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The royal wedding live on YouTube
April 19, 2011
Cross-posted on the
YouTube Blog
.
As the historic day approaches, the much-anticipated wedding of Britain's Prince William and Miss Catherine Middleton has people around the world buzzing with excitement.
While millions will be in London for the big day, it's clear that people around the world have wedding fever.
Google search trends
show that in addition to the UK and the US, the top ten countries searching for “royal wedding” include places like Singapore and the Philippines. In response, we've been working to make as much of the big day as possible accessible to everyone. We
previously
announced the expansion of our Google Earth 3D imagery to offer a “Royals’-eye” view of the entire wedding procession, complete with 3D images of iconic landmarks and five species of digital trees that can be seen along the route.
Today, we’re thrilled that the Royal Household has just announced that footage of the entire ceremony will be live-streamed on their official YouTube channel:
www.youtube.com/theroyalchannel
.
The live stream will begin at 10:00a BST (9:00a GMT, 2:00a PT, 5:00a ET) on Friday, April 29, and will follow the wedding procession, marriage ceremony at Westminster Abbey and balcony kiss. Alongside the live stream, The Royal Channel will also feature live blog commentary of the event to give timely updates and insights as the day unfolds. For those of you in different time zones, the footage will be reshown in its entirety directly following the event and will be available in full on the site to view afterwards.
You don’t have to wait until the big day to "attend" the wedding, though. A video guest book has just been opened on
The Royal Channel
for anyone in the YouTube community to upload messages of congratulations, inspiration or well wishes to the happy couple.
More than 50 years ago, the marriage of The Queen’s sister, Princess Margaret, and Antony Armstrong-Jones was the first royal wedding to be broadcast on television and had over 20 million viewers. This one is already heralded as the first of the Internet age, where for the first time in thousands of years of royal history, the moment will be captured online and preserved forever.
Posted by Rachel Ball, Partner Development Associate
Add your local knowledge to the map with Google Map Maker for the United States
April 19, 2011
[Cross-posted from the
Google Lat Long Blog
]
Before
Google Map Maker
—a product that enables people to add to and update the map for locations around the world—only 15 percent of the world’s population had detailed online maps of their neighborhoods. Using Map Maker, people have built out and edited the maps for
183 countries and regions
around the world, and now, due to the contributions of citizen cartographers, 30 percent of people have detailed online maps of the places they live.
Map Maker users have mapped entire cities, road networks and universities that were never previously recorded online. These contributions have been incorporated into Google Maps and Google Earth, so the collective expertise of the Map Maker community benefits the millions of people using these products globally.
Today we’re opening the map of the United States in
Google Map Maker
for you to add your expert local knowledge directly. You know your neighborhood or hometown best, and with Google Map Maker you can ensure the places you care about are richly represented on the map. For example, you can fix the name of your local pizza parlor, or add a description of your favorite book store.
You can help make the map complete in other ways as well, such as marking the bike lanes in your town or adding all of the buildings on your university campus so they appear in Google Maps. We’ve seen incredibly detailed contributions from power users worldwide, including this comprehensive map of
IIT Bombay
. We’re eager to see you add the same level of detail to locations in the United States.
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
To confirm Map Maker user contributions are accurate, each edit will be reviewed. After approval, the edits will appear in Google Maps within minutes—dramatically speeding up the time it takes for online maps to reflect the often-changing physical world. To see examples of what people around the world are adding to Map Maker, you can
watch mapping in real-time
.
In addition to opening Map Maker for the United States, we’ve added some new features for users globally. You can now get a street-level perspective on places with Street View imagery directly in Map Maker, see and edit all points of interest, and find exactly what you’re looking for with advanced search options such as displaying all railroad tracks.
Browsing all points of interest in downtown Palo Alto, California
To learn more, check out our
getting started site
, or start mapping now at
mapmaker.google.com
.
Posted by Lalitesh Katragadda, Tech Lead and Manik Gupta, Product Manager, Google Map Maker
Shepherding the wind
April 18, 2011
We recently invested approximately $100 million in the Shepherds Flat Wind Farm, anticipated to be the largest wind farm in the world. Shepherds Flat is currently under construction near windy Arlington, Ore., and when completed in 2012 will produce 845 MW of energy. That’s a lot of wind—enough to power more than 235,000 homes.
This project is exciting to us not only because of its size and scale, but also because it uses advanced technology. This will be the first commercial wind farm in the U.S. to deploy, at scale, turbines that use permanent magnet generators—tech-speak for evolutionary turbine technology that will improve efficiency, reliability and grid connection capabilities. Though the technology has been installed outside the U.S., it’s an important, incremental step in lowering the cost of wind energy over the long term in the U.S.
Shepherds Flat will help Oregon continue to be one of the top wind producing states in the nation, while providing significant direct economic benefits to the state. The project will also benefit the region by helping California meet its aggressive renewable energy goals with a cost-effective and clean wind resource. The electricity produced at Shepherds Flat will be sold under long term agreements to Southern California Edison.
The Shepherds Flat Wind Farm under construction with me in the center and my colleagues Arielle Bertman and Matthew Stepka.
We look forward to joining a project with strong experienced partners such as the developer,
Caithness Energy
, and
GE
, which is an early investor in Shepherds Flat as well as the turbine manufacturer and operations and maintenance supplier. Our co-investors are
Sumitomo Corporation of America
, a subsidiary of Sumitomo Corporation, and
Tyr Energy
, a subsidiary of ITOCHU Corporation, both of which have deep experience in power projects.
This project brings our total invested in clean energy to more than $350 million, including our most recent investments in a
German solar photovoltaic plant
and in the
BrightSource Ivanpah solar power tower
—the largest solar energy project in the world. We’re excited about helping deliver clean energy to the grid and we hope this latest investment encourages other companies to think about ways they can help accelerate the deployment of more renewable energy. We remain on the lookout for more projects that make business sense and will help all of us take advantage of clean, renewable energy.
Posted by Rick Needham, Director of Green Business Operations
Happy Tax Day! Now, where did your tax dollars go?
April 18, 2011
Like it or not, Americans have a date with the IRS today. In a few hours, our tax forms will have been sent in... yet most of us will still be left wondering, “How will the government spend our money?”
In February, we
launched
the
Data Viz Challenge
to answer that very question. The challenge was a five-week competition that asked developers to visualize how our federal income tax dollars are spent. We received more than 40 thought-provoking entries that each take a unique approach to making this data more accessible to taxpayers.
Take a look at the variety of visualizations in this short video:
The entries ranged from quirky and fun to serious and academic. Some were as simple as a
receipt
, others showed us how many
minutes
or
days
we work to cover public spending.
One
even rendered the data as a cityscape and invited people to climb the towers virtually.
In the end, our
jury
selected Anil Kandangath’s “
Where Did My Tax Dollars Go?
” as our Grand Prize winner. As the jury noted, his entry is information-rich but elegantly designed, and at no point while interacting with the visualization do you lose the “big picture.” Anil’s entry is a great example of how data visualization can take boring, complicated, but critically important information and make it accessible to everyone. Congratulations, Anil.
Thank you to all of the entrants and our partners
Eyebeam
and
Whatwepayfor.com
for making this possible. We hope these submissions help you better understand where your tax dollars are spent—and even inject a little bit of fun into your tax day this year. Happy filing!
Posted by Jenny Ramaswamy, Google Creative Lab
The taxman searcheth
April 17, 2011
While he may
not have been the first to say it
, Benjamin Franklin
famously wrote in 1789
:
“Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”
It’s tough to argue with Ben’s point, but as it turns out, a spike in searches around the two most significant events of tax season in the U.S.—the availability of W-2 forms and the due-date for federal tax returns—are pretty dependable as well, as search volume increases in January/beginning of February and in early April. Like other years, users have been looking for info on the process, places to turn for help, and service providers to get their taxes done. As expected, in the
“Accounting & Tax” category
, the fastest rising searches since mid-January include both commercial terms like [TurboTax] and [H&R Block] and government-specific terms like [IRS forms] and [1040 instructions].
Americans looking to file their taxes in advance aren’t the only ones searching for information on the subject; the last-minute filers have been searching quite a bit as well. In recent weeks, as the deadline has approached, searches for terms like [
tax extension
] have shot up. Elsewhere, tax filers from around the country are increasingly looking for ways to complete their taxes online in 2011. This year, searchers in North Carolina are leading the way in [
do taxes online
] followed by Missouri, and Pennsylvania.
During tax season, professional accountants aren’t the only ones that get consumed with tax preparation. Proof that Americans get seriously tax-obsessed: in the last week, folks have been
searching more for tax info
than for that other seasonal fixation, [american idol].
But no matter how consistent tax-related queries tend to be, the 2011 calendar features a wrinkle: in observance of
Emancipation Day
on April 15, the IRS has extended the deadline for federal returns to Monday, April 18. If you thought you were the only one who didn’t know that, you’re not alone: The deadline change has prompted quite a bit of action for [
when is tax day
].
Of course, taxpayers have been keenly interested in how they can save on taxes. For example, [
American Opportunity Credit
] searches have increased substantially from last year. More creatively, some Americans are looking to maximize their refund by documenting their financial activities of the past year. For some, that means looking at the monies that they *gave away* in one way or another. When it comes to taxes, perhaps vices trump good. Case in point: Like in past years, searches for [
gambling losses
] are currently besting those for [
charity deductions
].
For a view into what truly enterprising taxpayers have managed to claim in past years, see this
list of deductions
that have been actually been approved. Do you think we might be able to claim a deduction for our
lava lamps
?
Posted by Sam Sebastian, Industry Director Local, B2B and Government and Reggie Riley, Head of Industry, Financial Services
Google Apps highlights – 4/15/2011
April 15, 2011
This is part of a regular series of Google Apps updates that we post every couple of weeks. Look for the label “
Google Apps highlights
" and subscribe to the series. - Ed.
In the last few weeks we’ve improved Google Apps with easier email snafu avoidance, better document and spreadsheet printing, stronger business security features for Android and more. The pace of entire organizations switching to Google Apps also continued to build, and many have shared their stories about moving to the cloud.
Recipient suggestion features graduate from Gmail Labs
We’ve all made the embarrassing mistake of forgetting to add an important email recipient, or even worse, sending an email to the wrong person with a similar name as someone else. To help you avoid such a digital faux pas, we experimented with Gmail Labs features that could notify you while drafting a message if it appeared you had addressed your message incorrectly. We heard lots of positive feedback about these Labs, so on Wednesday we rolled out
recipient suggestion features
for all Gmail users. Keep an eye out for the tips that show up beneath the address box!
Pagination and better printing for documents
Google Docs speeds up collaboration right in the browser between classmates and colleagues, but people often want to see how documents will look on paper before actually printing. On Tuesday we advanced Google Docs another notch by
adding pagination
—the ability to see where page breaks fall. We also made document printing a whole lot better on Chrome. Printing is now a simpler operation right from the browser’s “File” menu, and what you see in your browser is exactly what you’ll get on paper.
Improvements to spreadsheet printing, too
As of Monday, you can now
print spreadsheets from your mobile phone
with Cloud Print, building on the
mobile document and email printing
capabilities we announced earlier this year. You can print from most mobile browsers that support HTML5 to any
cloud-connected printer
. We also made improvements to spreadsheet printing from desktop browsers, with new options for printing spreadsheet titles, sheet names and page numbers.
Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office interface improvements
If your school or business wants some of Google Docs’ collaboration magic in familiar Microsoft Office software without upgrading Office or deploying SharePoint®, then we think you’ll like Google Cloud Connect. People can work together on the same files at the same time in Word, PowerPoint® and Excel® without the agony of attachments. We recently added 38 new language interfaces and a top feature request: the ability to
minimize the Google Cloud Connect toolbar
.
Better Android security and productivity for businesses
Last week we treated our business and education customers to
three new Android features
: storage encryption for Android 3.0+ devices, a streamlined contacts experience that makes it faster to find and connect with people in your organization and the ability for users to locate and secure lost or stolen Android 2.2+ devices without burdening IT administrators.
Who's gone Google?
Since our last update here, over 60,000 businesses have moved to Google Apps. We’ve profiled quite a few on the Google Enterprise Blog recently, including
Boxx Group
,
South Carolina REALTORS
,
Just Salad
,
3Tailer
, and our favorite switch story of all,
Contoso
.
Thousands of schools, nonprofits and other organizations made the move as well. Welcome to
Boise State University
,
Edina Public Schools
,
ESSEC Business School
,
Monash University
,
Oakwood Junior School
, the
Georgia Department of Corrections
and
The Phoenix of New Orleans
.
I hope these product updates and customer stories help you and your organization get even more from Google Apps. For more details and the latest news, check out the
Google Apps Blog
.
Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager
This week in search 4/15/11
April 15, 2011
This is part of a regular series of posts on search experience updates that runs on Fridays. Look for the label "
This week in search
" and subscribe to the series. - Ed.
This week we made several announcements that help make search faster, easier and more fun, including introducing a new kind of trivia puzzle where using Google is allowed, continuing to enable Google Instant around the world and adding date annotations on recent Google Images.
A Google a Day
This week we
introduced A Google a Day
, a new type of trivia puzzle where you can test not just your knowledge, but also your search skills using Google. Questions are posted daily on
www.agoogleaday.com
and in the New York Times above the crossword puzzle. Try your hand at today’s question:
Use
www.agoogleaday.com
to search to avoid real-time spoilers from blogs or Tweets, and follow
@agoogleaday
on Twitter so you don’t miss any of the questions.
Google Images with Date Annotations
Sometimes when you’re searching for a particular topic, you want to see the most recent images for that subject. For instance, you might want to find images related to the recent Masters Golf Tournament. Searching Google Images will give you a lot of images related to the Masters, but it’s hard to quickly tell which pictures are from this year’s tournament.
This week, we’re introducing a change that should make finding recent images a lot easier—Google Images with Date Annotations. Now, we’ll add date annotations right to the thumbnails of images that were uploaded recently. Try it out on any recent news or event query, such as
Charl Schwartzel winning that coveted green jacket
.
More Instant results around the world
Bringing the speed of instant search results to new countries,
Google Instant
is now available for more people around the world. Signed-in searchers in the British Virgin Islands, Ghana, Greenland, Kenya, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda will see results faster with Instant, and French searchers will now see Instant results even when signed-out.
Instant Previews update
Last November, we launched
Instant Previews
, a quick way to get a visual overview of the search results before you click on them. Since launch, we’ve made a number of improvements that we’re excited to share:
Flash is now supported—for most previews, we’ll render a screenshot of the flash component in the preview, rather than just displaying a puzzle piece icon.
Instant Previews is now integrated with
Google Quick Scroll
. Users who have Quick Scroll installed (either as a
Chrome extension
or as part of
Google Toolbar
) can click on a highlighted area within an Instant Preview, and we’ll scroll you directly to that section of the page.
Instant Previews can now be used on
mobile devices
, Android tablets, iPads and the Opera browser.
Previews support additional result types, including .doc and .ppt files; and
video results
have a new, playable interface.
Google Search dictionary tool
To help you quickly access definition content, we’ve brought our dictionary feature into the left-hand panel in search. For example, search for [legerdemain] and you can find its definition by selecting “Dictionary” on the left. You’ll also see examples of the word “legerdemain” in context from news, related phrases, synonyms and more. One click on the translation tool brings you to Google Translate for all your bilingual needs. We’re also enhancing other dictionary search features, including a refreshed look for your dictionary look-up queries such as “define legerdemain” and “
what is legerdemain
” in the search results. Give it a try.
New Google News for Opera Mini
We’ve rolled out a redesigned
Google News for Opera Mini
in
29 languages and 70 editions
to bring people greater mobile access to top stories and news search. This includes an enhanced homepage featuring richer snippets, thumbnail images, links to videos and section content without explicit navigation, a convenient search bar, comfortably spaced links and the ability to access your desktop personalization on your phone. We hope that this will improve the news browsing experience for Opera Mini users around the world, including millions of people using a feature phone as their primary point of access to the web. See it here in the Indian Hindi and Nigerian English versions:
Posted by Johanna Wright, Director, Search Product Management
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