55 Ways to Have Fun With Google

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Philipp Lenssen, Google Blogoscoped</span><br /><br />It's time for a little guest post from Germany -- thanks, Google, for inviting me over! I'm the author of a blog on Google (<a href="http://blog.outer-court.com">Google Blogoscoped</a>), and this year I've written a book called <a href="http://www.55fun.com"><span style="font-style: italic;">55 Ways to Have Fun With Google</span></a>. In it, I present Google-related riddles, games, cartoons, search tips, stories, and miscellaneous insights (no programming skills needed -- and most of the time, you don't need to be close to a computer, either).<br /><br />You'll learn about such things as the giant Japanese Google painting, the man who traveled the world looking for Googlewhacks, advanced tips for Google-searching, how Google News can screw up in funny ways, or the Google Image prediction trick. There's a great German word for this -- "Wunderkammer," a cabinet of curiosities.<br /><br />The book is self-published with <a href="http://lulu.com">Lulu.com</a>, an interesting service. Basically, Lulu allows you to upload your Microsoft Word or OpenOffice Writer file along with your cover, and then convert it to a print-on-demand book. If you pay a little extra, your book will also appear on Amazon. The process ain't free of headaches but I gotta say, it's worth it. Lulu will also make sure the book's findable through<a href="http://books.google.com/books?q=%2255+ways+to+have+fun+with+google%22"> Google Book Search</a>.<br /><br />Self-publishing is already an interesting experiment on its own, but I chose to take an alternative route with copyright as well. <span style="font-style: italic;">55 Ways</span> can be copied, remixed and shared under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/">Creative Commons license</a>, and the full text is available as a free download. People have already converted it to websites, and there's a group effort going on to translate the full book into Chinese! Some people told me making the book available for free will stop people from buying the "offline" version ... well, here's your chance to prove them wrong :)

55 Ways to Have Fun With Google

Posted by Philipp Lenssen, Google Blogoscoped It's time for a little guest post from Germany -- thanks, Google, for inviting me over! I...

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Don't miss this chance to prove yourself

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Jeanne Williams, Staffing Programs</span><br /><br />There are only 5 days left until registration closes for Google Code Jam 2006. So far, about 16,000 competitors have signed up to show off their programming skills -- and perhaps win an all-expenses paid trip to our New York City engineering office to compete in the finals on October 27. The winner gets $10,000 and global bragging rights: people have registered in huge numbers not only from the U.S., but from India, China, Canada, Brazil, the Russian Federation, Poland, Pakistan, Iran, Australia, the U.K., Germany, Singapore, Japan, Hungary -- you get the idea.<br /><br />The top 100 finalists will be flown to NYC to show us what they've got. Have you got what it takes to Code Jam? Then by all means <a href="http://www.google.com/codejam/">register here</a>.

Don't miss this chance to prove yourself

Posted by Jeanne Williams, Staffing Programs There are only 5 days left until registration closes for Google Code Jam 2006. So far, about 1...

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Download the classics

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Adam Mathes, Associate Product Manager, Google Book Search</span><br /><br />Starting today, you can go to <a href="http://books.google.com/" title="Google Book Search">Google Book Search</a> and download full copies of out-of-copyright books to read at your own pace. You're free to choose from a diverse collection of public domain titles -- from well-known classics to obscure gems.<br /><br />Before the rise of the public library -– a story chronicled in this 1897 edition of <a href="http://books.google.com/books?vid=LCCN02006048&id=AJCpexX5NUMC&pg=PA3" style="font-style: italic;" title="The Free Library">The Free Library</a> – access to large collections of books was the privilege of a wealthy minority. Now, with the help of our wonderful <a href="http://books.google.com/googlebooks/partners.html" title="library partners">library partners</a>, we're able to offer you the ability to download and read PDF versions of out-of-copyright books from some of the world’s greatest collections.<br /><br />Using Google Book Search, you can find <span style="font-style: italic;">The Free Library </span>and many other extraordinary old books, such as:<br /><br />* Ferriar's <a href="http://books.google.com/books?vid=HARVARD32044024329419&pg=PA3" style="font-style: italic;" title="The Bibliomania">The Bibliomania</a><br />* A futurist from 1881's <a href="http://books.google.com/books?vid=UOM39015004715002&pg=PA1" style="font-style: italic;" title="Glance at the 20th century">1931: A Glance at the Twentieth Century</a><br />* Aesop's <a href="http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC03465111&printsec=titlepage" style="font-style: italic;" title="Fables">Fables</a><a href="http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC05716993&printsec=titlepage" style="font-style: italic;" title="Principia"></a><br />* Shakespeare's <a href="http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC14763089&id=2-iPD1DrwgYC&pg=PA3" style="font-style: italic;" title="Hamlet">Hamlet</a><br />* Abbott's <a href="http://books.google.com/books?vid=0PO8Zb8GuSvhGZx2&id=u8HOxy7lQYUC&printsec=titlepage" style="font-style: italic;" title="Flatland">Flatland</a><br />* Hugo's <a href="http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC12330174&id=ZEGJW5a0IfoC&pg=PP11" style="font-style: italic;" title="Marion De Lorme">Marion De Lorme</a><br />* Dunant's <a href="http://books.google.com/books?vid=HARVARD32044012475109&printsec=titlepage" style="font-style: italic;" title="Eine Erinnerung an Solferino">Eine Erinnerung an Solferino</a><br />* Bolívar's <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=W162EMZdSVwC&vid=HARVARD32044048104251&jtp=1" style="font-style: italic;" title="Proclamas">Proclamas</a><br />* Dante's <a href="http://books.google.it/books?vid=OCLC13779284&id=iQ5Glx7BGZkC&printsec=titlepage" style="font-style: italic;" title="Inferno">Inferno</a><br /><br />To find out-of-copyright books that you can download, simply select the "Full view" radio button when you search on <span style="font-weight: bold;">books.google.com</span>. (Please note that we do not enable downloading of any book currently under copyright. Unless we have the publisher’s permission to show more, we display only small snippets of text –- at most, two or three sentences surrounding your search term -– to help you determine if you’ve found what you’re looking for.)<br /><br />Of course, this is just the beginning. As we digitize more of the world's books -- whether rare, common, popular or obscure -- people everywhere will be able to discover them on Google Book Search.

Download the classics

Posted by Adam Mathes, Associate Product Manager, Google Book Search Starting today, you can go to Google Book Search and download full cop...

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Get your people talking

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Raju Gulabani, Product Manager, Google Apps for Your Domain</span><br /><br />Back in February, we <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/02/big-mail-on-campus.html">blogged</a> about an experiment called "Gmail for your domain" that enabled IT administrators to power their custom domain email with Gmail with 2GB of storage, powerful search tools, and other Gmail features to all of their users. Since then, we've been listening to feedback from thousands of small businesses, K-12 schools, non-profits, universities, even families with their own websites, and based on what they've suggested, we've added so many features that the original name just didn't describe the service accurately any longer.<br /><br />So say hello to <a href="http://www.google.com/a">Google Apps for Your Domain</a>, a service available at no cost to organizations of all shapes and sizes.<br /><br />We think we may be on to something here: all the functionality of Gmail, Google Talk and Google Calendar wrapped up with tools to make them work for your organization, plus Google Page Creator for designing and publishing your website. There's no hardware or software required, and you can customize the user interfaces with your branding and color scheme, so they look and feel like your own.<br /><br />Things have come a long way in the last six months, and we're still working on the service. If you're from a larger business or university with more advanced needs for communications and sharing, please <a href="https://www.google.com/a/interestPremium?login=yes">get in touch</a> regarding premium versions of the service, due out later this year.

Get your people talking

Posted by Raju Gulabani, Product Manager, Google Apps for Your Domain Back in February, we blogged about an experiment called "Gmail f...

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We love you, webmasters

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Vanessa Fox, Product Manager, Webmaster Central, and Adam Lasnik, Search Evangelist</span><br /><br />We always aim to offer our users relevant and helpful results, and webmasters provide the great content that we point to. Unfortunately -- though we've had the pleasure of chatting with many of you in a variety of forums, around the blogosphere, and at many conferences across the world -- we simply haven't been able to interact with every one of you. So we're excited to announce our new <a href="http://www.google.com/webmasters/">Google Webmaster Central</a>, which enables us to have productive conversations with many more of you, all the time.<br /><br />Recently, we've added:<br /><ul><li>A new <a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/" title="blog">Webmaster Central blog</a>, where you'll find lots of information about how we crawl and index sites.</li><li>An expanded <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help" title="Google Group">Webmaster Help Google Group</a> featuring helpful conversations with other webmasters and Googlers.</li><li>Tons of new and updated <a href="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters" title="FAQs">FAQs.</a> </li></ul> Furthermore, Google Sitemaps has been renamed <span style="font-weight: bold;">Google webmaster tools</span>. It's more than a new coat of paint; we've added and improved lots of geeky goodies to help give you more info and control.<br /><br />For those of you who've already established a Google sitemap, have no fear: the <a href="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40318&topic=8514" title="Sitemaps protocol">Sitemaps protocol</a> remains unchanged and Sitemaps submission mechanisms and reporting is still available from the Sitemaps tab. If you haven't already added a Sitemap, you might want to <a href="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40318&topic=8514" title="learn more about it">learn more about it</a>. (In short, putting a Sitemap file on your site enables you to tell us <span style="font-style: italic;">what</span> pages your site has, <span style="font-style: italic;">which </span>of them are most important, and <span style="font-style: italic;">how often</span> they are typically updated.)<br /><br />You've worked hard on your sites, and, not surprisingly, you want to make sure they're listed appropriately in Google, so of course you have lots of questions. You can find many answers simply by creating a <a href="http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/siteoverview" title="Google webmaster tools account">Google webmaster tools account</a> (if you have a Google Account, you're already set), adding your site URL to your account, and verifying that you own the site. A few of the many things you can do with webmaster tools:<br /><ul><li>Tell us if you'd <a href="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=44231" title="prefer your site's URLs to be indexed with the www or without">prefer your site's URLs to be indexed with the www or without</a>.</li><li>View any <a href="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35120&topic=8474" title="errors we had crawling your site">errors we had crawling your site</a>.</li><li> See an <a href="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35237&topic=8475" title="analysis of your robots.txt file">analysis of your robots.txt file</a> and a way to test changes to it.</li><li>See what <a href="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35252&topic=8512" title="searches bring up your site">searches bring up your site</a> in the results and what position the site shows up.</li><li><a href="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40052" title=" Request reinclusion"> Request reinclusion</a> of your site if you're previously violated the webmaster guidelines.</li></ul> We've also put together a comprehensive webmaster help center to answer more of your questions, such as:<br /><ul><li> <a href="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769" title="What are Google's webmaster guidelines">What are Google's webmaster guidelines</a>?</li><li> <a href="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34432&topic=8524" title="How can I improve my site's ranking">How can I improve my site's ranking</a>?<a href="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34434&topic=8523" title="Why doesn't my site show up for a specific keyword"><br /></a></li><li><a href="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34434&topic=8523" title="Why doesn't my site show up for a specific keyword">Why doesn't my site show up for a specific keyword</a>?</li><li> <a href="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34464&topic=8523" title="My URL changed, so how can I get Google to index my new site">My URL changed, so how can I get Google to index my new site</a>?</li><li> <a href="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34473&topic=8523" title="What's a "supplemental result"">What's a "supplemental result"</a>?</li></ul> With our webmaster tools and webmaster help center, we're able to tackle an increasing number of questions and make the answers available to <span style="font-style: italic;">all</span> webmasters. But we're not planning to rest on our laurels. We're listening to your concerns (in person and all over the Net!) and working hard to expand the content and languages of our help center. We appreciate the webmaster community very much, and look forward to many great conversations to come. We couldn't do search without you.

We love you, webmasters

Posted by Vanessa Fox, Product Manager, Webmaster Central, and Adam Lasnik, Search Evangelist We always aim to offer our users relevant and ...

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Happy birthday, Google Talk!

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Lewis Lin, Product Marketing Manager, Google Talk</span><br /><br />A year ago today, we launched <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/08/google-gets-to-talking.html">Google Talk</a>. On the days leading up to launch, we spent long summer nights fueled by <a href="http://rezab.com/">Reza's</a> eclectic play list. Thankfully, Google Talk didn't have <a href="http://www.google.com/trends/music">Music Trends</a> back then. The team listened to everything from 2Pac to Ludacris to Biggie. <br /><br />We want to thank all the users who have submitted product feedback. We'd also like to thank the millions of users who are using the Google Talk network – either through the <a href="http://www.google.com/talk/">Google Talk client</a>, <a href="http://mail.google.com/mail/help/chat.html">Gmail chat</a>, or <a href="http://www.google.com/talk/otherclients.html">other supported clients</a>. Our users love the chat integration within Gmail, and we're planning to make it easier to chat with your buddies through other Google services.<br /><br />Want to send us a birthday message? Leave us a <a href="http://www.google.com/talk/whatsnew.html">voicemail</a> at talkbirthday@gmail.com.<br /><br />MEEP.

Happy birthday, Google Talk!

Posted by Lewis Lin, Product Marketing Manager, Google Talk A year ago today, we launched Google Talk . On the days leading up to launch, we...

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Finding the wealth in your library (and everyone else's)

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Bruno Fonseca, Google Brazil</span><br /><br />As a student and then as a researcher, I used to haunt libraries in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. I spent time looking for the books I needed, but also happened to find gems by chance, as I scanned the shelves I walked by. Fun as it was to find an unexpected treasure, I always knew that much remained hidden. Large libraries are way too big to just walk around and browse, even for an enthusiastic teenager.<br /><br />Today, we're launching the Library Catalog Search feature in Google Book Search, designed to help casual readers and bookworms everywhere find gems in the libraries around the world. Queries on <a href="http://books.google.com">Google Book Search</a> will automatically include results from library catalogs when appropriate. Each result includes a "Find Libraries" link to help readers find libraries that hold the book -- ideally a library nearby, or if need be, a library far away. For example, after reading <a href="http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0486203948&id=kWoJ8mEEJ0wC&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=fads+and+fallacies&sig=9yb3NrszgTXTEgxmgkh6bJu4LbM">Martin Gardner's book <i>Fads and Fallacies</i></a>, I wanted to follow up on <a href="http://books.google.com/books?q=immanuel+velikovsky">Immanuel Velikovsky's books</a> about scientific explanations for biblical miracles. Clicking on the "Find Libraries" link for Velikovsky's <a href="http://worldcatlibraries.org/oclc/475631&referer=brief_results"><i>Worlds in Collision</i></a>, I found that a copy was available in the University of Sao Paulo library. <br /><br />This is true of many types of books in countries all over the world -- my colleagues in Google's Zurich office tell me about being able to find <a href="http://books.google.com/books?q=Harry+Potter+chamber+of+secrets&as_libcat=1&sa=X&oi=libcat&ct=more-results"><i>Harry Potter and the Chambers of Secrets</i></a> for their nephews and nieces. In many cases, it's even possible to click through to the local library and reserve the book.<br /><br />For this feature, we have worked with more than 15 library union catalogs that have information about libraries from more than 30 countries, as well as with our colleagues working on <a href="http://scholar.google.com">Google Scholar</a> (which includes a similar feature just for scholarly books).<br /><br />We would like to acknowledge and fete our partners who have collected information about the wealth in world's libraries with amazing thoroughness and care. And we're looking to work with union catalogs in other parts of the world so it can be just as easy for library patrons elsewhere to learn what their libraries have waiting for them.<br /><br />If you're a library patron and can't find the books you're looking for, ask your local library to participate in this program. If you are a librarian at a union catalog and would like to work with us to help users find books in your collections, please <a href="mailto:scholar-library@google.com">contact us</a>.<br /><br />Here's hoping readers worldwide will use this to discover and explore the wonderful collections in the world's libraries.

Finding the wealth in your library (and everyone else's)

Posted by Bruno Fonseca, Google Brazil As a student and then as a researcher, I used to haunt libraries in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. I spent t...

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