Superdelegate layer in Google Earth

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Rick Klau, Strategic Partner Development Manager and Elections Hipster</span><br /><br />I'm a political junkie, and as Super Tuesday neared it seemed likely that the race for Democratic nominee would extend well past that big day at the polls. I started looking around for information about the so-called "<a title=""Super Delegates"" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdelegate" target="_blank">superdelegates</a>" (the party leaders and elected officials who make up 20% of the vote at the convention) -- and was disappointed to find no single resource that provided details on who they were, which candidate they'd endorsed (if anyone) and where they are located.<br /><br />So I went ahead and registered '<a title="superdelegates.org" href="http://www.superdelegates.org/Main_Page" target="_blank">superdelegates.org</a>', installed <a title="MediaWiki" href="http://www.mediawiki.org/" target="_blank">MediaWiki</a> and started populating the site with the info I could find. Thanks to a terrific extension to MediaWiki (<a title="KML Export" href="http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:KML_Export" target="_blank">KML Export</a>, written by Juliano Ravasi), it's possible to map the wiki pages to a <a title="Google Earth layer" href="http://www.superdelegates.org/Special:KMLExport" target="_blank">Google Earth layer</a>, which helps to visualize where these delegates are.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguauV5nfzJezfVBMnphzH_RsO4B9NyrGs75J4AhqtelrKgAdcSHTs4WyOcLJ4K6s2yCmDmSSdKof3rZ_e7thVO6LvmFr2qNz-tc0YTz7P4ZcpEdMQsE4AOsichpXvYf_y8083PR5JGdEA6/s1600-h/superdelegates-google+earth-becerra.PNG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5169138331363619890" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguauV5nfzJezfVBMnphzH_RsO4B9NyrGs75J4AhqtelrKgAdcSHTs4WyOcLJ4K6s2yCmDmSSdKof3rZ_e7thVO6LvmFr2qNz-tc0YTz7P4ZcpEdMQsE4AOsichpXvYf_y8083PR5JGdEA6/s320/superdelegates-google+earth-becerra.PNG" style="cursor: pointer;" /></a><br /></div><br />Since the <a title="superdelegates site" href="http://www.superdelegates.org/" target="_blank">superdelegates site</a> launched two weeks ago, it has been <a href="http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/2008/02/12/google.superdelegate.cnn" title="featured on CNN" target="_blank">featured on CNN</a>, and tens of thousands of people have stopped by to learn more about superdelegates, understand the process, and add information. Over 60% of the delegates are now on the map and are associated with their endorsed candidate, with more info coming in every day. It's tremendously gratifying to see a community grow around this timely subject- hope you find it useful!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Update: </span>Since I posted this entry, there have been a few additional improvements to the <a href="http://www.superdelegates.org/" title="superdelegates site" target="_blank">superdelegates site</a>. <span>Every delegate's wiki page now includes a Google Newsbar with scrolling headlines mentioning the delegate. </span><span>Fellow Googler Bob Rose also created an enhanced <a href="http://www.superdelegates.org/Special:KMLExport" title="KML layer" target="_blank">KML layer</a> so that each delegate's placemarker now includes information and links to their</span><span> home state, position in the DNC, and candidate endorsement (with YouTube videos of speeches if available).</span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Disclaimer: </span></span></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Since superdelegate endorsements are not binding, we can't ensure that the endorsements listed are indicative of future events. But we're excited that people are engaging in politics online by drawing from a compilation of candidate endorsement lists on <a title="candidate endorsement lists on Roll Call" href="http://www.rollcall.com/politics/endorsements.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-style: italic;">Roll Call</span></a>, <a title="CNN's Election Center" href="http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/19/dem.delegates/index.html" target="_blank">CNN's Election Center</a> and other sources to update the site on a daily basis. Other groups and publications may have different superdelegate counts, including candidates' campaigns, the <span style="font-style: italic;">New York Times,</span> and the AP.</span></span>

Superdelegate layer in Google Earth

Posted by Rick Klau, Strategic Partner Development Manager and Elections Hipster I'm a political junkie, and as Super Tuesday neared it ...

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A Valentine Treat from Google

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Scott Giambastiani, Executive Chef</span><br /><br /><object height="355" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/0JUDnwPwh9U&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/0JUDnwPwh9U&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object><br /><br />This recipe pairs well with Roederer Estate, Anderson Valley Brut sparkling wine for a Valentine's day treat for two.<br /><br />Ingredients:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Yields about 4 cakes</span><br /><br />1 tbsp. butter (You may substitute olive oil.)<br />4 shallots, minced<br />¼ cup mayonnaise<br />1 fuji apple, peeled and grated on a cheese grater, juice reserved<br />1 tsp. lemon juice, fresh<br />2 tsp. tarragon, minced<br />2 tbsp. parsley, minced<br />1 cup Dungeness crab meat, picked free of shells<br />¼ cup breadcrumbs, finely ground<br />Tabasco sauce<br />kosher salt<br /><br />cooking oil (rice bran, canola, vegetable, etc.)<br />metal heart shaped cookie cutter, large size (About 4-6 oz)<br /><br />Roast Pepper Sauce:<br /><br />8 oz. pimento peppers in the jar (You may substitute with Spanish piquillo peppers,<br />or 3 each red bell peppers roasted over an open flame, peeled and seeded), chopped into 1-inch pieces<br />2 tbsp. sherry vinegar (You may substitute with any vinegar)<br />2 tbsp. water<br />2 tbsp. butter (Optional)<br /><br />Procedure:<br /><br />In a sauté pan, sweat the shallots in butter over medium-low heat until sweet, but with no color forming. This will take about 5 minutes. When sweet, allow the shallots to cool in a medium-sized mixing bowl. Add the mayonnaise, grated apple with juice, lemon juice, herbs, and picked crab to the mixing bowl.<br /><br />With a spatula, gently fold the mixture together, so as not to break up any whole crab meat. This will give the cakes a better texture. Fold the mixture just until evenly mixed. Add enough breadcrumbs to bind the cakes. You might need more or less breadcrumbs than stated,<br />depending on the moisture of the crab. Season the cakes with salt and Tabasco to taste. Using a teaspoon, spoon crab mixture into a metal, heart-shaped cookie cutter. Gently press the crab into the mold. Repeat this process until all cakes are molded. Keep the crab cakes refrigerated until ready for service. Prepare the sauce.<br /><br />To prepare the sauce, place the prepared peppers into a small non-reactive sauce pan with the vinegar and water. Bring contents to a simmer and transfer to a bar blender. Add the butter to the blender, cover and puree the sauce until it is smooth. Season with salt and pepper.<br /><br />To finish the crab cake, heat a sauté pan over medium-high heat, add a teaspoon of cooking oil, and sear the crab cake over medium heat until golden brown. This will take 1-2 minutes. Using a spatula, flip the crab cake over and repeat for 1-2 minutes until the crab cake is golden brown on both sides and warm in the center. Piercing the center of the crab cake with a toothpick and feeling the temperature of the toothpick under your lip will give you a good idea how warm<br />the cake's center is.<br /><br />To plate the crab cake, pour about two heaping spoonfuls of warm pepper sauce over a warmed plate. Place the warm crab cake over the sauce and garnish with baby mixed greens (mâche, upland cress) and/or freshly picked herbs (Italian parsley, chervil, tarragon, chives…). Enjoy!

A Valentine Treat from Google

Posted by Scott Giambastiani, Executive Chef This recipe pairs well with Roederer Estate, Anderson Valley Brut sparkling wine for a Valentin...

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Global marketing challenge now underway

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Daniel Rubin, Google AdWords Communications team</span><br /><br />It's well known that online advertising is becoming increasingly important to the marketing mix. Now we're giving 21,000 students the chance to experiment and gain hands on experience of this medium -- and to empower small local businesses to harness the power of the web to attract more customers. In a vast global academic competition, business students from 466 universities in 61 countries will participate in the Google Online Marketing Challenge.<br /><br />The competition offers student groups $200 vouchers to spend on Google AdWords™ advertising so that they can work with a local business they choose to devise effective online marketing campaigns. The teams will outline a strategy, run the campaign, assess their results, and recommend ideas to further develop the businesses' online marketing.<br /><br />Students will have three weeks to mastermind their strategy, and will pit their marketing minds against thousands of others worldwide. During this period, the various teams will submit two competition reports: one before they begin the Challenge, and one after the campaign has ended. An international panel of professors will judge the entries, and will choose winners based on the success of the campaigns and the quality of the reports.<br /><br />We'll post an update once the winners are announced in July. <a href="http://www.google.com/onlinechallenge/index.html" target="_blank">Read more about the Challenge</a>.

Global marketing challenge now underway

Posted by Daniel Rubin, Google AdWords Communications team It's well known that online advertising is becoming increasingly important to...

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What if... you could have your doodle on the Google homepage for a day?

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products & User Experience, and Dennis Hwang, Webmaster Manager and Chief Google Doodler</span><br /><br />Today, we're excited to announce the Doodle 4 Google competition.<br /><br />Every once in awhile, we redesign the logo (a.k.a. Google Doodle) on our homepage to commemorate special birthdays and events. Dennis Hwang draws these <a href="http://www.google.com/holidaylogos.html">Google Doodles</a> (check out this cool time-lapse video of Dennis creating the latest one):<br /><br /><object height="355" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/TOOY0xuQ3TU&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/TOOY0xuQ3TU&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object><br /><br />However, with the Doodle 4 Google competition, we're making an exception...<br /><br />Doodle 4 Google gives U.S. students in grades K-12 the opportunity to design a doodle for the Google homepage. Students will be asked to draw a doodle that best represents the theme <span style="background-color: rgb(153, 255, 153);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"What if...?"</span></span><span style="background-color: rgb(153, 255, 153);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> We ask ourselves this question every day when we build our products, so we thought we would ask the same of the future doodlers.</span></span><br /><br />A panel of expert judges and Googlers will select 40 regional winners, who will be invited to the Googleplex in Mountain View, California, in May. Four national finalists will be announced as the result of a public vote. From there, Dennis will select one lucky student whose doodle will be on the Google homepage for a day in the U.S. This winner will also receive a <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">$10,000 </span>college scholarship and a technology grant for his or her school.<br /><br />Check out <a href="http://www.google.com/doodle4google/"><span style="color: rgb(51, 102, 255);"><u>www.google.com/doodle4google</u></span></a> for more details. All you need to do to get started is to have a teacher or principal register your school. Registration closes on 3/28/08, and entries must be postmarked by 4/12/08.<br /><br />So gather those art supplies. All it takes to enter is a drawing on paper using your favorite medium (crayons, markers, colored pencils, whatever!) -- and encourage your kids to enrich us all with their imaginative vision. We look forward to seeing the creative doodles that are submitted!<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.google.co.uk/doodle4google/index.html"></a>

What if... you could have your doodle on the Google homepage for a day?

Posted by Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products & User Experience, and Dennis Hwang, Webmaster Manager and Chief Google Doodl...

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You are connected to mountaintop removal

<span class="byline-author">Posted by <a href="http://www.robertfkennedyjr.com/">Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.</a></span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">[From time to time we invite guests to blog about initiatives of interest, and are very pleased to have Mr. Kennedy join us here. – Ed.]</span><br /><br />In 1810, Thomas Jefferson wrote to a contemporary, "No one more sincerely wishes the spread of information among mankind than I do, and none has greater confidence in its effect towards supporting free and good government." Almost 200 years later, Google provides us all with unprecedented access to the world’s information. In Appalachia, nonprofit organizations are using that information in innovative new ways to reveal the destruction caused by <a href="http://www.ilovemountains.org/">mountaintop removal coal mining</a>, and to demand for the people of Appalachia the "free and good government" that Jefferson envisioned.<br /><br />If the American people could see what I have seen from the air and ground during <a href="http://www.ilovemountains.org/cost_of_coal/87">my many trips to the coalfields</a> of Kentucky and West Virginia: leveled mountains, devastated communities, wrecked economies and ruined lives, there would be a revolution in this country. Thanks to <a href="http://earth.google.com/outreach/index.html">Google Earth</a>, you can now visit coal country without ever having to leave your home.<br /><br />Every presidential candidate – and every American – ought to take a few seconds to visit an ingenious new <a href="http://www.ilovemountains.org/">website</a> created by nonprofit organizations in Appalachia that lets you tour the obliterated landscapes of Appalachia. By <a href="http://www.ilovemountains.org/myconnection/">entering your zip code</a> into this amazing new website, you learn how you're personally connected to mountaintop removal. Americans from Maine to California can see these mountains and the communities that were sacrificed to power their home. This puts a human face on the issue by highlighting the stories of families living in the shadows of these mines.<br /><br />The site uses <a href="http://maps.google.com/">Google Maps</a> and <a href="http://earth.google.com/">Google Earth</a> as interfaces to a large database of power plants and mountaintop removal coal mines. A November 15, 2007 article in the <i><a href="http://www.ilovemountains.org/news/349">Wall Street Journal</a></i> highlighted the site as one of the most cutting-edge uses of these powerful tools. And today, the <a href="http://earth.google.com/outreach/index.html">Google Earth Outreach</a> program is launching a <a href="http://earth.google.com/outreach/cs_app_voices.html">featured case study</a> about this project, along with <a href="http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2008/02/six-rs-of-google-earth-outreach.html">additional resources</a> for nonprofit organizations, in order to help spread the word and make these tools even more accessible to the public.<br /><br />Each day coal companies detonate <a href="http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/explosives/index.html">2500 tons of explosives</a> – the power of a Hiroshima bomb every week – to blow away Appalachian mountaintops to reach the coal seams beneath. Colossal machines then plow the rock and debris into the adjacent river valleys and hollows, destroying forests and burying free-flowing mountain streams, flattening North America's most ancient mountain range. <a href="http://www.epa.gov/Region3/mtntop/">According to the EPA</a>, 1,200 miles of American rivers and streams have already been permanently interred, leaving behind giant pits and barren moonscapes, some as large as <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/nationalmemorialforthemountains/237882016/">Manhattan Island</a>. I recently flew over one 18 square-mile pit – Hobet 21 – which you can now <a href="http://www.ilovemountains.org/memorial/">tour in Google Earth</a>.<br /><br />We are literally cutting down the historic landscapes where Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett roamed and that are so much the source of American's values, character and culture.<br /><br />Mountaintop mining poisons water supplies, pollutes the air, destroys hundreds of miles of North America's most ancient and biologically diverse hardwood forests and permanently impoverishes local communities. For too long, this devastation has been hidden in the remote poverty-stricken communities of Appalachia. This new <a href="http://www.ilovemountains.org/">website</a> finally exposes this national disgrace for every American to witness. Wherever you live, <a href="http://www.ilovemountains.org/myconnection/">you have a connection</a> – and a responsibility.

You are connected to mountaintop removal

Posted by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. [From time to time we invite guests to blog about initiatives of interest, and are very pleased to have Mr....

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New Open Source Programs blog

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Leslie Hawthorn, Program Manager, Open Source Team</span><br /><br />Since its inception in 2005, our <a title="Open Source Programs Office" href="http://code.google.com/opensource/" id="kf5j">Open Source Programs Office</a> has been responsible for maintaining license compliance within Google. And over the past three years, our mission has grown encompass even more activities that we hope are useful to our colleagues in the open source community: <a title="project hosting" href="http://code.google.com/hosting/" id="tk:f">project hosting</a>, <a title="releasing Google created code into open source" href="http://code.google.com/hosting/search?q=label%3aGoogle" id="xw4u">releasing Google created code</a> and <a title="funding open source development" href="http://code.google.com/opensource/wine.html" id="lbyt">funding open source development</a>. We've also continued to get students involved in open source, recently debuting the <a title="Google Highly Open Participation Contest" href="http://code.google.com/opensource/ghop/" id="o:2i">Google Highly Open Participation Contest</a> for secondary schoolers as a complement to our university program, <a title="Google Summer of Code" href="http://code.google.com/soc/" id="nfjf">Google Summer of Code</a>.<br /><br />When you have this much good news to share, you just have to create your own blog --so we did. Come check out the new <a title="Google Open Source Blog" href="http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/" id="qu4.">Google Open Source Blog</a> for regular updates on all of the above and, if you like what you see, <a title="subscribe" href="http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/atom.xml" id="zr8m">subscribe</a>.

New Open Source Programs blog

Posted by Leslie Hawthorn, Program Manager, Open Source Team Since its inception in 2005, our Open Source Programs Office has been responsi...

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Google search on Nokia phones

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Christian Hernandez Gallardo, Strategic Partner Development Manager, mobile team</span><br /><br />At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona today, we announced a partnership with Nokia that will bring Google search to millions of Nokia phones. There's <a href="http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2008/02/mobile-world-congress-2008-google-and.html">more detail</a> on the Google Mobile Blog.

Google search on Nokia phones

Posted by Christian Hernandez Gallardo, Strategic Partner Development Manager, mobile team At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona today, ...

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