Today is Blog Action Day

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Karen Wickre, Google Blog team</span><br /><br />Around Google we know firsthand the value that small changes, aggregated on a large scale, can bring to people everywhere. It's how our <a href="http://www.google.com/technology/">search engine</a> and <a href="http://www.google.com/ads/" id="k6qk" title="advertising system">advertising system</a> work: every click counts. Similar thinking — local action, global impact — is what made Cyan Ta'eed, her husband Collis Ta'eed, and Leo Babauta create <a href="http://blogactionday.org/" id="lzqx" title="Blog Action Day">Blog Action Day</a>, a worldwide initiative to get blogs posting about a common cause: the environment. As Cyan has said of bloggers and readers around the world, "If they all make a very small change it could be very effective, and a small step but an important step" on the road to addressing climate change and other environmental challenges.<br /><br />In this first year, more than 10,000 bloggers are participating in Blog Action Day around the world. We're pleased to be among them. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Fifteen of our corporate blogs are posting today, on topics varying from this weekend's <a title="International Clean-up Day" href="http://googlejapan.blogspot.com/2007/10/blog-post_15.html" id="yfmr">International Clean-up Day</a> to this year's <a title="Nobel Peace Prize recipient" href="http://blog.google.org/2007/10/nobel-peace-prize-for-climate-change_15.html" id="cw8v">Nobel Peace Prize recipients</a>. Other blogs covered a <a title="competition for the best sustainable designs" href="http://sketchupdate.blogspot.com/2007/10/green-design-in-sketchup-for-blog.html" id="y3j.">competition for the best sustainable designs</a> using SketchUp, <a title="Green programs on YouTube." href="http://www.youtube.com/blog?entry=rTY-L7_0nwM" id="ws:t">green programs on YouTube</a> and the efforts of the <a title="Bioneer's" href="http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/" id="z6g4">Bioneers</a> to bring together thinkers from many disciplines to tackle environmental issues. We also enjoy various company-wide green initiatives, from offering employees shared <a title="plug-in cars" href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/06/clean-energy-update.html" id="y3-7">hybrid cars</a> on-site to serving organic food to installing <a title="solar panels" href="http://www.google.com/corporate/solarpanels/home" id="ej5a">solar panels</a>.<br /><br />We look forward to seeing the momentum of Blog Action Day, and we encourage you to join the many bloggers and citizens who are making their voices heard about environmental concerns.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Update: </span>Check out posts on more participating Google Blogs: <a href="http://buzz.blogger.com/2007/10/environmental-blog-roundup.html">Blogger Buzz</a>, <a href="http://buzz-es.blogspot.com/2007/10/un-da-una-cuestin-miles-de-voces.html">Blogger Buzz - ES</a>, <a href="http://googlecheckout.blogspot.com/2007/10/taking-action-and-going-green.html">Checkout Blog</a>, <a href="http://googlefinanceblog.blogspot.com/2007/10/green-with-envy.html">Finance Blog</a>, <a href="http://googlebase-de.blogspot.com/2007/10/blog-action-day.html">Google Base Blog - DE</a>, <a href="http://adsense.blogspot.com/2007/10/celebrating-blog-action-day-with.html">Inside AdSense</a>, <a href="http://adwords.blogspot.com/2007/10/vegging-out-with-google-adwords.html">Inside AdWords</a>, <a href="http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2007/10/think-globally-eat-locally.html">Inside Google Book Search Blog</a>, the <a href="http://googleitalia.blogspot.com/2007/10/think-globally-clean-locally.html">Google Italy Blog</a> and Blogs of Note - <a href="http://blogsofnote.blogspot.com/">EN</a> and <a href="http://blogsofnote-es.blogspot.com/">ES</a>.<br /></span>

Today is Blog Action Day

Posted by Karen Wickre, Google Blog team Around Google we know firsthand the value that small changes, aggregated on a large scale, can brin...

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Our Zurich hackathon

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Douwe Osinga, Software Engineer</span><br /><br />Among the many perks Googlers get, I like the 20% time rule the best. You can spend it on an existing project you'd like to learn more about or especially care about, or you can use it to start a new project. Among other things, Gmail, AdSense, Google News and Google Trends famously started life as 20% projects. But even with 20% time, there are always so many other interesting things to do that it's sometimes hard to focus on this great idea you had the other day at the coffee machine.<br /><br />I work for the <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&time=&date=&ttype=&q=Freigutstrasse+12,+8002+Z%C3%BCrich,+Switzerland&sll=46.597264,9.592213&sspn=0.009908,0.017638&ie=UTF8&z=16&iwloc=addr&om=1" id="g3m.">Zurich office</a>, which incidentally was our first engineering office in Europe. As you must know, Switzerland has lots of mountains. Where better to be alone with your thoughts and ideas than the mountains? Well, when I started talking about the idea, a lot of people liked it and wanted to go, too. So never mind being alone with my thoughts: instead, over a four-day weekend, 16 engineers spent most of their waking hours coding up the ideas that had been plaguing us for a while.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbDv6hyphenhyphentYhPcvaHd5qoPpoMZIrIuVc4sT7t3P4WdFL6tGLXBf10Htdzg1ipokfHxDUKWKihcuokqrDLxD5fJ9fxxuanW3Xm2EuYVsrjoHbs8CZHOo-cgErXNLmVALrdH0HJCWlNvk53YS4/s1600-h/Zurich_hackathon.gif"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5120884455103262866" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbDv6hyphenhyphentYhPcvaHd5qoPpoMZIrIuVc4sT7t3P4WdFL6tGLXBf10Htdzg1ipokfHxDUKWKihcuokqrDLxD5fJ9fxxuanW3Xm2EuYVsrjoHbs8CZHOo-cgErXNLmVALrdH0HJCWlNvk53YS4/s320/Zurich_hackathon.gif" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" /></a>In small groups and individually, we looked at things like how we can do a better job at personalization, experimented with different ways to render search results, and since we have quite a few maps engineers in Zurich, tried out some new ideas in that area too. Though we did get some nice demos out, they're not quite ready to launch, but keep an eye out on <a href="http://labs.google.com/" id="onwz">Google Labs</a> and something will show up soon.<br /><br />Sadly, we were almost completely oblivious to the extreme natural beauty surrounding our hackathon headquarters at the <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&time=&date=&ttype=&q=Veia+Sandeilas+12,+switzerland&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=46.495626,72.246094&ie=UTF8&om=1&z=16&iwloc=addr" id="c_zi">cube hotel in Savognin</a>. Some of us did go up the mountain for some extra inspiration.<br /><br />Another interesting accomplishment was the furniture tower we built after a long session of hacking. They had this stackable furniture in the lobby of the hotel and we had a beer or two, and just started to play around. Around 6am just before breakfast we reached the ceiling.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9JafFOdof-ldnKiWMPjE_DbG50jply66Z5zMsMbz5Isl6mWu-nPT6wDhzM3tb7DXaSVW5N6K3VZgcS8rSLur7OxFU2GW71VcV6Sv1PhVsUi0kcuTWCGGNlVILxlhd-L8yVEM6UkSFH6Cr/s1600-h/Zurich_redcubes.gif"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5120884712801300642" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9JafFOdof-ldnKiWMPjE_DbG50jply66Z5zMsMbz5Isl6mWu-nPT6wDhzM3tb7DXaSVW5N6K3VZgcS8rSLur7OxFU2GW71VcV6Sv1PhVsUi0kcuTWCGGNlVILxlhd-L8yVEM6UkSFH6Cr/s320/Zurich_redcubes.gif" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" /></a>It was really great to see people work all out driven by nothing more than the will to create something new and cool and it was for me a great reminder in so many ways as to why I work for Google. If you want to join us on our next hackathon, you're in luck -- <a href="http://www.google.ch/jobs">we're hiring in Zurich</a>.

Our Zurich hackathon

Posted by Douwe Osinga, Software Engineer Among the many perks Googlers get, I like the 20% time rule the best. You can spend it on an exist...

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GOOG-411 graduates from Labs

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Jonathan Matus, Product Marketing Manager </span><br /><br />A few years ago, my younger brother won a car in a raffle. He wanted to share this good news with the entire family, so he decided to keep it a secret until we were all together at dinnertime. But good news is hard to keep; he couldn't wait, and by lunchtime we all knew about our new car. And now we have some exciting news of our own that we just can't contain any longer.<br /><br />Many of you explored <a title="Google Labs" href="http://labs.google.com/" id="poor">Google Labs</a> and discovered a local business info service that's totally free. It's called GOOG-411 and it helps callers find and connect with local businesses just by dialing 1-800-GOOG-411. It's a voice-based local search service, which means it uses speech-recognition algorithms to recognize what a caller is saying and then finds the local business information he or she is looking for. These algorithms had to be trained with real utterances, much like how a baby learns language by listening to its parents. Since its unveiling in April, GOOG-411 has successfully served millions of callers. And we owe a big thanks to everyone who took our speech recognition algorithms from infancy to adulthood! <br /><br />People have been spreading the word about GOOG-411 to their friends and families. And now we're happy to report that our local business info service has officially graduated from Labs. To mark the occasion, we're celebrating with a <a href="http://www.google.com/goog411/index.html">brand new website</a> that includes this fun video:<br /><br /><object height="350" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/cN0q8SvlQAk"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/cN0q8SvlQAk" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="350" width="425"></embed></object><br /><br />When you watch the video, pay extra attention to the people you meet at the end. One of them is the real voice behind GOOG-411. Think you can guess who it is? When you call 1-800-GOOG-411, listen closely and see if you can identify which team member shown in the video is the voice. Then, post your answer as a comment on <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=cN0q8SvlQAk"><span style="color: rgb(51, 102, 255);"><u>our YouTube page.</u></span></a>

GOOG-411 graduates from Labs

Posted by Jonathan Matus, Product Marketing Manager A few years ago, my younger brother won a car in a raffle. He wanted to share this good ...

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If you build it, they will eat it

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Kevin McConvey, Cafe Director</span><br /><br />To commemorate the first anniversary of our New York office in its current space, we decided to think big -- a giant scale-model cake of the entire block-long building. Our facilities manager, Laura Gimpel, and I came up with a plan to construct this tasty treat and serve it at last Thursday's anniversary celebration.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUEaH2Vdyhfcx7V_aSEMZ2wyz7CWM1ddkWdyjodvxlb4SI4YUHHLK6fAIBSD-470uJdQLi-oaS2jy5WOkPmMLfnf0m8QekvtumqlFm-w5htU5AoGpCpRBSARILZKHq2QClFKBDTfRel6RQ/s1600-h/small+cake2.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5120250749858607218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUEaH2Vdyhfcx7V_aSEMZ2wyz7CWM1ddkWdyjodvxlb4SI4YUHHLK6fAIBSD-470uJdQLi-oaS2jy5WOkPmMLfnf0m8QekvtumqlFm-w5htU5AoGpCpRBSARILZKHq2QClFKBDTfRel6RQ/s320/small+cake2.JPG" style="cursor: pointer;" /></a><br /></div><br />Our first step was to use <a title="Google Earth" href="http://earth.google.com/" id="mio5">Google Earth</a> and <a title="Street View" href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&time=&date=&ttype=&q=76+Ninth+Avenue+NYC&sll=37.09024,-95.712891&sspn=39.456673,75.322266&layer=c&ie=UTF8&ll=40.745989,-74.004614&spn=0.009234,0.018389&z=16&om=0&cbll=40.741949,-74.004659&cbp=1,360,0.5,0,-8.92705486895993" id="fuy3">Street View</a> to get aerial views and photos of the building. Spanning an entire city block, the massive structure was originally constructed in 1932 to house the <a title="Port Authority of New York" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Authority_of_New_York_and_New_Jersey" id="m3fo">Port Authority of New York</a>; today, it's Manhattan's second-largest building in square footage. Next, our pastry chef, Danita Holt, drew up the blueprints. After a few weeks of developing the plans, it was time to start pouring the foundation. The <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/pfang69/TheBuildingOfTheAnniversaryCake">actual production</a> took four days, with seven of us (two sous chefs, two pastry chefs, our executive chef, a line cook, and me) working on it. In total, we used 630 eggs, 105 pounds of sugar and 20 pounds of butter. The finished product was five feet long, three feet high and two feet wide. Now that's a lot of cake!<br /><br />Perhaps even more challenging, we had to make sure there was no waste -- every last bite had to be eaten. The day after the celebration (when we did make a sizable dent), we served cake 'donuts' for breakfast. We got even more creative for lunch and offered an anniversary cake trifle and an amazing Oreo-infused anniversary cake pudding. Throughout the day, we put platters of leftover cake in the micro-kitchens, game room and library. The last of our creation was consumed on the balcony on Friday night around 7 p.m. by a group of hungry engineers.<br /><br />This was one of the most memorable projects I've worked on so far. I can't wait to see what we do when our office turns two.

If you build it, they will eat it

Posted by Kevin McConvey, Cafe Director To commemorate the first anniversary of our New York office in its current space, we decided to thin...

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Anita Borg Scholarships expand to Canada

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Michelle Levesque, Software Engineer</span><br /><br />On my desk at work I have a little Canadian flag. I grew up in Toronto, Canada and attended school at the University of Toronto where I graduated with a degree in software engineering. Now I work in Mountain View designing tools to help improve our ads quality. But I've never forgotten where I'm from, and that's why I'm so excited that Google is announcing the expansion of our Anita Borg scholarship to Canada.<br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Borg">Dr. Anita Borg</a> (1949-2003) devoted her adult life to revolutionizing the way we think about technology and dismantling barriers that keep women and minorities from entering computing and technology fields. Her combination of technical expertise and fearless vision continues to inspire and motivate countless women to become active participants and leaders in creating technology. In honor of Dr. Borg's passion, for the past four years, Google has sponsored a <a href="http://www.google.com/anitaborg/">scholarship program</a> with the Anita Borg Institute for Women in the U.S., and more recently, in Europe and Australia.<br /><br />This year, we're excited to announce the expansion of the program to include Canada, where we're very pleased to offer an opportunity to both undergraduate students and postgraduates, who may apply for CAD$5,000 scholarships. We're looking for women who will carry on the legacy of Dr. Borg, with strong academic backgrounds and demonstrated leadership qualities.<br /><br />All scholarship recipients and finalists will be invited to visit the Google engineering office in New York City next April for a networking retreat featuring workshops with a series of speakers, panelists, breakout sessions and social activities.<br /><br />Tell your friends, or apply yourself, at <span style="font-weight:bold;"><a href="http://www.google.ca/anitaborg/">www.google.ca/anitaborg</a></span>. The deadline for the Canada program is Monday, February 4, 2008.

Anita Borg Scholarships expand to Canada

Posted by Michelle Levesque, Software Engineer On my desk at work I have a little Canadian flag. I grew up in Toronto, Canada and attended s...

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China in real time

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Katie Jacobs Stanton, Group Product Manager</span><br /><br />Over the past few years, the Chinese stock markets have grown at a breathtaking pace. Not surprisingly, investors have demanded more access to data and information about Chinese stocks, particularly in real time. Google Finance has heard the clamor, and we're pleased to be able to improve our service for the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges by providing pricing data in real time. So if you're interested in <a href="http://finance.google.com/finance?q=SHE:000878" 000878="">Yunnan Copper</a>, <a href="http://finance.google.com/finance?q=SHA%3A601988" 3a601988="">Bank of China</a>, or you just want to search around, enjoy the additional data on <a href="http://finance.google.com/">Google Finance</a>.<br /><br />Now that the Chinese stock data is live, we're hoping our friends at the SEC will take note and approve the last sale proposal <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/01/real-time-quotes-for-free.html">we announced in January</a>. This proposal would allow us to offer our users free and unlimited access to real-time last sale prices for NYSE and Nasdaq stocks. As soon as the SEC approves, we'll flip the switch.

China in real time

Posted by Katie Jacobs Stanton, Group Product Manager Over the past few years, the Chinese stock markets have grown at a breathtaking pace. ...

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Our Corporate Equality effort

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Megan Smith, VP of New Business Development, and Nicholas Creswell, University Programmes Manager, EMEA</span><br /><br />Googlers care deeply about creating a workplace that affords equal treatment for all our staff, and while we do it regardless of any accolades we think our efforts might bring, recognition from outside organizations does mean a lot to us. Which is why we're really pleased about our <a href="http://w3.hrc.org/Template.cfm?Section=Search_the_Database&Template=/CustomSource/WorkNet/srch_dtl.cfm&srchtype=QS&searchid=1&orgid=5117" id="wah1" title="strong performance">strong performance</a> in the U.S. Human Rights Campaign (HRC) <a href="http://www.hrc.org/placestowork/" id="ps-m" title="Corporate Equality Index">Corporate Equality Index</a> for the second year in a row. It's particularly exciting given that this is a time of rapid growth for our population of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employees (whose group name is, naturally, Gayglers) around the world.<br /><br />This summer marked the first time Gayglers coordinated a presence at Pride parades globally. In San Francisco, New York, and Dublin, we had the largest (and perhaps rowdiest) presence of any corporation, and <a href="http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=5qtS9bnQCj4">we went one further at Europride in Madrid</a> where we were the <i>only </i>global company present among 45 floats. We had lot of fun at all of the marches, and it was a great way to bring Gayglers and their friends together in the communities we call home. We're passionate about our <a href="http://www.google.com/jobs/diversity">diverse workplace</a>, and we hope anyone who shares our commitment to equality will consider <a href="http://www.google.com/jobs/gayglers" id="zray" title="joining us">joining us</a>.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXBzjyIlI10gYdVxUpz89y1uUD9rWErj6qEWBUSj1d6IitNNh6qoHmkBz0URWx_eK6o44Vmt8zGCSn0Wg0-m7gC6U67w5VWa0lDZz9h7WzuAK0fXUKE9Efern0sWR1OiIjgQMr9Kn_c_lK/s1600-h/gayglers_SF_2007.gif"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5119329801496162386" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXBzjyIlI10gYdVxUpz89y1uUD9rWErj6qEWBUSj1d6IitNNh6qoHmkBz0URWx_eK6o44Vmt8zGCSn0Wg0-m7gC6U67w5VWa0lDZz9h7WzuAK0fXUKE9Efern0sWR1OiIjgQMr9Kn_c_lK/s320/gayglers_SF_2007.gif" style="cursor: pointer;" /></a>

Our Corporate Equality effort

Posted by Megan Smith, VP of New Business Development, and Nicholas Creswell, University Programmes Manager, EMEA Googlers care deeply about...

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