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Finally feeling like a local
April 29, 2005
Posted by Tom Stocky, Product Marketing Manager
I just moved to the Bay Area a few months ago, so when friends come from out of town, they're pretty underwhelmed with my abilities as a tour guide.
But not last weekend. My visitors wanted to have brunch somewhere with "a great view." So I plugged [
brunch "great view"
] into
Google Local
, and was pleasantly surprised with the results. Not only was brunch delicious, but we had that "great view" my friends were looking for. Best of all, now they actually think I know my way around the city. (At least until they see this.)
What's cool about Google Local is that you can go beyond standard categories like restaurant or hotel to search more specifically for things like [brick oven pizza] or [inexpensive hotel]. Very handy, especially if you're a budding tour guide like me.
I, Googlebot
April 27, 2005
Posted by Ben Rathbone, Hardware Operations
Data centers are not the most visually stimulating environments, and Google's are no exception. After all, they house computers, and the walls, ceilings, and floors are invariably stark white, or some minor monochromatic variation. So imagine this dream scenario for me: I'm a painter, apart from my day job as a data center technician, which keeps me busy swapping out parts and running cable. And we'd just set up a new Google data center in an undisclosed location.
Hardware Ops colleague 1
: "So, we basically own this space and can do anything we want, right?"
HO 2
: "Yup."
HO 1
: "We should get a big old Google banner in here, or paint one on the wall. Even cooler, we should paint a mural. Hey, Ben, you like to paint, why don't you do something?"
Though I didn't take this challenge too seriously at first, I couldn't help playing around with some ideas. If you've been in a data center, you know there is a lot of wire, and racks with stacks of servers in them. I had some experience running websites and had seen evidence of the Googlebot hitting my own websites. Some kind of robot icon could be a neat starting point. Then I pondered the question: what does Google do? The grossly simplified answer that I came up with is Google connects the world with the Internet.
It all snapped into place: the idea of a robot, connecting a world with the Internet, with wires, that connect to big cabinets of computers. It was not hard then to make the leap to representing the internet as a world, or globe, made up of pages. So I drew up a design and the manager said, "That's great. Go for it."
Then, while everyone was away for the annual ski trip, I started by taking the basic drawing, drawing a grid over it, and translating the units of the grid to the wall.
I did the initial drawing with charcoal pencil, which was easy to remove with an eraser. I used a regular carpenter's level, held up to the wall, to get all the lines straight. Once I had the drawing down, I used masking tape to stencil out certain shapes. This allowed me to rapidly paint into those shapes, and when I pulled off the tape, I got very clean and straight lines.
The whole thing took 70 hours of work. It's 8' high x 22' long.
Now our data center isn't so stark anymore - and I'm looking for another empty wall.
It's a wonderful town
April 22, 2005
Posted by Craig Nevill-Manning, Engineering Director
I suspect that when people think of New York, they think of Wall Street finance, Broadway shows, fashion, TV news. Probably "innovative software development" doesn't spring to mind. But hidden away in a Times Square high-rise, more than 80 software engineers are coding up some exciting Google products. If we told you *everything* we're working on, it'd spoil the surprise (hint: keep an eye on
Google Labs
). Recently, we've launched
Google Q&A
,
My Search History
,
Web Definitions
, and
Local Search
, including the
UK version
earlier this week.
In fact generally we focus on the next generation of Google's crawling and indexing technology. We've got hard-core statisticians pondering how to measure search quality more accurately, and a slightly nutty project that we think might revolutionize the way that we organize and search structured information.
It's not all work, work, work, though. We have a large three-story atrium, so it's axiomatic that we have several radio-controlled blimps - some with cameras - and a gyroscopically-stabilized four-rotor helicopter that can definitely take folks by surprise. And although breakfast, lunch and dinner are provided (we seem to have lost the ability to forage for ourselves) and two on-site masseuses (Manhattan can be a little intense), it's nice to get off site from time to time.
Which means a trip to the Empire State Building, of course. We've taken a group photo of the team standing on our 19th floor terrace from the observation deck of the ESB -- we calculated that this requires an effective focal length of 3000mm, which is just right for an astronomical telescope and a digital SLR.
So we're a little geeky for New York City, but it
is
supposed to be a melting pot, isn't it? And we're right next to
Bryant Park
, home of one of the world's first free public 802.11b networks, which we sponsor. Somehow that seems appropriate for a bunch of hackers trying to organize the world's information.
It almost goes without saying that we're hiring like mad, what with our insatiable appetite for great software architects and coders. If the Bright Lights of the Big City are blinking at you, check out our
New York jobs
.
From lost to found
April 20, 2005
Posted by Avni Shah, My Search History team
How many times have you used Google to find an obscure funny website or fun facts about "The Wizard of Oz," but then got distracted by other web pages and tasks? I know - me too. Wouldn't it be great to find them again, and for that matter review all your Google searches over time? Which is exactly why we built
My Search History
.
When you're signed in to your
Google Account
, you can use My Search History wherever you go. An additional bit of fun: try the handy calendar to check the level of your Google activity on a given day, or see related searches you've done over time. Look for the link in the upper right corner of your Google web search home page and results pages.
Google does Grimsby, Gateshead and Glasgow
April 18, 2005
Posted by Richard Boardman, Usability Analyst
Sometimes it's hard being a Brit in Silicon Valley. Have you tried to find a decent pint, authentic fish and chips or well-made bowler hats in northern California lately? (Okay, the last one isn't a priority.) There's also that feeling of being left out when new technology gets launched in the U.S. before it reaches the rest of the world.
Take
Google Local
and
Google Maps
, for example - innovative local business search and beautiful interactive maps. However, as per the barrage of emails I got from mates back home: New Orleans, Anchorage and Beverly Hills are all very well, but what about London, Cardiff, and Belfast?
I guess my colleagues got tired of my moaning, so I'm delighted to introduce
Google Local UK
and
Google Maps UK
. The Google UK office and a few of us homesick Brits in California have been helping out with the development.
Engineer
: Why are the streets in the UK such a mess?
Me:
Sadly, the ancient Britons, Romans and Vikings had a different idea of urban planning than do we moderns.
Product Manager:
Manchester's not that important, is it?
Me:
It is if you're a Mancunian! (So watch it, lad.)
Give it a go: your
fish and chips in Plymouth
,
theatres near Piccadilly Circus
, and
haggis in Inverness
await.
P.S. We Brits also love our text messaging, so all this info (and more) can be found on the go by texting your (UK) queries via
Google SMS
.
Bird view
April 15, 2005
Posted by Michael Krantz, Google Blog team
Okay, we know we're always saying that this product and that product are cool, but seriously:
Google Maps
are cool. And in the few weeks since we added
Keyhole
satellite imagery, we've enjoyed watching netizens inventing ingenious ways to play with Maps, and thought we'd share a few of our favorites.
We'll begin with a sampling of our favorite views. The
Photoshopped White House roof
is soooo last week, but the
airplane graveyard
may never get old. We're impressed by
Dave's work
-- but even more so by
Luecke's
. And of course, people are always finding a few
surprises
.
But the real jewels are the various Google Maps collections. This is
a nice aggregation
of views, and the
Google Sightseeing blog
might eventually be even better. This guy's
marriage of Google Maps and Craig's List real estate ads
had our engineers saying "Wow." Speaking of engineers, our own Nelson Minar came up with
this visualization
of where people did the most Maps searching on April 6th. And on the high art front, the
Memory Mappers
are creating nothing less than a new literary form. Cool.
P.S. Go
Sox
!
Mom says so, that's why
April 14, 2005
Posted by Tom Stocky, Product Marketing Manager
As my mom's unofficial tech support hotline, I got a call from her today with a problem: She had a tracking number for a package, but didn't know who the shipper was.
Me:
"Just plug it into Google."
Mom:
"But Tom, I don't know what company shipped it."
Me:
"Just plug in the number itself, Mom. It's cool. See what happens."
Google didn't let me down. She got a link to the USPS website with her tracking info - the one she hadn't checked. Next time you have a mystery package en route, try it yourself.
Mom: "We need to tell people about this." Yes, Mom.
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