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The Day in the Cloud Challenge featuring Google Apps on June 24th
June 1, 2009
You're invited to take the
Day in the Cloud Challenge
, the first-ever online scavenger hunt to be played simultaneously in the air and on the ground. We've teamed up with
Virgin America
to sponsor this challenge on June 24, 2009, the "Day in the Cloud." At Google, we've gathered a small group of gamers extraordinaire to come up with unique puzzles, trivia, and brain teasers, many of which use Google Apps. So if you're game, get ready for the Day in the Cloud Challenge.
More and more people are storing their data (such as documents, calendars, email, and photos) online "in the cloud" with services like
Google Apps
. All that you need is an Internet connection to access and share that information with friends, family, and co-workers. With airlines like Virgin America offering in-flight Wi-Fi, it's now even easier to stay connected while you travel, even when you're flying through the sky.
Those of you paying close attention might remember that we've held a
puzzle extravaganza
in the past. The Day in the Cloud Challenge will be different in that each contestant will have just
one hour
to play the game. Everyone is encouraged to take on the challenge between 12:00am and 11:59pm PDT on Wed, June 24, 2009. And if you happen to be flying on Virgin America, in-flight Wi-Fi service will be complimentary on June 24th so that you can play during your flight.
The top five scorers in the challenge will receive a "Year in the Cloud"
prize package
, which includes a year of free flights and free in-flight Wi-Fi from Virgin America, an HP netbook computer, and 1 terabyte of Google account storage for all of your photos and email. Not a puzzle fanatic? Don't worry. The questions come in various difficulty levels so there will be some easy puzzles and others that might drive even the most experienced competitors crazy. A final note on eligibility: You must be a legal resident of the U.S. and at least 18 years of age to be eligible for a prize.
Check out
www.dayinthecloud.com
for more information. While you're there, sign up for an email reminder to receive practice clues and tips.
We'll see you in the cloud.
Posted by Boris Debic, Physicist and Google Software Engineer (and puzzle creator)
Went Walkabout. Brought back Google Wave.
May 28, 2009
Back in early 2004, Google took an interest in a tiny mapping startup called Where 2 Tech, founded by my brother Jens and me. We were excited to join Google and help create what would become
Google Maps
. But we also started thinking about what might come next for us after maps.
As always, Jens came up with the answer: communication. He pointed out that two of the most spectacular successes in digital communication, email and instant messaging, were originally designed in the '60s to imitate analog formats — email mimicked snail mail, and IM mimicked phone calls. Since then, so many different forms of communication had been invented — blogs, wikis, collaborative documents, etc. — and computers and networks had dramatically improved. So Jens proposed a new communications model that presumed all these advances as a starting point, and I was immediately sold. (Jens insists it took him hours to convince me, but I like my version better.)
We had a blast the next couple years turning Where 2's prototype mapping site into Google Maps. But finally we decided it was time to leave the Maps team and turn Jens' new idea into a project, which we codenamed "Walkabout." We started with a set of tough questions:
Why do we have to live with divides between different types of communication — email versus chat, or conversations versus documents?
Could a single communications model span all or most of the systems in use on the web today, in one smooth continuum? How simple could we make it?
What if we tried designing a communications system that took advantage of computers' current abilities, rather than imitating non-electronic forms?
After months holed up in a conference room in the
Sydney office
, our five-person "startup" team emerged with a prototype. And now, after more than two years of expanding our ideas, our team, and technology, we're very eager to return and see what the world might think. Today we're giving developers an early preview of Google Wave.
A "wave" is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.
Here's how it works: In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It's concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use "playback" to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.
As with
Android
,
Google Chrome
, and many other Google efforts, we plan to make the code open source as a way to encourage the developer community to get involved. Google Wave is very open and extensible, and we're inviting developers to add all kinds of cool stuff before our public launch. Google Wave has three layers: the product, the platform, and the protocol:
The Google Wave
product
(available as a developer preview) is the web application people will use to access and edit waves. It's an HTML 5 app, built on
Google Web Toolkit
. It includes a rich text editor and other functions like desktop drag-and-drop (which, for example, lets you drag a set of photos right into a wave).
Google Wave can also be considered a
platform
with a rich set of open APIs that allow developers to embed waves in other web services, and to build new extensions that work inside waves.
The Google Wave
protocol
is the underlying format for storing and the means of sharing waves, and includes the "live" concurrency control, which allows edits to be reflected instantly across users and services. The protocol is designed for open federation, such that anyone's Wave services can interoperate with each other and with the Google Wave service. To encourage adoption of the protocol, we intend to open source the code behind Google Wave.
So, this leaves one big question we need your help answering: What else can we do with this?
If you're a developer and you'd like to roll up your sleeves and start working on Google Wave with us, you can read more on the
Google Wave Developer blog
about the
Google Wave APIs
, and check out the
Google Code blog
to learn more about the
Google Wave Federation Protocol
.
If you'd like to be notified when we launch Google Wave as a public product, you can sign up at
http://wave.google.com
/. We don't have a specific timeframe for public release, but we're planning to continue working on Google Wave for a number of months more as a developer preview. We're excited to see what feedback we get from our early tinkerers, and we'll undoubtedly make lots of changes to the Google Wave product, platform, and protocol as we go.
We look forward to seeing what you come up with!
Update
@ 7:07PM: The
video
of the Google Wave keynote presentation is now available:
Posted by Lars Rasmussen, Software Engineering Manager
Search engineer stories
May 27, 2009
I came to Google because I wanted to work on hard problems and have a big impact on the world. Four years later, I'm still constantly awed by how challenging search is. We work on improving the entire search process, including formulating queries, evaluating results, reading and understanding information, and digging deeper with this new information. Every day we work on ways, both big and small, for search to be better, faster, and more effortless.
My fellow engineers and I wanted to give a peek into some of the challenges we face and how we're trying to make search even better. We created a
series of short videos
so you could hear straight from the engineers. Here's mine, where I talk about a change to spell suggestions.
Some of the videos may talk about things you are already familiar with and some may be new. Either way, we hope that you enjoy hearing these stories, and do stay tuned for more!
Posted by Patrick Riley, Software Engineer
Kicking off 2nd annual Google I/O developer gathering
May 27, 2009
Today is the first day of
Google I/O
— two days of developer talks, fireside chats and demos, all focused on the latest innovations in the web as a development platform. We're excited to have this chance to welcome more than 3,000 developers to the Moscone Center in (unusually) sunny San Francisco for a variety of interactive roundtables and talks on subjects like Android, Google Maps and Google Apps for the Enterprise.
We'll be back with more news as the conference progresses. In the meantime, you can follow updates on the
@googleio
Twitter stream; videos of all sessions will be available on
code.google.com
shortly after they conclude.
Update
@ 3:20PM: Videos from Day 1 of Google I/O are now available on our
YouTube playlist
.
Posted by Emily Wood, Google Blog team
New logo look
May 21, 2009
You may have noticed new logos at the top of some of Google's web pages, including
Google Labs
,
Google Moderator
, and
Google Code
. These are the result of a new logo design we are rolling out. We hope this design freshens up our look as well as improves consistency and ease of use across our sites. Now, our product names will appear in clean, simple blue lowercase type alongside the Google logo as shown here:
Since the logos appear in many different locations and sizes on our websites, our new designs are standardized to be the same size and color wherever they appear. This should make it easier for you to recognize which site you are on and navigate to wherever you want to go. They are also consistent across all our international domains, which is especially helpful for people using right-to-left languages such as Arabic and Hebrew.
We are happy with this change since it will help us streamline our user experience. Count on seeing the new logos rolling out to Google Maps, Google News, Google Docs and more over the next few weeks.
Posted by Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products and User Experience, and Jamie Divine, Senior Visual Designer
Netlog integrates with Google Friend Connect
May 21, 2009
When we started building
Friend Connect
, we wanted to provide a fully open system — one that lets you join any website and interact with the people there in a meaningful way, regardless of where they come from. To enable this kind of engagement, we used open standards like
OpenID
,
OAuth
, and
OpenSocial
as underlying technologies, enabling any other service to plug into Friend Connect.
Today, we're excited to share that
Netlog
has used these open standards to integrate their social networking service with Google Friend Connect. Now, Netlog's more than 45 million users across Europe can:
Sign into any of the millions of sites and blogs using Friend Connect with their Netlog credentials
Use their Netlog profiles on these sites
See if any of their friends are already members of the same sites and invite other Netlog friends to join
Share their Friend Connect activities with their friends on Netlog, and
Send messages back to their Netlog friends
Additionally, for sites that are already using Friend Connect, one of the benefits of this standards based model is that they can take advantage of any new service that chooses to join this open ecosystem, like Netlog, without any additional work. The new network option simply appears.
Any social network or service, whether they are large or small, regional or global, niche or general audience, is welcome to take advantage of these open standards to integrate with Friend Connect, and participate in an open social web.
Posted by Mussie Shore, Product Manager
Put the pedal to the metal with a faster Google Chrome
May 21, 2009
We
introduced Google Chrome
back in September, and it's received a great response so far. Since launching, we've been working hard on adding the
top requested features
and making Google Chrome even faster.
Today, we are updating to a new version of Google Chrome that is faster than ever. JavaScript-heavy web pages will now run about 30% faster. See the chart below or
compare scores yourself
.
Additionally, we've added some useful features like
form autofill
, full screen mode, and the ability to remove thumbnails from the
New Tab page
. Here's a short video demonstrating some of this new functionality:
If you're already using Google Chrome, you'll be automatically updated with these new features soon. If you haven't downloaded Google Chrome, get the latest version at
google.com/chrome
.
To read more about this update, visit the
Google Chrome blog
.
Posted by Darin Fisher, Google Chrome Team
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