Update: Letters to the Next President project

When I <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/what-do-students-want-to-tell-next.html">introduced</a> the <span style="font-style: italic;">Letters to the Next President</span> writing project last month, 962 middle and high school students had published their letters. Since then, thousands of new letters have been written and published (there are now more than 5,200 total).<br /><br />High school juniors and seniors from <a href="http://www.letters2president.org/classes/2283-deborah-hagedorn">rural Alaska</a> have voiced their concerns about gas prices and paying for college. Ninth and tenth graders from <a href="http://www.letters2president.org/classes/2173-eric-gordon">Brooklyn, NY</a> have written persuasive pieces on war and global warming.<br /><br />Although most of these students are too young to vote in tomorrow's presidential election, they've proven that they can participate in the democratic process by expressing their concerns and hopes for our country. You can read their letters at <a href="http://www.letters2president.org/">Letters2President.org</a> and hear some of their thoughts in this video.<br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/X-3HQ6Alkbs&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/X-3HQ6Alkbs&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Andrew Chang, Google Docs Marketing Manager</span>

Update: Letters to the Next President project

When I introduced the Letters to the Next President writing project last month, 962 middle and high school students had published their le...

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Plug in to the latest release of Google Chrome

When we launched Google Chrome two months ago, the response was overwhelmingly positive. We got all sorts of support and encouragement from many users, but we also got the most valuable resource we could ask for: feedback! Because of the variety of software and hardware configurations that exist "in the wild," users were able to find a few issues that we hadn't come across. In particular, they reported problems with Google Chrome's support for plugins used to play videos and show PDFs.<br /><br />I am happy to report that we've made great progress in addressing plugin problems. The release that just went live is packed with plugin fixes, and early developer-channel users noted that plugin performance improved dramatically. You can read more about one of the improvements to viewing PDFs on the official <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></span><a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2008/10/beta-and-plugin-improvements-in-google.html" id="bns2" title="the Official Chromium Blog"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Chromium Blog</span></a></span></span>. Most importantly, if you tried the first version of Google Chrome but found that there were some bugs giving you headaches, give it another try. If you already have Google Chrome, you will get <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></span><a href="http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=95414" id="ktnt" title="updated automatically"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">updated automatically</span></a></span></span>, or you can download the latest version from <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><a href="http://google.com/chrome/index.html?brand=CHMP&utm_source=en-blog-ogb&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=en" id="il_1" title="www.google.com/chrome"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">www.google.com/chrome</span></a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></span></span></span></span></span>.<br /><br />We've still got a long list of planned improvements, so stay tuned. And keep the <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></span><a href="http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Chrome" id="mv16" title="interesting questions"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">interesting questions</span></a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></span>, helpful bug reports, and stellar code contributions coming!<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Glenn Wilson, Product Manager</span>

Plug in to the latest release of Google Chrome

When we launched Google Chrome two months ago, the response was overwhelmingly positive. We got all sorts of support and encouragement from ...

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Visualizing data in the cloud

More and more companies are storing data in the cloud, and as this data grows, so does the need for reporting tools to make sense of this information. To address these growing needs, earlier this year we introduced the <a href="http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2008/03/introducing-google-visualization-api.html">Google Visualization API</a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Verdana;" ></span>, a powerful API that enables anyone to <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/opening-google-docs-to-users-and.html">build apps on top of Google Spreadsheets</a>. Companies can create and use reporting applications from the <a href="http://code.google.com/apis/visualization/documentation/gadgetgallery.html">Google Visualization Gadget Gallery</a> that can be integrated anywhere on the web, displaying data from a Google Spreadsheet. Today, we are expanding the capabilities of the Google Visualization API by enabling developers to display data from any data source connected to the web (any database, Excel spreadsheet, etc.), not just from Google Spreadsheets. From pivot tables and heat graphs to motion charts and timelines, the Google Visualization Gallery holds a growing set of 40+ visualizations that appeal to a multitude of businesses.<br /><br />We're also pleased to announce that <a href="http://www.salesforce.com/">Salesforce.com</a> has made available some <a href="http://blog.sforce.com/sforce/2008/11/elevate-your-fo.html">tools</a> to make the Google Visualization API even easier to use. These tools enable their customers to build sophisticated reporting and analysis applications using the API that works with data inside Salesforce.com's CRM. The Visualization API also enables developers to create custom reporting applications to sell to Salesforce customers or to other companies with data in the cloud. Earlier today at the <a href="http://www.salesforce.com/dreamforce/DF08/">Dreamforce</a> conference, Adam Gross, Vice President, Developer Marketing, Salesforce.com, commented that "The enhancement of the Google Visualization API represents a significant opportunity for developers. We expect to see the creation of new tools for our users to quickly generate reports and dashboards for their Salesforce CRM data and in their Force.com applications. These enhanced analysis capabilities will provide our customers with greater productivity and deeper insight into their businesses."<br /><br />As companies open their platforms, we expect to see increased integration of data and services across clouds, benefiting the enterprise community.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyJZrmE1nAj8dXh0EqstOQsWFK4tzil-u-cy3lNcZ8iaJPYyvyAKwYdCxYb5TBdN16mS13asN7vU8xa7A9ep3YGWJndzSwjG_zhqIQLI_EQ49HBLD8Q5PPRihN5cg092hSeSQqGKqSYntq/s1600-h/gviz+blog+11-2008.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5264282641162239986" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyJZrmE1nAj8dXh0EqstOQsWFK4tzil-u-cy3lNcZ8iaJPYyvyAKwYdCxYb5TBdN16mS13asN7vU8xa7A9ep3YGWJndzSwjG_zhqIQLI_EQ49HBLD8Q5PPRihN5cg092hSeSQqGKqSYntq/s320/gviz+blog+11-2008.JPG" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 253px;" /></a><br /><br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Nir Bar-Lev, Senior Product Manager, and Yossi Matias, Director of Tel Aviv Engineering Center</span>

Visualizing data in the cloud

More and more companies are storing data in the cloud, and as this data grows, so does the need for reporting tools to make sense of this in...

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What are you going to be for Halloween?

In 2006 it was a pirate. Halloween party-goers donned eye patches, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tricorne">tricornes</a>, and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jolly_Roger">Jolly Roger</a>, inspired by favorite seafarer <a href="http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=TsI&q=captain+jack+sparrow&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&resnum=1&ct=title">Captain Jack Sparrow</a>. And last year the search was on for a lot of blond wigs and microphones à la teen pop idol <a href="http://images.google.com/images?q=hannah%20montana&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&sa=N&tab=wi">Hannah Montana</a>.<br /><br />Halloween being one of our favorite holidays, we couldn't wait to see what the hot getups of 2008 would be. Using <a href="http://www.google.com/insights/search/#">Insight for Search</a> we tracked the fastest <a href="http://www.google.com/support/insights/bin/answer.py?answer=99758&topic=15267">rising searches</a> related to Halloween costumes for this year's ghoulish festivities.<br /><br />Here are some of the "costume"-related queries (in the U.S.) that have seen the most growth for 2008 — don't be surprised when you run into some of these outfits roaming the streets on All Hallows' Eve.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1N39l26Cz-bWN4b6W0OjDXwA0nyTePnOez2ftEeb40pkUEU9TJSJA1quDIpgNEBEwC9618NSmxI9l6fdjrArFuwBfdQ0cQbQmyDZnPEZc3UFntaT9Pf0fXhECue1CSzmBY7TKB0cjSVF8/s1600-h/Picture+10.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5263448231054461618" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1N39l26Cz-bWN4b6W0OjDXwA0nyTePnOez2ftEeb40pkUEU9TJSJA1quDIpgNEBEwC9618NSmxI9l6fdjrArFuwBfdQ0cQbQmyDZnPEZc3UFntaT9Pf0fXhECue1CSzmBY7TKB0cjSVF8/s400/Picture+10.png" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 145px;" /></a><br />If you're like me, you found your inspiration in the past 24 hours. However, it looks like others are more serious — according to this <a href="http://www.google.com/trends">Google Trends</a> graph, searches for costumes have been increasing since July.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv8o1Awy063HejIFlrtTRd5HgSH7I-WefleHVZTQr4UT0a3oO9exWuTqeJsbAn93N7_4zCqYZcpRoN8arQnnJAfqf-ztvrhl3T8g5iEuYygPRkzeH-bynz-hCvuGLWGbv8Ituk2HxzZPIU/s1600-h/Picture+11.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5263448001208401266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv8o1Awy063HejIFlrtTRd5HgSH7I-WefleHVZTQr4UT0a3oO9exWuTqeJsbAn93N7_4zCqYZcpRoN8arQnnJAfqf-ztvrhl3T8g5iEuYygPRkzeH-bynz-hCvuGLWGbv8Ituk2HxzZPIU/s400/Picture+11.png" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 166px;" /></a><br />Around Google, we've been planning our outfits for months as well. Not even rain could stop us from showing off our fiendish finery at this year's Googleween in Mountain View. And have a scary-happy Googleween yourself!<br /><br /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf" flashvars="host=picasaweb.google.com&RGB=0x000000&feed=http%3A%2F%2Fpicasaweb.google.com%2Fdata%2Ffeed%2Fapi%2Fuser%2Fgblogphotos%2Falbumid%2F5263449764350882737%3Fkind%3Dphoto%26alt%3Drss" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" width="400" height="267"></embed><br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Jordan Newman, Google Blog Team</span>

What are you going to be for Halloween?

In 2006 it was a pirate. Halloween party-goers donned eye patches, tricornes , and the Jolly Roger , inspired by favorite seafarer Captain J...

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Feed me! Google Alerts not just for email anymore

This week, our Trondheim-based <a href="http://www.google.com/alerts">Google Alerts</a> team launched support for feeds, a highly requested feature you can use to receive alerts via the feed reader of your choice. (Of course, <span style="font-style: italic;">we</span> think the best places to view your updates are <a href="http://www.google.com/ig">iGoogle</a> and <a href="http://www.google.com/reader/view/#overview-page">Google Reader</a>.) Until now, alerts have been delivered via email only, but those days are over. Now your News, Web, Blog, Video, and Groups alerts are more easily accessible than ever.<br /><br />Once you sign in to Google Alerts and create an alert, you can opt for feed delivery by clicking 'Edit' next to your alert on the <a href="http://www.google.com/alerts/manage">'Manage Your Alerts' page</a> and changing your 'Deliver to' selection from 'Email' to 'Feed' (click on the image to see larger).<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2v84mO-0X1UlXXcHOzp8zvS9ao0cP4YYjx2HrtaafrUidHe3eI60YH4osuYYypkaiUVNluJpjBhAKzznZy5Gx4ZwtsPs_DaGOzgB44TCXRBgn16UTI3gdf2Slb_ndQnOnsUHJXVx3HF-H/s1600-h/Picture+1.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5263393404921878834" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2v84mO-0X1UlXXcHOzp8zvS9ao0cP4YYjx2HrtaafrUidHe3eI60YH4osuYYypkaiUVNluJpjBhAKzznZy5Gx4ZwtsPs_DaGOzgB44TCXRBgn16UTI3gdf2Slb_ndQnOnsUHJXVx3HF-H/s400/Picture+1.png" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 166px;" /></a><br /><br />Two other notable improvements to Google Alerts are that we've made them faster (especially News alerts) and are now including — where possible — images in News alerts. It's a busy time in Trondheim these days, so stay tuned for more changes to Google Alerts in the coming months.<br /><br />Have feedback or a feature request? <a href="http://www.google.com/support/alerts/bin/request.py">Send your thoughts our way</a>.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Jaime Forman-Lau, Online Operations</span>

Feed me! Google Alerts not just for email anymore

This week, our Trondheim-based Google Alerts team launched support for feeds, a highly requested feature you can use to receive alerts via ...

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A picture of a thousand words?

<i><span style="font-size:85%;">(Note: Click on the first result in each of the search results pages linked to throughout the post to see this feature in action.)</span></i><br /><br />A scanner is a wonderful tool. Every day, people all over the world post scanned documents online -- everything from official <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=public+statements+iraq" id="vdf1" title="government reports">government reports</a> to obscure <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=theory+of+interstellar+trade" id="hxs2" title="academic papers">academic papers</a>. These files usually contain images of text, rather than the text themselves.But all of these documents have one thing in common: someone somewhere thought they were they were valuable enough to share with the world.<br /><br />In the past, scanned documents were rarely included in search results as we couldn't be sure of their content. We had occasional clues from references to the document-- so you might get a search result with a title but no snippet highlighting your query. Today, that changes. We are now able to perform OCR on any scanned documents that we find stored in Adobe's PDF format. This Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology lets us convert a picture (of a thousand words)<span style="font-style: italic;"> into</span> a thousand words -- words that can be searched and indexed, so that these valuable documents are more easily found. This is a small but important step forward in our mission of making all the world's information accessible and useful.<br /><br />While we've indexed documents saved as PDFs for some time now, scanned documents are a lot more difficult for a computer to read. Scanning is the reverse of printing. Printing turns digital words into text on paper, while scanning makes a digital picture of the physical paper (and text) so you can store and view it on a computer. The scanned picture of the text is not quite the same as the original digital words, however -- it is a <i>picture</i> of the printed words. Often you can see telltale signs: the ring of a coffee cup, ink smudges, or even fold creases in the pages.<br /><br />To people reading these documents, the distinction between words and <i style="font-weight: normal;">pictures</i> of words makes little difference, but for a computer the picture is almost unintelligible. Consider a circle. Should it be read it as a zero, the letter 'O', just a circle, or the ring from my coffee cup? People learn to answer this kind of question very quickly, but for the computer it is a painstaking and error-prone process.<br /><br />To see our new system at work, click on these search queries. Note the document excerpt in the search results, along with the full text presented after the 'View as HTML' link:<br /><br /><span>[</span><a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=repairing+aluminum+wiring" id="fd2l" style="font-weight: normal;" target="_blank" title="repairing aluminum wiring">repairing aluminum wiring</a>]<br />[<a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=spin+lock+performance" id="qqpp" style="font-weight: normal;" target="_blank" title="spin lock performance">spin lock performance</a>]<br />[<a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=Mumps+and+Severe+Neutropenia" style="font-weight: normal;" target="_blank" title="theory of interstellar trade">Mumps and Severe Neutropenia</a>]<br />[<a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=Steady+success+in+a+volatile+world" target="_blank" title="theory of interstellar trade">Steady success in a volatile world</a>]<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Evin Levey, Product Manager</span>

A picture of a thousand words?

(Note: Click on the first result in each of the search results pages linked to throughout the post to see this feature in action.) A scanner...

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What we learned from 1 million businesses in the cloud

The reliability of cloud computing has been a hot topic recently, partly because glitches in the cloud don't happen behind closed doors as with traditional on-premises solutions for businesses. Instead, when a small number of cloud computing users have problems, it makes headlines. As with most things at Google, we are fanatical about measuring the availability of Gmail, and we thought it best to simply share our reliability metrics, which we measure as average uptime per user based on server-side error rates. We think this reliability metric lets you do a true side-by-side comparison with other solutions.<br /><br />We measure every server request for every user, every moment of every day. Any millisecond delay is logged. Over the last year, Gmail has been available more than 99.9 percent of the time — for everyone, both consumers and business users. The vast majority of people using Gmail have seen few issues, experienced no downtime, and have continued to have a great Gmail experience, with exception of an <a href="http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/we-feel-your-pain-and-were-sorry.html">outage in August 2008</a>. If you average all these data together, including the August outage, across the entire Gmail service, there has been an aggregate 10-15 minutes of downtime per month over the last year of providing the service. That 10-15 minutes per month average represents small delays of a couple of seconds here and there. A very small number of people have unfortunately been subject to some disruption of service that affected them for a few minutes or a few hours. For those users, we are very sorry. And for Google Apps Premier Edition customers, we have extended service level agreement credits to them.<br /><br />So how does greater than 99.9 percent reliability compare to more conventional approaches for business email? We asked some experts. Naturally, the normal caveats apply for on-premises solutions, since each individual business environment will vary, depending on server reliability, staff response time, and actual maintenance schedules for each application.<br /><br />According to the research firm Radicati Group, companies with on-premises email solutions averaged from 30 to 60 minutes of unscheduled downtime and an additional 36 to 90 minutes of planned downtime per month.¹<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl7ezGiIP9UTcF1FFrYtHNAs4z9hqnxUHMIiuv9J06-sB3jS2hx9xZq3VWMoU5jJsqYQETmFXh-bNYz924lUH171W7LrLBNHIltPmk5O-aET7yr-F5ejGzx24k4GIF83GGF-ZXPOllVMhb/s1600-h/Picture+2%282%29.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5263013369211409682" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl7ezGiIP9UTcF1FFrYtHNAs4z9hqnxUHMIiuv9J06-sB3jS2hx9xZq3VWMoU5jJsqYQETmFXh-bNYz924lUH171W7LrLBNHIltPmk5O-aET7yr-F5ejGzx24k4GIF83GGF-ZXPOllVMhb/s320/Picture+2%282%29.png" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 211px;" /></a>Looking just at the unplanned outages that catch IT staffs by surprise, these results suggest Gmail is twice as reliable as a Novell GroupWise solution, and four times more reliable than a Microsoft Exchange-based solution that companies must maintain themselves. And higher reliability translates to higher employee productivity. Gmail's reliability jumps to more than four times as reliable as a GroupWise solution and 10 times more reliable than an Exchange-based solution if you factor in the planned outages inherent in on-premises messaging platforms. But this isn't the only way Google Apps helps businesses do more with their resources. Compared to the costs of Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus or Novell GroupWise — including software licensing, server expenses and the labor associated with deploying, maintaining and upgrading them on a regular basis — Google Apps leaves companies with much more time and money to focus on their real business.<br /><br />We are now extending what we've learned from Gmail to the other applications in Google Apps.<br /><br />Today, we're announcing that we will extend the <a href="http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/terms/sla.html">99.9 percent service level agreement</a> we offer Premier Edition customers on Gmail to Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Sites, and Google Talk. We have been delivering high levels of reliability across all these products, so it makes sense to extend our guarantees to them.<br /><br />More than 1 million businesses have selected Google Apps to run their business, and tens of millions of people use Gmail every day. With this type of adoption, a disruption of any size — even a minor one affecting fewer than 0.003% of Google Apps Premier Edition users, like the one a few weeks ago — attracts a disproportional amount of attention. We've made a series of commitments to improve our communications with customers during any outages, and we have an unwavering commitment to make all issues visible and transparent through our <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/apps-discuss?pli=1">open user groups</a>.<br /><br />Google is one of the 1 million businesses that run on Google Apps, and any service interruption affects our users and our business; our engineers are also some of our most demanding customers. We understand the importance of delivering on the cloud's promise of greater security, reliability and capability at lower cost. We are hugely thankful to our customers who drive us to become better every day.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">1. The Radicati Group, 2008. "Corporate IT Survey – Messaging & Collaboration, 2008-2009" </span><br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Matthew Glotzbach, Product Management Director, Google Enterprise</span>

What we learned from 1 million businesses in the cloud

The reliability of cloud computing has been a hot topic recently, partly because glitches in the cloud don't happen behind closed doors ...

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