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Google Toolbar: Take your tools with you
December 12, 2007
Posted by Aseem Sood, Product Manager, Google Toolbar Team
I've started to notice something peculiar about the Toolbar team, and that's this: we literally can't seem to stop carrying the Toolbar around with us. When we moved to a new space in our Mountain View campus, we brought along a hallway-sized printout of it. For Halloween, eighteen of us dressed up as the different parts of the Toolbar itself.
And now with the latest beta release of the Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer, my fellow product manager Avni and I couldn't wait to point out the new features.
Maybe it's on our minds, because with the latest version of Toolbar, you can
save your settings online
, and then get all of your bookmarks, custom buttons and AutoFill information from your different computers -- like when you're at home, or at work, or if you get a new computer for the holidays. It's kind of like carrying your Toolbar with you, but without the hassle of cardboard and string, and a lot more useful.
And, yes, there are some new reasons for you to carry your Toolbar with you, too.
You can accessorize with Google Gadgets:
We
first released custom buttons
with search and feed functionality, and now we've added support for many Google Gadgets. In Toolbar, gadgets can even interact with the pages you're on, like with the Google Product Search gadget, you can just highlight the name of something you'd like to buy on any page and do a quick price comparison right there.
Google Notebook is built in:
We realized that saving links as bookmarks to come back to is great, but not quite enough. So now you can collect text and images, too and put them into notebooks right from the Toolbar.
You'll get suggestions instead of error pages:
If you mistype a URL or a page is down, now the Toolbar will give you that familiar "Did you mean" with alternatives,
like when you do a Google search
.
We still have the original Toolbar features, like automatic form filling, pop-up blocking and spelling correction, too, so give it a try and let us know what you think at
http://toolbar.google.com/T5
.
Haere Mai! Google Maps lands in New Zealand
December 12, 2007
Posted by Noel Gordon, Software Engineer
Today we're pleased to announce the full launch of
Google Maps in New Zealand
. Although we've offered basic mapping in New Zealand for some time, today we're unveiling a localised and customised site for our users in New Zealand. We've added full local business search capabilities, plus the
Local Business Centre
, so that any Kiwi business can get a free listing.
While we know New Zealanders care about a lot more than rugby, racing and beer, we're pleased that now Google Maps can help you find the nearest place to do any of those things. Plus, you can find a
cafe in Ponsonby
, an
Indian restaurant in Wellington
, a
plumber in Dunedin
, or a great
hotel for your next holiday
. All available on a PC or
mobile phone
near you!
And of course, Kiwis can also use Google Maps to look up an address, get
driving directions
(and the ability to drag them around), browse our satellite imagery, and even create custom maps that you can share with friends, all using the simple interface.
Earth From Above
December 11, 2007
Posted by Rebecca Moore, Manager, Google Earth Outreach
French photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand's beautiful images of the planet have become a coffee table favorite across the world. Today we are excited to present a new Google Earth layer of nearly 500 of his images, many taken from hot air balloons and all taken from above the earth. Each image is paired with thought-provoking statistics about the current environmental situation they depict. The facts and figures were put together by
GoodPlanet.org,
Yann's non-profit organization established to promote environmental awareness and sustainable development.
In June this year, we launched
Google Earth Outreach
, a program to empower non-profit groups with resources and tools to use Google Earth to promote their cause. Today's new "Earth From Above" layer (located in the Global Awareness folder in Google Earth) is an excellent example of what such groups can accomplish.
Not only can you enjoy these stunning new photographs on Google Earth -- we're also launching an iGoogle gadget you can add to your personalized Google homepage to see a different image each day. You can find the iGoogle gadget and a YouTube interview with Yann
here
. We hope you enjoy them!
Twice the Sitelinks
December 7, 2007
Posted by Jeremy Silber, Software Engineer
During your searches you've most likely noticed
Sitelinks
, the set of links below some search results that lets you jump directly to useful pages deeper in the site. They've been so popular that we've decided to give you more: our algorithms have been working overtime and we've recently started showing up to eight Sitelinks per site instead of just four. These extra links let you quickly access even more areas of the top site, and all eight sitelinks together give a good overview of a site's content.
Previously:
And now:
We've also been tweaking things here and there so that Sitelinks will appear for many more websites, and with more descriptive names. These improvements should help get you to the specific page you're looking for even more quickly.
Voices without borders
December 7, 2007
Posted by Stephen Cho, Director, Product Management
Our lives are a fabric of overlapping stories: stories that are entirely unique, stories that are richly specific, stories that define who we are, where we have come from, what we believe in. And while each story is ultimately personal, we find across them the common themes of love and loss, adversity and triumph. Listening to others’ stories, we can better appreciate our shared humanity, and recognize that the stories and lives of everyone, everywhere matter.
In the U.S., the
StoryCorps
effort seeks to capture, preserve, and share the stories of ordinary people. These can be heard on Friday mornings on
National Public Radio
’s “Morning Edition.” Earlier this year, a number of interested Googlers met with Dave Isay, founder of StoryCorps, and also with leaders of One Laptop per Child (OLPC) and UNICEF. We realized that collectively, we had a unique and very real opportunity to leverage our respective strengths to take this idea global and to build together an ability to preserve and share online millions of personal stories from around the world.
With the good efforts of many people from each of the partners, we brought this inspiration to fruition over the last six months, and are excited to launch the Our Stories project and the
www.ourstories.org
site today. From the Google side, this grows out of our passion and commitment to make the experience and wisdom of these personal stories universally accessible to users around the world.
One Laptop per Child (
www.laptop.org
) is a heroic effort to help bring laptops to children in developing countries around the globe. (Google is a founding supporter of OLPC.) The distribution of OLPC laptops provides us with a platform to help preserve and extend the histories and identities of these traditional cultures. Children receive training on the Our Stories activity on the laptops, and record in their native languages the stories of their elders, their family members, and friends. These stories are then uploaded and shared through the website, where they can be found on a Google Map.
For this project, UNICEF’s in-country communications teams are working with the schools using OLPC laptops, and also with children using other recording devices, computers, and mobile phones to preserve and share stories online. An enthusiastic team of Google volunteers, including me, developed the laptop application, the interview guides based on the work of StoryCorps, and the website.
In the coming years, we hope to capture and share millions of stories, which we believe will help to preserve a truly global, multi-lingual history of humanity in the 21
st
century. We also hope that, in some small measure, the ability to listen to the voices of others, to hear first hand about their hopes and challenges, contributes to a better understanding of our shared humanity across the many lines which often divide us.
Google's (and parents') role in keeping kids safe online
December 7, 2007
Posted by Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist
We know that technologies like the "v-chip" can be used to keep kids from seeing inappropriate content on TV. And while technology has an important role to play in protecting kids online, it's as important that parents implant a symbolic "v-chip" in their children's minds to guide them when it comes to deciding what online content is and is not appropriate.
That was one of the observations I shared this week at the
Family Online Safety Institute
's conference in Washington, D.C. The Internet provides an amazing opportunity for young people to express themselves creatively and access immense quantities of useful information. Kids are using geospatial, mobile and social networking technologies, for example, to learn in new, interactive ways. The Internet also provides unparalleled opportunities for free expression, enabling kids and adults alike to deliver tremendous benefit to society by voicing sometimes unpopular, inconvenient, or controversial opinions.
At the same time, there is some online content and activity that is unsuitable for younger users. Google is dedicated to supporting parents' efforts to educate and protect their children when they go online. We've invested in developing family safety tools that empower parents to limit what online content their children can discover. Our
SafeSearch
filter, which users can adjust to block explicit content from their search results, is an example of this type of technology.
On
YouTube
, where we host user-generated content, we aim to offer a community for free expression that is suitable for children and protects them from exploitation. Our work to keep YouTube safe for children includes
clear policies
about what is and is not acceptable on the site; robust mechanisms to enforce these policies, such as easy tools for users to police the content by flagging inappropriate videos; innovative product features that enable safe behavior; and YouTube
safety tips
.
We've also partnered with child safety organizations, including
CommonSense Media
,
i-Safe
,
iKeepSafe
,
NetFamilyNews
, and, of course, the Family Online Safety Institute to increase awareness about online child safety. In addition, we cooperate with law enforcement and industry partners to combat child exploitation and help minimize the uploading of illegal content, offering training and technical assistance to law enforcement officials and providing groups like the National Center For Missing and Exploited Children with technology tools to help them be more effective in their work.
Keeping children safe on the Web is the shared responsibility of parents and families, educators, industry, and government. We have a shared responsibility to help teach children the media literacy skills they need to become savvy online and offline information consumers and, working together, we believe this goal is attainable.
Gmail <3 AIM
December 4, 2007
Posted by Mike Jazayeri, Senior Product Manager
Millions of users chat on the Google Talk network every day, and chatting via Gmail chat is by far the most popular way. People tell us they love the convenience and simplicity of having access to their buddies right within the Gmail interface. In fact, for many users, Gmail chat was their first introduction to the world of instant messaging.
We've been working with AOL on ways to let our users talk to their buddies on the AIM network, and I'm delighted to announce that the fruits of that labor are
live
. Starting today, Gmail users can sign into their AIM accounts via Gmail chat and talk with AIM buddies just as they do with their Google Talk friends. Best of all, the features you love most about Gmail chat, such as chat history and automatic sorting of your buddies based on frequency of communication, work seamlessly across your Google and AIM buddies. This is rolling out in the newest English version of Gmail today and will be available in other languages soon.
A big thank you to our friends at AOL who worked closely with our engineering team to make this possible--and who we can now chat with while in Gmail. :)
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