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Blogger Template Designer now available to everyone

mercredi 23 juin 2010

In March, we launched the Blogger Template Designer on Blogger in Draft, our experimental playground where you can try out the latest features Blogger has to offer. Today we’re excited to announce that the Blogger Template Designer has graduated from Blogger in Draft and is now available to everyone by default.

Blogger Template Designer is a way for you to easily customize the look of your blog without knowing any HTML or CSS. You can select from a variety of templates, images, colors and column layouts to make your blog an expression of you. See our post on Blogger Buzz for the highlights on this new tool.

You can try the Template Designer on your blog now by going to the “Design” menu, then selecting “Template Designer.” Even if you don’t have a blog — or weren’t planning to redecorate the one you have — you can try out the Blogger Template Designer and play around with potential designs. If you like one, you can apply it to a new blog or to an existing blog.

If you want to learn more on how the Blogger Template Designer can help you create your own unique blog designs, watch our video and check out the Blogger Buzz blog



FIFA.com and Google team up to help fans celebrate the 2010 FIFA World Cup™

The 2010 FIFA World Cup has kicked off in South Africa. During the month-long tournament, millions of fans around the world will follow the games.

To mark the event, FIFA.com, the world’s official football website, and Google have collaborated on a range of online features to help supporters keep track of how each team is doing throughout the tournament. Whether you’re searching for FIFA World Cup news or want to voice your opinion on a player’s performance, we have a number of ways for fans to stay on top of the action:

Follow your team while browsing the Internet: stay up-to-date when you’re online with the FIFA.com Chrome extension. Get a live feed of FIFA World Cup results, news and match statistics and if you’re supporting a particular team, personalise the gadget for alerts of goals scored by your team as they happen.

See the latest scores and schedules in search results: search for [world cup], [world cup spain], [world cup group g] and more, and you’ll see live scores, latest results and match schedules at the top of your search results. You’ll find quick links to game recaps, live updates, standings and team profiles on FIFA.com.

Follow the tournament on your personalised home page: get all the latest information on FIFA World Cup teams, players and matches streamed to your very own home page with the iGoogle Gadget. If you want to know more about where all the action is happening, click on the ‘venues’ tab to take a closer look at the stadiums.

Get a feel for what it’s like to be there: FIFA.com and South African Tourism have used Google Maps to add information about the host cities, stadiums and attractions, giving people easy access to these sights with Street View and 3D views: maps.google.com/exploresouthafrica

You can get access to all of these features from FIFA.com and Google by visiting google.com/worldcup

Good luck to all, and may the best team win!

The art of a homepage

Last week, we announced a new feature that lets you add a favorite photo or image to the background of your Google.com homepage.

To provide you with an extra bit of inspiration, we‘ve collaborated with several well-known artists, sculptors and photographers to create a gallery of background images you can use to personalize your Google homepage. Included in the collection are photographs of the works of Dale Chihuly, Jeff Koons, Tom Otterness, Polly Apfelbaum, Kengo Kuma (隈研吾), Kwon, Ki-soo (권기수) and Tord Boontje, as well as some incredible photos from Yann Arthus-Bertrand and National Geographic. We’ll be featuring these images as backgrounds on the Google homepage over the next 24 hours.

Of course, since we want your Google homepage to be personal to you, you can still choose an image or photo from your computer or your own Picasa Web Album. Whether you select an image from our new artist collection or prefer to have a more personal touch on your homepage, you’ll still enjoy the speed and ease of use that you’ve come to expect from Google.

Niijima Floats, Dale Chihuly

Yann Arthus-Bertrand, GoodPlanet Foundation

We’re also excited to announce that this feature is now available internationally. We hope you enjoy the new artist collection and making Google feel more like your own!

Update June 10, 11:31AM: Last week, we launched the ability to set an image of users’ choosing as the background for the Google homepage. Today, we ran a special “doodle” that showcased this functionality by featuring a series of images as the background for our homepage. We had planned to run an explanation of the showcase alongside it—in the form of a link on our homepage. Due to a bug, the explanatory link did not appear for most users. As a result, many people thought we had permanently changed our homepage, so we decided to stop today’s series early. We appreciate your feedback and patience as we experiment and iterate.

Blazing the online safety trail

When I was in middle school, computer class was spent learning the basics of “keyboarding” and rushing to finish the lesson so I could get back to my journey on the Oregon Trail. My main goal was to survive the river crossings, maintain enough buffalo meat to sustain my family and arrive safely in California with my entire fake family still alive.

Today, many schools are teaching their first graders the basic computer skills I was learning at 13. Teens have always been the quickest adopters of new technology, as parents and teachers struggle to keep up and equip teens to make good decisions online.

When I visited Dunne Technology Academy in South Chicago earlier this week, most of the students were getting ready for their summer break, but we paused for a bit to talk about what they’re doing online. The majority of these tech-savvy teens had all encountered cyberbullying at some point, had seen pictures and information on profiles they thought were inappropriate, and had had someone try to trick them through a phishing scam.

We spent the day discussing ways to avoid being scammed, how to create an online profile that can be an asset rather than a liability, and actions you can take if you’re being bullied, harassed or see inappropriate content. Most students seemed to understand that their online identity and their “real world” self were one and the same, and that they have choices in managing their content and reputation online. We agreed that by applying the rules of good citizenship online, the Internet would be a safer and more enjoyable experience for everyone.

So while teens have more difficult choices online today than to ford or to ferry the river in Oregon Trail, we can prepare them to make smart decisions online. Check out the educational materials from our Digital Literacy Tour in our Google For Educators site at www.google.com/educators/digitalliteracy.html.


The power of human rights video

A year ago this weekend, Tehran erupted in protest at the disputed results of Iran’s tenth presidential election. In the severe government crackdown that followed, documented on cameras and uploaded by citizens to YouTube, no moment has been seen more than the death of Neda Agha Soltan, a young musician whose brutal killing by a sniper became the rallying cry for Iran’s opposition Green Movement. The anonymous videos of her death even won the prestigious George Polk prize for journalism last year.

How has video become such an important part of human rights advocacy worldwide?  In the past, we mainly saw these kinds of images in the nightly news or in documentaries - and even then only occasionally. But now that access to the Internet is much more widespread (even in many developing countries), and billions worldwide have access to ever more powerful cellphones and digital cameras, we encounter human rights images much more directly - on YouTube, in Google searches, in Facebook feeds, through links shared on Twitter.

Today the YouTube blog begins a series of posts exploring the issues around human rights and video in partnership with WITNESS, an international human rights organization that supports people using video to document and expose human rights violations. We encourage you to learn more.

Grab bag videos are back!

We’re kicking off June with the start of a new round of webmaster Q&A on the Webmaster Central YouTube channel. You submitted and voted on questions for Matt Cutts to answer, and Matt sat in the studio for a full day sharing advice for webmasters.

For those of you who watch each video (and who doesn’t?), we’ve worked hard to keep things interesting. Not only did Matt wear different colored shirts, we changed the backgrounds as well! Just don’t submit any screen grabs to We Have Lasers, okay?

To get you started, here’s the first video, which addresses a question about geographic targeting in Webmaster Tools

 


We’ll be posting links to new videos as they’re posted on our Twitter account, so follow us there or subscribe to our YouTube channel to be notified of new answers.

YouTube's Interactive Transcripts

YouTube added a cool feature for videos with closed captions: you can now click on the "transcript" button to expand the entire listing. If you click on a line, YouTube will show the excerpt from the video corresponding to the text. If you use your browser's find feature, you can even search inside the video. Here's an example of video that includes a transcript.


YouTube lets you upload a transcript file for a video and it can automatically generate the appropriate timestamps. "YouTube uses experimental speech recognition technology to provide automatic timing for your English transcript. Automatic timing creates a caption file that you can download."

{ Thanks, Bogdan. }

Try Google Docs Without a Google Account

Now you can try Google Docs even when you don't have a Google account. It's not difficult to create a Google account, but sometimes you want to show someone how Google Docs works without revealing sensitive information from your Google account.

If you go to https://docs.google.com/demo/, you can start editing a document, a spreadsheet or a drawing and share the links with other people, so you can collaborate in real-time. Google says that the documents are only available for 24 hours from the time they are created.


It would be nice to create documents in Google Docs or upload files to Google Docs without associating them to a Google account. Maybe they aren't very important or maybe they include important information that you aren't allowed to post.

{ via Matt Cutts }

When Google Bans Its Own Discussion Group

Google employees use Google's services to get feedback from users and to share the latest updates: Blogger, Google Groups, YouTube, Google Moderator, Google Spreadsheets and more. Some important benefits are that they test Google's services, find bugs and they're more likely to improve the services. Often, Google's employees are regular users and they'll see the same bugs and limitations as any other Google user.

Stefan Küng clicked on a link from Google Talk Labs Edition FAQ which was supposed to send him to the Google Talk Labs Edition Group. Unfortunately, Google's own group has been removed because it violated Google's Terms Of Service.


The terms of use forbid users from posting "inappropriate, defamatory, infringing, obscene, or unlawful content", "messages that promote pyramid schemes, chain letters or disruptive commercial messages or advertisements" or messages that "transmit any viruses, worms, defects, Trojan horses, or any items of a destructive nature". Spam is still a big problem for Google Groups and it's likely that the Google Talk Labs Edition Group was a great place for posting spam messages.

Google Classic Plus

The new feature that lets you add a background image to Google's homepage has a name reminiscent of Microsoft: "classic plus". When you click on the link to iGoogle, there's an option to switch to the classic homepage. Now the classic homepage has an important feature that was only available in iGoogle: themes.


It will be interesting to see if Google adds more features from iGoogle to the "classic plus" homepage. Google could add some simplified gadgets that show if you have new messages in your Gmail inbox, new events in your Google Calendar agenda, gadgets for weather and news. Since Google only shows the search box and the two search buttons if you don't move your mouse, the gadgets wouldn't clutter the homepage.

Why Google Web History Is Enabled by Default

When you create a Google Account, the option to store all your queries and the search results you click on is enabled by default. Google Web History keeps track of all your Google searches and associates them with your account so that Google can personalize search results.


Jonathan McPhie, Product Manager at Google, explains why Google Web History is enabled by default:
We've found that it is difficult to articulate the usefulness of having Web History turned on without trying it out for yourself. This is because the changes are subtle and vary from person to person. Having this feature on by default allows users to enjoy the benefits of personalized search without going out of their way to turn it on. And this option is one of only two that we show when signing up for a new account (the other is "stay signed in"), so we feel like it has a fair amount of prominence in the process.

Google Web History can be temporarily paused or even removed from your Google Account. Initially, Google Personalized Search was an optional feature and users had to manually enable it. Now Google personalizes search results even for users that aren't logged in. If you're not signed in, Google personalizes search results using "up to 180 days of signed-out search activity linked to your browser's cookie, including queries and results you click."

Thursday, June 03, 2010

Decrypting the RLZ Parameter

If you install a Google software that lets you perform searches, you'll notice that Google search URLs include a new parameter called RLZ, which has a cryptic value. Google has open-sourced the RLZ library and we can now decrypt the value sent to Google every time you search.


"Client applications with the RLZ library can use explicit cohort tagging to manage promotion analysis. A client application with a particular tag can transmit that tag as it chooses for payments and analysis purposes. As an example, the RLZ parameter "rlz=1T4ABCD_enUS202" indicates the client application is Toolbar version 4, distributed with Abcd software bundle, English version, to a US user in December 2006. This empowers computation of metrics broken down into useful dimensions," explains Google.

"T4" is a codename for Google Toolbar 4 for Internet Explorer, but Google uses many other values: "C" for Google Chrome, "D" for Google Desktop, "B" for Google Toolbar for Firefox, "U" for Google Pack. "ADBR" is a code that identifies the distribution channel. "This correlates to how the user got the software (ie. they downloaded it by itself vs. it came pre-installed on their new computer vs. it came with a partner's software)." "c" is a value that tells Google if someone was already a Google user.

The library sends Google two other interesting values: install cohort (the country and week of the user's installation event) and first search cohort (the country and week of the user's first Google search). The week is measured as the number of weeks since Feb 3, 2003. For this example, "US239" informs Google that the user performed a search from the US in September 2007.

It's interesting to notice that Google measures the success of a campaign that promotes Google Toolbar, Google Chrome or other Google software by counting the number of Google searches.

Inform, engage and mobilize voters with YouTube and Google Campaign Toolkits

It’s no secret that any successful 21st century political campaign must have a robust online strategy to succeed. But elected officials and candidates need more than just a website and a YouTube channel to engage voters: from President Obama’s YouTube interview to Senator Scott Brown’s campaign team’s use of Google Docs to Congressman Scott Murphy’s “Google blast” ad strategy, we’re seeing politicians use more and more of our products and platforms to interact with voters, share information and keep their campaigns organized.

We want to do our part to make sure candidates and campaigns have the tools to stay close to voters, who now expect to hear and see much more from their elected officials than ever before. So today, we’re launching YouTube’s You Choose 2010 Campaign Toolkit and a new and improved Google Campaign Toolkit. Both help candidates make their organizations more effective and deliver their messages more directly. On YouTube, campaigns will have access to features like a Politician channel (which allows campaigns to brand their channel and upload longer videos), Google Moderator, our free analytics tool YouTube Insight, and information about running paid advertising campaigns—using formats like in-stream ads and Promoted Videos—to reach viewers with political ads, just like on TV. And our Google toolkit demonstrates how Google Apps can keep staff and volunteers connected, how search ads can grow your email list and provides other helpful tools.

We hope campaigns in both national and local contests will use these toolkits to engage and inform voters on important issues in 2010. As access to information online is increasingly important in elections, we’re pleased to continue developing useful tools for voters and candidates

Google Apps highlights

his is part of a regular series of Google Apps updates that we post every couple of weeks. Look for the label “Google Apps highlights" and subscribe to the series. - Ed.

Over the last couple of weeks we continued to improve the new versions of Google documents and spreadsheets, introduced some features to Gmail and made it easier for businesses and schools to switch to Google Apps.

Advanced sorting in Google spreadsheets
We added some powerful data sorting controls to the new version of Google spreadsheets. Rather than sorting an entire worksheet by values in a single column, you can now sort any range of cells and sort by the contents of multiple columns.


Formula highlighting in Google spreadsheets
We also made it easier to write formulas in the new version of Google spreadsheets by adding visual indicators to show which cells a particular formula references. These color-coded highlights will help you keep track of your formulas at a glance. This feature works with Google Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer; Firefox support is coming soon.


Improvements to Google documents
The new version of Google documents also got a few upgrades last week, including improvements to make finding content in your documents, applying text styles and linking to sections within your documents with bookmarks faster and easier.


“Move Icon Column” now in Gmail Labs
Our set of experimental Gmail features has a new addition: the “Move Icon Column” Lab. This Labs feature moves the icons for messages with attachments, chats and calendar invitations from the right side of your inbox to the left, keeping those icons next to your stars. You can enable this feature and many others from the Labs tab under Gmail Settings.


“Reshare” in Google Buzz
As of last week, Google Buzz lets you reshare posts that you find interesting without having to copy and paste the original content. Just click the new “Reshare” link beneath public buzz posts, type up anything you want to add and click “Post.” You can choose to reshare publicly on the web or privately to a select group.


Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Outlook®
We offer an array of migration tools to help businesses and schools move email, calendar and contacts data from their old systems to Google’s cloud. Customers have used these utilities to migrate more than 2 billion email messages to Google’s cloud, and last week we introduced the new Google Apps Migration tool for Microsoft Outlook®. This is a new end-user tool that moves email, calendar and contact data from Outlook® profiles, PST files and Exchange accounts to Google Apps.


Who’s gone Google?
In the spirit of National Small Business Week, we recently profiled a few small businesses doing big things with Google Apps. Revenue Spark is using Google Apps to build up a global presence to help bring green technology products to market. Yola counts on Google Apps to help their business grow fluidly as they bring on more software developers and business employees around the world. Smart Furniture turned to Google Apps to free up precious resources, improve productivity and remove barriers to growth. These are just a few of the millions of businesses that have gone Google. If your company has a story to share, add yourself to the map!

We continue to see more and more schools beginning to use Google Apps as well. A warm welcome to Georgetown University McDonough School of Business, SUNY Oswego, Elon University, Anderson University and Oxford Brookes University.

google toolbar

http://www.mpg6.net/ht/news/google-toolbar-1.jpg 

Nouveau ! Partagez et enrichissez n'importe quelle page Web grâce à la barre d'outils

 Bonjour,
j'aimerais avoir la barre d'outils google avec mes favoris qui sont déja dans firefox et internet explorer,dans google chrome, je n'arrive pas a trouver le moyen de l'inserer
est ce que quelqu'un a une idée ?
merci

click her

iGoogle

http://blog.feedget.eu/wp-includes/images/gallery/igoogle-netvibes.jpg

iGoogle est un service gratuit lancé par la société américaine Google en mai 2005. Il s'agit d'un portail Web personnalisable permettant d'agréger en une seule page des flux d'information continue (notamment des flux RSS), des jeux, des services personnalisés (Agenda, météo, Gmail...) et différents modules de type widget. On peut également décliner cette page unique en différentes pages en ajoutant jusqu'à 6 onglets eux aussi personnalisables.
iGoogle était anciennement nommé « Google Personalized Homepage » mais a changé d'appellation le 30 avril 2007.

Find Microblog Updates with Images

Google added a new advanced search option that lets you restrict the posts from sites like Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz to updates that link to images. You only need to select "updates" in Google's left sidebar and click on "updates with images".


The new search filter is useful to find photos from recent events, personal pictures and random images from all over the world.


{ spotted by Google.org.cn. Thanks, TomHTML. }

Google Indexes Mobile Apps

Sometimes, when you use a smartphone, the best search result is not a web page, it's an application. That's probably the reason why Google added an OneBox for iPhone and Android apps. If you enter a query that includes keywords like "download", "application" or "app" on an iPhone or on an Android phone, you'll see a list of results from Apple's App Store or from the Android Market.

"You can tap these links to go directly to the app's Android Market or iPhone App Store page. You can also get a quick look at some of the app's basic details including the price, rating, and publisher. These results will appear when your search pertains to a mobile application and relevant, well-rated apps are found," explains Google.

Maybe Google will develop a full-fledged search engine for mobile apps, index reviews, show recommendations and allow developers to advertise their applications.

Searching for the 2010 Stanley Cup

Although it feels like summer in many parts of the world, this week much of the North American sports community is focused squarely on ice hockey. That’s because the Stanley Cup Finals between the Chicago Blackhawks and Philadelphia Flyers kicked off over the weekend. Today, the series shifts to Philadelphia, and the Flyers look to even the series.

We’ve always shared the world’s interest in ice hockey, and have expressed that through our 2010 Olympic Ice Hockey doodle, NHL scores in search results and our content partnership with the NHL on YouTube. And this year a few Googlers in Chicago tried to grow their own playoff beards to get in the spirit of the games.

We see a surge of search queries related to the Stanley Cup every May, and this year is no exception. As each of the two teams get closer to hoisting Lord Stanley’s cup, we’re taking a look at what people from Chicago and Philadelphia as well as around the world are searching for related to the Cup.

Globally, searches for [blackhawks] trump searches for [flyers] in the sports category although both are experiencing an unprecedented spike compared to past years.


In both Philadelphia and Chicago, the [blackhawks] and [flyers] were top of mind last week:

Top sports searches in Philadelphia

Top sports searches in Chicago

Searches for [patrick kane] of the Chicago Blackhawks lead the way among searches for players involved in the Stanley Cup Finals.


After each goal scored in Chicago, the Blackhawks play the song “Chelsea Dagger” by the Fratellis. Accordingly, searches for [chelsea dagger] are surging, with Google users in Illinois topping the list and sparking a resurgence of the song across America.


With Googlers in our offices in both Illinois and Pennsylvania, we’ll be watching like the rest of the world to see who wins the greatest trophy in sports. Just make sure you don’t touch the Cup until you actually win it!


Decrypting the RLZ Parameter

If you install a Google software that lets you perform searches, you'll notice that Google search URLs include a new parameter called RLZ, which has a cryptic value. Google has open-sourced the RLZ library and we can now decrypt the value sent to Google every time you search.


"Client applications with the RLZ library can use explicit cohort tagging to manage promotion analysis. A client application with a particular tag can transmit that tag as it chooses for payments and analysis purposes. As an example, the RLZ parameter "rlz=1T4ABCD_enUS202" indicates the client application is Toolbar version 4, distributed with Abcd software bundle, English version, to a US user in December 2006. This empowers computation of metrics broken down into useful dimensions," explains Google.

"T4" is a codename for Google Toolbar 4 for Internet Explorer, but Google uses many other values: "C" for Google Chrome, "D" for Google Desktop, "B" for Google Toolbar for Firefox, "U" for Google Pack. "ADBR" is a code that identifies the distribution channel. "This correlates to how the user got the software (ie. they downloaded it by itself vs. it came pre-installed on their new computer vs. it came with a partner's software)." "c" is a value that tells Google if someone was already a Google user.

The library sends Google two other interesting values: install cohort (the country and week of the user's installation event) and first search cohort (the country and week of the user's first Google search). The week is measured as the number of weeks since Feb 3, 2003. For this example, "US239" informs Google that the user performed a search from the US in September 2007.

It's interesting to notice that Google measures the success of a campaign that promotes Google Toolbar, Google Chrome or other Google software by counting the number of Google searches

Téléchargez Google Earth pour PC, Mac ou Linux


Google Earth est une mappemonde virtuelle.
Quelques clics de souris suffisent pour consulter les images, enregistrées par satellite, de la plupart des endroits de la planète. Que le lieu visité soit aperçu depuis l’espace ou à quelques mètres du sol, la précision des photos est surprenante. Il suffit d’indiquer le lieu à visiter dans le moteur de recherche pour que la caméra s’anime et vous conduise à destination.
La manipulation du Globe est très intuitive, il est possible d’orienter la caméra, de la faire pivoter, de la déplacer et naturellement d’agrandir l’image.
Des informations supplémentaires peuvent être superposées à l’image satellite, comme les hôtels, les restaurants, les routes, etc.
Google Earth étant entièrement réalisé en 3D, le relief des zones (terrestres et maritimes) ainsi que les bâtiments sont également apparents.
Enfin, il est possible d’annoter la carte, d’envoyer une photo satellite par courrier électronique ou encore d’effectuer des mesures au centimètre près.

Note : voir l'article "Google Earth 5.0 explore les fonds marins et voyage dans le temps" dans la rubrique Actualités.

Télécharger Google Earth gratuit
gratuitement

Télécharger Google Maps 1.0.0.0

Download Google Chrome


Un navigateur Web rapide, à télécharger gratuitement

Google Chrome ouvre les pages Web et les applications à une vitesse fulgurante.
http://www.google.ch/chrome?hl=fr

Orange- Black theme for Google chrome

heme description : Orange Black theme for Google chrome
Author : Xp3

New Red theme for Google chrome




Theme description : Red Chrome theme
Version 1.0
Author : xp3
Url : http://di00r.blogspot.com/

Download :
For chromium dev channel Red-chrome.zip

For Chrome 1.0.154.36 Red-new-chrome.zip

Rhino theme for google chrome

Theme description : Rhino Theme for google chrome
Created by : http://di00r.blogspot.com/
Version :1.0

Code for My Tracks is now yours

A year ago, we released My Tracks, an Android app that lets you track activities like hikes, bike rides and trail runs using your mobile device. Now we’re announcing the release of the My Tracks source code into the wild.

What this means to users: My Tracks will become even better. The collective intelligence of the development community will create a more powerful, more intuitive, more useful, and more robust My Tracks. In addition, complementary apps will be written (For details on third party app development, see the wiki documentation). Applications for fitness activities, geocaching—heck, even dog tracking—are not hard to imagine.

Open-sourcing My Tracks also means that bug tracking is now public. Go to the "Issues" section of the My Tracks Code site to see what is being actively developed and to file your own feature requests/bugs.

What this means to developers: You can now contribute code directly to My Tracks to improve it, fix a bug, or add a feature. We don't promise that all changes will become part of the My Tracks codebase, but cleanly coded, useful contributions have a darn good chance. If you’re feeling adventurous (and slightly masochistic), file and fix bugs for unreleased--and probably buggy--versions of My Tracks, to improve overall quality and stability. Note that for all contributions, we have a code review process—see the wiki for more information.

How non-coders can contribute: Translate My Tracks! If you'd like to translate My Tracks to your language, or fix a translation that is incorrect, please let us know at mytracks-dev@googlegroups.com and we'll explain how to do it. We'll soon post documents explaining the process, on the My Tracks wiki.

All development-related discussions will occur on the mytracks-dev@googlegroups.com list (but please don't post coding-related questions there).

This is an exciting new track for My Tracks. Jump in!

Permalink Links to this post

Styled Maps and wrapping up I/O in style

Your millions of online votes helped us pick the winners of this year's Doodle 4 Google competition. Today, we're pleased to announce the results.

Congratulations to Makenzie Melton, a third grader at El Dorado Springs R-2 Schools in El Dorado Springs, Missouri. Her winning design, entitled "Rainforest Habitat,” expressed her concern that "the rainforest is in danger and it is not fair to the plants and animals.” Makenzie’s design triumphed over more than 33,000 student submissions from all over the country. Makenzie’s colored-pencil creation beautifully embodied this year’s theme.


Makenzie received a $15,000 college scholarship, a netbook computer and a $25,000 technology grant for a new computer lab at her school. Her doodle will also be featured on the Google.com homepage tomorrow, May 27, for millions of people to enjoy all across the country.

Our congratulations also go out to other three national finalists. They were selected as having the best doodle in their grade groups by the online public vote, and each student will receive a netbook computer:

Grades 4-6
Raymundo Marquez, Grade 6, of Nellie Mae Glass Elementary, Eagle Pass, Texas for his doodle entitled "Save Our Rainforest." The background of Raymundo’s work depicts deforestation and the effects it can have on our land. He says, “we will eventually have less oxygen and clean air. We need to unite to protect not just our lives, but the lives of all the rare and beautiful plants and animals that live there.”

Grades 7-9
Vance Viggiano, Grade 7, Heritage Home School Academy, Long Valley, New Jersey, for his doodle entitled "The Love of Art." Vance says, “If I could do anything, I would... enrich the world with an intense passion for art and the everlasting joy it provides. Art embodies the creator's expression, and offers exquisite exuberance towards both the artist and the viewers, also serving to soothe an ailing soul in distress.”

Grades 10-12
Bevan Schiffli, Grade 11, Highlands School, Highlands, North Carolina, for her doodle entitled "Branch Out." Bevan says, “My doodle expresses my desire to understand other views and cultures. I want to branch out to gain a strong sense of the world; not only in one perspective, but many. My wish is to show people my experiences through a pursuit of art/design in my future career.”

Our four winners were announced at an event today at the Google New York office and were celebrated at the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, where we also unveiled an exhibit of the 40 regional winners that will be on view until August 15, 2010. The finalists were treated to a day in New York City, including doodle classes with our doodle team and the opportunity to meet some of this year’s expert jurors who helped judge this year’s final doodles around the theme “If I Could Do Anything, I Would..." Judges at today’s event were well known artists and animators from Disney, the Charles M. Schulz Creative Associates and Peanuts gang, Barbie/Matell and the Sesame Street Workshop.

A special thanks to all those who voted and helped us select this year's winner. Thank you to all those creative kids out there who submitted entries — and the teachers and principals who work so hard to get their students recognized. We hope you'll doodle with us next year!

Take a test drive into the cloud


We’ve talked about the power of cloud computing and how millions of businesses have already gone Google by switching to Apps. But sometimes it’s hard to imagine what working in the cloud would really mean, and frequently, people ask us how they can better understand the benefits of Google Apps specifically for their business. How would online collaboration really affect your workplace? And how could increased email storage or integrated IM and video chat actually impact your company’s productivity?

To answer some of these questions, we’ve created the Go Google cloud calculator to let you take a test drive into the cloud. Whether your company is big or small, brand new or been around for a while, this tool will give you a sense of the benefits of going Google in an easy-to-understand way. Here’s a quick demo:
 
 
 
Once you take a spin and learn about the potential cost and time savings, the tool will create a custom URL, presentation PDF, spreadsheet or even a poster that you can share with other decision makers within your business as you discuss going Google.

To show you a real-life example, we asked one our customers, Smart Furniture (you may remember them from their recent guest post), to test-drive the tool for us. And here’s their poster:


So if you’ve been thinking about moving your business to the cloud, take a couple minutes and see what it would be like to go Google. Be sure to tweet and share your results. The Go Google cloud calculator can be found at www.gonegoogle.com.

Six ways to find the right Chrome Extension for you

With so many Chrome extensions to choose from, exploring the extensions gallery has been like a treasure hunt for me. Over the last few months, I've spent hours checking out new extensions and discovering cool ways to keep up with the latest news or find better deals online. I'd like to share with you some useful extensions that I came across in six easy-to-use pages for web development, blogging, shopping, sports, fun and Google applications.




I always love finding a bargain online. For all of you who also like to shop smart, these extensions can make online online shopping faster and easier. You can track an item's price history with the Camelizer extension or complement your bargain hunting with extensions from Amazon, Woot! and eBay.

We also have extensions dedicated to fans of sports from around the world. You can track live scores and commentary on cricket, rugby and Formula 1 with extensions from ESPN. If you want an edge in your fantasy sports leagues, the Pickemfirst extension brings you news, game statistics and commentary of pro sports players currently displayed in your browser.

Besides sports and shopping, these blogging extensions can help you write better blog posts and share web content more efficiently. You can quickly post to your blogs at TypePad or Blogger. You can also get contextual suggestions of related articles, images, links and tags with Zemanta. After the Deadline offers an extension that automatically checks your spelling and grammar (while optionally checking for cliches and double negatives!)

In addition, we made it easier to find the extensions for Google applications you frequently use. These include extensions to preview Google Docs or to check your Google Calendar directly from your Google Chrome browser.

For those of you who want to complement Google Chrome's developer tools to create a customized development environment in Chrome, there are web development extensions such as viewing PHP documentation, creating random dummy text or testing your page at various resolutions.

Finally, if you want to play a prank on your co-workers or take a 5-minute break with a game, there are quite a few fun extensions to brighten up your day.

I hope you enjoy these pages. There are more than 4,000 extensions waiting to be discovered in the gallery. Happy hunting!

A new Chrome stable release: Welcome, Mac and Linux!

In our most recent beta release, we fired up all engines to bring to life our fastest version of Chrome to date.

Today, we’re bringing all this beta goodness to the stable channel so that it’s available to all Chrome users. We’re particularly excited to bring Chrome for Mac and Linux out of beta, and introduce Chrome’s first stable release for Mac and Linux users. You can read more about the Mac and Linux stable releases on the Google Mac and Chromium blogs respectively.

Today’s stable release also comes with a host of new features. You’ll be able to synchronize not only bookmarks across multiple computers, but also browser preferences -- including themes, homepage and startup settings, web content settings, preferred languages, and even page zoom settings. Meanwhile, for avid extensions users, you can enable each extension to work in incognito mode through the extensions manager.

Our stable release also incorporates HTML5 features such as Geolocation APIs, App Cache, web sockets, and file drag-and-drop. For a taste of HTML5’s powerful features, try browsing through websites developed in HTML5 such as scribd.com, dragging and dropping attachments in Gmail, or by enabling the geolocation functionality in Google Maps. We’ve also given Chrome’s bookmark manager a facelift with HTML5:



In recent weeks, we’ve been beta-testing Adobe Flash Player integration into Chrome. While Flash Player integration in the browser is not included by default in today’s stable release, we’re excited to enable this feature with the full release of Flash Player (version 10.1) soon.

If you’re already using Chrome for Windows, Mac or Linux, you’ll be auto-updated to this latest release soon. You can also try out these new features on our speedy browser now, by downloading Chrome from google.com/chrome.
 

2009 ·google english by TEG