Calling for federal consumer privacy protection

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Nicole Wong, Associate General Counsel</span><br /><br />Google is committed to protecting your privacy and to supporting an Internet environment that also respects individual privacy. Today, we're joining a group of notable U.S. companies <a href="http://www.cdt.org/privacy/20060620cplstatement.pdf">calling for federal consumer privacy legislation</a>.<br /><br />Here in the U.S., we have a growing patchwork quilt of state privacy laws, disparate industry-specific privacy laws (for example, different laws covering health-related data, financial data and children's online data), and a similarly-mixed bag of data security laws. This matrix of laws is complex, incomplete, and sometimes contradictory. For consumers, the result is a set of privacy protections that are uneven at best. <br /><br />On an Internet beset with spyware, malware, phishing, identity-theft, and other privacy threats, enforcement of privacy protections has become an industry-wide challenge, and highlights the lack of a coherent regulatory structure. Google strongly supports the adoption of a federal consumer privacy law. It would be good for our users, and would contribute to consumer trust on the Internet as a platform for communication, expression, e-commerce, and so forth. Americans care about their privacy, and so does Google. A baseline U.S. federal consumer privacy law will help protect all of us online.

Calling for federal consumer privacy protection

Posted by Nicole Wong, Associate General Counsel Google is committed to protecting your privacy and to supporting an Internet environment t...

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Publishing your Google Calendar

<span class="byline-author">Posted by David Marmaros, Google Calendar Tech Lead</span><br /><br />Lots of people already use <a href="http://www.google.com/calendar/">Google Calendar</a> to stay organized and schedule their lives, and that's great. But maybe you want to publicize an event for a group of people -- say you're the captain of a dragonboat racing team who needs to coordinate the <a href="http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=tmeabd0b7p0rnpm2mp8cq8hb90%40group.calendar.google.com">practice and race schedule</a> for your crew. Possibly you're a soccer fanatic who wants to publish all the <a href="http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=5t3sca1qss8kro1k1gv6ofod9c%40group.calendar.google.com">2006 FIFA World Cup matches</a>. Or maybe you'd like to publish a calendar of <a href="http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=f18bcj3uua63stsjfhnqjlusjg%40group.calendar.google.com">cool events around town</a> to share with friends.<br /><br />Now you can get the word out to anyone, because we just added a new publishing feature that lets you show an interactive calendar to others -- even if they don't use Google Calendar. All calendars now have a simple web page that you can point people to, and you can even incorporate one into your own website, profile page or blog. A few <a href="http://www.google.com/googlecalendar/event_publisher_guide.html">quick steps</a> and you'll be ready to show others what's going on in your world.

Publishing your Google Calendar

Posted by David Marmaros, Google Calendar Tech Lead Lots of people already use Google Calendar to stay organized and schedule their lives, ...

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Finding government info

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Kevin Gough, Product Manager</span><br /><br />Want to find those IRS forms to get in your taxes on time? Need to figure out where to send your DMV fees, or find the phone number for your local parks and rec department? <a href="http://usgov.google.com">Google U.S. Government Search</a> launches today -- it's a site on which you can 1) search across a huge index of U.S. Federal, state and local government websites via a single search box, and 2) stay up to date through personalized content feeds from government agencies and press outlets. Off you go.<br /><br />For easy bookmarking, go to <span style="font-weight:bold;">http://usgov.google.com</span>.

Finding government info

Posted by Kevin Gough, Product Manager Want to find those IRS forms to get in your taxes on time? Need to figure out where to send your DMV ...

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The 36th edition of Google News is Arabic

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Mohamed Elfeky, Software Engineer</span><br /><br />As we increase the number of languages supported in Google News, and as the number of Arabic news sources available on the web grows, now there's <a href="http://news.google.com/news?ned=ar_me&promo=blog_arabic">Google News in Arabic</a>. This edition is a little different than the other 35: normally, we target editions to a specific region like a country, but the Arabic edition targets the entire Arab region of the world -- so Arabic speakers from more than 20 countries have access to an especially wide variety of perspectives on the news being published in their language.<br /><br />Arabic readers can visit the Google News homepage to see a compilation of links to top news headlines all in one view, look for news just in their favorite categories, or search within news stories for particular terms. We're glad to be launching Google News for a whole new audience, and we look forward to bringing it to even more people around the world.

The 36th edition of Google News is Arabic

Posted by Mohamed Elfeky, Software Engineer As we increase the number of languages supported in Google News, and as the number of Arabic new...

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It’s all about the photos

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Adrian Graham, Product Manager</span><br /><br />Reading feedback from Picasa users is one of the best parts of my job. And lately the feedback has been especially clear and direct: please offer an easy way to share photos online. Today, we’re delighted to begin testing a new Picasa feature that does just that. It’s called <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/">Picasa Web Albums</a>.<br /><br />In case you’re not familiar with Picasa, it’s Google’s free desktop photo management software. Picasa is a quick download that makes it easy for people to organize and edit their pictures using something that’s simple and clutter-free. It’s all about the photos. And now we’ve tried to bring that same experience to online photo sharing with Picasa Web Albums. Just pick a bunch of your photos from Picasa and upload them into a web album in a couple of clicks. Once they’re online, it’s super-easy to share them – click the “Share” button from anywhere on the site or, just email friends the URL for your public gallery.<br /><br />Take a look at the photos that our tester <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/tester">wants to share</a>: Try flipping through photos using the arrow keys (we pre-fetch photos so they load quickly). Zoom in and out to check out details or see the whole photo. Or maximize them on a large monitor. We focused on the photos, not ads or archiving, because we know how important your photos are to you especially when you want to share them. Of course, there's a lot we want to add and improve — which is why for the moment, we're only testing this feature by invitation. If you’re interested in making your own Picasa Web Albums (and helping us make it better), give us your Gmail address <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/">here</a>. We’ll be sending out invitations first come, first served.<br /><br />Once you have an invitation, you’ll be able to download the latest version of Picasa with the web uploading feature. And actually, it’s not just about web uploading -- there’s also <i style="">downloading</i>. We wanted to make sure you can keep enjoying the photos your friends have shared with you. With this in mind, when viewing others’ galleries, you can download an entire album of photos directly into Picasa with just a couple of clicks. For uploading and downloading to and from Picasa Web Albums, you’ll need the new version of Picasa – again, it’s only available to invited users for the time being.<br /><br />Finally, you may be wondering if this costs anything. No, and no hidden fees either. Picasa is free as always, and Picasa Web Albums comes with 250MB of free storage space. That’s enough for approximately 1,000 wallpaper-sized photos at 1600 pixels each. We also offer an easy-to-understand <a href="http://picasa.google.com/web/help.html#facts">storage upgrade option</a> if you have a whole lot more pictures to share.<br /><br />We’re working hard to make both Picasa and Picasa Web Albums better. And we’re excited to start making our most commonly-requested feature available to more people. Try it out and <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/support/bin/request.py">tell us what you think</a>. We’d love to hear from you.

It’s all about the photos

Posted by Adrian Graham, Product Manager Reading feedback from Picasa users is one of the best parts of my job. And lately the feedback has ...

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The Bard's the thing

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Jen Grant, Google Book Search team</span><br /><br />Summer in New York: kids running through fountains, steamy subways, P. Diddy's White Party in the Hamptons, and ... Shakespeare. Today, <a href="http://www.publictheater.org/view.php?mode=eventdisplay&parentid=210&eventid=788&returnURL=%2Fview.php%3Fmode%3Deventdisplay%26eventid%3D210">Shakespeare in the Park</a> kicks off its 50th year with free performances of <i><span style="font-style: italic;">Macbeth </span></i>in Central Park. To help celebrate (and because we love a good excuse to delve into old books), we've created a place to find and search the complete plays of Shakespeare. <a href="http://books.google.com/googlebooks/shakespeare/?utm_source=googleblog&utm_campaign=shakespeare&utm_medium=et">Here</a>, book lovers and theater fans alike can explore popular favorites and lesser-known gems right from their desktops with <a href="http://books.google.com" title="http://books.google.com/">Google Book Search</a>. (Note that some print versions of Shakespeare's plays may not be in the public domain everywhere in the world. Where copyright status is in question, we protect the publisher by showing the <a href="http://books.google.com/intl/en/googlebooks/screenshots.html" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" target="_blank" title="http://books.google.com/intl/en/googlebooks/screenshots.html">Snippet View</a>. As always, we encourage you to let us know if you believe a publication should be in <a href="http://books.google.com/intl/en/googlebooks/screenshots.html#bookpage" target="_blank">Full Book View</a>, and we hope you bear with us as we confirm the status and, whenever appropriate, change the display.)<br /><br />Finally, if you want to learn more about how Book Search is helping people around the world browse and discover books of all kinds, be sure to check out our <a href="http://booksearch.blogspot.com/?utm_source=googleblog&utm_campaign=shakespeare&utm_medium=et">new blog</a> too.

The Bard's the thing

Posted by Jen Grant, Google Book Search team Summer in New York: kids running through fountains, steamy subways, P. Diddy's White Party ...

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More gadgets, more places

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Sophia Brueckner, Software Engineer</span><br /><br />We've released the Personalized Homepage feature in <a href="http://www.google.fi/ig">Finland</a>, <a href="http://www.google.no/ig">Norway</a>, <a href="http://www.google.se/ig">Sweden</a>, <a href="http://www.google.dk/ig">Denmark</a>, <a href="http://www.google.ie/ig">Ireland</a> and <a href="http://www.google.co.nz/ig">New Zealand</a>, so that more of you around the world can put the information you want on your Google homepage.<br /><br />And given the football frenzy now underway, we've included the <a href="http://www.google.com/ig/directory?num=24&url=http://www.google.com/ig/modules/world_cup.xml&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;q=&start=24">gadget for the World Cup</a> in these new editions to make live scores, standings and schedules available. So hop to it now for soccer updates or other info (like news, weather, recent Gmail messages, and feeds from your favorite sites).

More gadgets, more places

Posted by Sophia Brueckner, Software Engineer We've released the Personalized Homepage feature in Finland , Norway , Sweden , Denmark , ...

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