healthy4u

Find a needle in a feedstack with Google Reader

Posted by Ben Darnell, Google Reader Engineer The fundamental problem with information is that there's too much of it, and this is probably why we all go to our trusted sources to learn what we really need to know. Your sources filter out the noise and present the most interesting bits to you in a useful way. For many of us, these sources include newspapers, magazines, and of course blogs. We built <a href="http://reader.google.com/">Google Reader</a> as a way for you to see all of your online sources in one place. So if you want to keep up with the chatter about the new iPods or Superbad, now you can. We've added a familiar search box to the top of Google Reader so you can search across all the blogs and sites to which you're subscribed. <a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Ap14FtNN91w/RuB0vOe5_gI/AAAAAAAAAPY/rl3o-UjOL1o/s1600-h/Reader_search.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5107210332128542210" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Ap14FtNN91w/RuB0vOe5_gI/AAAAAAAAAPY/rl3o-UjOL1o/s320/Reader_search.jpg" style="cursor: pointer;" /></a> See if this doesn't help with your information overload. And by the way, if you want to learn more about feed readers, here's a great explanation: <object height="350" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/0klgLsSxGsU"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/0klgLsSxGsU" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="350" width="425"></embed></object>

Find a needle in a feedstack with Google Reader

Posted by Ben Darnell, Google Reader Engineer The fundamental problem with information is that there's too much of it, and this is proba...

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Collect, share, and discover books

Posted by Adam Mathes, Product Manager Books often live a vibrant life offline, and through digitization Google Book Search tries to help them live an even more exciting life online through full text search. Today we're launching some new features that go beyond search so you can collect, share, and discover new books. To start, you can create your own personal collection on Book Search, and use it to help find just the right book from your collection for any occasion. Other people can view your library, so you can share your collection <a href="http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2007/09/my-own-library-on-book-search.html">as Bethany has done</a>. Or take a look at some <a href="http://books.google.com/googlebooks/mylibrary/">other interesting collections</a>. Digitized text is useful beyond search, too. It enables us to infer connections between books through shared passages. For example, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=F201AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA158&sig=MRlRSfXVKcRYQGwql0xrCKdbahk&source=gbs_quot&vq=%22Sir+Isaac+Newton,+a+little+before+he+died,+said,+I+don%27t+know+what+I+may+seem+to+the+world%3B+but%22">Sir Isaac Newton</a> once said: <blockquote> I know not what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.</blockquote>This quote has resonated and <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=F201AAAAMAAJ&qtid=37e78a8">been used in hundreds of books</a> from the early 1800s to 2007. You can discover connections between books through quotations like this in a feature we call "Popular passages." Read more and <a href="http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2007/09/dive-into-meme-pool-with-google-book.html">dive into the meme pool</a>. We've also launched a way to let users, select, copy and embed segments of public domain books (like the Newton quote) in any web page. We hope to make it as easy to blog and quote from a book as it is from any web page. Like many innovations at Google, a stellar <a href="http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2007/08/share-and-enjoy.html">summer intern worked on this</a> . We hope these new features help you discover, collect, and share some of the great truths just waiting to be discovered (or maybe re-discovered) in the great ocean of books before us.

Collect, share, and discover books

Posted by Adam Mathes, Product Manager Books often live a vibrant life offline, and through digitization Google Book Search tries to help th...

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Speaking in more languages

Posted by Vlad Patryshev, software engineer Many Google products (<a href="http://www.google.com/">Google.com</a>, <a href="http://www.blogger.com/">Blogger</a>, <a href="http://earth.google.com/">Google Earth</a>, and others) currently support more than 170 languages, from Abhazian to Zulu. Translations into most of these languages are done by volunteers from around the world who are eager to help people view and search the web in their own native language. To facilitate how we go about getting these languages, we created a volunteer translation program: <a href="http://www.google.com/transconsole">Google In Your Language</a>. Anybody can sign up as a volunteer translator by visiting the <a href="http://www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en"> Language Tools</a> page and then clicking on the <a href="http://www.google.com/transconsole">Google in Your Language link</a>. After verification, you'll be offered a list of products to translate, including the main search site, Gmail, iGoogle, Google Maps, and many others Although the amount of translation for each project is not overwhelming, it usually takes weeks for an individual volunteer to finish translating one site. Once a reasonable percentage of translations for Google pages in a given language is submitted, we'll add your language to production and, after a bit of time, you'll be able to see them in yet another language. Some "volunteer" languages are well represented and are nearly finished being translated, i.e. Armenian, Estonian, Slovenian are 95% complete; even Latin has 70% of its translations done. Representatives of other languages are not as active, i.e. Abhazian has been available for several years, but so far we don't have enough translations completed to release it into production. Tibetan, Inupak, Inuktikut, Wolof, Zhuang all have less than 10% of their content translated. Interestingly, each of those has more speakers than Faroese, which has 74% of texts translated. Recently we have added a bunch of new languages to the Google In Your Language program, including Navajo, Filipino, several Russian Federation languages (Avaric, Chechen, Chuvash, Komi), and some African languages (Akan, Bambara, Gikuyu, Kongo, Ndebele, Ndongo, Nyanja, Venda). Our hope is to attract even more volunteers to participate in this program so that Google can speak all the world's languages one day.

Speaking in more languages

Posted by Vlad Patryshev, software engineer Many Google products ( Google.com , Blogger , Google Earth , and others) currently support more ...

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Google Desktop for the Mac in 9 more languages

Posted by Rose Yao, Mac Product Manager In April we <a href="http://googlemac.blogspot.com/2007/04/google-desktop-for-mac_04.html">launched Google Desktop for the Mac</a> to further our goal of delivering great products on the Mac and making them universally available on all platforms. A big thanks to all of you for using Desktop for the Mac, and for sharing your feedback. Today we're tackling the second part of that "universal" goal: now Google Desktop for the Mac is available in 9 more languages: Chinese Simplified and Traditional, Dutch, UK English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish. There's more on this on the <a href="http://desktop.google.com/mac">Desktop for Mac site</a>. We look forward to lots more of you trying it and sending us feedback from all over, and in different languages. We hope you like it, and encourage you to watch for more updates from our <a href="http://googlemac.blogspot.com/">Google Mac team</a>.

Google Desktop for the Mac in 9 more languages

Posted by Rose Yao, Mac Product Manager In April we launched Google Desktop for the Mac to further our goal of delivering great products on...

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Supporting GrandCentral's Project CARE

Posted by Craig Walker and Vincent Paquet, Product Managers For homeless people and others in need, not having a stable phone number can be crippling: you need one to follow up on medical appointments, keep in touch with friends and loved ones, and hear back from prospective employers. When we <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/07/all-aboard.html">acquired</a> GrandCentral Communications last month, we were pleased to embrace their Project CARE initiative, which provides a permanent local phone number and unlimited voicemail service to people who need a way to stay connected. GrandCentral has been operating Project CARE ("Communications and Respect for Everybody") since April 2006, and with the help of more than <a href="http://www.grandcentral.com/about/projectcare/">20 community outreach partners</a> has provided more than 5,000 phone numbers and served close to 100,000 voicemail messages to homeless and needy people in the Bay Area. Someone calling a number from Project CARE will have the same experience as someone calling a standard phone number, and voicemail messages can be stored as long as they're needed. A big part of Project CARE has been GrandCentral's participation in San Francisco's <a href="http://www.sfconnect.org/AboutUs/index.php/homeless_connect/phc_our_mission.html?">Project Homeless Connect</a> events. Every other month, these gatherings bring service providers like GrandCentral together with volunteers at an all-day fair to provide services to the homeless. In fact, <a href="http://www.sfconnect.org/specialevents/viewSpecialEvent.php?_mode=eventDetail&_action=eventDetail&ixSpecialEvent=10" id="opyx">there's an event today</a>, starting at 8:30 AM (PDT) at <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Bill+Graham+Auditorium+99+Grove+Street+94012&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;ie=UTF8&ll=37.778415,-122.418122&spn=0.022183,0.028968&z=15&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;iwloc=A&om=1" id="i9cy">Bill Graham Civic Auditorium</a>. If you're in San Francisco, please stop by our booth or even <a href="http://www.sfconnect.org/AboutUs/index.php/volunteer.html">volunteer</a>.

Supporting GrandCentral's Project CARE

Posted by Craig Walker and Vincent Paquet, Product Managers For homeless people and others in need, not having a stable phone number can be ...

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Lights, camera, Gmail

Posted by Bill Kee, Associate Product Marketing Manager Last month, we <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/07/like-making-videos-love-gmail.html" id="d4i0" title="invited you">invited you</a> to join the Gmail collaborative video, pull out your video cameras and help us imagine how an email message travels around the world. Two <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZIgdq9dp2M" id="ufek" title="Rubik's">Rubik's</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEhhzJB3n00" id="xy:r" title="cubes">cubes</a>, a few jaunts <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKeD4J70jqM" id="djq9" title="in a bottle">in a bottle</a>, beautiful <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFQdGkFZcE4" id="lqs1" title="sand animation">sand animation</a>, and one <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULwrZ22FJF8" id="ualc" title="dog's trip">dog's trip</a> to the Southernmost point of the continental US later, we'd received more than <a href="http://www.youtube.com/video_response_view_all?v=VfDW7qAdFGk" id="c41." title="1,100 fantastic clips">1,100 fantastic clips</a> from Gmail fans from more than 65 countries. It was impossible to fit all of the great submissions into one cut, but after hours of fun watching <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuEAjqyQ2qM" id="wudp" title="jugglers">jugglers</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0QlJJ_aF-E" id="aa1j" title="firemen">firemen</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKX82dsXWew" id="ly:n" title="camel-riders">camel-riders</a>, and original <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIvQMk4k6JU" id="o151" title="animation">animation</a>, we edited highlights together into this video and used the <a href="http://www.google.com/apis/maps/index.html" id="m.lo" title="Google Maps API">Google Maps API</a> to put together a map showing where many of the clips came from (you can also see these at <a href="http://mail.google.com/mvideo" id="g332" title="http://mail.google.com/mvideo">http://mail.google.com/mvideo</a>): <object height="353" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/qKAInP_tmHk"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/qKAInP_tmHk" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="353" width="425"></embed></object> <iframe width="95%" height="400" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" src="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=pl&geocode=&q=http:%2F%2Fservices.google.com%2Fearth%2Fmvideo.kml&ie=UTF8&om=1&t=k&s=AARTsJoT5oBjk9IHzTkEDj634yygZbvLFQ&ll=31.952162,-36.914062&spn=105.832053,158.203125&z=2&output=embed"></iframe> <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=pl&geocode=&q=http:%2F%2Fservices.google.com%2Fearth%2Fmvideo.kml&ie=UTF8&om=1&t=k&ll=31.952162,-36.914062&spn=105.832053,158.203125&z=2&source=embed" style="color:#0000FF;text-align:left;font-size:small">View Larger Map</a> A big thank you to everyone who participated -- your creativity is astounding!

Lights, camera, Gmail

Posted by Bill Kee, Associate Product Marketing Manager Last month, we invited you to join the Gmail collaborative video, pull out your vid...

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Google Web Toolkit: Towards a better web

Posted by Bruce Johnson and Dan Peterson, Google Web Toolkit team We're very pleased to tell you that the <a href="http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/">Google Web Toolkit</a> (GWT) is no longer in beta as of <a href="http://googlewebtoolkit.blogspot.com/2007/08/gwt-14-release-and-out-of-beta.html">today's release of GWT 1.4.</a> For Java developers who have used GWT to create high-end web applications over the last year, this may not seem all that surprising. But if you haven't yet heard the story behind GWT, this seems like the perfect time... If you've been in the technology industry for a while, you probably remember when enterprises and software vendors had to think pretty hard about whether to develop locally-installed desktop applications or web-based browser applications. These days, whether you're building <a href="http://code.google.com/gme/">mashups</a>, <a href="http://code.google.com/apis/gadgets/">gadgets</a>, or full-blown applications, it's a no-brainer: the browser is the delivery platform of choice. However, users expect more from the up-and-coming generation of web applications than the simple click-and-wait of yesterweb. And if you're a web developer, you know that this requires <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_%28programming%29">AJAX</a>, the cluster of technologies including JavaScript and dynamic HTML that can make browsers do backflips. But the stark reality of AJAX applications is that, although they can deliver sexy features and great usability, they are unusually hard to engineer. Browser quirks and the anything-goes nature of JavaScript will inevitably frustrate even the most dedicated developers and add risk to your schedule with every line of code written. If you do eventually manage to construct a complex AJAX application that works, you're likely to find that maintaining it over time can be a major challenge. And all that doesn't even scratch the surface of testing, optimizing, securing and internationalizing your application. (If you are currently working on an ambitious AJAX project and haven't yet come to this conclusion, please re-read this post in six months when you're further along!) We've learned a lot from our experiences building web applications, and we're happy to share the tools we've created. Google Web Toolkit is an open source project that helps Java developers harness the richness of AJAX in a cross-platform, web-friendly environment. The magic trick is that GWT cross-compiles Java source code into standalone JavaScript that you can include in any web page. Instead of spending time becoming JavaScript gurus and fighting browser quirks, developers using GWT spend time productively coding and debugging in the robust Java programming language, using their existing Java tools and expertise. Naturally, GWT is also a great way to easily take advantage of the latest-and-greatest Google APIs and browser enhancements, such as <a href="http://code.google.com/apis/gears/">Google Gears</a>. In addition to making debugging far easier, GWT's unique compilation-based approach to AJAX has the nice property that it rewards developers for good software engineering practices. Java source code that is clear and organized can be easily optimized by the GWT compiler, which is a nice antidote to the frequent hack-and-slash approach that's all too common in JavaScript development. As your application grows, the GWT compiler begins to pay off in even bigger ways. Unused code is automatically removed so that scripts are smaller and pages load faster. Complex code can be automatically coalesced and simplified. Most importantly, because the Java language is statically typed, many common errors can be caught during development rather than production. You can observe the high-performance results yourself in GWT's <a href="http://gwt.google.com/samples/Mail/Mail.html">sample Mail application</a>. Technical details aside, GWT makes it easy to develop fast, friendly web apps that users love — which is, after all, the point. <a href="http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/download.html">Download GWT 1.4</a>.

Google Web Toolkit: Towards a better web

Posted by Bruce Johnson and Dan Peterson, Google Web Toolkit team We're very pleased to tell you that the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is n...

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