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Our plans for Code Jam

Posted by Bartholomew "Ruberik" Furrow, Technical Lead What do you do if you've got a head full of good ideas, and nothing interesting to do with them? You might need a good dose of competitive programming. During a programming competition you contort your brain, trying desperately to figure out that tiny trick that will let your program run a thousand times faster, or searching for the elusive mathematical fact that will lead you to the solution. Then you tell your computer what to do, and watch it solve that torturous problem faster than you can blink. If you're like me, you eagerly participate in every coding competition that comes along. Since 2003, we have supported the fun and intensity of competitive programming around the world by offering code jams powered by TopCoder. Contests like the ACM ICPC, the TopCoder Open and our TopCoder-powered code jams have formed a great community of contests and contestants; now we're excited to join that community in our own right, by producing a Google Code Jam of our own! There aren't too many details to share yet, but we have some big plans: there are quite a few super-competitive programmers here, and we've put them to work preparing challenges for you. So start brushing up with <a href="http://services.google.com/blog_resources/Google_CodeJam_Practice.pdf">a couple of practice problems</a> -- and it's well worth checking out some old problems from the <a href="http://acmicpc-live-archive.uva.es/nuevoportal/">ACM ICPC</a> and <a href="http://www.topcoder.com/tc">TopCoder</a> too. We're also excited to hear what you think would make for a great Google-run programming contest, so send us your <a href="mailto:Programmingcontest-feedback@google.com">feedback</a> -- and get ready for a challenge.

Our plans for Code Jam

Posted by Bartholomew "Ruberik" Furrow, Technical Lead What do you do if you've got a head full of good ideas, and nothing int...

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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 onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Ap14FtNN91w/RuB0vOe5_gI/AAAAAAAAAPY/rl3o-UjOL1o/s1600-h/Reader_search.jpg"><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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