Online safety tips from Google and AARP

Now more than ever before, older Americans are logging on and surfing the web to stay in touch with family and friends, read websites and blogs, share photos, watch videos, and run online businesses. Like all Internet users, they're sometimes faced with unsafe activity online, such as viruses and malware, and they're looking for resources to learn how to keep their information on the web safe, private, and under their control.<br /><br />So we teamed up with <a href="http://www.aarp.org/">AARP</a> to launch a new video series that provides AARP members with helpful, easy-to-understand tips on how to stay safe online. It includes pointers on how to set privacy controls in online photo-sharing sites, configure firewalls to protect your computer, select safe and secure passwords for your online accounts, shop safely online, and avoid phishing scams. You can find the videos on AARP's <a href="http://www.aarp.org/onlinesafety">online safety page</a>, as well as on our <a href="http://www.youtube.com/googleprivacy">Privacy Channel</a> on YouTube.<br /><br />Here's a look at the first video, Safe Starts:<br /><br /><object height="350" width="425"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/cdO670FOmFM"> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/cdO670FOmFM" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="350"></embed> </object><br /><br />Our team gave a sneak peek of the videos from our booth at the annual AARP member event, <a href="http://www.aarp.org/aarp_benefits/natl_events/aarp_benefits/natl_events/dc/?type=party">Life@50+</a>, earlier this month. We received lots of great feedback from AARP members. Even the most computer-savvy members found the videos helpful, and most folks who stopped by were eager to share them with friends and family members who are just getting started online.<br /><br />Check out the rest of the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=E5469A21B9F9E466">online safety video series</a>. We hope the tips in these videos raise awareness among Internet users of all ages about how to stay safe online.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Update (12:06 p.m.): </span>Nancy LeaMonde, AARP's Executive VP of Social Impact, just <a href="http://blog.aarp.org/shaarpsession/2008/09/nancy_leamond_enjoy_life_onlin.html">posted</a> tips from the video series on AARP's blog.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Shuman Ghosemajumder, Business Product Manager for Trust and Safety</span>

Online safety tips from Google and AARP

Now more than ever before, older Americans are logging on and surfing the web to stay in touch with family and friends, read websites and blogs, share photos, watch videos, and run online businesses. …

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Project 10^100

<span style="font-size:100%;">If you could suggest a unique idea that would help as many people as possible, what would it be?</span><br /><br />It's a question worth considering. Never in history have so many people had so much information, so many tools at their disposal, so many ways of making good ideas come to life. Yet at the same time so many people (in all walks of life) could use some help, in small ways and big. In the midst of this, new studies are reinforcing the timeless wisdom that beyond a basic level of material wealth, the only thing that seems to increase individual happiness is... helping other people. In other words, help helps everybody.<br /><br />But what would help, and what would be most helpful? We don't believe we have the answers, but we do believe the answers are out there. Maybe in a lab, or a company, or a university -- or maybe not. Maybe the answer that helps somebody is in your head, in something you've observed, some notion that you've been fiddling with, some small connection you've noticed, some old way of doing something that you've seen with new eyes.<br /><br />To mark our 10th birthday and celebrate the spirit of our users and the web, we're launching <a href="http://www.project10tothe100.com/">Project 10^100</a> (that's "ten to the hundredth") a call for ideas that could help as many people as possible, and a program to bring the best of those ideas to life. CNN will be covering this project, including profiles of ideas and the people who submit them from around the world. For a deeper look, follow along at <a href="http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2007/impact/">Impact Your World</a>.<br /><br />Ideas are due by October 20, 2008. Get started <a href="http://www.project10tothe100.com/how_it_works.html">submitting</a> your own ideas, and come back on January 27th to vote on ideas from others. We hope you feel inspired enough to try. Good luck, and may the ones who help the most win.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Andy Berndt, Managing Director, Google Creative Lab</span>

Project 10^100

If you could suggest a unique idea that would help as many people as possible, what would it be?It's a question worth considering. Never in history have so many people had so much information, so many…

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This year's Faculty Summit

Recently we hosted more than 90 distinguished faculty members from roughly 60 North American universities to the Googleplex for the <a href="http://www.google.com/events/facultysummit2008/agenda.html">4th Annual North American Faculty Summit</a>.<br /><br />This annual event is both an opportunity for us to showcase our latest research and products, and a chance to deepen our relationship with the academic community. Faculty have the chance to network with colleagues and students-turned-Googlers, and to learn about opportunities for collaboration with Google.<br /><br />Some of this year's highlights:<br /><ul><li>Roundtables - small group discussions with senior engineers</li><li>API demos - introducing applications of our most popular APIs: Google Data, Open Social, Geo, and Android</li><li>A technical panel I hosted, "Computing at Scale: Challenges and Opportunities" - comprised of Googlers Rob Pike and Urs Hoelzle as well as Jeanette Wing, Assistant Director for Computer & Information Science and Engineering (CISE) at the National Science Foundation, and Ed Lazowska, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Washington</li><li>Visits from our CEO, Eric Schmidt, who dropped by the opening cocktail reception, plus founders Larry & Sergey, who mingled at the reception and conducted the closing Q&A</li></ul>You can watch videos of the talks on our <a href="http://research.google.com/university/relations/">University Relations website</a>.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Alfred Spector, VP of Research & Special Initiatives</span>

This year's Faculty Summit

Recently we hosted more than 90 distinguished faculty members from roughly 60 North American universities to the Googleplex for the 4th Annual North American Faculty Summit.This annual event is both a…

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Wiping out the next smallpox

<span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" >The Internet has had an enormous impact on people's lives around the world in the ten years since Google's founding. It has changed politics, entertainment, culture, business, health care, the environment and just about every other topic you can think of. Which got us to thinking, what's going to happen in the next ten years? How will this phenomenal technology evolve, how will we adapt, and (more importantly) how will it adapt to us? We asked ten of our top experts this very question, and during September (our 10th anniversary month) we are presenting <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Google%20at%2010">their responses</a>. As computer scientist Alan Kay has famously observed, the best way to predict the future is to invent it, so we will be doing our best to make good on our experts' words every day. - Karen Wickre and Alan Eagle, series editors</span><br /><br />It took more than a village: it took the entire world -- people of all races, countries and religions -- to eradicate smallpox. The final naturally occurring cases of "Variola major" in Bangladesh in 1978 and "Variola minor" in Somalia in 1977 marked the end to a chain of suffering and early death dating back to the Biblical plagues, and to Pharoah Ramses, who died from the very same disease. Since then we have continued to face countless pandemics -- the Black Death, cholera, and now bird flu, SARS, HIV/AIDS and a new generation of zoonotic diseases -- diseases that, often because of changes in population or climate, jump from animals to humans. We can't be sure where the next smallpox will emerge, but we can be sure that it will take an effort larger than any single person or organization to defeat it.<br /><br />Today there are some real heroes working to check off two more diseases from the list. The <a id="jc72" href="http://www.polioeradication.org/" title="World Health Organization">World Health Organization</a> has led the charge against the highly infectious disease of polio. Along with UNICEF and dozens of NGOs, and millions of national and local health workers, members of <a id="dh2w" href="http://www.rotary.org/en/EndPolio/Pages/ridefault.aspx" title="Rotary International">Rotary International</a> and volunteers from moms to Mullahs have stepped up to the plate and contained polio so that hundreds, not millions, of kids are paralyzed annually, but we cannot consider the case closed until we erase the last case, in the last country. The <a id="dtrd" href="http://www.cartercenter.org/homepage.html" title="Carter Center">Carter Center</a> has also accomplished a tremendous feat by leading the effort to shrink the cases of Guinea worm to the tens of thousands from the millions. Just as it took 150,000 health workers -- the world's unsung heroes -- to make one billion house calls in India searching for hidden cases of smallpox, it will take collaboration on a global scale to track and eliminate the next pandemic.<br /><br />There is no Nobel Prize for "Preventing a Pandemic," and the hardest part about working in this field is imagining the unimaginable. What will be the next SARS, the next ebola, the next H5N1 bird flu? Epidemiologists try to "out think" the massive numbers of permutations and combinations that may give rise to the newest threat to our lives. Chances are a microbe capable of sweeping the globe will emerge in the next decade or two, and chances are it will cross to humans from an animal host (as did SARS, the Spanish flu, and HIV/AIDS). We need new ways to find these emerging threats earlier in the process, before thousands are infected and the epidemic spirals out of control.<br /><br />Google.org's <a title="Predict and Prevent" href="http://www.google.org/predict.html" id="pkfr">Predict and Prevent</a> initiative is working with partners to use digital, genomic and IT technology to identify "hot spots" of emerging threats and provide early warning before they become global crises. When you're fighting a pandemic, early detection and early response can be the difference between dozens and hundreds of millions infected. What better birthday present could we offer the world after our 20th year, than to say we joined hands with a global movement and helped prevent the next smallpox?<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Dr. Larry Brilliant, Google.org</span>

Wiping out the next smallpox

The Internet has had an enormous impact on people's lives around the world in the ten years since Google's founding. It has changed politics, entertainment, culture, business, health care, the environ…

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The first Android-powered phone

Today, T-Mobile announced the <a href="http://www.t-mobileg1.com/" id="jmdz" title="world's first Android-powered phone">world's first Android-powered phone</a>. This marks an important milestone in the young history of Android. It was less than a year ago, on November 5, that the Open Handset Alliance, a group of more than 30 technology and mobile companies, <a href="http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/press_110507.html" id="bh8f" title="announced plans">announced plans</a> to create a complete mobile platform that would facilitate the development of advanced mobile applications and give users the best the web has to offer on a mobile device.<br /><br />Software developers are key to driving innovation on the web, and also for mobile. That's why, over the past year, we've released several early versions of the Software Developer Kit (SDK) and worked with developers from around the world to make it better and more complete. This has culminated in today's release of the Android 1.0 SDK R1. Through the SDK, developers have unprecedented access to the hardware and software capabilities of the device, enabling them to innovate freely. More than 1,700 applications were developed as part of the <a title="Android Developer Challenge" href="http://code.google.com/android/adc.html" id="atcv">Android Developer Challenge</a>. Google engineers have also been busy developing Android applications. Many of our products (Search, Gmail, and Maps, among others) are available on a wide range of phones such as the iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile devices, and many more. Today, they're also available on Android, and you can check out the <a href="http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2008/09/google-on-android.html" id="rz5x" title="Google Mobile blog">Google Mobile blog</a> for more details.<br /><br />But there's more to the Android story. Not only does it allow all applications open access to the phone's functionality; the platform itself will also be open. The Open Handset Alliance has announced its intention to open source the entire Android platform by the end of the year. Along with the other members of the Alliance, we hope that Android can provide a meaningful contribution to all players in the mobile ecosystem: the developers, the wireless carriers, the handset manufacturers, etc. Everyone will be free to adopt and adapt the technology as they see fit. By doing so, we hope that users will get better, more capable phones with powerful web browsers and access to a rich catalogue of innovative mobile applications.<br /><br />Developers will soon be able to distribute their applications to real handsets through the beta version of <a href="http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2008/08/android-market-user-driven-content.html" id="bqwf" title="Android Market (beta)">Android Market</a>. Handset manufacturers and wireless carriers will be able to incorporate Android innovations into their own new handsets and service offerings. And users will get better handsets and more choice. We think it's another step towards realizing the full potential of the mobile phone.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Erick Tseng, Lead Product Manager, Android Team<span><br /><br /></span></span>

The first Android-powered phone

Today, T-Mobile announced the world's first Android-powered phone. This marks an important milestone in the young history of Android. It was less than a year ago, on November 5, that the Open Handset …

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NYC transit directions have arrived

Today I'm happy to report we've taken a giant step in bringing public transit information to Google Maps. We've just added comprehensive transit info for the entire New York metro region, encompassing subway, commuter rail, bus and ferry services from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, New Jersey Transit and the City of New York. That means this information is now at the fingertips of the more than 20 million people who live in and around New York (not to mention the millions of people who visit the region every year). The MTA is the largest transportation agency in the U.S., serving one in every three users of mass transit in the country.<br /><br />Transit is a vital part of the infrastructure that makes cities run efficiently, and can help mitigate congestion, environmental concerns, and increasing energy costs. But until recently, access to that information has been more difficult than it needs to be. Even very prominent train and subway stations were often omitted entirely from maps in many cases. And as for bus lines, well, forget about it! This lead us to the fundamental goal of the <span style="border-collapse: collapse;font-family:arial;" ></span><a title="Google Transit" href="http://www.google.com/transit" id="pqol">Google Transit</a> project: make public transit information as easy to find as any other geographic information.<br /><br />We can only achieve this goal if we work closely with transit agencies around the globe to bring accurate and comprehensive transit information to everyone. Our role in this partnership is to bring all of this information together and make it easy to search and browse in interfaces that are simple, consistent and readily available.<br /><br />Thinking about the magnitude of today's launch, I can't help but think about how far we've come towards reaching our goal. It's been nearly two years to the day since I <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/happy-trails-with-google-transit.html">posted</a> about the expansion of the Google Transit trip planner (we added five more cities to our <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/12/public-transit-via-google.html">initial single-city launch</a> in Portland, Oregon). And in that post I included some statistics about how many people lived in a city covered by our product. At the time, our coverage was 6 U.S. cities. Now we cover more than 170 cities and countries across the globe, including about 70 cities in North America and 81 in China, plus cities in Europe and Australia and national coverage of Japan, Switzerland and Austria. And the number of people served annually by agencies was at about 6 million. Now it's hard to count precisely, but the number is at least at several hundred million (wow!).<br /><br />I would like to personally thank everyone at the agencies for their incredible level of enthusiasm for and commitment to the best interests of their riders.<br /><br />And to the riders: have fun! I hope you like the product as much as I do, and that it helps you get out and explore the world. To learn more about transit info in New York, head to <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps/mpl?f=d&dirflg=r&q=Grand+Central+Station,+NYC&daddr=Grand+Central+Station,+NYC&z=12&ie=UTF8&moduleurl=http://maps.google.com/help/maps/transit/nyc/mapplet.html&mapclient=google&ll=40.730478,-73.976612&spn=0.102635,0.171318&utm_campaign=en&utm_medium=ha&utm_source=en-ha-na-us-gns-trs&utm_term=NYClp"><span>maps.google.com/nyc</span></a>.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Chris Harrelson, Tech Lead & Creator of Google Transit</span>

NYC transit directions have arrived

Today I'm happy to report we've taken a giant step in bringing public transit information to Google Maps. We've just added comprehensive transit info for the entire New York metro region, encompassing…

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Book Search spreads its wings with new partnerships and tools

You probably know that you can use <a href="http://books.google.com/">Google Book Search</a> to search the full text of books -- and that, thanks to universal search, you can find many of these books doing a regular Google search as well.<br /><br />Today, we're announcing a new set of partnerships and tools to bring even more books to the people who are looking for them. We've partnered with booksellers like Books-a-Million, Buy.com, and Borders.com to allow their customers to browse previews of books right on the retailer's website. We've also extended this functionality to libraries, publishers, and social book sites like GoodReads. And, to make sure we didn't miss anyone, we're releasing a powerful <a href="http://code.google.com/apis/books/">set of APIs</a>, which make it easier for web developers and site owners to enable this functionality on their own sites, as well.<br /><br />To read more, head on over to the <a href="http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2008/09/book-search-everywhere-with-new.html">Google Book Search blog</a>.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Tom Turvey, Google Book Search Partnerships Director</span>

Book Search spreads its wings with new partnerships and tools

You probably know that you can use Google Book Search to search the full text of books -- and that, thanks to universal search, you can find many of these books doing a regular Google search as well.T…

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