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Helping entrepreneurs in the Crescent City
9 Maret 2012
I made my first visit to the Gulf Coast as a Red Cross shelter manager six weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. What I witnessed there made me believe in the potential for individuals and businesses to come together to rebuild a community devastated by disaster. Every year since, I’ve returned to New Orleans to engage in and lead much of Google’s commitment to the area, which has included the
direct use of Google Earth
to aid in rescue efforts,
search tools
to help during the aftermath and many service hours put in by
Google volunteers
.
Almost seven years later, I find myself amazed at the recovery and revitalization of the entire region, specifically in New Orleans. The city has come to embody a spirit of perseverance and evolved into a model for economic and community redevelopment. In 2010, Google provided
$102 million of economic activity
for Louisiana businesses, website publishers and nonprofits—and there’s still more work to do. Next week, we’re heading back to NOLA once again, this time to serve as the Premier Partner for the fourth annual
New Orleans Entrepreneurship Week
(NOEW).
Our support for NOEW is diverse and wide-ranging. Among other activities, we’re providing seed grants to up-and-coming educational entrepreneurs in the Education Entrepreneurship Challenge, as well as hosting “Google 101” (and 201) workshops for entrepreneurs and one-on-one Google Office Hours for small business owners. On Saturday, March 10, we’ll be working with Brad Pitt’s foundation,
Make It Right
, to help the organization engage with supporters globally during their NOEW charity event. At 8:00pm ET the
Make It Right Google+ Page
will host a live hangout with Brad Pitt and special guests Ellen DeGeneres, Randy Jackson and Aziz Ansari. Following the hangout, real time updates from the evening will be posted exclusively on the Google+ page, and visitors can view photos, ask questions of celebrity guests and watch videos from the evening.
Our sponsorship of NOEW 2012 is one piece of our ongoing work supporting entrepreneurship in New Orleans. Other support includes bringing a major partner,
Startup Weekend
, to NOLA as well as increasing
Accelerate with Google
in the region. We look forward to contributing to the entrepreneurship ecosystem to provide real economic opportunities for the New Orleans community, its people and its businesses.
I look at the week ahead as a celebration of the potential that one person has to make a difference—one volunteer, one business owner, one celebrity, even you. What I know for sure is that this one person is looking forward to returning to a city that has captured her heart through its people, its spirit, its music and ah yes, most definitely the food. Hope to see y’all there soon!
Posted by Tara Canobbio, Google New Orleans Outreach Lead
Re-imagining classic ads for the modern web
9 Maret 2012
This year, digital advertising turns 18. Over nearly two decades, waves of innovation have transformed the medium—it’s come a long way since the blinking banner ads of the early Internet. But we think the most exciting changes are still to come, as marketers and agencies increasingly embrace technology to enable new types of creativity, and build online ads that don’t simply inform, but delight and engage their audience.
For example, what if an online ad could bring together two strangers on opposite sides of the globe? Or let you follow a real-life adventure as it unfolds? We wanted to find out. So we started an experiment, both to celebrate 18 years of online innovation, and to link advertising’s digital future to its storied past:
Project Re: Brief
.
We started with four iconic ad campaigns from the 1960s and ‘70s from Alka-Seltzer, Avis, Coca-Cola and Volvo, each considered groundbreaking in its day. The advertising legends who made the original ads then came out of retirement to rethink their original “brief,” this time, using the full range of technological tools at their disposal, to reach consumers in today’s digitally connected world.
Here are previews of two of the re-imagined ads:
Coca-Cola
Original Art Director:
Harvey Gabor
A Coca-Cola can connect people. This was the idea behind a
1971 ad
in which young people from all over the world stood on a hilltop singing, “I’d like to buy the world a Coke, and keep it company.” But imagine being able to walk past a vending machine in New York and finding out that a stranger in Tokyo actually sent you a free Coke. Technology can make this possible by linking online ads to real-world devices, like vending machines, in real time. The
new ads
let you record a video or text message and send it, along with a free Coke, to special vending machines in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Capetown, South Africa; New York, NY; and Mountain View, Calif. The recipient can also record a message from the machine and send it right back. To see how this ad was brought to life, watch this short film.
Volvo
Original Art Director:
Amil Gargano
A Volvo is so durable, you can “Drive it Like You Hate It,” according to a 1962 series of print and
TV ads
. The re-imagined ads center on the durability of one particular Volvo—that of Irv Gordon, who has had his car since 1966 and put a world-record 2.9 million miles on it, so far. In
these ads
, you can join Irv on his journey to reach 3 million miles. Starting with colorful stories from his past and a live feed of his car’s odometer, you can interact with him through Google+, and recreate some of Irv’s favorite routes throughout the U.S. on Google Maps. Watch the behind-the-scenes story in this short documentary.
We’ll have more to share from this experiment soon. In the meantime, these are just a few examples of how agencies and brand marketers are harnessing technology to rethink what ads can be and make the web work for them (not the other way around). To learn more about the project, visit
projectrebrief.com
. And if you’re planning on attending SXSW, stop by the Discovery House at the
Google Village
to see demos of these campaigns, or
attend a talk
.
Posted by Jim Lecinski, Vice President, U.S. Sales and Brad Bender, Director, Product Management
Remembering Colossus, the world’s first programmable electronic computer
8 Maret 2012
It’s no secret we have a
special fondness for Bletchley Park
. The pioneering work carried out there didn’t just crack codes—it laid the foundations for the computer age.
Today, we’d like to pay homage to a lesser-known contributor—
Tommy Flowers
. Bletchley Park’s breakthroughs were the product of theoretical mathematical brilliance combined with dazzling feats of engineering—none more so than Flowers’ creation of
Colossus
, the world’s first programmable, electronic computer.
Photo of Dr. Thomas “Tommy” Flowers. Reproduced with kind permission of the Flowers family
By 1942 the hardest task facing Bletchley Park’s wartime codebreakers was deciphering messages encrypted by
Lorenz
, used by Germany for their most top-secret communications. Initially Lorenz messages were broken by hand, using ingenious but time-consuming techniques. To speed things up, it was decided to build a machine to automate parts of the decoding process. This part-mechanical, part-electronic device was called
Heath Robinson
, but although it helped, it was unreliable and still too slow.
Tommy Flowers was an expert in the use of
relays
and
thermionic valves
for switching, thanks to his research developing telephone systems. Initially, he was summoned to Bletchley Park to help improve Heath Robinson, but his concerns with its design were so great he came up with an entirely new solution—an electronic machine, later christened Colossus.
When Flowers proposed the idea for Colossus in February 1943, Bletchley Park management feared that, with around 1,600 thermionic valves, it would be unreliable. Drawing on his pre-war research, Flowers was eventually able to persuade them otherwise, with proof that valves were reliable provided the machine they were used in was never turned off. Despite this, however, Bletchley Park’s experts were still skeptical that a new machine could be ready quickly enough and declined to pursue it further.
Fortunately Flowers was undeterred, and convinced the
U.K.’s Post Office research centre
at Dollis Hill in London to approve the project instead. Working around the clock, and partially funding it out of his own pocket, Flowers and his team completed a prototype Colossus in just 10 months.
Photo of the rebuilt Colossus which you can visit at
The National Museum of Computing
in the U.K.
Reproduced with kind permission of The National Museum of Computing.
The first Colossus came into operation at Bletchley Park in January 1944. It exceeded all expectations and was able to derive many of the Lorenz settings for each message within a few hours, compared to weeks previously. This was followed in June 1944 by a 2,400-valve Mark 2 version which was even more powerful, and which provided vital information to aid the D-Day landings. By the end of the war there were 10 Colossus computers at Bletchley Park working 24/7.
Once war was over, all mention of Colossus was forbidden by the
Official Secrets Act
. Eight of the machines were dismantled, while the remaining two were sent to London where they purportedly were used for intelligence purposes until 1960. It wasn’t until the 1970’s that Colossus could begin to claim its rightful crown at the forefront of computing history.
Tommy Flowers passed away in 1998, but we were privileged recently to catch up with some on his team who helped build and maintain Colossus.
This week heralds the opening of a
new gallery
dedicated to Colossus at the U.K.’s
National Museum of Computing
, based at Bletchley Park. The rebuilt Colossus is on show, and over the coming weeks it will be joined by interactive exhibits and displays. Bletchley Park is less than an hour from Central London, and makes a fitting pilgrimage for anyone interested in computing.
Posted by Lynette Webb, Senior Manager, External Relations
(Cross-posted on the
European Public Policy Blog
)
Introducing Google Play: All your entertainment, anywhere you go
6 Maret 2012
Entertainment is supposed to be fun. But in reality, getting everything to work can be the exact opposite—moving files between your computers, endless syncing across your devices, and wires…lots of wires. Today we’re eliminating all that hassle with
Google Play
, a digital entertainment destination where you can find, enjoy and share your favorite music, movies, books and apps on the web and on your Android phone or tablet. Google Play is entirely cloud-based so all your music, movies, books and apps are stored online, always available to you, and you never have to worry about losing them or moving them again.
With Google Play you can:
Store up to 20,000 songs for free and buy millions of new tracks
Download more than 450,000 Android apps and games
Browse the world’s largest selection of eBooks
Rent thousands of your favorite movies, including new releases and HD titles
Starting today, Android Market, Google Music and the Google eBookstore will become part of Google Play. On your Android phone or tablet, we’ll be upgrading the Android Market app to the Google Play Store app over the coming days. Your videos, books and music apps (in countries where they are available) will also be upgraded to Google Play Movies, Google Play Books and Google Play Music apps. The music, movies, books and apps you’ve purchased will continue to be available to you through Google Play—simply log in with your Google account like always.
To celebrate, we’ll be offering a different album, book, video rental and Android app at a special price each day for the next week in our “7 Days to Play” sale. In the U.S., today’s titles include the collection of top 40 hits
Now That's What I Call Music 41
, the popular game Where's My Water, the novel
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
and the movie
Puncture
for just 25 cents each. In addition, you'll find great collections of hip-hop, rock and country albums for $3.99 all week, detective novels from $2.99, some of our editorial team's favorite movies from 99 cents, and our favorite apps from 49 cents.
In the U.S., music, movies, books and Android apps are available in Google Play. In Canada and the U.K., we’ll offer movies, books and Android apps; in Australia, books and apps; and in Japan, movies and apps. Everywhere else, Google Play will be the new home for Android apps. Our long-term goal is to roll out as many different types of content as possible to people around the world, and we’ll keep adding new content to keep it fresh.
To learn more, head over to
play.google.com/about
or keep up with the latest on our
Google+ page
. If you’re headed to Austin later this week for South by Southwest, come to the
Google Village
to see Google Play in action. We can’t wait for you to try Google Play and experience a simpler way to manage your entertainment.
Posted by Jamie Rosenberg, Director of Digital Content
Watch a star-studded reading of the play 8 live on YouTube this Saturday night
1 Maret 2012
From time to time we invite guests to the blog to talk about a topic of interest. We’re thrilled to have Rob Reiner, actor and director, join us today. -- Ed.
I want to invite you to come to YouTube on Saturday, March 3, to watch a reading of a powerful new play,
8
, about marriage equality and the Proposition 8 trial.
The play
, written by Academy Award winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (
Milk
), is an account of the case filed by the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER) in the U.S. District Court in 2010 to overturn Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment that eliminated the rights of same-sex couples to marry in the state of California. Framed around the trial's historic closing arguments in June 2010,
8
provides an intimate look at what unfolded when the issue of same-sex marriage was put on trial in the U.S.
At the time of the trial, the Supreme Court ruled against allowing cameras in the courtroom, preventing anyone outside the court from witnessing the proceedings. Today, we’re able to give people around the world a look at what happened behind closed doors via the live stream of this reading of
8
on
AFER’s YouTube channel
.
I hope you'll join me, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Martin Sheen, Kevin Bacon, Jane Lynch, Matthew Morrison, Jamie Lee Curtis and others who will be performing in the West Coast premiere this Saturday evening at 7:45pm PT (pre-show begins at 7:30pm PT). Tune in to
youtube.com/americanequalrights
to watch the event live streamed from the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles, Calif.
Posted by Rob Reiner, director of
8
and founding board member of AFER
Versus: liberating opinion with Google+ Hangouts
1 Maret 2012
Whether enabling voters to
interview their President
, or
connect underwater
in a project to photograph the ocean floor, Google+ Hangouts are being used in amazing ways. Not only do Hangouts have the ability to connect people on opposite sides of the planet, they can also connect people on opposing sides of the social and political spectrum. We’re delighted to announce that a new series of global debates, that will be live streamed on YouTube, will do exactly that.
Versus
, from Intelligence
2
—an organization committed to revitalizing the art of live debate—will give you the chance to question people who are close to the decisions being made on topical issues, on both sides of the debate. Real-time voting on the channel will also let the speakers know how their arguments are resonating with viewers.
The first motion to be debated is “
It’s time to end the War on Drugs.
” The debate will air diverse opinions from the likes of
+Richard Branson
,
+Russell Brand
,
+Julian Assange
, and experts such as the former Presidents from Mexico and Brazil, among others. BBC newsreader and presenter
+Emily Maitlis
will chair the debate.
The debate will be streamed live on the
Versus YouTube channel
on
March 13 at 7pm GMT
. From now until then, we invite you to discuss the issues and
join the debate on the Versus page
, where you’ll also find out how you could have the chance to secure a place in the live debate hangout.
Posted by Anna Bateson, Director of YouTube Marketing, EMEA
Google’s new Privacy Policy
29 Februari 2012
Our updated Privacy Policy takes effect today, March 1. As you use our products one thing will be clear: it’s the same Google experience that you’re used to, with the same controls.
And because we’re making these changes, over time we’ll be able to improve our products in ways that help our users get the most from the web.
While we’ve undertaken the most extensive user education campaign in our history to explain the coming changes, we know there has been a fair amount of chatter and confusion.
Here are a few important points to bear in mind:
Our Privacy Policy is now much easier to understand.
We’ve included the key parts from more than 60 product-specific notices into our main Google Privacy Policy—so there’s no longer any need to be your own mini search engine if you want to work out what’s going on. Our Privacy Policy now explains, for the vast majority of our services, what data we’re collecting and how we may use it, in plain language.
Our Privacy Policy will enable us to build a better, more intuitive user experience across Google for signed-in users.
If you’re signed in to Google, you expect our products to work really beautifully together. For example, if you’re working on Google Docs and you want to share it with someone on Gmail, you want their email right there ready to use. Our privacy policies have always allowed us to combine information from different products with your account—effectively using your data to provide you with a better service. However, we’ve been restricted in our ability to combine your YouTube and Search histories with other information in your account. Our new Privacy Policy gets rid of those inconsistencies so we can make more of your information available to you when using Google.
So in the future, if you do frequent searches for Jamie Oliver, we could recommend Jamie Oliver videos when you’re looking for recipes on YouTube—or we might suggest ads for his cookbooks when you’re on other Google properties.
Our privacy controls aren’t changing.
The new policy doesn’t change any existing privacy settings or how any personal information is shared outside of Google. We aren’t collecting any new or additional information about users. We won’t be selling your personal data. And we will continue to employ industry-leading security to keep your information safe.
If you don’t think information sharing will improve your experience, you can use our
privacy tools
to do things like edit or turn off your
search history
and
YouTube history
,
control
the way Google tailors ads to your interests and browse the web “incognito” using
Chrome
. You can use services like Search, Maps and YouTube if you are not signed in. You can even separate your information into different accounts, since we don’t combine personal information across them. And we’re committed to
data liberation
, so if you want to take your information elsewhere you can.
We’ll continue to look for ways to make it simpler for you to understand and control how we use the information you entrust to us. We build Google for you, and we think these changes will make our services even better.
Posted by Alma Whitten, Director of Privacy, Product and Engineering
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