Talk on your Personalized Homepage

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Rhett Robinson, Software Engineer</span><br /><br />We created the Personalized Homepage to help you gather all the things you care about on Google and across the web in one place. And since one of the things we all care about is communicating with friends, today we're excited to unveil a new version of Google Talk for your Personalized Homepage. The Google Talk Gadget lets you see your contacts and chat with your friends right on your homepage, and you don't have to download anything to start chatting. We've also added a few new features to make your chats a bit more colorful, like the ability to view <a title="YouTube videos" href="http://www.youtube.com/">YouTube videos</a> and <a title="Picasa Web Albums" href="http://picasaweb.google.com/">Picasa Web Albums</a> photos in your chats. And just like many other gadgets, you can also add the Google Talk Gadget to your own webpage or blog.<br /><br />To see the Google Talk Gadget in action on the Google Personalized Homepage, check out this <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPTP3rXKHvc">short video</a>. You can also read more about it on the <a href="http://googletalk.blogspot.com/">Google Talk Blog</a>. Then go ahead and <a href="http://www.google.com/ig/add?moduleurl=googletalk.xml&source=gtgb">add it to your homepage</a>.

Talk on your Personalized Homepage

Posted by Rhett Robinson, Software Engineer We created the Personalized Homepage to help you gather all the things you care about on Google ...

Đọc thêm »

Google Code Jam Latin America 2007

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Berthier Ribeiro Neto, Engineering Site Director, Google Brazil</span><br /><br />On March 1, we celebrated the Latin American coding community by hosting the first-ever <a href="http://www.google.com/codejamlatinamerica/">Google Code Jam Latin America</a> competition. Registrations definitely exceeded expectations: more than 5,000 eager programmers from around the continent signed up. The Code Jam consists of two online rounds, in which participants compete to solve three coding problems more quickly and accurately than their competitors. Then we invited the top 50, who came from across the region (and included one woman!), to compete in the onsite finals at our engineering office in <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Belo+Horizonte,+Brazil&ie=UTF8&z=13&om=1&iwloc=addr">Belo Horizonte</a>.<br /><br />This year's <a href="http://www.google.com/codejamlatinamerica/previous.html">grand prize went to Fábio Dias Moreira</a>, a student at Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro. The winner of the 2004 Global Code Jam, Sergio Sancho of Buenos Aires, took second place. Here's a photo of me with Fábio just after he'd won. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh81i_BQ0G4_zRnTYeo7gdmO6e9ty0vgXYQnQCDRLMIM_xXRhGNjU5nY65_4qSweAcPcpVn5DEwDgh4lObbE3D625Uwbw8eEuov0ACJg8H6tlDSiVUKSmoIvVrmnlk3TJVs5agXI_4YWv5e/s1600-h/LatAm_2007_codejam_winner+%282%29.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5041484531498801138" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh81i_BQ0G4_zRnTYeo7gdmO6e9ty0vgXYQnQCDRLMIM_xXRhGNjU5nY65_4qSweAcPcpVn5DEwDgh4lObbE3D625Uwbw8eEuov0ACJg8H6tlDSiVUKSmoIvVrmnlk3TJVs5agXI_4YWv5e/s320/LatAm_2007_codejam_winner+%282%29.JPG" style="cursor: pointer;" /></a><br /><br />This Code Jam also featured Google engineering presentations and information about our R&D activities in Latin America. We're delighted that so many of the finalists expressed their interest in joining Google. If you're interested yourself, visit <a href="http://www.google.com/support/jobs/bin/static.py?page=about.html&about=locations">our global jobs page</a>.

Google Code Jam Latin America 2007

Posted by Berthier Ribeiro Neto, Engineering Site Director, Google Brazil On March 1, we celebrated the Latin American coding community by h...

Đọc thêm »

World Cup action is upon us

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Sadeesh Kumar Duraisamy, Software Engineer</span><br /><br />If you're not into cricket, read no further. But if you are, you must know that everyone has an opinion on cricket and each point of view is unique. You sometimes choose to share your views with friends and family over a ‘dinner and watching the cricket match’ get-together ritual. Your uncle often interjects with his usual support for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shane_Warne">Shane Warne</a>'s superb bowling, even though Shane is now retired and not playing for Australia in this year’s <a href="http://cricketworldcup.indya.com/">World Cup</a>.<br /><br />Whatever your favourite mode of cricket expression might be, the <a href="http://www.google.co.in/cricket">Google cricket campaign in India</a> allows you to join in the world cup excitement in more ways than one. Howzzat?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Talk cricket on Orkut</span><br />Cricket discussions that started in the elevator can spill over to the <a href="http://www.orkut.com/">Orkut</a> network. Especially this season, in association with us, cricket expert and former Indian cricket captain <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krish_Srikkanth">Krish Srikkanth</a> has created <a href="http://www.orkut.com/worldcupwithkrish">his own community on Orkut</a> to interact with cricket lovers, debate the latest happenings and just share cricket views.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Express yourself on a blog</span><br />Write your own views about cricket on <a href="http://www.blogger.com/">Blogger</a>, and then publish and share them with the world online. If you would rather read about cricket than write, Krish has also created <a href="http://www.worldcupwithkrish.blogspot.com/">his own blog</a> on this year's World Cup action. Get to know him and his take on the games and his memories of his 1983 victory at close quarters. And if you've taken a fancy to blogging, submit your own blog this World Cup season to our <a href="http://www.google.co.in/cricket/contest.html">cricket blogging contest for Indian audiences</a>.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Get cricket scores & news </span><br />If work or school are getting in the way of your cricket enjoyment, keep up to date with match scores and World Cup cricket news by personalizing your Google homepage with the latest <a href="http://www.google.co.in/ig/add?moduleurl=http%3A//www.google.co.in/cricket/igoogle/news.xml">cricket gadgets</a>. If you prefer, you can also get cricket scores, exciting images and cricket videos straight to your desktop with Google <a href="http://desktop.google.co.in/plugins/c/sidebar/sports.html?hl=en-gb">desktop cricket gadgets.</a><br /><br />So if you're a cricket aficionado, join the World Cup fun with Google. And if you're not? More for the rest of us to enjoy!

World Cup action is upon us

Posted by Sadeesh Kumar Duraisamy, Software Engineer If you're not into cricket, read no further. But if you are, you must know that eve...

Đọc thêm »

Places you never thought you would visit

<span class="byline-author">Posted by James Leape, Director General, WWF International</span><br /><br />Not long ago, after tending to official meetings in Yaounde, Cameroon, I had an opportunity to drive seven hours southwest of the capital to one of WWF’s project sites<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj-lG7JSgWfkbCeIKlcL7sqWSYoQBx5KHAsydfbLNFGctJCPy3wwk_HYCGBazVLMH2jpNCHnrpAHoluY4D5R3ZfIGKtqfPPL85MZ-PwlAuAF5vlx04RXJ_RQ7DD0tW9Tae4iu6iUX1Zpg/s1600-h/WWF+blog+image.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5040115081626988098" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj-lG7JSgWfkbCeIKlcL7sqWSYoQBx5KHAsydfbLNFGctJCPy3wwk_HYCGBazVLMH2jpNCHnrpAHoluY4D5R3ZfIGKtqfPPL85MZ-PwlAuAF5vlx04RXJ_RQ7DD0tW9Tae4iu6iUX1Zpg/s320/WWF+blog+image.jpg" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" /></a>—the Campo-Ma'an National Park—which you can now visit on <a title="Google Earth" href="http://earth.google.com/">Google Earth</a>.<p></p> Created in 2000, the Campo-Ma’an park is a nature lover’s paradise with 80 species of mammals, including endangered elephants, gorillas and chimpanzees, as well as at least 302 species of birds, 122 species of reptiles, more than 80 species of amphibians, 249 species of fish, and a high level of endemic plant life. However, it is the local people who make this area so special. The communities living near the park are keen to protect their natural resources, but also desperate for economic development. WWF is working in partnership with them to promote community-based nature tourism as one solution.<br /><p></p> <p> By opening Google Earth and selecting the new WWF layer under "Global Awareness," you too can visit this extraordinary place. Watch this and over 150 WWF projects across the world and connect with <a title="WWF’s global website" href="http://www.panda.org/">WWF’s global website</a>.Track Campo Ma’an’s progress; it will take some time, but if we succeed in this project, both the local communities and the park will benefit.</p>

Places you never thought you would visit

Posted by James Leape, Director General, WWF International Not long ago, after tending to official meetings in Yaounde, Cameroon, I had an o...

Đọc thêm »

A bird's eye view of mountaintop destruction with Google Earth

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Mary Anne Hitt, Executive Director, Appalachian Voices<br /><br /></span><p> The first time I flew over southern West Virginia and saw <a href="http://www.ilovemountains.org/" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">mountaintop removal coal mining</a> from the air, I knew that if everyone could see what I had seen—mountain after mountain blown up and then dumped into streams in the neighboring valleys—they would think twice about where their electricity came from the next time they flipped a light switch.<br /><br />That's why we at <a href="http://www.appalachianvoices.org/" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">Appalachian Voices</a>, and our partner groups, created the <a href="http://www.ilovemountains.org/memorial/" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">National Memorial for the Mountains</a>, using Google Earth to tell the stories of more than 470 mountains that have been lost, as the centerpiece of our website <a href="http://www.ilovemountains.org/" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">www.iLoveMountains.org</a>. We never imagined that those stories would now be available to over 200 million people as part of the latest release of <a href="http://earth.google.com/featured_content.html" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">featured content</a> in Google Earth.</p> <p> Now it's your turn to fly over the region. I invite you to take a look at the mountaintop removal layer in the new featured content for <a href="http://earth.google.com/" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">Google Earth</a>. Look for "Appalachian Mountaintop Removal" under the "Global Awareness" folder of the "Layers" sidebar. You can take the site tour of a mountaintop removal operation, explore the featured mountains and affected communities marked with blue flag buttons, and use the slider bar to see high resolution images of these mountains before and after mountaintop removal. To view all the locations of the over 470 mountains that have been destroyed, please visit the full featured version of the Memorial on <a href="http://www.ilovemountains.org/" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">www.iLoveMountains.org</a>.</p> <p> Thanks for visiting and helping us spread the word, and thanks to everyone at Google Earth who worked so hard to help us bring this important information to life. </p>

A bird's eye view of mountaintop destruction with Google Earth

Posted by Mary Anne Hitt, Executive Director, Appalachian Voices The first time I flew over southern West Virginia and saw mountaintop re...

Đọc thêm »

2nd Annual Google Test Automation Conference

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Karen Wickre, Google Blog team</span><br /><br />For those who are interested in automated testing as a way to improve software quality, there's info on the Google Testing Blog about on our <a href="http://googletesting.blogspot.com/2007/03/2nd-annual-google-test-automation.html">second annual conference on automated testing</a>. It'll take place in New York in August; the deadline for submissions is April 6.

2nd Annual Google Test Automation Conference

Posted by Karen Wickre, Google Blog team For those who are interested in automated testing as a way to improve software quality, there's...

Đọc thêm »

Hitting spammers where it hurts

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Brad Taylor, Gmail anti-spam engineer</span><br /><br />I spend my days and nights here on the Gmail team fighting spam. From stock spam to empty spam to you-won-the-lottery spam, we expend a lot of energy—human and machine—on keeping our users' inboxes clean. So when I saw the <a href="http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2007/2007-34.htm">SEC's announcement today</a> about suspending trading on stocks that are frequent targets of spam scams, I was thrilled. Hit them where it hurts!<br /><br />Stock spam is a particularly nasty problem because it is particularly difficult to find the perpetrators, and its after-effects can be so devastating to individual investors who've been lured in. These spammers are often the most creative too, and we've put many person-years of effort into keeping up with their latest tricks.<br /><br />We know how much Gmail users love their clean inboxes. Every day we look for the relatively few messages that slip through our filter and work to deploy solutions quickly to catch them the next time. It's hard work, but we're proud that even though more spam is being sent these days, less of it is getting into Gmail inboxes. But even if Gmail can catch a lot of it, spammers will continue to send the spams in the hopes that someone else's filter will fail to catch them. It's so nice to see a root cause be addressed, as the SEC has done today, which will make the world a better place for both Gmail and non-Gmail users alike. Bravo!<br /><br />Don't get me wrong: this is not a magic bullet, but it will help. There's still lots more that needs to be done.<br /><br />How can you help in the fight? Your most powerful tool is the "Report Spam" button. Use it early and often. That isn't just there to get the spammy message into the spam folder. It sends valuable information back to the spam team that helps us flag messages and senders so we can keep future messages out of your and millions of other inboxes.

Hitting spammers where it hurts

Posted by Brad Taylor, Gmail anti-spam engineer I spend my days and nights here on the Gmail team fighting spam. From stock spam to empty sp...

Đọc thêm »