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Insights from Googlers into our products, technology, and the Google culture
Introducing the Europe Scholarship for Students with Disabilities
November 13, 2009
(Cross-posted with the
Google Students Blog
)
Today, we're excited to announce the most recent addition to our scholarship programs in Europe, the Google Europe Scholarship for Students with Disabilities. This scholarship is designed for students with disabilities who are pursuing university degrees in the field of computer science at a university anywhere in the European Union, plus Switzerland and Israel. Multiple scholarships will be awarded based on the strength of candidates’ academic performance and demonstrated passion for computer science.
Scholarships will be granted for the 2010/2011 academic year, and recipients will be invited to attend an all-expenses-paid retreat at Google’s Engineering Center in Zurich in 2010.
Here's what Nelson Mattos, our VP for Product & Engineering in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, has to say about this scholarship: "We're committed to diversifying the long-term engineering talent pool for the industry as a whole. We hope that this scholarship will increase opportunities for students with disabilities and encourage them to pursue careers in computer science. The retreat fosters relationships so that scholars can form a supportive network lasting the full length of their academic studies and beyond."
We know that a diverse group of people use our tools and services and only an equally diverse workforce can anticipate our users' needs. We've found that the diversity of perspectives, ideas and cultures leads to the creation of better products to the benefit of all users of the Internet. We hope that this scholarship works towards that end.
The deadline to apply is March 15th 2010. For more details, visit
www.google.com/studentswithdisabilities-europe
.
Posted by Beate List, EMEA University Programmes and Eleanor Mulligan, EMEA Diversity & Inclusion
Google Sidewiki: The first 50 days of valuable entries and new API features
November 12, 2009
It's been just under 2 months since we
launched
Google Sidewiki
and we've already seen a great number of valuable entries that have been written worldwide.
From product tips to online petitions and from expert health advice to programming help, Sidewiki users are finding many useful and creative ways to help others. We've been really excited by these uses of Sidewiki and wanted to share 10 of these great entries with you:
Jason Young speaks from personal experience and gives detailed insight into
tuning a bass guitar
on EMG's Bass Tips site.
Antony Carthy, a programmer in South Africa,
wrote tips
on how to find latitude and longitude coordinates on Google Maps.
Google's own Matt Cutts
warns visitors about a deceptive website
.
Shalin Gala of PETA
calls on readers to sign a petition
next to an article about animal mistreatment.
Ron Burk suggests a
missing reference for a medical article
.
The
Mayo Clinic
uses Sidewiki to welcome visitors with a special webmaster entry on its homepage (this one requires Sidewiki to view).
Jesse Poe from New York offers up great insights in a
review
of an iPhone app by Daniel Johnston, one of his favorite musicians.
Alfonso Grandis from Italy talks about his
eye-witness account
of a recent earthquake.
David Davis, a software engineer from California,
improves a snippet of code
in a programming tutorial.
Michael Roizen from the Cleveland clinic adds his
advice about H1N1 vaccinations
.
If you haven't used Sidewiki yet, you can download it at
google.com/sidewiki
as part of the Google Toolbar for Firefox and Internet Explorer. If you're using Google Chrome, Safari or other browsers without the Google Toolbar, simply install the
Sidewiki bookmarklet
.
We're also releasing a top-requested feature for our API today that makes it easy to retrieve all Sidewiki entries for an entire domain. With this addition, you can look for new entries created on any page of a website and also subscribe to them via RSS (such as this
RSS feed for all Sidewiki entries on the Google Blog
). See our
Sidewiki API documentation
for all of its details.
We look forward to seeing many more great entries and keeping you posted with new features —
follow us
on Twitter for the latest news and highlights. Try using Sidewiki right now to add your feedback to this blog post and read what others are saying!
Posted by Ario Jafarzadeh, Sidewiki User Experience Designer
Gone Google at EDUCAUSE 2009
November 12, 2009
Last week the Google Apps for Education team headed to Denver for
EDUCAUSE 2009
where the higher education community meets annually. It was at this conference three years ago that we first unveiled
Google Apps for Education
. Since then, we've witnessed staggering growth in the world of cloud computing in education. Lots has happened over the past year especially: more than
100 new features
have rolled out in Google Apps, we've engaged well over six million students and
faculty
(a 400% increase since this time last year),
launched
free Google Message Security for K-12 schools and have integrated with other learning services such as
Blackboard
and
Moodle
.
These developments are just the beginning. According to the newly-released 2009
Campus Computing
survey statistics, 44% of colleges and universities have converted to a hosted student email solution, while another 37% are currently evaluating the move. Of those that have migrated, over half — 56% precisely* — are
going Google
.
To toast the students and faculty that are shaping this movement, we hosted our customers and EDUCAUSE conference attendees at the Denver Public Library. Check out the photos to see what these schools have to say:
We also did something different this year and invited some student ambassadors from schools using Google Apps to come to Denver and share how using Apps on campus helps make their lives easier. Daniel Miller who works at University of Washington's Ethnic Cultural Center uses Calendar to let students on campus know about his organization's events. Sociology major Robin Brown uses forms in Docs to collect data for her class surveys at Notre Dame. Taylor Bell at Boise State relies on Gmail's filters and gadgets to seamlessly access to his Calendar, Docs, Tasks and Chat. After losing his journal, Vaughn Parker at Temple University created a Calendar to keep track of his assignments and share them with his classmates and professors. (There are many more of these
student stories
, too).
Every year, more schools move to Google Apps so they can spend their time focusing on students, not servers; on higher learning, not higher costs. If you're a school, you can go Google, too. Check out
www.google.com/appsatschool
to learn more.
*
Update on 11/20:
Among 4-year universities and colleges, the number is slightly higher, with 59% choosing Google Apps.
Posted by Miriam Schneider, Product Marketing Manager
Google's movie showtimes, digitally remastered
November 11, 2009
Did you know you can immediately discover movie times and locations by typing a simple search on Google? For example, search for [
where the wild things are
] and you'll see times and places to watch the film, or try [
glendale 18 los angeles
] to see movies playing at your local theater. You can also click on the showtimes search result to get more complete movie listings and information.
Today, we're making a few improvements to movie results on Google, including more detailed movie pages, genre filters and a new map view.
Click "showtimes" in your search results for more detailed information.
When you visit google.com/movies, you'll discover a new, more comprehensive resource with all the information you need to decide what movie to see and where to see it:
Comprehensive movie pages: Deciding what movie to see can take a few searches: What's it about? How are the reviews? Where is it playing near me? Our new
detailed layout
brings together all the basic information you need with a plot synopsis, trailer, reviews and photos in the same page.
Genre filters: The new movie pages also give you new ways to explore films by genre and find one you're in the mood for. Sometimes, you might feel like seeing a
sci-fi flick
or a
romance
, but you're not sure what's out in theaters. With genre filters you can start browsing right away and quickly find the right movie for you.
Map view: After you've chosen a movie, the new
map view
shows you nearby theaters playing that exact film. You no longer need to do a separate search to find out where you're going.
We hope these improvements will help you spend more time at the movies and less time researching. Visit
google.com/movies
or click through a "showtimes" result to try them out, and treat yourself to a movie!
Posted by Dan Stokeley, Associate Product Manager
Googlers receive prestigious ITOJUN Service Award
November 11, 2009
Googlers Lorenzo Colitti and Erik Kline have
received
the
ITOJUN Service Award
while attending the 76th Internet Engineering Task Force meeting in Hiroshima, Japan.
The Itojun Service Award honors the memory of Dr. Jun-ichiro "itojun" Hagino, who passed away in 2007 at the age of 37. The friends of itojun and the
Internet Society
(ISOC) came together to establish this award last year. The award recognizes and commemorates the extraordinary dedication exercised by itojun over the course of
IPv6
development.
Lorenzo and Erik have been the spark plugs and workhorses of Google's
implementation
of the IPv6 protocol that will help to carry the Internet beyond the anticipated exhaustion of the IPv4 address space in mid-2011. The two undertook, at their own initiative, to analyze the requirements and begin implementation of IPv6 throughout our networking infrastructure. Their leadership has placed us in the forward ranks of companies prepared for this important expansion. They are role models for others around the world, in the spirit of Itojun Hagino who was, himself, a model leader in this domain.
We're all proud to be associated with Lorenzo, Erik and the others at Google who recognized this challenge and took it head on.
Posted by Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist
Commemorating Veterans Day at Google
November 11, 2009
Today is
Veterans Day
, the annual U.S. holiday honoring military veterans who have served our country in the armed forces. It is also celebrated as Armistice Day or Remembrance Day in other parts of the world, falling on November 11, the anniversary of the signing of the Armistice that ended World War I in 1918. We want to take a moment to highlight a few things we're doing at Google to reflect on the service of our veterans.
YouTube has become an important platform for current service members as well as veterans who want to share their stories. Starting today, you can visit
www.youtube.com/veterans
to hear from these brave men and women. In addition, on the homepage, YouTube is featuring content from some institutions and organizations that have provided much-needed support to veterans. You can read more about how YouTube is recognizing Veterans Day on the
YouTube Blog
.
We also
launched
a Google Voice partnership with Blue Star Families, a group of military spouses who work hard to educate civilian communities and leaders about the hardships faced by military families. We're giving priority Google Voice invites to U.S. members of Blue Star Families to help bring them closer to their loved ones during deployments.
Finally, we're commemorating Veterans Day in Google offices around the country with an event hosted by the Google Veterans Network, our employee group dedicated to veterans' issues. The highlight of the event is a fireside chat with Google veterans discussing the values associated with military service, issues they face at Google and in the world in general, their hopes to end conflicts, similar groups at other companies and the company's efforts to support our Googler service women and men.
We hope to make this Veterans Day a memorable one and we want to thank everyone in the armed forces for their service.
Posted by Carrie Laureno, Learning & Development Manager and Founder, Google VetNet
World Bank public data, now in search
November 11, 2009
When we first
launched public data
on Google.com, we wanted to make statistics easier to find and to encourage
debate based on facts
rather than intuition. The day after we launched, a friend who worked at the World Bank called me, her voice filled with enthusiasm, "Did you know that the World Bank also just released an API for their data?" Excited, I
checked it out
, and found an amazing treasure trove of statistics for most economies in the world. After some hard work and analysis, today we're happy to announce that 17
World Development Indicators
(list below*) are now conveniently available to you in Google search.
With today's update, you can quickly access more data with a broad range of queries. Search should be intuitive, so we've done the work to think through queries where public data will be most relevant to you. To see the new data, try queries like [
gdp of indonesia
], [
life expectancy brazil
], [
rwanda's population growth
], [
energy use of iceland
], [
co2 emissions of iceland
] and [
gdp growth rate argentina
]. For example, if you search for [
internet users in the united states
], you will see the following chart at the top of the results page:
Clicking on the result will bring you to an
interactive chart
where you can compare the United States with other regions around the world. We've also added a new feature to enable you to embed these charts in your own website or blog by clicking on the "Link" button in the upper right-hand corner of the
chart page
. You have the option to either embed the chart with static data, or you can also set the chart to update dynamically when new data becomes available. To give you a sense of what these charts look like, we've embedded the chart below comparing Internet users in the United States and South Korea:
We hope this new data and our new embedding feature will help facilitate quick and easy access to public statistics. There are still many other data sets and sources out there, and we're excited about the possibilities for the future. If you're a data publisher interested in making your data more easily discoverable in Google, please
contact us
.
*
Complete list of World Bank indicators currently available:
CO2 emissions per capita
,
Electricity consumption per capita
,
Energy use per capita
,
Exports as percentage of GDP
,
Fertility rate
,
GDP deflator change
,
GDP growth rate
,
GNI per capita in PPP dollars
,
Gross Domestic Product
,
Gross National Income in PPP dollars
,
Imports as percentage of GDP
,
Internet users as percentage of population
,
Life expectancy
,
Military expenditure as percentage of GDP
,
Mortality rate, under 5
,
Population
, and
Population growth rate
.
Update
at 11:26am: We've updated this post to include a better example.
Posted by Chung Wu, Software Engineer
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