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Google Transit goes to Washington
May 12, 2011
Every day, many thousands of commuters, locals and tourists ride public transit in Washington, D.C. To help all of these transit riders find their way around the metro area, today we’re making comprehensive information about D.C.’s public transportation available on
Google Transit
.
In partnership with the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (
WMATA
), we’re adding all of D.C.’s Metro and bus stations, stops and routes, as well as connections to other transit systems in nearby cities. You can find this information on
Google Maps
as well as
Google Maps for mobile
—no matter where you are, you can get to where you’re going. With Google Transit, D.C. metro-area commuters—including those in Baltimore, Montgomery and Jefferson counties—may discover a quicker route to work, while visitors can easily make their way from the
airport straight to the Smithsonian
.
Public transportation is a vital part of city infrastructure and can help alleviate congestion and reduce emissions. However, planning your trip on public transit can be challenging, especially when there are multiple transit agencies and you need to use information from multiple sources to figure out the best route. With mapping tools like the transit feature, we’re working to make that easier.
Directions are also available on Google Maps for mobile—so if you’re graduating from George Washington University and want to meet some friends at Adams Morgan to celebrate, it’s as easy as pulling out your phone. If you’re using an Android device, for example, search for Adams Morgan in Google Maps, click on the Places result and select “Directions.” Switch to Transit in the upper left corner and find out which bus will take you there the fastest.
Wherever your journey takes you, whether using public transit, driving, biking or walking, we hope Google Transit directions in D.C. make finding your way a little easier.
Posted by Noam Ben Haim, Product Manager, Google Maps
Graduate with Google Apps
May 12, 2011
Millions of students will leave college this year with more than just a diploma. There’s a good chance that the graduating class of 2011 will also be experts in another field:
Google Apps for Education
.
If you attended a university that’s “
gone Google
” or just sought out Google products on your own, you’ve learned how to use Apps to collaborate and communicate with your professors and peers. Perhaps you’ve used Gmail to power through email efficiently, Docs to revise group projects without the hassle of attachments, Calendar to keep up with extracurriculars, forms to quickly collect and analyze data or Sites to organize resources around your projects. Using these tools has equipped you with valuable expertise for life after college—just like the finance skills you learned in your major or the Spanish language abilities you picked up while studying abroad.
With this in mind, we’ve created the
Google Guides
program to help you take your Google Apps expertise to your future job. When you become a Google Guide, we’ll equip you with resources to introduce and implement Apps in your workplace. You’ll make an
immediate impact
by saving your company money and facilitating collaboration among coworkers. Once your company is up and running with Google Apps, you’ll get to continue using all the Apps tools you learned and
loved
in college—not to mention be known as your company’s in-house Google expert.
If you’re not sure where you’ll be picking up your paycheck yet, don’t fret. The Google Guides program also provides tips and tools for your job search, including resume templates.
You can
sign up
as a Google Guide at
google.com/apps/graduate
and read our
FAQ
for more details. And for those of you not graduating this year, you can always get information specifically for students on the Official Student Blog.
Posted by Lauren Kolodny, Google Apps Marketing Manager
60+ young women recognized as Google Anita Borg Memorial scholars
May 11, 2011
The
Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship
honors the memory of
Dr. Anita Borg
, who devoted her life to encouraging the presence of women in computing and founded the Institute for Women in Technology in 1997. Anita passed away in 2003, and we created the Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship in 2004 to honor her memory. Anita’s legacy lives on today through this scholarship and the organization she created, which has since been re-named the
Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology
.
This year we’d like to recognize and congratulate the 65 Google Anita Borg Memorial scholars and the 82 Google Anita Borg Memorial finalists, all of whom attend universities in the
United States
,
Canada
,
Europe, the Middle East or Africa
. These students will attend the annual Google Scholars Retreat this summer, where they will have the opportunity to attend tech talks on Google products, network with other scholars and participate in social activities. Students from the U.S. and Canada will attend the retreat in Mountain View, Calif., and students from Europe, the Middle East and Africa will attend the retreat in Zurich, Switzerland.
We’d also like to congratulate this year’s recipients of the
Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship for First Years
. This scholarship is granted to young women in their senior year of high school who intend to study computer science, computer engineering, software engineering or a related program at a university in the upcoming academic year.
Here’s a full
list
(PDF) of this year’s scholars and finalists along with the institutions they attend. In the coming months, we’ll also be announcing the recipients of the Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship in
Asia
,
Australia and New Zealand
.
For more information on all our scholarships, visit the
Google Scholarships
site.
Posted by Azusa Hanashima, Talent & Outreach Programs
A new kind of computer: Chromebook
May 11, 2011
(Cross-posted on the
Code
and
Chrome
Blogs)
A little less than two years ago we set out to
make computers much better
. Today, we’re announcing the first Chromebooks from our partners,
Samsung
and Acer. These are not typical notebooks. With a Chromebook you won’t wait minutes for your computer to boot and browser to start. You’ll be reading your email in seconds. Thanks to automatic updates the software on your Chromebook will get faster over time. Your apps, games, photos, music, movies and documents will be accessible wherever you are and you won't need to worry about losing your computer or forgetting to back up files. Chromebooks will last a day of use on a single charge, so you don’t need to carry a power cord everywhere. And with optional 3G, just like your phone, you’ll have the web when you need it. Chromebooks have
many layers of security built in
so there is no anti-virus software to buy and maintain. Even more importantly, you won't spend hours fighting your computer to set it up and keep it up to date.
At the core of each Chromebook is the
Chrome web browser
. The web has millions of applications and billions of users. Trying a new application or sharing it with friends is as easy as clicking a link. A world of information can be searched instantly and developers can embed and mash-up applications to create new products and services. The web is on just about every computing device made, from phones to TVs, and has the broadest reach of any platform. With HTML5 and other open standards, web applications will soon be able to do anything traditional applications can do, and more.
Chromebooks will be available online June 15 in the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Netherlands, Italy and Spain. More countries will follow in the coming months. In the U.S., Chromebooks will be available from
Amazon
and
Best Buy
and internationally from leading retailers.
Even with dedicated IT departments, businesses and schools struggle with the same complex, costly and insecure computers as the rest of us. To address this, we’re also announcing
Chromebooks for Business and Education
. This service from Google includes Chromebooks and a cloud management console to remotely administer and manage users, devices, applications and policies. Also included is enterprise-level support, device warranties and replacements as well as regular hardware refreshes. Monthly subscriptions will start at $28/user for businesses and $20/user for schools.
There are over 160 million active users of Chrome today. Chromebooks bring you all of Chrome's speed, simplicity and security without the headaches of operating systems designed 20 to 30 years ago. We're very proud of what the Chrome team along with our partners have built, and with seamless updates, it will just keep getting better.
For more details please visit
www.google.com/chromebook
.
Update
3:58pm
: The video from the Chrome keynote at Google I/O is now available.
Posted by Linus Upson, Vice President of Engineering and Sundar Pichai, Senior Vice President, Chrome
Think Insights with Google: a new site for data lovers
May 11, 2011
It’s one of our guiding principles that data beats opinion. With that in mind, our marketing team has put a lot of effort into posing interesting questions—How do new mothers use the Internet? When do people really start their holiday shopping? What trends typify today’s Hispanic web user?—and answering them with concrete information to help marketers make better informed decisions.
Starting today, we’re sharing this knowledge at
Think Insights with Google
, a website where we’ll publish our data-supported insights about digital marketing trends. From papers to case studies to videos, Think Insights represents the ongoing work we’re doing to better understand how people use the web, and how marketers are adapting to this changing terrain. We’ll update the site frequently, so if you'd like to keep up with our latest news,
sign up
for email alerts to satisfy your monthly Think Insights fix.
Posted by Jenny Liu, Senior Product Marketing Manager
Accelerating diversity outreach to businesses in local communities
May 10, 2011
(Cross-posted on the
Google Small Business Blog
)
This is the latest post in our
series
profiling entrepreneurial Googlers working on products across the company and around the world. Here, business development manager Chris Genteel tells how Googlers across the U.S. are diversifying our marketing and sales outreach efforts to help communities of minority-owned small businesses around the country build an online presence. - Ed.
In May 2009, a team of Googlers and I attended the
Black Enterprise Entrepreneurs Conference
near our office in Ann Arbor, Mich., where we talked with dozens of small business owners. These folks were true entrepreneurs and clearly not afraid to try new things, yet many were unaware of Google’s products and services, such as
AdWords
and
Apps for Enterprise
. In fact, many of them didn’t even have an online presence.
The following Monday, two women Googlers who were new to the team and passionate about Google’s diversity initiatives busted into my office already on a mission—to help educate small businesses on Google tools in order to help them better connect with their target audience. They had attended the conference as well and decided to start a 20 percent project to increase awareness of and engagement with small, minority-owned businesses. Two months later, we proposed a business plan to Bonita Stewart, vice president of sales, to start reaching out to businesses. She approved our proposal and gave us the go-ahead to lead the initiative; it was our responsibility to find people who wanted to help.
We found our first volunteer when an intern on the team decided to make our initiative her 20 percent project, and, throughout that summer, more people were inspired to contribute their expertise part-time as well. Before we knew it, we had more than 40 Googlers working on what eventually became
Accelerate with Google
—a program to help minority-owned small businesses grow their online presence by working with organizations and partners who encourage the adoption of web tools within their local communities.
Throughout 2010, we traveled across the country to places like Detroit, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Miami, Chicago and New York to learn more about the minority-owned, small business community. Along the way, we built partnerships with leading business organizations, such as the
National Minority Supplier Development Council
, which already have respect and support from these communities. Our original goal was to build partnerships with minority community organizations nationwide, but that quickly developed into a larger mission to not only help small businesses move online, but empower them to be the web tools educators in their communities as well.
This May, we’re excited to be part of the
Michigan Minority Supplier Development Council
annual conference; they’ve been our chief partner and recipient of a grant for $175,000 to support the development of our program within its business community. We’ve trained Council representatives to be experts in Google tools like AdWords, and in turn they’ve led workshops for small business owners on how to build an online presence. We’ve built a similar partnership with the
Louisiana Council
by funding a $100,000 initiative to build outreach to small businesses in the area through programs such as
Google Certified Partners and Trainers
, which help people certify and demonstrate their proficiency in our ads tools.
All of this is just the beginning. This month marks the two-year anniversary of the initial inspiration for this project, and our team will once again be attending the
Black Enterprise Entrepreneurs Conference
, this time with a very different perspective. A project that began as a side job has now become a full-time role for myself and one of the project founders, with our ad hoc group of Googler volunteers still helping out part-time. We’ve seen measurable shifts in online engagement with the communities we’re working with—adding more than 100 minority-owned businesses in 2010 alone—and I’m excited to keep pushing this initiative out to business owners everywhere.
Posted by Chris Genteel, Business Development Manager, Global Diversity Programs
Android: momentum, mobile and more at Google I/O
May 10, 2011
(Cross-posted on the
Google Code Blog
)
This morning at
Google I/O
, the Android team shared some updates. It’s hard to believe a little more than two and a half years ago, we were just one device, launching in one country, on one carrier. Thanks to the ecosystem of manufacturers, developers and carriers, the platform has grown exponentially. There are now:
100 million activated Android devices
400,000 new Android devices activated every day
200,000 free and paid applications available in Android Market
4.5 billion applications installed from Android Market
Mobile—one OS everywhere
Over the past two and a half years, we’ve shipped eight releases of Android and there are now more than 310 Android devices around the world, of all shapes and sizes. This morning we talked about our next version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich. Our goal with Ice Cream Sandwich is to deliver one operating system that works everywhere, regardless of device. Ice Cream Sandwich will bring everything you love about
Honeycomb
on your tablet to your phone, including the holographic user interface, more multitasking, the new launcher and richer widgets.
We also launched
Music Beta by Google
, a new service that lets you upload your personal music collection to the cloud for streaming to your computer and Android devices. With the new service, your music and playlists are automatically kept in sync, so if you create a new playlist on your phone, it’s instantly available on your computer or tablet. You can use a feature called Instant Mix to create a playlist of songs that go well together. You can even listen to music when you’re offline: we automatically store your most recently played music on your Android device and you can choose to make specific albums or playlists available when you’re not connected. The service is launching in beta today to U.S. users and is available by invitation.
We’ve also added Movies for rent to
Android Market
. You can choose to rent from thousands of movies starting at $1.99 and have them available across your Android devices—rent a movie on your home computer, and it’ll be available for viewing on your tablet or phone. You can rent from Android Market on the web today, and we’ll be rolling out an update to Verizon XOOM customers beginning today. We’ll start rolling out the update to Android 2.2 and above devices in the coming weeks.
The Android ecosystem has been moving really fast over the last two and a half years and rapid iteration on new and highly-requested features has been a driving force behind Android’s success. But of course that innovation only matters if it reaches consumers. So today we’re announcing that a founding team of industry leaders, including many from the Open Handset Alliance, are working together to adopt guidelines for how quickly devices are updated after a new platform release, and also for how long they will continue to be updated. The founding partners are Verizon, HTC, Samsung, Sprint, Sony Ericsson, LG, T-Mobile, Vodafone, Motorola and AT&T, and we welcome others to join us. To start, we're jointly announcing that new devices from participating partners will receive the latest Android platform upgrades for 18 months after the device is first released, as long as the hardware allows...and that's just the beginning. Stay tuned for more details.
More—extending the platform beyond mobile
From the beginning, Android was designed to extend beyond the mobile phone. With that in mind, we’ve developed Android Open Accessory to help developers start building new hardware accessories that will work across all Android devices. We previewed an initiative called Android@Home, which allows Android apps to discover, connect and communicate with appliances and devices in your home. We also showed a preview of Project Tungsten, an Android device for Music Beta to give you more control over music playback within the Android@Home network.
You can watch the entire Android keynote from Google I/O on our
Google Developer YouTube Channel
shortly. On behalf of the team, we want to thank the entire Android community of developers, OEMs and carriers who are pushing the platform into new areas and building great experiences for consumers. Without you, the Android platform wouldn’t have grown so large in the past two and a half years. We look forward to seeing where you take it next.
Update
May 11
: The video from the keynote is now available:
Posted by Hugo Barra, Product Management Director, Android
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