You've got gadget mail

<span class="byline-author">Posted by by Sophia Brueckner, Software Engineer, iGoogle</span><br /><br />For a while now, we Googlers have used a bit of shorthand to refer to the Personalized Homepage -- a name that connotes interactivity, the Internet, and personalization all at once. Please meet <a href="http://www.google.com/ig?source=bppd">iGoogle</a>, the new name for the Google Personalized Homepage.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz1Ya1m5irfcb69wAi5RKRlKCRX34vgOZq-jLvCcRhr9lqUs8S-stcZKNKNyr938MNPPeqwaXTIw6vtXmw5zHAiStv8naeNI85aZQPT4ztm1k2C_ntAgqlb56jR5OcVzSc28Z9qsdh46Uw/s1600-h/iGoogle_logo.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5059393484756026370" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz1Ya1m5irfcb69wAi5RKRlKCRX34vgOZq-jLvCcRhr9lqUs8S-stcZKNKNyr938MNPPeqwaXTIw6vtXmw5zHAiStv8naeNI85aZQPT4ztm1k2C_ntAgqlb56jR5OcVzSc28Z9qsdh46Uw/s320/iGoogle_logo.jpg" style="cursor: pointer;" /></a><br /><br />Developers around the world have been working hard to make more and more of the world's content available for iGoogle. Can you get, oh, some of the world's most beautiful pictures, updated daily? Check. Thousands and thousands of gadgets to choose from? Check. A personal note and picture from your sweetie? Now you can make your own, because starting today, without having any programming or web design experience at all, <a href="http://www.google.com/ig/gmchoices?source=bppd">anyone can create Google Gadgets</a> for iGoogle and send them to friends. Simple gadget templates include a photo gadget, a "GoogleGram" greeting card-style gadget, a YouTube video channel gadget, and a free-form gadget.<br /><br />To make yours, choose the gadget template you'd like to use, enter your info, and enter your friends' email addresses. You can always make changes to your gadget, and you can even set some kinds of gadgets to update automatically so your friends will see a new message daily.<br /><br />Today we're also making the themes that have been so popular on iGoogle in the U.S. available on every edition of iGoogle around the world, and we're making iGoogle available in 22 new locales. Visit iGoogle and click "Select theme" to pick a theme for your own page.

You've got gadget mail

Posted by by Sophia Brueckner, Software Engineer, iGoogle For a while now, we Googlers have used a bit of shorthand to refer to the Personal...

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Authors@Google

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Ricky Opaterny, Authors@Google team</span><br /><br />For over the past year, we've invited some of the most prominent and promising thinkers, artists, leaders, and personalities of our time to give talks and have discussions at Google about their recently published books. We call the series Authors@Google, and we've posted videos of many of our events online. And now, the program has grown out of our Mountain View headquarters to include seven U.S. offices as well as our London and Dublin offices.<br /><br />In addition, we've just added our most important location yet: an online home at <a href="http://www.google.com/talks/authors">google.com/talks/authors</a> with a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/atgoogletalks">video archive</a> of our events on YouTube. Just this year, we've hosted a great variety of authors, including Martin Amis, Strobe Talbott, Bob & Lee Woodruff, Jonathan Lethem, Don Tapscott, Senator Hillary Clinton, and Carly Fiorina. The subjects of their talks range from literary fiction to science fiction, sociology to technology, politics to business.<br /><br />We're delighted to share our digital library of events with you, and will continue adding to it. We hope you'll bookmark this page and check back often.<br /><br />Finally, this weekend, April 28 and 29, the Authors@Google team will be exhibiting on the UCLA campus at the <a href="http://www.latimes.com/extras/festivalofbooks"> Los Angeles Times Festival of Books</a> -- the largest book-related event in the U.S. If you're in the area, do stop by, say hello, and browse books and videos from some of our previous events.

Authors@Google

Posted by Ricky Opaterny, Authors@Google team For over the past year, we've invited some of the most prominent and promising thinkers, ...

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Racing to save the world

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Sean Cornwell, Senior Product Marketing Manager</span><br /><br />I'm just back from running a marathon at the <a href="http://www.npmarathon.com/" target="_blank">North Pole</a>. It's only by continuously repeating this sentence out loud that the experience has started to become more real. Certainly, when you are at the Pole -- a place of absolute wondrous beauty, isolation, and harshness -- it feels very surreal. The 24-hour light with the sun always at the horizon, the mind-numbing cold, the lack of sleep -- it all gets to you. Wow, don't I make it sound like fun?<br /><br />So why, you might ask, did I put myself through this?<br /><br />Well, a friend and I also ran the <a href="http://www.saharamarathon.org/">Sahara marathon</a> at the end of February as a kick start to launch <a href="http://www.earthfireice.com/">EarthFireIce</a>, a campaign to raise awareness for the importance of individual action to reduce carbon emissions. By racing in such extreme conditions, the hottest and coldest marathons in the world, we also hoped to highlight two regions that stand to be seriously affected by climate change. People can make simple pledges of action on an interactive Google Maps mashup at <a href="http://earthfireice.com/pledge-template.php">our campaign site</a>.<br /><br />We've frequently been asked how we prepare for such extremes. The answer is that it's very hard. We tried to <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/6378929.stm"> wrap ourselves in plastic wrap</a> to replicate the Sahara heat, and we sat in a <a href="http://www.global-cool.com/en/2007/04/02/earthfireice-ice-baby">Kriotherapy chamber</a> at -130 C (-202 F) to get used to the extreme cold. Neither experience, I must confess, was that useful. The Sahara, at 42 C (approx. 108 F), simply sapped all my energy. And the second half of that run was one of the slowest and most painful in my life. Watch the video of the Sahara run, and me struggling through it:<br /><br /><object height="350" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/b-af5vyqD1Q"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/b-af5vyqD1Q" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="350" width="425"></embed></object><br /><br />The North Pole, on the other hand, was tough because you have to wear those ridiculous snowshoes, and because the terrain varies from hard ice to 2 foot deep powder snow. So it's much more of a slow jog, and thus less exhausting. However, the battle there is with the cold: at -30 C (-22 F), you really feel it despite the act of running.<br /><br />What's next, you may ask? Well, a lot of rest and relaxation, and back to my day job -- and then, some more events under the <a href="http://www.earthfireice.com/">EarthFireIce</a> banner, hopefully with lots of others joining us!

Racing to save the world

Posted by Sean Cornwell, Senior Product Marketing Manager I'm just back from running a marathon at the North Pole . It's only by con...

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Google Desktop 5 in 29 languages

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Kevin Tom, Google Desktop team</span><br /><br />We are happy to be releasing the <a href="http://desktop.google.com/">Google Desktop 5</a> application in 29 languages, including our first release in Hindi. It's now easier than ever for people around the world to find content on their computer as well as on the web. We've redesigned the look and feel of the sidebar and many of our most popular gadgets. There are also previews for search results and warnings for suspicious websites, whether you're clicking on links from documents, IMs, websites, and more.<br /><br />No matter which country you're in, we hope that these changes make it easier to quickly and safely find the right information. To learn more about what's new with Desktop 5, read <a href="http://googledesktop.blogspot.com/2007/03/new-sidebar-and-gadgets.html">this post</a> on the Google Desktop Blog. And check out the recently-released version for <a href="http://desktop.google.com/mac">Mac</a>, too.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfgvqGLuhffLRqhHqOWHz7ca0UvrauJ0uneNS70ekZshbVhixNFGcils3LfQ69YFFiNZUM3GcER1RZQfMslOsvRbD0-nYFrzX7Q1H7NkRbLVh1xZ2FZjJ75ujnYXQNIhKGvH3qOcIYhyphenhyphen3l/s1600-h/Desktop5_images.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5054518061659470450" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfgvqGLuhffLRqhHqOWHz7ca0UvrauJ0uneNS70ekZshbVhixNFGcils3LfQ69YFFiNZUM3GcER1RZQfMslOsvRbD0-nYFrzX7Q1H7NkRbLVh1xZ2FZjJ75ujnYXQNIhKGvH3qOcIYhyphenhyphen3l/s320/Desktop5_images.jpg" style="cursor: pointer;" /></a>

Google Desktop 5 in 29 languages

Posted by Kevin Tom, Google Desktop team We are happy to be releasing the Google Desktop 5 application in 29 languages, including our first...

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New 3-D layers from AIA on Google Earth

<span class="byline-author">Posted by RK Stewart, FAIA, President 2007, American Institute of Architects</span><br /><br />Architects are pretty passionate about architecture -– no surprise there. However, we've come to find that the American public is too. Starting today, there are two new <a href="http://earth.google.com/index.html">Google Earth</a> layers with which to explore architecture’s most popular structures and take away some ideas to help enhance the communities we live in. As president of <a href="http://www.aia150.org/">The American Institute of Architects</a> (AIA), I’m ecstatic to announce our partnership with Google Earth to launch these new layers in celebration of our the 150^th anniversary.<br /><br />Check out this <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpNaMbMr1CM">video</a> on YouTube to watch us navigate these layers from Google headquarters.<br /><br />Fly to <a href="http://www.favoritearchitecture.org/">America’s Favorite Architecture</a>, a layer featuring the American public’s favorite architecture (as selected though a national poll announced earlier this year). View all 150 structures, including many with just created 3-D models of the buildings, ballparks, bridges, and memorials that characterize architecture in the eyes of Americans. And then explore the second layer, <a href="http://www.aia150.org/bl150_default.php">Blueprint for America</a>. Blueprint is a community service effort funded by the AIA, in which AIA members donating their time and expertise are collaborating with community leaders and local citizens to enhance the quality of life in their community. You’ll be able to track the progress of these projects on Google Earth as they unfold over the next year and, we hope, become inspired to take action where you live.

New 3-D layers from AIA on Google Earth

Posted by RK Stewart, FAIA, President 2007, American Institute of Architects Architects are pretty passionate about architecture -– no surpr...

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Spelling For Muggles

<span class="byline-author">Posted by T.V. Raman, Research Scientist</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">From time to time, our own <a href="http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/raman/">T.V. Raman</a> shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see -- tips that sighted people, among others, may also find useful. - Ed.</span><br /><br />English spelling is far from being phonetic -- and commonly-used proper nouns make the problem even more complex. Often the final arbiter is "it looks correct." Try writing "success" with one trailing "s" and you'll see what I mean.<br /><br />This final aspect of spelling -- it "looks wrong" -- can be a serious challenge when one cannot see. I can spell well in English, and for regular English text, there are always dictionaries and spell-checkers that come to one's aid. But spelling commonly-used proper nouns that you've only heard others pronounce can still pose a challenge when writing them for the first time. Consider the following:<br /><ul><li>We're going on a skiing holiday to Taho.</li><li> I was in Rino last week.</li><li>My friend lives in San Luis Obispoe.</li></ul>Notice that the proper nouns in the above all contain spelling errors, and the respective Google search triggers a "did you mean" spelling suggestion as follows:<br /><ul><li><span style="font-style: italic;">Did you mean:</span> Tahoe</li><li><span style="font-style: italic;"> Did you mean: </span>Reno</li><li><span style="font-style: italic;"> Did you mean: </span>san luis obispo </li></ul>Over the years, I've come to find this an indispensible tool, especially in cases where there is general agreement on the web as to the correct spelling. And for the record, intelligence on the Web appears to believe that San Luis Obispo can also be spelt San Louis Obispo.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.google.com/help/features.html#spell">Google's spell-checking intelligence</a> comes from examining all the documents on the web. Thus, correct spellings often dominate incorrect ones. The example of San Luis Obispo is interesting; if you take the Web as representing current accepted practice, it would appear that people do write that proper noun both ways -- i.e., Luis or Louis.<br /><br />Who knows, perhaps we'll restore the o-u parity by adopting an extra "o" in Luis for the "u" that got dropped in "color."

Spelling For Muggles

Posted by T.V. Raman, Research Scientist From time to time, our own T.V. Raman shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as...

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Collaborating with Marratech

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Douglas Merrill, VP Engineering</span><br /><br />As a company, we thrive on casual interactions and spontaneous collaboration. So we're excited about acquiring <a href="http://www.marratech.com/">Marratech's video conferencing software</a>, which will enable from-the-desktop participation for Googlers in videoconference meetings wherever there's an Internet connection.<br /><br />We look forward to learning from the extraordinary ingenuity of Marratech's engineers as they focus on desktop conferencing research and development in Sweden, where they will continue to be located.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Update: </span>To clarify some confusion, we acquired Marratech's software, not the company itself.

Collaborating with Marratech

Posted by Douglas Merrill, VP Engineering As a company, we thrive on casual interactions and spontaneous collaboration. So we're excited...

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