healthy4u

Running the Relay Del Sol

Posted by Chris Holstrom, Technical Writer At Google we like to do things fast -- that's why you get search results in a fraction of a second, and that's why 12 speedy Googlers traveled to Phoenix this past weekend to run the <a href="http://www.ragnarrelay.com/delsol/">Relay Del Sol</a>. The Relay Del Sol is a 187-mile overnight relay race through the Arizona desert. Between the time Dan Brown started us off at 6 pm on Friday night and the time that I crossed the finish line at 1 pm Saturday afternoon, we each ran three grueling relay legs. Some of those legs were in the dark of night, with coyotes howling in the distance and us wearing lights and reflective gear to make us visible to cars. Other legs were in the heat of the desert sun -- and cacti don't provide much shade. Through it all, we stuck to our aggressive goal pace of just over six minutes per mile. It was good that we could run that fast, because we faced some serious competition from the <a href="http://www.marathongis.com/">MarathonGIS</a> team. After about 130 miles, they were just seconds behind us. We responded to the challenge, though, and really turned it on for our third set of legs. As we approached the finish in Scottsdale, we had built up a solid lead. I knew that victory was within reach when I took the handoff for the final leg. When I approached the finish, I saw my team waiting to cross the line with me. I pumped my arms in the air and flashed a huge smile, overwhelmed with the amazing teamwork and tremendous personal efforts that everyone contributed to the race. We came across the line together as the <a href="http://www.ragnarrelay.com/delsol/results07.php">first place team</a>. It was a great victory for us and an incredibly fun weekend. Here's our team: <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYF-X-XNHvGIOJGtw7Wv_VyYN_Mg0qk830nPEOh9FUjIWjOPldSFY6OAz16mw5f-kLJB1D3WHM1Ao8W4341lVfqSQCTkahbGkrXtP_gtsLrh_NNWa9_C3TlrR0iHxfdxdiEB628ZBoHW2x/s1600-h/Relay_DelSol_winners.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5048973773681186386" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYF-X-XNHvGIOJGtw7Wv_VyYN_Mg0qk830nPEOh9FUjIWjOPldSFY6OAz16mw5f-kLJB1D3WHM1Ao8W4341lVfqSQCTkahbGkrXtP_gtsLrh_NNWa9_C3TlrR0iHxfdxdiEB628ZBoHW2x/s320/Relay_DelSol_winners.jpg" style="cursor: pointer;" /></a> Back row, left to right: Belsasar Lepe, Eddie Higgins, Don Faul, Tom Phillips, Dan Brown, Sean Knapp. Front row, left to right: Nathan Stoll, Chris Estwanik, Chris Holstrom, Jared Jacobs, Katie Hotchkiss, Bismarck Lepe.

Running the Relay Del Sol

Posted by Chris Holstrom, Technical Writer At Google we like to do things fast -- that's why you get search results in a fraction of a s...

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Deadlines for submitting to testing, scalability conferences

Posted by Amanda Camp, Software Engineer Some of the most interesting conversations I've had working in the Kirkland office have been sitting around the lunch table. Bringing together smart people working on tough problems and encouraging them to brainstorm seems to generate the most innovative new ideas. The fact is Googlers love to discuss new ideas, and not just with each other. That is why we we're planning two conferences to share ideas. We want to hear about what other people in the technical community are doing to face the same hard problems we work on. Our <a href="http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2007/02/seattle-conference-on-scalability.html">Seattle conference on scalable systems</a> is in June, and our second annual <a href="http://googletesting.blogspot.com/2007/03/2nd-annual-google-test-automation.html">Test Automation Conference</a> will take place New York in August. There's still time to submit a proposal for either one. The Testing Automation Conference deadline for submissions is Friday, April 6 (email <a href="mailto:gtac-submission@google.com">gtac-submission@google.com</a>). As for the Seattle Scalability Conference, if "Beowulf" doesn't remind you of English literature, or you didn't know "Selenium" is also an element, you're just the person we're waiting to hear from. Here's a list of some of the topics we'd be interested in (you may have others): Scalable algorithms: <ul><li>Parallelization techniques (fully automatic or programmer-assisted)</li><li>Programming models and languages for multiprocessor systems (e.g., transactional memory, systems of communicating objects) </li><li>Algorithms that function in the face of system failures (flaky hardware, os bugs, network failures)</li></ul>Scalable systems: <ul><li> Managing large computation clusters (configuration, upgrade, repair, status monitoring) </li><li> Managing failure (automatic failure detection/diagnosis/repair) </li><li> Opportunities and challenges of multi-core architecture </li><li> Job management systems/schedulers for large compute clusters</li></ul>If you have an interesting approach or an exciting new solution to any of these, send an outline of your 45-minute presentation to <a href="mailto:scalabilityconf@google.com">scalabilityconf@google.com</a> by Friday, April 20.

Deadlines for submitting to testing, scalability conferences

Posted by Amanda Camp, Software Engineer Some of the most interesting conversations I've had working in the Kirkland office have been si...

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Live art day

Posted by Kevin Gough, Senior Product & Marketing Manager, Enterprise A few months ago we had a well-known spray can artist named Vulcan paint a set of <a href="http://mini.google.com/">Google Mini search appliances</a> for a Japanese launch event. They came out really hot, so this past Friday we invited him to come to the Google campus in Mountain View and do a live painting during lunch time. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHbdI2UMO3jDeIZU66bskTNC4Pwvv1JMrMasJL1W_skaTWc3Yg39m_rIjSalcQVoSQRsb4E7NCgHeinaIQu5tRE8xb2uOOgukY-Qg9EyCR9TbDnQsIdwBnnTUFDTEJ3z5Qf-ldTYN2u04/s1600-h/Mini_stacked.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5048935813471288482" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHbdI2UMO3jDeIZU66bskTNC4Pwvv1JMrMasJL1W_skaTWc3Yg39m_rIjSalcQVoSQRsb4E7NCgHeinaIQu5tRE8xb2uOOgukY-Qg9EyCR9TbDnQsIdwBnnTUFDTEJ3z5Qf-ldTYN2u04/s200/Mini_stacked.JPG" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 172px; height: 131px;" /></a>It just so happened that our new Executive Chef from Beijing—a master ice sculptor in addition to his culinary talents—was also on campus. So during lunch <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/jeromyh/GoogleArtDay33007">we had spray cans and chainsaws flying</a>, which led to the creation of two really cool pieces. <insert picture="" of="" the="" painted="" google="" mini="" search="" go="" vulcan_minis=""> For those of you in the U.S., we've made pictures of the Google Mini search appliances as well as other art hanging at Google available to <a href="http://www.startmobile.com/vulcan">download to your cell phone</a>. Also check out this very cool time-lapse YouTube video of the painting coming to life by hip-hop filmmaker Kevin Epps. <object height="350" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/1RROoo22Lak"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/1RROoo22Lak" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="350" width="425"></embed></object></insert>

Live art day

Posted by Kevin Gough, Senior Product & Marketing Manager, Enterprise A few months ago we had a well-known spray can artist named Vulca...

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About the New Orleans imagery in Google Maps and Earth

Posted by John Hanke, Director, Google Maps/Local/Earth This weekend, there has been <a href="http://news.google.com/nwshp?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;hl=en&tab=wn&ncl=1114821833">a lot of discussion</a> about our imagery of New Orleans in Google Maps and Google Earth. I thought I'd give you some background that may clear things up, and also let you know about new imagery of the region now available. In 2005, shortly after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, a very motivated group of volunteers at Google worked with NOAA, NASA, and others to post updated imagery of the affected areas in Google Maps and Google Earth as quickly as possible. This data served as a useful reference for many people -- from those interested in understanding what had happened, to friends and families checking on the status of loved ones and property, to rescuers and relief workers. Shortly after the event, we received a voicemail thanking us for <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,130045-page,9-c,freeware/article.html">the role Google Earth played</a> in guiding rescuers to stranded victims. Several months later, in September 2006, the storm imagery was replaced with pre-Katrina aerial photography of much higher resolution as part of a regular series of global data enhancements. We continued to make available the Katrina imagery, and associated overlays such as damage assessments and Red Cross shelters, on <a href="http://earth.google.com/katrina.html">a dedicated site</a> (<a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://earth.google.com/katrina.html">earth.google.com/katrina.html</a>). Our goal throughout has been to produce a global earth database of the best quality -- accounting for timeliness, resolution, cloud cover, light conditions, and color balancing. Given that the changes that affected New Orleans happened many months ago, we were a bit surprised by some of these recent comments. Nevertheless, we recognize the increasingly important role that imagery is coming to play in the public discourse, and so we're happy to say that we have been able to expedite the processing of recent (2006) aerial photography for the Gulf Coast area (already in process for an upcoming release) that is equal in resolution to the data it is replacing. That new data was published in <a href="http://earth.google.com/">Google Earth</a> and <a href="http://maps.google.com/">Google Maps</a> on Sunday evening. Make no mistake, this wasn't any effort on our part to rewrite history. But it looks like this April Fool's joke was on us.

About the New Orleans imagery in Google Maps and Earth

Posted by John Hanke, Director, Google Maps/Local/Earth This weekend, there has been a lot of discussion about our imagery of New Orleans ...

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Project Teaspoon

Project Teaspoon

Posted by Michael Krantz and Marissa Mayer, TiSP Product Team That's what we call it here at Google, anyway. What you'll call it is ...

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Google Notebook goes multi-lingual

Posted by Xiangtian Dai, Software Engineer I can read English. If you're reading this blog post, you probably can too. But if you're like me—someone who is not one of the <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=native+english+speaker+number">300 or 400 million</a> native English speakers in a world of more than <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=world+population">6 billion</a> people—you might be more comfortable on using your own language for personal activities. I know I am, and I can still remember the days 16 years ago when my dad and I were tweaking the home PC-XT to make a database application work in Chinese instead of in English. Now being a software engineer myself working in this great company whose products are used by people around the world, I would almost feel guilty if my product doesn't speak in the same language as you do. Fortunately, my feeling of guilt is coming to an end. When we released the <a href="http://www.google.com/notebook/">Google Notebook</a> in its shiny, fresh new look, we also made it speak 17 other languages besides English. We have German, Polish, Turkish—to name a few—and of course Chinese. Admittedly, there is still a long way to go for us to reach everyone in the world in all the thousands of languages. Rest assured, though, that just because your language isn't one of the first doesn't mean that we have forgotten you. In case you haven't heard about it before, <a href="http://www.google.com/notebook/">Google Notebook</a> lets you conveniently collect, organize and share information while searching and browsing the web. If you've tried it already, I urge you to try again, as its new interface is much smoother to use than it was—and I'm not saying that just because I'm looking at it in Chinese.

Google Notebook goes multi-lingual

Posted by Xiangtian Dai, Software Engineer I can read English. If you're reading this blog post, you probably can too. But if you're...

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How do you know you're getting the best care possible?

Posted by Adam Bosworth, Vice President When I talk to people using Google to search for information about their health questions and how well search answers these questions, I hear several common concerns. I want to list them and discuss our thoughts about them. How do I know if the information is trustworthy and reliable? There is a lot of material out there about drugs, diseases, procedures and treatments. How do you know what is trustworthy and what isn’t? Search is great at finding us places with relevant information, but it is hard to know which links are reliable and which are less so. Honestly, this is a hard problem. At Google, we have tried, as I said in an earlier post, to enlist the help of the health community to help us know which links contain medically reliable information, sift these reliable links so that they tend to show up relatively earlier in the search results, and then let you decide which groups in the health community you trust. If you go to Google and type in [Lipitor], for example, and then you click on the “For patients” link and look carefully, you’ll see that the search results often include at the bottom the word “Labeled By,” followed by words like NLM and HON. NLM stands for the National Library of Medicine, the world’s largest medical library, and HON stands for Health on the Net Foundation, an organization which is in the business of certifying web sites with health content that is reliable. These are organizations that have marked the part of the web that this link in the search results points to as medically reliable. It seems that we at Google may not have done a great job of making this clear enough. Unfortunately, many of you either don’t notice these words when you’re searching about health questions at Google or have no idea what they mean. Clearly, we can do better at making this kind of labeling noticeable and your ideas on how we could make it clear to you that a site is medically reliable or trustworthy would be greatly appreciated as we think this through. Am I getting the best standard of care? There is, actually, a lot of information out there about generally accepted medical guidelines for care. For most diseases, the medical literature lists the medically agreed-upon standard of treatment, rules to follow, and guidelines for which tests to administer and the best course of treatment - although it is hard to pull together from the various medical organizations and texts as it is constantly evolving. Experts determine which drugs make sense based upon a patient’s condition, other conditions and drugs, age, gender, weight, and so on. There are of course always cases where doctors need to make exceptions to these rules about which drug to administer due to side effects and/or prescribe an alternative drug due to the patient’s specific medical history. The point is that there are guidelines to help doctors with these decisions. However, this information isn’t really accessible to those of you who aren’t health professionals. Speaking, I think, both for those of us at Google and most of you, given our specific condition or conditions and medicines, just knowing what the guidelines and generally accepted standard of care is for us specifically would be hugely helpful in knowing what to discuss with our doctors and what to research further. Today, even if we can figure out which sites upon which to rely, it is hard to find this out. We don’t know where to start. Our treatment scares us, or our drugs have worrying side effects, or we’re just frightened that we’re not getting the treatment we should be getting. Honestly, this information can even help our doctors sometimes. They are over-worked and often pressed for time and it cannot ever hurt to double check. Sometimes they didn’t get accurate or complete information from us. While most drug-to-drug and drug-to-condition interactions are known to our doctors, they do change and the doctor might miss a new one or not know about all your drugs because we forgot to tell your doctor about one. The statistics show that mistakes happen. In fact at some point in a patient’s life, the odds of them being treated in a way which doesn’t follow the guidelines and rules is about 45%. There are estimates that somewhere between 44,000 and 98,000 Americans die every year from a preventable medical error at a hospital — or about 150 to 300 preventable inpatient death a day. And approximately 770,000 people are injured or die each year in hospitals from an adverse drug event. There are roughly 5,000 preventable medical errors a day taking place at doctor’s offices. So it seems that it would really help to let people know. It is tricky, however. Everybody’s condition is unique. It isn’t possible to just play doctor and tell you exactly what your treatment should be and why. Even doctors have a hard time with this because of the incredible and ever changing complexity of modern medicine. What is the best way to help people searching for answers to their health questions to know the right standard of care they should be receiving, what treatments or classes of medicines they should be researching, and what procedures might be indicated? Who is the best doctor or institution for you? Isn’t it strange that you can find out a lot about a restaurant on the web or about a movie, but not about a doctor? In fact you usually don’t even know who to go to and just accept whoever your general practitioner recommends? You clearly don’t just eat at restaurants other restaurants recommend, even though you might take it into account. Now admittedly there is a difference here. When it comes to food, you know what you like and the worst that can happen is you don’t like it. But when it comes to your health you may not know what is best, and you can’t necessarily tell if we’re getting the best possible care. Still, here is a common situation: You’ve been diagnosed. Your primary care physician and you have discussed it and it is clear that you need a specialist and your doctor has referred you to one, but you’re wondering how you know who is the best out there for you. How do you know whether they cover your insurance? How do you find them? Today, often you just take your doctor’s referral. Normally there are lots of doctors who could treat or diagnose you. And in point of fact there is a lot of information about doctors floating around in the ether. Where they went to school is known. Whether they are board certified is known. What is their specialty is known. CMS (Medicare) and insurance companies actually know how many procedures of various types most doctors regularly perform. And this turns out to matter. There is an excellent book out called <a href="http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0805063196&id=UUcuOkLacwkC&amp;pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&ots=gEFllHrmcN&dq=Atul+Gawande&sig=eAW-GxagGUmm_tt6LvrFXoKmshs#PPP11,M1">Complications by Atul Gawande</a> discussing a lot of these matters, but in particular the book notes that practice really does make perfect. But how do you know who is well seasoned? Do you always judge who to take care of you by how long they’ve been in practice? What does “best” really mean? This is a hard question. Mortality rates, for example, may not be a good indicator. Some specialists only treat the patients that others can’t handle, and so, naturally, even though they are the best in the world, their rates might not be the best. Sometimes your choice may be dictated by other considerations. If there are two possible specialists, one is a man and the other is a woman, then sometimes people care about that. It isn’t clear how we can best help. We don’t want to inadvertently steer you away from a brilliant doctor just because his or her mortality rate appears too high. What do you think, and what would you like to see made available on the web when you are searching for doctors? Summary At the end of the day, all these questions are about how you find the information you need. They are deceptively simple. If they were about restaurants, they would be trivial. But they are actually matters of life and death in the extreme and quality of life in the common case. In short, they matter profoundly. I’d like to say that we have all the answers. But we don’t. Mostly, at the moment, what we have is questions and <a href="http://www.google.com/support/health">we’d love to hear from you</a>. Update: New contact link.

How do you know you're getting the best care possible?

Posted by Adam Bosworth, Vice President When I talk to people using Google to search for information about their health questions and how we...

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