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New Firefox extensions
December 14, 2005
Posted by Glen Murphy, Software Engineer, Firefox Team
It wasn't that long ago that I was eating Vegemite on toast back in my homeland of Australia, idly wondering what my future employer Google might have in store for me. Now, five weeks after arriving in the country and being exposed to the Firefox codebase for the first time, and thanks to the array of geniuses sitting around me, it gives me great pleasure to announce the launch of my first project,
Blogger Web Comments
to Google Labs.
Originally conceived by my friend and mentor,
Aaron Boodman
, this Firefox extension shows you what bloggers around the world are saying about the websites you are viewing. If that doesn't satisfy, you can easily start or join one of these conversations using your
Blogger
blog. We've had plenty of fun reading what people have had to say about our own sites and the sites we visit every day, but best of all is when we discover new groups of people interested in the same niche sites we have been visiting for years.
Today we're also introducing a test release of
Google Safe Browsing for Firefox
, which should help protect you from phishing sites.
Check them both out on
Google Labs
.
Google Holiday Helper
December 14, 2005
Posted by Hunter Walk, Google Product Manager
First add 1/2 cup water and
seasoning packet
to 1 lb. ground beef... uh, wait -- this is the HOLIDAY Helper. Ooops. Okay, let's start over.
Holiday season can be a trying time -- shopping stress, end of year deadlines and
A Christmas Story
broadcast a thousand times on TV. We've got some quick tips to help you make sense of the madness.
1) Organize Your Wish List
Making a list and checking it twice is so much easier with
Froogle's Shopping List
, which lets you search for the items you want to buy, and then with just a click, save them for later. You can keep your list private or share it with friends who might just take the hint and buy you something you want this year instead of the
"World's Ugliest Tie"
.
2) Track Packages
Will your package arrive in time? Entering a UPS, USPS or Federal Express
tracking number
into a Google search box will give you an update on your shipment before you can say "overnight shipping."
3) Find Toll-Free Numbers
OK, here's a secret "the man" doesn't want you to know. Some companies have a toll-free number that's buried deep on their website -- but it would take like a thousand clicks to find it, and these days, who has the time? One way to get to it more quickly is to search Google for the company name and the phrase "customer support." Like this:
TiVo Customer Support
.
An even trickier way to get at hard-to-reach customer support phone numbers is to search for the company name and the standard toll-free prefixes. That'll dig up some real gems. For example, "[company name] 800 OR 877 OR 888 OR 866". Give it a whirl -- and here's to less holiday stress.
Build your own Google homepage
December 13, 2005
Posted by Adam Sah, Software Engineer
The
personalized homepage
was created to bring together the stuff that interests you from across the web. From an engineering perspective, this became an opportunity to create a framework for all types of content and information. Supporting RSS and Atom feeds was one step in that direction, and today we're excited to start supporting richer web apps as well. With the
Google Homepage API
, developers can now create modules for the personalized homepage. It's designed to be flexible and easy to use, and you don't need to download anything to create a module. To get the ball rolling, the team's created a few modules to add to
the directory
. So check these out and get started
creating your own
.
Same-Language Subtitling
December 12, 2005
The
Google Foundation
supports selected organizations whose work addresses the challenge of global poverty in ways that are effective, sustainable, and scalable. From time to time we will invite guest bloggers from grantee organizations to tell their story.
Recently, the Google Foundation awarded PlanetRead a grant to increase the number of SLS programs available, and Google is also supporting PlanetRead with free advertising through the
Google Grants
program and content hosting on Google Video.
When a billion people are illiterate (two-thirds of them women), and nearly half of the world lives on less than $2 a day, we believe it is important to examine the link between literacy and poverty. We are excited by the prospect of helping not hundreds, but millions, of people gain access to regular reading practice and improve literacy where it is needed most by supporting organizations like PlanetRead. - Google.org team
Posted by Dr. Brij Kothari, President, PlanetRead
My organization,
PlanetRead
, works in Mumbai and Pondicherry, India. We have developed a “Same-Language Subtitling” (SLS) methodology, which provides automatic reading practice to individuals who are excluded from the traditional educational system, or whose literacy needs are otherwise not being met. This is an educational program rooted in mass media that demonstrates how a specific literacy intervention can yield outstanding, measurable results, while complementing other formal and non-formal learning initiatives of the government, private sector, and civil society. We are fortunate to have just been selected as a Google Foundation grantee.
More than 500 million people in India have access to TV and 40 percent of these viewers have low literacy skills and are poor. Through PlanetRead’s approach, over 200 million early-literates in India are getting weekly reading practice from Same Language Subtitling (SLS) using TV. The cost of SLS? Every U.S. dollar covers regular reading for 10,000 people – for a year.
I hit upon this idea in 1996 through a most ordinary personal experience. While taking a break from dissertation writing at Cornell University, I was watching a Spanish film with friends to improve my Spanish. The Spanish movie had English subtitles, and I remember commenting that I wished it came with Spanish subtitles, if only to help us grasp the Spanish dialogue better. I then thought, ‘And if they just put Hindi subtitles on Bollywood songs in Hindi, India would become literate.’ That idea became an obsession. It was so simple, intuitively obvious, and scalable in its potential to help hundreds of millions of people read -- not just in India, but globally. So you can see how it works, we’ve uploaded some
folk songs using SLS
into Google Video. And we've uploaded
other examples
there as well.
The Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad and its Center for Educational Innovation helped me pursue research on SLS. In the beginning we showed Bollywood songs with and without SLS to people in villages, slums and railway stations and video-recorded their reactions. We then piloted SLS in schools and on TV in Gujarat state while measuring reading improvement. This early work convinced us that we not only had an idea that would provide automatic reading practice, it was hugely popular (later, the ratings demonstrated this). After five challenging years of developing and strengthening the program, SLS went on national TV throughout India. On the
PlanetRead website
, there are some video clips of SLS featured in a Bollywood film. Click on the “Video” link on the upper right to see the reaction of Indian villagers to the SLS experience.
There’s more on the effectiveness of this approach in
an article
in the MIT journal
Information Technologies and International Development
(it's a PDF file).
The idea of SLS tends to divide people into two camps – those who think it’s too simple to achieve anything, and those who understand that its simplicity and ability to integrate into popular culture can fundamentally alter the approach to the massive problem of low literacy. Now, a decade later, it is clear that the challenge of implementing SLS is changing minds used to resource-hungry approaches to literacy.
Fortunately, in India, several senior policy-makers in broadcasting and education are championing SLS. We feel it could be a breakthrough in how we approach literacy: SLS is inclusive, accessible, and builds upon popular songs and Bollywood films to create an enjoyable and effective learning experience. With support from Google, we have the opportunity to reshape the literacy landscape in India, home to a third of the world’s non-literates and early-literates. If this experiment succeeds in India, SLS could even go global!
A cure for the common inbox
December 8, 2005
Posted by Jared Jacobs, Gmail Engineer
Ever get the feeling that your email experience is a little too predictable? I certainly have. Over the past few months, I've been working on Gmail Clips, a new feature that can help mix things up a bit. Starting this week, you can see headlines from your favorite blogs and news sites right above your Inbox. Gmail tips and relevant text ads appear from time to time as well.
I had a lot of fun working on this feature, and biased as I may be, I have to say I really love Clips. No new mail? Great, then I have time to read
why pasta is made in different shapes
. And even if I do have mail I should be getting to, maybe I'm in the mood to digress for a moment and investigate
The Divine Secrets of the Cycle Commuter
.
Clips are full of headlines like these. They can come from any website that publishes an RSS or Atom feed. We've included some popular feeds for you to choose from, but it's easy to tailor Clips to your interests (for example, I get
running tips
). You can browse popular feeds, search for feeds using keywords, or add a specific feed—like, say, your friend's blog, or maybe the Google Blog — by pasting its URL in your Clips settings.
Now if you're one of those task-oriented types with no time for diversions, you can always turn Clips off. But then you'd miss
cow-tipping exposed as a near-impossibility.
Public transit via Google
December 7, 2005
Posted by Avichal Garg, Product Manager, Transit Team
One of the best things about working at Google is a policy known as "20 percent time," which you can read about on our
jobs page
or in
this post
. Having the freedom to pursue projects during 20 percent of our work week means engineers can pursue a breadth of unique and interesting ideas without having to wait for anyone else.
So not too long ago, a few engineers from San Francisco, New York, and Zurich -- all of whom regularly use public transportation -- decided that being able to plan local trips without having to go to multiple websites, and done in an easy, intuitive way would be a useful product. So they devoted their 20 percent time to building it. As it happens, a lot of people thought this was a great idea, and our small team quickly grew with "twenty-percenters" from across Google.
Today, we are happy and proud to tell you that their efforts have resulted in a new
Google Labs
experiment:
Google Transit Trip Planner
. With it, commuters will be able to easily access public transit schedules, routes, and plan trips using their local public transportation options. This first release covers only the Portland, Oregon metro area, but we are working to expand our coverage very soon. (If you're from a local transit agency interested in being included in Google Transit, we would love to speak with you.
Just write to us
.)
We chose to launch with the Portland metro area for a couple of reasons. TriMet, Portland's transit authority, is a technological leader in public transportation. The team at TriMet is a group of tremendously passionate people dedicated to serving their community. And TriMet has a wealth of data readily available that they were eager to share with us for this project. This combination of great people and great data made TriMet the ideal partner.
Public transportation offers a unique type of data that people use in very different ways than most of the data Google has worked with before. We really want to understand how people use Google Transit and the challenges we'll face as we cover additional cities. To that end, we'd love to
hear your feedback!
Try some of the queries you can do in Portland on Google Transit:
Leave now
pdx to 100 ne couch st, portland, oregon
4412 se 17th ave portland, oregon to hillsboro, oregon
Choose a specific time
pdx to portland, oregon at 7pm
100 nw couch st, portland to hillsboro, oregon by 8pm
portland to pdx at 7pm on 12/09/05
[Updated with links to results]
Acumen visits Google
December 5, 2005
The
Google Foundation
supports select organizations whose work addresses the challenge of global poverty in ways that are effective, sustainable, and scalable. From time to time we will invite guest bloggers from grantee organizations to tell their story. Here's the first of this occasional series.
Posted by Jacqueline Novogratz, CEO, Acumen Fund
Arriving at Google, we somehow found a spot in the overflowing lot and emerged onto a sprawling campus reminiscent of my days at Stanford. At the front desk, our team commented on the simple yet impressive display we spotted on a monitor depicting the volume of searches originating from every point on the globe with colored dots. Interconnectedness:
Acumen Fund
is building a global community of like-minded individuals committed to solving problems of poverty through market-based approaches and enabling poor individuals to make their own choices.
We followed the yellow brick road to Building 40, past the packed beach volleyball courts and an outdoor café. More than 100 people came to our talk. I was introduced by Sheryl Sandberg, who is Google’s VP of Global Online Sales and Operations and the current acting director of
Google.org
. Sheryl emphasized Google.org's aim: to work with ventures that are sustainable, collaborative, and able to achieve scale. (To that end, the Google Foundation already supports Acumen Fund;
read more here
.)
My
talk
(it was taped) focused on Acumen Fund's mission: to build blueprints for delivering critical goods and services to people earning less than $4 a day. If we can determine better ways for making water, health, housing, and energy available to the poor – and make them affordable and accessible – I believe we'll go a long way toward ending poverty. I spoke about some of Acumen Fund’s key investments: For example, our
malaria bednet investment
in Tanzania. It employs more than 2,000 women to produce more than 3 million long-lasting bednets per year, impregnated with insecticide to stop mosquitoes. We're hoping to manufacture 6 million of these by the end of 2006, which will mean another 12 million people protected from malaria. This is a good start in teaching us critical lessons about how sustainable enterprises can make an enduring contribution toward solving pressing social problems.
Even more important, our work teaches us what the poor want as consumers. And this is where Acumen Fund will see the greatest returns: the more we understand who poor people are, the better solutions we can develop based on their choices and needs. Indeed, finding iterative – or possibly revolutionary – improvements to delivery systems is where the partnership between Google and Acumen Fund could have great impact. Larry and Sergey believe that scale is key, as is sustainability, and these are the core concepts driving all of Acumen Fund's work.
As a first step, we hope to collaborate with interested Googlers to find better ways to learn what works around the world. Identifying powerful solutions to poverty that are useful to people in different settings, and that are market-driven, scalable, and sustainable, is our greatest challenge. Second, we're hoping to strengthen how the world measures both social and financial returns to investments in delivering critical goods and services to the poor. Like Google, we hold a deep belief in the power of
measuring everything
we can.
This unique partnership will enable us to do this work in a more powerful way, and to share lessons more broadly. At the end of the day, both Google and Acumen Fund are trying to bring solutions to the world that enable people to make their own choices, solve their own problems. This is the only way we will really be able to end poverty.
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