanges within a gadget on Google properties. We believe this is the first free gadget API for market data for developers and hope you have fun with it.

Read more on the Google Finance blog.

Google Tip of the Day gadget

Posted by Bryan Horling and Misha Brukman, Software Engineers

One of the great things about working at Google is the breadth and depth of ideas that people come up with. Our development process is primarily bottom-up and driven by the enthusiasm of those same people, so these ideas are frequently translated into new products, services and features. A side effect is that these improvements are sometimes launched at such a pace that even Googlers have a hard time keeping up, and some of the best aspects can be lost in the shuffle.

We hate to see a good feature go unnoticed, so we have used some of our 20 percent time to create a new gadget to help you discover them. The Google Tip of the Day gadget highlights some of the lesser-known or recently added members of the Google lineup, providing short, easily digested descriptions and examples. A new feature is covered each weekday, and you can catch up on what has been previously shown as well.

Here's today's tip:



You can add the gadget to your iGoogle homepage, or generate code to embed it in your web page or blog.

We know that many of you have tips and tricks of your own; soon we'll be adding functionality so you can submit your own tips that can be featured in the gadget. For now, if you have a tip you'd like to share, you can post it in our Google Group for Tips.