New dictionary translations

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Miguel García, Software Engineer, Zürich Engineering Office</span><br /><br />Google's <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/help/faq_translation.html#whatis">automatic translation</a> is handy for getting translations of complete sentences, paragraphs, and documents. But when you need to translate a single word, a bilingual dictionary can be very useful because it gives you translations for the many possible meanings a word might have. With that in mind, we've added <a href="http://translate.google.com/translate_dict?hl=en">dictionary translations</a> to <a href="http://translate.google.com/">Google Translate</a>. Now, for example, if you want to know how to say "play" in Spanish, you can <a href="http://translate.google.com/translate_dict?q=play&sa=N&hl=en&langpair=en%7Ces">use our dictionary translation</a> and learn that depending on the context it can be "jugar", "tocar", or "obra", among others.

New dictionary translations

Posted by Miguel García, Software Engineer, Zürich Engineering Office Google's automatic translation is handy for getting translations ...

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A smooth Apps move

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Vikaram Gupta, Software Engineer, Google Apps</span><br /><br />Today, it becomes a lot easier for organizations and schools to start using Google Apps email services without leaving any of their valuable email data behind. Our new self-service mail migration tools enables administrators using the Premier and Education Editions to easily copy existing mail from an IMAP server over to Google Apps. Now businesses and schools can spend less time worrying about "maintaining infrastructure" and focus more on the things that matter most to them -- like <a href="http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/admins/customers.html#biz">healthcare </a> or <a href="http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/admins/customers.html#edu">educating students</a>. <br /><br />One of the first organizations to test this out, Central Piedmont Community College, replaced its old email system for 30,000 users in just 3 weeks. And that process came down to 3 million emails flying from their server over to ours in just 24 hours -- more than 2,000 emails per minute, all without missing a beat.<br /><br />Once you're part of the Google Apps family, you can be sure there are more exciting things to come. In the past month alone, we added <a href="http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/admins/new.html">five new improvements</a> to make it even easier for organizations to share information and work together.

A smooth Apps move

Posted by Vikaram Gupta, Software Engineer, Google Apps Today, it becomes a lot easier for organizations and schools to start using Google A...

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Google and open source OCR

<span class="byline-author">Posted by T.V. Raman, Research Scientist</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">From time to time, our own <a href="http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/raman/">T.V. Raman</a> shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see -- tips that sighted people, among others, may also find useful. - Ed.</span><br /><br />As someone who cannot see, I prefer to live in a mostly paperless world. This means ruthlessly turning every piece of paper that enters my life into a set of bits that I can process digitally. I scan in everything. Until now, I have relied on commercial OCR packages to convert these images into readable text. OCR is perhaps one of the areas where the benefits of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law">Moore's Law</a> are most evident; today, OCR can do remarkably well when handed a page image. Until now, my only dissatisfaction with the status quo in this area has been that commercial OCR engines afford me little flexibility with respect to training them to do better on documents that are specific to me.<br /><br />The advent of our own open source OCR initiative, <a href="http://code.google.com/p/ocropus/">OCRopus</a> (source code: <a href="http://ocropus.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/">Ocropus Sources</a>) is a welcome change in this regard. I introduced support for <a href="http://code.google.com/p/emacspeak">OCRopus in Emacspeak</a> recently, and the HTML output this produces compares favorably with output from commercial OCR engines, provided you place the page at the right orientation on the scanner. OCRopus' extensibility, and the ability to express the OCR as a structured HTML document makes it an ideal starting point for producing rich spoken output. The possibilities are enormous for people being able to collectively train, customize and improve an OCR engine.

Google and open source OCR

Posted by T.V. Raman, Research Scientist From time to time, our own T.V. Raman shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as...

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Asia-Pacific Open House June 28th

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Christine Hong, Head of Engineering Operations, Asia Pacific</span><br /><br />We're hosting an Asia Pacific open house for engineers on Thursday, June 28 from 6-9pm on the <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=1600+Amphitheatre+Pky,+Mountain+View,+CA+94043&sll=37.0625,-95.677071&sspn=82.939223,105.996094&ie=UTF8&ll=37.423412,-122.086515&spn=0.042466,0.051756&amp;amp;amp;z=14&iwloc=addr&om=1">Google campus</a> in Mountain View. Ping Li from Accel Partners will moderate a panel discussion by the four directors of our engineering centers in India, Korea, Taiwan, and China. They'll talk about top tech trends in their respective markets, and we'll demo products developed in each location. Of course, there will be plenty of food & drink, and a raffle. This should be an informative networking event for Bay Area engineers and entrepreneurs with a technical background.<br /><br />Agenda: <ul><li>6-6:30 pm - Registration, food, drinks</li><li>6:30-8 pm - Panel discussion and Q&A</li><li>8-9 pm - Product demo, networking, and a raffle drawing</li></ul>If you're an engineer or an entrepreneur with a technical background who'd like to come, please email me at <span style="font-style: italic;">chong at google dot com</span> for your invitation. Make the subject line "APAC Open House 2007" and include:<br />- name<br />- title<br />- affiliation/company<br />- contact info<br /><br />We're looking forward to seeing you on the 28th.

Asia-Pacific Open House June 28th

Posted by Christine Hong, Head of Engineering Operations, Asia Pacific We're hosting an Asia Pacific open house for engineers on Thursda...

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Carbon neutrality by end of 2007

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Posted by Urs Hoelzle, Senior Vice President, Operations </span><br /><br />Climate change continues to be one of the biggest, most challenging problems our planet faces, and we know that a sustained global effort is needed if we're going to have any hope of reversing its effects. In that spirit, today we're announcing that Google will become carbon neutral by the end of 2007. This is an important step in our long-term pursuit of holistic environmental solutions.<br /><br />Our plan to neutralize Google's carbon footprint includes three basic strategies:<br /> - reduce energy consumption by maximizing efficiency;<br /> - invest in and use renewable energy sources; and<br /> - purchase carbon offsets for the emissions that we can't reduce directly.<br /><br />To calculate our carbon footprint, we took into account emissions from purchased electricity, employee commuting, business travel, construction, and server manufacturing. In a partnership with the <a title="Environmental Resources Trust" href="http://www.ert.net/">Environmental Resources Trust</a> (ERT), we have independently verified this assessment, and will do so every year.<br /><br />In order to meet our short-term goal of carbon neutrality, we have decided to purchase some carbon offsets. To be clear, we see carbon offsets not as a permanent solution but rather as a temporary tool which allows us to take full responsibility for our impact right away. By investing in projects elsewhere in the world that cut the overall amount of greenhouse gases, we can help reduce climate impact now while we develop more sustainable strategies for the future. When considering an offset project, we carefully examine the project's environmental integrity, its ability to be monitored and verified, and the impact that our investment will have in furthering that project's goals. In other words, we want to make sure that our offset funding directly enables the project, and that the carbon savings of the project are real.<br /><br />As you may have read, Google already has several other environmental programs and initiatives in place. Last week <a title="we announced" href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/06/climate-savers-computing-initiative.html">we announced</a> the <a href="http://www.climatesaverscomputing.org/" title="http://www.climatesaverscomputing.org/ Climate Savers Computing">Climate Savers Computing</a> initiative to greatly improve computing energy-efficiency standards. (Make sure your next computer purchase is a compliant PC!) Transportation is another major area of focus. Our employee shuttle system provides a commute for more than 1,500 Googlers daily around the San Francisco Bay area, and several hundred more have also taken advantage of our rebate when they bought a fuel-efficient vehicle.<br /><br />We're equally committed to finding and developing new green technologies and sources of energy. We <a title="just completed" href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/06/clean-energy-update.html">just completed</a> our solar panel installation in Mountain View, the single-largest corporate solar installation in the U.S. to date. We've also joined the World Resources Institute's <a title="Green Power Market Development Group" href="http://www.thegreenpowergroup.org/">Green Power Market Development Group</a>, so we can work with other companies to make more green power available to everyone. And of course <a href="http://google.org/" title="http://Google.org">Google.org</a> is working on creative new initiatives, including <a title="plug-in hybrid cars" href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/pressrel/rechargeit_20070618.html">plug-in hybrid cars</a>. In addition, we've set ourselves the ambitious goal of creating 50 megawatts of new renewable generation capacity--enough to power 50,000 typical U.S. homes--by 2012.<br /><br />Still, we're only one company, so aside from improving our own practices, we want to do more to raise awareness and commitment worldwide. We feel we can best do this through our products and services, which reach millions of people every day. For example, <a title="Google Transit" href="http://www.google.com/transit">Google Transit</a> makes it easier than ever to find and use public transportation around the globe. New custom tabs on iGoogle bring climate news, <a title="energy-related talks on video" href="http://www.google.com/ig/gmcreator?moduleurl=gm_youtube.xml">energy-related talks on video</a> from our @Google series and other environment-related content to your homepage. Google Maps users have created mashups to show <a title="possible coastal flooding" href="http://flood.firetree.net/">possible coastal flooding</a> if the sea level changes, or to map <a title="climate data for cities" href="http://www.climate-charts.com/climate-map.html">climate data for cities</a> worldwide. And we're urging lawmakers to create clear public policies on important issues like energy-efficiency standards, increased funding for public research and development of energy technologies, and regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.<br /><br />To learn more, visit our <a title="new site on energy initiatives" href="http://www.google.com/corporate/green/energy/">new site on energy initiatives</a>, which details much of this work to date.

Carbon neutrality by end of 2007

Posted by Posted by Urs Hoelzle, Senior Vice President, Operations Climate change continues to be one of the biggest, most challenging probl...

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More sharing

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Sam Schillace, Engineering Director</span><br /><br />We're pleased to announce that we've acquired the assets of Zenter, a company that provides software for creating online slide presentations.<br /><br />You've heard us talk a lot about using the web to improve group collaboration and information sharing. These days, when you create a document -- whether it's a text document, a spreadsheet, or a presentation -- you usually want to share it, collect feedback, or communicate about it in some way. We on the <a href="http://docs.google.com/" target="_blank">Google Docs & Spreadsheets</a> team focus on making this experience easier and more powerful for you. In particular, we're working to <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/were-expecting.html">add presentation-sharing capabilities</a> to Google Docs & Spreadsheets, and we're excited about the addition of Zenter's technology and team to that effort.

More sharing

Posted by Sam Schillace, Engineering Director We're pleased to announce that we've acquired the assets of Zenter, a company that pro...

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YouTube in 9 more domains

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Sakina Arsiwala, International Manager, YouTube</span><br /><br />The YouTube community began life speaking English, but thanks to the uniquely expressive medium of video, today there is a global village of content makers and viewers. With a noteworthy number of YouTube visitors now coming from outside the U.S., it's high time we go multilingual.<br /><br />Today at a Google press event in Paris, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen are announcing the launch of nine new domains in <a href="http://www.youtube.com.br/">Brazil</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.fr/">France</a>, <a href="http://it.youtube.com/">Italy</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.jp/">Japan</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.nl/">the Netherlands</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.pl/">Poland</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.es/">Spain</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.ie/">Ireland</a>, and the <a href="http://www.youtube.co.uk/">UK</a>.<br /><br />In response to many requests, each new site is fully translated and localized for each country including content (Featured Videos, Director Videos, Promotions), as well as the interfaces, search, user support, and such community features as video ratings, sharing, and content flagging. And these new localized versions are built using Google search technology, so you can quickly find more of what you want to see. Perhaps best of all, you can continue to use <a href="http://www.youtube.com/">youtube.com</a>, or move to one of these localized sites -- and switch seamlessly between the two. Happy creating, viewing and sharing!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Update:</span> Removed link to user content.

YouTube in 9 more domains

Posted by Sakina Arsiwala, International Manager, YouTube The YouTube community began life speaking English, but thanks to the uniquely expr...

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