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Insights from Googlers into our products, technology, and the Google culture
India's 15th general election: tools for citizen empowerment
6 April 2009
(Cross-posted from the
Google India Blog
)
At Google, we believe information is fundamentally empowering. While all of our technologies demonstrate a commitment to this guiding principle, information is especially important when a society comes together to participate in democratic elections. Beginning ten days from today, more than 700 million eligible voters in India will over the course of four weeks have the opportunity to participate in the
largest democratic event
in human history — India's 15th general election.
Today, along with a
wide range of partners
, we are happy to announce the launch of the
Google India Elections Centre
— available in
English
and in
Hindi
.
People from across India can use the centre to do the following:
Confirm their voter registration status
Discover their polling location
View their constituency on a map
Consume relevant election-related news, blogs, videos, and quotations
Evaluate the status of development in their constituency across a range of indicators
Learn about the background of their Member of Parliament and this year's candidates
With still more features to be added during the election, we hope the site will be an ongoing resource for analysis, governance, and democracy in India after the election.
This project would not have been possible without the shared vision of a broad coalition of partners: the
Association for Democratic Reforms
,
HT Media Limited
,
Indicus Analytics
, the
Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy
, the
Liberty Institute
, and
PRS Legislative Services
. These groups are the true champions of promoting a more transparent democracy, and we're privileged to be able to shine a light on their work on the occasion of India's 15th Lok Sabha polls.
We're hopeful not only that the elections centre will further a culture that seeks access to information, but that it will also yield positive changes in voting patterns during the upcoming polls.
Please visit the
site
, select your constituency, and get started! Spread the word about what you learn and, of course, don't forget to visit the polls.
Posted by Rishi Jaitly, Senior Policy Analyst, and Sanjay Jain, Product Manager
CVS joins Google Health Rx network: millions can access medication records online
6 April 2009
When I first started working on Google Health, I was shocked by how hard it is for people to access their own medical records. I wondered why that's the case when it's so easy to access other types of personal information like bank transactions, cell phone records, and utility bills. In many states you can even renew your car registration online with a few clicks. Yet when it comes to something arguably much more important, such as your own medical records or a current list of medications, we have little to no access. It just doesn't seem right.
We're working to solve this problem. With the recent addition of CVS/pharmacy to our network of pharmacy partners, more than 100 million people can now access their prescription history online and import it into a central, secure place — a Google Health Account. In addition to CVS, we're proud to be working with
several other well-known national and regional pharmacy chains
to improve patient safety, reduce medical errors, and increase efficiencies in health care.
Having a list of all your medications all in one place from the pharmacies you shop at helps your doctor, pharmacist and other care providers do a better job of taking care of you. In fact, it's estimated that
1.5 million Americans
are sickened or injured each year by errors in prescribing, dispensing and/or taking medications. Some experts suggest that medication errors claim more than 7,000 lives each year. Making your medications known to those who care for you is a simple step to ensure you get the best possible care. Not to mention, imagine how important having immediate access to this information could be during an emergency.
To get started, first
see if your pharmacy is connected with Google Health
. If so, just sign up for an online account at your pharmacy's website, and then you can securely import your data into your Google Health account. Once your medication information is in Google Health, you can use our new
sharing feature
to share it with anyone in your care network, including family members, doctors, and other caregivers.
If you have pharmacy benefits through your employer or your health plan, you may also be able to import your prescription history into Google Health. We are working with two of the largest pharmacy benefit managers in the nation,
Medco
and
CVS Caremark
, so check your wallet to see if you have a prescription drug card from either one of them today (see examples below). If you are a Medco or Caremark member, simply log in to your online Medco or Caremark account (or register for one if you don't already have an account set up) and then link your Google Health profile to it. If you are unsure if Caremark or Medco manages your pharmacy benefits, check your prescription drug card for one of their logos, or call the number on the back of your card.
Posted by Maneesh Arora, Product Manager, Google Health
5 years of Gmail
2 April 2009
It was five years ago yesterday that
Gmail launched
by giving out a gig. Back then, a typical webmail account could only store about five megabytes of mail. It's hard to remember what those days were like, considering that today, you can send a single 20 megabyte attachment, four times the size of an entire webmail account from 2004. A gigabyte of online storage may have been what got a lot of people to give Gmail a try, but changes to the email experience — like search, labels, conversation view, and strong spam protection — seem to be what kept people around.
The engineers who created Gmail were frustrated with the existing email solutions, and wanted to build a better tool for people who got a lot of mail, which meant rethinking everything from the ground up. They built an architecture that was a combination of HTML and JavaScript (this later became known as
AJAX
), which offered a smoother, faster interface. And they designed Gmail with the most demanding users in mind — Googlers who got hundreds of messages each day and power users with broadband connections, back when 56k modems were still the norm.
The last 5 years have brought about a lot of change, and Gmail is now more than just mail. We added
chat
, and then
video chat
. We've invested in
under-the-hood changes
that allow for the rapid development that's been happening lately in Gmail Labs — 43 experimental features in 43 weeks including
tasks
,
offline
,
undo send
, and even some
silly stuff
. What started as internal email for Google employees is now used by more than a million companies and tens of millions of people in 52 languages. And one gigabyte doesn't feel like very much space anymore.
Today's email problems are different than the problems people had five years ago, and Gmail's most demanding users continue to push it to its limits. We're getting more mail and communicating in more ways than ever before. Web browsers are getting faster and offering functionality that people could only dream of in 2004. We expect the changes over the next five years to be even more radical than those of the past five. We're already getting excited about some new stuff we're testing internally, and we'll keep you updated on our progress on the
Gmail Blog
.
Posted by Todd Jackson, Gmail Product Manager
ARIA for Google Calendar, Finance and News: In praise of timely information access
2 April 2009
From time to time, our own
T.V. Raman
shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see -- tips that sighted people, among others, may also find useful.
In our continued efforts to make Google applications more accessible, we have launched ARIA support for
several Google applications
over the last few months.
W3C ARIA
is a set of HTML DOM properties that enables adaptive technologies like screenreaders to work better with dynamic web applications. As with previous ARIA-enabled Google solutions, screenreader users can now switch on ARIA support in the following applications by activating an invisible Enable Screenreader Support link. Alternatively, simply browse to the links in this blog with a supporting screenreader and Firefox 3.0 to experience the interface enhancements. If you do not have a screenreader installed, but are curious to experience what eyes-free interaction with these applications feels like, we recommend the freely downloadable Firefox enhancement
Fire Vox by Charles Chen
.
Google Calendar
: The ARIA-enhanced Google Calendar enables speech-enabled access to the day view in Google Calendar. You can use the keyboard to move through events, move through the days of the week, as well as to cycle through your various calendars. As you work with the calendar, the application raises appropriate DOM events through W3C ARIA to invoke the relevant spoken feedback through the screenreader.
Google Finance
: The Finance page can be viewed as a set of logical panes, with related content appearing as items in each pane. The ARIA-enhanced version of Google Finance enables you to switch panes, and navigate the current pane with the arrow keys. Navigation produces spoken feedback through the screenreader. In addition, Google Finance provides several power user tools, including a stock screener, all of which are speech-enabled through ARIA. These power user tools provide interesting examples for Web developers experimenting with ARIA. (ARIA support for Finance was developed by intern Svetoslav Ganov as his starter project.)
Google News
: Finally, we have added ARIA support to enable rapid eyes-free access to Google News. These enhancements follow the same pattern as seen earlier for Google Finance, and the ability to navigate between the different views provided by Google News, (e.g., World News vs Sports enables rapid access to the large volume of news that is accessible via the Google News interface).
As with all of our ARIA-enhanced services, you can obtain additional help by pressing the
?
key to hear the available list of shortcuts. If you're interested in discussing these enhancements, visit the
Google Group for accessibility
.
Posted by T. V. Raman, Research Scientist, and Charles L. Chen, Software Engineer
CADIE awakens
1 April 2009
We do lots of research here at Google, and we release lots of products. And we always hope that the research we do and the products that result will change the world.
CADIE, we're fairly certain,
is one of those that will
. We won't pretend to know the future of the world's first Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity, but we're eager to learn what we can, and to watch and study while CADIE learns what she can. So you can expect to see her influence crop up in a number of Google products in the months to come. That will happen slowly and carefully, though, and we ask for your patience as we work through a few initial bugs. It seems CADIE has a mind of her own...
Posted by Michael Krantz, Team CADIE
Local flavor for Google Suggest
31 Maret 2009
Since the launch of Google Suggest
last August
, you may already be used to the magic feeling of getting real-time suggestions just after typing a few keystrokes — that is, if you're searching on Google.com. But what if you're doing a search on Google in the U.K., India, Ireland or Australia?
Today we're happy to announce the international launch of Google Suggest. We've localized our suggestions to account for various cultural and local factors to offer suggestions that look familiar to our users. For example, English users in different countries will get suggestions that feel natural:
If you type [liver] in the
U.K.
, you're probably a Liverpool fan (but in the
U.S.
you'll get more suggestions about liver diseases):
In
Australia
, typing [kan] will offer suggestions about Australia's most famous animal:
In
India
, where the mobile phone market is exploding, it's no wonder that typing [no] leads to:
In
Ireland
, there are [pubs] everywhere:
While in the
Maldives
, typing [ato] leads to:
Google Suggest now covers 155 domains in 51 languages. Special thanks go to the Suggest team in Israel for their hard work in making this a reality.
So go ahead and start using Google Suggest wherever you are, and enjoy the special flavor of local suggestions.
Posted by David Kadouch, Product Manager
Analytics in Latin America
31 Maret 2009
If you run an e-commerce site or use AdWords to direct traffic to your business' webpage, chances are you're interested in knowing what visitors to your site are clicking on, what content interests these potential customers and what avenues brought them there. The more you know about how people engage with your site, the better you are able to design successful advertising campaigns to help grow your business.
In Latin America, online advertising is growing as more and more small businesses initiate an online presence and publicize their efforts through search and display advertising. But less than 5% of web properties throughout Latin America rely on analysis tools to improve their website's performance. Last week, our offices throughout the region hosted several Analytics-themed events to give agencies and other clients a better look at several Google measurement tools that provide people with the means to analyze their site's flow of data, interest and readership in order to build a better advertising campaign.
In Mexico City, advertisers got together to learn about
Insights for Search
,
Ad Planner
,
YouTube Insights
,
Analytics
,
Sitemaps
and
Website Optimizer
, as well as
DoubleClick
tools. Presentations were designed to give companies an in-depth look at the Google tools that can be helpful for planning their marketing budgets during an economic downturn. Being able to measure data on what content interests people and where consumers are searching for information can help advertisers be more selective about how they invest ad budget. Since the great majority of consumers go online for information before making a purchase, the goal of the seminar was to familiarize advertisers with tools that can increase the reach of their campaigns, while giving them a better idea of what works and what people are searching for.
Meanwhile, our Analytics guru Avinash Kaushik visited São Paulo and Buenos Aires to speak to clients about web analytics and how to make the most of online marketing through analyzing metrics (check out his recent post on
bounce rate
for related information). Avinash made web analytics fun and accessible with colloquial comparisons (referring sites as 'BFFs'), and demonstrated how to
optimize a website's performance
with changes in color and layout, among other things. He was accompanied by Google's Latin America managing director Alexandre Hohagen, Brazil's country manager Alex Dias, and Argentina's country manager Adriana Noreña at a succession of events revolving around web metrics and website optimization.
The response and interest from customers and agencies to all of these events was indicative of the huge need for metrics and the ability to track ROI for their marketing investments, especially during these difficult times. For more information on Google Analytics tools, check out the
Google Analytics Blog
, the
Website Optimizer Blog
and the
Conversion Room blog
.
Posted by Alfonso Luna, Marketing Director, Latin America
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