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Grand engineering challenges for the 21st century

Posted by Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist Over the course of centuries, engineering of all kinds has transformed our lives -- and the field continues to have the potential to improve the quality of life for every person on the planet. This coming Friday (February 15), the US National Academy of Engineering will post a list of "grand engineering challenges" for the 21st century on <a href="http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/">a special site</a>, which has already garnered many comments from the public. To create the list, the Academy assembled a special committee that includes some of the most innovative names in engineering, including our own Larry Page. I think we will see on the list such things as renewable, sustainable and affordable energy, reduction of dependence on petroleum, desalinization, vastly improved food production, greenhouse gas reduction, and affordable and sustainable housing -- but these are just my guesses. No matter which challenges are selected, we know that attention to detail and daring goals are the twin drivers of innovation. Please visit the site, <a href="http://www.grandchallenges.dnsalias.net/cms/7187.aspx">contribute your ideas</a> and have a look February 15 to see what the experts have decided are the grandest of the grand challenges for engineering in this century. Of course, I hope "Internet for Everyone" makes it onto the list, but if it doesn't, it's still on mine :-).

Grand engineering challenges for the 21st century

Posted by Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist Over the course of centuries, engineering of all kinds has transformed our lives -- and the f...

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Google Translation + Gmail help people communicate

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 a technologist who cannot see -- tips that sighted people, among others, may also find useful. - Ed. Language barriers can be a primary source of accessibility problems on the web, and automatic translation, though not perfect, provides a useful solution. We recently made our machine translation technology accessible from within <a href="http://googletalk.blogspot.com/2007/12/merry-christmas-god-jul-and.html" target="_blank">Gmail and Google Talk</a>, which gives mail and IM users instant access to translation capabilities at the point where they might most need them, e.g., when communicating with friends and colleagues around the world. If you find yourself wanting to translate a few words or short phrase, you can IM an appropriate chat-bot to obtain an immediate translation. As an example, the Google translation bot for going from English to Chinese is available as <a href="mailto:en2zh@bot.talk.google.com" target="_blank">en2zh@bot.talk.google.com</a>. In general, translation bots are named using two-letter codes for the source and target language. Surfacing machine translation in this manner is a great example of how Web 2.0 mashups bring together useful services to create solutions that are bigger than the sum of their building blocks. I've blogged here in the past about the<a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/02/web-apis-web-mashups-and-accessibility.html" target="_blank"> potential presented by web mashups</a> for users with special needs. Using our work on <a href="http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2007/11/introducing-axsjax-access-enabling-ajax.html" target="_blank">AxsJAX</a> to inject accessibility enhancements into Web applications, my officemate <a href="http://clcworld.net/" target="_blank">Charles Chen</a> and I recently augmented Google Talk to produce appropriate spoken feedback when used with adaptive technologies such as self-voicing browsers. The combination of machine translation, instant messaging and AxsJAX-enabled spoken output produces an interesting result that is obvious after the fact: when I use Google IM to message a translation bot, I now hear the result in the target language. This makes for a very interesting chat buddy -- one who can act as my personal interpreter! And let's not forget that little <a href="http://www.google.com/help/faq_translation.html#translink">translate this page</a> within Google search results. Next time you find that some of the documents in your search results are non-English, try clicking on that translate link. You'll be able to specify the source and target languages to obtain an automatically generated translation. A nice thing about the translated page is that when you follow any links from that document, the newly retrieved document will be automatically translated. Thus, if you find an article in German that matches your query and you're an English speaker, you can translate from de|en (that's German to English using two letter language codes) and as you read the translated English version, following links from that document will result in their being automatically translated to English.

Google Translation + Gmail help people communicate

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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Going local

Posted by Egon Pasztor, Software Engineer One of the strengths of Google News is the diversity we can provide by crawling thousands of sources from around the world. Recently, we've also focused on building on the strength of our local news sources. Today you can do just that: find local news by typing your city name or zip code. As always, we'll bring you results from multiple sources. The biggest change is that top stories in your local area will appear at the top of your results. Our ranking system will take into account the location of the source so we can promote the local sources for each story. There's more information about this on the <a title="Google News Blog" href="http://googlenewsblog.blogspot.com/" id="mc0h">Google News Blog</a> and our <a href="http://www.google.com/support/news/" id="n2mp">help pages</a>. We encourage you to <a href="http://news.google.com/" id="jr1p">try it out</a> yourself as we keep working to bring you a better news experience.

Going local

Posted by Egon Pasztor, Software Engineer One of the strengths of Google News is the diversity we can provide by crawling thousands of sourc...

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Super Tuesday wrapup

Posted by Josh Cohen, Google News Team On Super Tuesday, voters couldn't cast their ballots online, but we were excited to see so many people turn to the Internet to participate in the election. Americans and many others from around the world sent a clear message on Tuesday -- and we heard you! Here are some of our favorite highlights: <ul><li> "Tweets" from politically-engaged Twitter users spanned a wide range of expressions. You spoke your mind: "In addition to Super Tuesday, today is also Fat Tuesday. Super Fat Tuesday -- finally, a day I can relate to!" (ejacqui, UK); you reported election results: "Can someone please explain why 10% of Californians are voting for Edwards? Don't they read the news?" (paul_irish, Boston, MA); you relayed conditions at the voting booths: "CA Precincts are worried about running out of ballots." (mizlit, Montara, CA). Of course, we had a favorite: <div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6tYB9lVvzNzSqvuklpQipjE8d7NQeBohKkwM6p56SimJQLDKxQcmCXJjHiWMXMGrO7ltr6HaqMfR9bhRLMsoGmeZqkfKAX4o-eZ9Azu3o6AcYnAmJt5HHR9wwQuhm1U-W0vwXkKkycro/s1600-h/Picture+23.png"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5164330034247514290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6tYB9lVvzNzSqvuklpQipjE8d7NQeBohKkwM6p56SimJQLDKxQcmCXJjHiWMXMGrO7ltr6HaqMfR9bhRLMsoGmeZqkfKAX4o-eZ9Azu3o6AcYnAmJt5HHR9wwQuhm1U-W0vwXkKkycro/s400/Picture+23.png" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" /></a></div> </li><li>Searches for [super tuesday results] hit the top of our <a href="http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends?sa=X" id="gbee" title="Hot Trends">Hot Trends</a> list early in the afternoon and stayed number one through much of the night. Related terms like [primary results], [where do i vote] and [super tuesday exit polls] were also in the top ten for significant chunks of time. Senator Obama turned out to be the most widely-searched candidate of the day, and [health care] emerged as the most popular policy issue. </li> <ul></ul><li> Voters, news organizations, and candidates submitted hundreds of videos to YouTube's YouChoose08 <a href="http://youtube.com/supertuesday" id="ig68" title="Super Tuesday site">Super Tuesday site</a>, providing for an interesting integration of unique content all on one platform. Check out some of the top videos uploaded by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=CA7C980DB674C8E5" id="irtj" title="voters">voters</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=ECE28A80B3C94B7B" id="r99i" title="news organizations">news organizations</a>, and the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=ACBC1854F9B5BA47" id="oyh6" title="candidates themselves">candidates themselves</a>. And here's one of the videos we thought captured the moment well: <object height="355" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/4vIZ7I3So7U&rel=1"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/4vIZ7I3So7U&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="355" width="425"></embed></object> </li></ul>

Super Tuesday wrapup

Posted by Josh Cohen, Google News Team On Super Tuesday, voters couldn't cast their ballots online, but we were excited to see so many p...

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It's all about teamwork

Posted by Justin Sadowski, Software Engineer Raise your hand if you'd have a hard time getting things done without the Internet. Arranging a reunion with school friends? You can figure out schedules, vote on a venue, share a map, post pictures and videos and later share everything with those who couldn't make it, and all without leaving your chair. It's become so easy to coordinate and share with friends and family that we've wondered why the same couldn't apply to teams of co-workers at work or classmates at school. That's why we're launching <a title="Google Apps Team Edition" href="http://www.google.com/apps/" id="ov5-">Google Apps Team Edition</a>. Now you and your co-workers or classmates have a new way to share documents, spreadsheets, presentations and calendar information online. Just sign up with your work or school email address. After confirming that you belong to that organization, it's easy to invite others from your company or school and start collaborating. There’s no hardware, software or setup involved (and no burden for IT folks). Of course, organizations need a level of security and control that individuals don't have to worry about. Team Edition enables co-workers and classmates to choose to share information just with each other, and not with outsiders, and it lets IT departments actively manage Google Apps, so admins can customize the Google Apps experience for users, including who should have access and which applications are available. You can learn more about all the administrative capabilities on the <a title="admin site for Google Apps." href="http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/admins/editions_spe.html" id="d9ks">admin site for Google Apps.</a><a title="admin site for Google Apps." href="http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/admins/editions_spe.html" id="d9ks"></a>

It's all about teamwork

Posted by Justin Sadowski, Software Engineer Raise your hand if you'd have a hard time getting things done without the Internet. Arrangi...

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We've lost a giant

Posted by Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Lederberg" target="_blank">Josh Lederberg</a>, whose pioneering work laid foundation stones for modern genetics and biotech -- and then for space biology and artificial intelligence -- passed away on February 2. His creative and deep thinking on these subjects helped generations of scientists blaze trails in information and bio-sciences. Even more important, his thoughtful approach to new ideas has contributed to dialog on such critical matters as disarmament, genetic engineering, and public health policy. In technology circles, he'll be remembered among other things for the expansion of the role of computers for scientific research. While at Stanford he and Edward Feigenbaum developed a computer program called DENDRAL, now recognized as the first expert system for use in science. He was also an early proponent of Digital Libraries. I have benefited in many ways from his tutelage. At one point, after briefing him on the possibilities of the idea of a Digital Library, he looked at me and said “Do something!” I could not have had better advice. As a child, Josh said he wanted to be "like Einstein." His Nobel Prize and National Medal of Freedom attest to just how far he got. We will miss him greatly, but his legacy of thoughtful advice will sustain many friends and colleagues well into the 21st century.

We've lost a giant

Posted by Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist Josh Lederberg , whose pioneering work laid foundation stones for modern genetics and biotech...

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What's India searching for online?

Posted by Tarkeshwar Thakur, Software Engineer and Alok Goel, Product Manager In December 2007, for the first time in India, we released a list of most popular and fast rising searches, i.e. the Google Zeitgeist. But you don't need to wait till this December to know what was popular this year; we've just unveiled Google Trends and Google Hot Trends on <a href="http://labs.google.co.in">Google India Labs</a>, giving you a chance to find out what India is searching for on Google by the hour. What's on our collective mind as we search for information? What's interesting to people right now? Hot Trends will tell you. At a glance, you'll see the huge variety of topics capturing our attention, from current events to sports to political issues to the latest Bollywood gossip. Hot Trends aren't the search terms people look for most often; those are pretty predictable, like [weather] or [games]. Instead, the Hot Trends algorithm analyzes millions of searches to find those that show an unusual and fairly sudden increase in popularity. The outcome is the Hot Trends list. Hot Trends is updated throughout the day, so check back often. For example, the #1 Hot Trends result on January 9, 2008, was <a href="http://www.google.co.in/trends/hottrends?q=*&sa=X&date=2008-1-9" target="_blank">'tata new car'</a> because of the auto expo going on then. The associated web results and associated news search results give you more context and insight into why people were searching for 'tata new car'. You can see these results by changing the date range on the top left hand corner of the Hot Trends page. As you can see, <a href="http://www.google.co.in/trends/hottrends?q=*&sa=X&date=2008-1-9" target="_blank">'tata new car'</a> has a Hot Trend status of 'spicy' -- a measure of its popularity. Together with Hot Trends, we also launched Google Trends for India. You can view search patterns and interest in their favorite topics. You can compare the popularity of multiple queries (e.g. different Bollywood stars) and see which cities and states search for them the most. Looking ahead to what 'Valentines Day' might mean to us, keep checking out Hot Trends and Trends for insights into the mind of India

What's India searching for online?

Posted by Tarkeshwar Thakur, Software Engineer and Alok Goel, Product Manager In December 2007, for the first time in India, we released a l...

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