Be who you want on the web pages you visit

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Niniane Wang, Engineering Manager</span><br /><br />A while ago, I looked around the social web and wished that it could be less static. Sure, you can leave a comment on a blog or write a text blurb on your social networking profile. But what if you want to express yourself in a more fun way, with 3D graphics and real-time avatar interactions? I started asking this question as a 20% project, and I'm excited to announce today's release of Lively by Google - a 3D virtual experience that is the newest addition to Google Labs.<br /><br />The Lively team wants to help people experience another dimension of the web. We hope you will use the product to express yourself with and without words, and to do this in the places you already visit on the web.<br /><br />If you enter a Lively room embedded on your favorite blog or website, you can immediately get a sense of the room creator's interests, just by looking at the furniture and environment they chose. You can also express your own personality by customizing your avatar's look, showing people who you are without having to say a word. Of course, you can chat with each other, and you can also interact through animated actions. In our user research, we’ve been amazed at how much more poignant it is to receive an animated hug than seeing the text “[[hug]]”.<br /><br />Prior to this release, we worked closely with Arizona State University. Based on feedback from ASU students and with help from the Google Desktop team, we added support for playing YouTube videos in virtual TVs and showing photos in virtual picture frames inside our rooms. Better yet, the gadgets you have in your Lively rooms can also run on your desktop.<br /><br />To learn more about Lively, please visit <a href="http://www.lively.com/" id="l:nq" title="www.lively.com">www.lively.com</a>. We’re eager to hear <a href="http://www.lively.com/help/bin/request.py?contact_type=suggest">your feedback</a>. Maybe we'll bump into you in one of our rooms!<br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/5YbwfOucET8&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/5YbwfOucET8&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

Be who you want on the web pages you visit

Posted by Niniane Wang, Engineering Manager A while ago, I looked around the social web and wished that it could be less static. Sure, you c...

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Protocol Buffers: Our open source data interchange format

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Chris DiBona, Open Source Programs Manager</span><br /><br />Today we have something special for all you coders: we're releasing one of our most widely-used internal development tools. We call it "Protocol Buffers." It's the way we encode almost any sort of structured information which needs to be passed across the network or stored on disk. We thought Protocol Buffers might be useful to other people, too, so we've decided to release it as open source software. Check out the details on the <a href="http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2008/07/protocol-buffers-googles-data.html">Google Open Source Blog</a>, or head directly to the <a href="http://code.google.com/p/protobuf/">project page</a> on Google Code.

Protocol Buffers: Our open source data interchange format

Posted by Chris DiBona, Open Source Programs Manager Today we have something special for all you coders: we're releasing one of our most...

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Tour the Tour de France with Street View

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Stephen Chau, Product Manager</span><br /><br />Today marks the beginning of one of my favorite summer events: the Tour de France. I'm always amazed when I hear about the long, steep climbs through mountains or the blistering speeds of the cyclists as they pass through the French countryside. But since most of us can't head over there to watch it in person, we're giving you the next best thing: Street View of the 2008 Tour de France route. Head to <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF&ll=45.460131,1.208496&z=6&layer=c">google.com/tourdefrance2008</a> to experience the route stage by stage, and learn more about the images (and check out some of the most breathtaking sights) over on the <a href="http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2008/07/tour-tour-de-france-with-street-view.html">Lat Long blog</a>.<br /><br /><iframe marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" src="http://maps.google.com/maps/sv?cbp=1,58.924081690356274,,0,-12.847584343719605&cbll=48.855759,2.287608&panoid=qj73CeRqHQoVWOZnrZUZfg&v=1&hl=en&gl=us" frameborder="0" height="240" scrolling="no" width="425"></iframe><br /><small><a href="http://maps.google.com/?cbp=1,58.924081690356274,,0,-12.847584343719605&cbll=48.855759,2.287608&layer=c&ie=UTF8&ll=48.857056,2.287656&spn=0.006092,0.016222&z=17&panoid=qj73CeRqHQoVWOZnrZUZfg&source=embed" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255); text-align: left;">View Larger Map</a></small>

Tour the Tour de France with Street View

Posted by Stephen Chau, Product Manager Today marks the beginning of one of my favorite summer events: the Tour de France. I'm always am...

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More tools for citizen participation

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Peter Foo, Associate Webmaster and Mark Lucovsky, Technical Director</span><br /><br />Political participation isn't just about casting your vote; everyone should be able to become an informed participant instantly. When Americans want to learn about candidates and issues using Google, we find that they want more than one source, and immediate results. Instead of sitting through entire television broadcasts, voters are going online to get their daily dose of politics - as they did during the primaries, when searches for political queries spiked.<br /><br />We created a page on <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/trends/elections/" id="u685" title="2008 US election trends">2008 US election trends</a> that highlights search queries on candidates by location to show how, during this election season, voters across the nation are getting politically engaged online. Use the <a href="http://www.google.com/ig/adde?synd=open&source=ggyp&moduleurl=cqueries.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/queries_1.2.xml%3Fp%3D1">Candidate Search Queries map</a> to see which cities are searching more for Obama or McCain, and the News by Candidate tool on the trends page to see the latest headlines on each of the presidential contenders.<br /><br />Our political outreach efforts are aimed at providing citizens with useful knowledge on where candidates, office holders and advocacy groups stand. As more Americans go online and take simple steps to participate in politics, we aspire to promote democracy and informed participation in the process by equipping voters with useful information through search.

More tools for citizen participation

Posted by Peter Foo, Associate Webmaster and Mark Lucovsky, Technical Director Political participation isn't just about casting your vot...

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What comes next in this series? 13, 33, 53, 61, 37, 28...

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience</span><br /><br />Late one night in the summer of 2000, I found myself answering user support emails in response to two new features we had just released, Advanced Search and Preferences (at the time catchily called "Language, Display, and Filtering Options" :)). Busy crafting answers about how to set Safesearch or change the number of results offered by default, I worked my way through the email queue. And then I saw it: The next email had just a number ("37") in the subject - and no message text. What a weird form of spam, I thought. Why would anyone be motivated to just send a number? I searched for the user's email address to see what else had been sent. Interesting. Lots of numbers: 33, 53, and then a clue: "61, getting a bit heavy, aren't we?" Furthermore, the date on each of the messages seemed very familiar. Then I realized that's because the dates were all days that I had launched various changes on the homepage. "Getting a bit heavy?" - that one did correspond to one of the wordiest homepage releases we had ever done. Could the sender be counting words? Sure enough, I looked back, counted the words myself, and he was - a manual, human version of a scale for the Google homepage. He was weighing our homepage and letting us know when it was getting too heavy. One of his earliest mails had a note in the body: "What happened to the days of 13?" - referring to the word count on the initial 1999 homepage.<br /><br />This mystery and its revelation was really interesting because I thought about the homepage, and how to keep it simple, all the time. Yet I hadn't thought to look at it through this very simple lens: just count the words. The fewer, the better. Ever since that night, this has been our discipline, and everyone who works on the homepage and its design knows the current number: 28. (That's the word count for the basic page if you are signed out, there's no promotional line running beneath the search box, you've set Google as your homepage and thus don't get the "Make Google Your Homepage!" link, and you count "©2008 Google" as two words.)<br /><br />So, today we're making a homepage change by adding a link to our privacy overview and policies. Google values our users' privacy first and foremost. Trust is the basis of everything we do, so we want you to be familiar and comfortable with the integrity and care we give your personal data. We added this link both to our homepage and to our results page to make it easier for you to find information about our privacy principles. The new "Privacy" link goes to our Privacy Center, which was revamped earlier this year to be more straightforward and approachable, with videos and a non-legalese overview to make sure you understand in basic terms what Google does, does not, will, and won't, do in regard to your personal information.<br /><br />How does privacy relate to homepage word count? Larry and Sergey told me we could only add this to the homepage if we took a word away - keeping the "weight" of the homepage unchanged at 28. Given that the new Privacy link fit best with legal disclaimers on the page, I looked to the copyright line. There, we dropped the word "Google" (realizing it was implied, obviously) and added the new privacy link alongside it.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhheI1hqEAozhnspac5k1uiUO5zHFjaGpJpXr_my5jqwxNZGeEuxW10g-5Ir7tbC9B6_z-hFKpRk_VgylZI0paAshlmBu1XEBSPuizhRdbW17ht194_pPxwLDNeOVj7YerkTLajL7ynVJCQ/s1600-h/blogpost.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5218887618314035170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhheI1hqEAozhnspac5k1uiUO5zHFjaGpJpXr_my5jqwxNZGeEuxW10g-5Ir7tbC9B6_z-hFKpRk_VgylZI0paAshlmBu1XEBSPuizhRdbW17ht194_pPxwLDNeOVj7YerkTLajL7ynVJCQ/s1600/blogpost.jpg" style="margin: 0px auto 0px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" /></a><br /><br />We think the easy access to our privacy information without any added homepage heft is a clear win for our users and an enhancement to your experience. You can <a href="http://www.google.com/privacy.html" id="dvb2" title="check out the new Privacy Center here">check out the new Privacy Center here</a>.

What comes next in this series? 13, 33, 53, 61, 37, 28...

Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience Late one night in the summer of 2000, I found myself answering user suppor...

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Wrapup: Google Developer Days and Google I/O

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Elizabeth Yin & Min Li Chan, Google Developer Programs</span><br /><br />May and June were exciting months for our developer team. Not only is it the start of summer in the Bay Area, but also the start of Google I/O and Google Developer Days around the world. Many of the team dispersed to various parts of the globe to meet with developers. Here's a quick recap of where we've been, and where we're heading.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">San Francisco, May 28-29</span><br />We started the summer with <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/developerday/GoogleIO200802#" id="owhq" title="Google I/O on May 28-29th">Google I/O</a>. This two-day conference was our biggest developer gathering to date. While we'd love for every single software developer to come to these events, we realize that isn't possible. So we've recorded as many of the sessions as we could and made them available online. We've posted videos and presentations <a href="http://sites.google.com/site/io/" id="pow1" title="more than 70 of the sessions">more than 70 sessions</a> for you to view.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Yokohama, June 10</span><br />Shortly after Google I/O, we kicked off our 2008 Google Developer Days. The first stop was <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/developerday2008/DeveloperDayJapan#" id="c6l:" title="Yokohama, Japan">Yokohama, Japan</a>. Andy Rubin and Takuya Oikawa started the day before 1100 developers, highlighting the Android user interface, the Earth API's 3D graphics, and announcing Japan's new Google Developer API Expert program. <a href="http://sites.google.com/site/developerdayjapan/" id="d922" title="Videos and sessions are now available.">Videos and sessions are now available.</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Beijing, June 12</span><br />Two days later, Marissa Mayer and Kai-Fu Lee opened <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/developerday2008/DeveloperDayChina#" id="k0hk" title="Developer Day in Beijing, China">Developer Day in Beijing</a> for more than 2,000 developers, highlighting the effort between Google and local developer communities to collectively make the web better as a platform. Notably, we welcomed several new Chinese networks to the OpenSocial community, including 51.com, 51wan.com, Douban.com, Hainei.com, Tianji.com, Xiaonei.com, and YiQi.com. These networks join a few others that have already launched in China, including MySpace.cn and Tianya.cn, as well as CityIN.com, which has shipped a sandbox for developers. <a href="http://sites.google.com/site/developerdaychina/" id="j1a." title="Beijing videos and sessions are here.">Beijing videos and sessions are here.</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Taipei, June 14</span><br />Next on the schedule was <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/developerday2008/DeveloperDayTaiwan#" id="mx0h" title="Taipei's first Google Developer Day">Taipei's first Google Developer Day</a>, with 900 developers. In the developer showcase, we invited three developers to demonstrate web applications they'd built using Google APIs: Wei-chih Chiang, a student of Yi Shou University and his <a href="http://pi.isuphoto.org/photofeet.htm" id="x.:b" title="Photo Note">Photo Note</a> site, Jun-Chieh Huang, founder of <a href="http://www.ischool.com.tw/" id="qp-:" title="iSchool">ischool</a>, a website that integrates Google services for elementary and high schools in Taiwan, and <a href="http://funp.com/" id="mxot" title="FunP">FunP</a>, a social website integrating OpenSocial features. <a href="http://sites.google.com/site/developerdaytaiwan/" id="nk66" title="Here are the Taipei videos and sessions.">Here are the Taipei videos and sessions.</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sydney, June 18</span><br />Rounding out the Asia-Pacific Developer Days was an intimate group of <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/developerday2008/DeveloperDayAustralia#" id="v:jd" title="450 developers in Sydney">450 developers in Sydney</a> right by scenic Darling Harbor. In addition to folks from Google, we were excited to have Daniel Reyes, Head of Engineering from MySpace AU, stop by to share his team's work with Gears. Also of note were six local developers who showcased their app at our <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/developerday2008/DeveloperDayAustralia#5214827415724646066" id="dh:g" title="speedgeeking contest">speedgeeking contest</a>: contest winners Casey and Dan Russell of <a href="http://www.cleancruising.com.au/" id="gmvu" title="CleanCruising">CleanCruising</a>, Nick Lothian of <a href="http://www.scootle.edu.au/" id="w2.j" title="Scootle">Scootle</a>, Ken Hoetmer of <a href="http://quikmaps.com/" id="afub" title="Quikmaps">Quikmaps</a>, Tom Horn of the <a href="http://cannonade.net/aubrey.html" id="v:ho" title="Patrick O'Brien Mapping Project">Patrick O'Brien Mapping Project</a>, Tak Tran with the <a href="http://www.matthuynh.com/cabtour/cabtour.php" id="gqtu" title="Collaborative Autobiography">Collaborative Autobiography</a> site, and Tim Savage with the <a href="http://www.google.com/ig/directory?url=hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/104881640610994779021/seqwater.xml" id="vihi" title="SEQ Brisbane Water Levels gadget">SEQ Brisbane Water Levels gadget</a>.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mexico City, June 23 </span><br />John Farrell and Alfonso Luna opened <span id="w_k1" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">our </span><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/developerday2008/DeveloperDayMexico#" id="n3z6" title="first Developer Day in Mexico City">first Developer Day in Mexico City</a>. 500 enthusiastic developers joined us from all over Central and South America, with a crowd of them gathering as early as 6am, well ahead of the 9am start time. Check out <a href="http://sites.google.com/site/developerdaymexico/" id="imgi" title="sessions">sessions.</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sao Paulo, June 27</span><br />Alexandre Hohagen and Paulo Golgher welcomed 750 developers to <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/developerday2008/DeveloperDayBrazil02#" id="isrj" title="Google Developer Day in Sao Paulo">Developer Day in Sao Paulo</a>, the largest event in Google Brazil's history. The crowd was especially excited to hear Eduardo Thuler's announcement of orkut's upcoming support of OpenSocial in Brazil.<br /><br />Our Developer Days don't stop there, though. After a summer break, look for the team to hit the road again, including a new date in Bangalore.<br /><div class="g-unit" id="vvhg"> <ul id="vvhg0"><li id="vvhg1"> September 16 - London, England </li><li id="vvhg2"> September 18 - Paris, France </li><li id="vvhg3"> September 23 - Munich, Germany </li><li id="vvhg4"> September 25 - Madrid, Spain </li><li id="vvhg5"> October 11 - Bangalore, India </li><li id="vvhg6"> October 21 - Milan, Italy </li><li id="vvhg7"> October 24 - Prague, Czech Republic<br /> </li><li id="vvhg8"> October 28 - Moscow, Russia </li></ul> </div> Stay tuned for registration details for these Developer Days.

Wrapup: Google Developer Days and Google I/O

Posted by Elizabeth Yin & Min Li Chan, Google Developer Programs May and June were exciting months for our developer team. Not only is i...

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Google Apps continues to build in Europe

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Roberto Solimene, Enterprise Director, EMEA</span><br /><br />With Google Apps nearing the venerable age of 17 months, we have already seen more than 500,000 organizations adopt Apps as part of their business, with another 3,000 signing up every day. Many of those customers are small- and medium-sized businesses, but more and more large enterprises are also opting for the cost savings and greater flexibility that cloud computing offers.<br /><br />A good example is Taylor Woodrow, a UK-based construction, facilities management and engineering company that has just moved all its employees onto Google Apps Premier Edition. Their 1,800 users can now collaborate from offices, construction sites, and client premises across the UK and Benelux. Not only has it brought greater mobility and flexibility to everyone, but Taylor Woodrow's director of IT estimates he's saved £1 million in the process. <a href="http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2008/07/taylor-woodrow-migrates-1800-users-to.html">Read more on the Google Enterprise Blog</a>.

Google Apps continues to build in Europe

Posted by Roberto Solimene, Enterprise Director, EMEA With Google Apps nearing the venerable age of 17 months, we have already seen more tha...

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