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Google Keep—Save what’s on your mind
March 20, 2013
Every day we all see, hear or think of things we need to remember. Usually we grab a pad of sticky-notes, scribble a reminder and put it on the desk, the fridge or the relevant page of a magazine. Unfortunately, if you’re like me you probably often discover that the desk, fridge or magazine wasn’t such a clever place to leave the note after all...it’s rarely where you need it when you need it.
To solve this problem we’ve created Google Keep. With Keep you can quickly jot ideas down when you think of them and even include checklists and photos to keep track of what’s important to you. Your notes are safely stored in Google Drive and synced to all your devices so you can always have them at hand.
If it’s more convenient to speak than to type that’s fine—Keep transcribes voice memos for you automatically. There’s super-fast search to find what you’re looking for and when you’re finished with a note you can archive or delete it.
Changing priorities isn’t a problem: just open Keep on your Android phone or tablet (there’s a widget so you can have Keep front and center all the time) and drag your notes around to reflect what matters. You can choose the color for each note too.
Pro tip: for adding thoughts quickly without unlocking your device there's a lock screen widget (on devices running Android 4.2+).
Google Keep
is available on Google Play for devices running Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich and above. You can access, edit and create new notes on the web at
http://drive.google.com/keep
and in the coming weeks you'll be able to do the same directly from Google Drive.
Posted by Katherine Kuan, Software Engineer
Make a silent movie by talking to Chrome
March 19, 2013
Last month
, the
Web Speech API
brought voice recognition to
Chrome
users in more than 30 languages. We thought it would be fun to demonstrate this new technology by using an old one: silent film.
The Peanut Gallery
lets you add
intertitles
to old black-and-white movie clips just by talking out loud while you watch them. Create a film and share it with friends, so they can bring out their inner screenwriters too.
We hope that developers will find many uses for the Web Speech API, both fun and practical—including new ways to navigate, search, enter text, and interact with the web. We can’t wait to see how people use it.
Posted by Aaron Koblin, Creative Lab
(Cross-posted from the
Chrome blog
)
Explore Everest, Kilimanjaro and more with Google Maps
March 18, 2013
Most of us have a bucket list of the places we want to visit in our lifetime. If you’re like me, the list is pretty long—to be honest I’d be lucky to get to all of mine. Google Maps has a bucket list too, and today we’re checking off a couple of our favorites so we can make our map more comprehensive and share it with you. And if tall mountains are your thing, you’re in luck.
Now you can explore some of the most famous mountains on Earth, including Aconcagua (South America), Kilimanjaro (Africa), Mount Elbrus (Europe) and Everest Base Camp (Asia) on Google Maps. These mountains belong to the group of peaks known as the Seven Summits—the highest mountain on each of the seven continents. While there’s nothing quite like standing on the mountain, with Google Maps you can instantly transport yourself to the top of these peaks and enjoy the sights without all of the avalanches, rock slides, crevasses, and dangers from altitude and weather that mountaineers face.
Start your adventure on Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro, the dormant volcano known as the Roof of Africa. See amazing views of the highest freestanding mountain in the world covered in snow just three degrees south of the equator.
View Larger Map
At 19,341 ft, Uhuru is the highest point on Mount Kilimanjaro
Next, travel to the tallest mountain in Europe, Russia’s Mount Elbrus, and see huts made from Soviet-era fuel barrels. Climbers have to take refuge in the huts built on the mountain when the weather turns wretched.
Get imagery of
Mt. Elbrus
and all of the other mountains on Google Maps on
your iPhone
and
Android device
Explore Argentina’s mighty Aconcagua, the highest peak in both the Western and Southern Hemispheres. See how a base camp is set up amongst the exposed rock in Plaza Argentina and how expeditions eat, camp and prepare for their ascent.
View Larger Map
A permanent park ranger camp, as well as a helipad and medical center are available during climbing seasons at Plaza Argentina
Finally, make your way to Everest Base Camp, where expeditions stage their attempts to reach the top of the world. Along the ascent, steal glimpses of the snow-capped Himalayan mountain peaks and the awesome Khumbu glacier.
View Larger Map
The route to Everest Base Camp is one of the most popular trekking routes in the Himalayas and is visited by thousands of trekkers each year
This imagery was collected with a simple lightweight tripod and digital camera with a fisheye lens—equipment typically used for our
Business Photos program
. See the slideshow below and our
Lat Long Blog
for a behind-the-scenes look at the regular Googlers that actually climbed these mountains to capture this stunning photography.
Behind-the-scenes shots of the expedition team
Whether you’re scoping out the mountain for your next big adventure or exploring it from the comfort and warmth of your home, we hope you enjoy these views from the top of the world. See more of our favorite shots on the
Street View Gallery
. We’ll also be hosting a
Hangout on Air
today at 10:00 am PT where we’ll share stories from our expeditions and answer questions about this special collection.
Posted by Dan Fredinburg, Google adventurer, on behalf of entire expedition team
Think Insights: Marketer data, information and inspiration just got a new address
March 14, 2013
Today marks the debut of the new
Think Insights
, Google’s hub for marketing insights and inspiration for advertisers and agencies. On
google.com/think
, you can learn about the latest research in digital marketing, be inspired by creative brand campaigns, and find useful products and tools. You’ll also find industry-leading case studies and Google’s latest research, strategic perspectives, interviews with innovators and experts and more—all to help you make the most of the web.
Every week, we’ll feature content that spans industries and interests. Here’s a snapshot of our top stories:
In
Understanding the Full Value of Mobile
, learn how sporting goods industry leader adidas worked with digital performance agency iProspect to understand how mobile drives value beyond mobile commerce, particularly in-store sales. The campaign proved that mobile brought a 680% incremental increase in ROI.
The
Hyundai Elantra: Driveway Decision Maker
campaign lets you watch your favorite Hyundai model drive right to your driveway, using a combination of Google Maps Street View, projection mapping and real-time 3D animation.
YouTube Ads Leaderboard
shows which YouTube ads most moved audiences this month, through a winning combination of savvy promotion and smart creative strategy; a new list is featured each month.
In our Perspectives section, we tap our own experts—as well as heads of industry, digital visionaries and Wharton professors—to lend their insights and analyses on the topics that matter most to marketers. The Product & Tools section contains information about our products and advertising platforms, as well as Planning Tools like the popular
Real-Time Insights finder
.
We built
google.com/think
to help you do it all—stay up-to-date on the latest in digital marketing, arm yourself with data to support your business cases and create inspiring campaigns. Explore the site now, and if you like what you discover, don't forget to subscribe to our
Think Letter
for a monthly round-up of our most popular content.
Posted by Lisa Gevelber, Head of Global Ads Marketing
Sharing stories of Bletchley Park: home of the code-breakers
March 14, 2013
For decades, the World War II codebreaking centre at Bletchley Park was one of the U.K.’s most closely guarded secrets. Today, it’s a poignant place to visit and reflect on the achievements of those who worked there. Their outstanding feats of intellect, coupled with breakthrough engineering and dogged determination, were crucial to the Allied victory—and in parallel, helped kickstart the computing age.
We’ve long been keen to help
preserve
and
promote
the importance of Bletchley Park. Today we’re announcing two new initiatives that we hope will bring its story to a wider online audience.
First, we’re welcoming the
Bletchley Park Trust
as the latest partner to join
Google’s Cultural Institute
. Their
digital exhibit
features material from Bletchley’s archives, providing a vivid snapshot of the work that went on cracking secret messages and the role this played in shortening the war. Included are
images of the Bombe machines
that helped crack the
Enigma code
; and of
Colossus
, the
world’s first programmable electronic computer
, used to crack the German High Command code—including
this message
showing the Germans had been successfully duped about the location for the D-Day invasion.
Second, as a followup to
our film about Colossus
, we’re pleased to share a personal story of
the Bombe
, as told by one of its original operators,
Jean Valentine
. Women like Jean made up the majority of Bletchley Park’s personnel—ranging from cryptographers, to machine operators, to clerks. In her role operating the Bombe, Jean directly helped to decipher messages encoded by Enigma. In this film Jean gives us a firsthand account of life at Bletchley Park during the war, and demonstrates how the Bombe worked using a replica machine now on show at the museum.
We hope you enjoy learning more about Bletchley Park and its fundamental wartime role and legacy. For more glimpses of history, explore the Cultural Institute’s other exhibitions on
www.google.com/culturalinstitute
.
Posted by Marzia Niccolai, Technical Program Manager, Google Cultural Institute
A second spring of cleaning
March 13, 2013
We’re living in a new kind of computing environment. Everyone has a device, sometimes multiple devices. It’s been a long time since we have had this rate of change—it probably hasn’t happened since the birth of personal computing 40 years ago. To make the most of these opportunities, we need to focus—otherwise we spread ourselves too thin and lack impact. So today we’re announcing some more closures, bringing the total to 70 features or services closed since our
spring cleaning began
in 2011:
Apps Script
will be deprecating the
GUI Builder
and
five UiApp widgets
in order to focus efforts on
Html Service
. The rest of the Ui Service will not be affected. The GUI Builder will continue to be available until September 16, 2013. For more information see
our post
on the Google Apps Developer Blog.
CalDAV API
will become available for whitelisted developers, and will be shut down for other developers on September 16, 2013. Most developers’ use cases are handled well by
Google Calendar API
, which we recommend using instead. If you’re a developer and the Calendar API won’t work for you, please fill out
this form
to tell us about your use case and request access to whitelisted-only CalDAV API.
Google Building Maker
helped people to make three-dimensional building models for Google Earth and Maps. It will be retired on June 1, but users are still able to access and export their models from the 3D Warehouse. We’ll continue to expand the availability of comprehensive and accurate
new 3D imagery on Google Earth
, and people can still use
Google Map Maker
to add building information such as outlines and heights to Google Maps.
Google Cloud Connect
is a plug-in to help people work in the cloud by automatically saving Microsoft Office files from Windows PCs in Google Drive. But
installing Google Drive
on your
desktop
achieves the same thing more effectively—and Drive works not only on Windows, but also on Mac, Android and iOS devices. Existing users will no longer be able to use Cloud Connect as of April 30.
We launched
Google Reader
in 2005 in an effort to make it easy for people to discover and keep tabs on their favorite websites. While the product has a loyal following, over the years usage has declined. So, on July 1, 2013, we will retire Google Reader. Users and developers interested in RSS alternatives can export their data, including their subscriptions, with
Google Takeout
over the course of the next four months.
Beginning next week, we're ending support for the
Google Voice App for Blackberry
. For Blackberry users who want to continue using Google Voice, we recommend they use our
HTML5 app
, which is more secure and easier for us to keep up to date. Our HTML5 site is compatible with users with Blackberry version 6 and newer.
We’re deprecating our
Search API for Shopping
, which has enabled developers to create shopping apps based on Google’s Product Search data. While we believe in the value this offering provided, we’re shifting our focus to concentrate on creating a
better shopping experience
for users through Google Shopping. We’ll shut the API down completely on September 16, 2013.
Beginning today we’ll no longer sell or provide updates for
Snapseed Desktop for Macintosh and Windows
. Existing customers will continue to be able to download the software and can
contact us
for support. We’ll continue to offer the Snapseed mobile app on iOS and Android for free.
These changes are never easy. But by focusing our efforts, we can concentrate on building great products that really help in their lives.
Update
March 15, 2013
: We worked with the developers who provide 98 percent of our current CalDAV traffic to assure access to the CalDAV API, which means many popular products will not be impacted. We remain committed to supporting open protocols like CalDAV.
Posted by Urs Hölzle, SVP Technical Infrastructure and Google Fellow
Update from the CEO
March 13, 2013
Sergey and I first heard about Android back in 2004, when Andy Rubin came to visit us at Google. He believed that aligning standards around an open-source operating system would drive innovation across the mobile industry. Most people thought he was nuts. But his insight immediately struck a chord because at the time it was extremely painful developing services for mobile devices. We had a closet full of more than 100 phones and were building our software pretty much device by device. It was nearly impossible for us to make truly great mobile experiences.
Fast forward to today. The pace of innovation has never been greater, and Android is the most used mobile operating system in the world: we have a global partnership of over 60 manufacturers; more than 750 million devices have been activated globally; and 25 billion apps have now been downloaded from Google Play. Pretty extraordinary progress for a decade’s work. Having exceeded even the crazy ambitious goals we dreamed of for Android—and with a really strong leadership team in place—Andy’s decided it’s time to hand over the reins and start a new chapter at Google. Andy, more moonshots please!
Going forward, Sundar Pichai will lead Android, in addition to his existing work with Chrome and Apps. Sundar has a talent for creating products that are technically excellent yet easy to use—and he loves a big bet. Take Chrome, for example. In 2008, people asked whether the world really needed another browser. Today Chrome has hundreds of millions of happy users and is growing fast thanks to its speed, simplicity and security. So while Andy’s a really hard act to follow, I know Sundar will do a tremendous job doubling down on Android as we work to push the ecosystem forward.
Today we’re living in a new computing environment. People are really excited about technology and spending a lot of money on devices. This is driving faster adoption than we have ever seen before. The Nexus program—developed in conjunction with our partners Asus, HTC, LG and Samsung—has become a beacon of innovation for the industry, and services such as Google Now have the potential to really improve your life. We’re getting closer to a world where technology takes care of the hard work—discovery, organization, communication—so that you can get on with what makes you happiest… living and loving. It’s an exciting time to be at Google.
Posted by
Larry Page
, CEO
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