Need a ride?

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Russell Shoji, Business Development </span><br /><br />One of the things I like most about Google is the ability to create useful tools for our users that leverage current products. There's no shortage of ideas, for instance, on how to use Google Maps; here's one we're ready to show you.<br /><br />If you're like me, you use a mix of recommendations from friends, the phone book, or standing on the corner with your hand in the air (and hoping it isn't raining) when you need to find a taxi, limousine or shuttle service. With <a href="http://labs.google.com/ridefinder">Google Ride Finder</a>, you can tell us where you want to find a ride and we'll show you the actual positions of participating vehicles in that area, along with a phone number you can use to contact the fleet operator (e.g., <a href="http://labs.google.com/ridefinder?z=8&near=Chicago%2C%20IL&src=1">Chicago</a>).<br /><br />We're just getting started, so forgive us if we don't have your city or ride provider yet; we'll be adding more as they become available. If you're a fleet owner/operator, <a href="http://labs.google.com/ridefinder/inquiry.html">get in touch with us</a>; we'd love to include your vehicle.<br /><br />Now I've got to run to catch my ride to the airport.

Need a ride?

Posted by Russell Shoji, Business Development One of the things I like most about Google is the ability to create useful tools for our users...

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Enhanced searching with Firefox

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Reza Behforooz, software engineer</span><br /><br />Now Google's faster than ever on <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/">Firefox</a> and Mozilla browsers. When you do a search on these browsers, we instruct them to download your top search result in advance, so if you click on it, you'll get to that page even more quickly.<br /><br />You can learn more about this cool feature <a href="http://www.google.com/help/features.html#prefetch">here</a>. If you're a webmaster, we have <a href="http://www.google.com/webmasters/faq.html#prefetch">FAQs</a> for you too. Or you can just <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/">download Firefox</a> and check it out for yourself.

Enhanced searching with Firefox

Posted by Reza Behforooz, software engineer Now Google's faster than ever on Firefox and Mozilla browsers. When you do a search on thes...

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Puzzling images

<span class="byline-author">Posted by </span>Wei-Hwa Huang, Software Engineer<br /><br /><img align="left" alt="Google Logo in Pixelblocks" src="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/media/easteregg_title.jpg" /> As a little bonus for my fellow employees who were around during the winter, I held a little on-campus contest. I took 130 photographs of things around the buildings and challenged people to identify them and go to the location, where they'd then have to find a little hidden sticker with a letter on it. They'd email the letter to me to confirm that they found the location. I thought our blog readers might find it interesting to identify what's in these photographs, which were some of the more challenging pictures.<br /><table><tbody><tr valign="top" align="middle"><td><img src="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/media/easteregg_a.jpg" /></td><td><img src="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/media/easteregg_b.jpg" /></td><td><img src="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/media/easteregg_c.jpg" /></td></tr><tr valign="top" align="middle"><td><span style="font-size:78%;">Cvaonyy znpuvar (<a href="http://images.google.com/images?q=bally%20spectrum">Onyyl "Fcrpgehz"</a>). </span></td><td><span style="font-size:78%;">Neebj sebz n <a href="http://images.google.com/images?q=one-way+sign+graphics">"Bar<br />Jnl" fgerrg fvta</a>.</span></td><td><span style="font-size:78%;">Jngre obggyrf (<a href="http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=%22smart+water%22+sport">FznegJngre<br />Fcbeg</a>). </span></td></tr><tr valign="top" align="middle"><td><img src="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/media/easteregg_d.jpg" /></td><td><img src="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/media/easteregg_e.jpg" /></td><td><img src="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/media/easteregg_f.jpg" /></td></tr><br /><tr valign="top" align="middle"><td><a href="http://images.google.com/images?q=pool+table+pocket"><span style="font-size:78%;">Cbby gnoyr cbpxrg</span></a><span style="font-size:78%;">, nf ivrjrq sebz orybj.</span></td><td><span style="font-size:78%;">Fgevatf vafvqr n onol <a href="http://images.google.com/images?q=grand+piano">tenaq<br />cvnab</a>.</span></td><td><span style="font-size:78%;">Hfrq <a href="http://images.google.com/images?q=illy+espresso">pbagnvaref<br />sbe Vyyl Rfcerffb</a>.</span> </td></tr><tr valign="top" align="middle"><td><img src="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/media/easteregg_g.jpg" /></td><td><img src="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/media/easteregg_h.jpg" /></td><td><img src="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/media/easteregg_i.jpg" /> </td></tr><br /><tr valign="top" align="middle"><td><a href="http://images.google.com/images?q=arcade+start+button"><span style="font-size:78%;">Fgneg ohggba</span></a><span style="font-size:78%;"> sbe ivqrb tnzr znpuvar.</span></td><td><span style="font-size:78%;">Lryybj (nzore) <a href="http://images.google.com/images?q=amber+traffic+light">fgerrg<br />yvtug</a>.</span></td><td><span style="font-size:78%;">"Ivfvgbe Ybool" fvta nf ivrjrq sebz vafvqr.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br />The answers are in an old computer-geek code called <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=rot%2D13">ROT-13</a>. Or you can click on the links to see some of our search results for the item. Have fun!

Puzzling images

Posted by Wei-Hwa Huang, Software Engineer As a little bonus for my fellow employees who were around during the winter, I held a little on-...

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Show me the money

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Katie Jacobs Stanton, Business Product Manager<br />(</span>on behalf of a hardworking and shy team of finance enthusiasts)<br /><br />As a Google user, it always bugged me to have to go to other websites to get stock quotes. Now we get a direct feed of market data, so all you have to do is type in a ticker symbol like <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=indu&btnG=Google+Search">INDU</a> or <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q=sunw&btnG=Search">SUNW</a> and the search results will include the latest exchange and real-time ECN quote, intraday chart, volume and market cap. And if you're on the go, these quotes are also available on Google SMS. Just send a text message to 46645 ('GOOGL') with the ticker and you'll quickly see the latest market data.<br /><br />There's a lot of stock info we don't provide, which is why we link to financial sites like <a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/">Yahoo Finance</a> and <a href="http://www.fool.com">Motley Fool</a>. We know people have firm opinions about stock information, so <a href="mailto:quotes@google.com" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" target="_blank">tell us what you think</a> of it -- and how it could be better.

Show me the money

Posted by Katie Jacobs Stanton, Business Product Manager ( on behalf of a hardworking and shy team of finance enthusiasts) As a Google user,...

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Earthquake information

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Google Blog team</span><br /><br />Another major earthquake has struck the Indian Ocean off the coast of Sumatra. The U.S. Geological Survey <a href="http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqinthenews/2005/usweax/">estimates the quake</a> at 8.7 magnitude. Tsunami warnings have been issued for Thailand, Japan and Sri Lanka. For more information, try <a href="http://news.google.com">Google News</a>, the <a href="http://www.prh.noaa.gov/itic/tsunami_events/events.html">International Tsunami Information Center</a>, or the <a href="http://www.usgs.gov/">USGS site</a>. Our thoughts and prayers are with all those in the affected countries.

Earthquake information

Posted by Google Blog team Another major earthquake has struck the Indian Ocean off the coast of Sumatra. The U.S. Geological Survey estimat...

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Will code for pride of place

<span class="byline-author">Posted by </span>Krishna Bharat + Lalitesh Katragadda, Bangalore team<br /><br />Inside every Google engineer is a kid who loves solving problems. Wanting to celebrate that fervor, we just held our first India Code Jam to attract the best software coders in India and South Asia. The competition started in February with some 14,000 contestants in the first round. Several elimination rounds later, 50 finalists were flown to our R&D Center in Bangalore.<br /><br /><img alt="Will code for rupees" src="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/media/willcodeforrupees.jpg" /><br /><br />This hardy lot competed on their ability to think creatively, design expertly, and code correctly and efficiently - traits that dovetail with creating Google's search algorithms, products and infrastructure. On Saturday morning expectations were high. Brains went on overdrive. Two and a half hours later the dust settled. The top winner: Ardian K Poernomo, a computer science student from Singapore, who won Rs. 3,00,000 (US $7000). We don't know whether Ardian will want to join Google, but we do know a lot of coders had good geeky fun. If you missed the Jam but are Bangalore-bound, consider <a href="http://www.google.com/bangalore">joining us</a>.<br /><br /><br />Google Bangalore

Will code for pride of place

Posted by Krishna Bharat + Lalitesh Katragadda, Bangalore team Inside every Google engineer is a kid who loves solving problems. Wanting to ...

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A bun gartetg!

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Sascha Brawer, Software Engineer, Zurich</span><br /><br />Google is already available in <a href="http://www.google.com/help/customize.html#searchlang">104</a> languages, from <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/af/">Afrikaans</a> to <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/zu/">Zulu</a>, but we had no Romansh. It's an old tongue that's still spoken in valleys in the Swiss Alps. Only about one percent of Swiss people can speak it, but even so it's one of the country's four official languages. Romansh is in the same family as Spanish or Italian, but looks more daunting because of the long sequences of consonants. For example, "image search" becomes "tschertga da maletgs."<br /><br />So we threw a party in <a href="http://www.google.ch/jobs/">Zurich</a> and asked people fluent in Romansh to translate text like "I'm feeling lucky." (They found this particularly hard to translate, and settled on "A bun gartetg," which is more or less "on good luck"). And now there is <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/rm/">Google in Romansh</a>. Why do we bother? Call us obsessive, but we like it when everyone can use Google in their native language.

A bun gartetg!

Posted by Sascha Brawer, Software Engineer, Zurich Google is already available in 104 languages, from Afrikaans to Zulu , but we had no Ro...

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