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Building software tools to find child victims

Posted by Shumeet Baluja, Research Scientist Since it was founded in 1984, the <a title="National Center for Missing & Exploited Children" href="http://www.missingkids.com/" id="olp8">National Center for Missing & Exploited Children</a> (NCMEC) has reported more than 570,000 child exploitation leads to law enforcement agencies and assisted with more than 140,900 missing child cases, resulting in the recovery of more than 124,500 children. The advent of the Internet has unfortunately provided child predators with a new avenue to exploit children. In August 2006, we <a title="joined" href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/coalition-against-child-pornography.html" id="g6.a">joined</a> NCMEC's Technology Coalition Against Child Pornography, teaming up with other tech industry companies to develop solutions that hinder predators' ability to use the Internet to exploit children or traffic in child pornography. In an outshoot of that industry initiative, I discovered some other areas where I thought Google could help the staff at NCMEC. For instance, to date, NCMEC analysts have reviewed more than 13 million child pornography images and videos to assist law enforcement agencies working to identify and rescue children. This task has been time-consuming, and NCMEC analysts were simply getting overwhelmed by all of the data they had to sift through. One of our core strengths here at Google is our ability to manage and organize immense amounts of information -- whether it's text, image, audio, or video -- and make it more useful and accessible for users. As a member of Google's research group, I realized that NCMEC had an immediate need for some of our research-stage technology. They needed help organizing and making sense of the enormous number of images and videos sent to them every week through their <a title="CyberTipline" href="http://www.cybertipline.com/" id="mlhi">CyberTipline</a> and from law enforcement officers nationwide. So we went into overdrive. I recruited some fellow engineers to help me build tools that NCMEC might find useful. Throughout 2007, using our 20% time, we <a href="http://missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/NewsEventServlet?LanguageCountry=en_US&PageId=3644">created innovative software tools</a> to help NCMEC track down child predators through video and image search. With these tools, analysts will be able to more quickly and easily search NCMEC's large information systems to sort and identify files that contain images of child pornography. In addition, a new video tool we built streamlines analysts' review of video snippets. The keys here were organization, scalability, and search. In particular, the tools we provided will aid in organizing and indexing NCMEC's information so that analysts can both deal with new images and videos more efficiently and also reference historical material more effectively. We hope the tools we've built for NCMEC will help its analysts make the important and often time-sensitive work of investigating child predators faster and more efficient. For me, working with NCMEC provided an incredible opportunity. It allowed us to immediately deploy some of our latest research in image and video analysis in a real-world setting. On a personal note, I've been truly inspired by the entire NCMEC team's dedication and diligence in completing such a heart-wrenching mission. You always hope that your work will eventually be used do some good in the world, and this was an amazing chance to make that hope real by creating tools that have the potential to aid investigations of child predators, find child victims and reduce the flow of child pornography on the Internet.

Building software tools to find child victims

Posted by Shumeet Baluja, Research Scientist Since it was founded in 1984, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC)...

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Salesforce for Google Apps

Posted by Scott McMullan, Google Apps Partner Lead, Google Enterprise A little less than a year ago, we <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/pressrel/salesforce_alliance.html" id="xvmx">partnered with Salesforce.com</a> to create Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords. It combines Salesforce.com’s CRM applications with AdWords to make it easier for businesses to generate leads, track, and close them. Since then, people have offered up a constant stream of requests to streamline even more of the CRM process. At the top of list are everyday tasks like improved efficiency sending and sharing account emails, easier ways to create and share documents and presentations, and simpler ways to schedule meetings and events. To address these requests, we set out to collaborate on another product integration. Live today, we're happy to unveil <a href="http://www.salesforce.com/products/google/apps/">Salesforce for Google Apps</a>, a new product for all of those using Salesforce.com available at no additional charge. It brings the collaboration and communications features of Google Apps directly into the user experience of Salesforce.com, and is focused on streamlining the activities most frequently requested by our users. (There's <a href="http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2008/04/run-even-more-of-your-business-in-cloud.html">more detail</a> on our Enterprise Blog.) Here's a quick look at the problems we're trying to solve with Salesforce for Google Apps: <object height="355" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Pqe2eCtY4Pg&hl=en"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Pqe2eCtY4Pg&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="355" width="425"></embed></object> Regarding improvements, we'd like to remind developers that these new features -- as well as those announced today by our partners <a href="http://www.astadia.com/about/astadia_press_release-salesforce.com-google-products-launch.aspx">Astadia</a> and <a href="http://www.appirio.com/about/pr_products_041408.php">Appirio</a> -- were created using our respective open APIs. We share with Salesforce.com a commitment to make the web the best platform for application innovation. Thanks to everyone for your good ideas so far. We hope you'll continue to <a href="http://ideas.salesforce.com/popular/google">share your thoughts</a> about what you like and what can be improved.

Salesforce for Google Apps

Posted by Scott McMullan, Google Apps Partner Lead, Google Enterprise A little less than a year ago, we partnered with Salesforce.com to cr...

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The Spelman College CS Olympiad

Posted by Marcus Mitchell, Engineering Director We're always interested in supporting computer science education, and in encouraging top talent from diverse backgrounds. Which is why we've just sponsored the Sixth Annual <a id="g.n9" href="http://www.spelman.edu/%7Esccso/" target="_blank">Spelman College Computer Science Olympiad</a> for the second consecutive year. In all, 16 teams from eight Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCUs), or Association of Computer/Information Sciences and Engineering Departments at Minority Institutions (ADMI) participated. These teams competed in five computer science-related events. One of these was a <a id="jy-g" href="http://www.google.com/webmasters/gadgets/" target="_blank">Google Gadgets</a> competition, where the assignment was to build an interactive, creative and useful Google Gadget. Students brought their semi-completed gadgets and got troubleshooting advice and tips at a hack session, where Googlers and students worked together into the night to perfect them. The following day, each team presented their gadget to our panel of three judges (myself and 2 other Googlers). We chose first, second and third place winners, whose gadgets will be uploaded to the <a id="djo:" href="http://www.google.com/ig/directory?synd=open" target="_blank">iGoogle Directory</a> soon: <ul><li>First place: Morehouse College Team 2 (Lawrence Forrester, Kevin Walton, Mark Slade, Michael Davis) <a href="http://kevin.ultinets.net/gadget/hopstop/hopstop.xml" target="_blank"></a></li><li>Second place: Old Dominion University Monarchs (Duc Nguyen, Cesar Barbieri, Darrin Lee, Nicole Jackson)</li><li>Third place: Spelman College YOMamaBoards (Jonecia Keels, Jazmine Miller, Paige McReynolds, Arielle Baine)</li></ul>It was inspiring to see the energy, enthusiasm, and skill of these future computer scientists -- our congratulations to all the teams that participated. <div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPM_bvTMHQ6zdMvCoQDJ_ktwEuz_KgZ7v67TSC52DVp-YHWL_AlRUkhm36f58NmLd00wldn5Mepyd5F_fBDTDqCwoVk7oEEfW0AMeY-VANH3CVsDUW1LeMxiKlFSrln1o0bE6BH3bjj0uM/s1600-h/Hopstop+Gadget.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5188143586822690706" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPM_bvTMHQ6zdMvCoQDJ_ktwEuz_KgZ7v67TSC52DVp-YHWL_AlRUkhm36f58NmLd00wldn5Mepyd5F_fBDTDqCwoVk7oEEfW0AMeY-VANH3CVsDUW1LeMxiKlFSrln1o0bE6BH3bjj0uM/s320/Hopstop+Gadget.JPG" style="cursor: pointer; width: 205px; height: 256px;" /></a> </div><div style="text-align: center;">First-place winner. </div>

The Spelman College CS Olympiad

Posted by Marcus Mitchell, Engineering Director We're always interested in supporting computer science education, and in encouraging top...

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Sharing gadgets just got better

Posted by Jeff Regan, Engineer Have you ever wanted to tell a friend about a really great game gadget on <a title="iGoogle" href="http://www.google.com/ig?source=igbp" id="fpt0">iGoogle</a> or help someone set up a gadget exactly the way you have it? You can do those things on iGoogle using the Share menu, but what you couldn't do before today was share a gadget and collaborate with your friends on the same gadget data. This means you can now view and edit gadgets just like <a href="https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=writely&passive=true&continue=http%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2F&followup=http%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2F&ltmpl=homepage&nui=1&rm=false" id="fe1r" title="Google Docs">Google Docs</a>. A simple gadget to share is one for <a href="http://www.google.com/ig/directory?hl=en&url=www.google.com/ig/modules/sticky.xml" id="cl_j" title="Sticky Note">sticky notes</a>. Enter a grocery list, share it with family members, and everyone can see and edit the same list. If you like crosswords, but like me need plenty of help, just share your <a href="http://www.google.com/ig/directory?q=crossword&hl=en&url=www.nytimes.com/ads/crosswords/gadget/puzzle.xml" id="mfr_" title="crossword gadget">crossword</a> with a friend and they can work on it with you. Here's how in three steps: Step 1: Click the triangle on the gadget you want to share and click "Share this gadget." <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoRcvz2AK_X6C6tmnrzNFSkyGeTYoAADLgsWq9aurekKBdyzbZQqHcJWvHJyrU7vZzyRodR0NsKQfQdEGMVBHtXLZHiy8N9P2EnGiYfCl5tLIqwg38Nw7dTdRgZWb112_oIzOc7X3PCGL1/s1600-h/screenshot.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5182423496747215970" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoRcvz2AK_X6C6tmnrzNFSkyGeTYoAADLgsWq9aurekKBdyzbZQqHcJWvHJyrU7vZzyRodR0NsKQfQdEGMVBHtXLZHiy8N9P2EnGiYfCl5tLIqwg38Nw7dTdRgZWb112_oIzOc7X3PCGL1/s320/screenshot.jpg" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" /></a> Step 2: If you're a Gmail user, just pick the friends you want to share with or type in their email addresses. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg58p_SFLRDxW-c3W06MYk2dR0ASHlyxZfgaIijakYeosY0IXyVwqU-Usnuq-3lSaT6ziQBsB3xHP5Sr42INMmY7Wf5yREzZly7t2zbbS0Cmh55f3QYCo-aKRI3LMSl7OuS4Tx7xP9b2WiA/s1600-h/screenshot2.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5182424591963876482" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg58p_SFLRDxW-c3W06MYk2dR0ASHlyxZfgaIijakYeosY0IXyVwqU-Usnuq-3lSaT6ziQBsB3xHP5Sr42INMmY7Wf5yREzZly7t2zbbS0Cmh55f3QYCo-aKRI3LMSl7OuS4Tx7xP9b2WiA/s320/screenshot2.jpg" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" /></a> Step 3: Decide whether you want to let your friends edit your gadget content or just view it on their iGoogle page and click "Send invites." Your friends will get an email from you and they will be able to see a preview of the gadget in the email and add it to their own iGoogle page. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrfrdrIf8h125n0RTOxhrnSML3L0ZFP42vEv3CDD8N-rlsh_lXrnxUu2dSuXtZUVmsAr1I468gY23uk4itGHHLaGrJyCzkLqky-S7BiEQ_mKfAeEf-UAI_JaV-NIjLNukFEyl0U9kyE4Eh/s1600-h/screenshot3.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5182425025755573394" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrfrdrIf8h125n0RTOxhrnSML3L0ZFP42vEv3CDD8N-rlsh_lXrnxUu2dSuXtZUVmsAr1I468gY23uk4itGHHLaGrJyCzkLqky-S7BiEQ_mKfAeEf-UAI_JaV-NIjLNukFEyl0U9kyE4Eh/s320/screenshot3.jpg" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" /></a> So go ahead, check out the <a href="http://www.google.com/ig/directory?hl=en&root=/ig&dpos=top&cat=shareable&sort=popular" id="p14v" title="full list of gadgets">full list of gadgets</a> with this feature and give it a try. We've enabled this feature for some of our more popular gadgets to encourage collaboration, but of course it doesn't make sense for every gadget. For example, you can share a weather or movie listings gadget with a friend, but data sharing is not enabled - your friend gets an independent copy of the gadget, as before. Developers, check out the <a href="http://googlegadgetsapi.blogspot.com/2008/04/write-collaborative-gadget-with-one.html" id="wo.c" title="Gadget API Blog">Gadgets API Blog</a> to learn how to incorporate this feature in your gadget with one line of code. <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Web_Search_Help" id="dsaz" title="We would love to know what you think.">We would love to know what you think.</a>

Sharing gadgets just got better

Posted by Jeff Regan, Engineer Have you ever wanted to tell a friend about a really great game gadget on iGoogle or help someone set up a g...

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Last call for scalability papers

Posted by Andrew Schwerin, Software Engineer As an engineer in Seattle, I can't wait for summer to arrive. This year, I'm not just looking forward to the beautiful weather, but also the <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/seattle-conference-on-scalability-2008.html" id="xbg0" title="Seattle Scalability Conference">Seattle Scalability Conference</a>. It takes place on Saturday, June 14th. Conference planning is underway, and the deadline for our call for papers is this Friday, April 11th! If you have an interesting approach for building and maintaining scalable systems, this is the perfect gathering to share it. Send a 500-word abstract of your 30-minute presentation to scalabilityconf at google.com -- and plan on enjoying the long-awaited Seattle sunshine with me this June. Here are some of the topics that interest me (but I'm open to more ideas): Scalable algorithms: <ul><li> Parallelization techniques (fully automatic or programmer-assisted)</li></ul><ul><li> Algorithms that are robust in the face of system failures (flaky hardware, OS bugs, network failures)</li></ul>Scalable systems: <ul><li> Managing large, evolving data stores</li></ul><ul><li> Languages and tools for organizing high-throughput data processing systems</li></ul><ul><li> Handling partial failure (automatic failure detection/diagnosis/repair)</li></ul>We'll be posting more information for conference attendees soon.

Last call for scalability papers

Posted by Andrew Schwerin, Software Engineer As an engineer in Seattle, I can't wait for summer to arrive. This year, I'm not just l...

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Gadgets for a cause

Posted by Samantha Crow, Product Marketing Manager, iGoogle With Americans spending the same amount of time online as they do watching television (so says this <a href="http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/231/report_display.asp" id="o6z1" title="Pew Internet">Pew/Internet study</a>), organizations and campaigns have the opportunity to build awareness of election issues broadly through Google tools that make it easy for users to access information. Gadgets -- which are basically interactive and dynamic mini-billboards -- are one of the fastest growing applications at Google. They're the foundation for iGoogle, the personalized version of the Google homepage that has tens of millions of users. They can also be included on most any page on the web with some simple copy-and-paste. Our top gadget developers include a database specialist from the University of Southern Maine, a stay-at-home mom from Utah, and a computer science major from Puerto Rico. Now any campaign or organization with a live website can use the <a href="http://www.google.com/webmasters/gadgets/promo/election.html#utm_source=en-et-mar08blog&utm_medium=et&utm_content=en&utm_campaign=mar08blog" id="t9ba">Gadget Builder for organizations</a> to quickly create a gadget. You can drive traffic from your gadget on iGoogle to your website and help your organization be seen and heard on this new platform. Your gadget could feature news from your organization, blog updates, a YouTube video channel, polls, trends, speeches, and more. You can <a href="http://www.google.com/webmasters/add.html" id="pe-m" title="submit your gadget">submit your gadget</a> to the iGoogle directory and drive additional usage of your gadget from your website. By making content accessible on iGoogle, organizations can engage supporters, reach undecided voters, and provide information to the uninformed. All you need to get started is access to a publicly available server where you can host your gadget files. If you already have a gadget, make sure it's in the <a href="http://code.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=55132&topic=12391" id="ntfx" title="appropriate category">appropriate category</a>, for instance <a href="http://www.google.com/ig/directory?root=/ig&dpos=top&cat=politics&sort=popular" id="dagt">Politics</a> or <a href="http://www.google.com/ig/directory?root=/ig&dpos=top&cat=news&sort=popular" id="xtn1" title="News category">News</a>. If you don't have a gadget yet, it only takes a few minutes to get started. For more details on gadget creation, visit the <a href="http://www.google.com/webmasters/gadgets/about/#utm_source=en-et-blog0308&utm_medium=et&utm_content=en&utm_campaign=blog0308" id="upix" title="Google Gadget Center">Google Gadget Center</a>.

Gadgets for a cause

Posted by Samantha Crow, Product Marketing Manager, iGoogle With Americans spending the same amount of time online as they do watching telev...

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Developers, start your engines

Posted by Kevin Gibbs, Tech Lead, Google App Engine We just launched a preview release of <a href="http://appengine.google.com/">Google App Engine</a>, a way for developers to run their web applications on Google's infrastructure. In the same way that Blogger made it easy to create a blog, Google App Engine is designed from the ground up to make it easy to create and run web applications. With Google App Engine, developers can write web applications based on the same building blocks that Google uses, like <a href="http://labs.google.com/papers/gfs.html">GFS</a> and <a href="http://labs.google.com/papers/bigtable.html">Bigtable</a>. Google App Engine packages those building blocks and provides access to scalable infrastructure that we hope will make it easier for developers to scale their applications automatically as they grow. This means they can spend less time dealing with system administration and maintenance, and more time building and improving their applications. (There's <a href="http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2008/04/introducing-google-app-engine-our-new.html">more detail</a> on the new App Engine Blog.) Google App Engine is free to use during the preview release, but the amount of computing resources any app can use is limited. In the future, developers will be able to purchase additional computing resources as needed, but Google App Engine will always be free to get started. Today's launch is a preview release. We've got a lot left to do, and there are a lot of features we still want to add to the system. What we'd really like is to get your feedback on it, so we know which features are most important to you. We'll use your suggestions to keep improving the system. This preview of Google App Engine is available for the first 10,000 developers who sign up; we will increase that number in near future. So, developers, please <a href="http://appengine.google.com/">sign up</a>, <a href="http://code.google.com/appengine">download the SDK</a>, and start your engines.

Developers, start your engines

Posted by Kevin Gibbs, Tech Lead, Google App Engine We just launched a preview release of Google App Engine , a way for developers to run th...

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